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Bergdorf Goodman Holiday 2008
Fifth Avenue, NY
Sargent’s “Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer” contemplates symmetry. It is rigidly staged, almost prim. The dark background isolates the figure dressed in dreamy white and ivory. The sitter wear a formal dress with a full skirt, suggesting classicism, a repeated motif of wood library panels and simple bench seems almost puritanical, as if staged and stiff backed, almost as if the sitter was being punished. Schorr finds an eerily similar tableau in Bergdorf Goodman’s Holiday window. The encircled arms of the subject are almost identical from painting to photograph, as is the lighting and manner of dress. The long hair is gently turned under in both renderings as is the attention to the elbow as the dress/glove breaks. The motifs in Bergdorf’s wins also suggest a connection to classic symbols. Side by side, they seem to be conveying the same point of view.
