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
Vitality and exuberance, guided by a distinct sense of order, are the
dominant notes of the Arts of the Exposition and pre-eminently of the
sculpture. It proclaims with no uncertain voice that "all is right with
this Western world" - it is not too much to claim that it supplies the
humanized ideality for which the Exposition stands - the daring,
boasting masterful spirits of enterprise and imagination - the frank
enjoyment of physical beauty and effort - the fascination of danger; as
well as the gentler, more reverent of our attitudes, to this mysterious
problem that is Life.
One of the strongest influences the sculpture will have will be in the
direction of a new impulse to inventive decoration. This field has
remained relatively undeveloped, partly owing to our fondness for the
portrait idea, but the direction is legitimate and worthy. Architecture,
which is the growth of a selective precedence, must be continually
supplied with new impulses - new blood to re-energize, rehumanize its
conventions - and on the other hand, all such new impulses must be
trained into order with architecture. Within the last few years a school
devoted to the development of this, as it might be styled, applied
sculpture, has been maintained by a group of public-spirited architects
under the management of the Society of Beaux Arts Architects and the
National Sculpture Society of the United States of America.
The Star Goddess on the colonnades of the Court of the Universe amounts
to a definite creation of a new type of repeated architectural finial -
a human figure conventionalized to be come architecturally static - yet
not so devitalized as to be inert. Based on another style of
architecture the finials of the cloister of the Court of Ages serve a
correspondingly related purpose, and the crouching figures on columns in
this court are excellent examples of decorative crestings.
The groups of the Nations of the East and the Nations of the West are
new types in motif and composition of arch-crowning groups - to be seen
in silhouette against the sky at all points.
Both of these are grandly successful solutions of problems never before
attempted since the ancients imposed the quadriga form of composition.
They were first of all made possible by the receptive attitude of the
distinguished architects, Messrs. McKim, Mead and White - which proves
conclusively to me that those who are most versed in the various forms
of antique arts are also those who are most capable of accepting the
application of new motifs when sufficiently proven, and of quickly
assimilating genuine contributions to the growth of progressive art. By
so doing they lend to them all that wealth of refined elegance that has
come down through the ages. This acceptance in itself is fraught with
much encouragement to the growing school of public sculpture that aims
to understand the principles of co-operation and to weld them to an
ideal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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