Suit Shopping: An Engraved Narrative

Andrew Raftery, artist

born 1962

RISD Print Editions, printer

Suit Shopping: An Engraved Narrative, 2002

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: engraving; laid paper

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 375 x 520 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 14.76 x 20.47 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 490 x 610 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 5/16 x 24 in
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): entire triptych 375 x 920 mm
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 3/4 x 36 1/4 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): entire triptych 490 x 1060 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 5/16 x 41 3/4 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Lucy Shaw Schultz Fund

Accession number: 2003.0107.a

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Power Clashing: Clothing, Collage, and Contemporary Identities

“Engraving itself is like a man’s suit—a cultural remnant, an icon of power. We still recognize it as authoritative because of its relationship to currency.” – Andrew Raftery
Raftery employs the painstaking and highly skilled process of copperplate engraving to depict the seemingly ordinary event of a couple shopping for suits in the men’s section of a department store. The narrative extends over five panels, each composed of swelling, parallel lines that emulate the style of 17th-century French engraver Claude Mellan. The work appears in a triptych-like arrangement, a format historically used for church altarpieces. With its historical technique and religious overtones, Raftery transforms the act of suit shopping into a contemporary male ritual.

Exhibition Label:
“Embodiment,” Nov-2005, Kate Meyer
Raftery’s suggestion of a triptych format promotes a sense of narrative but also imbues this work with a certain historical authority, as does his use of an engraving technique and style modeled on seventeenth-century French printmaking. These decisions encourage the viewer to contemplate and question what might otherwise be dismissed as a rather banal scene: a man interacting with a salesman, a tailor, and his wife, as he goes through the ritual of buying a suit in a department store.