Champs De Mars: the Red Tower

ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY

SECTION EDITOR: JAMES C. HARRIS, MD Champs de Mars: The Red Tower There is virtually no Parisian glance it fails to touch atsometimeofday....allthis night, too, it will be there, connecting me above Paris to each of my friends that I know are seeing it: with it we all comprise a shifting figure of which it is the steady center: The Tower is friendly. Roland Barthes, 19971(p3)

HE EIFFEL TOWER, NAMED gène Chevreul (1786-1889), author of incorporated the tower into its city sur- after its designer, engineer The Principles of Harmony and Contrast roundings from every vantage point, from Gustave Eiffel, is the tall- of Colors, and Their Applications to the different angles, from all sides. Delaunay est building in Paris, nearly Arts.4 Yet Delaunay was not sympa- examined the tower’s shapes and forms twiceT the height of the Washington thetic to Marc’s philosophical views from multiple perspectives, disarticulat- Monument in the US capital, com- about the connectedness of life5 and ing it. He engaged its structure, short- pleted in 1884, only 5 years before it. wrote to him that he, Delaunay, had no ened it, and tilted it toward the viewer to More than 200 million people have vis- philosophy.3 Still Delaunay saw him- show its full height, nearly 1000 feet. He ited it since its opening on May 6, 1889. self as the enemy of disorder; for him art adopted 10 points of view, 15 perspec- It was the entrance arch to the World’s meant harmony. His work was not me- tives; depicting it from above as a bird flies Fair (Exposition Universelle) that cel- chanical but was harmonic and empha- by it, from below, and from a window ebrated 100 years of progress since the sized simultaneity and depth. He fo- looking out on it. Fully engaged in his cre- storming of the Bastille and the French cused on those moments when his visual ation, he felt, as his friend Blaise Cen- Revolution.2 Originally a 20-year per- perception made him acutely aware of drars wrote, “that whole dizzying mass mit was granted to Eiffel with the ex- the depth and unity of the universe. flirted” with him.3(p28) pectation that the city of Paris would tear Delaunay, like Barthes (epigraph), per- Robert and Sonia Delaunay were the the tower down in 1909 when owner- sonifiedtheEiffelTower;forhimtooithad rare artist couple; both were produc- ship reverted to the city. But its value as become an inhabitant of Paris. From 1909 tive and successful. Their home was a a communication tower was recog- until1912,hecompleted10paintingswith gathering place for the art establish- nized and it was allowed to stand. the tower solidly in the center. His first ment of their time. With the onset of In 1909, the same year it was origi- study in the fall of 1909 was apparently an World War II they escaped the Nazis, go- nally slated for demolition, Robert De- engagement present for his wife to be, So- ing to Switzerland, where Robert died of launay (1885-1941) initiated his series of nia Terk, whom he married in November cancer in 1941. After his death, Sonia Eiffel Tower paintings, a project that 1910. Their relationship had deepened as kept attention to his art alive and ad- would occupy him for the next 3 years theystrolledtogetherneartheEiffelTower vanced in her own career, eventually and again later in his life. These paint- discussing art and aesthetics; she recalled eclipsing the success of her husband. ings were the culmination of his “de- that it was “our picture.”3(p29) In August 1944, when the Allies were structive period,” a time when he sought In Delaunay’s Champs de Mars: The Red nearing Paris, Hitler ordered General Die- to liberate himself from conventional Tower (cover), the viewer looks out on it trich von Choltitz, the military gover- drawing and find a new means of repre- from the Champ de Mars park, located in nor of Paris, to demolish the Eiffel Tower, sentation. He would break the tower into the 7th arrondissement. Named after the but fortunately he disobeyed the order. fragments and imaginatively reassemble Campus Martius of Rome, it is the “Field In the 21st century, the Eiffel Tower it. He spoke of this as a catastrophic art, of Mars” after the god of war; its original continues to stand and to flourish: it is one that would bury the old approaches use was for military drills. Barthes re- undiminished as a tourist attraction and to art and create a new modernity.3(p28) minds us that the tower looks at Paris gathering place and is now notable in Largely self-taught, Delaunay had en- where “the Tower overlooks not nature and for itself as it celebrates its 120th gaged and absorbed the modern currents but the city,”1(p8) reminding the contem- anniversary. in art from Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, porary viewer in 1889 of what tran- and Pablo Picasso, taking from them, re- spired 100 years before. A massacre oc- James C. Harris, MD spectively,theimpressionistfocusonlight curred in this park on July 17, 1791, and on painting the same scene repeat- during the French Revolution, when a REFERENCES edly, a refined analysis of form, and the crowd of Jacobins met to draft a peti- cubistic emphasis on multiple perspec- tion seeking the removal of King Louis 1. Barthes R. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. tives. Unlike theirs, his subjects were ur- XVI and were fired on by the French Na- Howard R, trans. Berkeley: University of California ban ones and his focus during his most tional Guard. Press; 1997. productive period was the city, not the In this painting (cover), the tower “sits 2. Jonnes J. Eiffel’s Tower. New York, NY: Viking Press; countryside. astride a sea of undulating and distorted 2009. Delaunay found support from art- buildings, framed on either side by other 3. Delaunay R. Visions of Paris: Robert Delaunay’s Se- ists Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc buildings that form an ‘arch,’ ”3(p30) mate- ries [organized by Mark Rosenthal]. New York, NY: and exhibited with their avant-garde Blue rializing space. The architecture reflects Guggenheim Museum, distributed by H. N. Abram; 1997. Rider group in 1911. Marc visited him the further refinement of Delaunay’s ideas 4. Delaunay R, Delaunay S. The New Art of Color: The and admired his approach to form and of cubism. Diagonal shafts of light hit the Writings of Robert and Sonia Delaunay. Cohen AA, use of color. Delaunay incorporated vi- tower on its twisted axis. Seeking to show ed. New York, NY: Viking Press; 1978. sion research into his work, applying the Paris all at once, Delaunay captured con- 5. Harris JC. The Yellow Cow. Arch Gen Psychiatry. research of color chemist Michel Eu- currently multiple moments in time. He 2009;66(8):809-810.

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