Dress c. 1938

Hans Mangelsdorf made this image of dresses with watercolour. Isn't watercolour tricky? All that transparency. Like, where do you even begin? The red dress is intense, almost a blood-orange, dotted with these tiny black flecks. It gives it this vibrating, almost feverish quality. But then look at the white dress – pure, pristine, almost ghostly. It's like two sides of a personality, or maybe two paths diverging. There's something so tentative about the line work, especially on the white dress. See how it sort of fades in and out? It’s like Mangelsdorf is feeling his way through the form, not quite sure where it’s going, but trusting the process. Which reminds me of those studies by Rodin. He would make drawings as a sort of exercise, and this has that type of feeling. He wasn't trying to make a perfect representation, it was the activity that mattered.