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6. Bruce Altshuler, “Instructions for a World in post-WWII Japan, see Midori articles in the volume: Donald Richie, of Stickiness: The Early Conceptual Work Yamamura, Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the “Stumbling Front Line: Yoko Ono’s Avant- of Yoko Ono,” in Munroe, Yes: Yoko Ono, Singular (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Garde Show,” and Toshi Ichiyanagi, “Voice 65. Altshuler cites an e-mail to him from 2015), 9–44. of the Most Avant-Garde: Objection to Ono, November 3, 1999. 8. Aside from her informative text, Donald Richie” (122–25). 7. For more on the anti-conformist tendency Yoshimoto translated two important

Sonia Delaunay Delaunay’s international stature are er just as many of my (baby boomer) Edited by Anne Montfort, with contribu- these primary materials along with generation experienced this same tions by Jean-Claude Marcadé et al. others at institutions in , requirement without necessarily self- Museés & Tate Enterprises, 2014 Germany, United States, Russia, identifying as androgynous. 4 Portugal, and Spain. Brigitte Leal discusses the important Reviewed by Jan Garden Castro The first essays, “In St. Petersburg” ‘Fauve’ works the artist created after her by Jean-Claude Marcadé and “Being studies with Ludwig Schmid-Reutte in he Tate Modern catalogue and Russian in Paris” by Sherry Buck- Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1904, her studies exhibition is a visual tour de berrough, touch on Sergei Diaghilev’s with Rudolf Grossmann in Paris in 1907, Tforce, with over 250 mostly full- Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) magazine as and her introduction to the art of Braque, color illustrations that highlight Sonia an important part of the young artist’s Picasso, Derain, Dufy, Metzinger, Pascin, Delaunay’s artistic range working in formative influences, and on the and her future husband, Robert diverse media, materials, and processes Ukrainian and Russian needlework and Delaunay (they married in 1910). First, as well as her leadership and partici- craft traditions that it re-popularized. though, in 1908, Sonia married German pation in new arts movements, including Neither mentions that the artist’s family gallerist (a marriage of , Simultané, Abstraction- had its own seamstress, and that cos - convenience to an openly gay friend) Création, and Nouvelles Réalities. Its tume parties were part of her youth. rather than return to St. Petersburg as her scope is larger than the 2011 fabric and Importantly, the Hermitage Museum, relatives urged. Leal’s short essay centers fashion-oriented : Color near her home, offered an optimal view on the post-Cézanne context for Nu jaune Moves catalogue and exhibition at the of great international art. 3 Marcadé dis - (Yellow nude, 1908), “in which colour Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, National cusses that few documents survive in prevails over form, and narrative over Design Museum. The Tate Modern relation to Sara Stern Terk’s Ukrainian iconicity,” and which, along with work catalogue, a collaboration with Musée birth heritage and the Jewish intelli - by (Czech painter) Frantisek Kupka, d’Art Moderne, Paris (where the gentsia culture in which she was raised exhibition originated), 1 offers fourteen in St. Petersburg, after age five, by her marked the simultaneous arrival short essays by leading and younger aunt and uncle Terk. Marcadé notes that in the work of both the Czech and Delaunay scholars, primarily from after she moved to Paris, the artist did the Russian artist of an art of France, with one from England and two not frequent Jewish circles, considered colour which would dominate the from the United States. 2 An excellent herself a ‘Russian Ukrainian,’ and cele - century in all its dimensions— chronology for each decade is brated the Orthodox Christian Easter expressive, psychological, physio - interspersed between the essays to “culturally rather than religiously” (19). logical and musical—and of which present the timeline of Sonia Delaunay’s Buckberrough’s essay argues that they shared equal status as the life (1885 Ukraine – 1979 Paris) and Delaunay was consciously androgynous undisputed pioneers (40). 5 main artistic achievements. Instead of a because she may have met with grounded narrative overview and Valentine de St-Point in Paris in 1914, To a remarkable degree, Delaunay’s analysis of Delaunay’s body of work in because painted inventions were ahead of her time. Pascal relation to her century (and our own), hieroglyphs on her bare breasts in Rousseau’s essay, “Voyelles: Sonia the chronology, images, and essays Moscow the same year, and because she Delaunay and the universal language of spotlight key artistic achievements. “wears a man’s working jacket … per - colour hearing,” first quotes Apollin- Céline Chicha-Castex and Brigitte sonalized by her patchwork” in one aire’s close-up view as the guest of Sonia Leal open by summarizing the huge, 1914 photo (47–48). In my opinion, and Robert, “As they wake up, the important donations of art and Buckberrough neither defines androgy - Delaunays speak ” (71). documents by Sonia and Charles ny nor provides sufficient evidence that Rousseau emphasizes that the artist’s Delaunay, her son, to the National it applies here. Delaunay was not con - pioneering use of color had an Museums of France in 1963 and 1977. sciously choosing to adopt a international impact, in part, because The primary written materials include male/female persona, and the word Sonia grew up with German, English, masses of letters, and over thirty years androgynous is being retro-imposed. and French governesses, and she, of Sonia’s journal entries, most stored at She was functioning simultaneously as a Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars, and others the Bibliothéque nationale. One sign of wife, mother, artist, and income-produc - in her circle were polyglots, fluent in

