The Modern Pre-Raphaelite

Recently on Facebook, I started a list of things that were being called Pre-Raphaelite in the news at present.  This ranged from any actress with red hair through to a pretty footballer and the film Public Enemies (when compared to Ganster Squad, apparently).  It seems like the media has caught hold of the notion of 'Pre-Raphaelite' meaning red, vivid, dreamlike, fairytale, luxurious, bohemian and many other things, and are misusing it with gay abandon.  In someways it is just a by-product of the fact that Pre-Raphaelites are popular again, on the telly, in the galleries, and so using 'Pre-Raphaelite' as shorthand for a pretty girl with red hair will be understood by a lot of people.

However, it has also come to pass that people have started sneaking Pre-Raphaelite imagery into photographs, both overtly and covertly.  This isn't new, for example...

The Bridesmaid (early 20th century) Unknown Photographer

It doesn't take a genius to spot that this is a direct copy of this...

The Bridesmaid J E Millais

What about more recently?  I was surprised at how directly David Bowie had used Rossetti's 1860s work to influence the look of his album 'The Man Who Sold the World'...

I'm really hoping that outfit is in the V&A exhibition of his costumes, it's beautiful.  Talking of musicians, we don't need to go back to the 1970s to find Pre-Raphaelite imagery.  This is a rather Old School image of a certain pop megastar.  When I talk about Pre-Raphaelite Madonna, I don't usually mean this...

Best picture of Madonna, ever.

Apart from the fact that Rufus Wainwright seems to use Pre-Raph styling in his work, one woman who seems to wear a constant Pre-Raph label is Florence Welch (it's the red hair) and this must be the most 'Astarte Syriaca' of her images...

Apart from Bowie's overt use of Rossetti which he acknowledged and aspired to, usually when Florence and her Machine get called Pre-Raphaelite, it is down to her red hair and swirling bohemain clothes.  Of late, there have been some more Pre-Raphaelite images on show in fashion magazines, their pinnacle has to be the Vogue shoot...

Saoirse Ronan, also from Vogue

Stephanie Pina, from the amazing Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood site was kind enough to send me the edition of Vogue with all the Pre-Raph style in it and it is gorgeous, if only I was allowed to go around dressed like that all the time without being looked at funny.  Mind you, that might not be the clothes...moving on...

There is endless Pre-Raphaelite inspired photograph online at present, some better than others.  There is a complete book you can buy for Kindle on the subject:

This was one of the first things I bought for my Kindle, it's not that much money and some of the pictures are truly inspired.  I love the version of Found that graces the cover, plus Pandora which shows a rather handsome young man in a robe with the box in his hands.  I enjoyed playing with modern versions of the pictures for the competition last summer, and it is clear that others have had similar fun.

Grand Marnier Advert by David Scheinmann

Clare Chong for Nylon September 2007

When you know the visual cues it's obvious that images of enormous beauty can be created that work on a number of different levels: The image is beautiful, undoubtedly, but also for people who know and love Pre-Raphaelite art, the image references a set of ideals, a dream shared across a century and more, a notion of perfection shared by men and women in 1850 and 2013 in a sort of unity and accord that is hard to fathom.

The reason for my meander through this subject is this picture, stumbled across in the National Portrait Gallery yesterday...

Like a Painting (2005) Miles Aldridge

This astonishingly gorgeous image is of the model Lily Cole, who has of course been labelled 'Pre-Raphaelite' because of her red hair and fragile, child-like beauty, so it is possible that the poor girl would look Pre-Raphaelite whatever she did, without even trying...

Lily pops round to Tesco...

Lily puts her wheelie bin out on a Tuesday evening...

Well, you get the idea.  The thing I adore about Like a Painting is the butterflies, fluttering around her, like Venus Verticordia, settling on her like The Blind Girl.  The sort of side-on, three-quarter portraits of women remind me of things like this...

Juliet J W Waterhouse

...and the whole effect is utterly stunning.  There is a definite pleasure in seeing a Pre-Raphaelite photograph, like sharing a joke, feeling that a work of art has been created for your own pleasure in a world of things that don't seem to apply to you.  If you are anything like me (and I assume you are, and we are all fabulous, obviously) many images of modern times, the adverts, the fashion, the visual culture of modernity, just don't connect to me. I don't read women's magazines because I don't feel they have anything to offer me, I am useless with adverts as they don't appeal to me (apart from the one with the dog and his friend the rabbit, that's ace), but if they ever attach a product to that image of Lily Cole, I'd be putty in their hands.  I'd buy what ever she's selling because that image is astonishing.

I am going to start a rumour that Madonna's next album will consist entirely of Christina Rossetti's poems set to music.  If we repeat it enough I'm sure it will come true, and she already has her 'look' sorted for the album...

Oh, and I'd buy it.