Chez la Marchande de Pavots 1920

George Barbier made this print, Chez la Marchande de Pavots, probably in the 1920s, and I can imagine him in his studio, composing this vision of languid ladies and a looming dragon. It’s so stylized! The figures are flattened, but everything's balanced—the colors are muted, and the patterns are decorative, not chaotic. I think it is interesting that the dragon is stylized while the ladies are nude. There's a cool detachment here, a formal approach to representing, well, an opium den! It’s like he is winking at the viewer, asking us to consider the aestheticization of everything, even pleasure and escapism. It reminds me a little of Matisse, who turned everything into decoration but in this artwork, there is an absence of brushwork and a stillness that feels very modern, like the Jazz Age distilled into a single, striking image.