April in Paris: Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo 9781487518585

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APRIL IN PARIS Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo

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April in Paris Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo

IRENA R. MAKARYK

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2018 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4875-0372-7 (cloth) Printed on acid-free paper.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Makaryk, Irena R. (Irena Rima), 1951–, author April in Paris : theatricality, modernism, and politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo/ Irena R. Makaryk. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4875-0372-7 (hardcover) 1. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925 : Paris, France).  2. Exhibitions – Political aspects – France – Paris – History – 20th century.  3. Exhibitions – France – Paris – History – 20th century. 4. Theater – Political aspects.  5. Aesthetics, Modern – 20th century.  I. Title. T805.1925.L1M35 2018   907.4’4436   C2018-900947-0 This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada

For Natalia, Larissa, and Yaroslaw

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Paris n’est pas une ville, c’est un Monde.

(attributed to Charles V)

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Contents

List of Illustrations  xi Acknowledgments  xv Note to the Reader on Transliteration  xix Introduction. April in Paris 1925: “as important as the Renaissance”  3 1  Theatricalizing the City: Space, Modernism, and the Paris Expo  28 2  April in Paris 1925: Staging the New Spirit  55 3  Conquering Space: The Soviets in Paris  83 4  Great Expectations: Space and Theatre Arts  108 5  Trial by Space: Incarnating the Revolution  134 6  Battling Traditional Space: Bringing Modernism from Paris to New York 166 7  Transformative Space: Into the Future  193 Notes  211 Works Cited  255 Index  277

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Illustrations

Plates (following page 172) Plate 1 The spectacular Fontaine des Totems. Paris, Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels, 1925.  Plate 2 Bird’s-eye view of the expo.  Plate 3 Cover. Catalogue of the USSR pavilion. Paris, 1925.  Plate 4 Alexandra Exter. Lighting design for an unrealized production.  Plate 5 Alexandra Exter. Costume sketch for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Plate 6 Alexandra Exter. Costume sketch for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Plate 7 Vadym Meller. Mask. Choreographic sketch.  Plate 8 Alexandra Exter. Sandwich Man (L’Homme sandwich).  Figures Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5 Fig. 1.6 Fig. 1.7

Exposition poster.  29 The Eiffel Tower at night.  31 Map of the Exposition.  35 Alexandre III bridge with boutiques.  36 General view of the Exposition.  37 Spectators lining the Alexandre III bridge.  39 Crowds of spectators watch with fascination the cascades of water.  40 Fig. 1.8 Spotlight illuminations.  42 Fig. 1.9 The “street” of boutiques on the Alexandre III bridge.  42

xii  List of Illustrations

Fig. 1.10 Fig. 1.11 Fig. 2.1

Bolshevik propaganda train.  46 V. Tatlin. Model of the Monument to the Third.  49 Visitors to the expo at the entrance to the Jardins de la Manufacture de Sèvres.  57 Fig. 2.2 Cover of the journal L’Esprit Nouveau. 61 Figs. 2.3, 2.4 The British Empire Exhibition 1924–5. Wembley.  65 Fig. 2.5 Cover page of the Catalogue général officiel. 68 Fig. 2.6 The elegant Pavilion of the City of Paris.  71 Fig. 2.7 View of the expo from the Tour de Bordeaux.  74 Fig. 2.8 Advertisement for glamorous undergarments and hosiery.  75 Fig. 2.9 The Grand Palais as it looks today.  76 Fig. 2.10 Vision d’Orient. Dancers in the Grand Palais.   78 Fig. 2.11 La Rivière de diamants. The Tiller Girls at the Fête du théâtre et de la parure.  79 Fig. 2.12 Music hall mannequin displayed at the Paris expo.  80 Fig. 3.1 Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion at the expo. 85 Fig. 3.2 The ornate Alexandre III bridge (1897).  88 Fig. 3.3 Cover, Soviet catalogue for the 1925 expo.  90 Fig. 3.4 Display of Soviet books, pamphlets, and various propaganda. 94 Fig. 3.5 Two Soviet Ukrainian porcelain plates manufactured in Mezhyhiria.  100 Fig. 3.6 Melnikov’s proposed Soviet pavilion for the 1925 Paris expo.  101 Fig. 3.7 The opulent pavilion of the Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette.  103 Fig. 3.8 Konstantin Melnikov’s pavilion.  105 Fig. 4.1 The Theatre of the Exposition. Exterior view.  120 Fig. 4.2 The Theatre. Interior.  122 Fig. 4.3 Projectors.  123 Fig. 4.4 Letrosne’s imposing staircase in the Grand Palais.  126 Fig. 4.5 Official program for the inauguration of the model Theatre. 127 Fig. 4.6 Coupon admitting two to the Theatre.  128 Fig. 4.7 Dancers from the Institute Roggen.  129 Fig. 4.8 Sumptuous attire and Loge d’Artiste designed by Jeanne Lanvin.  132 Fig. 5.1 Staircase in the Grand Palais leading to the USSR Theatre Arts exhibits.  135

