Essays

Modernism and Fabric: Art and the Tirocchi Textiles

 

It is clear that Charles Bianchini's employment of Dufy was an inspiration to other Lyon silk manufacturers. By hiring Dufy, Bianchini pointed to a possible way of restoring Lyon to its former status as the producer of the best-designed silks in the world: the adoption of modernist patterns created by French artists to achieve a contemporary and uniquely French style recognizable to all. Certainly Dufy's creations were unlike anything produced in the workshops of Vienna or Germany, nor could English silks be compared in any way to his designs. Bianchini built on his success with Dufy's textiles by hiring other Parisian artists. All were illustrators or avant-garde painters, and many in addition were fashion illustrators, fashion designers, or theatrical costume designers. Several also exhibited at the salons of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs, demonstrating once again the close connections between the textile and fashion spheres and the world of early modernist art and design.

Before beginning to design for Bianchini, Férier in 1912, Paul Iribe had been a newspaper typographer and magazine illustrator. In 1906, he founded the satirical journal Le Témoin, in which he collaborated with many avant-garde artists, including Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Lyonel Feininger, and Juan Gris. He continued to produce illustrations throughout his career for the Gazette du Bon Ton and other magazines. In 1908, Paul Poiret commissioned the young artist to produce illustrations for a brochure on his collections, Les Robes des Paul Poiret, racontées par Paul Iribe, consisting solely of Iribe's plates in the new pochoir stencil technique [fig. 156]. Its success made Iribe famous, and the work became a model for subsequent illustrators.(18) After 1910, he designed jewelry, furniture, and other objects, and in 1912, he opened a shop in the Faubourg St. Honoré, where he sold textiles printed to his designs by Bianchini, Férier. From this shop he refurnished the apartment of couturier Jacques Doucet, who, having sold his extensive collection of eighteenth-century furnishings, opted for the ultramodern and began to acquire a collection of Oriental and tribal art and cubist painting. Iribe stopped designing for Bianchini, Ferier after his move to New York following the First World War. In the United States, he became well known for his illustrations in Vogue and his costume and set designs for the theater and for Hollywood producer Cecil B. DeMille. On his return to France in 1930, he created a line of jewelry for Gabrielle Chanel.(19) Iribe's textile designs often incorporated his modernistic rose [fig. 157].

Charles Martin had been a friend of artists Georges Lepape, André Marty, and Pierre Brissaud since their student days at the Atelier Cormon in Paris, and he worked with them as one of the creators of pochoir illustrations for the fashion magazines that emerged around 1912, particularly the Gazette du Bon Ton [fig. 158]. Like these artists, he also designed posters, furniture, and wallpaper. As a member in good standing of the modernist movement, which brought together artists in all media, he collaborated with composer Erik Satie to illustrate Satie's Sports et Divertissements of 1914. Martin also designed theatrical sets and costumes. Charles Bianchini printed his design of ladies and gentlemen in a garden on silk [fig. 159].

 

 

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