L’ Ilot 1914

George Barbier made this print called ‘L’ Ilot’ using color stencils in the style called pochoir, some time around the 1920s. The evenness of the color suggests a carefully controlled process, but one that is also full of surprises. You can see it in the way the colors overlap ever so slightly and the way the stencils don't quite line up. The colors are interesting, aren’t they? Those blues and reds, they remind me of beach umbrellas and bathing costumes. The overall effect is dreamlike. I love how Barbier plays with flatness. Like in the water, which becomes a decorative pattern as much as a representation of the sea. The man’s arm has a similar feeling, like the kind of stylized gesture you see in the work of someone like Erté. Pochoir was often used to reproduce fashion illustrations, but it was also considered an art form in its own right. The way it embraces artifice, that slight remove from reality, has always appealed to me. Art is about showing us something, but it’s also about showing us how we see.