Gazette du Bon Ton, 1914 - No. 5, pag. 175: Bas-reliëfs 1914

This book illustration was made in 1914 by J. Renée Souef for the Gazette du Bon Ton, a magazine of fashion and society. What I love about this piece is its quiet energy, the way the draped skirt, rendered in hatched lines of pink and blue, hints at a form in motion. The texture in the skirt is amazing, like an early form of glitch art, the kind that might come from a broken printer. If you look closely, you can see the way the lines break down into tiny dots, giving the fabric a shimmering, almost pixelated quality. There is something very knowing and self-aware about this piece, which reminds me of the bold, playful work of Hannah Höch, who also worked in this period. Like Hoch, Souef is not afraid to embrace ambiguity, to create images that are both beautiful and slightly unsettling. It's this tension, this push and pull, that makes the work so compelling.