La Villa d’Este ; France XXe siècle 1923

George Barbier created this pochoir print called “La Villa d’Este” in France, sometime in the early 20th century. The limited color palette and the linear quality of the rendering of shapes makes me think of early animation. The paper is flat but the subject matter is anything but: there is a kind of drama playing out between these two figures, the man bent over the woman’s hand, the cypress trees punctuating the skyline. I love the way the details of their clothing are rendered in miniature, almost as though the clothes themselves are miniature artworks. It's so stylized and the figures look almost like fashion mannequins. There’s a similar feeling in the work of Erté, a kind of frozen moment of high style. With its delicate lines and decorative sensibility, this piece is also a reminder that art is a conversation, a back-and-forth between the artist and the world, between artists, and between us and the image. It gives us space to dream.