List of Illustrations xiii

Fig. 5.2

The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet directed by Alexander Tairov for the Kamerny Theatre.  138 Fig. 5.3 Phaedra at the Kamerny Theatre directed by Alexander Tairov.  139 Fig. 5.4 Maddermarket production of The Taming of the Shrew. 141 Fig. 5.5 Owen Paul Smyth. Set design for Hamlet at the Maddermarket Theatre.  143 Fig. 5.6 Irakly Gamrekeli’s stage design for Hamlet directed by Konstantin Mardzhanov.  146 Fig. 5.7 Scene from The Secretary of the Labour Union directed by Borys Tiahno for the Berezil Theatre.  147 Figs. 5.8, 5.9 Mikhail Libakov’s costume sketches for the Ghost (5.8) and Polonius (5.9). Hamlet at the Second Studio, Moscow Art Theatre.  150 Fig. 5.10 Antony and Cleopatra at the Petrograd Academic Theatre of Drama.  151 Fig. 5.11 Costume design for Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924) directed by Yakov Protazanov. Designer: Alexandra Exter.  152 Fig. 5.12 Scene from Leon Gordon’s White Cargo presented by the English Players.  156 Fig. 5.13 Isaak Rabinovich’s design for a production of Lysistrata. 157 Fig. 5.14 Phaedra at the Kamerny Theatre directed by Alexander Tairov. 159 Fig. 5.15 Liubov Popova’s set design for Fernand Crommelynck’s The Magnanimous Cuckold directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. 161 Fig. 5.16 A section of the Soviet theatre exhibit.  164 Fig. 6.1 Frederick Kiesler arriving in New York, 1926.  168 Fig. 6.2 Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap with assistant preparing the International Theatre Exposition. New York, 1926.  169 Fig. 6.3 Cover. The Little Review. 171 Fig. 6.4 Poster, International Theatre Exposition. New York, 1926. 172 Fig. 6.5 Rotunda of Steinway Hall, New York.  175 Fig. 6.6 Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap preparing for the International Theatre Exposition.  176 Fig. 6.7 Displays at the New York International Theatre Exposition. 179

xiv  List of Illustrations

Fig. 6.8

Visitors at the New York International Theatre Exposition. 184 Fig. 6.9 Cover. Catalogue of the International Theatre Exposition. New York, 1926.  187 Figs. 6.10, 6.11, 6.12 Pages from The Little Review. 188 Fig. 6.13 Georg Kaiser’s Gas directed by Les Kurbas for the Berezil Artistic Association.  190 Fig. 6.14 Scene from Jimmie Higgins directed by Les Kurbas for the Berezil Theatre.  191 Fig. 7.1 Simon Lissim’s set design for a production of Hamlet. 1925.  207 Fig. 7.2 Boris Aronson’s set for Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company. 1970.  209

