The Bastille Day Celebrations

Leaving the world of iron, Dufy devoted himself to the “sound and light” aspect, as he called it in an interview. Having covered electricity’s technical and industrial achievements, he set out to depict the new leisure activities brought about by technical progress in this field. He began with a subject dear to him since his Fauve period: the 14th of July celebrations, with the streets bright with French flags and dance venues. 

 Fourteenth of July Ball, 1912, MAMVP

Here he mingles the two themes in an orange-pink ambience, with strings of light bulbs illuminating dancers rapidly sketched in streets decked with the tricolour. 

Visuel de la fresque (détail)

The frequent allusions to France in The Spirit of Electricity take the form, for example, of blue, white and red flags on the pediment of a factory or on the tail of an aeroplane emerging from the darkness in the painting’s final phase. 

Visuel de la fresque (détail) x 2

It should be remembered that Dufy’s participation in the International Exhibition was part of an exercise in reconciling the beautiful and the useful, art and technology. But the patriotic instinct was at work, too: Dufy and the directors of the Paris electricity company set out to call attention to France’s most remarkable achievements in a period of economic crisis shaken by strikes and international tensions.

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