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Champs de Mars: The Red Tower
This amazing painting was completed by the French painter Robert Delaunay in 1911. Overall, the canvas projects a positive image of a relatively new, industrialized city (such as the chic Paris with its new buildings, art, and social conventions). The painting depicts a distorted Eiffel Tower, which was designed by Gustav Eiffel’s company in 1887. The finished product was displayed at the 1889 World’s Fair exhibition in Paris and is made of pure iron. The prefabricated structure and message of this Tower (new machinery, modernity) is similar to Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, which showed new technology and control over nature. The actual Champs de Mars is the grassy field underneath the Tower that is an example of urban planning (i.e. Burnham and Chicago). The painting is the in the style of Orphism, which is distorting objects through Cubist angles (abstraction) and bright, uplifting colors. The Eiffel Tower is shattered into different planes that are twisted, tilted, and more curvilinear than the actual Tower is. The structure is deep red and is surrounded by bright blue and white fields of color that look like wings or clouds; this praises the ingenuity and industrial aspect of the Tower. The colors also draw the eye to the center of the painting and create a vibrating, modern energy like that of a bustling city. Also directing the viewer’s eye to the center is the dark, cubist buildings that frame the central Tower and seem to close in around it; it’s almost as if the viewer is seeing the Tower through a faceless, skyscraper jungle. The dark colors of the buildings contrast with the brilliance of the central image, and the smaller buildings in the foreground are meant to emphasize the height and monumentality of the Tower as well. Overall, the painting is saying that technology is positive and brings light and innovation to a growing (and perhaps slightly isolated) urban society.