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the many institutions and their staff for helping make research possible and pleasurable on this fascinating topic. On this continent: University of Ottawa, Morisset Library, Inter­ library Loans; National Gallery of Canada Library; Toronto Reference Library, Special Collections and Archives; Jennifer B. Lee, Curator, Performing Arts Collections, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University; Avery Library, Columbia University; Michelle Harvey, MoMA (Queen’s), Archive and Library, New York; Frick Art Reference Library; New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, NPL Rare Books and Manuscripts Division; Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts, NYC. In Europe and elsewhere: Dr. Maren Ballerstedt and his staff at the Stadtarchiv, Magdeburg, Germany; Gerd Zillner, Archive Director, and his staff at the Ősterreichische Friederich und Lillian Kiesler Privatstiftung, Vienna; Yann Onfroy and Guillemette Delaporte, Archives et Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris); Bibliothèque nationale de France (Richelieu); Bibliothèque des arts et métiers; Archives nationales (France); Bibliothèque Forney; Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris; Christine Dixon, Senior Curator, International Painting and Sculpture, and her staff at the Na­ tional Gallery of Australia. Sincere gratitude to the following people for answering e-mail queries, offering advice, and support: Arthur Chandler, San Francisco State University; Alison Rowley, Concordia University; Annie Gérin, Université du Québec à Montréal; John E. Findling, Indiana University Southeast; Rachel Bowditch, Arizona State University; John Calhou, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library; Jennifer Tobias, MoMa Library (Manhattan); Philip Whalen, Coastal Carolina University; Adam

xvi Acknowledgments

Wallace, Special Collections Research Center, Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno; Michelle Assay, Université ParisSorbonne, University of Sheffield; David C. Fisher, The University of Texas at Brownsville; Alexander C.T. Geppert, Freie Universität Berlin; Laurie Rizzo, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library; Douglas Di Carlo, La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La Guardia Community College, CUNY; Anthony Gilroy, Steinway and Sons; Morgen Stevens-Garmon, Theater Collections, Museum of the City of New York; Tammy Kiter, Manuscript Department, Library, New-York Historical Society; Irena Baranayová and Hana Oplestilova, Slavonic Library, Charles University, Prague; Elizabeth Lovero, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin; Mardi Valgemae; Natalya Kusel, Victoria and Albert Museum Archive; Fabrizio Bazzani, Bureau International des Expositions; Bérengère de l’Epine, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris; David C. Fisher, The University of Texas at Brownsville; Dominique Versavel, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, Bibliothèque nationale de France; Elisabeth Olive, Département de l'environnement, de l'aménagement du territoire et de l'agriculture, Archives nationales (France); Peter Beck, Maddermarket Theatre; Myroslava Mudrak, The Ohio State University; Tetiana Rudenko, Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine; Virlana Tkacz, Yara Arts Theatre; and Ethan Menchinger. Marissa McHugh cheerfully and efficiently assisted in rooting out some of the North American press coverage of the Paris Exposition. Roxanne Lafleur, Morisset Library, University of Ottawa, assisted with the scanning of a number of the images. A very special word of thanks goes to Marc Aronson for a generously long and enlightening telephone conversation about his father, Boris. Early drafts of some parts of chapter 6 were delivered as presentations and as conference papers at the following institutions and organizations: National Gallery of Canada, Spectrum of Art series, Wednesday Morning Study Circle; Symposium on Ukrainian Modernism, the Ukrainian Museum (New York); Columbia University Harriman Institute; Shevchenko Scientific Society of America (New York); Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada (Montreal); International Shakespeare Conference (Stratford-upon-Avon); Penn State University, Comparative Literature Brown Bag Lunchtime series; Ukrainian Modernism Symposium, Harvard University; University of Alberta, Ukrainian Studies.

Acknowledgments xvii

It has been a great pleasure once again to work with the wonderful, talented, and efficient team at the University of Toronto Press. Thanks to the unflappable Barbara Porter and to her production team; to John Beadle for his beautiful design work; most particularly, to Richard Ratzlaff, Humanities Editor, for his support, and wise and gentle counsel; and to Ruth Pincoe for her painstaking work on the index. None of this work could have been undertaken without institutional support. For a sabbatical leave during which this project took on a real shape and for financial support, the author expresses her deepest thanks to the University of Ottawa.

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Note to the Reader on Transliteration

This book moves between many different languages – English, French, Russian, Ukrainian, German, Polish, and Italian – a fact which complicates the issue of consistency of spelling and transliteration. For ease of reading, a simplified transliteration system of Slavic names has been used throughout the body of this book (e.g., Anatoly Lunacharsky rather than Anatolii Lunacharskii; Yevgeny, not Evgenii Vakhtangov). The spelling of well-known figures follows common practice (e.g., Meyerhold, not Meierkhol’d; Alexander, not Aleksandr Rodchenko). In the Works Cited and in quoted passages, however, the spelling of all names has been retained as published (e.g., Lounatcharsky, Lunacharskii, or Lunatcharsky, as the case may be).

