Reactions to the Fair

An October 1900 review of the Exposition Universelle, focused on art and architecture, casts a critical eye over the fair that contradicts the praise and enthusiasm of many other guests. Shelton, an American observer, has no kind words for the architectural environment of the fair, despite the focus on decorative unity in the exhibition program. He refers to the plan, divided by the Seine, as being in a “broken condition” whose only boon was to emphasize the unique appearance of wildly diverging styles of architecture. Struggling to find permanent structures for comment, Shelton dismisses the fair architecture as a “potpourri of heterogeneous ingredients” in “rococo… stucco… piecework.”  He reserves his strongest praise for the Petit Palais, the smaller of the two Beaux-arts palaces and permanent, and admires the Danish building for its “national characteristic.” The United States pavilion, however, he dismisses as a travesty, as “a box to support a dome to support an eagle” that cannot qualify as architecture. (222) He expresses this distaste elsewhere in his article, reporting a “chorus of disapproval” for the building which resembled little more than a post-office. (220) Instead, he claims, the United States should have shown Washington’s house at Mount Vernon as a nationally characteristic colonial style and filled it with old Colonial furniture. Despite this adamantly worded passage, Shelton seems to miss the irony of depicting the rising young American nation through the architecture produced during its subordination to British rule.

The offending U.S. pavilion, indeed with an eagle on top.

Shelton’s review is largely typical in its discussion of art displays at the exposition. One nation’s art has devolved, another’s has advanced; France, for example, has lost its soul and dedication to “art for art’s sake,” shifting in tone between “mannerism and affectation,” “academic emptiness,” and “morbid realism.” The German exhibition has shown the most improvement since 1889, and Shelton imagines that secessionists have helped bring about the “departure from academic tenets” and “Dusseldorf reminiscences.” (226) The author makes a characteristic dismissal of Japanese painting and its “transition… from old Japanese art to pure European,” and mistakes the modern school of nihonga painting for that of “old Japan” contrasting with their oil works.

The Mothers by Eugène Carrière, a man accused of mannerism.

This whole review of the fine art of various nations does conflate the country directly with their representation at the exposition, and the act of visiting with patriotism- an American’s visit to see the country’s art referred to as “natural and patriotic.” (225) However, the author’s discontent with this arrangement suggests a transformation of concepts of natural identity in art. Despite increasingly itinerant artists such as Thaulow, Carlos Schwabe, Kaemmerer, and so forth, artists are always lumped in with the country of their birth. This is also inconsistently observed, which Shelton claims pollutes the United States display with newcomers and a frustrating among of characteristically weak inconsistent and weak painting practiced by Americans abroad in Paris. Meanwhile, some artists such as Whistler are cosmopolitan enough to belong in an international division. (222)

Caprice in Purple and gold: The Golden Screen, by Whistler, 1864

Although an insistence on the conflation of nation and style pervades Shelton’s review, this latter paragraph reveals the many weaknesses of this system based on national division. Not only does it radically disadvantage an innovative younger generation by expectation of an older era, as in the case of Japanese painting and American architecture, but it quickly loses any meaning when artists travel abroad, sometimes permanently, in increasing numbers. The impression that a handful of Americans working abroad was enough to disrupt the impression of a “truly American school,” and that several artists had passed into an “international” idiom, may serve as evidence that painting was gradually breaking away from conflicts of national character and contests of national academies. 

W.H. Shelton, "The Paris Exposition," The Collector and Art Critic Vol. 2, No. 14, The Paris Exposition Number (Oct., 1900), pp. 222-229

The Economics and Science of the 1900 Exposition

In spite of the spectacularly overtaxing of the Parisian water, sewage, and transportation systems, reports from the fair indicate a remarkable degree of financial success. A 1900 Chicago tribute report indicates that funding for the fair was secured by a combination of state contribution, donations from the city of Paris, and private investment. In a novel system, donations from individuals were secured in the form of non-reimbursable bonds costing four dollars. More than three million and a half of these bonds were issued, and they promised the purchaser twenty entries to the fair, a reduction in price of the railroad, and entry into a quarterly lottery drawing. As entrances to the fair cost nothing for the fair, this approach of soliciting public interest was an effective means of gathering “a great many millions” for the fair planning committee.

