Sonia Delaunay
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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 France, requirement without necessarily self- Paris 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 Wilhelm Uhde (a marriage of Orphism, 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 Sonia Delaunay: 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 Natalia Goncharova 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 painting” (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. Robert Delaunay had patented the ‘physiological’ taste for coloured vowels, Robert Delaunay navigated the Berlin 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 paintings) 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.