In the last few posts about butterflies and serpentine dances I mentioned early films coloured using the hand-stencilling technique.
The use of colours, their symbolism and meaning in art, film and fashion always fascinated me and, every time I visit an artist/fashion designer’s studio or creative space, I end up staring in a kind of enraptured trance at their paints, brushes, coloured pencils or fabric swatches.
One of my favourite artists’ studio remains Mariano Fortuny’s. Located inside Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei in Venice, the studio perfectly reflects the personality of this versatile artist.
Fortuny was a painter and photographer, but also a set, costume and fashion designer and lighting engineer, and his studio - crammed with books, sketchbooks, silk lampshades, lenses, electrical wires, catalogues, extracts and clippings from magazines, albums of photographs, engravings, optical instruments, magic lanterns and even a Pathé projection machine - displays his interests in different disciplines.
The best bit of the studio is definitely the tiny retreat behind his work table with shelves of unfinished tubes of colour, brushes, vials of dyes and inks, chalks, glass jars and vases with mysterious materials, powders, oxides, glues and lacquers. This space looks indeed like the cabinet of an alchemist.
You will discover more about Fortuny and his connections with fashion, divas and film at next week's screening of Rapsodia Satanica
But if you want to see some alchemical experiments, colours and illusions in action, check out the Le spectre rouge (The Red Spectre, 1907) directed by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca in the tradition of Georges Méliès.
The Red Spectre - also included in the programme of the Fashion in Film Festival that kicks off in London tomorrow - features a demonic character playing illusion tricks such as wrapping women in fabrics, making them levitate and setting them on fire; producing three glass bottles in which three tiny women are trapped and conjuring up screens on which moving images are projected.
Throughout his experiments, the satanic figure is challenged by a good spirit represented by a woman who will eventually reduce him to an inanimate skeleton. The directors of this film blended visual trickery and colour effects with the skills of an alchemist, creating a series of early horror vignettes characterised by a touch of irony.
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