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In 1936, the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution Electricity commissioned Raoul Dufy to decorate the Pavilion of Electricity at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. The subject of the monumental mural was to be the great discoveries of science and the marvels of electricity. The Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution Electricity wanted Dufy’s mural “to promote the role of electricity in the life of the nation and especially the crucial social role played by electric light.” The Electric Fairy was exhibited in the same World’s Fair that Picasso exhibited Guernica. The Electric Fairy is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France where it was moved in 1964.

Dufy was given a carte blanche commission, meaning that the only constraints he had for the mural were the dimensions of the Pavilion. The mural is made up of 250 78 in. x. 47 in. panels, which totals 33 ft x 197 ft. The walls of the Pavilion were concave and formed rounded points at the two long ends to make a softly pointed oval shape. The mural contains a narrative meant to be read from left to right. The visual plane is divided into two horizontal levels that can be read simultaneously. The top level contains various landscapes and locations populated by Greek Gods and Goddesses, yachts, and sights from France. The bottom level contains individual portraits of 109 men and one woman whose inventions and contributions to science culminate at the intended end of the mural in the present day. Present day in 1937 is represented with visions of radios, airplanes, an orchestra playing, and the bright lights of a cinema presided over by an angel or Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory.

The entire composition is a celebration of innovation. Not only was the mural’s subject about the innovations of technology, but Dufy used a novel method of oil painting. Dufy worked with Jacques Maroge, a chemist, to produce a medium that when added to oil paints, made them appear translucent while still retaining their bright pigmentation. This combination of fish glue, water, and varnish is what gives the mural its watercolor-like wash and allowed Dufy to transition from one color to another so beautifully. Each time period is given a unique color to distinguish it from another. Antiquity, inhabited by Aristotle, Galilee, and Archimede, is painted in pastoral greens and yellows to equate the past with the natural landscape. The more recent past and the beginning of industrialization is shown in reds and oranges. As time goes on the colors get cooler and cooler, ending with blues and turquoises.

On top of the washes of color, Dufy drew calligraphic figures and forms. Color and form are autonomous of each other: One is not defined or contained by the other. The figures names are also included near them in Dufy’s signature calligraphic handwriting. Because of the size of the mural, the figures appear life-sized but not in realistic perspective. The figures are stacked one on top of the other as if some are standing on the heads of others. In this Byzantine-like arrangement of bodies, figures float around on clouds of color. The top level of the painting, which contains cityscapes and landscapes, is stacked on top of the figures in the bottom level without regard to accurate perspective or delineation of space. In some places of the painting Dufy uses a Fauvist arbitrary assignment of color. The different sections of the mural are meant to be viewed individually like vignettes of the past or all together as a chronological timeline. Dufy was inspired by Lucretius’ poem, De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things), to create the story of The Electric Fairy. In The Nature of Things, Lucretius, a Roman philosopher, uses ancient Epicurian philosophy to explain the workings of the universe instead of dismissing natural phenomena as the bidding of the gods. Dufy’s narrative of human innovation acts like an epilogue to The Nature of Things by carrying the story to present day.

The shape of the room and the Dufy’s careful choice to depict an ancient Greek temple in the middle of the mural has prompted critics to describe the entire display using architectural terms that might be used to describe a church. For example, the center of the mural is often said to be aligned with the “apse” of the room. A selection of greek gods and goddesses reign over the middle of the mural and oversee the timeline that unfolds on either side of the room. Zeus is shown in the center of the composition with zig-zag shapes that could be interpreted visually as either the god’s lighting bolts or sparks of electricity. This ambiguity gives viewers a hint that the electricity came from the gods even though Dufy based the narrative on The Nature of Things, which favors rational thought over religion. Dufy justified this explanation by giving the human inventors and scientists credit for their achievements, while still acknowledging that a supreme being created the electricity that was needed for the inventions to work. All of the elements of Dufy’s design work together to produce a frenetic energy symbolic of the intelligence of the figures and the electricity that Dufy was commissioned to represent.