Paris Exposition it Was Officially

Paris Exposition

It was officially called the Exposition Universelle of 1889 but in fact it was a very memorable and historic World's Fair, held in Paris, France, in 1889. It ran from May 6 to October 31 and was the 100th anniversary of the so-called "storming of the Bastille" (the launch of the French Revolution). Among many other themes, the exposition reflected the Art Nouveau movement, and the United States was very well represented in the exposition, bringing one hundred eighty nine artists. The Paris developers actually re-created the Bastille, and the neighborhood that surrounded the Bastille was recreated as well, to dramatize the push for democracy in France and remind the world that the French people are resilient and determined when it comes to their liberties. This paper will review the exposition, the controversies that were reflected in the presentations and the paintings, and will review the art that the U.S. artists and painters contributed.

Literature on the 1889 Paris Exhibition

Richard Guy Wilson, professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia, explains in an essay that the exposition was both a "rude awakening" and "a great challenge" for the approximately 150,000 Americans who attended. It was a rude awakening because the entire exposition "had nationalistic implications" and indeed the French fully intended to "assert French supremacy in all areas, from the arts to manufacturing" (Wilson, p. 93). The first challenge that Americans faced, Wilson explains, was coming to terms with the Eiffel Tower, a 1,000-foot tall landmark that was "controversial" -- both "hailed and condemned" from its inception -- because it "left behind traditional structures of masonry and wood" (p. 93). The giant tower was "firmly planted on huge angled feet" and made ordinary structures around it "appear puny, weak, and earth-hugging," Wilson continued.

Wilson quoted French theorist, critic and philosopher Roland Barthes; the Eiffel Tower is "so absolutely useless, so absolutely new, so empty, so ineluctable that it can mean everything or nothing…" (Wilson, p. 94). As to the rest of the exposition, Wilson wrote that visitors to Paris in 1889 came away "numbed, overloaded with formation" because the exposition appeared to be like a "giant department store of both goods and ideas" (p. 96). Not every critic agreed with Barthes, however. Patrick Young writes in the journal the History Teacher (May, 2008) that Gustave Eiffel's 106-story "lattice tower" became two things at the moment of its construction (which was timed to coincide with the 1898 exposition); one, it was the world's tallest structure at its debut; and two, it took on "iconic status as a marker of French national prestige."

Moreover, Young asserts, it "signified progress and optimism (as well as a creeping anxiety) in Europe's age of industry and empire" (Young, p. 339)

A year prior to the exposition the New York Times reported (April 22, 1888) that the United States had accepted an invitation to bring exhibits of art and culture to the fair. The Times' writer enthuses that the French can "boast that" every nation worldwide "save Austria and Germany" will be represented there in some fashion. The writer went on to remind readers that "some untoward political accident" could occur to prevent all nations from participating, and that untoward political event did indeed take place as England also declined the invitation to attend.

Among the big international news stories that came out of the exhibition -- in addition to the technology and the enormous exhibit of paintings from all over the world -- was the Eiffel Tower, which in fact was somewhat controversial at that time because it was so stark, tall, and contrasted so sharply with the city of Paris. The writer for the New York Times ("C.T.") promoted the exposition with great flair, noting that the French are preparing to show off the Eiffel Tower despite the negative attitudes towards the tower by "skeptical Parisians." In hindsight, the Times report is somewhat amusing as he criticizes the tower. "I don't much think that, as a speculation, the tower will pay," he writes (April 22, 1888). "The public may go up to its summit occasionally, but having once gazed upon 'the admirable panorama' of the great city and its environs…the public will go where it can find things more interesting and more instructive" (CT).

The Eiffel Tower wasn't the only controversy at the exhibit. In hindsight, Albert Boime explains, there were blatantly racist depictions of cultures from various parts of the world. "Visitors to the fairs were orchestrated to feel superior to the exotic Asians, Africans, Native Americans and other nonwhite people" (Boime, p. 69). Writing in the book Paris 1889: American Artists at the Universal Exposition, the late professor Boime explained that the cultural "habitations" and the "primitive arts and curios" of minority peoples were measured "against the colossal technological advances of the whites" (p. 69).

