The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's First Disk

Envisioning Abstraction: The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's "First Disk"
Author(s): Gordon Hughes

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 306-332
Published by: College Art Association
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Envisioning Abstraction: The Simultaneity of Robert
Delaunay's First Disk
Gordon Hughes
Of all of the movements lucky enough to have been caught in Window series) as both a "historical landmark" and "an iso
the tangles of Alfred Barr's spider-web chart of modern art lated study."4 The difficulty of The First Disk for art historians
(Fig. 1), only one, Orphism?Guillaume Apollinaire's misbe is likewise reflected in the scant attention it receives in Sherry
gotten term and attempt to unite the post-Cubist abstraction A. Buckberrough's 1982 book Robert Delaunay: The Discovery of
of Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand L?ger, and Simultaneity, which devotes only 3 of its 243 pages to The First
Francis Picabia?goes nowhere.1 That the diagrammatic ar Disk, most of which are purely descriptive. Especially surpris
row leading from Cubism to Orphism ends in what Barr sees ing is the near-total absence of Delaunay from Clement
as the sole cul-de-sac in twentieth-century art is surprising Greenberg's writings. In one of his few references to Delau
given that the relation between Cubism and abstract art was nay, Greenberg writes that "abstract art itself may have been
the ostensible motive for Barr's flow chart. Though Orphism born amid the painterliness of Analytical Cubism, L?ger,
is important enough to warrant mapping, the exact nature of Delaunay, and Kandinsky."5 Unlike the other names on the
its significance is unclear within the logic of Barr's schema. list, though, Delaunay is discussed only once in Greenberg's
For importance, as conceived by Barr, is clearly determined collected writings (for a total of two paragraphs), in a 1949
by flow; from movement to movement, one into the next, exhibition review. Describing Delaunay in this review as "an
twentieth-century modernism progresses smoothly and logi enterprising painter whose influence is perhaps more impor
cally down into the twin funnels of "geometrical" and "non tant than his art, fine as it is," the influence ascribed to
geometrical" abstract art. Everything leads to something else. Delaunay, for Greenberg as for art history in general, is duly
Everything, that is, but Orphism, which just sits there, an noted but never substantiated.6
apparent clog in the pipes. Yet this is a clog that cannot be In large part it is the obdurate singularity of The First Disk
cleanly removed or ignored. Delaunay's abstraction in partic that frustrates interpretation?a singularity foregrounded by
ular is too much of a modernist milestone?too much of a the fact that the paintings leading up to it are neatly bundled
first?to be left off the chart. Despite its lack of flow?despite into discrete series: the Saint-S?vrin series (1909-10); the
the fact that it goes nowhere?Orphism is important. It's just City series (1909-11); the Eiffel Tower series (1909-12); the
not clear why. City of Paris series (1911-12); the Window series (1912-14);
Part of the problem, of course, is the lack of fit among the the Cardiff Team series (1913); the Circular Forms series
artists assembled under the Orphic umbrella. All had under (1913); and then, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere,
gone their artistic formation within Cubism, and all shared a The First Disk (1913). Against the backdrop of its preceding
tendency toward abstraction as they in turn broke with Cub work, The First Disk appears as a one-off that, as de Duve
ism in 1912. But otherwise these artists had little of substance describes it, "bursts out violently as something without real
in common. Indeed, the divergent nature of those who were precedent in Delaunay's work."7
muscled into Orphism is apparent by the very fact that most Far from being what Bois calls "a unicum in his oeuvre"?
of these artists did slide their way into the channels of mod coming out of (and going) nowhere?The First Disk must be
ernist flow: arrows can be drawn from Duchamp and Picabia situated within Delaunay's larger project to ground painting
to Dada and Surrealism, and from L?ger to the postwar in a new optical model. This model was first put forward in
machine aesthetic of Purism. In part, it is these different the 1912 Window series, developed further in the 1912 Cir
tensions in direction that prevent Orphism from flowing as it cular Forms series, and culminated in 1913 with the singular
should. The real problem, however, is Delaunay. While the statement of The First Disk. It is only through establishing this
art historical tracks of influence have long been laid for the developmental logic that The First Disk can properly resist its
majority of those who passed through Orphism, Delaunay current characterization as an art historically significant, if
and his First Disk (Fig. 2) present twentieth-century modern otherwise inexplicable, "fluke."
ism with a stubborn radicality that it doesn't know what to do
with. While others moved on, Delaunay was left, more ebb 1912: Delaunay contra Cubism
than flow, to clog things up.
If Barr's chart stands out as the first art historical account This happened in 1912. Cubism was in full force. I made
to find itself at a loss in how to deal with Delaunay's abstrac paintings that seemed like prisms compared to the Cubism
tion, it was not to be the last. More recently Yve-Alain Bois has my fellow artists were producing. I was the heretic of Cub
acknowledged the radicality of Delaunay's First Disk, while ism. I had great arguments with my comrades who banned
simultaneously characterizing it as a "fluke."2 Thierry de color from their palette, depriving it of all elemental mo
Duve has similarly described The First Disk as "a moment of bility. I was accused of returning to Impressionism, of
surprise that was without epistemological consequences."3 making decorative paintings, etc. ... I felt I had almost
Pierre Francastel, in his introduction to Delaunay's writings, reached my goal.?Robert Delaunay, "First Notebook,"
Du cubisme ? Vari abstrait, cites The First Disk (along with the 19398
THE SIMULTANEITY OF ROBERT DELAUNAY'S FIRST DISK 3Q7
Nineteen twelve was a watershed year for Robert Delaunay.

On March 13 his first major exhibition in Paris closed to great
acclaim after two weeks at the Galerie Barbazanges.9 Com
prising forty-six works, the exhibition spanned his career to
date: his early, self-taught Impressionist works;10 his 1905-6
Neo-Impressionist period; a single painting from his 1909-10
Saint-S?vrin series (Saint-S?vrin No. 1); a large number of Pari
sian cityscapes produced between 1909 and 1911; and the
series of Cubist Eiffel Tower paintings from 1909-11. Apol
linaire, who was to live briefly with Delaunay and his wife
Sonia from November to mid-December of 1912, praised
these works in his review of the exhibition, portraying Delau
nay as "an artist who has a monumental vision of the world.
. . . Robert Delaunay has already come to occupy an impor
tant place among the artists of his generation."11 Two weeks
later, he singled out Delaunay's La ville de Paris in his review
of the Salon des Ind?pendants. "Decidedly, the picture by
Robert Delaunay is the most important of this salon," Apol
linaire effused. "La ville de Paris is more than an artistic
manifestation. . . . He sums up, without any pomp, the entire
effort of modern painting."12
Flagged by Apollinaire as a new force on the Parisian
artistic landscape, Delaunay was also making steady strides
elsewhere in Europe, most notably in Germany, Switzerland,
and Russia. Participating in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition
in Munich, Delaunay sold four of the five works on view,
including the now-lost La ville No. 1, to the painter Alexei von
Jawlensky.13 More significant than sales, Delaunay's paintings
prompted an enthusiastic response within the Blaue Reiter, 1 Alfred H. Barr Jr., "The Development of Abstract Art," cover
of Cubism and Abstract Art, exh. cat., the Museum of Modern
leading to active correspondence with Wassily Kandinsky,
Art, New York, 1936 (digital image ? The Museum of Modern
August Macke, and Franz Marc.14 Delaunay's Blaue Reiter
Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY)
connections in turn led to Erwin Ritter von Busse's article
"Robert Delaunay's Methods of Composition," which ap
peared in the 1912 Blaue Reiter Almanac, alongside Roger
Allard's description of Delaunay, in his essay "The Signs of notebook: "At this moment, about 1912-1913, I had the idea
Renewal in Painting," as a painter "who has conquered the for a kind of painting that would depend only on color and
arabesques of the picture plane and who shows the rhythm of its contrast but would develop over time, simultaneously per
great, indefinite depths."15 Delaunay went on to exhibit that ceived at a single moment. I used Chevreul's scientific words:
February in the second Blaue Reiter exhibition in Munich simultaneous contrast. ... I called them Windows."19 It was
and in the Valet de Carreau exhibition in Moscow. In March this series of remarkable paintings, unabashed?flaunting
he exhibited in the first Der Sturm exhibition in Berlin and, at even?in their use of color, that ended Delaunay's otherwise
the invitation of Hans Arp, in July at the Moderner Bund unremarkable apprenticeship within Cubism.20 It was evident
exhibition Zweite Ausstellung in Zurich. Among the many to all who saw his paintings that Delaunay had broken ranks;
painters in Germany to come under the sway of Delaunay's he quickly became, as he stated in his notebook, "the heretic of
influence was the Swiss artist Paul Klee. After visiting Delau Cubism [/'h?r?siarque du cubisme]."
nay at his Paris studio in 1912, Klee translated the French To reference Delaunay's self-proclaimed heresy, or to char
man's 1912 essay "Light" into German, and it appeared in the acterize him as "breaking ranks," is not, I should make clear,
January 1913 issue o? Der Sturm}6 to ascribe an overall aesthetic or conceptual coherence to the
Delaunay's critical triumphs in 1912 would have been little Cubism that Delaunay came to oppose. As many scholars
more than art historical footnotes, however, were it not for correctly insist, the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges
his Window series. Begun in all likelihood in La Madelaine in Braque is wholly distinct from the so-called Salon Cubism of
the Chevreuse Valley, where the Delaunays were vacationing Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, and others.
for the summer, the twenty-two-painting Window series marks Differences likewise abound within the critical reception of
Delaunay's self-described moment of artistic maturity and Cubism. Yet despite the myriad internal tensions and contra
break with Cubism. "They were my true aesthetic departure dictions gathered under the rubric "Cubism," Delaunay and
for modern art in reaction to the academicism and confusion others understood his break in opposition to a very specific
of early Cubism," Delaunay writes of the Windows in an group of Cubist painters, and in opposition to a very specific
undated letter to his friend the Cubist painter Albert Gle set of ideas associated with those painters. For all their various
izes.17 Delaunay relates the substance of his break with Cub formal and intellectual differences, the Salon Cubists strate
ism?that "which truly began my life as an artist"18?in a 1939 gically represented themselves as a more-or-less cohesive
308 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2007 VOLUME LXXXIX NUMBER 2
2 Robert Delaunay, Le premier disque (The First Disk), 1913, oil on canvas, diam. 53 in. (134 cm). Private collection (artwork ?
L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
movement, downplaying disparity in favor of a unifying com opinion of all."21 Salon Cubist Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes
mon ground. Indeed, prior to his break with Cubism, Delau similarly recalls how Gleizes and Metzinger aimed "to estab
nay himself played a central role in the decision, made with lish a kind of legislation of the Cubist movement."22
Gleizes, Metzinger, and Le Fauconnier, to display their work The first published suggestion that Delaunay had broken
collectively in what would come to be the first public group with this group of Cubists appeared in the March 23, 1912,
manifestation of Cubism: the famous Salle 41 at the 1911 issue of L Assiette au Beurre, in James Burkley's review of that
Salon des Ind?pendants (hence "Salon Cubism"). Gleizes year's Salon des Ind?pendants. Commenting on entry num
notes in his memoirs that it was important for these Cubist ber 868, Delaunay's La ville de Paris, Burkley wrote, "The
painters to appear unified: "Metzinger, Le Fauconnier, Cubists, who occupy only a room, have multiplied. Their
Delaunay, and I decided to send work to the next Salon des leaders, Picasso and Braque, have not participated in their
Ind?pendants. . . . But we must be grouped, that was the grouping, and Delaunay, commonly labeled a Cubist, has
THE SIMULTANEITY OF ROBERT DELAUNAY'S FIRST DISK 3QO,
wished to isolate himself and declare that he has nothing in of optics and perspective, he is telling a deliberate lie.
common with Metzinger or Le Fauconnier."25 In an open Gleizes, on the contrary will try to show things in their
letter to the Cubist critic Louis Vauxcelles, published in an sensible truth.27
editorial in Gil Bias on October 28, 1912, Delaunay further
differentiated himself from the Salon Cubists. Responding to While Salon Cubism and its advocates turned to conception
Olivier-Hourcade's claim, printed in Paris-Journal eight days as the basis for a new realism?what Gleizes and Metzinger
earlier, that "it was, however, these four painters [Metzinger, termed, in their 1912 book Du Cubisme, the "profound real
Gleizes, Le Fauconnier, and L?ger] who, with Delaunay, in ism" of the mind, in opposition to the "superficial realism" of
1910 and above all at the [Salon des] Ind?pendants in 1911, the eye28?Delaunay stood alone in his attempt to develop a
created?and truly are?Cubism,"24 Delaunay retorted: new, nonsuperficial model of vision for painting. He first
posed this new optical model in the Windows, where he
I don't support the opinion, inaccurately put forward by sought to combine Cubism's emphasis on conception with
Mr. Hourcade, that proclaims me the creator of Cubism Impressionism's emphasis on optical sensation. In so doing
with four colleagues and friends. Unbeknownst to me Delaunay not only reconciled the seemingly irreconcilable?
several young painters have made use of my early studies. Cubism and Impressionism?he also posited a pictorial
Lately they have exhibited canvases they call Cubist. I model of vision that was fully informed by modern optical
don't exhibit. Only some friends, artists, and critics know theory.
the direction that my art has taken. ... It is necessary to set Explicit in his understanding of the shift from a premod
the record straight.25 ern to a modern conception of perception, Delaunay re
marked on the consequences of this shift for painting in an
Given this explicit and public disavowal of Cubism?a dis entry to his 1939-40 notebook: "Historically there really was
avowal already picked up on by critics?what was it exactly, a change in understanding in modes of seeing, and thus in
vis-?-vis Cubism, that Delaunay was disassociating himself [pictorial] technique."29 Virginia Spate, who begins her 1979
from? In part, Delaunay's break with Cubism marked a re book on Orphism with this quote, takes this shift in visual
fusal to have his increasingly evident individualism sup understanding not as a literal change enacted by modern
pressed through Salon Cubism's aspirations for unity. More optical theory but as a general response to the perceptual
to the point, however, it was the conceptual means by which conditions of modernity. For Spate, in other words, Delau
the Salon Cubists sought to establish this unity that Delaunay nay's "Perceptual Orphism" stands in relation to historical
rejected. As the Salon Cubists would have it, Cubism's cohe changes external to the viewing subject, which in turn affect
sion as a group was determined by a set of aesthetic and the overall mental conditions of perception. Delaunay's en
theoretical concerns common to all forms of Cubism?a set
gagement with issues of perception is thus conceived through
of unifying concerns whose discursive power overrode indi the "profound aspects of modern life and of a new form of
vidual formal and stylistic differences. Pascal Rousseau con consciousness: Simultaneous consciousness."50 I want to ar
ceives the conceptual stakes underlying the Salon Cubists' gue something quite different. Delaunay, I believe, should be
efforts toward unity: taken at his word: that his work stands in response not simply
to an altered mode of seeing wrought by modernity but to a
It was a matter of uniting the modern movement around
a solid critical discourse that would at once validate the historical change in the actual understanding of perception?a
change, that is, in the understanding of the internal, psycho
inscription of Cubism within a classical tradition "? la
physiological mechanics of perception. How, then, to formu
fran?aise" (the refusal of Impressionist sensuality in favor
late this change in understanding, and with it Delaunay's
of a more cerebral art), privilege structure through essen
attempt to salvage vision as a viable ground for painting? In
tialist decisions (the permanent harmony of line versus the
order to grasp Delaunay's reformed visual realism, it is first
too-loose and fleeting character of light), and, more gen
necessary to comprehend the structure of vision as reformed
erally, translate visually the subjective character of repre
by modern optical theory. It is necessary, that is, to compre
sentation through a neo-Kantian interpretation of optical
hend what Delaunay describes as the "change in understand
synthesis (multiple views of the object and the "Cubism of
ing in modes of seeing."
conception").26
In short, the substance of Delaunay's break with Cubism Physiological Optics

