THE ART OF OBSERVING

I am writing an essay about art, and it is sorta kicking my butt. I have plenty to write about and yet am supposed to fit it into just 1,000 words.

I know I’m long-winded, but when I start talking about art, I’m not sure 1,000 words is enough.

I’ll overflow what I know I can’t fit into my essay here for you fine readers. You’ve been warned.

Marimekko

Back in 1964, Marimekko did not receive the love we all feel for it now in 2023. Finnish residents scoffed at the designs, even going so far as to walk into the Marimekko store and spit at the clothes. Another Finnish resident besieged Marimekko by phone going on and on about “how Marimekko hats were spoiling the look of the Helsinki streets.”

This seems very much an overreaction from where I sit currently after I finally set foot in my first Marimekko store (in New York, across from the Flatiron) and bought my first Marimekko scarf. I swooned over all of the clothes, the fabrics, the housewares, and also bought an umbrella in my favorite Unikko print.

Since we’re now more than 70 years since Marimekko showed their first pieces to the public, during which we’ve seen Marimekko collaborations with Uniqlo, Adidas, Ikea, West Elm, and others, I think Helsinki must have grown to accept the hats, don’t you?

Sonia Delauney

Sonia Delauney may be most famous for co-founding Orphism, a movement perceived as key in the transition from Cubism to abstract art. Orphism or Orphic Cubism was named by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912. In 1913, Sonia illustrated friend and neighbor, Blaise Cendrars’, poem La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France and it was published to wide acclaim throughout France. It is an accordion-style book, folded over and over and over, and when removed from its binding and pulled to its height, is as tall as a door. You can see a picture of it here or in person at the New York Public Library, MoMA, the Getty, Tate Modern, and the V&A. Next time I’m in New York, I’m going to see it (if I can make that happen).

Sonia lived to be 94 and in 1970, was photographed with a collection of her colorful abstract art. Much of what you or I remember from the 1960s and 1970s is the result of her creating it decades before. Paul Klee was so inspired by her use of rectangular boxes in her art that he incorporated the same shape into his own pieces during his mystical-abstract period (1914-1919).

Vera Neumann

War shortages of linen forced Vera to use silk in the 1940s, just as she and her business partner and husband, George, were selling their first products to department stores. Overstocks of silk (mostly used for military parachutes) were cheap and plentiful. Vera and George immediately transferred Vera’s patterns onto the silk (including her signature, which is on every Vera scarf) and earned instant popularity. Vera’s designs were everywhere, even in the Truman White House, which used Vera’s design on Schumaker fabric to decorate the third floor solarium window treatments and upholstery.

Later we saw Jackie Kennedy sporting Vera scarves, as Vera’s designs hit their stride in the 1960s. A resurgence of Vera designs found their way into Crate & Barrel and Target in 2012 and 2013, but I didn’t discover Vera until a trip to the Museum of Arts and Design in 2019 where the exhibit “Vera Paints a Scarf” took hold of me. I’ve become a bit obsessed, tracking down a large square abstract Vera silk scarf on Etsy that I had framed.