Marcia Cohen, SCAD Atlanta professor. Image courtesy of SCAD Atlanta Human Resources.
Marcia Cohen, one of SCAD Atlanta’s favorite professors, gave a talk on Nov. 3 about her current companion exhibit “Color Mode.” Known for her black-and-white outfits, cute bunnies and challenging color theory class, Cohen’s new exhibition is currently on display at ACA Library’s artist book collection room. Quite different from her previous work, the exhibition “Color Mode: Croquis and Cut-Outs” was inspired by Cohen’s research and travels during her Presidential Fellowship trips to Marrakesh, London and Paris. She explained that at this time, there appeared to be a serendipitous alignment between major fashion exhibitions in these three cities. These experiences traveling abroad inspired her to visit special places related to fashion and color like Jardin Majorelle, Yves Saint Laurent’s former residence in Marrakesh, a YSL retrospective near London, and the posthumous Alexander McQueen exhibition “Savage Beauty” (which she described as the best exhibition she has ever seen). The resulting artworks are like the title “croquis and cut-outs” suggests, but also so much more. As an homage to Yves Saint Laurent’s use of paper dolls as a design tool, Cohen made wooden and museum-mounted versions of these.
Image courtesy of Vogue France.
From the description, it seems like the most glamorous research trip ever: hunting down colors, learning about YSL’s life and career and being behind the scenes at museum archives. Cohen’s curiosity led her to places of fascinating intersections between fashion, color, art history, world history, anthropology and even “The Devil Wears Prada” film—the types of insights SCAD art and design students would cherish. Artist or not, anyone can appreciate the power and inspiration color contributes to our lives.
As you would expect from Marcia Cohen, the talk was funny, smart and full of her infectious curiosity. It’s as if she lends you the black-and-white spectacle and suddenly you can see the world in brighter colors, appreciate eye-catching fashions and notice the convergence of historical references in our modern world that we can take for granted. For instance, Cohen described her fascination with the color Majorelle Blue which is found in the Jardin Majorelle and how she wanted to hunt it down ever since first encountering it during her 2011 Fulbright fellowship travels. The electric blue color had such an impact on her that she decided to devote part of her most recent studies to tracking it down. She discovered that the color was formulated by the villa’s previous owner and that the pigments came from a special indigenous culture in Africa where they used the pigment in their textiles and housing.
An exterior view of the Jardin Majorelle. Image courtesy of www.hierophant.com.
The exhibition runs through Feb. 1, 2016, so make sure to visit the ACA library before then to view these astounding displays meant to provide pleasure and inspiration for SCAD students