centered on rejection of its central orthodoxy: the suppres In Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
sion or elimination of superficial visual sensation?color be Nineteenth Century, Jonathan Crary posits the beginning of the
ing the worst offender in this regard?in favor of the invari nineteenth century as a fundamental break from what he
able and essential ground of conception. This position is terms "classical models of vision." For Crary, one of the pri
voiced in the criticism of Olivier-Hourcade, among others, mary models that founds and supports the idea of classical
who claimed that Cubism depicts what we know of the repre vision is the monocular paradigm of the camera obscura. The
sented object?what we know o? its physical form?as opposed enclosed, darkened space of the camera obscura creates an
to what we see. As Hourcade writes: inverted image of the external world as light passes through
a small opening. While the effects of this simple imaging
The painter, when he has to draw a round cup, knows very device have been likened to human vision since antiquity, it
well that the opening of the cup is a circle. When he draws was only in the period from the late 1500s to the end of the
an ellipse, therefore, he is making a concession to the lies 1700s that it became the dominant model for visual percep
tion. The ascendance of the camera obscura model effec We have already seen enough to answer the question
tively brought to an end the prior debates over extramis whether it is possible to maintain the natural and innate
sion?the theory that the eye emits as well as receives light.31 conviction that the quality of our sensations, and especially
Stripped of its active function of emission, the eye became our sensations of sight, give us a true impression of corre
instead a totally passive and transparent receptor of light and sponding qualities of the outer world. It is clear they do
the optical information it carried. not. . . . Pressure upon the eyeball, a feeble current of
In addition to positing a stable visual field, the camera electricity passing through it, a narcotic drug carried to
obscura serves as a model of the subject in several important the retina by the blood, are capable of exciting the sensa
ways. On a structural level, it separates the observer from tion of light just as well as sunbeams. The most complete
others, which has the effect of individuating the viewer. This difference offered by our various sensations . . . does not,
simultaneously supports the viewer as a free and sovereign as we now see, at all depend upon the nature of the
individual and universalizes the observer as an interchange external object, but solely upon the central connections of
able position openly available to anyone. At the same time the nerves which are affected.34
that the mechanism of the camera obscura separates the user
from others, however, it also separates the user from the No longer grounded in a unified, stable field, visual percep
external world. The camera obscura thus became a kind of tion becomes irrefutably conditioned by the body. This break
technological analog to the Cartesian separation of the view with classical models of vision actively participates in the
ing subject (res cogitans) from the world (res extensa). Consti construction of a new visual subject. Once the physiological
tutive of this interior-exterior divide is a fundamental stabil intervention of the body is foregrounded in the perceptual
ity. The camera obscura asserts a coherent and consistently process, the previous stability of a clearly demarcated "inside"
unified visual field "from which any inconsistencies and ir (the projected image inside the camera obscura, the res cogi
regularities are banished to insure the formation of a homog tans) and "outside" (the world, res extensa) becomes untena
enous, unified and fully legible space."32 And, finally, the ble.35 As a result, color and light lose their prior bond to an
model of the camera obscura severs the eye from the body of externally stable and unified visual field.
the viewer. This decisive separation functions to "sunder the It is vital not to mistake the significance of physiological
act of seeing from the physical body of the observer, to optics within modern optical theory as simply a new form of
decorporealize vision. . . . The body then is a problem the epistemological skepticism. Throughout the seventeenth and
camera could never solve except by marginalizing it into a eighteenth centuries the observation of internally experi
phantom to establish the space of reason."33 enced physiological effects was frequently cited as evidence
The ascendance of this model of vision, and the subject for the fallibility of the senses.36 Modern optical psychology
position that it supports, came to an abrupt end in the early does not tell us anything new, or even anything less than
nineteenth century. In its place developed a modern and obvious, in stating that pressure on the eye produces the
heterogeneous regime of vision, one that is grounded, above internal experience of light. What modern optical theory
all else, by the insertion of the body into optical discourses. provides is a conception of "pure" sensory information that is
Within this newly formed optical paradigm, a split emerges internal to the body and actively produced by the senses. By
between the study of light and color as independent phenom way of contrast, a pre-nineteenth-century thinker such as
ena within the physical world (prismatic light) and of light David Hume (who relied on the camera obscura model of
and color as they are experienced subjectively through the vision) understood the perceptual image to exist externally to
physiological and cognitive processes of the body. The early the body and independently of the senses. Hume is typical of
nineteenth century thus marks a break between optics as a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers in his concep
branch of physics (the study of light and its constituent tion of the perceptual image as a unified, external entity that
properties) and physiological optics as a branch of percep flows through the senses much as water flows through an
tual and cognitive theory. inlet: "Nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image
The insertion of the body into various theories of percep or perception, and the senses are only the inlets through
tual physiology is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the which these images are conveyed."37 While a modern optical
sudden centrality assumed by physiologically produced chro theorist such as Helmholtz understands the senses as actively
matic effects in the early nineteenth century. These include producing sensory information, for Hume the senses func
such phenomena as visual afterimages; colors that mix in the tion as mere conduits for an external perceptual image.
retina of the viewer; and the experience of light and color The significance of internally produced chromatic effects
from causes such as pressure on the optic nerve, certain for modern optical theory went beyond providing new evi
narcotics, and so on. As Crary points out, the centrality of dence for the fallibility of the senses: it served to demonstrate
internally produced chromatic effects cuts the supposed that sensory information is produced actively by the senses.
bond between optical sensation and real-world referent, and This was the crucial step that was excluded from the camera
in so doing breaks radically from the camera obscura model obscura model of vision?that between the eye and the brain,
of classical vision. The experience of light or color is thus no optical information exists in a "pure" state, wholly distinct
longer dependent on any external light or color. Centralizing from the external stimuli that generate it and the final per
the physiology of the body in the optical process creates an ceptual image that is registered in the brain. As Crary states,
epistemological rupture at the heart of visual perception. As it was this middle step?the moment of pure, internally pro
Hermann von Helmholtz stated in 1867 in "On the Recent duced sensory information?that was unthinkable prior to
Progress of the Theory of Vision": the advent of modern optical psychology: "In the seventeenth
THE SIMULTANEITY OF ROBERT DELAUNAY'S FIRST DISK 3J 1
and eighteenth centuries this kind of 'primordial' vision optic and haptic sense functions compensate for each other
could not be thought, even as a hypothetical possibility."38 as they merge cognitively in the mind. As Helmholtz states:
Svetlana Alpers similarly describes how the seventeenth-cen "The two senses which really have the same task, though with
tury optical theorist Johannes Kepler made a revolutionary very different means of accomplishing it, happily supply each
distinction between the world outside of the eye (idola, or other's deficiencies/Touch is a trustworthy and experienced
visual species) and the image formed on the retinal surface servant, but enjoys only a limited range, while sight rivals the
(pictura). Despite this distinction, Kepler was unable to con boldest flights of fancy in penetrating unlimited distances."44
ceive of an intermediary step between the retina and percep For Helmholtz, therefore, touch and vision are made to
tion. As Alpers writes, "The study of optics, so defined, starts cohere within cognition in order to produce normative visual
with the eye receiving light and ceases with the formation of perception. "Ordinary vision," as Helmholtz asserts, "is not
the picture on the retina. What happens before and after? produced by any anatomical mechanism of sensation, but by
how the picture so formed, upside down and reversed, was a mental act."45
perceived by the viewer?troubled Kepler but was of no Given the conclusion that touch and sight supplement one
concern to him."39 another, how then can touch be mobilized when an object is
How, then, can "pure optical information"?the optical only seen? In answering this problem, Helmholtz proposed
sensory data that is transmitted from the optic nerve to the that the second component fundamental to visual perception
brain?be characterized? First, as is commonly known, pure is memory. No longer an innate, fully formed condition
optical information when registered on the retina is inverted present from birth, perception is reconfigured as a process
in relation to the external world, both upside down and left that is learned. Accordingly, Helmholtz analyzes the means by
and right. Second, this inverted image on the wall of the which an infant develops visual perception as it learns to
retina is not simply a straightforward mirror image of the connect the tactile senses of its body with what it sees in order
world turned on its head, for the neatly bounded distinctions to develop perceptual unity:
of figure and ground that we see within everyday visual
perception do not exist within pure optical data. Yve-Alain A child seizes whatever is presented to it, turns it over and
Bois has pointed out that one of the crucial distinctions over again, looks at it, touches it, and puts it in its
between visual perception and pure optical information is mouth. . . . After he has looked at such a toy every day for
precisely the absence of a figure-ground distinction in the weeks together, he learns at last all the perspective images
latter: "To perceive is first of all to perceive a figure against a which it presents. ... By this means the child learns to
ground (this is the basic definition of perception). But the recognize the different views that the same object can
ground is not always given: it is indeed what we must precon afford in connection with the movements which he is
sciously construct differently each time we are solicited to constantly giving it. The conception of the shape of any
perceive."40 Third, optical information is binocular, and this given object, gained in this manner, is the result of asso
binocularity creates a slight discrepancy in the information ciating all these visual images. . . . All these different views
that is registered in the different retinas. This discrepancy in are combined in the judgment we form as to the dimen
the retinal image is crucial to the visual process, as the brain sions and shape of an object.46
compares the slight differences within the eyes as a means to
generate depth perception.41 Finally, pure optical informa We learn, over a period of time, to make sense of what we see
tion as it is registered on the concave surface of the retina is and what we know. In so doing our memory brings past
completely two-dimensional. The knowledge of optical flat sensory experience and knowledge into the present.47 When
ness was indeed so widespread within the critical literature of we see an object we are remembering how our body has
the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Adolf interacted with it?how it feels, how it recedes in space, how
Hildebrand felt only a footnote was necessary to remind the tall it is, how hard, cold, or sticky it is.48 As Henri Bergson
reader of this well-established fact: "The reader need hardly explains in Matter and Memory: "our senses require education.
be reminded that our actual impression is two-dimensional, a Neither sight nor touch is able at the outset to localize
flat picture on the retina."42 In sum, optical information is impressions. A series of comparisons and inductions is nec
understood by modern optical theory to be fundamentally essary, whereby we gradually coordinate one impression with
unlike what we actually see. another."49 Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, seeing
Granting the specificity of discrete sensory operations, ceases to be a given?it ceases to be a simple fact of being that
modern optical theory faced the central problem of how we are born into, fully formed and already present. From the
dissimilar forms of sensory information combine to generate mid-nineteenth century on, seeing becomes instead a physi
a coherent, cohesive perceptual array.43 Helmholtz in partic ological and cognitive process that we must learn.
ular was intensely concerned with the problem of how two
dimensional, inverted, binocular optical data, devoid of all Cubism and Antivisuality
spatial perception, is experienced as visual perception with Delaunay's attempt to rehabilitate vision as the basis for a new
depth and clearly bounded figure-ground distinctions. The pictorial realism must be placed squarely in the context of the
problem for Helmholtz and others was how the distinct nerve modern optical theory explained above. But just as impor
functions of touch and vision come together to construct a tant, it must also be seen in opposition to the Cubist recep
unified and functionally seamless field of vision. Helmholtz tion of that same optical theory. For as far as the Cubists were
thus identified two basic components fundamental to the concerned, modern optical theory demonstrated conclu
process of visual cohesion. The first is that the deficiencies of sively that vision?now understood to be fundamentally dif
ferent from pure optical information and subject to the vagar it into a wholly new and modern conception, Delaunay
ies of the body in which it is enmeshed?is not to be trusted. sought to do the same for painting. Engaging rigorously with
According to the Cubist reception of modern optical theory, the structure of perception as claimed through modern op
vision had been proven to be wildly erratic and prone to a tical theory?a structure premised on the double role of
range of corruptions. This stood in contrast to the mind, cognition and sensation?Delaunay's paintings emphasize
which filters out impurities, giving us a true and stable im the role of the mind in the act of vision. And in so doing,
age?giving us perception as an act of cognition. References Delaunay's paintings develop a fundamentally new model of
to modern optical science abound in Cubist criticism. Gleizes visual realism?a visual realism in which painting serves to
and Metzinger refer to the modern optical theory of binoc bridge the body of the viewer with its ground in the world.
ular accommodation in Du Cubisme. "As for visual space we
know that it results from the agreement of the sensations of
convergence and 'accommodation' in the eye."50 Maurice The Windows
Raynal likewise invokes Helmholtz in an appeal to Cubist The immediate optical impact of the Windows announces
antivisuality: "'The truth is not in the senses,' said Male Delaunay's commitment to opticality?and thus his break
branche, 'but in the mind,' and Helmholtz?and indeed from Cubism?in no uncertain terms. Revisiting Neo-Impres
Bousset before him?showed that the senses tell us nothing sionism's involvement with chromatic retinal mixing, Delau
but our own sensations."51
nay abandoned the Divisionist technique of colored dots, or
The most sustained and thoroughgoing use of modern taches, in favor of larger colored planes of "simultaneous
optical theory within Cubist-era criticism is found in Daniel contrast," a form of optical mixing first theorized by the
Henry Kahnweiler's The Rise of Cubism. In his understanding nineteenth-century optical theorist Michel-Eug?ne Chevreul.
of the relations between sensation, memory, and cognition, Chevreul explains this process in the introduction to his 1839
Kahnweiler demonstrates a clear debt to modern optical De la loi du contraste simultan? des couleurs:.
science. Kahnweiler contends that the process of "seeing" a
Cubist painting (Kahnweiler uses the quotation marks) al A ray of solar light is composed of an indeterminate
most identically mirrors the process of visual perception as number of differently colored rays . . . [these] have been
theorized by Helmholtz. In both cases, a visual stimulus is distributed into groups which have been given the names
charged with a specific memory image. The ensemble of red rays, orange rays, yellow rays, green rays, blue rays, indigo
visual stimuli and memory images combine within the view rays, and violet rays; but it must not be supposed that all the
er's mind to produce a final image. "Seeing" a Cubist paint rays comprising the same group, red for instance, are
ing, for Kahnweiler, constitutes more an act of concep identical in color. On the contrary, they are generally
tion?of cognitive assembly?than an act of vision: "When considered as differing, more or less among themselves,
'real' details are thus introduced the result is a stimulus that
although we recognize the impression they separately pro
carries with it memory images. Combining the 'real' stimulus duce as comprising that which we ascribe to red?1
and the scheme of forms, these images construct the finished
object in the mind. Thus, the desired representation comes Looking onto a field of contiguous colored planes, we per
into being in the spectator's mind."52 For Kahnweiler, as for ceive what appear to be discrete colors, "we recognize the
Helmholtz, the viewer combines the known with the seen, such impression they separately produce as comprising that which
that, as Kahnweiler describes Cubism, we mediate "the two we ascribe to red." But as Chevreul points out, these appar
dimensional 'seen' with the three dimensional 'known.'"53 ently unified colors are in fact composed of "an indetermi
Not only does Cubist criticism use modern theories of nate number of differently colored rays," which intermingle
vision against vision, it does so in the name of an essentialist and vary according to the proximity, hue, brightness, and
realism. Cubist painting, according to early advocates, pro surface texture of adjacent colors. Rays of colored light mix
vides the ontological blueprints?the essential truth?of its with neighboring rays of light to produce the optical mixing
objects, such that, as Olivier-Hourcade claims, "The ruling of simultaneous contrast. As Blaise Cendrars describes the
preoccupation of the [Cubist] artists is with cutting into the essential effect of simultaneous contrast within Delaunay's paintings,
truth of the thing they wish to represent, and not merely the "A color isn't a color unto itself. It is only a color in contrast
external and passing aspect of this truth."54 Likewise, for Jacques with one or more colors. A blue is only blue in contrast with
Rivi?re, "The true purpose of painting is to represent objects a red, a green, an orange, a grey and all the other colors."58
as they really are; that is to say, differently from the way we see No longer is vision construed as a classical piercing of
them. It [Cubism] tends to give us objects in their sensible space?a progressive (or diachronic) succession into depth,
essence, their presence; this is why the image it forms does not from the eye through lines of perspective to an ever-receding
reveal their appearance."55 Stripping away "contingent visual vanishing point. Rather, vision is reconfigured as a simulta
and anecdotal elements" from its represented object, "Scien neous (or synchronie) field, distributed across the visual
tific Cubism," as Apollinaire terms it, "resulted from the fact plane.59
that the essential reality was depicted there."56 The emphasis on optical phenomena in the Windows has
Beginning with the Window series and culminating with led art historians to characterize Delaunay as a "retinalist," a
The First Disk, Delaunay broke decisively with Cubism's at term of disparagement coined by the Cubists to denigrate the
tempted end run of vision into the essentialism of concep "superficial realism" of Impressionism. Rosalind Krauss main
tion. Understanding that modern optical theory does not tains that Delaunay's paintings establish a visual homology
invalidate vision, as the Cubists argued, but rather reformulates between the surface of the canvas and the surface of the
THE SIMULTANEITY OF ROBERT DELAUNAY'S FIRST DISK 313
retina. For Krauss, this "retinalism" eliminates the role of the the senses and the mind forms the basis of Delaunay's recon
mind, stripping vision of its conceptual depth: "the 'arr?t ? la stituted visual realism. And, true to modern optical theory,
r?tine,'' the stopping of the analytic process at the retina . . . this is a model of vision in which we must literally learn to see.
[became] a kind of self-sufficient or autonomous realm of
activity. . . . This is the logic we hear, for example, in Delau
nay's assertions that the laws of simultaneous contrast within Seeing in Time
the eye and the laws of painting are one and the same. . . ."60 Delaunay's Windows perform the slow process of learning to
More than just a superficial model of vision lacking "the see described by Helmholtz. As Delaunay suggests, it is only
analytic process," however, retinalism is also premised on over time that we learn to see his paintings: "I had the idea
speed. Deprived of cognitive function, visuality according to for a kind of painting that would depend on color and
the retinalist model indulges the pure optical stimuli of rapid contrast, but would develop over time."6 As discussed above,
and kaleidoscopic retinal sensations. Rousseau, for example, Helmholtz theorized that young children must learn to cog
argues that Delaunay's paintings attempt to translate the nitively merge two-dimensional optical information with
frenzied pace of modern life as it darts across the surface of three-dimensional spatial knowledge in order to develop vi
the eye: "The paintings of Robert Delaunay are entirely mo sual perception. Remarkably, this complex process of learn
tivated by the avid retinalism of the 'painting of modern life': ing to make sense of what we see is performed experientially
'Looking to see,' to see more and more quickly, to see too in the act of looking at the Delaunay's Windows. We can see
much, sometimes to the point of risking a hypnotic vertigo as this if we begin with what is now generally considered to
the eye is carried away by the gyrating movement of colors."61 be the second (though first finished) painting in the se
Rousseau sees the speed of Delaunay's retinalism as part and ries, Simultaneous Windows (1st Part, 2nd Motif, 1st Replica) (Fig.
parcel of the artist's larger efforts to recover a primitive 3) .68 Our initial experience of the painting, much like that of
vision, cleaved from knowledge and experiential memory. In an infant, with its undeveloped perceptual acuity, is purely
a 1997 essay, Rousseau claims that Delaunay "adopts the optical; we see a loosely articulated grid of apparently abstract
'innocent eye' thesis defended by Ruskin" and quotes a pas colors with no clear figure-ground distinction, no evident
sage from Paul Val?ry's 1895 Introduction ? la m?thode de orientation?top to bottom, left to right?and a two-dimen
L?onard de Vinci:
sional array of rough, ill-defined chromatic shapes that bleed
one into the other. What we see, in other words, replicates
Most people see with the intellect much more frequently the conditions of pure optical information as it is registered
than with the eye. Instead of colored spaces they become on the retina of children prior to perceptual development.
aware of concepts. A tall, whitish cube with holes filled Color, in this initial view, both painterly and perceptual, takes
with the reflections of glass is immediately a house: the precedence over form.
House! A complex concurrence of abstract qualities. The granting of chromatic priority in the Windows places
When they move they miss the movement of the rows of Delaunay in direct opposition to Cubism's privileging of form
windows, the transformation of the surfaces continually (determined through conception) over effects of color (de
changing their aspect?for the concept does not change. termined through vision). Kahnweiler, for example, claims
They see through
62
a dictionary rather than through the Cubism's suppression of color serves to separate the "primary
retina. ...
qualities" of geometric form and spatial position from the
"secondary qualities" of color and tactility:
It is this innocent eye engagement with a world of pure
opticality that Rousseau assigns to Delaunay: "The project of[The Cubists] distinguish between primary and secondary
simultanism adds to this refutation of a priori knowledge qualities. They endeavor to represent the primary, or most
within representation through a claim to a primitive sense of important qualities, as exactly as possible. In painting
color."63 Along similar lines, Spate, too, asserts that Delaunay these are: the object's form, and its position in space. They
attempted to locate "a consciousness found in perceptual merely suggest the secondary qualities such as color and
experience unclouded by conceptual, learnt experience."64 tactile quality, leaving their incorporation into the object
The view of Delaunay as a "retinalist" who seeks to derive in the mind of the spectator.69
knowledge from the domain of the visual not only is at odds
with the experience of his paintings, it also underestimates Kahnweiler's reliance on optical physiology notwithstanding,
(or misunderstands) the depth of Delaunay's engagement the nineteenth-century realization that infantile vision is ini
with modern optical theory.65 Far from expressing a naive tially experienced as pure optical sensation prior to the
retinalism that is optically immersed in the speed of modernlearned perception of form and space supports Delaunay's
life, Delaunay's paintings, beginning with the Window series,visual prioritization of color. No longer subservient to pr?ex
are at pains to slow the gaze of the viewer, while at the sameistent three-dimensional objects, color, in Delaunay's Win
time coupling vision with experiential knowledge. Consistentdows, refuses to function as a coating, applied as a secondary
with modern optical theory, Delaunay's concern is to move characteristic to a priori forms in space. As Apollinaire main
beyond the two-dimensional surface of the retina and into the tains, "color is no longer used for just coloring . . . color is
depth of visual perception. Knowledge works in tandem withnow itself the form. . . . Color no longer depends on the
the senses to create spatial perception such that, as Delaunaythree dimensions, for it is color that creates them."70 Walter
writes, "We live in depth, we travel in depth. I am there. TheBenjamin expresses a similar view, which he relates directly to
senses are there. And the mind!!"66 This equilibrium betweeninfantile perception, in his 1914 essay "A Child's View of
Color." Emphasizing that for young children, "their eyes are tive information in order to determine spatial depth and
not concerned with three-dimensionality, this they perceive decipher images. This occurs with a series of images that are
through their sense of touch," Benjamin, like Apollinaire, gradually perceived within the chromatic grid. The first, and
claims the priority of color over form: "for the person who most easily discerned, is the green elongated triangle of the
sees with a child's eyes . . . [color] is not something superim Eiffel Tower in the center of the canvas, with its lighter, more
posed on matter, as it is for adults. The latter abstract from difficult to see supporting columns below (Fig. 4). The two
color, regarding it as a deceptive cloak for individual objects small windows on a building front follow in the lower part of
existing in time and space."71 the frame. Most difficult to determine are two images that
Prior to the perception of form, touch and color exist have gone unnoticed in past accounts of the Windows and
within separate sensory registers before the mind learns to have taken an especially long time to learn to see. The first is
combine them into a cohesive, three-dimensional view of a face in the yellow field of the viewer's right-hand side of the
space. This double separation and cohesion of touch and painting (Fig. 5). The dark green patch of paint two-thirds of
color is also performed in the experience of viewing the the way down the right-hand side functions as lips, while the
Windows. Avoiding a view of color that is "superimposed on quarter-circle of yellow beneath forms the chin. The ear nes
matter," Delaunay strategically engages the retinal mixing of tles in the right-hand corner of the base of the tower. The jaw
simultaneous contrast to separate color from its material and then the neck extend the sloping, fragmented line of the
ground. Our experience of color, in looking at the Windows, tower a fraction away from the corner of the canvas. This line
is necessarily determined through the physiological mixing then continues into the outer edge of the picture through
of color in the eye. This physiological experience of color, the rough, prominent miter of the frame. The second is a
determined through the effects of simultaneous contrast, is rectangular form that cuts diagonally across the surface of
thus literally stripped of form. At the same time, however, we each painting in the series, which represents an aerial view of
see the contrasting textures of paint application and the the Champ de Mars, the field on which the Eiffel Tower sits.
tactile differences in paint created by the wooden ground of Delaunay took the aerial image from a photograph published
the frame and the rough weave of the canvas. The colors we in 1909 in the journal Comoedia (Fig. 6) and later reworked it
see in Delaunay's Windows are thus located simultaneously in his 1922 lithograph Tour Eiffel et Jardins du Champ de Mars
and indeterminately between the pure, physiologically pro (Fig. 7).72
duced colors of the eye?devoid of form and internal to the All of these images make sense. Setting the stage for our
body?and the material colors of the paint, inextricably seeing, Delaunay tells us his painting is a window. Given
bound to its tactile form and ground, external to the body. Delaunay's renown for cityscapes of Paris, and the Eiffel
The effect of simultaneous contrast, in other words, allows for
Tower especially, it stands to reason that we should come to
a seemingly impossible and paradoxical expression of color, see the tower. The surrounding sky blue pushes back into
in which it is simultaneously both separated from and bound to space, and the two small dashes of green on the bottom of the
tactile form.
frame ground the tower in neighboring buildings. By the
This simultaneous separating and reassembling of sight same token, we know from experience that facing a window,
from touch is further articulated in a curious detail in Delau
we can see our mirror image reflected back into our line of
nay's painting. If we look at the rough, conspicuous miters of vision. Drawing from experience, each individual viewer can
the painted frame, we see how Delaunay has carefully delim learn to see his or her face (or is it Delaunay's face, the first
ited each miter with paint so that two or more colors meet viewer of this window?). We also know that Delaunay's past
along the exact seam of the wooden joint. This holds true in Cubist representations of the tower contained simultaneous
all but the upper-right corner of the frame, where we see the and aerial views. Accordingly, there is a visual logic to seeing
light blue cross over the forty-five-degree angle of the miter the Champ de Mars in the diagonal rectangular form. Simi
with an exacting deliberation. It is as if Delaunay were at larly, we also know from experience how aerial views activate
pains to show how the coarse frame that we can feel, and the memory in the act of seeing. Looking at the all but unrecog
color that we see, have been cleaved from one another?
nizable sprawl of Paris from the top of the actual tower, we
separated as distinct forms of sensory information?only to perceive isolated fragments that orient us to the overall struc
be reassembled again in the rest of the frame. In prying the
ture of the city. Memory works to relate part to whole such
tactile form of the frame from its corresponding color, it
that, over time, we begin to form a comprehensible image. As
seems that Delaunay is intent on showing not simply the Roland Barthes describes this process of aerial vision from
structure of painting but also how it relates to the structure of
the top of the Eiffel Tower:
the viewer's vision.
It is crucial to Delaunay's project that our perceptual ex
perience of the Windows not rest with this initial sensory view Take some view of Paris taken from the Eiffel Tower; here
of color and tactile surface but that it extend into an acquired you make out the hill sloping down from Chaillot, there
perception of form determined through experiential knowl the Bois de Boulogne; but where is the Arc de Triomphe?
edge. This move beyond the sensory is vital, for in the Win You don't see it and its absence compels you to inspect the
dows, Delaunay seeks to foreground the perceptual priority panorama once again, to look for this point which is
of color over form by replicating in the viewer the process of missing in your structure; your knowledge struggles with
infantile perceptual development. Accordingly, in the pro your perception, and in a sense, that is what intelligence is:
cess of learning to see?as in the process of learning to see to reconstitute, to make memory and sensation cooperate so
Delaunay's Windows?we combine sensory data with cogni as to produce in your mind a simulacrum of Paris.73
3 Delaunay, Les fen?tres simultan?es sur la ville (Ire partie, 2e motif, Ire r?plique) (Simultaneous Windows [1st Part, 2nd motif, 1st Replica]),
1912, oil on canvas and wood, 18 X 16 in. (46 X 40 cm). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (artwork ? L and M Services B.V.
Amsterdam 20060504)
In laying bare the structure of vision, the aerial view demands structure, the mind must negotiate between what is known
that the mind cooperate with the eye in an act of visual and what is seen. Visual perception, as it is experienced and
interpretation. Separating and grouping, moving between seen from the top of the Eiffel Tower, is thus a process that
recognized fragments and their position within the larger takes place over time as the mind pieces together all the parts
fffi? fa1* iv
??
4 Delaunay, detail of Fig. 3 (artwork ? L and M Services B.V.

