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: laid paper; engraving

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 375 x 230 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 14.76 x 9.06 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 490 x 290 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 5/16 x 11 7/16 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.b

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.

Within the stereotypically feminine spaces of an upscale department store, one finds the sequestered zone of the men’s department. A men’s department often utilizes “masculine” furnishings featuring dark woods and striking, minimalist decor. The casually posed yet elegantly suited mannequins in Raftery’s image are perused by men in less formal attire, who perhaps wish to project the professionalism seen in these models by selecting and purchasing new suits of their own.
Kate Meyer, Curatorial Assistant in Prints and Drawings

Exhibition Label:
"xy," Jun-2009, Kris Ercums
Within the stereotypically feminine spaces of an upscale department store one finds the sequestered zone of the men’s department. A men’s department often utilizes “masculine” furnishings featuring dark woods and striking, minimalist decor. The casually-posed yet elegantly suited mannequins in Raftery’s image are perused by men in less formal attire, who perhaps wish to project the professionalism seen in these models by selecting and purchasing new suits of their own.
Kate Meyer, Curatorial Assistant in Prints and Drawings

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.