The Ball
"The title of this painting when first presented at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1913 - Mouvement, couleur, profondeur, danse, Bullier (Motion colour, depth, dance, Bullier) - sums up the artist's ambition to transcribe movement with colour-forms. The panoramic format of the canvas unfolds arabesques of dancing couples, swirling about under the halos of the electric lights of the Bal Bullier, a dance hall on the Boulevard Saint-Michel frequented by the Delaunays. The theme of dance, both a means of depicting movement and emblematic of the dynamism of modern life, favours the fragmentation of form and its dissolution into abstract planes."
George Seeley
1910