Amsterdam 20060504)
of the visual puzzle, moving between the memory of past

experience and what is given in sight.
Structuring Vision
Duplicating a forty-five-degree rotation of the central canvas
almost exactly, the rectangular form of the Champ de Mars
twists the structure of painting (the canvas support) into a
metaphor for the structure of vision (the aerial view). Indeed, fef
in drawing a connection between visual and pictorial struc
ture, Delaunay radically reformulated the correlation be
tween painting and vision, both of which were classically
understood to provide transparent, windowlike views onto 5 Delaunay, detail of Fig. 3 (artw
Amsterdam 20060504)
the world. Delaunay's window thickens space so that its visual
opacity gives way to depth only after negotiation with expe
6 The Eiffel Tower, Paris, from a Balloon,

from Andr? Schelcher and S. Omer
Decusgis, Paris vu en ballon, Paris,
ca. 1909, reprinted in Comoedia 23
(October 1909) (photograph in the
public domain)
7 Delaunay, Tour Eiffel et Jardins du Champ de Mars (Eiffel Tower

and the Gardens of the Champ de Mars), lithograph, 1922
(artwork ? L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
riential knowledge. The orthogonal grid of the Windows

exemplifies this imbrication of pictorial and visual structure.
Simultaneously marking both the flat, literal surface of the 8 Delaunay, Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower), 1910, ink on paper,
16 X 13 in. (40.5 X 32.4 cm). Location unknown (artwork
painting and the spatial vectors that have traditionally served
L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
as the markers of perspective, the grid fluctuates, back and
forth, between the literal form of the painting's surface and
the grid of perspectival vision. Krauss foregrounds this dis perception of depth, on the other. "The grid," Krauss writes,
tinction between the literal material flatness of the grid, on "is flattened, geometricized, ordered. It is antinatural, anti
the one hand, and its simultaneous relation to vision and the mimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Delaunay, 7 our (La Tour

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H on X 35V? (125 X
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1 Solomon
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
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viewstresses
back on nature."74 At the same time, Krauss of the Eiffel Tower, there is another
that prior
to its inscription on the pictorial surface
thatin
wethe twentieth
eventually learn to see. Interwov
century, the grid was first articulated insive
the solidity of cen
nineteenth this orthogonal structur
tury through the Symbolist fascination with the window:
another "The
geometric pattern: a kind of prism
grid appears in symbolist art in the form
the of windows,
window the
whereby the rectangular gr
material presence of their panes expressed by of
subset the geometri
intersecting triangles. As with
cal intervention of the windows' mullions." Yet
tower, wewhat Delau
can also learn to make sense of
nay's Windows make explicit is that vision, despite
rectangular andappear
triangular forms. If we loo
ances to the contrary, is precisely not one
like
ofa the
window.
pen-and-ink
In studies of the to
1910 andwindow
Delaunay's series, the image of the transparent 1912, we see about a third of th
vies
with the literal flatness of the nontransparent
bottom a screen of the and familiar-looki
conspicuous
painting's surface. In order to see through this particular
subdivided into intersecting triangles (Fi
window, out onto the world of objects, we must
have first it,
noticed learn
we to
see it throughout the re
drawings
see through its resolutely two-dimensional in this
and opaque series as well as in the C
grid.
Given Delaunay's concern with structure, it does
towers that not take painted prior to the
Delaunay
1910
long for us to realize that in addition to the and 1911
frontal (Fig. 9).
and aerial
10 Lucien Herv?, The Eiffel Tower, 1986, gelatin silver contact

print (artwork ? Lucien Herv?, Paris)
The orthogonal and diagonal lattice of the grid presents us

with another view of the Eiffel Tower, a view not from straight
11 Frank Stella, Marquis de Portago (First Version), 1960,
on or from above but from within?an image of the inter
aluminum oil paint on canvas, 7 ft. 9V? in. X 5 ft. IIV2 in.
locking grids that form the skeletal structure of the tower (2.38 X 1.82 m). Private collection (artwork ? 2007 Frank
itself (Fig. 10). What we see in this close-up image of structure Stella / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)
are the pressures and strains?the nuts and bolts?of a struc
tural framework that, once assembled and looked at from a
remove, piece together to form another image of the tower.
additionally structured according to the viewer's vision?to
The First Disk the circular radius of the viewer's optical cone, whose circum
Delaunay's Eiffel Tower serves metaphorically to map visual ference delimits vision prior to its peripheral distortion. Vi
structure onto pictorial structure. In so doing, the meta sion is thus inserted as an active term in the play between the
phoric image emphasizes, as metaphors do, the role of the painted concentric bands and the material structure of the
mind. It is this emphasis on the visual role of the mind and its circular support. Indeed, it is crucial to the viewing of The
reliance on metaphor that The First Disk attempts to balance First Disk that vision can be aligned to the shape of its outer
in relation to the body. Without in any way downplaying how edge and also with the shape of each of the seven painted
we are drawn into the intimate surfaces of the Windows?we bands. For, as painted and visual radii coincide in their
feel and literally see ourselves thrust into the heart of the respective diminishment, The First Disk positions not just the
tower?the accent, both metaphoric and experiential, is orientation of the viewer's vision but also the physical posi
placed on cognition. The First Disk by contrast, foregrounds tion of his or her body. With each step closer, the viewer's
not only the impact of embodied vision as it strikes the visual radius realigns with a new painted radius. The First Disk
painted surface but also the impact of the surface as it strikes pulls us in, nearer and nearer toward its central blue and red
embodied vision?an impact made explicit by Delaunay in bull's-eye, only to push us out again, back toward the outer
his multiple references to The First Disk as "a punch."75 frame of the support.
Like the Windows, The First Disk folds the structure of vision The diminishing circumference of the painted bands can
into the structure of painting. The First Disk, like the retinal be seen equally in terms of the body's movement toward The
image, presents no clear sense of orientation, no obvious left First Disk and The First Disk's movement toward the body. The
or right, top or bottom. And, like the retinal image, The First successively smaller circles can be visualized as increasingly
Disk is resolutely two dimensional. The merging of visual and proximate cross-sections within a static visual cone extending
pictorial structure is most immediately evident, however, in from The First Disk to the viewer. Accordingly, the outer edge
the shape of The First Disk. As in Frank Stella's stripe paintings of the painting corresponds to the most distant point of
of the early 1960s (Fig. 11), the depicted shape of the circular vision, with the absolute center of the painting being the
bands echoes the literal shape of the canvas. The shape of point at which the tip of the cone touches the viewer's eye.
Delaunay's First Disk, unlike that of Stella's stripe paintings, is If the painted bands do function as distinct positions within
12 Delaunay, Les fen?tres (Fen?tres ouvertes simultan?ment Ire partie, 3e motif) (Windows [Windows Open Simultaneously 1st Part, 3rd
Motif]), 1912, oil on canvas, 22V? X 48V? in. (57 X 123 cm). Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (artwork ? L and M Services
B.V Amsterdam 20060504)
the viewer's optical cone, collapsed into the flatness and ment?a slow, optical illusion of gentle rotation and pulse. As
circular shape of the painting, then the central crossing of Delaunay described the physiologically produced perception
the horizontal and vertical lines that bisect The First Disk of movement in The First Disk. "The experience was convul
designate the contact point between the eye and the paint sive. No more fruit dish, no more Eiffel Tower, no more
ing. At the same time, these lines also serve to entwine visual street. ... I tried to cry out to them: I have found it! It turns!
and pictorial structure. As vision is aligned along the cross But they avoided me."77
hairs of the painting, the intersecting lines reflect the struc Along with the effect of chromatic retinal mixing, the
tural cross bracing used to reinforce the stretcher of the rhythmic movement of simultaneous contrast further ob
tondo. scures the boundary between the eye and the painting?
Delaunay further blurs the boundaries between vision and between the physiological pulse of movement and the repre
its pictorial object through his strategic use of simultaneous sentation of movement as a static image. We see, therefore,
contrast. In the process of viewing The First Disk, the colors the quiet turns of The First Disk as a perceptual effect, pro
that are perceived exist both physiologically within the eye as duced through the chromatic vibrations of simultaneous con
a result of retinal mixing and as a material property of the trast. Delaunay characterized this effect of movement as be
pigment, immanent and bound to the painted surface.76 ing distinct from The First Disk's surface in a 1926 interview:
Color butts against color in The First Disk to produce retinal "[Simultaneous] Colors offer the depth of a penetrating
effects of simultaneous contrast that seem to belong at once rhythm ... a movement . . . insolently outside of the notice
to the interiority of the eye and to the exteriority of the able surface."78 But The First Disk also provides a graphic
painted surface. Neither quite inside the eye nor quite out suggestion of movement that is bound to its surface?a rep
side on the surface of the painting, the location of color is resentation of movement resembling a spinning propeller or
perceived indeterminately between The First Disk and the wheel. Hidden in plain sight like Poe's purloined letter, the
viewer. It is this visual indeterminacy?an indeterminacy that representational function of The First Disk sits in open view,
blurs the distinction between the viewing subject and its even while it is concealed within the rings of its own abstrac
painted object?that relates The First Disk back to the optical tion. Like the colors of simultaneous contrast, the exact
model first established in the Windows. Yet, while the empha location of The First Disk's movement is again indeterminate:
sis in the Windows is on a metaphoric thrust into and from both inside the eye of the viewing subject and outside, bound
above the Eiffel Tower, The First Disk performs this visual to the form of the painted image. It is unclear in viewing The
thrust on an experiential level, as the boundaries are broken First Disk whether we perceive movement as a physiological
between the eye and the painting. response to its circular color patterns or as a representational
The retinal effects of simultaneous contrast do more, form independent of the eye. Unable to clearly separate
though, than confound the neatly prescribed location of physiological effect from representational form, the viewer is
color in either the eye or the painting. The chromatic vibra folded into an indeterminate space that combines the per
tions of retinal mixing also produce the effect of move ception of movement with the stasis of the image. As Delau
14 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Soleil no. 2 ( Circular Forms,

