IN SMOLDERING forest green, burgundy, and violet velvet and silk fabrics, Sonia Delaunay’s Robe simultanée—a sartorial sentinel on view at Bard Graduate Center Gallery—has an uncanny vitality for a garment that is the same age as New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. Originally worn by the artist as she attended the Salle Bullier, a Paris dance hall, Delaunay’s first Simultaneous Dress embodies not only the ambitious spirit of an artist for whom clothing was one aspect of strategic self-promotion, but also a visual compendium of the emerging crosscurrents in modern painting, performance, decorative arts and design in the 20th century.
, an artistic practice that Sonia and
