the panama-pacific, that is! • part 3

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.)

the bath, part 3

PLACES TO SWIM

Summer's ambitious project — the beach and its
dark striped rocks,
stone-lined pool at the swim club,

passage where the tide flowed out behind dunes,
left fingers and lips blue,
tea-colored pond of black sticks where kids

jumped off branches of an over-hanging tree,
aqua
 of indoor pool lanes,

the white lines' circling, breaking pattern
interrupted by arms, churns and kicks.

*****

Yellow leaves drift down —
 fish-shaped ovals, flecking slick streets,
light October rain,

almost like swimming, the walk
through wet, late afternoon air.
In town this week, two people found goldfish

balanced in paper cups
in their mailboxes.
Teal blue wool, ten rows

to no- tice the wave reappear

in the cable I'm knitting,
dusk pattern,

 



you bent
over the piano in the kitchen
picking out the lost bars of Satie
(what could sound better?).

Music book left
somewhere — an attic
or with cousins by the lake.

Talvikki Ansel

(how strongly a part of all this was erik satie. how similarly our artists paint the bathers.)

dow's COMPOSITION part 2

PICTURES COMPOSED ON RECTANG- ULAR LINES

Great architects and designers were not the only ones to use this simple line- idea; mere doing of the work recommended here will be of little value if the only thought is to get over the ground, or if the mind is intent upon names rather than principles. The doing of it well, with an artistic purpose in mind, is the true way to develop the creative faculties.

These tracings from a variety of compositions, old and new (No. 36), show that this combination was chosen either to express certain qualities and emotions, -- majesty, solemnity, peace, repose, (Puvis de Chavannes) or be- cause such a space division was suited to tone-effects (Whistler's Battersea Bridge), cut a space finely by landscape shapes; or to color schemes (Hiro- shige). These should be copied exactly in pencil, then drawn enlarged. Find other examples in museums, illustrated books, or photographs, and draw in the same way.

puvis de chavannes himself played an interesting side-bar role in dow's life. according to dow's biographer johnson, puvis was seen by both dow and fenollosa as "the fusion of occident and orient. they discovered him for america and had much to do with his obtaining the commission to paint a series of murals in the boston public library.

"puvis came to america and to boston where he was received with cool and unintelligent criticism." dow even wrote a letter to the boston evening transcript, on jan. 2o, 1893, protesting that reaction. i am trying to find that letter....

all well and good... but... i could find no record of puvis coming to america (please feel free to correct me!), and i found this, written on the occasion of weir's death: Mr. Hassam's intimate remini- scences of Weir bring to notice many interesting traits and incidents. One of his anecdotes seems to amount to a claim that Weir was the first man to suggest the commissioning of Puvis de Chavannes to paint the mural decorations for the Boston Public Library. It appears that Weir, being in Durand-Ruel's Paris gallery, one day, met Stanford White there. "McKim's doing a library for Boston," said White. "Who's the man to make a big mural painting?" "Why, Puvis, of course," exclaimed Weir. They went from there to the Place Pigalle, found Puvis de Chavannes, "and we know the rest. He painted for Boston one of the most beautiful decorations in the world.'' 1

and this: Puvis was first approached with a request to paint murals for the staircase of the newly built Boston Public Library in 1891 Despite the generous terms offered ... complete freedom in the choice of subject matter, as much time as he wished and a vast fee of 250,000 francs ($50,000 far in excess of any other commission he received ... it took two years of patient negotiations to overcome Puvis misgivings about painting murals for a building he would never see. A plaster model of the staircase was made for him and samples of the stone used sent so that he could establish a colour harmony. In Puvis own words he chose to represent in emblematic form, the ensemble of intellectual riches, united in this beautiful monument .

The first and most impor- tant of the panels Les Muses Inspiratrices, was exhi- bited at the Salon du Champ-de- Mars in 1895 before being shipped to Boston. Over the next year or so it was followed by eight smaller panels depicting La Poesie des Champs (Virgil), la Poesie dramatique (Aeschylus), la Poesie Unique (Homer), L Histoire, L Astronomie la Philosophie, La Chimie and la Physique. As the last of them crossed the Atlantic, Puvis remarked that he felt like a father whose daughters had entered a convent. 2

did puvis visit boston? who were more important in getting his work there? just think -- in 110 years, when we try to figure out who said what to who, given that we have immediate 24-hour reporting and commentary, we still will be no better in learning who was right.

EXERCISE: To discover the best arrangement, and to get the utmost experience in line and space composition, the landscape should be set into several boundaries of differing proportions, as shown in the examples, keeping the essential lines of the subject, but varying them to fit the boundary. For instance, a tree may be made taller in a high vertical space than in a low horizontal space, (No. 37). After working out this exercise the pupil may draw a landscape from nature and treat it in the same way. Let him rigorously exclude detail, drawing only the outlines of objects.
arthurwesleydow

dow's COMPOSITION part 1

i will jump right in, giving you a taste of the book that changed art education in america for at least half a century. dow's teaching philosophy involved using examples from other artists, not his own. when i can find it i will show the original on which his example is based.

The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on which he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-idea, and on it hinges the excellence of the whole, for no delicacy of tone, or harmony of color can remedy a bad proportion.

A picture, then, may be said to be in its beginning actually a pattern of lines. Could the art student have this fact in view at the outset, it would save him much time and anxiety. Nature will not teach him composition. The sphinx is not more silent than she on this point.

He must learn the secret as Giotto and della Francesca and Kanawoka and Turner learned it, by the study of art itself in the works of the masters, and by continual creative effort.

If students could have a thorough training in the elements of their profession they would not fall into the error of supposing that such a universal idea as Beauty of Line could be compressed into a few cases like the "triangle," "bird's-wing," "line of beauty," or "scroll ornament," nor would they take these notions as a kind of receipt for composing the lines of pictures.

Insistence upon the placing of Composition above Representation must not be considered as any undervaluation of the latter. The art student must learn to represent nature's forms, colors and effects ; must know the properties of pigments and how to handle brushes and materials. He may have to study the sciences of perspective and anatomy.

More or less of this knowledge and skill will be required in his career, but they are only helps to art, not substitutes for it, and I believe that if he begins with Composition, that is, with a study of art itself, he will acquire these naturally, as he feels the need of them. Returning now to the thought that the picture and the abstract design are much alike in structure, let us see how some of the simple spacings may be illustrated by landscape.

No. 34 is a landscape reduced to its main lines, all detail being omitted. Make an enlarged copy of this, or design a similar one. Then, in the attempt to find the best proportion and the best way of setting the subject upon canvas or paper, arrange this in rectangles of varying shape, some nearly square, others tall, others long and narrow horizontally as in No. 35. To bring the whole landscape into all these will not, of course, be possible, but in each the essential lines must be retained.

The art of landscape painting is a special subject, not to be treated at length here, but I believe that the true way to approach it is through these or similar exer- cises. First study the art, then apply it, whether to landscape or any other kind of expression.
arthurwesleydow