1989-2011 Nicolas Jasmin

Nicolas Jasmin, Untitled (Jasmin/Avantgarde/Surrended), 1989-2011, mixed-media on hessian, 33 x 21 cm

Spending the evening at the studio. Next door you hear the party you don't feel like going to despite the collector's invitation. It's fun. Hours elapse parallel to the remorse. The stronger you rebel, the more you get hooked by the procedures of choosing and applying paint onto canvas. Colors mix. One with the name Jasmin such as the flower, the revolution or the mutinous painter himself. The other is called Avantgarde as it could be a menagerie of drag queens, socialites, drug addicts, musicians, and free-thinkers of a groundbreaking party.

Nicolas Jasmin uses paint by Adler.

2011 Raf Simons for Jil Sander

The Jil Sander summer/spring 2011 collection by Raf Simons marks a successful attempt to transcribe the appearance of minimal art into fashion. Unveiling odd shapes out of simple geometric volumes that cover the whole figur from the base of the neck down to the ankles, he simultaneously traces the outline of the human body within these primary structures and uncovers all the various qualities of textiles as there are flowing and bagging folds, flatt, matt, textured to shiny surfaces, soft or crisp, in vivid and significant shades of color. By keeping the overall composition irreducible, he manages to carry over explicit accessories--like mirrored sunglasses or a red plastic bag--into a state of literal abstraction.

This venture does not stand alone as he repeatedly had appropriated distinctive aesthetic concepts of painters as Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly or Anselm Reyle into past collections of his own fashion house.

"There was a lot of debate about this so-called new minimalism," says creative director Raf Simons about his summer/spring 2011 collection for Jil Sander "the idea of couture, for me, is the uniqueness, and the uniqueness here is the color." [...] The extreme shades were achieved by using low-brow fabrics like polyester and nylon blends (silk alone would never have held that lightning-bolt purple and magenta), but the oversize, simple shapes fell with classic grace.

From Fashion's Bright Spot - Showcasing couturelike craftsmanship in electric Kool-Aid acid-test colors, Jil Sander's Raf Simons proves he's fashion's maximal minimalist by J.J. Martin for Harper's Bazaar January 2011

2009 American Apparel

Winter / Soft Pink

Fluorescent Red / Periwinkle

Black / Sand Dollar

American Apparel RSAPHTC Opaque Two Color Pantyhose

1952 Ellsworth Kelly

Another important example of a panel painting that explores the idea of the mural was Red Yellow Blue White (1952). It's the only one I ever did using actual dyed fabric of ready-made colours, which moves the painting into the realm of real objects. It consists of five vertical panels, each with five canvases. The vertical panels are separated on the wall and the intervals of the wall surface between them are part of the painting.

Red Yellow Blue White 1952 dyed fabric on canvas

A photograph of Weber wearing the dress designed by Kelly

In Branden Joseph's book Random Order on Robert Rauschenberg's relationships with the "avant-garde," the extensive discussion on Kelly's highly specific use and treatment of color confirms that Kelly used the same fabrics from Red Yellow Blue White (1952) to make a dress for his friend Ann Weber.

1972 Robin Mitchell

Robin Mitchell's Painted Room at Womanhouse Los Angeles 1972

To make a painting that is a room,

To make a room that is a painting,

Color on the floor, on the walls,

on the furniture, on the ceiling,

To fill the room with color

as the sun fills the room with light.

Meisterhäuser in Dessau from the 1920s:

1) View from the sunflower tinted vestibule of Haus Klee into Haus Kandinsky with its keen and much cooler color combinations.

2) Staircase of Haus Feininger

Das Treppenhaus ist meine ganze Freude.

Lyonel Feininger

2009 Alexander Thieme

1966 Bruno Munari

Certainly if we now used the colours of the 'art nouveau' period for roadsigns, these would fade magnificently into their surroundings. At that time they used some really refined combinations of colour. A faint idea of them can still be had from Robert's talcum powder boxes and the labels on Strega bottles. They used to put pink and yellow side by side, or brown and blue, coffee and chocolate, pea green and violet. Then they would make unexpected leaps from one shade to another, putting red with pale blue (instead of dark) and so on. Can we imagine a 'No Overtaking' sign with a coffee and chocolate car on a violet background? Well, yes. We can imagine it for fun, but we cannot use it for a roadsign in real life.

From Bruno Munari Design as Art 1966