Madame Plumage - Robert Lohman, c. 1981

Robert Lohman’s Madame Plumage is one of the more theatrically suggestive works within his group of calligraphic abstractions. The title immediately frames the image as a hybrid figure: part woman, part bird, part costume, part performance of line and color. Lohman does not present “Madame” as a conventionally rendered portrait. Instead, he constructs her through feathers, fans, plumes, sweeping contours, and chromatic flourishes and a side profile in a wash of blue. The result is a work that hovers between figuration and abstraction, suggesting the presence of a flamboyant character without ever fully stabilizing into a literal body.

The composition is expansive and horizontal, but its movement feels centrifugal. Forms seem to unfurl outward from the middle of the sheet: a yellow fan-like headdress blooms near the upper center, a green feathered crest curls across the upper right, and broad blue and peach forms sweep through the lower half of the composition. This gives the image a sense of theatrical display, as though the figure is not merely occupying space but performing herself into existence. Lohman’s “Madame” is made from gesture, ornament, and motion.

Feathers and feather-like structures appear throughout the work, but they are never rendered with naturalistic precision. Instead, Lohman translates plumage into repeated linear systems: ribbed arcs, hatching, scalloped marks, and translucent washes. These marks suggest not only feathers, but also fans, fabric, costume fragments, and decorative excess. The birdlike quality becomes inseparable from theatrical femininity. “Madame” is not simply a woman with feathers; she is an identity assembled through display.

Color is central to the work’s expressive force. Lohman uses yellow, green, blue, peach, pink, and touches of dark ink to create an atmosphere of buoyancy and ornament. The yellow passages provide luminosity and warmth, while the blues and greens introduce cooler structural counterweights. Pink and peach soften the composition and heighten its performative quality, giving the image a sense of costume, cosmetics, or stage light. The palette is delicate, but not passive. Its transparency allows the white ground to remain active, making the image feel airy, suspended, and in constant formation.

The dark linework gives the piece its necessary discipline. Without the inky structure, the watercolor might dissolve into decorative softness. Lohman’s lines cut, curl, feather, and loop through the composition, creating a dynamic armature beneath the color. In several areas, especially near the central dark cluster and the upper-right green plume, line becomes almost obsessive to form her profile. These passages complicate the work’s lightness, adding density and psychological texture.

There is also a strong sculptural sensibility in the way the forms interlock. Lohman does not simply scatter ornamental elements across the page. He builds a structure of counterbalancing masses: the large green form at upper right answers the yellow fan at upper center; the peach and blue forms at lower left counter the warmer orange passage at lower right; the central dark area acts as a hinge between the two sides of the image. This compositional balance reflects Lohman’s broader understanding of form as something constructed, extended, and spatially activated.

Stylistically, Madame Plumage belongs to Lohman’s late calligraphic mode, in which figural identity is suggested through rhythm rather than the literal nature of things. The work feels related to his other abstractions, but here the emphasis shifts toward persona. The image is almost cabaret-like: theatrical, ornamental, witty, and slightly elusive. It has the quality of a stage character glimpsed through movement rather than posed for formal portraiture.

The most compelling aspect of the work is its refusal to separate decoration from identity. Lohman treats ornament as structure, not embellishment. The plumes, fans, and feathered gestures do not merely adorn the figure; they create her. In that sense, Madame Plumage can be read as a study of performance itself: how a persona is built through gesture, costume, color, exaggeration, and display.