All text reproduced from World's Fair magazine, Volume VIII, Number 3, Copyright 1988, World's Fair, Inc.
Expanded and revised version January 2000, by Arthur Chandler.

For thoughtful Parisians, the presence of American writers and artists constituted further proof of what they felt to be the destiny of their city: to resume the mission civilisatrice, the cultural leadership of the entire world, as proclaimed by Victor Hugo half a century earlier. With the return of peace and prosperity, France could once again turn her thoughts to hosting an international exposition in order to reassert her position as the ruler of taste and style. But there was no groundswell of enthusiasm for launching an enterprise on the scale of the 1900 world's fair. Now, two decades later, France decided that it would be unwise and unnecessary to host another universal exposition. The 1900 fair, perhaps the most ambitious in all history, had properly inaugurated Paris as the city which set the themes for the coming century. What profit would there be in hosting a reprise? As Frederic Le Play had foretold in his report on the 1867 exposition, there was an irresistible pressure to make each fair more lavish than the previous one. The 1900 fair was certainly the most ambitious in the history of Paris; but it had lost money, and fell far short of the attendance figure that the commissioners had confidently predicted would eventuate.

View of the Grand Palais during the 1900 World's Fair

Was Paris, then, to hold no more universal expositions? Would the leadership go to England, or Italy, or the United States? America seemed a likely candidate, having hosted major expositions in 1893, 1904, and 1915. Following the exhaustion of the First World War, it seemed likely that the leadership role would pass to the United States, which was undamaged physically an in form economically.

But the French were not ready to pass the flame to America. France would – France must –retain her leadership in this vital area. But future expositions in the capital city must have specific agendas. To hold another world’s fair, which exhibited everything from everywhere, was simply too vast an enterprise. The next French exposition should be organized around a particular theme – an idea proposed by Le Play in 1867 – and they should manifestly advance the interests of French business and government.

By the second decade of the twentieth century, France had a very definite idea as to what such a "theme exposition" should do. Looking back on the situation in France just before the war, Minister of Commerce Lucien Dior accurately saw his country's predicament:

It is worth noting the change in nomenclature from "universal" to "international" in the official title of the exposition. The change itself bespeaks a pulling back from the larger aspirations of the earlier expositions. "Universal" meant both "all-inclusive" in the audience to which the exposition was directed, and "ranging over all forms of thought" in its exhibition of industrial and artistic products. The word "international" reveals a new perspective on the exposition. While national interests had always been present, overtly or covertly, at every exposition in Paris since 1798, nationalism now assumes the front rank, and replaces the urge for universality. And France, of course, saw herself as the orchestrator of international styles.

In many respects, Paris had never relinquished her role as leader. In painting, literature, and music, Paris had been the home of the avant-garde – the very term betrays its French origin – for decades. In women's fashion, it was still the Parisian hat, glove, and gown that set the standard for novel elegance in high society everywhere. Only in the decorative arts and architecture had the French resolutely clung to the past. The innovative art nouveau buildings and furniture of 1900 were forgotten. Old money and new alike preferred the tried and true styles – from the stately elegance of the ancien régime to the florid eclecticism of the Second Empire – for their own living spaces.

Gardens of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs

To some extent, though, Art Deco was a movement very much in the spirit of art nouveau. Both forms rejected the decorative vocabularies of the past, with their inevitable longings for classical motifs, themes, and proportions. Both were essentially surface arts, reflecting John Ruskin's earlier pronouncement that ornamentation is the principal part of architecture. But since the dawn of the twentieth century, there were three new influences that exerted themselves on the imagination of artists and craftsmen alike: Cubism in painting, colonial art from the French colonies, and the Bauhaus movement in architecture. Each of these influences could be seen clearly in the architecture and exhibits of the 1925 exposition.

The art and artifacts of black Africa, collected by connoisseurs since the opening years of the century, were also seen as sources of a kind of primitive, muscular vitality that was unavailable either to the traditional decorative modes or to the languid lines of art nouveau. Many of the highly stylized and brilliantly colored fabric designs of Art Deco owe their existence to French designers' admiration for, and translation of, African fabrics and masks. The 1925 exposition marks a real turning point with regard to the French feeling towards the colonial peoples. African fabrics, once seen as quaint productions of a retarded people, were now energetically incorporated into the Art Deco style, which seemed to fit well with the angular energy of "primitive" art. Paralleling the fascination with African crafts and art was the mania for Josephine Baker and her Revue Nègre, which took Paris by storm in the 1920s. The enthusiasm with which the French embraced these two manifestations of black culture is, in one respect, a carryover of the thirst for the exotic that has marked French society for centuries. But, on higher level, the French acceptance of black culture marks a turning point in the acceptance of the society and mores of a people whom she once felt were backward and benighted. Art Deco is the clearest sign of a measure, not just of tolerance, but acceptance of the value of other cultures.

The case of Art Deco in architecture is more complicated. The Bauhaus had been in business since 1919; but it was a German enterprise, and German aesthetics had little attraction for the French in the years following the Great War. Germany was not invited to participate in the 1925 exposition; and, as a consequence, Bauhaus ideas were present only as they appeared in other foreign pavilions – notably Malnikov's Russian pavilion and Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau. Though, as we shall see, there were some stunning attempts at the 1925 exposition to bring Art Deco to architecture, the results were, in the long run inconsequential – or, at least, not as far-reaching as its proponents hoped or believed. Art Deco in architecture was destined to become little more than a temporary fashion in interior decorating, or the addition of decorative flourishes to the facade. The International Style inn architecture, which was to dominate the modern skyline for the next half a century, grew out of Bauhaus principles, and rejected Art Deco as a superficial program out of keeping with "form follows function" and "less is more."

NOTES

1 Quoted in Bouin and Chanut, Histoire Française des Foires et des Expositions Universelles (Paris, 1980), page 170. The Battle of Sedan, in 1870, was the decisive defeat of the French Army by General von Moltke – the defeat that led to the downfall of the Second Empire and the occupation of Paris by German Troops.

2 L’Amour de l’Art, " "L’Exposition des Arts décoratifs et Industriels de 1925, les tendences générales," p. 286