Shopping is a real art.  It combines cognitive decision making and emotional responses while trying to find the right item.  For some, shopping can induce anxiety.  How do you pick out the right thing?  What if you love something, but it’s just a little bit off?  And worse, what do you do when you’re shopping alone?

I had a really great idea for a weekly post based on this concept.  Dressing Room Confessions will be every Friday, and I’ll give you tips and trick for evaluating clothing. 

(Here is a real dressing room confession: I always photograph a garment to see how it will look!)

On my last shopping trip, I found this Free People dress.  The mix of prints and summertime feel was irresistible.  But there was something a little off.  The dress fit perfectly, the textile combination was fantastic, but there was just too much volume in the skirt.  My body is a bit curvy, so if a garment is too big all over, it isn’t flattering.  The dress would be perfect if the skirt was more fitted!

The dress just needed a slight adjustment.  I experimented with draping the extra fabric up around my hip, and was delighted with the results.  In fact, the dress was even better now than on the rack.  All I needed was a brooch to keep it in place.  Now the different prints swirled around in a much more interesting way.  Best of all, it complimented by body type instead of looking baggy.

When I got home, I added a vintage brooch that belonged to my grandmother.

And my new favorite pair of shoes!

Here’s the finished look, after a slight adjustment:

Human creativity never ceases to amaze me.  Scientific research that tries to study and identify factors on the creative process enthrall me.  You may have seen this in my previous posts, Synesthesia in Art & Fashion and A Stroke of Genius- Sudden Artistic Output.  These posts discuss different neurological conditions and how they impact artists.  It was serendipity that brought me to the Morven Museum to see Puzzles of the Brain: An Artist’s Journey through Amnesia.

"Enthusiastic" Woman with Pleated Skirt by Lonni Sue Johnson, 2009. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

Lonni Sue Johnson was a professional illustrator for 31 years. Her art was published by The New York Times and appeared on covers of  The New Yorker magazine. She also did illustrations for The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, the medical field, major corporations and the government.  You may recognize some of her covers for The New Yorker, below:

Lonni Sue Johnson for The New Yorker. Image courtesy of Conde Nast.

Lonni Sue Johnson for The New Yorker. Image courtesy of Conde Nast.

But in 2007, Lonni Sue contracted encephalitis.   Encephalitis is acute inflammation of the brain, which can cause brain damage and death. Lonni Sue had such an acute case of encephalitis that she had permanent brain damage in the hypocampus.  This is the region of the brain that stores memory.  Lonni Sue short and long-term memory were affected.  She had to relearn how to walk, talk, and eat.  She couldn’t remember past events, like her marriage or the death of her father.  She also has difficulty remember things she has just done.  (Very similar to the film, Memento.)

Brain damage after Lonnie Sue contracted encephalitis. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

Lonnie Sue did retain a sense of identity – she knew who she was, that she had been an artist.  She also retained a rich and extensive vocabulary.  Slowly, she began relearning motor skills.  In an attempt to get her back to art, Lonnie Sue’s mother devised games to get Lonnie to draw.  First, she drew shapes and had Lonni Sue copy them.  As Lonni Sue’s motor skills progressed, her mother would draw squiggles and stray lines and instruct her to “finish the picture”.  Lonnie Sue began creating art again.  Her new style incorporated very similar characteristics to her previous work, but included words.

Copy the shapes game. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

Finish the picture game. The red squiggles were drawn by Lonni Sue's mother. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

Art by Lonnie Sue. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

The very fact that Lonnie Sue was able to recover her artistic ability baffled the scientific community.  John Hopkins University is studying Lonnie Sue and her brain activity to learn more about the creative process.  (Watch the video below to hear more about their studies)  It seems that what we know about ourselves, or what we think we know about ourselves, has very little to do with creativity or personal style.

