The Guggenheim attempts to recenter and redeem a largely neglected artistic moment in a new exhibition, Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910 to 1930. Given that “Orphist” was not a name these artists gave themselves, or even necessarily identified with, it’s a hard sell.
In 1912 or 1913, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term “Orphic Cubism” (the name alludes to the mythic poet Orpheus) to describe work with no obvious root in the visible world; that was less jarringly angular than its Cubist forebears; that was influenced by music; and focused on “pure aesthetic pleasure” and color and movement so far abstracted it became, in Apollinaire’s words, sublime. He named the works of Robert Delaunay, Francis Picabia, Fernand Léger, and Marcel Duchamp (and some by Picasso) as exemplars. At the Guggenheim, Delaunay’s work opens the show, followed closely by that of Sonia Delaunay, Picabia, and František Kupka, all known for their vibrantly colorful abstract paintings.
None of these artists, however, were self-described Orphists: The Delaunays preferred to call their work “Simultaneist”; Picabia is best known for his connections to Dada and Surrealism; and Kupka rejected any labels. Duchamp is present through a handful of dark, fragmented works that feel odd and out of place with Orphism’s supposed interest in color, with barely any effort made by the exhibition to incorporate them into its narrative. Indeed, the show struggles to define the term it’s centered around: It’s about capturing “multiple moments in single compositions,” according to the wall text, but so is Futurism. It’s a celebration of light and modernity, but so is Rayism (which is represented in the show by a stunning Natalia Goncharova work, “The Electric Lamp” (1913)). It connects painting to sound through vibrant color and rippling, flowing abstract shapes, but that was also the goal of Synchromism, a movement of American artists formed in Paris around the same time. The Synchromists, represented here by Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, claimed in their 1913 manifesto that to confuse their work for Orphism was “to mistake a tiger for a zebra” — a fact included in the wall text — yet the curators of Harmony and Dissonance have struggled to create any clear divide between them, ultimately leaving the impression that the only real difference was the nationality of their members.
The problem with Harmony and Dissonance is that its narrative is neither harmonious nor dissonant, but rather fragmented and vague. These artists had their friendships and rivalries, personal conflicts and group exhibitions, but for the most part they simply existed in the loose constellations of the Paris art world. Within that world, Orphism was not so much a movement as a style, and as such, the categories of what is and isn’t Orphist work within the show are frustratingly contradictory.
The gallery text that accompanies Léger’s “Les Fumeurs” (1911–12) is typical. It’s a landscape of trees and houses, viewed through the suggestion of a window, framed by the titular smokers and their plumes of cigarette smoke. I was immediately reminded of Georges Braque’s 1908 paintings of L’Estaque, fractured landscapes from multiple perspectives that are considered some of the first Cubist works to be exhibited. But in the interest of advancing Orphism as its own unique style, the curators have made a different comparison, linking it to two Robert Delaunay paintings of the Eiffel Tower also made around 1911. Calling Delaunay’s Eiffel Tower paintings “dynamic” is fine — the landmark is broken into dizzying, clashing shapes and painted in an energetic red — but then dismissing Braque’s Cubist work as “static” feels forced and a little clumsy, especially when Léger’s painting is mostly a fairly quiet, rural, landscape painted years after Braque’s first experiments. Léger and Delaunay’s paintings are still fundamentally figurative: They are beginning to move away from representation, but are still not exactly purely aesthetic pleasures.
Which brings us to the circles. Robert and Sonia Delaunay both used circular motifs in their work, as did Kupka, Albert Gleizes, Eduardo Viana, and several of the other artists featured here. Circles are not inherent or exclusive to Orphism, but their prominence in the work of the Delaunays has made them a kind of easy shorthand for non-Cubist abstraction. The result here is dizzying, and frustrating. Marc Chagall’s work is described as having “Orphist tendencies” — suggesting he was influenced by his peers’ overlapping planes and complementary colors is compelling, but pointing only to “colored disks and circles” as evidence of this is remarkably reductive.
There is something soothing about all the circles. They look beautifully at home in the Guggenheim, perfectly suited to the gallery’s slow upward spiral. It’s pleasant, looping gently past all these curves and colors, though it quickly starts to feel repetitive. We’re moving, but barely: These works cover a 20-year time span, but there’s little stylistic change or progression. Trying to reclaim Orphism as a distinctive movement doesn’t work — it’s at most an adjective, borrowed from a poet. The resulting show is pretty — pleasurable, even — and certainly pure and apolitical in its aesthetics. Unfortunately, that makes for an uninspiringly one-note exhibition.
Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930 continues at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1071 5th Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through March 9, 2025.
