Existing comment:
Conde Nast, 1873-1942
Clara Tice's witty Dada portrait captures publisher and New York society leader Condé Nast at the height of his influence. The café society parties Nast hosted at his lavish Park Avenue penthouse were funded by a stable of successful magazines all meant to elevate standards of taste, including Vanity Fair, House and Garden, and his flagship journal, the fashion magazine Vogue. Tice's clever portrait of Nast, based on a publicity photo, affectionately spoofs the dapper publisher's aloof propriety by featuring undressed ladies of questionable taste. After an exhibition of Tice's nudes attracted the fury of Anthony Comstock and his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Tice's friends staged a mock trial, where she hoped to be acquitted of "having committed unspeakable black atrocities on white paper, abusing slender bodies of girls, cats, peacocks, and butterflies."
Clara Tice, c 1923 |