But what was really eery about the exhibition was the first work of art I viewed.  It is a drawing of a clock, that really resembles a mandala.  (A mandala is a circular piece of Buddhist art that reminds the viewer of our relationship to the infinite realms that exist beyond and within our bodies and minds).  Inscribed underneath a clock is a quote that reads:

“There is no permanent forgetting.  We may seem to forget a person, a place, a state of being, a past life, but meanwhile what we are doing is selecting a new cast for the reproduction of the same drama.” – Anais Nim

Clock with Quote by Lonni Sue Johnson, c. 1973. Image courtesy of the Morven Museum.

For more information on Lonnie Sue Johnson, please visit:

Lonnie Sue’s Blog

A Few Strokes of the Past with an Artist Who Lost Her Memory

W has always been my fashion magazine of choice.  It has the most interesting fashion editorials.  While Vogue attempts to cover yet another color blocking trend, the stylists and editors at W consistently create poetic, artistic spreads.   I attribute this mainly to W’s  sensitivity to art and design.

Fashion doesn’t exist in isolation.  It coexists with trends in other disciplines, all of which reflect the spirit of the times and levels of personal taste.  And W‘s Inspiration Equation couldn’t illustrate this point more perfectly.

This month, Virginia VanZanten shows us how furniture design, infused with themes in popular culture, influences the latest fashion.  Take a look at these amazing equations.

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

Image courtesy of W Magazine, May 2012

History and art are two subjects that are taken very seriously.  Perhaps too seriously.  If you’ve read any of my posts for WornThrough.com,  you’ll know that my teaching philosophy includes lots of entertainment and humor.  This week, I was lucky to come across lots of funny material that makes art and history fun.  It’s just too good not to share.

A Concise History of Art. Image courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/Shahram.Design

This concise history of art summarizes the change in aesthetic values, while poking fun at the art world.  Be sure to read the captions.  My favorite?  The title under Impressionism: Homicide des Mouches a la Gare de Saint Marie-sur-la-Seine un Dimanche Matin de Printemps.  A title doesn’t get more Impressionist than that!

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

As a fashion historian, I absolutely LOVE this series of self-portraits by artist Nina Katchadourian.  To pass the time during long flights, the artist goes to the lavatory, adorns herself in tissue paper costume, and creates hilarious self-portrait photos in the style of Flemish Renaissance paintings.  She calls the series Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.   Katchadourian said:

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

Margaret, the Artist's Wife by Jan van Eyck c. 1439.

Portrait of a Young Woman by Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1445

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

Self-portrait by Rembrandt, c. 1669

Self-portrait by Rembrandt.

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

Self-portrait by Katharina van Hemessen, c. 1542

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

Seat Assignment: Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style by Nina Katchadourian. Image courtesy of http://laughingsquid.com

Follower of Antoon van Dyck (Antwerp 1599-London 1641) Portrait of a Lady. Image courtesy of http://www.musees-strasbourg.org

"Amsterdam has a half-seedy/half-glam, but utterly awesome, underworld. You can get a tattoo and get fondled at the same time. It's the most magical place on earth." Image and caption courtesy of TheFashionSpot.com

And in the spirit of fun, you MUST read TheFashionSpot.com  Writer Nika Mavrody has become my favorite writer of all time.  She not only reports on the latest fashion news, but her editorial copy is witty and brilliant.  Her article, Dutch Vogue’s First Editorial Honors Amsterdam had me laughing so hard tears streamed down my face.  Other articles I’ve enjoyed by Mavrody are the “deliciously humiliating” Flour-Bombing of Kim Kardashian:

"On the other hand, I've never more enjoyed a news story about Kim Kardashian. It turns out flour-bombing, while fundamentally harmless, is deliciously humiliating: I can only imagine the scene backstage post-incident, the star's entourage falling all over themselves trying to wash the clumpy wet flour out of her over-processed hair." Image and caption courtesy of TheFashionSpot.com

and Charlotte Free’s philosophy on body hair:

When a reporter asked if her recent shoot for Terry Richardson, which included a close-up photo of Free licking her unshaven armpit, was "a feminist statement," the model responded in the affirmitive. Image and caption courtesy of TheFashionSpot.com

I will never be able to dissociate Charlotte Free from the infamous photo she took for Terry Richardson, which showed her licking her unshaven armpit and smiling lasciviously into the camera. A small portion of my brain is just scar tissue imprinted with the image, and Terry and Charlotte are welcome to take that as some kind of compliment.

