Apollinaire, Cubism and Orphism

During the years before his death in 1918 Apollinaires reputation as poet and artistic animateur approached legendary proportions. This book is the first to present an extensive reassessment of Apollinaires role in the promotion of themes and iconography amongst his painter friends. Detailed analysis of the poetic subject matter of selected works of Dufy, Delaunay, de Chirico, Laurencin, Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia and Picasso is used to reconstruct the responses of these artists to Apollinaires artistic and aesthetic proclivities. Drawing attention to the poets immersion in the art and iconography of the French late-Renaissance and the seventeenth century, Adrian Hicken shows that the study of the permeation of Apollinairean and Orphic imagery in the work of artists with very different personalities presents a fascinating and pivotal episode in the history of Parisian modernism.