The Octroi tax repaid the city of Paris for its investment in the exposition by a factor of three. Levied on food and wines brought into the city, this tax charged businesses for a third again the cost of food and drink in the city. While the report is unclear whether the fee was transferred to urban businesses or primarily to guests, it is likely that this approach relied heavily on the large crowds of foreign tourists visiting for the fair.

In addition to the business of the fair itself, many countries made contributions to exhibitions of recent scientific research. While it is difficult to point out a thematic contest of national specialties, the eagerness of the United States, for example, to contribute its discoveries made in Experiment Stations recently established in 1890 indicate that such representation was crucial for international prestige and possibly private investment. The 1900 report on US exhibits at the Exposition Universelle shows a strong focus on agricultural research. The report conveys news of new testing systems for the saline content, acidity, and moisture of soil. Likewise, the United States displayed numerous crops that pushed the boundaries of climatic extremes. 

  Meanwhile, however, the French competitors of the United States pushed the boundaries of scientific understanding through the Professor Curie’s demonstration of the “purely physical influence” of isolated radium on natural surroundings. In this experiment, a tube of radium next to a tube of zinc sulphide. The radiation from the radium causes the zinc sulphide to shine without any direct chemical reaction, indicating an invisible, heretofore unknown physical process. Simultaneously, Professor Pellat proved the existence of another invisible force, that of magnetic fields, through an independent demonstration.

A dramatization of the Curie experiment

            Thus, the demonstrations of scientific advances at the fair show a new approach by French scientists. While other displays, such as that of the United States, were focused on practical technology to improve agricultural yield, the French displays condensed laboratory procedures for public presentation as “devices” and remained focused on research that, while utterly groundbreaking, as yet had no immediate commercial implication.

The Curie experiment in its most common form: combined radium and zinc sulphide, or glow-in-the-dark paint. 

Exhibition of Scientific Devices in Paris. Scientific American (1845-1908); Jul 19, 1902; Vol. LXXXVII., No. 3.; American Periodicals pg. 34

American Experiment Stations at the Paris Exposition. Scientific American (1845-1908); Mar 24, 1900; Vol. LXXXII., No. 12.; American Periodicals. pg. 178

Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922); Mar 11, 1900; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune. pg. 49

The Japanese Pavilion

The Japanese pavilion at the 1900 world’s fair showed a remarkably historicizing approach to the display of Japanese cultural history, with a focus on creating an integrated environment around the tea ceremony.  This display, of course, was closely integrated with Japan’s commercial approach to international tourism, and thus combined the government’s 1900 efforts at art historical canonization with a simulation of tourism in Japan.

The main pavilion, featured in many reports on the fair, was an updated representation of the Golden Pavillion, or Kinkakuji, which was a major tourist destination to be found just outside of Kyoto. (Tsen 121) The pavilion on display in 1900, however shows major changes from its contemporary, the still-standing original structure. Some changes are restorations, and others modernizations. While the extant building, named for its gold trim, had long since faded and worn, the building in Paris was covered in gold paint as if suggesting a teleportation back in time to its original splendor. Simultaneously, however, the building’s first story is omitted in the Paris version, and the paneled walls are opened up with glass windows in what appear to be an indo-Saracenic style considered a Japanese national style at the time. These features make the building accessible by stair, and likely more approachable to foreign viewers. Finally, while the original Kinkakuji was repurposed as a Zen Buddhist temple following the death of its builder Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1394, its original function as a teahouse was restored in its Paris reconstruction.

