Très Parisien, 1923, No. 4: 2. - SÉVILLE. Une adorable toilette .... 1923

This fashion plate called ‘Très Parisien’ was made in 1923, its author now lost to us. The artist uses a limited palette of pastel tones, setting the confident graphic lines of the flapper figure against a background that is almost parchment in its subdued simplicity. Look at the way the black ink both defines and obscures the figure. The dress itself is a series of broken vertical lines, suggesting movement and texture, while the pastel circles create a sense of playful, almost dizzying energy. Note how the colour is flat, opaque, giving a sense of depth but also of stylized artifice. The bouquet of flowers she offers, and the yellow and purple palette of the dress, make me think of the Nabi painters, like Bonnard, who saw the world as an array of colour and pattern. This piece reminds us that art is always in conversation with itself, borrowing and transforming ideas across time, always embracing ambiguity.