Life as Art

The Art of Black and White: Art and Fashion

Three artists who stand out when utilizing dramatically applied wide brush strokes of black and white paint on canvas are Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Pablo Picasso with his painting Guernica (1937). When an artist uses the contrast of black and white, it evokes a sensation of vast spaces, good and evil, yin and yang, while focusing the viewer’s attention on the artwork’s composition.

This week, as I opened the latest Vogue magazine’s March issue, what stood out immediately was that the first 30 or so pages were all advertisements by top fashi...