FALL / WINTER 2015 45 founder Tristan Tzara, Russian Futurist Iliazd, and others after the Delaunays returned to Paris in 1921. Some old friends were bitter that the Delaunays had decamped during the War. Sonia became friends with Tzara, who had brought the Dada movement to Paris in 1919. In 1923, she designed cardboard costumes (which were not easy to wear) for Le Couer á Gas (The Gas-Powered Heart) , a Dada romp that caused the surrealists in the audience to riot and storm the stage. André Breton broke one actor’s arm with his cane. Lush drawings of the period follow: dress poems, photos of sets and costumes for René Le Somptier’s film Le P’tit Parigot (The little Parisian), the Delaunay’s living room, Sonia’s fashions and fabrics. During the 1920s, Sonia invented coordinated designs for hats, scarves, coats, shoes, swimsuits, beach coats and umbrellas, purses, and even a matching Fig. 1. Sonia Delaunay, Autoportrait (1916), cover of the catalogue for the Stockholm exhibition, pochoir, 13 3/8” x 17 7/8”. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Gift of the artist, 1977. Citroën B 12 sports car. Cécile Godefroy, overall Curator of this exhibition, con - tributes a short essay, “The métier of several languages. Rousseau concludes abstract titles such as Coussin Astral Simultanism,” discussing Sonia that Sonia “was to find in colour an (Astral Cushion). The art objects were a Delaunay’s polymorphic output. She authentic substitute for the expressive shocking departure from painting and participated in the 1924 Salon deficiencies of language” (72). He argues made a huge impact on the fifty avant- d’Automne and the 1925 Exposition of that artists and thinkers of the period garde artists exhibiting at Der Sturm. Industrial and Decorative Arts. She also posited correspondences among vowels, These decorative objects stirred a hearty produced an album of pochoir prints that colors, and sounds and that “this helps to debate about “what is art?” Because advanced the field of printed reproduc - explain Sonia Delaunay’s very Sonia was fluent in German, she and tions. had patented the ‘physiological’ taste for coloured vowels, Robert Delaunay navigated the Simultané brand in 1925. After the stock in particular during her pre-war scene so well that Lyonel Feininger market crash of 1929, Sonia’s main mar - ‘simultanist’ period, which led both her called the couple “almost scientific, an ket became fabric designs for Metz & Co, and Robert towards ‘pure painting’” (75). optical corporation” (90). a boutique department store based in Nearby, dozens of color illustrations In “On time: Sonia Delaunay’s Amsterdam. Matteo de Leeuw-de Monti, related to this essay demonstrate sequential Simultanism,” Juliet Bellow the grandson of its founder, Joseph de Rousseau’s points that the emotional addresses how some of Delaunay’s art Leeuw, picks up the story in “Sonia resonances of Delaunay’s contrasting was both created and performed in Delaunay – the designs for Metz & Co.” juxtaposed colored shapes communicate relation to time, including performances After Joseph de Leeuw met Sonia at the vividly, as he suggests, more akin to for which Sonia created costumes that 1925 Paris Expo and placed his first music than to verbal language . would literally be moving in time with order, their business collaboration and Each essay contributes another layer, their wearers. She mentions the friendship prospered. Sonia’s friends color, and point. Sophie Goetzmann’s Delaunay family’s six-year ‘vacation’ in during this period included the essay supports Rousseau’s view of Portugal and Spain during and just after American photographer Florence Henri Delaunay’s international language of World War I. This period was artistically and artists Mondrian, Chagall, Gabo, painting as it explores the stir caused by rich beyond the scope of Bellow’s fine Gleizes, Kandinsky, Léger, Pevsner, and her art objects with “pure tones and essay. Sonia learned to support her Vantongerloo. The author, Matteo de humble materials” (90) (rather than oil family by designing fashions for their Leeuw-de Monti, first met Sonia ) at Herwarth Walden’s friends, including members of Delaunay much later —in 1956 when he important 1913 Der Sturm salon in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. She opened was four years old; in addition to his own Berlin. Sonia Delaunay introduced five Casa Sonia, a fashion boutique. career, he has devoted part of his life to paintings along with painted boxes, Cécile Barques next discusses Sonia’s researching and preserving Delaunay’s cups, a curtain and cushions with relationships with Romanian Dada art and legacy.

