ART HISTORY HALLOWEEN: Femme au chapeau

Happy Halloween!

My costume this year was inspired by Henri Matisse's Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), 1905, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  I've always been fascinated by this painting for its riotous colors, and it was actually one of the first artworks to be classified as "Fauvist".  

It is a portrait of Matisse's wife, Amélie, who was a hat-maker.  What a fun challenge to recreate the gorgeous topper depicted in this painting!  

I used hand-painted paper, which I cramped and attached to a painted hat.  I painted the blouse as well, and the backdrop.  My friend Kathy helped me with the makeup and took the photos.  It was so much fun to bring one of my favorite paintings to life!

Have you worn an art-inspired Halloween costume?  I'd love to see it!

GERHARD RICHTER AT SFMOMA

"Art is the highest form of hope." -Gerhard Richter

I finally got to visit the new SFMoMA yesterday, which reopened after a long remodel.  In anticipation of the visit, I painted this dress, inspired by Gerhard Richter's 256 Farben (256 Colors) from 1974, which is part of the Fisher collection at the museum.

The colors in Richter's color chart paintings are ordered by chance, which seems surprising when you encounter the precise-looking arrangement.    Of these works, Richter is quoted as having said that he "...found it interesting to tie chance to a wholly rigid order."  We happened to notice that there were more warm tones on the left side of the canvas, and for some reason this made me appreciate the painting even more.

It was fun wearing my handpainted dress to the museum, and I even made a few friends in the process.  One is a photographer from Seattle named Sam Saimo who took the photo below and kindly emailed it to me!  Another was an elderly lady who exclaimed, "There's hope in the world!" when I told her about my process for creating art-inspired clothing.

256 Farben is just one of the hundreds of modern works on few at the new museum, and I encourage you to make a visit the next time you're in the Bay Area.

Photos by William Sealy, and the bottom photo by Sam Saimo.

FUNK ART

I recently thrifted a book of painting and sculpture from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and came across the work of Robert H. Hudson (b. 1938), a Bay Area sculptor.

Hudson's work was new to me, but combined a few of my favorite things:  Abstract Expressionism, the Bay Area color palette, and assemblage.

Hudson began as a painter (comparable to the work of Richard Diebenkorn, also from the Bay Area) and slowly moved toward a combination of painting, sculpture, and found objects, eventually known as Funk Art Assemblage.

"Drawing from a reservoir of images, memories, ideas, and stories, he has developed a unique and ever-expanding language which he puts to use in a multitude of mediums."

I'm wearing a thrifted skirt worn as a dress, vintage leather belt, thrifted and DIY jean jacket, Lauren Merkin clutch, and Tory Burch boots.

[Hudson images from zymoglyphic.org, sofaexpo.com, and lorraineglessner.blogspot.com; quote from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: The Painting and Sculpture Collection, 1985.]

SERGE DE NIMES

Denim is one of the most versatile textiles in production. Originally manufactured for the U.S. in Nîmes, France, it was called serge de Nîmes, which has been shortened into the colloquial term denim. As far as fashion is concerned, denim is always in style, and the average American owns 7 pairs of jeans.

Although the use of denim is widespread in the fashion industry, it was originally intended as a textile for laborers' garments. One of my favorite artworks addresses the issue of worker's clothing and its associations with this country's complicated industrial history.

Artist Ann Hamilton created this mound of denim for an installation in 1991, and it was shown again in 2007 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It consists of 18,000 pieces of used blue work clothes on a pallet and a seated participant actively erasing text from a book.

Hamilton's goal with this work, called Indigo Blue, was to encourage the rewriting of American history to include the importance of laborers in our country's industry. It spotlights the millions of working class citizens who made our country what it is today but have rarely been featured in accounts of U.S. history.

You can find some videos of Hamilton discussing Indigo Blue here.

For my Indigo Blue look, I wore a Marcel Dachet for Bergdorf Goodman denim dress and Christian Siriano for Payless shoes.

I plan on wearing this dress often--it's like a blank slate for colorful accessories. For its debut, however, I decided to keep it simple with these tonal pumps.

[Indigo Blue images from sfmoma.org.]