In some comments to The Guardian, Free said the picture was a feminist statement, and mentioned that she only shaves her body hair “once in a blue moon for a really big job.”

I wish Katchadourian and Mavrody were my friends! 

Dearest readers, I’ve not forgotten about you!  When my personal schedule becomes chaotic, I don’t have much time to write.  Recently, I started teaching 2 new courses: fashion forecasting and textiles.  As you can imagine, I’ve been quite busy.  But I have written some new material for Worn Through that I’d love to share.

If you’ve visited my blog before, you know how much I love fashion as a language.  (New to my site?  Please take a moment to see How to Speak Fashion, Part I & How to Speak Fashion, Part II.  Part III is in the making!)  Before I had considered pursuing fashion, I dreamed of becoming an Italian professor.  Aside from the language sounding so beautiful, I was fascinated by learning vocabulary.  I was particularly taken with how Italian words and concepts varied so greatly from English.  One language may have a precise word for a phrase or group of words that exists in another.  (For example, qualunquismo is a word to describe someone who is apathetic about politics.)  Semantics, the study of meaning and interpretation of meaning, adds another layer of interest.  The meaning of words are solidified in the brain by experiences and memories.  This is what can make communication tricky; word meaning can vary slightly from person to person.

Curiously enough, once I started teaching fashion, semantics reappeared.  I was introduced to the work of Roland Barthes (1915-1980) during my first year teaching.  Barthes was a French philosopher that pioneered the study of semiotics, semantics, and also how these linguistic disciplines are replicated in fashion.  The Fashion System is Barthes attempt to “read” clothing and determine its system of meaning.

When I taught in LA, I used semantics to stimulate creativity in my students.  Want to know how?  Please read my posts over at Worn Through:

On Teaching Fashion: The Semantics of Creating Fashion

On Teaching Fashion: More on Semantics

I bet you’re dying to know about the dresses above.  You’ll find out in my posts.

Image courtesy of disaboom.com

Some of my most popular posts include images of nudes.  I don’t use them to be controversial – I am genuinely interested in how garments, accessories, and makeup are used to “create” or re-create the body.

Feeling Blue, a post I recently wrote about the artist Yves Klein, explored how an artist used nude females as live paintbrushes.  Aside from appreciating the artistic statement (and sensuality of seeing the works of art being created), the article reminded me so much of how clothing is an artistic medium used to create identity.

Anthropometry, Untitled Characteristics: Dry pigment in synthetic resin on paper 102 x 73 cm. Image courtesy of guggenheim-bilbao.org

I pushed this idea further in another post, Role Reversal.  Sometimes, the image we see in the mirror is not an accurate representation of how we feel about ourselves.  This disparity can have many different degrees.  We are each born with one body, but experience change continually.  At one point or another, clothing helps you transition to a new identity – a new phase of life.  But sometimes, your gender may not match with your biological sex.

Gia Carangi and unknown model in YSL Rive Gauche, 1979. Photo by Helmut Newtown. Image courtesy of imtheitgirl.com

Clothing helps us to construct multiple identities.  Therefore it’s virtually impossible to teach fashion without exploring how fashion constructs and deconstructs gender identities.  Read more about how I discuss this topic with my students on Worn Through:

On Teaching Fashion: Gender Identities

Great Coats: Women's Outerwear from the Collection. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Coats are often thought about in the dead of winter, but surely everyone still needs a cover during the crisp spring evenings.  Great Coats, a fashion exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art gives some great ideas on how to transition your wardrobe from season to season.

Gallery at a Glance. Image courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This lovely plaid coat is by Pauline Trigere.  But what I really love about it is that it’s reversible!  It’s always good to have multiple options.

