The audio tour for John Chamberlain: Choices shares perspectives on select key works from the exhibition.
www.guggenheim.org/chamberlain

Exhibition Website

John Chamberlain's Involvement with Abstract Expressionism

Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: "Red Eiffel Tower" by Robert Delaunay is a rectangular oil-on-canvas painting from 1911 that measures about 4 feet tall by 3 feet wide. Its primary subject is an abstracted view of the iconic Eiffel Tower. It’s rendered, unusually, in a vermillion, or Venetian red, reflecting the structure’s appearance during the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris.  

The tower extends the entire height of the composition. It tapers skyward until its peak disappears, seeming to continue above the canvas. The structure is widest near the composition’s bottom, where the tower’s base stretches across the left side to just right of center. Here, two broad legs meet to form a wide arc supporting the upper structure, like pillars of a bridge. The body of the legs and the pointed tower above do not seem solid; instead, they are composed of beams, intertwined like triangular latticework or crosshatch marks. These relatively thin intersecting lines give an airy impression to the structure despite its substantial form.  

The entire composition has an unconventionally stylized three-dimensional appearance because of its geometric shapes, angular lines, and varying shades of color. For instance, the tower’s legs are quadrilateral columns, yet do not follow the typical rules of three-dimensional visual perspective, in which lines are directed toward one or more shared vanishing points. Rather, the right leg is oriented as if we were looking directly at its corner, able to see two of its planes. The left leg, however, is oriented straight-on, as if we were standing directly in front of the structure, seeing its face as only one plane. This illogical and unpredictable three-dimensionality may give an impression of moving around the tower, as if we were seeing it from many angles at once. Or the tower itself may be moving, its two front legs twisting toward each other or even taking uneven, lumbering steps. The two rear legs are suggested by similarly unrealistic lines and shapes in softer shades of red, seemingly layered behind the front legs.  

The artist’s use of color adds to the composition’s dynamic sense of depth. The vibrant red structure seems foregrounded against a muted, mosaic-like arrangement of gray, beige, and blue geometric forms that fill the rest of the canvas. Each shape contains gradations of color from light to dark, distinguishing them from similarly colored adjacent shapes.   

On close inspection, this geometric background is in fact an abstract cityscape. Small, vertical rectangles in gray and blue seem to sit in the farthest recess of the background near its right edge—perhaps a skyline of multistory buildings. White and gray clusters of soft curving shapes may represent amorphous clouds or puffs of smoke, floating in front of and behind the tower. Arching toward the tower from the composition’s bottom right, a set of wide beige and gray stripes suggest a pathway to the structure. Similar curved stripes are echoed in both upper corners of the composition, where they drop down and bend outward, off the canvas’s sides. These curved stripes, which are shades of gray on the left and varied tones of blue on the right, could indicate draped folds of window curtains. 

This painting is the artist’s first in a series depicting the Eiffel Tower and its surroundings as if seen through curtained windows. As poet Blaise Cendrars explained, “[Delaunay] disarticulated the Tower . . . to get inside its structure. He truncated it and he tilted it . . . to disclose all of its three hundred dizzying meters of height.”

Orphism - Verbal Descriptions

Description of Red Eiffel Tower (La Tour rouge), 1911–12

As part of the Guggenheim Museum’s Summer of Know series, artist Ad Minoliti and activist Adam Werner discussed social and artistic responsibility, and building community on digital platforms, with moderation by X Zhu-Nowell, Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum.

Photo: Ed Marshall

Archivo de la Memoria Trans
https://archivodelamemoriatrans.tumblr.com/

Queer Ancestors Project
https://www.queerancestorsproject.org/

The Feminist School of Painting
http://fschool.kadist.org/

Cromoactivismo
https://www.facebook.com/Cromoactivismo-1430319627007557/

Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal Seguro y Gratuito
http://www.abortolegal.com.ar/

Summer of Know

Conversation: Ad Minoliti and Adam Werner (2019)

Listen to audio about exhibitions and artworks at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark building is home to a collection of modern and contemporary masterpieces.

Description of Red Eiffel Tower (La Tour rouge), 1911–12

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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