Art Deco. Victoria Charles

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СКАЧАТЬ of tower, or rather mast, formed by two thin walls with sharp edges, coated with a rough mortar, and cut at right angles. It housed, at a height of a little over 100 feet, the rectangular case of an electric clock, the elegant and spiritual nature of a sculptor as much as of an architect. If the small canopies of the clock case could be louvres, three small planks of concrete placed horizontally and equidistant of one another, the one below seemed to have no other purpose but to create recalls of forms, contrasts of light and shade: a decoration in the same capacity as the garlands of the past but of a more severe aspect. This new type of mast had four vertical posts of reinforced concrete as its framework, connected by beams forming standoffs, with the space between them which was bricked up. They went down 21 feet below the ground where they drowned into a reinforced concrete footing. Thus, the lowering of the centre of gravity had ensured the stability of the ensemble. In the hall, the entrance of which was announced by this mast, Mallet-Stevens used reinforced concrete with such skill, but without compromising the decoration. The work could not have been better conceived to suit its purpose. Outside, there was an almost full and rather mysterious wall. Inside, a room, 66 feet long, surrounded by exchange and information services. The great light which lit them up fell from the ceiling and poured through stained glass windows, set in a bay window which measured only 20 inches in height, but which circled the whole hall with a continuous band of images of the most beautiful monuments of France toppling over one another, like scenery whizzing past the window of a car travelling at top speed. The part of the wall which surmounted this translucent frieze seemed, paradoxically, to be leaning on it. In fact, it was supported by strong reinforced concrete beams, placed on pillars so thin that one did not notice their presence.

      Pavilions of cities or regions, of department stores, of an individual or a group in the French section numbered around a hundred. On one of the sites, under the shade of the Champs-Élysées and decorated with flowers, Paris wanted to exhibit the work of its schoolchildren. Two long, symmetrical, robust, and elegant wings were connected by a hall which was used as a reception room for the Municipal Council. Full and empty, projections and recesses were learnedly balanced by the architect Roger Bouvard. Each wing ended in a three-part projection, pierced by three high bays. This semi-hexagonal form which was repeated, high up, at the crowning of each window, showed firm lines without stiffness. With the ceramics vases which decorated the front steps and the stucco-marble frieze which was located under the cornice, this Trianon of schoolchildren was brightened by a discrete polychromy.

      The pavilions built for other cities raised the very delicate question of regionalism in architecture. Undoubtedly the walls were the same, though the same roofs are not suitable for different terrains or different climates like the ones of Brittany, Alsace, Picardy, or Provence. But local traditions, reflected in the style of building, are also due to habits, ways of life, working methods which were no longer valid. In a centralised country, in a time when the progress of the means of transport shortened distances, these traditions disappear. Isn’t the architect who maintains them, with a tenderness for the past, likely to create an anachronistic decoration? At the Exhibition, the problem became even more complicated. The aim was to present, under favourable conditions, various productions in the area of arts, born in such or such a region, but intended for many others.

      Were they not settling for an easy picturesque style, which puts them in a category from before they were born? A few architects deliberately freed themselves from local traditions. Rather, they built for cities whose characters were not so strongly marked. In the pavilions of Lyon, Nancy, and Limoges, there was nothing particularly typical. On the contrary, Mulhouse, Roubaix and Tourcoing, the Alpes-Maritimes, Normandy, Berry, Alsace, and Brittany invited the visitor on a tour of the provinces. The long blind façade of the pavilion of Lyon and Saint-Etienne, its three-tiered octagonal crowning, with 120 windows, reminded the visitor of Tony Garnier’s fancy for grand-scale works. But the powerful city, which was at the cutting edge of French urban design, offered a vast space to the talent of its architect. He seemed to be cramped with the meagre portion of the Esplanade des Invalides allotted to him. The building, well laid out, seemed to be designed for greater dimensions.

      The Maharaja’s bathroom, early 1930s.

      Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur.

      Jean Dunand, Project for lacquer panels for a pair of doors, c. 1930.

      Jean Dunand, Folding screen with two panels, c. 1925.

      Lacquer and ivory. Presented at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs (Convention of Artist-Decorators) in 1928.

      Of equal surface area, the pavilion of Nancy and the East, work of Jean Bourgon and Pierre Le Bourgeois, was less original, but of a more satisfactory scale. Its flattened dome on top of an octagonal tambour crowned a steel hall. The rectangular bay windows of its wings would illuminate a conference room and auditorium on one side and a museum of the region of Lorraine on the other. Everything, up to the frieze of the entrance, screamed for a propaganda and information office for the Eastern regions. Under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine sat the pavilion of Limoges, by Pierre Chabrol, which had a vast shop window of harmonious proportions where enamels and the porcelains shimmered of their own will. One can find, in the camp of picturesque portrayals of the regions, capped with three floors of attic windows, the highly-steeped, sloping roof designed by André Ventre and Jean Launay, architects of the pavilion of Mulhouse. On the walls, reinforced concrete beams replaced the old timber frame. In composing the pavilion of Roubaix and Tourcoing, De Feure remembered the brick frontages and tiered gables of the North of France. The pavilion-smallholding of Berry-Nivernais by Gauchery and Dreyer, the “Clos Normand”, or enclosed flower garden, by Victorien Lelong and Pierre Chirol, and the pavilion of Franche-Comté by Boutterin all showcased beautiful framework. The traditional farmhouse of Provence by Dallest, Castel, and Tournon, and the delightful pavilion of the Alpes-Maritimes of Charles and Marcel Dalmas could, on rare occasion, give the illusion of this privileged land where the rough-cast ochre or pink walls, the Genoese roof cornices, and the terraces with tiled balustrades form, along with large flowered earthenware jars, the most pleasant decoration.

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