Reversible Checked Coat, Fall/Winter 1972-73 by Pauline Trigere. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Yellow Mohair Coat, c. 1964 by Bonnie Cashin. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

My pick for an spring evening coat would be this yellow Bonnie Cashin.  I’d pair it with jeans and moccasins.  The muted plaid with leather embellishments and fringe makes me think of throwing a party around a bonfire.

Blue Silk Faille Coat, c. 1948 by Christian Dior. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Evening coats always complete a party look.  Normally, Dior would be my pick.  But after having seen The Artist, I’m in LOVE with this 1920s silk velvet evening coat.  There are small beads that really catch the light and sparkle.

Silk velvet evening coat with metallic lame threads by ANART, Paris c. 1923-8. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Detail, silk velvet evening coat with metallic lame threads by ANART, Paris c. 1923-8. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

DVF Ad Campaign. Image courtesy of Interview Magazine.

One of my favorite pastimes is poring over magazines while having a cup of coffee.  And two nights ago, that is exactly what I did.  This DVF ad campaign caught my eye.  What a nod to surrealism!  I couldn’t help but wonder if the advertising team attending Dylis Blum’s lecture on The Surrealist Hat.  The styling of the shot is such a reference to the art of Dali and Magritte from the 1930s.  The text accompanying the ad says:

Be the woman you want to be.

Dali - Three Young Surrealist Women Holding In Their Arms The Remains Of An Orchestra. Image courtesy of http://niiavolokin.tumblr.com

DVF Surrealist Ad Campaign.

Woman with Flower Head by Salvidor Dali, 1937. Image courtesy of wikipaintings.org

The Pleasure Principle by René Magritte, 1937. Image courtesy of http://www.g-truc.net

French Connection also followed suit – their models shielding their faces with balloons.

French Connection Ad Campaign. Image courtesy of Interview Magazine.

The Son of Man by Rene Magritte, 1964. Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

My real favorite is this fashion illustration featured in Elle Collections UK.  Fashion illustrations are a favorite of mine, and I would love to see them make a comeback.  This editorial illustration certainly looks a lot like the vintage illustrated ads for Maybelline and other cosmetics.

Makeup Illustration. Artwork by Lisa Rahman, image courtesy of Elle Collections UK.

Maybelline Illustrated Ad, c. 1960. Image courtesy of http://flickrhivemind.net

Here’s to hoping that everything old will be new again!

Angela Missoni painted and photographed by Liu Bolin. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.

Keeping up with all my fashion magazines can be challenging.  So I was happy to finally sit down and look through the March edition of Harper’s Bazaar.  You can imagine my delight when I found this editorial called Lost in Fashion, a collaboration between photographer Liu Bolin and some of my favorite fashion designers.

Alber Elbaz of Lanvin painted and photographed by Liu Bolin. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.

Bolin, a Chinese artist, lived and worked in an artists’ village in Beijing.  In 2005, the village was demolished by the Chinese government.  This prompted Bolin to create the portrait series Hiding the City, where he painted himself to melt into the wreckage of the artist’ studios.  Bolin sought to blend into the background as a way to comment on the invisible sense of humanity in every environment, especially in times of destruction.

Jean Paul Gaultier painted and photographed by Liu Bolin. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.

This collaboration reminds me of my previous posts on Veruschka, Graffiti Fashion, and Feeling Blue.

Even Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino said:

We felt like Veruschka in a Franco Rubartelli picture.  But you don’t really know what’s happening, and all the people around you are saying, ‘It’s amazing.’

Pierpaolo Piccioli & Maria Grazia Chiuri of Valentino painted and photographed by Liu Bolin. Image courtesy of Harper's Bazaar.

