''Tea cup ballet'' is a 1935 photograph by Australian

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

photographer

Olive Cotton Olive Cotton (11 July 191127 September 2003) was a pioneering Australian modernist photographer of the 1930s and 1940s working in Sydney. Cotton became a national "name" with a retrospective and touring exhibition 50 years later in 1985. A book ...

. It is arguably Cotton's best known work. The photograph depicts six tea cups and saucers lit so to form shadows that suggest the form of

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

dancers. The photograph was exhibited in the

London Salon of Photography London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

in 1935, the first work of Cotton's to be shown outside Australia. The work was featured on an Australia Post stamp in 1991 commemorating 150 years of photography.

References

External links

''Tea cup ballet''
- Art Gallery of New South Wales {{photography-stub Black-and-white photographs 1935 works 1935 in art Modern art Australian photographs 1930s photographs