Woman with a Parasol (rotated)

Somewhere within this whirl of blue, crimson, and forest green hides a woman holding a parasol, though you would be forgiven for missing her entirely. This is Robert Delaunay's "Woman with a Parasol" from 1913, a painting far more interested in the energy of color than in showing us a person. Delaunay was a French artist who, along with his wife Sonia, helped shape a style nicknamed Orphism. Their idea was simple but daring: let bright color and curving shapes carry the emotion, and let recognizable objects fade into the background.

The curves here fold and turn into one another like the world caught mid-spin, and this particular version has been rotated, which only deepens the pleasant sense of confusion. Artists of the early 1900s were busy asking bold questions about what a painting truly needed to be, and Delaunay clearly enjoyed testing those limits. Finding the woman is beside the point. The real pleasure comes from letting your gaze drift across the reds and yellows and following wherever the color leads.