Eiffel Tower

The plaque on the wall of the Dallas Museum of Art reads, "Robert Delaunay's Eiffel Tower is an emphatic celebration of modernity. The soaring wrought iron girders of the Eiffel Tower, erected for the Paris International Exposition in 1889, had already become an icon of the modern age. The whirling propeller forms at the upper left are also symbols of technological advancement, an allusion to the heroic cross-Channel flight of Louis Bleriot in 1911. With the jumble of multiple perspectives--bird's eye view from the tower, head-on cruciform pattern of the propellers--the artist attempts to capture the dizzying effects of height and speed. This painting joins others with a similarly optimistic attitude toward the progress of the modern industrial world."

I am writing (and you are reading) on a machine that could not have been imagined in Delaunay's day, yet we do not share the optimistic spirit of a century ago. Technology has proven to be a double-edged sword. However, Jacques Ellul may have been right when he argued that real hope is found only when lesser hopes have been exhausted. We look at Eiffel Tower with historical interest, and we find hope in the real world outside.