Each of the designers talk about what it would be like if they were invisible:

“I am Missoni myself, so I wanted to totally disappear into my fabric.  But if I could be invisible, I would forget about clothes for a day.  I’d be invisible but naked.” - Angela Missoni

“If I were invisible, I would look at myself as a designer, I’m not an exhibitionist; I’m move of a voyeur.  All I try to do is be invisible.  I’m working day after day in front of a mirror and trying to disappear in front of the mirror.  I don’t want to see myself.  But I think it’s a choice: to make clothes to make women visible or to be a star and to always be visible.  I always preferred to be on the other side of the street and disappear.” – Alber Elbaz, Lanvin

“If I were invisible, I don’t know what I would do.  I would have no people to interact with.  It would have to be a very short moment, not for life!  I would never use it to spy, to find out if people truly loved me, because maybe I would feel depressed.  So [laughs] I think maybe I should die.” – Jean Paul Gaultier

“If I were invisible? I would stay by myself.  Just me.” -Pierpaolo Piccioli, Valentino

“I would wear pieces by other designers [laughs]!  That would be very nice for me.” – Maria Grazia Chiuri

 

Harper’s Bazaar, March 2012.  Pages 408-417

My dear friend and fellow blogger D. Kareem of The Blackout Blog recently wrote about RuPaul’s Drag Race.  For those of you who haven’t seen the show, it’s a competition for America’s next drag superstar.  Perspective contestants submit audition tapes in order to be cast.  All contestants selected must be 21 years of age or older at the time of taping, and all contestants must be biological men.  Once selected, the contestants are given challenges to progressively eliminate the number of drag queens in the competition until a winner is selected.

D. Kareem asked me an interesting question:

Do you think it’s a queen’s responsibility to learn to sew before entering Drag Race? Or should she focus more on other parts of her performance in preparation for the show if that’s not her thing?

RuPaul. Image courtesy of rupaulsdragrace.tumblr.com

My immediate reaction to this question was no.  And I would say that my answer to this question was self-serving – why should Drag Race seek to become a derivative of Project Runway?  As a viewer, the idea of watching the transformation through the use of makeup is much more enthralling.  That is why I enjoy watching Petrilude so much:

After some reflection, I considered how difficult it must be to find clothing that fits these queens.  Tailored clothing can be difficult to find, not to mention when your proportions are not the industry average.  I’m not sure that it should be the responsibility for each queen to make her own garments, but I’m sure it would allow a greater freedom to express their identities.

When teaching, I often discuss how fashion constructs and deconstructs gender identities.  The first time I led this discussion, I was entering with my own agenda: women wearing pants.  (See my guest post for Fashion Historia on California Playclothes).   Trousers or pants for women appeared throughout fashion history, but always on the scandalous periphery: Amazonian warriors, riding habits, coal miners, Bloomers, and so on.  It wasn’t until the 1930s that trousers for women became accepted for casual use for the home and vacation.  Yet women could be refused service in the public sector when they were clad in pants.    This slowly started to change in the 1960s, but with much resistance.

Woman in Le Smoking by Yves Saint Laurent, 1966. Photo by Helmut Newtown. Image courtesy of mademoiselle-c.tumblr.com

I like to use images of Yves Saint Laurent’s “Le Smoking“, photographed by Helmut Newton.  I think it captures the idea of the time period – is a woman still a woman if she dresses like a man?  Now this question seems absurd.  Of course women can be feminine and still wear pants.  It is socially acceptable.  But historically, pants and trousers identified masculinity.  So what happens when gender identity is blurred through clothing?

Woman in Le Smoking by Yves Saint Laurent, 1961. Photo by Helmut Newtown. Image courtesy of messandnoise.com

Gia Carangi and unknown model in YSL Rive Gauche, 1979. Photo by Helmut Newtown. Image courtesy of imtheitgirl.com

Through these classroom discussions, I learned a lot about the experience of cross dressing from my students.  They were all fashion design majors and could construct their own garments, so it doesn’t address D. Kareem’s question to me.  But hearing their experience of not allowing their identity to be defined by gender was enlightening.  One student explained:

Once I embraced the idea that I was attracted to the same sex, I felt a total freedom to dress differently.  Suddenly, every garment was now accessible to me.  Waking up everyday became exciting!  So many choices!  How I dress still reflects my identity, but less of how society sees me and more of how I feel on a day to day basis.  Some days it is more masculine, and some days it is more feminine. 

