Dress 1936

Marie Famularo made this watercolor, “Dress,” sometime in the early part of the 20th century. It’s a gentle wash of blues and grays that make up the dress, the frills, and the small black decorative curves. I think of process when I look at this; of the slow, deliberate actions that build up an image, like the layering of a dress. It’s a pretty, almost-monochrome dress with a little jacket, and Famularo has given us a ghostly second view, as if seen from behind. This one is like a diagram, a pure contour that lacks the color, texture, and weight of the main subject. I keep wondering about the paper itself and about those two parallel black lines at the bottom of the dress, so carefully measured. This reminds me of the fashion sketches of Sonia Delaunay, where the subject is not the wearer, but the beautiful shapes of the cloth themselves. These are artworks that embrace the ongoing conversation between the image and the idea.