The visitor Andre Hallais describes the experience of drinking tea at the pavilion in depth in his account of the 1900 fair, and delights in finding many traces of Japanese “national character.” At the Japanese garden in the Trocadero, he orders the reader to walk past the vulgar black tea served by Parisians at nearby restaurants, but instead to climb to the first floor, where one can enjoy "chanoyu… the ceremony of tea." For several pages, he describes with bombastic enthusiasm this source of "extremely delicate enjoyment…" with its "politeness of speech, the grace of its gestures, the neatness of its utensils…" This extraordinary experience, Hallais writes, all of its "taste" and "elegance," can be "characterized in one word: exquisite." (242) In his memory, as Hallais drank his green tea, he gazed into the calm and tranquil garden, where sculpted branches met in peaks to reverberate echoes of Mount Fuji and the landscapes of Japan. Numerous flower arrangements and ceramics adorned the room, and the guest is finally sent away with a small package of tea, sweets, small flowers. This, Hallais declares with some envy, is Japan, "with its childlike grace, the Japan that the globe-trotters have experienced." (244)

1900 Japanese Garden

The effort on the part of Japanese planners to create an accessible, multi-sensorial experience of Japanese cultural heritage is clear from Hallais’ report. Combining the ritualized performance of the tea ceremony, the drink itself, multiple arts, and the surrounding garden would have offered a coherent experience of Japan recognizable from the accounts of returning European tourists. Hallais’ remarks reveal another dimension of the tea ceremony, however: its quality as an integrated display of multiple high art objects, including painted screens, displayed ceramics, hanging scrolls, and lacquerware. The Japanese government had already pioneered this type of integrated tea display in its replica of the Phoenix hall at the 1893 Chicago world’s fair under the guidance of Okakura Kakuzo, who thought this ensemble presentation to be most coherent expression of Japanese art. (Coaldrake 185) This ensemble, “freed from ex post facto categorization” in 1900 as in 1893, was one of two places where visitors could see Japanese art objects together rather than strewn in various displays around the fair.

1893 Japanese pavilion and interior

The other of these two locations was in a display of thirteen centuries of Japanese art in sculpture, painting, and ceramics also held in the Japanese pavilion (the display building is still uncertain). These works were accompanied by the publication of a weighty 273-page tome, L’histoire de l’art du Japon, which functioned as a narrative guide not only to the display, but also to the many craft objects presented as anonymous works in multiple “applied arts.” This book was published in French as the first full history of Japanese art from the premodern era to the threshold of the modern era.

Kinkakuji in 1900, before 1950 fire and reconstruction

In spite of the extraordinary effort to assemble this meticulous, era-by-era account of Japanese art, the French viewer still occasionally insisted on maintaining the innocent and unknowing gaze of the amateur. Andre Hallais writes, for example, that the"… The statues, lacquerwares, bronzes, ceramics, kimono displayed at the marvelous pavilion Japan built at the Trocadero… there, we have the revelation of an ancient art of which we know nothing." He continues: "we are barbarians- it is indisputable- we are barbarians without grace, agility, subtlety. (21) I know nothing of this art: I ignore the centuries, the schools; I am inclined to all sorts of errors. Before these [objects]… I sense they have a beauty, a beauty that I, the barbarian- will never penetrate." (22) As rich as these words are in praise, Hallais merely cites a conventional attitude towards Japanese art here, which is to refer to it as a transhistorically graceful, elegant, and childish (see his quote above) society only at the threshold of civilization. Deliberate ignorance of the specifics of its history and a focus on sensorial experience instead, it seems, is key to maintaining this image. 

Race and Medium at the 1900 Fair

The 1900 Exposition Universelle was a year of tremendous success for Japanese art in Paris, as it marks the first time any Japanese works were displayed and evaluated as “art” in a beaux-arts context. As Coaldrake notes, the French system for categorizing exposition entries posited an absolute division between “decorative” or “industrial” arts and “fine arts.” (176) In this system, an object with any function beside the purely visual or spatial function of painting and sculpture was defined by that function, and entered into a relevant pavilion of furnishings or textile. For Japan, this meant that the history of painting on silk panels was categorized as “decorative,” maligning an impressive millennia-old history of painting lineages and relegating any modern-day submissions to anonymous non-recognition in separate galleries throughout the fair. To Japan, this was a “pressing political and diplomatic issue,” as a country without recognition of its high arts was in threat of “being defined as second class on the world stage.” (176) Given the recent historical fact of France and America’s forcible overtaking of Japanese land and market access in the 1860s, and the pending renegotiation of the resulting unequal treaties, this categorical rather than empirical exclusion of Japanese art suggests a desperate effort by French exposition organizers to relegate Japan to a semi-colonial, liminally civilized status.

