Since the decline of Orphism as a religious cult, the term has come to denote the style of painting created and practiced by French painter Robert Delaunay (1885—1941). First called “orphic cubism” by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880—1918), the style is characterized by an approach in which color (identified with light) is the primary pictorial element. The theory on which orphic cubism is based comes from the recognition that the constant movements and changes of light produce color
Left: This painting by Gustave Moreau (1826—1898) shows Orpheus’s detached head in the arms of a suitor after he had forsworn all contact with women.
Shapes that are independent of objects, and that create patterns resembling those of abstraction. By an extension of this theory, certain combinations of colors can be juxtaposed in such a way as to produce harmonic contrasts with each other and thus represent the movement of light. Delaunay’s series The Windows, painted between 1910 and 1913, exemplifies the kaleidoscopic possibilities of orphism, as does his Window on the City No. 4 (1911). Orphism was built on the achievements of earlier movements such as impressionism, cubism, and futurism, and especially on the 19th-century color theories studied and explored by, among others, Georges Seurat (1859—1891), the French artist who founded pointillism. In modern English usage, the term Orphian or Orphean means anything that is outstandingly melodious or tuneful.
Kirk Summers
Bibliography
Bulfinch, Thomas. Myths of Greece and Rome. New York: Penguin, 1979.
Ovid, and A. D. Melville, trans. Metamorphoses. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
See also: Jason; Maenads.
World History
