Michel Pastoureau's 'The Devil's Cloth' Explores Stripes' Historical Stigma and Artistic Applications

Michel Pastoureau's 2001 book 'The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric' examines the complex cultural history of striped patterns. Translated by Jody Gladding and published by Columbia University Press in New York, the work traces stripes from medieval Europe to contemporary art. In the 13th and 14th centuries, stripes carried diabolical associations, with Leviticus 19 prohibiting garments 'made of two' and Old French linking 'barre' to illegitimacy. Marginal figures like jesters, prostitutes, and clowns wore stripes, creating visual disturbance by disrupting figure-ground relationships. The pattern later gained hygienic connotations as white undergarments gave way to pastel stripes. Pastoureau connects this history to modern phenomena like McDonald's fry container linings and German 'Zebrastreifen' pedestrian crossings. Artists have engaged stripes extensively: Daniel Buren uses them as public visual disruptors, Sean Scully has painted countless stripes citing Matisse's Nice series influences, David Diao created 'Little Suprematist Prisons' in 1986 responding to Robert Motherwell, and Cary Smith paints vertical stripes to capture modern tension. Pastoureau, a French medievalist specializing in heraldry, notes stripes' metonymic quality and observes that 'too many stripes can drive you mad.'