46 WOMAN’S ART JOURNAL During the 1930s, Sonia became story of ,” critiques the ways end of the war” (247). The culmination involved with the Abstraction-Création in which critics of various stripes—from came in 1967, with a Sonia Delaunay artists led by Auguste Herbin and French to traditional to feminist—slant retrospective at the Musée National Georges Vantongerloo and with plans for their views of Sonia Delaunay’s d’Art Moderne, Paris. the 1937 Paris International Exposition. accomplishments. She quotes Michel From her 1963 meeting with Jacques She was part of the Réalitiés Nouvelles Seuphor’s 1950 book on the origins of Damase, who published a range of her group of abstract artists that formed in abstraction in which Seuphor suggests art books and prints until her death in 1939. Even though she was born Jewish that sometimes Sonia appeared to be 1979, Delaunay continued to receive and France was occupied by Nazis, “ahead” of Robert in her art-making, major exhibitions, prizes, and recogni - during the war she managed to care for and that she was best of show in 1948 tions. Juliet Bingham, Curator of the Tate her husband Robert (who died in when she turned from decorative arts Modern exhibition, returns readers to Montpellier in 1941), to preserve their back to painting (220). 6 Pollock says Delaunay’s historically important early and their friends’ art, and to remain in Sonia was more supportive of her achievements in the context of modern France—she lived with the Magnellis husband’s art than he may have been of art. Ann Montfort, Curator of the Musée and the Arps in Grasse. Sonia also hers. She does not mention that Sonia d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exhi - created new art, including a work for the both restored Robert’s art and worked to bition, closes the essays with “Le vierge, International Red Cross. Guitemie secure his place in the French pantheon, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui,” which is Maldonado discusses the circular nor that Robert was the son of French translated as a Mallarmé poem’s title rhythms of Delaunay’s art of the 1930s, Countess Berthe de la Rose, who had “The Virgin, Vivacious and Beautiful and does a good job summarizing this ‘discovered’ Henri Rousseau. Delaunay Today.” 7 Montfort’s essay moves in many important period and her abstract murals was modest about her achievements directions; at one point, she proposes that and oil paintings of 1938 and 1939. I wish until later in life. Her role as a pioneer of a 1967 painting in three parts, Le serpent she could have further emphasized the chromatic abstraction was overlooked or noir , draws its inspiration from genius of painting airplane propellers, downplayed because she had left the Delaunay’s art works from three different dashboards, and engines for the 1937 Russian art scene, was not French, and periods. She discusses the freedom Paris International Exposition and have was a woman in an art world dominated Delaunay found, in 1973, by returning to further answered her own question by men. Pollock suggests that traditional making art in relation to favorite poetry, about how and why Delaunay moved art historians including Guy Weelen did such as nine of Rimbaud’s Illuminations , from abstract representations of travel to not give Sonia equal stature with her and quotes the artist’s 1968 view: “Just as, pure large abstract paintings and murals husband in 1960, and that feminist in written poetry, it is not the way the in the late 1930s. Cindy Nemser’s later conversation with words are put together that counts, but “Confused origins” by Laurence Delaunay “is full of a feminist discourse the mystery of creation that gives, or does Bertrand Dorléac reviews what of discrimination and difficulty” that not give, an emotion … so with colours, it biographer Dominique Desanti has misread her historic role. Pollock is poetry and the mystery of an inner life written about Sonia Delaunay’s Jewish concludes: “Sonia Delaunay lived a life that emerges, radiates and communi - origins, roots, and early education in of partnership, generosity, necessity and cates” (274). relation to the aftermath of World War sustained research into the field in which This major exhibition and catalogue II. Because her Civil Status Record from she must now be understood as from Paris and boldly asserts 1910 marking her legal presence in historically an innovator, a creator, a that earlier critics were biased, and France suggested, but did not list, her first” (222). these