Just a moment
Just a moment
Robert Delaunay · 1911/23 · Art Institute of Chicago
This is a tall oil painting, about five feet high and four feet wide, showing the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Oil paint on canvas is the traditional material of European painting. The tower is not drawn as a calm, solid monument. The artist breaks it into rhythmic pieces and sets strong colors against one another, so the whole scene seems to shake and move. The title calls it the red tower, and the tower's towering presence is the first thing that hits you. Stand back and let your eye travel upward along its height.
Start low in the picture, at the base of the tower. Here Delaunay placed smaller, shorter buildings, and he shows them as if seen from above. Then look at the tall buildings that frame the tower, which make it feel even bigger by comparison. Finally, raise your eyes to the very top. There the clouds spread out like wings, and patches of light-filled sky open around the tower's peak. Notice too that the shapes do not agree on one single viewpoint. The scene is seen from several angles at once.
Robert Delaunay was four years old when the Eiffel Tower went up in the Champ de Mars, a public green space in Paris. Many artists painted the landmark, and he made a whole series of Eiffel Tower paintings. This is among the best known. He first showed it in the winter of 1912 at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris. The writer Guillaume Apollinaire reviewed it and called it unfinished, whether on purpose or by accident. By 1923 Delaunay had repainted parts of the canvas and filled in areas he had left bare, so it looked as it does today.
Delaunay wanted this painting to carry the energy of modern life. He did it with several viewpoints at once, broken-up forms, and bold contrasts of color. Rather than record the tower as a quiet postcard view, he made it surge upward above the city. The massive structure seems to lift off, helped by the wing-like clouds around it. Before you move on, look once more at the top of the tower, where the structure, the clouds and the bright patches of sky blend together, and see whether it seems to hold still.
This guide was written by AI from material published by Art Institute of Chicago. Licence: CC BY 4.0
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