Sun no. 2), 1913, oil on canvas, 39 X 27 in. (100 X 68.5 cm).
Mus?e National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou,
13 Delaunay, H?lice (Propeller), 1923, oil on canvas, 39 X 31 in. Paris, gift of the friends of the Mus?e National d'Art Moderne
(100 X 80 cm). Foundation Wilhelm Hack, Ludwigshafen (artwork ? L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
(artwork ? L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
nay claimed: "That's what I tried to realize with my simultan the eye around the edge of the painting, the S form also
ism, that which can properly be called static movement."79 works to shift the interlocking stasis of the grid into a local
Delaunay's first attempt to represent movement in relation ized area of movement?a single point of rotation that fights
to the effects of simultaneous contrast occurs in the later to break free of the painting's gridlock. Significant as it is that
paintings of the Window series. This is seen, for instance, in Delaunay made an attempt to break free of the stasis of the
Delaunay's first shaped canvas, perhaps the most abstracted grid, this initial effort to depict circular movement is deter
work in the series, Les fen?tres (Fen?tres ouvertes simultan?ment mined through its reliance on purely representational mark
Ire partie, 3e motif) Windows (Windows Open Simultaneously, 1st ers of motion. Delaunay signifies rotation here through the
Part, 3rd Motif) (Fig. 12). Here, more than in any other use of conventional signs?through the almost cartoonish
painting in the series, the triangular motif of the Eiffel Tower black lines that stream off the upper half of the curve, and
is obscured in favor of the interchromatic reactions of the through the indexical motion marks of the brush in the
orthogonal and triangular grid patterns. All but gone are the lower-right side of the S. More iconic still is the unavoidable
iconic images of the Champ de Mars, the tower, and the fact that this spinning S takes on the appearance of a propel
reflected face whose barest residue can be seen in the yellow ler, a motif Delaunay would turn to again, and explicitly,
forms just to the right of center. If the small green square that throughout his later work, in paintings such as his 1914 series
sits in the middle of the white broken triangle on the left side Homage to Bl?riot and in a series of works done in the
of the painting is to be taken as a window, it is by no means mid-1920s around the theme of the propeller (Fig. 13).
obviously so. The retinal force of the chromatic grid and its Delaunay's concern with movement is further elaborated
material assertion of the picture plane have all but subsumed in the apparently abstracted motifs of the 1913 Circular
the composition. Within the rectilinear and diagonal grid Forms paintings. For all their apparent abstraction, if we look
pattern, however, we see a new form that appears for the first to paintings such as Circular Forms, Sun no. 1 and Circular
time in the series: the S-shaped patch of white on the right Forms, Sun no. 2 (Fig. 14), we again see the representational
side of the painting. signs of rotation?the wisps of speed flowing from the central
The appearance of this serpentine form in the otherwise form and the unmistakable similarity, again, to a spinning
angular network marks Delaunay's first attempt to represent propeller. These representational markers of rotation are
circular movement. Just as the oval shape of the canvas carries both abetted and confused by the physiological effects of
m*-=r
16 Optical diagram from Gustav Fech
Scheibe zur Erzeugung subjectiver Far
und Chemie Ab (1838) (artwork in th
15 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Lune no. 2, 1913, oil on canvas,

32 X 25 V? in. (81 X 65 cm). Kuntsmuseum, Bonn (artwork ? tionally?to spin, while the Moon pa
L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504) beating to the pulse of the eye and
The First Disk doubles these tw
through the combined effect of th
and vertical lines and the concent
simultaneous contrast. Confused, as the source of the paint
structure. The First Disk spins and p
ing's movement can once again be said to exist neither
around, back and forth, in and ou
clearly in the form of the painting nor clearly in the eye. As
the visual twists and turns we exper
with The First Disk, movement exists in an indeterminate
Disk, we feel ourselves drawn into th
space: between the physiological operations of the eye and its
the French optical theorist Paul So
perceived object.
1889 book The Aesthetics of Moveme
Throughout the Circular Forms paintings Delaunay played
have been aware of?it is exactly this
warm color against cool color to generate the retinal vibra
movement that grips and pulls viewe
tions of simultaneous contrast. In Circular Forms, Sun no. 2, for
viewing. Describing this immersion
instance, the familiar serpentine form that divides the circu movement, Souriau observes:
lar image separates the predominantly cool right side from
the predominantly warm left side. The neatness of this divide
is put under tension throughout the painting, however, as a We take pleasure in seeing a ban
means to twist one side into the other: warm colors push into extremity of a mast, or the smok
the cool side of painting?as with the red band on the lower rolling and unrolling endlessly in
right of the circle or the patch of yellow just above it to the falling from the sky. . . . Which of
right?while cool colors slide into the warm side of the mindless rapture, to watch the s
painting?as with the purple and blue lower left bands or the eddies in a river, the quivering of a
isolated patch of green above them. hours gazing at the steam of a steam
The twisting effect of warm and cool colors in the Circular and shrinking of its connecting r
Forms, Sun paintings combines with the spoke- or propeller flywheel. ... It seems as if our eyes
like contours that radiate from the central kernel to evoke in motion and drawn forcibly into
rotation. An altogether different form of movement is sug
gested in the Circular Forms, Moon paintings (Fig. 15). Here, Drawing us into the sensory gears
the accent is placed on the concentric bands that ring the Disk captivates us in a manner
central form, which created a back-and-forth motion, in and cognitive viewing of the Windows
out toward the viewer, rather than the effect of rotation. The experiential memory and cognit
Sun paintings are thus designed?optically and representa First Disk. Through the memor
17 Delaunay, Drame politique (Political % ^^HI?S^^ -^?m

Drama), 1914, oil and collage on '''''X ^^BI?IH J???-:
cardboard, 35 X 26V? in. (88.7 X V ^VHBHB^
67.3 cm). National Gallery of Art, ?^^H?W^w ^^^^"^Pi?^^^HPBBBBPf^^ ^: ;-
Washington, D.C., gift of the Joseph 'Mpi^lfcw . B^SPWMHmK%?V'r';'' ' ^^?^P
H. Hazen Founda?on (artwork ? .,^ rj^^.,-,.... -- ^^g^^|p^ -^P 'ml 11 1Li i)rnfT*^^^^
L and M Services B.V. Amsterdam c?i|?^
20060504) :?ilS^
17) make explicit the relation between The First Disk an

through its abstraction into a graphic image of high-speed
rotation. We also learn to see The First Disk's unmistakable
the shooting inward of vision into the painting. Based o
resemblance?frequently pointed out?to the various disksthe cover illustration for the March 29, 1914, issue of L
used by theorists in the demonstration of optical physiol
Petit Journal (Fig. 18), the paintings depict the notoriou
ogy (Fig. 16). In recalling these images, the mind concen
assassination of Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro, by
Henriette Caillaux against the almost identical concentric
trates our vision. And this concentration is aimed directly
at The First Disk. circles of The First Disk.81 Replicating the vanishing point of
As our sight is propelled into The First Disk, along perspectival
the space, the absolute center of The First Disk,
alignment of its crosshairs, we scope the painting likemarked
a as a single point of intersecting horizontal an
sharpshooter scopes his mark. Indeed, for Delaunay, vertical
the lines, coincides with the gunshot fired into the
space of the painting. This literal shot into the heart of th
telescopic rifle sight stands as the very image of a projected
and concentrated vision. Invented in 1880, the telescopic
painting is echoed by the forward thrust of Mme Caillaux
sight shoots the marksman's vision through space, collaps
body. But while the line of movement extends from the
ing the distant target onto the proximate visual image, viewer
as into the space of the painting, Delaunay also estab
eye and mind, absorbed in focus, concentrate on the lishes
aim. a countermovement that pushes in the opposit
The two versions of Delaunay's 1914 Political Drama (Fig.
direction, moving from the space of the picture toward th
of the disk and the flailing arm of Calmette (conspicuously

separated from the rest of his body by its plum color, as if
to alert us to this function) mark its base. As in many works
in the Window series, the shapes of curtains and of the
tower fluctuate unstably, one between the other.82 At the
same time, it is not just the frontal view of the tower that is
referenced but also, and once again, the view from the top
of the tower. In the foliate (or leaf-shaped) overlapping
quarter circle in the upper-left side of Political Drama, we
see the same foliate design as in the aerial view of the
Champ de Mars in several of Delaunay's Cubist Eiffel
Towers (Figs. 8, 9). This is evident, for example, in the
1910-11 watercolor Simultaneous Tower (Fig. 19), in which
we see the leaf-shaped pattern of the Champ de Mars from
above, in tension with the predominantly frontal view of
the tower. And again, once it is noticed, it is only a ques
tion of time before the same foliate shape is seen within
various Circular Forms paintings, as is particularly evident
in Circular Forms, Moon no. 1 and Circular Forms, Moon no. 2
(Fig. 15). No longer secure in their frontality, the Circular
Forms are suddenly reoriented onto a new line of sight,
seen from above.
The double orientation of Political Drama is reinforced
by the trajectory of the actual gunshots fired by Mme
Caillaux. As it happens, Mme Caillaux fired shots directly
in front of her, straight into Calmette's body, as well as
downward, into the floor. In her testimony at the trial?
testimony that was reproduced verbatim in leading news
papers and read obsessively by Parisians?Mme Caillaux
described the struggle against her crime passionnel: "At the
moment when I fired the first shot," Mme Caillaux stated,
18 Cover of Le Petit Journal, March 29, 1914 (artwork in the "I experienced an almost imperceptible flash of conscious
public domain) ness, and that was to shoot downwards towards the
ground."83 While the Petit Journal illustration shows only
the forward shot, Henriette Caillaux in fact shot in two
viewer. This counterforce is established by the overlapping directions: forward and down.
quarter circles in the upper-left and upper-right corners of Delaunay emphasized the sensory impact of The First Disk
the painting, referring back to the curtains of the original through his many references to the painting as a "punch." As
Petit Journal image. Political Drama thus references not only Delaunay recalled, "We called this time: pure painting, and it
The First Disk but also that other image of particular con was thus that I made the experiences of the Simultaneous Disk
cern to Delaunay, the image represented in the very center [The First Disk]. . . . One day I called this experience the
of the Petit Journal illustration?a window. Light streams 'punch.'"84 This play between the inward and outward impact
into the room through the window, radiating toward the of The First Disk is experienced in the optical illusion of its
viewer along the rings of the disk. No longer the telescopic back-and-forth beat. The First Disk's in-and-out, punch-and
trajectory from the viewer's eye into the disk (or the shot push is also felt in the perceptual instability that lies at its
from the gun barrel toward its target), the light from the heart?a central crossing that fluctuates between the reces
window pushes from the recessive space of the tableau sive depth of a central vanishing point, on the one hand, and
toward the viewer, into the eye. In and out, gunshot and the tip of a cone that extends outward, toward, and into the
light, the lines of sight in Political Drama shoot into the eye of the viewer, on the other. This outward thrust literally
space of the painting while simultaneously pushing back, impacts the eye through the chromatic pressure that The First
projecting toward the viewer. Disk exerts on the eye. As Chevreul argued, light strikes
Further complicating the double direction of Political nervous fibrils in the eye that correspond to, and are ex
Drama's inward and outward lines of sight is a visual ori hausted by, rays of different color. Light literally pressures
entation that is similarly doubled between frontal and and exhausts the eye, hitting the retina with force.85 This
downward views. In the space between the open curtains sensory pressure on the eye both counters the simultaneous
we see the image of the window as well as the recurrent, inward pull of The First Disk and contributes to its sense of
frontal image of the Eiffel Tower. The negative space rotation. As optical fibrils are exhausted, the eye moves
between the curtains flips into the positive image of the around the surface of The First Disk, in search of colors that will
tower; the sloping sides of the curtains double as its sloping relieve the pressure. According to F. Forichon's account of
sides, while the horizontal line that cuts across the center this optical movement:
19 Delaunay, La Tour simultanke

(Simultaneous Tower), 1910, ink,
watercolor, gouache, and pencil on
paper, 25 X 19 in. (63.5 X 47.5 cm).
Private collection (artwork ? L and M
Services B.V. Amsterdam 20060504)
Everyone knows that one cannot concentrate for too also known as the "punch." As Sonia Delaunay wrote in her
long on one single point without being tired. So this autobiography:
organ [the eye] is in perpetual movement . . . after
having first looked at a yellow tone, for example, it will
be pleasant for the eye to pass afterwards to a blue On account of his becoming so quickly aggressive in all
violet, since all the nervous fibrils that are sensitive will of his discussions, he was nicknamed "punch." The Disk,
enjoy a complete rest.86 that he said he did in 1912 [sic], the first practical and
theoretical application of Chevreul's theories of simul
taneous contrast, had been given the name tableau coup
Viewing The First Disk, we see the illusionism of its static
de poing. The striking title was then reattached to his
movement, in and out, clockwise and counterclockwise. We
whole person.87
feel ourselves drawn into the depths of its space, even as we
feel its impact strike our eye. We feel it twist, even as we feel
it pulse. This imbrication of Delaunay with The First Disk can also be
In characterizing The First Disk as a "punch," Delaunay found in Political Drama, which places the image of The First
underscored the force of its sensory impact while oddly con Disk in direct relation to Delaunay's name. Manifestly not his
flating it with his own self-image: for Delaunay himself was signature (to which it bears no resemblance), it is written
21 Delaunay, Cheval prisme Soleil Lune, from Montjoie! April

