Dress c. 1937

Julie C. Brush made this dress design with some kind of drawing material on paper. I love the way she’s got a few different tones working together, it makes my eyes keep moving around the design. It's not a photorealistic rendering, but it really doesn't need to be, the process of artmaking comes through. There’s a great contrast between the very detailed pattern on the dress itself, with these mad puffy sleeves, and the sketchy outline of the dress floating behind it. It's like two different languages talking to each other. The paper is matte and flat, providing a grounded space for the vivid detail of the dress pattern. I wonder if the color choices are suggestive of an actual fabric or are just the expression of the designer? This reminds me a little of some of Hilma af Klint’s more figurative works, the way she can pull together representation and abstraction into a single image. It embraces ambiguity, doesn’t try to give us all the answers, and lets the image be what it is.