blackbird online journal spring 2002 vol.1 no. 1

 

MARK HARRIS | Work and Commentary

Mixed Media

Sixty-eight, Sixty-nine, 1999, 9' x 23' 6"; acrylic on paper inset with digital prints of Ungaro fashions.


Ungaro designs from the end of the 1960s are interspersed within a cartoon drip structure of cut paper whose colors derive from the same images in Vogue and L'Officiel fashion magazines of the late 1960s. The distribution of outfits is determined by material, with synthetics and chiffon on the left, woolens in the center, and leather and PVC on the right. I'm impressed by the brash hedonism of these couture designs. I imagine these designs (and the fabric from which they are made) as utopian representations sustaining an image of the future that was imagined during that decade. Psychedelia has a similar reference in the cutout paintings.

 


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