Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1991 - 37

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Mod ern Ism

Erte and the Theatre
Sylvia J. Hillyard and Christopher J. Driscoll

consequently it is curious bur wholly
mong the major prophers of the
resonated with the themes of early 20th
posrmodern age is Roland
century modernism.
understandable that Ene's achievement
Barrhes, the French strucruralist
The theatre is an art of the actor;
should be based on the costume, not on
and semiologisr. It is
the human being underneath
significant that, as a student of
the costume. The major tenet
semiotics-the study of the
of modernism as we now are
able to observe it was an
signs or icons of a cui turerte was barn an 23 Navember 1892 in St. Petersburg, the anly san of an obstinate commitment to the
Barthes wrote a book on
admiral in the Russian Imperial Fleet. Among his earliest memories were his intellectual solution. In the
Romain de Tirtoff, the artist
known to the world as Ene- interest in drawing and clothing. In his teens he studied painting under the arts,
this passion
for
for Ene was one of the great Russian portrait artistllya Repin.ln 1912 Erte went to Paris.
intellectualism prompted the
iconographers of our century.
In 1913 he secured a position as a designer with the House af Poiret, where Russians Kandinsky and
Meyerhold to experiment on
Indeed, Barthes feels that Ene's
he received his first theatrical costuming assignments, and where he adopted the canvas and the stage with
images were instrumental in
creating the 20th century the pseudonym "Erte," based on the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T.
purely formal compositions.
From 1915 to 1937, Erte designed costumes for the Paris and New York As a Russian himself, Ene may
woman.'
If Banhes is correct, "the theatre and created fashion illustrations for Harper's Bazaar. He also spent the well have been aware of these
20th century woman" sprang year 1925 in Hollywood, though little came of this movie venture.
experiments, though in Paris
full blown from the stages of the
Erte stayed in German-occupied Paris during World War II and resumed his where he then lived Ene was
Paris Music Halls in the first
surrounded by the essays in
twO decades of this century and career aher the war, gaining a reputation for his designs for ballet and opera, pure color attempted by the
traveled from the stage to the notably his acclaimed 1951 La Traviata for the Paris Opera. In 1965 he began a Fauves and the work of the
page via the famous series of professional relationship with the london art agents Erik and Solame Estorick.
Cubists who were deliberately
covers created by Erte for
The Sixties and Seventies found him concentrating on lithographs. His fracturing traditional images
Harper's Magazine. While the theatrical contributions did not cease however. He provided the Glyndebourne into pure lines.
image of woman he created
Ene had been affiliated with
Festival with costumes and decor for Der Rosenkava/ier in 1980. His last show the Association of Decorative
depended in great part on Ene's
own fertile and eccentric was a Hoagy Carmichael revue called Stardust, which played at the Kennedy Artists, the school of designers
imagination, that image also Center in Washington, DC in February 1990.
who would create the style
drew from the values of the An
known as Art Deco.' Art Deco
Erte died in Paris on 21 April 1990.
Deco movement, values that
-Sy/vial. Hillyard was the epitome of the

Erte, AVita

TD&T

1991

WINTER

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1991