Chaise longue 1895 - 1935

This "Chaise Longue" seems to have been made as a print, and is all about the fantasy of interior decoration. It's one of those images that's all line and wash, like a high-end coloring book page. The whole thing is rendered with such delicacy, you can almost feel the fabric, the light airy frills, that weird little tassel. The artist uses these cool blues and golds, which makes you think about high-end taste and the process of making something desirable, but it’s also clearly mass-produced. It's as if the artist is selling a dream, even though you can tell it’s an industrial process. The bottom edge is interesting, it's a strange bit of added shadow, which is there to ground the piece, but just makes the whole thing more ethereal and unreal. It reminds me a bit of Manet's interiors, but without the subversive feeling of reality that those paintings contain. With a work like this, it’s all about embracing the unreal, and finding pleasure in the surface.