Liquor Jack: Sun and Moon, Rhythm and Colour: Robert Delaunay

Joie de Vivre (detail): Robert Delaunay, 1930; image by Florie Milet, 8 December 2008 (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

When you look at colors, the intuitions of fantasy, in contrast to the creative imagination, manifest themselves as a primal phenomenon. All form, every outline that man perceives, corresponds to something in him that enables him to reproduce it. The body imitates itself in the form of dance, the hand imitates and appropriates it through drawing. But this ability finds its limits in the world of color. The human body cannot produce color. It does relate to it not creatively but receptively: through the shimmering colors of vision... In short, pure color is the medium of fantasy, a home among clouds for the spoiled child, not the strict canon of the constructive artist.

-- Walter Benjamin, from The World of Children's Books, 1926, tr. by Rodney Livingstone in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume I: 1913-1926, 1996

Joie de Vivre (detail): Robert Delaunay, 1930; image by Florie Milet, 8 December 2008 (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

Joie de Vivre (detail): Robert Delaunay, 1930; image by SandrineT, 2 August 2010 (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

Joie de Vivre (detail, bottom right corner): Robert Delaunay, 1930; image by SandrineT, 2 August 2010 (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

Joie de Vivre: Robert Delaunay, 1930; image by SandrineT, 2 August 2010 (Centre Pompidou, Paris)

Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon (detail): Robert Delaunay, 1912-1913; image by Marcia Hansen, 14 November 2009 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)