critics collectively hail Sonia Jewish heritage, she was lumped into The title of Domitille d’Orgeval’s Delaunay (and Kupka) as the pioneers of the ‘métèque’ (foreigner) status with essay, “Conquering the Paris art scene in modernist color. The essays on her other Russian emigrants after World the 1950s and 1960s,” refers readers to fashions, mixed media, and decorative War II. Dorléac quotes from the artist’s the last chapter of Cécile Godefroy’s arts stop short of making the same 1941 diary at the Bibliothèque nationale doctoral thesis on Delaunay. In the post- claims in these media, even though the and other sources and concludes that WWII years, Paris artists both rallied evidence is just as strong or stronger. she identified as Russian but not Jewish around those who had died during the The prints, drawings, paintings, and during a difficult period. By January War (including Robert Delaunay), and pochoir deserve further discussion as 1945, Delaunay had returned to Paris also held salons presenting abstraction the 250 images and the essays propel and was busy exhibiting as well as as Réalités Nouvelles. Given Sonia Sonia Delaunay’s body of work into the starting a “friends of Robert Delaunay” Delaunay’s friendships, by now, with forefront of early modern art. Another young artists group. Their son, Charles curators who had risen to become major achievement, thanks to Griselda Delaunay (1911–88), who became a jazz directors in the French museum system, Pollock’s and Brigitte Leal’s strong critic and joined the Resistance during and her innovative prints and paintings views, is new ways to view early the War, started a journal Le Jazz Hot . shown by the Denise René Gallery, she twentieth century achievements and Griselda Pollock, in “Art criticism “achieved in stages the different new ways to dissect and reflect on early and the problem of the non-modern objectives she had set for herself at the modern art history.

FALL / WINTER 2015 47 Jean-Claude Marcadé, Sherry Buck- Seuphor lists Sonia second after Sophie Goetzmann, doctoral student, berrough, and others quote from the 1978 Kandinsky—three places above Robert Université Paris IV – Sorbonne; Brigitte Leal, Deputy Director, Musée National autobiography Nous irons jusqu’au soleil Delaunay—in a field of two women and d’Art Moderne/ ; Jean- (We Will Go Right Up to the Sun), which thirteen men. Even though Seuphor Claude Marcadé; Guitemie Maldonado, Delaunay dictated in the year before her suggests Sonia should have stuck to Professor, History of Art, École Nationale death; however, this seems to me to be a painting (p. 29, same quote Pollock uses), Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Anne less reliable source than earlier primary Seuphor includes images of her early Montfort, Curator of exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Griselda documents and accounts. Buckberrough , prints, fashions, and paintings. Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical hints but does not directly state that the In the same book, Seuphor’s chapter ‘Les Histories of Art, University of Leeds; name Sonia is Russian for sun, making origins de l’art abstrait,’ includes only Juliette Rizzi, Assistant Curator, Tate; the artist’s identification with the sun painting and one woman in the group of Pascal Rousseau: Art History Professor at personal as well as symbolic in her art— fourteen. Seuphor’s championing of Université Paris I- Panthéon-Sorbonne. as seen in her important Self-Portrait Sonia’s design work in the 1920s and its 3. See Mikhail Piotrovsky, My Hermitage How series of 1916 (Fig. 1), in which her inclusion, despite his seeming preference the Hermitage Survived Tsars, Wars, and Revolutions to Become the Greatest circular abstract ‘’ consists of nests for painting, in his 1971 book exemplifies Museum in the World (New York: Rizzoli, of multi-hued half-circles. One critic one way that one quote may not fully 2015). Sonia, in St. Petersburg between mentions another early innovation— represent a critic’s valuation of an artist’s 1890—around 1905, visited its international breaking electric light into circular work. collection. She experienced how increasing patterns of prismatic diffracted colors Finally, most of the illustrations are anti-Semitism affected even circles of wealthy assimilated Jewish people, and this related to light and sun. Juliet Bellow and not discussed. The evolution of Sonia probably affected her decision to not a few others mention the artist’s 1913 Delaunay’s