June 1914 (artwork in the public domain)
painted band to the immediate left of the collar. Light and

20 Delaunay in front of The First Disk, 1913 (photograph in dark are again balanced in the shading of Delaunay's face,
the public domain) the darkened left half complementing the dark painted ring
at the left, while the illuminated right half complements the
light-colored painted ring to the upper right. Perhaps most
graphically in all capitals at the bottom of the painting. The striking are the horizontal and vertical creases in the photo
appearance of Delaunay's name in Political Drama brings graph that conspicuously mirror the horizontal and vertical
together both punches, The First Disk and Delaunay, into a painted crosshairs of The First Disk. Whether a remarkable
simultaneous, yet separate, whole. coincidence of age or scored deliberately (presumably by
The conflation of The First Disk and "Robert Delaunay" is Delaunay), these creases further an image of Delaunay en
also evident in the earliest known photograph of The First meshed within the formal structure of The First Disk.
Disk (Fig. 20). Inscribed "Expos? ? Berlin 1914 au Herbst Delaunay's portrait was not the only three-dimensional
salon?Fait ? Louveciennes ao?t 1913" (Exhibited in Berlin
object Delaunay photographically entwined with The First
in 1914 at the Herbstsalon?Made in Louveciennes August
Disk. In the first published photograph of The First Disk,
1913), the photograph shows Delaunay in the immediate
appearing under the title Cheval prisme Soleil Lune in the
center of The First Disk.88 More than simply posed in front of
journal Montjoie! in 1914, Delaunay placed a painted sculp
The First Disk, however, Delaunay is visually intermingled with
ture of a horse in front of the painting (Fig. 21). As with
its form. His eyebrows continue the horizontal painted line
Delaunay's portrait, the painted sculpture merges with the
across the canvas, while the vertical division of his face along
formal structure of the painted rings: the light-colored
the line of his nose and through the clefts in his upper lip
and chin continue the vertical painted line of the work. This saddle completes the central dark half circle; the line
across the horse's back and darkened lower neck continue
vertical division is continued downward through the but
toned closure of his vest, functioning as a bodily extension of the painted horizontal line of the painting; the light patch
the painted line that runs directly above his head. At the same on the horse's chest continues the curves of The First Disk,
time, the shape and color of his hair mirror the curve and as do the light and dark stripes on its front legs. Represen
color of the central circle of The First Disk, the barest sliver of tation and abstraction, real object and painted form, two
which is just discernible above his ear. The near-seamless dimensional and three-dimensional image, Delaunay and
continuation of dark hair into dark painted form balances Disk: each of these oppositions is collapsed in the photo
the light-colored shirt collar that continues the light-colored graphic images of The First Disk.
Delaunay, Les *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^IH

