CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/8/2024

Kaleidoscopic and dynamic, Orphism comes to the Guggenheim

Science, technology, artistic freedom! Ah, the optimism and unfettered exploration of the Belle Époque. Then: the devastation of the 1918 influenza epidemic, followed by the First World War. In November 2024, the Guggenheim Museum opens Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, the first in-depth examination of this avant-garde movement whose name, borrowed from the Greek poet-hero Orpheus, was coined in 1912 by French literary giant Guillaume Apollinaire. “‘Orphism’ referred to the kaleidoscopic and dynamic paintings produced by a constellation of transnational artists exploring the boundaries of representation to convey their experiences of modern life,” Guggenheim senior curator Tracey Bashkoff writes. “Artists connected to Orphism engaged with ideas of simultaneity—which they equated with modernity—creating compositions that often capture motion, encompass disks of vibrant color, and evoke multisensory responses. Situated among vanguard movements of the period such as Cubism and Futurism, Orphism pushed further into modes of abstract expression, whereas these other idioms remained invested in figurative content. … To invoke [František] Kupka, Orphism is an amorphous concept. Apollinaire invented the term to describe an abstracted pictorial idiom, but he did so by specifically conjuring the ultimate bard, the mythological Orpheus. In doing so, he productively allied painting, poetry and music with one another—and with modernity itself.” Featured spreads show work by František Kupka, Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Gino Severini and Mainie Jellett.