The results were abstract heads with period hairdos all shaped out of black leather — chic if somewhat unsettling, an S-and-M trip to "Downton Abbey".
(His family background was Russian Orthodox, but I can't grasp what he thought he was communicating, between 1917 and 1933, after his Expressionist period, in series of "Mystical Heads," "Saviour's Faces," and "Abstract Heads," which veer between decorative preciousness and cartoony flapdoodle).
PARIS — Valentino wrote his name with a flourish on the white wall and with slightly less dexterity on an iPad, after his finger had traced an abstract head, a flower-decorated chignon and a long gown falling in waterfall of ruffles at the side.
Six abstract "heads," wood reliefs the artist began to make in 1988, are lined up across the wall — icons of a generalized humanity watching over the art experience.
The collages feature enlarged photographs the artist's taken in Berlin and Karachi, which she augments with spray paint, ink, and oil stick, applying cutouts of weed buds from High Times magazine as eyes on an abstract head.