x 33^2 x ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^m
The Morton Neumann *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
on loan to *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
Gallery *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
Amsterdam --iHIHillHHIIIHHHHill^lHIHHHHHHHH^
Delaunay's Illusionism ties of tactility can again be traced back to the Wind
The impression of movement marks the most evident?butThis is evident in how the individual paintings in the se
not exclusive?form of illusionism encountered in whileviewing all oil on canvas, feel as if they were painted
The First Disk. It is also present in a distinctive form of of media. The version of Simultaneous Window
variety
optical illusionism that is experienced in the tactile the
playNational
of Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for ex
The First Disk's surface. In the pictorial space of The First
ple, assumes the tactile properties of colored penc
Disk, we see two distinct forms of tactility. First, there is the
paper (Fig. 22), while the Simultaneous Windows in
physical fact of how the paint lies on the canvas following
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, carries the chalky feel of gou
its application?the tactile aftereffects of variation (Fig.
in pres
23). Likewise, The Windows in the Museum of Mo
sure as the paint was touched onto the rough surface of New
Art, the York, appears pastellike in its sometimes dr
canvas with differing amounts of medium. In thissometimes
we see oily use of scumble, in contrast to the wat
the material tactility of The First Disk. At the same time, weuse of thin but vibrant washes of color in Wind
orlike
also see the paint transcend this materiality, as its partial
Open Simultaneously (1st Part, 3rd Motif) in the T?te Mod
bands of eggshell hardness, chalkiness, abrasiveLondon.
coarse If the Windows contrast tactile variations of
ness, mottled scumble, and thin wash combine to form
same general composition?a framed view onto the Eif
another kind of surface?a surface caught in the illusion
istic flow of simultaneous contrast. In this other Tower?the
kind of tactility of The First Disk, by contrast, los
representational point of contact. But while its abstra
surface, we see another kind of tactility?an illusionistic
obscures reference, the tactility of The First Disk enac
tactility inseparable from the combined optical and surface
own kind of illusionism?an illusionism that exists sole
effects that cause The First Disk to pulse and turn. Just as the
the pictorial
optical properties of color are lost to the indeterminacy of space of its surface.
Caught
the eye and painted surface, The First Disk's tactile proper in the pull of The First Disk's movement
ties are similarly both bound to and cleaved from the viewer experiences its tactility from within this illusionis
material
Simultaneously, the tactile qualities of the surface
surface of the painting?both material and illusionistic.
grounded in the material properties of the paint
Delaunay's concern with the specifically optical proper
'"ypwa?'tajfii' ''':'"?';''' ' ' i^
:,,.,.,,. . .-:..:, _ ... . "."" '~ . .'" ,...^J 20060504)
canvas, distinct from this illusionistic tactility. The First Diskviews, stasis and movement, abstraction and representation,
therefore separates and binds these two forms of the tacseparation and cohesion of the optical and tactile. Indeed,
tile?the illusionistic tactility that moves to the optical even the simultaneity of simultaneous contrast denotes the
retinal blending of opposing colors to form a new kind of
pulse of The First Disk and a material tactility that is bound
to its physical structure. Contrasted in their simultaneity,illusionistic color. However, this is a blending that negates
these two forms of tactility?illusionistic and material? and preserves the original colors?colors that are both opti
separate and cohere in the act of their viewing. The struc cal and material, internal and external, green and red, yellow
and blue. This paradoxical condition of simultaneity?of
ture of sensory separation and cohesion is not only ele
reconciled and simultaneous oppositions?has proven ex
mental in the viewing of The First Disk, it is also the
precondition for all acts of perception. Sensory informa tremely difficult to see and think in Delaunay's paintings. Yet
tion is broken apart within the physiological network ofif our understanding of The First Disk is to move beyond the
the body, only to be reassembled within cognition as stasis a of its currently inexplicable abstraction, then it is ex
cohesive perceptual image. No longer the visual metaphoractly this condition of reconciled simultaneity that needs to
enacted by Delaunay in the Windows through the image of be seen and thought. The flow of The First Disk needs to be
the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars, the perceptualgoverned by its proper movement: backward, toward the
structure of sensory separation and cohesion is now situWindows, and forward, out of its clog in the art historical
ated in relation to the visual experience of The First Disk'spipes. This back-and-forth movement must also coincide with
optical and material structure. how The First Disk turns?illusionistically and materially?and
Delaunay's paintings reconcile a range of oppositionshow we, in our turn, are simultaneously folded into the
through what he termed "simultaneity": frontal and aerialstructure of its vision.
Gordon Hughes is the 2006-8 postdoctoral fellow in art history at J'en suis content: quatre sur cinq expos? et une belle somme." Delau
nay to Halpert, February 1912, Fonds Delaunay, Biblioth?que Natio
Rice University. He received his doctorate from Princeton University, nale de France, Paris.
a master's from the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the 14. Delaunay and Kandinsky began to correspond in October 1911, at the
University of Western Ontario, and a master's in fine art from the initiation of Elizabeth Epstein, a painter and mutual friend of Kandin
sky and Sonia Delaunay. In a letter to Kandinsky containing photo
University of Illinois, Chicago [Department of Art History, Rice graphs of Delaunay's work, Epstein enthusiastically endorsed Delau
University, PO Box 1892, 103 Herring Hall, MS-21, 6100 Main nay's contribution to the 1911 Salon des Ind?pendants. Sharing her
St., Houston, Tex. 77251-1892, GAH@rice.edu]. enthusiasm, Kandinsky invited Delaunay to participate in the Blaue
Reiter exhibition in December 1911. Delaunay and Kandinsky briefly
continued their correspondence following the exhibition?Kandinsky
sent Epstein a copy of ?ber das Geistige in der Kunst to translate for
Notes Delaunay in February 1912?though the two would not meet in person
until 1937, four years before Delaunay's death from cancer.
Profuse thanks first and foremost to Michael Cole, Jennie King, and The Art 15. Roger Allard, "The Signs of Renewal in Painting," in The Blaue Reiter
Bulletin's two anonymous readers for their generous responses to this essay. Almanac, ed. Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc (London: Thames and
Many thanks are also due to Hal Foster, Brigid Doherty, Carol Armstrong, and Hudson, 1974), 109. See also E. v. Busse, "Robert Delaunay's Methods
Michael Fried for their support of this work. Special thanks to Lory Frankel of Composition," in ibid., 119-23.
for her editorial skill and patience. I also thank Princeton University's De
partment of Art and Archaeology for assistance with image copyrights. Unless 16. Klee visited Delaunay on October 11, 1912, as noted in his diary entry
otherwise indicated, translations are mine. for that date. See The Diaries of Paul Klee: 1898-1918, ed. Felix Klee
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 268. Klee's translation
1. In his public talk "Le cubisme ?cartel?" (The Quartering of Cubism) of "Light" appeared in Der Sturm, nos. 144-45 (January 15, 1913): 255
given on October 11, 1912, Guillaume Apollinaire described the "quar 56.
tering" of Cubism as he saw it in relation to the Section d'Or exhibi 17. Delaunay to Albert Gleizes, n.d., in Correspondance Gleizes-Delaunay (Am
tion at the gallery La Bo?tie. It was here that he first described an "Or puis: Association des Amis d'Albert Gleizes, 1993), 1. Delaunay's confi
phic" tendency in late Cubism, to which Delaunay was central. He dence in breaking with Cubism no doubt stemmed in part from the
described as Orphic the work of Delaunay, Fernand L?ger, Francis acclaim he received from both Apollinaire and from the Blaue Reiter
Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and the light (and only the light) in the group. As he described his break with Cubism in a letter to Paul Klee,
work of Pablo Picasso. Apollinaire asserted, "Orphic Cubism is the "It was the visit from Mme and M. Franc Mark [sic] and M. Mack [sic]
other great tendency within modern painting. It is the art of painting that prompted my decision." Delaunay to Klee, October 8, 1912, Paul
new ensembles with elements borrowed not from visual reality, but cre Klee Stiftung, Kunstmuseum, Bern, quoted in Robert Delaunay 1906
ated entirely by the artist and endowed by him with a powerful reality. 1914: De l'impressionisme ? l'abstraction (Paris: Centre Georges Pompi
Works by Orphic artists must simultaneously present a pure aesthetic dou, 1999), 38.
agreement, a structure that stands to reason [qui tombe sous le sens], and
18. Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 87.
a sublime signification, which is to say the subject. This is pure art. The
light in works by Picasso contain this art invented alongside him by 19. Ibid., 81.
Robert Delaunay, with Fernand L?ger, Francis Picabia, and Marcel 20. This is not to suggest that Delaunay was the only painter once associ
Duchamp also making great strides." Apollinaire, Les peintres cubistes: ated with Cubism to use color. In his review of the 1911 Salon
M?ditations esth?tiques (Paris: E. Figui?re, 1913), 12. d'Automne, for example, Andr? Warnod describes Salle 7, which con
2. Yve-Alain Bois writes, "Delaunay's case is enigmatic to say the least: al tained work by Picabia and Frantisek Kupka, as "the room of frenzied
though he was aware of the radicalism of the Disk (calling it his coup de color." Warnod, Comoedia 31 (October 1911), trans. Virginia Spate, Or
poing) it represents a unicum in his oeuvre and can possibly be re phism: The Evolution of Non-Figurative Painting in Paris, 1910-1914 (Ox
garded as a fluke." Bois, "Sophie Taeuber-Arp against Greatness," in ford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 25. Likewise, Delaunay's own
Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Transverse of Twentieth-Century Art, ed. Eiffel Tower Cubist works, painted prior to the Window series, were
Catherine de Zegher (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 417 n. 8. distinguished by their conspicuous use of color. Delaunay's use of
3. Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism: On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from color within a Cubist idiom did not go unnoticed by critics such as
Painting to the Readymade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Roger Allard: "Delaunay appeared very different. . . . Fundamentally it
1991), 153-54. was an adaptation of the Impressionist method. . . . But Delaunay is the
master of his color." Allard, "Sur quelques peintres," Les Marches du
4. Pierre Francastel, introduction to Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, by Robert Sud-Ouest 2 (June 1911): 57. Compared with the chromatic intensity of
Delaunay (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1957), 24, 27. the Windows, however, the color of Kupka, Picabia, and Delaunay's
5. Clement Greenberg, "Post-Painterly Abstraction," Art International 8, own Cubist work is comparatively subdued.
nos. 5-6 (Summer 1964): 63-65, reprinted in Clement Greenberg: The 21. Albert Gleizes, Souvenirs: Le cubisme 1908-1914 (Ampuis: Association
Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. John O'Brian, 4 vols. (Chicago: Univer des Amis d'Albert Gleizes, 1957), 10.
sity of Chicago Press, 1986), vol. 4, 193.
22. Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, D?j? jadis (Paris: Juillard, 1958), 30,
6. Clement Greenberg, "Review of Exhibitions of Thomas Cole and Rob trans. David Cottington, Cubism and Its Histories (Manchester, U.K.:
ert Delaunay," Nation, January 22, 1949, reprinted in Greenberg, The Manchester University Press, 2004), 92.
Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 2, 281.
23. James Burkley, "Les Ind?pendants," L'Assiette au Beurre 571 (March 23,
7. De Duve, Pictorial Nominalism, 153.
1912), quoted in Delaunay 1906-1914: De l'impressionisme ? l'abstraction,
8. Robert Delaunay, "Les cahiers de Robert Delaunay: Premier cahier," in 243.
Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 82.
24. Olivier-Hourcade, "Discussions," Paris-Journal, October 20, 1912, 4 (em
9. Delaunay's Barbazanges exhibition, shared with Marie Laurencin, was phasis in the original).
favorably reviewed by Andr? Salmon ("Robert Delaunay et Mme Marie 25. Robert Delaunay, "Des origins du cubisme," editorial, Gil Bias, October
Laurencin," Paris-Journal, March 6, 1912); Guillaume Apollinaire ("La 28, 1912, 4.
vie artistique: Marie Laurencin?Robert Delaunay," L'Intransigeant,
March 5, 1912); Gustave Kahn ("Les expositions," Mercure de France, 26. Pascal Rousseau, "L'h?r?siarque du Cubism," in La Section d'Or: 1912?
March 15, 1912); and James Burkley ("Pudding," L'Assiette au Beurre, 1920?1925 (Paris: ?ditions Cercle d'Art, 2000), 99-100.
March 23, 1912). Louis Vauxcelles was decidedly more negative, de 27. Olivier-Hourcade, "La tendance de la peinture contemporaine (Notes
scribing Delaunay's work as "immature" ("Marie Laurencin et Robert pour une causerie sur l'art contemporaine)," Revue de France et des Pays
Delaunay," Gil Bias, March 5, 1912). Fran?ais, February 1912, 35-41, trans. Edward Fry, Cubism (New York:
10. Delaunay's only artistic training came from his two years of apprentice
McGraw-Hill, 1966), 74.
ship as a theatrical scene painter at the atelier of Eug?ne Ronsin in 28. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme (Paris: E. Figui?re,
Belleville. 1912), trans. Robert L. Herbert, ed., Modem Artists on Art: Ten Un
11. Apollinaire, "La vie artistique: Marie Laurencin?Robert Delaunay," abridged Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965).
reprinted in Chroniques d'art (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 220-21. 29. Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 80.
12. Apollinaire, "Le Salon des Ind?pendants," L'Intransigeant, March 20, 30. Spate, Orphism, 161.
1912, reprinted in Chroniques d'art, 224-25.
31. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the
13. As Delaunay wrote to Sam Halpert, "On m'a invite ? Munich, chez Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 33. See also
Thanhauser [sic], le grand marchand de l?-bas: j'y ai vendu la grande Theo C. Meyering, Historical Roots of Cognitive Science: The Rise of a Cog
Tour Grise que j'ai faite chez toi, St-Sevrin, La Ville Bleue et un dessin. nitive Theory of Perception from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century (Dor
drecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989); and Teresa Brennan, "'The nitive Science, 156-57, the intuition theory of perception "allows little
Contexts of Vision' from a Specific Standpoint," in Vision in Context scope for the role of experience in the perceptual process. . . . Space
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, ed. Brennan and Martin and place are directly sensed as such, just as any other quality of per
Jay (New York: Routledge, 1996), 219-28. ception."
32. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 33. 48. As Meyering, ibid., 159, characterizes Helmholtz's theory of spatial per
33. Ibid., 39-40. ception: "The harmonization of the senses of touch and sight is gradu
ally developed through meticulous learning and through trial-and-error
34. Hermann von Helmholtz, "On the Recent Progress of the Theory of adjustment."
Vision" (1867), in Helmholtz on Perception: Its Physiology and Development,
ed. Richard M. Warren and Roslyn P. Warren (New York: John Wiley 49. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1988), 48.
and Sons, 1968), 99. The nineteenth-century realization that visual perception is a learned
rather than an innate process was reinforced by a series of operations
35. Helmholtz, "On the Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision," 107, was on the blind. It was found that even when these operations were com
fully aware of this break between a stable interior and exterior contin pletely successful the patients had to learn how to see over the course
uum: "One might almost believe that nature had here contradicted of many years, often with limited results. As the eye surgeons Moreau
herself on purpose, in order to destroy any dream of a pre-existing har and LePrince wrote in 1910: "It would be an error to suppose that a
mony between the outer and inner world." patient whose sight had been restored to him by surgical intervention
36. In David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1777), can thereafter see the external world. The eyes have certainly gained
for instance, we find: "I need not insist upon the trite topics, employed the power to see, but the employment of this power, which as a whole
by the skeptics in all ages, against the evidence of sense; such as those constitutes the act of seeing, still has to be acquired from the very be
which are derived from the imperfection and fallaciousness of our or ginning. The operation itself has no more value than that of preparing
gans, on numberless occasions; the crooked appearance of an oar in the eyes to see; education is the most important factor. ... To give
water, the various aspects of objects according to their different dis back sight to a congenitally blind person is more the work of an educa
tances; the double images which arise from pressing one eye; with tor than of a surgeon." Moreau and LePrince, quoted in M. von Sen
many other appearances of a like nature." Hume, An Enquiry Concerning don, Space and Sight: The Perception of Space and Shape in the Congenitally
Human Understanding, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: University of Ox Blind before and after Operation, trans. Peter Heath (Glencoe, 111.: Free
ford Press, 1896), 151-52. Over a century earlier, Thomas Hobbes Press, 1960), 20. For an extended discussion of the education of the
wrote: "And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye, makes us fancy a senses, see Hippolyte Taine, "External Perception and the Education of
light, and pressing the ear, produceth a din; so do the bodies we also the Senses" (1864), in On Intelligence, bk. 2, chap. 2, trans. T. D. Haye
see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved ac (London: L. Reeve: 1871).
tion." Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (1651; Oxford: Oxford 50. Gleizes and Metzinger, Du Cubisme, trans. Herbert, Modern Artists on Art,
University Press, 1957), 8. 8. For more on optical accommodation, see Nicholas J. Wade, A Natu
37. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 151-52. ral History of Vision (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 37-49.
38. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 66. 51. Maurice Raynal, "Some Intentions of Cubism" (1919), reprinted in Fry,
Cubism, 151.
39. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 35-36. 52. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism, trans. Henry Aronson
