just gaze for a moment at this spot which really existed for a few short months, about a hundred years ago, as its city still reeled from its earthquake and fire, and while the rest of the world warred on.
can you imagine? wonderland indeed.
you've come to see the murals and the french painters, and now see the statues. there are more statues at this fair than you can look at in a week and a half, and that is just the beginning.
you can see the bathing beauties,
then fifteen minutes later you can go listen to john philip sousa and his band play a march.
you can visit, with- out leaving the fair, yellowstone, the grand canyon, or even mt fuji.
perhaps you're curious about panama itself -- well then visit there -- or maybe china, or samoa, or, other nations far and near.
or maybe, after visiting the national parks, and then japan, you decide to visit hawaii, as you've just heard hawiian music for the first time and you couldn't keep your those hips from swingin' to one of the many new songs introduced at the fair (even irving berlin had one) that then went on to make it big all over the world.
but the palace of fine arts keeps drawing you; you see some japonisme,
but maybe less than you had expected, given what you'd seen in europe just one year ago.
you love being introduced to tonalism and now that you have spent more than a week in san francisco with it's cover of fog all day, even in the summertime!, you understand why the tonalists use such muted colors.
and since you loved her husband's mural, you are thrilled to learn his wife's a painter too.
lots of etchings are exhibited, but nothing like the won- drous work from nabis or any of the other new-century art trends that you'd seen overseas.
and what they did show was usually without color and sometimes even appeared to have travelled back in time while the rest of the world moved forward. were the american judges classically trained and old-fashioned?
why were so few of the prints and paintings so far less colorful and free as the murals. certainly not that guerin guy.
and yet, is there any way to say that this has not been a dream with sincere magic? has not your heart been lifted and your mind eased and entertained?
and in the end you are grateful, very grateful, for all the colors of the jewel city.
(tomorrow more references than you can shake a stick at)
Aside from the construction of the $50,000 pipe organ, which, after the Exposition, will be placed permanently in the Civic Auditorium, the two most important musical items found on the schedule of Exposition enterprises are the engagements of Camille Saint-Saens and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The former, who maintained that "Beethoven is the greatest, the only real, artist, because he upheld the idea of universal brotherhood," is perhaps better fitted than any living composer to write special music for the Exposition.
This he has done, -- writing two compositions in fact; and their presentation has been an outstanding feature. "Hail, California," was dedicated to the Exposition. Scored for an orchestra of eighty, a military band of sixty, a chorus of 300 voices, pipe organ and piano, its first presentation was an event.
The Saint-Saens Symphony in C minor (No. 3) Opus 78, composed many years ago, has become a classic during the life-time of its creator. It was one of the wonders of the Boston Symphony programmes played in Festival Hall. Its yield of immediate pleasure and its reassurance for the works of Saint-Saens to be heard later, grew from the fact that it was scored for orchestra and pipe organ, and in this massive tonal web the genius of the composer to write in magnificent size was overwhelm- ingly evident, thus forecasting the splendors of "Hail, California."
The French Pavilion is a dignified and impressive structure, as those who recall the Legion of Honor Palace in Paris will understand. The entrance to the court is a triumphal arch flanked by double rows of Ionic columns on either side, with figures of Fame as spandrels. The arch is connected by lateral peristyles with the wings of the pavilion, the attics of which are adorned with has reliefs.
Ionic colonnades extend along the sides of the court to the principal front of the building, which is decorated with six Corinthian columns, forming a portico for the main entrance. The portal opens on a stage, above which a great central hall, flanked by lesser halls, extends back through the palace.
More notable than the building itself, or its priceless contents, is the fact that these are here. That, in the midst of war and its demands, France should still find time for the ideal, and for this beautiful tribute to the long-standing friendship between the two countries, is a demonstration of French spirit and of French culture that will not escape the attention of any thoughtful American. For France herself, as it has well been said, her appearance here means as much as a victory on the battlefield.
But the glory of the building is in its exhibits. France poured out the treasures of the Louvre, the Luxembourg and the National Museum to adorn this pavilion. Fine as is the exhibit in the French section of the Palace of Fine Arts, the best pictures and Sculptures are shown here. In the Court of Honor stands the masterpiece of the master sculptor of modern times, "The Thinker," by Auguste Rodin. (p. 158.) In the galleries are his "John the Baptist" and other important bronzes.
Vast, unique and of the greatest interest is Theodore Riviere's wonderful group in bronze representing a triumphant band of desert soldiers dragging captive the Moroccan pretender, secured in an iron cage. There, too, are splendid paintings by Monet, Meissonier, Detaille, de Neuvilie, and many other French artists approved by time. **
(these all are actual pieces shown in that exhibit, accompanied by the music played there, described by someone who visited there. and this is just the teensiest fraction of just one country's offerings, just france. and the world was there. bibliography to follow.)
California's Magazine.
Presidio of San Francisco: PPIE