art is clearly outlined, yet identify as Jewish. She was in Paris during /text collaboration with there is no hint that the essayists have the 1905 workers demonstration in front of Blaise Cendrars, La Prose du Transsibérien observed the embedded signs and the Winter Palace, and she identified with et de la Petite Jehanne de France (The Tale of symbols present throughout her work— this movement, even though it affected her family and eventually ended her income the Trans-Siberian Express and Little Jeanne from the image in the 1911 cradle cover from them. This book documents the of France ), a vertical scroll two meters tall. for her son Charles to the late prints and Hermitage’s grand collection and how it Although it is amply illustrated in the paintings. • was preserved during evacuations in 1812, catalogue, this historically significant 1917, and 1941 . work would benefit from a fuller Jan Garden Castro (www.jancastro.com) 4. Bernard Dorival, in his excellent biography analysis. is a contributing editor for Sculpture Sonia Delaunay Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: I will elaborate on one small quibble Magazine . Her books include The Art & Damase editions, 1980) mentions that Sonia Delaunay was more ‘masculine’ than because it’s at the core of modern art Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, Sonia Delaunay: her husband Robert: ”C’est elle qui fut history. Belgian artist and writer Michel La Moderne , and The Last Frontier . Her virile et, lui, féminin”(p. 84). In this, he Seuphor, born Fernand Berckeaers in work has appeared in The Nation, seems to refer to the fact that Sonia was 1901, played an important role in American Poetry Review , and American organized, calm, and supported the family featuring Delaunay’s earliest art, Book Review . Her MA thesis on Sonia while Robert could be temperamental and never earned his own living. Dorival was including the interior for a bookstore, in Delaunay’s art is the basis for an as-yet- using French cultural and generational his periodical Het Overzicht in Antwerp unpublished book. norms. Sonia, Coco Chanel and many in the early 1920s. He told me, in 1991, women of their generation were, either about his frequent visits to the Notes from necessity or choice, financially responsible for themselves and others. It Delaunays’ salons, starting in 1925, after 1. The exhibition opened at Musée d’art seems to me that considering this (and Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Oct. 17, 2014 he had moved to Paris. In the following some other traits) “masculine” often refers –Feb. 22, 2015) and traveled to the Tate decades, he was instrumental in to cultural biases of a period/country rather Modern, London (April 15 – Aug. 9, 2015). developing abstraction as a concept. than gender-exclusive traits/ behavior. 2. The contributors to the catalogue and their With Joaquin Torres-García, he co- 5. Note: all quotes use the British spelling credentials, as listed in the catalogue, are founded the 1929 Cercle et Carré group colour, and I use the American spelling as follows: Juliet Bellow: Assistant color. to which Robert and Sonia belonged (a Professor of Art History, American footnote on p.188). Seuphor is pictured University, Washington, D.C.; Juliet 6. Quote on p. 220 from Michel Seuphor, with Mondrian, Sonia Delaunay, and Bingham: Curator International Art and ‘Robert Delaunay,’ L’Art abstrait, ses origins, ses premiers maitres, Maeght, others in the Abstraction-Création group, curator of Tate exhibition; Sherry Buckberrough, Chair of Art History, Paris, 1950, pp. 41-47 . For more on this 1931 (on p. 191). After World War II, the University of Hartford, CT; Chris Dercon, quote from Seuphor, see second to last main focus of many of his books became Director, Tate Modern; Domitille d’Orgeval, paragraph of this essay. to establish abstract painting as a concept. Art Historian; Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, 7. C. F. MacIntyre translates this as “The Nevertheless, in his book l’art abstrait 1. Art Historian, Professor at Sciences-Po, lively, lovely, and virginal today”: 1910/1918 (Paris: Maeght, 1971), in his Paris; Cécile Godefroy, Curator of the Stéphane Mallarmé Poems (Berkeley, exhibition, art historian; Fabrice Hergott: chapter ‘Les premiers maîtres de l’art Univ. of California Press, 1971), 83. Director, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville abstrait’ ( Masters of Abstract Art ), de Paris; Matteo de Leeuw-de Monti;

48 WOMAN’S ART JOURNAL