Parisian Orphists Cover Guggenheim with Color

Posted on March 7, 2025 by MsSusanB

Ascending the ramp inside the Guggenheim Museum to enjoy Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930, European optimism and color abound. The exhibition, on view through March 9, 2025, showcases the exuberance and innovation of artists living in early 20^th century Paris, who felt exhilarated by the profusion of modern forms of music, dance, and architecture and used abstraction and prismatic color to translated their enthusiasm.

Avant-garde power couple Robert and Sonia Delaunay broke from analytic cubism’s monochromatic approach and injected pulsing color into the art-scene conversation in Paris.

Robert Delaunay’s 1911-1912 *Red Eiffel Tower* – modern architecture and cubism with a twist of color.

Inspired by 19^th century color theory (wheels demonstrating complimentary and dissonant colors), they painted swirling orbs pulsing with harmonies and contrasts to show optimism about the future.

Modern buildings like the Eiffel Tower, electrification of city streets, and the syncopation in dance-hall music created a pre-war energy in Paris that motivated these “orphists.” Everything seemed to be happening simultaneously. Harmonious and dissonant colors and whirling shapes on large canvases seemed a good way to represent it, as shown in the Guggenheim’s fun musical promo:

The style was named “orphism” by none other than Apollinaire himself. Robert Delaunay’s works in the exhibition include some of his early experimentation with abstract oval “windows,” his abstract riffs on the cosmos, and canvases still showing a hint of the real world. All convey the simultaneous push-pull of Paris, modern life, and larger scientific forces.

Robert Delaunay’s 1913 *Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon*. Courtesy: MoMA

Robert Delaunay’s 1913 *The Cardiff Team*, with Eiffel’s tower, aerial achievements, and sports dynamics. Courtesy: Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands.

Many of Sonia’s orphist paintings are featured, including a gigantic horizontal color work inspired by the dynamic movement of tango dancers at a popular Parisian club. No doubt the massive 2024 Bard Graduate Center Gallery show about her forays into fashion and other creative fields (Sonia Delaunay: Living Art) influenced the Guggenheim curators to include her painted toy box and her celebrated super-tall accordion-book painting representing her collaboration with poet Blaise Cendrars.

Sonia Delaunay’s 1913 oil *Bal Bullier* inspired by dynamism of tango dancers at the popular Parisian club. Courtesy: Centre Pompidou

Innovations by the Delaunays are placed alongside other artists’ works that reflect the artistic breakthroughs of the early Twentieth Century – Kandinsky’s abstraction, the Blue Rider group’s symbolic use of color, and the synergies that artists felt between abstraction and music. In 1912, Leopold Survage intended to create the first fully abstract film, but the project was halted by World War I. Fortunately, we can envision his plan from his series of dynamic color drawings.

*Colored Rhythms* series of twelve 1912 ink drawings created by Léopold Survage for the first abstract film. Courtesy: La Cinémathèque Française

The music that inspired the Orphism is referenced throughout the exhibition – the improvisation and free structure of jazz, the dissonance of cutting-edge experimental music, and the staccato of the latest Parisian dance-hall craze – Argentine tango. The curators have even provided musical tracks to underscore this influence.

The Italian futurists Balla and Severini are also featured. Speed, modernity, and simultaneous city sensations were their bread and butter, too, even though they argued in the press and art journals that Futurism and Orphism were totally different.

Italian futurist Giacomo Balla’s 1914 *Mercury Passing before the Sun*, an allusion to recent cosmic events. Milan’s Museo del Novocento.

Gino Severini’s 1915 *Dancer–Propeller–Sea*. Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum

In pre-war Paris, American modernist painters Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and Morgan Russell picked up on Orphism, although the latter two rebranded their work Synchronism when they wrote their manifesto.