(1915; New York: Wittenborn, Schultz, 1949), 11-12. The emphasis on
40. Yve-Alain Bois, "Perceiving Newman," in Painting as Model (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 203. a mental construction of the image through known, a priori structures
is continued in Kahnweiler's statement (14), "Only our knowledge of
41. This process, known as binocular parallax, is the physiological means simple stereometric forms enables us to add the third dimension to the
through which we arrive at a single perceptual image within stereo flat picture which our eye perceives. Without the cube, we would have
scopic vision. As Adolf Hildebrand describes in his 1901 The Problem of no feeling of the three dimensionality of objects, and without the
Form in Painting and Sculpture (New York: G. E. Stechert, 1907), 22-23, sphere or cylinder, no feelings of the varieties of this three dimension
if an object is viewed from an extreme distance, then there is no differ ality."
ence in the impression formed on the respective retinas of the eyes. If 53. Ibid., 14. The distinction between the "seen" and the "known" is wide
an object is seen at a short distance, however, there is an "angle of
spread in Cubist criticism and marks a crucial point of overlap with
convergence" (the angle at which the eyes cross) that creates a differ
modern optical theory. As Apollinaire describes Cubism {Les peintres
ent retinal position of the object in each eye. This can be easily ob
cubistes, 11): "It is the art of painting new compositions with elements,
served by viewing an object at close range first with one eye closed,
not taken from reality as it is seen, but from reality as it is known." Ro
then reversing the order of open and closed eyes, after which the ob
salind Krauss and more recently Pepe Karmel have sought to make
ject will appear to assume a different position in space. The brain uses
explicit the link between optical psychology and Cubism. See Krauss,
both this difference in retinal image and the angle of convergence as a
"The Motivation of the Sign," in Picasso and Braque: A Symposium, ed.
means by which to determine depth. Amazingly, the mind trigonomet
Lynn Zelevansky (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992), 268-69;
rically calculates the difference between the object's projection onto
and Karmel, Picasso and the Invention of Cubism (New Haven: Yale Uni
the two retinas with the angle of convergence and the space between
versity Press, 2003). See also Lisa Florman, Myth and Metamorphosis:
the two eyes within the skull. The inability of classical perceptual the
Picasso's Classical Prints of the 1930s (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
ory to properly account for binocularity can be seen, for example, in 2000), 198.
Ren? Descartes, who assumed that the pineal gland was responsible for
generating unified perception: "There must be some place where the 54. Olivier-Hourcade, "La tendance de la peinture contemporaine," 35,
two images coming through the eyes . . . can come together in a single trans. Fry, Cubism, 74 (emphasis in the original).
image or perception before reaching the soul, so that they do not 55. Jacques Rivi?re, "Sur les tendances actuelles de la peinture," Revue
present two images instead of one." Descartes, The Philosophical Writings d'Europe et d'Am?rique (March 1912), 387, trans. Fry, Cubism, 76.
of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Du
56. Apollinaire, Les peintres cubistes, 11. "Scientific Cubism" was one of four
gald Murdoch, ed. Paul Verni?re (Paris: Gamier, 1964), 340.
divisions, along with "Physical Cubism," "Orphic Cubism," and "Intui
42. Hildebrand, The Problem of Form, 21. tive Cubism," ascribed by Apollinaire to Cubism in 1912.
43. As Rosalind Krauss writes: "It was this very fact?that the image on the 57. Michel-Eug?ne Chevreul, De la loi du contraste simultan? des couleurs
retina is inverted with respect to reality, top and bottom, left and (Paris: Pitois-Levr?ault, 1839), 1-2. Chevreul goes on to define simulta
right?that stood for the larger problem facing late nineteenth century neous contrast (7): "If we look simultaneously upon two stripes of dif
optics, namely, how information gets from the eye to the brain. At the ferent tones of the same color, or upon two stripes of the same tone of
heart of this inquiry into vision was the problem of just how the (geo the different colors placed side by side, if the stripes are not too wide,
metrical) optical display, focused by the lens onto the retina, is trans the eye perceives certain modifications which in the first place influ
formed to an entirely different order of signal. For it is not a 'picture' ence the intensity of the color, and in the second, the optical composi
that goes to the higher neurological centers." Krauss, The Optical Uncon tion of the two juxtaposed colors respectively. Now as these modifica
scious (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 120. tions make the stripes appear different from what they really are, I give
them the name simultaneous contrast."
44. Helmholtz, "On the Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision," 108.
45. Ibid., 125. 58. Blaise Cendrars, "Kontraste, Gleichzeitigkeit, Form," Die Aktion 17
(March 1914), trans, into French in Delaunay 1906-1914: De l'impres
46. Ibid., 127-28, in German, Hermann von Helmholtz, Vortr?ge und Reden sionnisme ? l'abstraction, 257. Frantisek Kupka, another painter who
(Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1884), 320. turned toward an abstraction informed by Chevreul, wrote in his Manu
47. Helmholtz's "empirical theory [empiristische Theorie]" that spatial percep script 1: "We who have the conquests of the Impressionists behind us,
tion is aquired as a developmental process was opposed to "intuition we enlarge their pointillism into planes by colors; we know very well
theory [nativistische Theorie]" As Meyering states, Historical Roots of Cog that light is not in black and white but in color, according to the more
THE SIMULTANEITY OF ROBERT DELAUNAY'S FIRST DISK 33J
or less scientific theory of complementarity." Kupka, quoted in Margit Cubism" of Picabia, which he relates directly to Delaunay: "He [Pica
Rowell, Frantisek Kupka (New York: Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, bia] thus moves into an art where, as in the works of Robert Delaunay,
1975), 130. color is itself the ideal dimension." In Apollinaire's description of indi
vidual artists, he groups Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Laurencin,
59. As many commentators have noted, Delaunay's attempt at aesthetic
and Juan Gris as belonging to his category of "Scientific Cubism," fol
synchrony is shared by Apollinaire's poetry. As Hans Robert Jauss de
scribes Apollinaire's "ambient lyricism": "this is precisely what enables
lowed by L?ger, Picabia, and Duchamp, who represent "Orphic Cub
the here-and-now, the simultaneity and ubiquity of the euphorically ism." Delaunay is conspicuously absent from the latter group. In fact,
affirmed modern life in its unceasing movement, to be experienced in Apollinaire had intended to dedicate a chapter exclusively to Delaunay
in a planned, though never written, sequel to The Cubist Painters, to
a self-producing synchrony. . . . Apollinaire himself pointed out that
have been titled The Orphic Painters. Apollinaire was staying with the
this novel literary effect, at the time the modern trend par excellence,
is entirely analogous to the concept of orphie painting [developed by] Delaunays while he was working on the publisher's proofs of The Cubist
his friend Robert Delaunay. . . ."Jauss, "1912: Threshold to an Epoch; Painters, and he gave the second set of these proofs to the Delaunays.
Apollinaire's Zone and Lundi Rue Christine," Yale French Studies 74
Tristan Tzara eventually acquired the proofs after World War II. See
(1988): 46-47. Peter Read, "Apollinaire and Cubism," in Apollinaire, The Cubist Paint
ers, trans. Read (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 103-5.
60. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious, 124.
71. Walter Benjamin, "A Child's View of Color" (1914-15), in Walter Ben
61. Pascal Rousseau, "Visions simultan?es: L'optique de Robert Delaunay," jamin: Selected Writings, vol. 1, 1913-1926, trans. Rodney Livingstone, ed.
in Delaunay: De l'impressionnisme ? l'abstraction, 77. Despite my differ Michael W.Jennings and Marcus Bullock (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
ences with Rousseau, his work represents the most sustained, rigorous, University Press, 1996), 50. Benjamin goes on to write: "The child's
and provocative writing on Delaunay to date. Also of note is the recent view of color represents the highest artistic development of the sense
writing on Delaunay by David Cottington in Cubism in the Shadow of War of sight; it is sight at its purest, because it is isolated."
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) and Cubism and Its Histories.
72. As Pascal Rousseau notes, Delaunay was a regular reader of the journal
62. Paul Val?ry, Introduction ? la m?thode de L?onard de Vinci (1895; Paris: Comoedia and it is therefore likely that he saw Ars?ne Alexandre's arti
Gallimard, 1957), 25, quoted in Pascal Rousseau, "'Cherchons ? voir': cle "L'art et l'air," Comoedia 23 (October 1909), where this photograph
Robert Delaunay, l'oeil primitif et l'esth?tique de la lumi?re," Cahiers was reproduced. See Pascal Rousseau, "La construction du simultan?:
du Mus?e National d'Art Moderne 61 (October 1997): 22. Michael Fried
Robert Delaunay et l'a?ronautique," Revue de l'Art 112 (1996): n. 19. I
makes a distinction similar to the one I am making for Delaunay, be am much indebted to Rousseau's essay, which discusses the importance
tween the pure opticality of John Ruskin, on the one hand, and the of aerial views to Delaunay's work but does not make the connection
cognitive and corporeal vision of Adolph Menzel, on the other. Fried between the aerial view of the Eiffel Tower and the Window series, nor
quotes from Ruskin's "Of Turnerian Mystery" to demonstrate Ruskin's
its relation to optical physiology.
attempt to suppress knowledge within vision: "Everything in the field of
73. Ibid.
sight is equally puzzling, and can only be drawn on the same difficult
conditions. Try it fairly. Take the commonest, closest, most familiar 74. Rosalind Krauss, "Grids," in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other
thing, and strive to draw it verily as you see it. Be sure of this last fact, Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 10.
for otherwise you will find yourself continually drawing, not what you 75. See n. 84 below.
see, but what you know." Ruskin, "Of Turnerian Mystery: First, as Essen
tial," in The Works offohn Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wed 76. Indeed, this type of conflation led Chevreul himself to confuse the
derburn, the Library Edition, 39 vols. (New York: Byran, Taylor, 1903), mixing and complementary nature of color as it existed as pigment, as
75-76 (emphasis in the original), quoted in Fried, Menzel's Realism: Art light, and as a physiological effect of the eye. As Faber Birren remarks
and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century Berlin (New Haven: Yale University in his explanatory notes to the 1967 English-language edition of Chev
Press, 2002), 1. reul's The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Color and Their Application
to the Arts (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1967), 55,
63. Rousseau, "'Cherchons ? voir,'" 22. In order to bring Ruskin's theories
"Chevreul .. . naively confuses pigment mixtures with light mixtures,
closer to Delaunay, Rousseau quotes a passage from Jules Laforgue,
and both with visual mixtures." As Birren points out, however, shortly
first published in 1903, in which Laforgue construes the "natural vi
after the publication of Chevreul's theory of simultaneous contrast,
sion" of Impressionism in opposition to the "educated eye": "The Im Helmholtz wrote the first accurate account of the differences between
pressionist is a modernist painter who, endowed with a sensibility of
spectral and pigment mixtures. Chevreul's view that red was the com
the eye that lies beyond the norm, forgets all the paintings that have
plement to green holds true only for pigments. Birren noted, "Colored
been gathered throughout the centuries in the museums, forgetting the
rays of light do not react upon each other as do pigments?nor do ei
optical education of school (drawing and perspective, color) in order to
ther of such combinations agree with results that take place when col
live frankly and primitively in the luminous spectacles of the open air
ors are mixed visually."
. . . becomes a remaking of the natural eye, to see naturally and to paint naively
as one sees" (emphasis added). Laforgue, Oeuvres compl?tes: M?langes pos 77. Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 217.
tumes (Paris: Mercure de France, 1903), 136, quoted in Rousseau, 78. Delaunay, interview by Louis Ch?ronnet, "Publicit? moderne: Fernand
"'Cherchons ? voir,'" 26. L?ger et Robert Delaunay," L'Art Vivant, December 1926, 890.
64. Spate, Orphism, 161. 79. Ibid.
65. See Gordon Hughes, "Coming into Sight: Seeing Robert Delaunay's 80. Paul Souriau, The Aesthetics of Movement, trans. Manon Souriau (Am
Structure of Vision," October, no. 102 (Fall 2002): 87-100. herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983), 121. Along with Th?o
66. Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 109. dule Ribot, Souriau was a central figure in the diffusion of German
perceptual theory in France during the 1880s (principally the work of
67. Ibid., 81 (emphasis added).
Helmholtz, Wilhelm Wundt, and Ernst Mach). For more on Souriau,
68. Guy Habasque records nineteen works in the Window series in Delau see Francis Sparshott's foreword to The Aesthetics of Movement. Of partic
nay's catalogue raisonn?, included in Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art ab ular concern to Souriau was the relation between scrutinized tactility
strait, 245-379. Since its original publication, three more works in the and the effect of movement, first articulated in 1889 in Esth?tique du
series have come to light, for a total of twenty-two. While precise dating mouvement and again four years later in La suggestion dans l'art (Paris:
remains open to debate, the first work in the series is generally consid Alean, 1893). It is in the latter, for example, that Souriau articulates a
ered to be the unfinished The Windows on the City (1st Part, 2nd Motif). confluence of concerns that overlap with those of Delaunay. Souriau
Simultaneous Windows (1st Part, 2nd Motif, 1st Replica), which appeared describes how the "well-exercised eye" can discern the effects of move
with a date of April 1912 in a special album on the Windows prepared ment within the texture of painterly facture (130): "For a well-exer
by Apollinaire for Delaunay's 1913 Der Sturm exhibition, is considered cised eye, all the nuances of the execution will be visible and make an
the second in the series, but it is the first that Delaunay finished. For impression. Approaching the detail, one will recognize also how each
more on the dating of works within the Window series, see Matthew mark was made, one will follow the speed of the hand that had traced
Drutt, 'Simultaneous Expressions: Robert Delaunay's Early Series," in it as if one had been there at its making. It is for this reason that paint
Visions of Paris: Robert Delaunay's Se?es (New York: Guggenheim Mu ings sketched in large strokes, where the touch is still visible, or at least
seum, 1997), 36-42. perceptible, have more animation and life. It is not enough to under
69. Kahnweiler, The Rise of Cubism, 12. Kahnweiler's appeal to "primary" stand by this that one sees how they were made. Rather, one must say
and "secondary" qualities derives from John Locke's Essay Concerning that we see them making themselves, inasmuch as they give the impres
Human Understanding. Fran?oise Meltzer argues that the poetry of sion of actual movement."
St?phane Mallarm? functions, as I am arguing here for Delaunay, to 81. On March 16, 1914, Gaston Calmette, the editor o? Le Figaro, was shot
reverse Locke's notion of "primary" and "secondary" qualities, such fatally in the chest six times by Henriette Caillaux. Calmette had pub
that color takes priority over geometric form. Meltzer, "Color as Cogni lished letters belonging to Caillaux's husband, Joseph Caillaux, the
tion in Symbolist Verse," Critical Inquiry 5 (Winter 1978): 253-73. minister of finance, in which he appeared to admit rejecting a tax bill
70. Apollinaire, Les peintres cubistes, 67. Apollinaire is discussing the "Orphic that he had publicly claimed to support. The ensuing trial of Mme
Caillaux was a media sensation, culminating in her acquittal on July 28, merchant not provoke this fatigue of the eyes in his customer, he must
1914. Though Mme Caillaux did not deny murdering Calmette, her take care, after having shown the latter seven pieces of red, to present
defense attorney managed to convince the jury that her crime him some pieces of green, to restore their normal state."
stemmed from uncontrollable female emotion, for which she could not
be held responsible. For more on l'affaire Caillaux, see Edward Beren 86. F. Forichon, La couleur: Ses manifestations, son r?le dans les arts, ses harmo
son, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Berkeley: University of California nies (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1916), 135-36, trans. Peter Brooke, Albert
Press, 1992). Gleizes: For and against the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2001), 157. Brooke goes on to detail how Gleizes, seeking to de
82. Delaunay established the play between the shape of the Eiffel Tower
velop an in-and-out movement of color in his post-Cubist works, was
and the shape of draping curtains early on in Window with Orange Cur
tains (1912) and throughout the Window series. inspired by both Delaunay and Forichon (169): "Of course, the center
of the painting risks being its death?its immobility. To avoid this the
83. Transcript of the trial of Henriette Caillaux, Le Temps, July 21, 1914,
eye is guided backed to the frame of the painting by the accents, small
quoted in Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux, 42.
touches of color which, in the slower atmosphere of the initial colors,
84. Delaunay, Du cubisme ? l'art abstrait, 217. Delaunay also stated (217): pick up the faster colors of the center. Thus, an in-out movement is
"This earliest disk was a painted canvas where colors opposing each established, like breath, which, also like breath, can be kept up indefi
other had no reference to anything visible. In fact, the colors, though nitely."
contrasts, were placed circularly and opposed to one another. But
which colors? Reds and blues were opposed in the center, red and 87. Sonia Delaunay, Nous irons jusqu'au soleil (Paris: Laffont, 1978), 63-64.
blue determining the extraordinarily fast vibrations, physically percepti 88. As Pascal Rousseau has demonstrated, the Berlin Herbstsalon (roughly
ble to the naked eye. One day I called this experiment a 'first punch.'" equivalent to the Salon d'Automne) in which Delaunay exhibited The
85. Chevreul, De la loi du contraste simultan?, 82, describes this effect of opti First Disk actually took place from September 20 to December 1, 1913,
cal exhaustion as it pertains to the selling of fabric: "In order that the not in 1914, as Delaunay recorded.

