Art Deco. Victoria Charles
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Paris Exhibition.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many attacks against the decorative arts. At the dawn of the last century, architects and decorators took liberties with decorative fantasy. They claimed to have based their style on the visual development of themes borrowed from flora or on the use of sinuous lines which they imposed on pieces of furniture as well as on houses, stone, wood, and metal. A backlash was inevitable. As people had grown accustomed to the bare beauty of machines, the reaction had the character of a puritan reform. A well-known manifesto of the Austrian architect Adolphe Loos, Ornament and Crime, became the bible for a whole group of young artists. “The ornament of an ordinary object,” Loos essentially said, “is, like tattooing, a sign of cruelty or degeneration. It is a criminal waste of time, money, and energy.” Loos foretells of a civilisation where “the streets of the cities will shine out like large, very white walls”.
In general, the architects estimated that discrete decoration, judiciously placed and carried out tastefully, would animate and enrich the materials. The beauty of the bare parts must be appreciated, as they, themselves, give all their value to the decorated parts. It is, however, necessary that the architect remains the authorising director. The direct submission of the painter, sculptor, and designer to the architect of the piece was one of the major features of the 1925 Exhibition. The fashionable decoration at the Exhibition has often been described as cubist. In truth, in 1925, authentic cubes or at least simple shapes, with flat surfaces were seen: those of reinforced concrete constructions and plywood pieces of furniture. But they did not owe Braque or Picasso anything. In order to understand the beauty of the bare masses, architects and cabinet-makers had not awaited the revelation of which some amateur critics had been the noisy heralds.
Joseph Hiriart, Georges Tribout and Georges Beau, La Maîtrise pavilion for Galeries Lafayette at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.
Cubism was hardly represented at the Exhibition, at least not in the paintings decorating the architectural compositions, except for two works placed in the hall of the embassy. One, a work of Fernand Léger, juxtaposed geometrical surfaces illuminated by pure colours spread out flat. The other, shimmering with colour, was entitled La Ville de Paris, or the City of Paris. Robert Delaunay had painted the Eiffel Tower and a lady, barely clothed, on the Pont de la Concorde. Whatever one might think of the outcome obtained in painting and sculpture by Picasso, Braque, and their disciples, it is certain that their formula contributed to develop the decorators’ taste for broken lines and abstracted decoration, far from living nature. Tired of curves and having exhausted the joys of a timid naturalism and of the stylisations of flora and fauna, which their precursors had abused, the decorators of 1925 took pleasure in a capricious geometry which had nothing to do with science.
The decoration on the monumental entrances of the place de la Concorde – in the low-reliefs intelligently composed by the Martel brothers for the pylons and the pedestal of the statue named L’Accueil, or Reception, – announced the union of art and industry. It could be found in the pavilion of Le Bon Marché (department store), of L’Intransigeant (daily newspaper), of Christofle (silverware), and Baccarat (crystal ware), and in a great number of kiosks. In response to the sensitivity of a generation who, in art, flee away from details and prefer the essence, this fashion resulting from Cubism remains a simple decorative convention. In theory, sculpture was only allowed at the Exhibition as long as it was a part of an architectural piece, hence the considerable number of low-reliefs. However, without taking into account the fountains, such as those of Max Blondat, Christofle, Marcel Loyau, and Naoum Aronson, statues and groups decorated the gardens, or the entrances to the buildings. This broad interpretation of the regulations made it possible to admire, close to the pavilion of the General Commissioner, a nude figure of a sovereign eurhythmy by Despiau, calm without being inert and, in addition, in an alcove of the Bernheim Jeune pavilion, a splendidly full-figured bronze nude by Maillot: both variations on an age-old theme, but nevertheless “modern” works due to the originality of vision.
Despite the subordination of sculptures in the round and low-reliefs to their architectural units, the Exhibition offered a rather exact image of the current state of sculpture in France. From sculpture which only stirs emotions through its lively profiles and its rhythmic outlines, to that which has the ambition to express ideas, and from the most traditional to the most paradoxical, every trend has its defenders. In the foreign sections, sculpture could not be represented in a complete state to qualify it for an overall judgement. We will focus later, within their respective sections, on capital works such as those of Mateo Hernandez of Spain, Henryk Kuna of Poland, Ivar Johnson and Carl Milles of Sweden, as well as Jean Stursa of the former Czechoslovakia.
In spite of the theories, sculpture is protected from any dangerous concern, because of the requirements of the profession which demands complete clarity of form. With fewer constraints, the painter can suggest more than he can express, can be more pleasing with a range of tones, and more charming with promises that may or may not be kept. Whilst sculpture has remained healthy and robust, painting underwent a significant crisis which was revealed by the Exhibition. This explains why the walls of the Court of Trades were not offered to the most original champions of young French painting. It is by paintings of restricted size exhibited in certain furniture units or in the pavilion Bernheim Jeune that their talent could be judged.
In the years leading up to the Exhibition, a renaissance of the fresco was witnessed. Paul Baudouin, disciple and friend of Symbolist painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, showed that frescos can survive as well under a wet sky as in a dry climate, if the painting materials are judiciously chosen and if the wall is preserved with saltpetre. The failure of many attempts made in France, in the first half of the 19th century, is due only to poor technique. It is known that painting with fresco, known from the Greeks and the Romans, and with so many masterpieces produced in Italy and in medieval France, consists of spreading colours diluted in water over a fresh plaster of faded lime and fine sand. Fixed on this mortar they become, whilst drying, as hard as the wall itself. The fresco, which requires prompt execution, is therefore a school of decision and, consequently, of reflection. The fresco painter has no time to either hesitate or get bogged down in the meticulousness of details. His composition must be finalised beforehand, then carried out on a large scale. It is also a school of simplicity, because lime admits only a restricted number of colours. Since the example of Paul Baudouin, the fresco already produced remarkable works: the splendid ensemble by Bourdelle at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the compositions of Marcel Lenoir at the seminar of Toulouse, heavy, systematic, but truly powerful, those of Caro Delvaille, those of Henry Marret, in particular in the Church of Saint-Louis de Vincennes. It seems that this technique must benefit from the appreciation of large flat surfaces, and it must offer reinforced concrete – a material of a rather poor appearance, or with asbestos cement (a substrate used by Marret), a suitable decoration for it. It was a significant part of the Exhibition, particularly in the French section.
Tiffany & Co., Desk clock.
Silver, jade, crystal, black onyx, and enamel, signed, height: 12.7 cm.
Jean Dunand, Lacquered panel with gold leaf, 1930.
Rapp & Rapp (architects), The Paramount Theater, auditorium, 1931. Aurora, Illinois.
The French section
Reinforced concrete and its derivatives played such a large part in the Exhibition that a classification based on the implemented materials would not ensure a clearer approach. It would be better to look at the achievements of the various projects, starting with the section’s over plans.
The French section comprised two main areas, almost perpendicular to each other: one of them marked by the Seine between the Pont de la Concorde and the Alma Bridge, the other one, leading alongside the Avenue Nicolas II, the Alexandre III Bridge, and the alley bisecting the section cutting across the Esplanade des Invalides from north to south. On the quays of the right bank of the river and the Cours-la-Reine, the visitor