Elsa Perretti by Helmut Newton. Image courtesy of Hamburg Kennedy Photographs via artnet.com

Now that’s freedom.  For more on this topic, please visit:

The Blackout Blog

Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety

In 1960 Cardinal Siri urged women not to wear trousers. I think he may have had a point

Image courtesy of optikoeyewear.blogspot.com

There comes a point in the semester when I discuss design philosophy with my students.  I particularly like this quote by Epictetus to start a discussion.  Philosophy can be a dirty, intangible word to many.  There are countless misconceptions about philosophy, particularly when I talk to fashion designers early in their careers. . .

Read the rest of my post on Worn Through

My post, Sunshine on a Cloudy Day, was about the paintings of Israeli artist Yadid Rubin.  Sadly, Mr. Rubin passed away shortly after the post.  The Chelouche Gallery for Contemporary Art and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art had an evening in memory of Yadid Rubin.  My friend and extraordinary artist, Daniel Beaudoin, attended the event and wrote this guest post.

As an artist, Beaudoin felt an affinity for the of Yadid Rubin. Rubin painted spiritual landscapes.  In a similar way, Beaudoin paints political and social landscapes in his art.  Beaudoin says:

My art deals with social and political issues; and tries to give expression to existential dilemmas.  I use everyday objects and a variety of materials, with which I texture and construct my canvases. This approach is exhilarating, and I often feel like a mason at work on a construction site.   I am then free to present in my paintings the moral dilemmas of the social and political issues I am currently engaged with.

Yadid Rubin at work. Image courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

Yesterday evening, 29 February 2012, I attended an event to commemorate the passing away of Yadid Rubin (74), an Israeli painter that dared to defy and challenge the institutional dictates and rules set by the self appointed gatekeepers of Israeli art.

Yadid Rubin, born 1938, lived and worked in Kibbutz (a collective farm) Givat Haim.  Rubin’s paintings remarkably and beautifully express the meaning of the allusive term Israeli: the landscape of the kibbutz, vast plowed fields, plantations filled with fruitful trees, columns of cypresses, warehouses and tractors.

Kibbutz Landscape by Yadid Rubin. Image courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

Rubin, at the beginning of his career, was intimidated by color, and painted carefully, including self portraits and more minimal depictions of kibbutz life.  He was afraid to “tamper with God”, as he put it to me one day when I had the unexpected luck of running into him at the Chelouche Gallery, which was his artistic home for more than two decades.  Eventually, he decided to touch the face of the divine, and began to paint in an exhilarating and explosive display of color: hues of yellow, ochre, red, blue, browns and so many layers of paint applied straight from the tube.

A rare portrait by Yadid Rubin. Image courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

I always wanted to get up real close and smell his paintings, maybe even take a small bite out of one of the plowed fields.  The gooey bright texture, for some reason, reminds me of treacle and toffee, consumable landscapes of Israel.  Unfortunately, on the many occasions that I went to see his work, including in the landmark exhibition he held at the Tel Aviv Museum for Modern Art (with a record six month showing), I was unable to escape the museum guards; I never had the chance to stick my face to the canvas and taken a good sniff and taste.

Landscapes reminiscent of toffee, by Yadid Rubin. Image courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

The repetitive motive of his work recall prayer mantras: again and again the emotional rendition of childhood scenes and adulthood spent in the fields and agricultural activity surrounding him.  These landscapes, he said, reflect my soul, and that is why he preferred to paint from memory, and from within a windowless room, which was an old chicken coop.  But the windows of his soul were very wide open, and they invite us to participate in the divine experience of his sensual orgy of color, texture and naïve dreams of how simple and beautiful life can really be.

Very shortly before his death, for real estate purposes, the kibbutz decided to level the fields and cypress trees which surrounded his studio.  The thought still haunts me that maybe the disappearance of the so familiar landscape had traumatized him so much that it actually caused his demise.  I am not sure, but I know that whenever I travel through the country and see a red tractor plowing line after line of deep brown fields, or the row of pines along the horizon, floating in a mist of ochre brilliance, I too feel as if I were close to the divine.

Thank you, Yadid.