chromatic icons 1: Loïe Fuller

As we gear up for our Colour Compass project, this post marks the beginning of a weekly series exploring creative innovators who have shaped the world of colour

In 1900, Jean Cocteau visited the electrified pavilion at the Paris Exposition, and – along with several million other visitors – was completely wowed by what he saw. “Atop a pedestal, manoeuvring great waves of supple silk” Cocteau was mesmerised by the colourful spectacle of a dancer, swathed in billowing drapery, who swirled and whirled her way through a continually shifting electric rainbow. Entranced by “inumerable orchids of light and fabric unfurling, rising, disappearing, turning, floating,” Cocteau described this dancer as “the phantom of an era,” a phenomenon as effervescent and fugitive as modernity itself.

Cocteau’s phantom was Loïe Fuller, whose development of an extraordinary performance combining modern technologies of light and colour with the body-freeing movement of modern dance, seemed to encapsulate, for many, the electric spirit of Fin de siècle Paris.

Born in Fullersburg Illinois, in 1862 and raised in and around Chicago, by the time Marie Louise Fuller was a teenager she had changed her name to Loïe and joined Buffalo Bill on tour. Pioneering her own distinctive form of free dance, combining loose fitting drapery with lightweight poles that dramatically extended her body’s range of motion, Loïe’s body and persona filled every stage she stepped on to with the spectacular, unusually sculptural shapes that she was able to create through her own dress and movement.

By the turn of the 1890s, Loïe had begun to innovate with light, performing out of darkened stages in which her bright, swirling figure was the only object ever visible.

But it was not until she moved to Paris, to perform at the newly electrified theatre of the Folies Bergère, that Loïe’s distinctive brand of illuminated performance art became a distinctively modern sensation.

An innovative use of coloured gels and filters enabled Loïe’s body and drapery to be illuminated with a shifting chromatic spectrum that completely dazzled contemporary audiences. Loïe quickly became known as La Fée Électricité (the electric fairy) and, in the early 1890s, drew rapturous crowds over an unprecedented 300 consecutive performances.

Loïe was not only a talented performer, but a technological entrepreneur and canny businesswoman, who recognised that in her distinctive combination of “light, colour, music and the dance” she had created something of the moment, something new.

Löie collaborated with Thomas Edison and Marie Curie, eventually adding a flourescent salt to the surface of her drapery to enhance the chromatic effects of her swirling figure.

She pioneered the use of revolving coloured discs and filters and quickly patented the results of her experiments.

She patented the unique construction of her costume too.

Truly a woman of her time, Loïe loved bright colours, and felt that the recent discovery of aniline dyes heralded a new era of chromatic innovation. “The scientific admixture of chemically composed colours, heretofore unknown, fills me with admiration,” she enthused. “I stand before [these colours] like a miner who has discovered a vein of gold and who completely forgets himself as he contemplates the wealth of the world before him.”

Those who saw Loïe dance recognised that her innovative use of colour made her performance both thoroughly modern and utterly mesmeric. Many artists tried to capture the effect. But Loïe’s chromatic spectacle was so ephemeral and so fleeting that it proved impossible to reproduce in any medium other than her own.

Nor could photography, still in its slow-shuttered, monochrome infancy, really do Loïe justice.

Might the moving image eventully capture Loïe’s spectacle?

Early cinematographers like the Lumiere brothers, George Méliès and Thomas Edison were utterly intrigued by what Loïe Fuller was doing, and insisted upon filming her many times. But even their innovative experiments in hand-tinted celluloid could not capture the continually shifting hues of the distinctively modern Loïe Fuller.

Loïe Fuller was, then, a true chromatic icon.

Loïe was an important queer icon too, who lived openly with her partner, Gab Sorère, for thirty years. Innovative, creative, and truly self-determined, Loïe Fuller’s wide ranging, multi-disciplinary influence continues to be cited by women in the contemporary performing arts from Jody Sperling to Taylor Swift.

Further Reading:

Rhonda K Garelick, Electric Salome: Loïe Fuller’s Performance of Modernism (2009)

Madeleine Hewiton, Charlotte Ribeyro and Matthew Winterbottom, eds, Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design (2023)