Robert Delaunay, Homage à Blériot, 1914

• Style

  Orphism, also called Simultanism was a trend in abstract art spearheaded by Delaunay that

  derived from Cubism and gave priority to light and colour. The movement's name was coined in

  1912 by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire.1 There is an overall pattern of coloured shapes with

  tensions and harmonies of pure colour contrasts.
• Colour

  Orphist painters were influenced by the geometric fragmentation of Cubism but embraced colour as a powerful formal element. Orphism was influenced by the colour theory of the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul.
• Light

  Delaunay’s philosophy of painting is contained in his manifesto on light, written in 1912. Light and colour became a means to celebrate modernity. There is a sense of electric lamps and a setting sun that seem to compete with signs of the modern and technological world.
• Blériot was the first man to fly across the English Channel. Delaunay called him ‘The Great Constructor’.
• Speed, dynamism and motion conveyed by colour discs
• Modern life (speed & technology) are celebrated using a combination of sharp edges and blended lines – simultaneous colour palette,
• Celebratory rather than critical view of the modern world
• 30 pictures of the Eiffel Tower instigated in 1909 showed the tower as a symbol of the modern and reveals the seeming destruction of solid objects by light and colour that appear as fragmented and interpenetrating planes. Eiffel Tower can be recognised, a biplane flying overhead and a plane’s propeller and undercarriage.
• Industry, science and technology - Man created a new world through the use of benevolent and powerful machines. New and optimistic style was appropriate to celebrate these advances.
• Delaunays’ painting consists of interlocking planes of complementary colours. In Chevreul’s theory, and in reality, contrasting colours brought together (i.e. simultaneous) enhance each other, giving the surface a greater intensity. The image is rhythmic.
• Delaunay’s work is based on colour contrasts as equivalents to light, space and movement. In fact, Delauney fragmented objects with faceting and light. Orphism characteristically used concentric circles of contrasting colours like a frozen kaleidoscope.
• Influences

  • Delaunay explored the developments of Cubist fragmentation.Delaunay chose to paint the Eiffel Tower because it allowed him to examine a sense of space, atmosphere, and light, while evoking a sign of modernity and progress. Like the soaring vaults of Gothic cathedrals, the Eiffel Tower is a uniquely French symbol of invention and aspiration.
• Delauney’s work is essentially a synthesis of Fauvist colour, Futurist dynamism, and Analytic Cubism.
• Professor Christopher Green said of Delauney, ‘…modern images would repeatedly intrude on his ‘pure paintings’ in staccato” and that some depictions of modernity were ‘selective and idealised’ at this time.4 Certainly, we could relate these ideas to Homage à Blériot.