Pure Painting and Mottled Colour (original) (raw)

On the eve of World War I, Guillaume Apollinaire announced the birth of “pure painting.” Scholars have typically understood this as an early version of mid-century views of abstract art; however, that interpretation ignores the poet’s deep connection to Robert and Sonia Delaunay. These artists made little to no distinction between works with recognizable objects and those without, and they moved freely between the realms of high art and those of fashion and décor. Yet, the Delaunays did have an obsession with purity. The terms “simultaneous contrast” were omnipresent in the couple’s pre-War art, writing, and conversation. This was a direct, and acknowledged, reference to M. E. Chevreul, a nineteenth-century color theorist and chemist who had shown that hues diametrically opposed on the color wheel appear more pure when seen simultaneously. Most often discussed in relation to the phenomenological changes that occur when red and green are viewed side-by-side, simultaneous contrast suggests an alternative view of purity. It could be produced not by segregation but proximity, not by distillation but careful mixing. For Robert and Sonia Delaunay, this type of purity became a way of life. After outlining how the Delaunays used Chevreul’s theories to evoke three-dimensional space, this paper will argue that their techniques of simultaneous contrast were a way of recognizing the ideological struggles, power structures, and practical congestion of modern, urban Paris. Robert Delaunay’s juxtapositions of color spatialize time in order to distinguish his work from the ideas of the Cubists, the Futurists, and the Unanimists. Sonia Delaunay’s motley designs arrange the competing claims for her identity (wife, artist, mother, nightclub fixture). In short, for the Delaunays, pure painting was not a retreat from the world, but a way of making its dichotomies and conflicts more visible.