5.19.2009


colorblock dress

http://swissmiss.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/26/ellsworth_kelly.jpg

designed by
ellsworth kelly
sanary, france
1952


michael was so
kind to send me
this photo


ps: i can't find
any information on
kelly as a designer.
can you?

10 comments:

Chelsea said...

This is amazing! I had no idea Ellsworth Kelly designed dresses as well as painted...what a lovely translation to fabric

Maia said...

I didn't know about Kelly's dress design, either - it's such a stark and bold statement with the painting. And on a beautiful and regal woman as well. Gorgeous.

Jana FitzGerald said...

wow! really? I had no idea. I like this very much. I wish more painters made clothing...each transition I've seen is at the very least interesting or cheeky.

Gold Dust Women said...

I adore your color palettes!

Love you blog <3

Check out mine:
http://twogolddustwomen.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

everything is amazing about the first photo!
nancy

erica lorraine scheidt said...

beautiful posts...

Lindsay said...

That's stunning. The dress is beautiful, and so is the woman. I'm sending this question to The Textile Blog - John might know more about Kelly as a designer (and that modernist carpet, too).

John Hopper said...

I have not found evidence that Kelly produced any textile design work. The dress appears to be made from four strips of different coloured fabrics sewn together, and so wouldn't really constitute a textile design as such.

Artists are sometimes keen to see what their artwork looks like on a human figure, reminiscent of Yves Saint Laurent's 'Mondrian' dress of 1965, for example. This was probably an interesting one off experiment by the artist, and not repeated.

Greg Allen said...

The dress was made for Ann Weber, an early collector and friend of Kelly's, who was the wife of the artist Max Weber.

He made it using fabric he bought for his sole "painting object" which used "readymade" [i.e., commercially dyed] colored fabric stretched into panels.

Sanary was extremely important for the development of Kelly's use of color. I researched the dress, found the images in old Kelly retrospective catalogues, and wrote about it last week after seeing Cere's post.

http://greg.org/archive/2009/05/21/dress_1952_by_ellsworth_kelly.html

Mary said...

interesting post and photos!
love all the comments people have made too :)