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Christina Malman’s 1935 drawing of a woman embracing a dog is both aesthetically  magnetic and brimming with affect.  Using a brush with black ink and white gouache, Malman masterfully utilizes positive and negative space to create simplified forms that are at once sleekly modern and yet familiar.  The figures are depicted in a kind of rounded, candid profile.  As viewers, one has the sense that the figures are caught in a fleeting moment of stillness, the brevity of which is all too familiar for canine owners.  Selects Series curator Ellen DeGeneres included Malman’s charming drawing in her exhibition, explaining: “For the love of a dog, we would do anything!” Malman’s graphic sensibilities, well demonstrated in this evocative drawing, one of several dozen by the designer in Cooper Hewitt’s Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design Department, led to a flourishing relationship with The New Yorker magazine in the 1930s-1950s.  Recognized for her innate talent at an early age, Malman was

Spree New York

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Batik, an ancient craft often associated with Indonesia, became popular in United States in the 1910s and 20s, with artists such as Arthur Crisp, Pieter Mijer, and Lydia Bush-Brown attracting national attention. These artists worked in the traditional manner, painting paraffin and beeswax on their cloth to create a resist, but expanded the traditional design vocabulary to include patterns inspired by contemporary design and painterly subjects such as landscapes and still lifes. Bush-Brown gained acclaim for her wax-resist illustrations depicting scenes both imagined and real. This example depicts the Manhattan skyline, capturing New York City’s industrial expansion with factories billowing with smoke, and skyscrapers, two of which are under construction. Based in Greenwich Village, Bush-Brown would have borne witness to this expansion. Whether or not she supported it remains open to interpretation. Mae Colburn is a master’s student in the Parsons-Cooper Hewitt History of Decorative

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