Édouard Vuillard, French
“Priceless” Hack of the Day: Save $$$ By Making Your Clothing Out of Leftover Wallpaper and Furniture Upholstery, 1896
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page may have more).
/// Thera sits on the couch in a tizzy.
Complex patterns can make her feel dizzy.
She gets visions, (not pain),
from an optic migraine.
Does her gold-on-gold skirt look too busy?
/// All these women choose clothing to wear
which blends into a background right there.
They’d completely blend in,
were it not for their skin,
so they’re getting tattoos and dyed hair.
/// Called the Reader, she studies her books,
which were hidden in hard-to-see nooks.
Each page, densely designed,
makes it too hard to find
out “Where’s Waldo?” (The last place she looks.)
/// Thera’s noticed a thing that enthralls
her; the wallpaper’s covered with scrawls.
How it’s done she can’t gauge.
Waldo leapt off the page
and he’s hiding in spots on the walls.
/// She looks all round this room to confirm
that the patterns are starting to squirm.
Floral forms rearranged,
or else, Thera’s deranged.
This environment made her infirm.
/// The profusion of colorful shapes
on the walls, rugs, couch, pillows and drapes,
don’t augment one another.
Over time, viewers smother,
and one either goes mad or escapes.
/// Taking in this minutiae, she pales.
She seeks out some coherence and fails.
This decor had been planned
by Lord Satan’s own hand,
for, the Devil is in the details.
/// She’s discovered, to her utter fright,
that, when viewed with her eyes crossed just right,
all these shapes coalesce
from a loud jumbled mess
to a 3-D form haunting her sight.
/// Setting off all her deepest of fears,
when her eyes cross, the Devil appears
seeming solid in space.
As she looks in his face
he peers into her soul and he leers.
/// At that sight, she sank down to her knees.
Called a priest: “Send an exorcist, please!”
Holy water and prayer
chased the demon from there,
but her home decor still causes quease.
/// At long last, Thera called in a man
to design a new home decor plan.
The redo would consist
of a minimalist
look— as seen in clean rooms in Japan.
/// In a year Thera’s multi-hued home
was a sensible beige monochrome.
All the froufrou had vanished
and all clutter was banished.
Thera sat on a mat chanting “Ommmmmm…”
/// She had asked if her roommates would mind
if she had the front room redesigned
by her uncle Pierre.
They said they didn’t care.
Learned too late Pierre’s legally blind.
/// The effect on their eyesight was such,
that the ladies stopped looking so much.
With the lamps dimmed at night
they found, to their delight,
Pierre’s fabrics were thrilling to touch.