NEW YORK'S GIFT: FASHIONABLE VENUES (c) By Polly Guerin

A painting is worth a thousand words. In l881, Edouard Manet said, “The latest fashion…is absolutely necessary for painting. It’s what matters most!” Fashion and art capture the spotlight in breathtaking museum exhibitions. Here’s the scoop!!!

Claude Monet, Luncheon on the Grass

IMPRESSIONISM, FASHION, and MODERNITY With the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation o fashion magazines, those at the forefront of the avant- garde--- Manet, Monet, and Renoir to Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Zola---turned a fresh eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as the harbinger of modernity. The novelty, vibrancy, and fleeting allure of the latest trends in fashion proved seductive for a generation of artist and writers who sought to give expression the pulse of modern life in all it nuanced richness. The stunning survey, anchored by the most celebrated works of the Impressionist era illustrates the extent to which artists responded to the dictates of fashion between the 1860s, when admiring critics dubbed Monet’s portrait of his future wife “The Green Dress,” and the mid-1880s, when Degas capped off his famous series of milliners and Seurat pinpointed the vogue for the emphatic bustle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some 80 major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, and popular prints, highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. A fashionista’s find on view through May 27, 2013.

FASHION CULTURE SPRING PROGRAMS Organized by The Museum at FIT (MFIT) presents PLUS ONE: AN OUTSIDER’S PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY INTO THE WORLD OF FASHION with Sharon Socol, an intuitive, spontaneous photographer---and a fashion outsider. She attended hundreds of fashion events as her husband’s “plus one” during the year years that he was CEO of Barneys New York. Her book, Plus One, is Ms. Socol’s photographic record of that unique experience on Thursday, February 28 at 6pm. A book signing will follow her presentation. At 27th Street & Seventh Avenue. To register call 212.217.4385.

NO LIMITS, NEW YORK SKYLINE RE-INVENTED features Cuban-born artist, Alexandre Arrechea’s first large-scale public art exhibition in new York city which opens along Manhattan’s park Avenue malls on Friday. The extraordinary exhibit will feature ten recognizable bur re-imagined new York City buildings , in a series of steel and aluminum sculptures that depict the buildings as you have never seen them before, some amusing and some that will rotate when visitors push them. This unusual display of architecture re-invented will be up through June 9, 2013.

Ta Darlings!!! Impressionism and Fashion reveal more than meets the eye about fashion and how it reflects how artists interpret the spirit of their age. Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon.net. Polly’s Blogs are best accessed at her website pollytalk.com. Just click on the link in the left-hand column for visonarymen, womendeterminedtosucceed, poetry or fashion.