Lacquer Objects by Kamisaka Sekka, designed within a decade of the fair

In response, 1900 shows a new approach from the Japanese government. First, they submitted works, as usual, to a large number of pavilions. In spite of this separation of media meant to reference one another as an ensemble, the Japanese performed admirably, with works by the young Kamisaka Sekka and his mentor Kishi Kokei taking the gold in lacquer furniture and textiles. Second, the Japanese submitted works in oil paint and ink-and-mineral-pigment directly to the beaux arts pavilion. The oil painting was led by the artist Kuroda Seiki, who had first learned and then studied oil painting in Paris for six years before returning to Japan to pioneer a national style. His masterpiece triptych Wisdom, Impression, and Sentiment was one of the few works to receive a gold at the beaux-arts pavilion. Leading nihonga, or ink-and-mineral-pigment painting, was Hashimoto Gaho, the last painter in the Kano lineage and central to the Japan Fine Art Academy. His painting, Folding Screen with Painting of Dragon and Tiger, also received praise at the beaux-arts pavilion, and exposed audiences to a composition and theme with several centuries of painted history in Japan referenced in L’Histoire de l’Art du Japon. It is not clear how this folding screen managed to slip by the French organizers; perhaps the oppositional line between oil painting and “traditional Japanese-style painting” elevated the latter by power of association.

Kuroda Seiki, Wisdom, Impression, and Sentiment

Hashimoto Gaho, Folding Screen with Painting of Dragon and Tiger

Despite this Japanese victory, however, the comments made by French viewers to the beaux-arts pavilion reveal an extreme cultural anxiety upon seeing Japanes oil painting. Almost universally, this work was decried as “imitative” of European art and, ironically, as abandoning Japan’s true “decorative” calling. Remarkably, this reveals the instability of the categorical definition of fine arts used at the fair, which contradicts the concept of art as a self-asserting category by revealing its role as a vehicle for national essence.

A 15th century Dragon and Tiger painting included in L'Histoire de l'art du Japon

Many of the comments regarding Japanese oil painting have an unmistakable tinge of racial essentialism. In his report on the Japanese beaux-arts display, for example, W. Walton considers it to be an unwelcome cultural transgression contradicting the Japanese “temperament.” The term “imitate” abounds in his account, and he dismisses the Japanese painters as “clever islanders” who got lucky with a few copies- and thus not always prone to “failing at appropriation” of civilization (87)-rather than as first-hand witnesses to the art found in Paris. Where praise emerges it is of the “naiveté” of Kuroda’s “decorative” qualities, and of Hashimoto’s ability in the “imagination of monsters.” One wonders at the insistence of French commentators as they try to force Japan back onto a hierarchically lower rung, into the already poorly understood realm of craft, insisting that it matches the true nature of these “clever islanders.”

The Beaux-Art Palaces

In this context, the medium of oil painting ceases to be a category defined solely by its own parameters, but to suddenly have a valence of cultural essentialism that links it inexplicably to Europe. Oil paint, canvas, and varnish are suddenly no longer tools of personal expression or academic adherence, but are reimagined as the instruments of a fundamentally national expression- in short, oil painting gains the function of defining national character. For W. Walton, the oil paintings reveal too much of reality. Oil painting is not considered a technology in and of itself, but as a symptom of  “commercialism and the imitation of the European” (92). The commentator also fails to recognize the institutional and personal history of the oil painters- one of whom, Kuroda Seiki, received years of training in France before working tirelessly to adapt the conventions of oil painting to a Japanese context. 

Answering this question of why Japanese oil painting so perturbed European viewers requires further research, but these comments indicate a combination of factors. First of all, Japan had lept out of the decorative category, challenging what may have been assumed to be a stable category for a nation imagined as primitive. Second, Japanese oil painting seems to have rattled conventional notions of the medium, revealing the tension between the category of painting as autonomous and purely visual, and painting as mediating national essence for international contest.