Marsden Hartley’s 1914 *Abstraction* Courtesy: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Stanton Macdonald-Wright’s 1917 oil *Synchromy*. Courtesy: MoMA

Even after the War, the Delaunays continued to represent orphism even if they occasionally incorporated real-world elements. Early orphism adopter Albert Gleizes also continued in this style throughout his career, and inspired students like Mairnie Jelett to explore color theory and its potential.

Albert Gleizes’s 1942 *Painting for Contemplation, Dominant Rose and Green.*

Irish artist Mairnie Jellett’s 1938 *Painting*. Courtesy: National Museum, NI, Ulster.

Take a look at our favorite works in our Flickr album here, and enjoy a syncpated strut through the colorful side of Modernism in this catalog preview:

MIAC Connects Diné Textiles to Land and Community

Posted on January 31, 2025 by MsSusanB

Building on the groundwork laid in the artist-curated exhibition Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery (opening in St. Louis on March 7), Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture asked five Navajo textile artists, photographers, and scholars to delve into MIAC’s historic collections to tell the story of Diné weavng.

Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, on view through February 2, 2025, presents historic and contemporary weavings alongside epic photographs of Navajo Nation landscapes to show the connections textile artist have to ancestors, their mentors, the community, the land, and their materials.

Historic Diné weaving with photomural by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Courtesy: the artist.

Appropriately, the story told by over 30 historic textiles is presented in MIAC’s Masterpieces gallery.

The entrance presents a dazzling display – a pictorial blanket woven in the 1890s set against a photomural of co-curator Rapheal Begay’s family sheep corral. It’s a visual testament to the importance of wool, life, and the 27,000 square miles of Navajo Nation.

The blanket’s creator (unknown today) was an astute observer of the life on the land and translated it all into warp and weft – cow punchers, cattle, boots, birds, and new-fangled railroad cars, that only arrived in Navajo Country around the 1880s. Click here to see the detail.

1885 pictorial blanket created with Germantown wool yarn introduced in the Southwest by the railroads; photomural *Navel (Hunter’s Point, AZ)* by co-curator Rapheal Begay. Photo courtesy of artist.

Nothing was newer than the railroad, at the time this artist depicted it – a steam-fed invention from the East that would change western life forever, but that also brought a wide array of colorful yarn that could be mixed and matched with vegetal dyes to create new Native designs.

The intertwined history of Diné (“The People” in the Navajo language), textile art, and the land is told through quotes and recollections by the exhibition’s Native collaborators. While examining masterful geometric weaving techniques in 19^th-century works, visitors are provided with an historic context – the types of art materials introduced to captives imprisoned at Bosque Redondo after the Long Walk, the images that could be interpreted as a longing for the homeland by the incarcerated, and coded spiritual affirmations.

1850-1860 hand-spun wool child’s (or saddle) blanket with Spider Woman crosses; created with natural cocineal, indigo, and chamisa dye

1880-1897 rug made with Germantown wool yarn, cotton string, and raveled yarn; materials used in weaving at Bosque Redondo era, post-Long Walk.

The participants in the exhibition make sure that viewers also experience how the landscape inspires the work of the past and contemporary Native textile artists. Diné fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha includes her two-panel dress in which incorporates images of the Utah clouds and mountains that bring her spiritual peace. The masterful wall hanging by Lillie Joe uses the palette of the desert to create a mesmerizing geometric dazzler.

2020 two-panel dress by fiber artist Tyrrell Tapaha with images from Utah landscapes that inspired her; woven from churro, silk, mohair, and marino wool..

Close up of highly detailed 1980s *Burntwater* wall hanging by Lillie Joe, reflecting colors and patterns of the Navajo Nation landscape.

The curators feature both the photography of co-curator Rapheal Begay and Darby Raymond-Overstreet to allow gallery visitors to experience the awesome beauty of the homeland that inspires artists. Digital artist Raymond-Overstreet overlays geometric textile patterns across his luscious, beautiful landscapes.

