Danse serpentine - Simultaneism

This piece by Sonia Delaunay, entitled “Dubonnet”, is a 1914 advertisement for a popular wine-based quinine drink that is still sold today.

The renovation of advertising language during the 20th century saw the introduction of new forms of artistic expression such as Simultanieism which, in this work, was enough in itself to catch the public’s eye. Industrial society was moving forward, and alongside it the number of consumers was growing rapidly. Businesses soon realized the advertising potential of Avant-gard art.

While Cubists used the deconstruction of form to create a new artistic language, with Simulteneism other artists found that by using the simultaneous contrast of colours as a kind of abstraction, they could represent spaces or convey emotions.

The video being screened here is Danse Serpentine. It shows the dancer Loie Fuller, who staged a performance in which the movement of oscillating fabric hiding her body worked as a screen onto which electric projectors, fitted with colour filters, tinted her apparently random movements.

At this point in time, dance had joined the wave of innovation that was sweeping across the Western art world.

(c) (R) 2012, MUSMon com S.L.