Hermès Editeur, the French fashion house’s collection designed by guest artisans, has previously celebrated the work of contemporary artists Hiroshi Sugimoto, Josef Albers, and Daniel Buren. The fourth edition will be rolled out just in time for Art Basel and explores the symbiotic relationship between light and movement and the effects that they have on one another. For this collection, Hermès Artistic Director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, searching for a fresh, invigorating approach to color, brought on Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc to create a unique sixty-piece collection of 90cm square scarves. Each scarf is a variation of Le Parc’s La Longue Marche (1974-75), a series of ten paintings with winding lines, that when put together create a ribbon-like streak that flows throughout the scarf set.
For this Hermès series, Le Parc diverged from his original compositions by experimenting with the order of colors to shift the entire optical sensation. As a result, Le Parc’s artistry is both an evolution of color and non-color, as his grey-scale creations are too an exaltation of the interplay between movement and color (or in this case the lack thereof), and the visual impact on the audience. Using a vintage edge-to-edge technique, the Lyons-based artisans at the Hermes workshop skillfully transcribed Le Parc’s designs to the silk twill squares. The entire spectrum comes alive as color and light radiate from a silk symphony in Julio Le Parc’s Variations autour de La Longue Marche.
Julio Le Parc’s work will be displayed from June 15-28 at the Museum der Kulturen for Art Basel. The silk scarves will be available for purchase exclusively online at www.hermes-editeur.com starting yesterday, June 15.
