Unanimist spectaclesĭelaunay’s depictions of the Eiffel Tower as a conjunction of fragmented and discontinuous views have been linked to the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s early twentieth-century theories about the way memory informs perception to combine past and present experiences. The following year he would devote himself to an analysis of color and light partly derived from Neo-Impressionism that would lead him to non-representational painting. In addition to the Cubist fracturing of forms and space, Delaunay here used a Neo-Impressionist -like technique of small brushstrokes to create the effect of shimmering highlights on the surface of the canvas. The dark shadowed buildings and rooftops of the city rise up from below and stretch into the distance, where the red and black silhouette of the Eiffel Tower can just be seen surging up into the faceted sky. In The City, curtains are visible on the sides as light, curved forms framing the central scene. Guggenheim Museum, New York)ĭelaunay often depicted Paris and the Eiffel Tower as viewed through a window. Robert Delaunay, The City, 1911, oil on canvas, 57 1/16 x 44 1/8 inches ( Solomon R. Delaunay was unusual in his devotion to representing the experience of the modern city, and he was particularly drawn to the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of modern Paris. Delaunay exhibited with many other Cubist painters in the Paris Salons, where his work was notable for its focus on Paris as a subject.Īlthough the group of Cubists with whom Delaunay was associated, the Salon Cubists, were dedicated to modern artistic techniques, their subjects were often not especially modern. This is a vision of the modern city in the most modern painting style of the day, Cubism. The sky shatters into crystalline angles, and clusters of round shapes - suggesting trees or clouds or smoke - solidify the space around the tower into a cacophony of shifting planes. The tall buildings on the sides of the painting curve and sway as if responding to the tower’s contours. Some sections seem to dissolve, while others morph into extra supports and towers as if a different side view has been attached to the main form.Īlthough the details of the structure are often confused, the overall triangle formed by the central tower projecting from its splay-legged base is clear and shapes everything that surrounds it. In this painting we see the tower from different angles, looking simultaneously up at the supporting legs and arch, and down at the central portions of the tower. This is one of many paintings in which Delaunay attempted to convey the dominating and disorienting presence of the famous nineteenth-century Paris monument - a product of modern engineering and a symbol of modernity. Robert Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower seems to slash up through the canvas, bending and distorting the surrounding city as it climbs into a fractured sky. Robert Delaunay, The Eiffel Tower, 1911, oil on canvas, 79 1/2 x 54 1/2 inches ( Solomon R.
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