Color Block Party!

Mark Rothko

Narcisco Rodriguez/BCBG 2010

Now that Spring has truly, officially, really,actually happened, colors have exploded all over the city. Like, the way a bird who eats uncooked rice explodes, or an equally gruesome fate of an exceptionally festive and over-stuffed pinata on Cinco De Mayo. All over the place I'm seeing more and more otherwise normal people walking around like this:

Which reminds me of this:

Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black, 1921

Piet Mondrian: Hero of primary colors and color blocking in general, if you ask me. He was color blocking when all these models were far far from coming into existence. Not much of a looker, I heard he owned some awesome records and wooed ladies that way. You can't paint something like Broadway Boogie Woogie (not shown) without them. Everyone do the twist!

Apparently, one can over-do this color block trend.

And I may not be too far off here, but don't these look a bit like...

Give them all 6-inch heels and expensive handbags,

and they could walk all over SoHo, running over little old me

AND all my grey and black clothes.

Paul Klee, Flora on the Sand, 1927

He was really onto something...

A little restaint, please? Thank you. I love the neutrals. But I don't really love that the second weather hits about 60 degrees every young lady is immediately tan? Where do they go? Did the groundhog that popped up 2 months ago see my white legs and retreat? Is that why winter lasted so long? let hope not, people. Lets hope not. (I'm sorry).

The beautiful patchy paintings seen above and below the row of waifs, are those by Paul Klee. A huge influence of abstract and color field/theory painting, a professor at Bauhaus, and there is a lovely restaurant named after him in Manhattan. Ha!

Paul Klee, Ancient Sounds, 1925

It was only after I saw these paintings that I fully understood that pain-in-the-ass-assignment all of us had to do either freshman or sophomore year, to mix every color and gradate them on a canvas/board? Took literally FOREVER? Well, its so we could all appreciate colors that are not out-of-the-tube all the time. Like Klee's, thanks bro.

I will use any excuse to bring up my fondness of Mark Rothko, or really good blush.

Klee wasn't the only one inspiring future palettes of overly done up women...

Go out there and wear all the crazy stuff you own. Remember when you couldn't mix stripes with spots? Plaid and Argyle? Vodka and Tequila? It's 2011. If these fast paced times and media saturation has taught us anything, its that you can dress like a crazy person, who escaped from Pandora's closet, got lost in a field of magic mushrooms along the way, and as long as you smell decent while doing it, you are awesome. Simply fabulous. Seizure inducing paintings and clothing are just the tip of the iceberg of this glorious warm weather ahead of us, I'm sure.

Lite Bright, anyone?