Le Coeur à gaz (The Gas-Operated Heart)

Artist Sonia Delaunay Terk (French, born Ukraine, 1885-1979)

Publisher Jacques Damase

Author Tristan Tzara (French (born Romania), 1896-1963)

Place of OriginParis

Date1977 (original designs 1923)

DimensionsOverall: 17 5/8 x 9 1/4 in. (447.68 x 234.95mm)

MediumBook with color lithographs, plus an extra suite of lithographs; letterpress text

ClassificationBooks

Credit LinePurchased with funds given by the Toledo Modern Art Group

Object number

2003.3A-J

Not on View

DescriptionOne artist's book, containing the letterpress script and lithographs of the macquettes created for the 1923 performance of Tristan Tzara's play Le Coeur à gaz, along with an additional suite of lithographs.

Label TextPainter, textile artist, ceramicist, furniture designer, color theorist, and influential fashion designer, Sonia Delaunay was a modern “renaissance” woman. She believed in the integration of art into all aspects of life and that color was the key to art. She practiced a theory known as Simultaneity, in which dissonant and harmonious colors, experienced simultaneously, set up rhythms and movement she believed were expressive of modern life. In 1923 Delaunay was asked by avant-garde writer Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) to provide the costumes for a production of his absurdist play The Gas-Operated Heart. Designed to shock an audience expecting brilliance, the play consisted of tedious dialogue between the facial features (Nose, Mouth, Eye). Tzara described it as “…the greatest swindle of the century, it will bring luck only to the industrialized imbeciles who believe in the existence of geniuses.” Some of Delaunay’s fabric-covered cardboard costumes mocked and exaggerated stiff, formal evening clothes. Others were based on simultaneous colors and geometric shapes to create the effect of ever-changing motion. The costume designs are preserved here in these colorful lithographs that accompanied a luxury, limited-edition book of the play published in 1977.Published Referencescf.: Stanley Baron, Sonia Delaunay: The Life of an Artist (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995). cf.: La Rencontre Donia Delaunay, Tristan Tzara (Paris: Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1977). cf.: Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay (Paris: Musée d'art modern de la ville de Paris, 1985). cf.: Jacques Damase, Sonia Delaunay: Fashion and Fabrics (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991). cf.: A. Cohen, editor, The New Art of Color: The Writings of Robert and Sonia Delaunay (New York: Viking, 1978).Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, In Motion: Dance and Performance in Art, September 18, 2015- January 3, 2016.