The essay by Boime asserted that the "hierarchical structure" of whites as the dominate world culture was intentionally designed to "discriminate against selected classes…and ethnic minorities [were] represented among them." This was true at both the Chicago Fair of 1893 and the Paris Fair of 1889. In Paris colonialized people were "degraded… in favor of the triumphant civilization embodied in the Beaux-Arts style" (p. 70). What is not perhaps well-known about the Paris Fair of 1889 is that it was boycotted by the monarchies in England and Germany; the grounds for the boycotts was that the fair "celebrated the overthrow of monarchy." Boime (p. 71) assures readers that the absence of royalist deputies "did the fair no harm, indeed probably contributed to its success."

The opening ceremony of the exposition featured remarks by French Prime Minister Pierre-Emmanuel Tirard, who vowed to "prove" to visitors that "Republican France is hospitable and generous; that she loves and honors the workmen of all nations, and sees in them, not rivals of whom she is jealous, but fellow-workmen who labor with her for the happiness of humanity and the peace of the world" (Boime, p. 70). The essayist called the prime minister's rhetoric "lip service" towards fairness for working people, when in fact France was very deep into a spirit of nationalism but indeed it needed the loyalty of "the underclasses," Boime wrote.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric about the "love of labor" that the French put forward, Boime wrote that there was "remarkably little evidence of this concern in the subjects of the art works displayed" by France and the U.S. (p. 74). The "predictable scenes of peasant and fishing activities" were there, Boime continued [more on peasant-themed art will be presented later in this paper] but there was "scant attention paid to the laboring class." Boime picked out one painting in particular -- the Intruder -- that showed a chimney sweep ("grotesque-looking") covered from head to toe with soot, in fact totally black. In the painting the chimney sweep is surrounded by "astonished bathers…some gaze in horror at this strange creature while others double over in laughter" (a photo of the painting is printed on p. 75).

And while one reviewer thought that the chimney sweep was actually sharing in the laughter directed at him because his white teeth are contrasted sharply with his blackened face, Boime disagreed. To the contrary, Boime asserts that the Intruder was actually a scene of "alienation and oppression" that "encodes the upper-class ideal of workers excluded from the cultural and social edifice constructed by their labor happily accepting…" their station in life (p. 75).

Meanwhile, the substantial contribution that American artists made at the Universal Exposition of 1889 in Paris was surprising to the critics, according to D. Dodge Thompson (Thompson, 1989, p. 53). The critics were in awe of the "variety of temperaments" presented and "the diversity of the pictures." The diversity of the works displayed by American artists presented a challenge to the critics, Thompson explained. In fact, the writer for the New York Times who was present, Harold Frederic, complained that his job as a reporter "was not unlike the task of an amateur turned loose in a picture dealer's attic" (p. 53). One hundred and eighty nine American artists brought a total of 336 paintings to the exhibit, and a reviewer from the Atlantic Monthly commented on the variety of style represented in the Americans' work:

"There never was a time in which there were so many diversities of style;

contrasts could hardly go further in conception and treatment of the same subject in every school of painting -- portraits, landscapes, religious, marine, military. One would like to say, 'My brethren, be not many masters," but the difficulty is rather that there are too many pupils" (Owen Wister).

The United States jury accorded the "place of honor" in the American section to William T. Dannat's painting called "The Quartette" -- a painting featuring four people playing unorthodox instruments. Thompson referred to the Quartette as "a Spanish genre scene"; Dannat also showed two additional paintings in the "main gallery" including the Portrait of Miss H. that U.S. Commissioner of Fine Arts Rush Hawkins said "…seems to take us back to the best period of the Dutch school" (Thompson, p. 56). The French government liked the Portrait of Miss H. so well that they bought it from Dannat and placed it in the Luxembourg Museum.