The unfashionable human body

Bernard Rudofsky's views on the human body and its coverings first attention in 1944 with "Are Clothes Modern?" -the earliest of his controversial exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art-and a book of the same title. A widely traveled, many-sided, overeducated man (two master's and one doctor's degree), he applies his insatiable curiosity to what he calls, not without irony, the Art of Living. The ensuing discoveries and reflections he has put into his books, Behind the Picture Window, a commentary on the American way of life; The Kimono Mind, an informal guide to Japan and the Japanese; the iconoclastic Architecture Without Architects; and the up-to-the-minute Streets for People. A Ford, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Fellow, Mr. Rudofsky has held professorships at Yale, and Tokyo's Waseda University.