La Villa d’Este ; France XXe siècle 1923

George Barbier made this piece, La Villa d’Este, in France in the early 20th century. Looking at those crisp lines and cool tones, I can almost feel the artist plotting each element with precision and care. Imagine Barbier, maybe with a cigarette dangling from his lips, hovering over the paper, deciding where each line should fall, each shade should blend. I wonder if he started with the figures or the architecture. The figures in their elegant outfits almost seem carved from stone and rendered in a muted palette, so different from the flashy colors we associate with the roaring twenties. The artist also did costume and theatre design, so the work exists somewhere between real life and the stage. This piece really speaks to the dialogue that artists have across time. It seems like artists are in an ongoing conversation, picking up on each other's ideas, riffing, and responding across the ages.