In this generously illustrated book, Anne Hollander examines the representation of the body and clothing in Western art, from Greek sculpture and vase painting through medieval and renaissance portraits, to contemporary films and fashion photography. First published ahead of its time, this book has become a classic.

Hollander shows how modern women adapted men's tailoring to their richer scheme of display, making suits do for women what they had long done for men: show their sexuality to be central, serious and interesting, rather than irrational, shallow and dangerous. She shows us, too, how men - now that women have adopted every element of male style - are recapturing the color and ornament they long found taboo, without giving up the potent beauty of tailored suits, which women have made universal. Richly informed, surprising, entertaining, Sex and Suits gives us a fresh view of what we have long taken for granted, and a new context for thinking about our society.

A new book on the nourishing powers of visual art-film, painting, dance, and clothes. Since the advent of cinema more than a hundred years ago, visual art has tended to be perceived as if it were in motion, and as the century ends, we notice that artists create less often in fresco or carved stone and more on film or tape, on the dance stage or in the ever changing, ever moving medium of clothes. In this remarkable collection of writing that ranges over art of the past century with unusual depth of historical insight, the noted critic Anne Hollander explores these rich, diverse visual treasures and the underlying themes that connect them. "Feeding the Eye" opens with a wonderful array of "modern legends"-essays on celebrated figures from Balanchine to Cartier-Bresson, from Kafka to Chanel, from Isadora Duncan to Simone de Beauvoir-who have helped to define our world. Other sections of the book are devoted to the arts of dressing or decorating the human body-Hollander is particularly celebrated for her bold and original interpretations of this theme-and to classic, often misinterpreted artists of the cinema: Chaplin and Garbo, among others. Hollander concludes by asking us to consider how great paintings of the past continue, in many different ways and contexts, to startle us with "the tonic effect of acute optical experience, which is the whole world's natural birthright."