Colourful robes
Fuller fluttered across the stage in wide, transparent draperies with long sticks in the sleeves, evoking images of butterflies, flowers, and flames.
Her robed changed colour as a result of changing light projections. She even used mirrors and wind machines to heighten the visual impact of her performance.
Samuel Joshua Beckett (1870-1940), Loïe Fuller Dancing, ca. 1900, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gilman Collection, Mrs. Walter Annenberg and The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 2005
Isaiah West Taber (1830-1912), Loïe Fuller in La danse Blanche, 1897
Serpentine Dance: Loïe Fuller (1897). Public Domain Archive
Decorative beauty
Although Fuller was not an overtly elegant woman in real life, poet Georges Rodenbach portrayed her as a spiritual femme fatale, and printmakers like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted her as a decorative apparition.
Critic Roger Marx wrote early glowing reviews of Fuller’s innovative performances and collaborated with Pierre Roche on an artist’s book about her. Roche’s hand-coloured gypsographs vividly captured the ethereal quality of her presence.
Pierre Roche, Artists' book La Loïe Fuller by Roger Marx, 1904
Further reading:
- Loie Fuller, Quinze ans de ma vie, Parijs 1908
- Loïe Fuller, Danseuse de l’Art Nouveau, exh.cat., Nancy (Musée des Beaux-arts & Musée de l’ecole de Nancy) 2002
- Staf Vos, Dans in België 1890-1940, Leuven 2012