2018 digital print *Woven Landscape, Shiprock* by Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné), overlaying digital landscapes with traditional weavings. Courtesy: the artist

Take a look at some of our favorite works in our Flickr album. And enjoy these historic and contemporary dazzlers.

Detail of 1895 wedge weave blanket made with commercial cotton string and Germantown wool – a dramatic 19th c. weaving innovation. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art.

2022 wedge weave by Kevin Aspaas; white and grey wool yarn with indigo dye. Courtesy: private collection.

Detail of dynamic Diné 1960 wool tapestry weave. Courtesy: International Museum of Folk Art

Relax in Denver’s Modern Mexican Chair Collection

Posted on January 10, 2025 by MsSusanB

2023 A Family of 4 red oak side chairs by LANZA Atelier (Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo).

Everything you could want from a design exhibition is packed into Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today at the Denver Museum of Art through January 12, 2025 – history, context, videos, inspiration behind the designs, and…

Did we mention that you get to sit on the chairs?

The creative lighting and gallery layout invites visitors to take a journey that reflects Mexico’s ancient and colonial history – just like the work of the 22 designers featured here.

Everything on display is part of the Denver Museum’s permanent design collection,

The museum has created an environment that’s engaging and fun, so visitors seem to take time to read about the designers and the history of Mexican furniture while they sample the diverse range of furniture (“it’s more comfortable than it looks!”) as they wind their way through the clean, modern installation. View it all in our Flickr album.

Laura Noriega’s 2012 *Your Skin* chair made of walnut, handwoven cotton, and synthetic fabric, combining Japanese woodworking and Mexican textiles.

As you enter, you’re greeted by a tiny carved Guatemalan figurine from 300-100 CE, showing the type of simple thrones from which Olmec rulers or religious leaders might sit – a backless seat. Ancient civilizations are the inspiration for the innovative seats made by the first set of designers.

Some of these humble-looking stools by Camilia Apaez and HABITACIÓN 116 are made from stoneware, basalt and volcanic ash – harkening back to landscapes, environments, and simplicity that resonates with these forward-looking 21^st century designers.

Camila Apaez’s 2002 stoneware *Room in the Cave* seats – inspired by deep associations with Paleolithic and Neolithic architecture and ceramics.

Raúl Cabra’s 2009 *Bamboo* seats made from carizzo reeds; video shows public seating.

Visitors are invited to sit and experience the enjoyment of relaxing in each of the exhibition areas – and many couples and families do! It’s nice to sit and watch the large-screen videos that take you on a trip around Mexico, showing you modern and traditional public seating areas along city streets and town squares.

Not all of the stools are minimalistic, proven by the creations of Aldo Alvarez Tostado, who turned from architecture to making smaller pieces that enabled him to work with traditional Mexican weavers and woodworkers to invent seats that are run and new.

Aldo Alvarez Tostado’s 2022 *Little Horse* stools, made of wool and synthetic horsehair.

The second section of the show features the history and modern interpretation of easy chairs – comfortable seating that invites visitors to stay and enjoy. There’s an upscale Spanish Colonial chair to demonstrate traditional European design roots, surrounded by Ricardo Casas’s classy designs and Mauricio Lara Eguiluz’s funny foam take on the Yucatan’s Chac-Mool Mayan deity (always reclining comfortably!)

But if truth be told, all the visitors are having the most fun flopping onto the super-comfortable recycled “stuffables” by Andrés Lhima!

An array of comfortable easy chairs – the 2013 *Clara* design by Ricardo Casas and the 2005 polyurethane foam *Chac Seat* by Mauricio Lara Eguiluz

Andrés Lhima’s fun, portable easy chairs – comfy 2011 plastic mesh *Fidencio* chairs filled with shredded foam and recyclables.

The final section pays tribute new takes on the Spanish side chair, comparing a 19th-century classic with high-style sets by Oscar Hagerman and La Metropolitana and outrageous reinventions by Estaban Calcendo Cortés. You can feel the Afro-Colombian rhythms in his woven palm chairs.