He Fa on Picasso

A tiny navy cap sits above an enormous round belly; blue-and-white stripes curve with the fabric, while caramel-brown shorts push the volume farther sideways. This painter figure loosely associates itself with Picasso-like everyday clothing, but all its proportions belong to a new design. What I most want to preserve is the moment when the horizontal line has to bend: the pattern has finally encountered the body actually wearing it.

To insist that every horizontal line remain straight, one must first flatten the belly or hide the curved parts from the image. A uniform appearance is often achieved through such alterations and omissions. I would rather let the stripes show their deformation, acknowledging that the same cloth experiences different tensions in different places. Being comparable does not mean having to undergo identical correction.

Double pleats in the shorts provide room, while socks and broad-toed loafers give the lower body a practical footing. The contrast between enormous volume and thin little legs is certainly comic, but also makes me think about bearing weight: the parts responsible for meeting the ground need not be the most conspicuous. If the belly always draws attention away, the feet's work in keeping the body standing is taken for granted.

I also know that shared dimensions are not always oppressive. Without interchangeable specifications, making and borrowing clothes may become more expensive. The question is whether a specification serves as a starting point or as an endpoint bodies must conform to. A sizing system that allows ease, alterations and different shoe widths can let a shared pattern coexist with particular bodies without making either disappear.

So I let the sailor stripes keep curving around the belly, and the little cap retain its excessively light dimensions. A body need not shrink itself first to make a pattern look correct. If shared clothing is really to serve shared life, perhaps those bent horizontal lines are what most deserve to remain: they show that the same thing can pass through different people and still be recognized.