The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition: A Pictorial Survey of the Art of the Panama-Pacific international expositionPerry, Stella G. S. (Stella George Stern)
General
The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition: A Pictorial Survey of the Art of the Panama-Pacific international exposition
Perry, Stella G. S. (Stella George Stern)
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.); Sculpture, American
Under the branches of a low tree the poetic group by Edward Berge, "Muse
Finding the Head of Orpheus," a white marble group of superior elegance
and texture, arrests the passerby. A Muse kneels, drooping in exquisite
pathos over the head of Orpheus found in the waves. The sculptor has
chosen the tragic side of the Orphean myth. The son of Apollo and the
Muse Calliope, whose heaven-taught lyre charmed men and beasts, melted
rocks and even opened the gates of Erebus, had failed to win from death
his bride, Eurydice, lost to him for the second time. As he wandered
disconsolate, the Thracian bacchantes wooed him in vain. Maddened by
failure and by their bacchanal revels, they called upon Bacchus to
avenge, and hurled a javelin upon him. But the music charmed the weapon,
until the wild women drowned it with their cries. Then they dismembered
the singer and threw him to the waves; but the very fragments were
melodious and reached the Muses, who buried them where the nightingale
still sings "Eurydice." So runs the allegory; even drowned by earthly
clamors, slain and torn by wanton hands, the song of Poetry continues,
the weeping Muses save.
Diana
Garden Exhibit, South Lagoon
In a setting of surpassing appropriateness and beauty, installed high
amid the tall shrubbery as if emerging from the edge of one of her own
forests, the huntress Diana points the arrow she is about to let fly.
This rendering by Haig Patigian, who made the heroic Powers and other
decorations on Machinery Hall, is simple, classic, pure, imaginative,
poetic in purpose and in effect. He has softened the traditional
coldness of the goddess by a warmer humanity without injuring the sense
of proud aloofness. The Maiden goddess of the Hunt bears in her hand the
crescent bow, its lines here strongly suggestive of those of the young
moon, of which it is the symbol and this goddess the deity. Mr. Patigian
exhibits in the Colonnade a companion piece, "Apollo, the Sun God," twin
brother of Diana. A vivid figure of manly grace, Apollo is presented in
the guise of the sun of the morning. He kneels and shoots an arrow
upward; the long, pleasing curve of his bow suggests the outline of the
sun above the horizon as Apollo releases his first bright shaft of
light.
Eurydice
Garden Exhibit, Colonnade
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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