The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's First Disk

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The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's First Disk

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Envisioning Abstraction: The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's "First Disk"

Author(s): Gordon Hughes

Nineteen twelve was a watershed year for Robert Delaunay.

In short, the substance of Delaunay's break with Cubism Physiological Optics

4 Delaunay, detail of Fig. 3 (artwork ? L and M Services B.V.

of the visual puzzle, moving between the memory of past

6 The Eiffel Tower, Paris, from a Balloon,

7 Delaunay, Tour Eiffel et Jardins du Champ de Mars (Eiffel Tower

riential knowledge. The orthogonal grid of the Windows

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Delaunay, 7 our (La Tour

10 Lucien Herv?, The Eiffel Tower, 1986, gelatin silver contact

The orthogonal and diagonal lattice of the grid presents us

14 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Soleil no. 2 ( Circular Forms,

15 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Lune no. 2, 1913, oil on canvas,

17 Delaunay, Drame politique (Political % ^^HI?S^^ -^?m

17) make explicit the relation between The First Disk an

of the disk and the flailing arm of Calmette (conspicuously

19 Delaunay, La Tour simultanke

21 Delaunay, Cheval prisme Soleil Lune, from Montjoie! April

painted band to the immediate left of the collar. Light and

Delaunay, Les *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^IH

'"ypwa?'tajfii' ''':'"?';''' ' ' i^

:,,.,.,,. . .-:..:, _ ... . "."" '~ . .'" ,...^J 20060504)

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The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay&#39;s First Disk

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Envisioning Abstraction: The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's "First Disk"

Author(s): Gordon Hughes

Nineteen twelve was a watershed year for Robert Delaunay.

In short, the substance of Delaunay's break with Cubism Physiological Optics

4 Delaunay, detail of Fig. 3 (artwork ? L and M Services B.V.

of the visual puzzle, moving between the memory of past

6 The Eiffel Tower, Paris, from a Balloon,

7 Delaunay, Tour Eiffel et Jardins du Champ de Mars (Eiffel Tower

riential knowledge. The orthogonal grid of the Windows

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Delaunay, 7 our (La Tour

10 Lucien Herv?, The Eiffel Tower, 1986, gelatin silver contact

The orthogonal and diagonal lattice of the grid presents us

14 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Soleil no. 2 ( Circular Forms,

15 Delaunay, Formes circulaires, Lune no. 2, 1913, oil on canvas,

17 Delaunay, Drame politique (Political % ^^HI?S^^ -^?m

17) make explicit the relation between The First Disk an

of the disk and the flailing arm of Calmette (conspicuously

19 Delaunay, La Tour simultanke

21 Delaunay, Cheval prisme Soleil Lune, from Montjoie! April

painted band to the immediate left of the collar. Light and

Delaunay, Les *^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^IH

'"ypwa?'tajfii' ''':'"?';''' ' ' i^

:,,.,.,,. . .-:..:, _ ... . "."" '~ . .'" ,...^J 20060504)

You might also like

The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's First Disk

The Simultaneity of Robert Delaunay's First Disk