Illustrators: Harbinger of Tomorrow

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In the giddy '20s, the prettiest birds of paradise who pranced across the stage of Ziegfeld's Follies and George White's Scandals were invariably festooned in confections of bangles and ostrich feathers whipped up by the designer known as Erte. He also created the lavish sets and languid costumes, trimmed with serpentine curlicues, that made some Metropolitan Opera productions beggar those of today. From 1915 to 1938, the lithe chiffon-draped mademoiselles that graced the covers of Harper's Bazaar were largely the work of Erté.

During his heyday, art experts generally dismissed Erté's chaste variety of Beardsleyish Orientalism as an evanescent fad, like mah-jongg or the Charleston. Almost alone, French Critic Maurice Feuillet in 1929 hailed him as "a harbinger of the art of tomorrow, a prince of fantasy, a magician of conception." Feuillet may have been close to the truth. Last month, when Manhattan's Grosvenor Gallery put on display 179 early gouache and metallic-paint designs by Erté, the entire collection was snapped up by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The gallery has since been selling Erte paintings that it originally had no room to display.

Born Romain de Tirtoff in St. Petersburg, Erté, an admiral's son, adopted a nom de palette based on his initials shortly after he arrived in Paris in 1912. Now a dapper 74, he is still going strong at his studio, turning out costumes and sets for avant-garde operas. He has also designed a ballet to be shown on CBS-TV this Christmas, and contributed seven huge floats to Flying Colors, a musical spectacular starring Maurice Chevalier that will open next week at Expo 67. Still addicted to the ornate fantasies of the '20s and '30s, Erté is busy developing a new kind of sculpture. It embodies shapes of birds, shells and animals in flame-colored collages of copper and aluminum.