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APRIL IN PARIS Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo

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Introduction

April in Paris 1925: “as important as the Renaissance”

On 8 November 1925, a great endeavour was brought to a close. After more than six months, the Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, one of the most important and influential artistic events of the twentieth century, saw its final day. Viewing the exhibits for one last time, listening to fanfares, strolling through the gardens, and listening to the musical ensemble of seventy uniformed players of the Préfecture de Police playing popular French airs, visitors entered the Grand Palais to experience the “strange and marvelous dancing” of Josephine Baker and the “ballet Nègre” performed on the steps of the specially constructed enormous staircase. As night approached, for the “ultimate apotheosis” of the expo, bells began to joyously ring out and fireworks exploded, illuminating the sky. Organized under the title of “La Journée des pauvres” (The Day of the Poor), this concluding event was co-sponsored by the largest French daily newspaper of the right wing, L’Intransigeant, with proceeds going to welfare services (“Sur L’esplanade” 362).1 Attracting over fifteen million visitors, the expo had had an ambitious goal: to create a new style which would reflect the great scientific, industrial, and technological advances that had produced a new spirit identified as “modern.” It was also intended to respond to the widespread psycho-social and economic changes that were a consequence of the Great War. Writer and art critic Yvanhoë Rambosson, one of the central figures of the organizing committee, asserted that those present at the 1925 Exposition would come to understand that they had “participated in an upheaval as important as that of the Renaissance” and that the year 1925 would be recognized as “one of the great years of history,” the “point of departure of a new era” (“Conclusion” 363).

4  April in Paris

There are four notable, unique aspects of this Exposition which distinguish it from all other world’s fairs held both before and after. First, this was the only expo ever to take up the targeted goal of the creation of a new, distinctive style. Its remit was thus to display only the innovative in all conceivable aspects of design – from garden pots and letter boxes to architecture and stagecraft. Second, for the first time ever, theatre arts were seriously embraced as a significant, organic part of an international exhibition. Third, the expo offered the USSR one of its first major appearances on the world stage since its formation in 1922, a special opportunity whose import the Soviets well understood and exploited. Last but not least, the Exposition displayed to a broad spectrum of the public a revolution not only in the use of theatre space but also in the whole conception of space and thus, as philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre has reminded us, of society itself. Of all the exhibits on display in Paris, by common consent the Soviet theatre arts were considered the most radical and thus were the most consistently discussed, lauded, and attacked. They were nonetheless regarded as best reflecting the theme of this expo: the nexus of modernism and modernity. Taking Paris and, subsequently, New York, by storm at the International Theatre Exposition (1926), the Soviet displays encountered strong resistance in several quarters, a resistance that frequently centred on their concepts of space and of spatial practices; to many, these represented a clarion call for a revolution both in and beyond the theatre. While the Exposition has received much attention over the past few decades, primarily from scholars of architecture, art, design, and women’s fashion, the part that theatre and theatre arts played in the exhibition have been almost entirely overlooked. (A history of theatre exhibitions remains to be written.) For their part, theatre specialists have tended to focus on the contribution of individuals (notably playwrights and directors) to the development of theatrical modernism. Also still barren terrain is the analysis of the carefully scripted Soviet participation in international exhibitions. This book is intended to begin to address these lacunae as well as broader questions: How do revolutions in the theatre come about? How are “isms” like “modernism” disseminated? What are the processes that lead to their acceptance or rejection by a larger audience? What part do the classics play in such projects of cultural transmission? International and world’s fairs, influential but seemingly ephemeral events, have the unique ability to influence style, help shape canons,

Introduction 5

and affect an extraordinarily wide range of viewers, not just specialists. Because of their six-month duration – much longer than even major sporting events such as the Olympics – and the enormous numbers of visitors they attract, they have throughout their long history had “a profound impact” (Loscertales 2). Some have even argued that “of all events in recent history, only wars have had more dramatic influence than World Expositions upon the expression of civilisation” (Australian World Exposition Project qtd. in Allwood 3). A place of fantasy, wonder, and spectacle, the international fair has a long pedigree and has also spawned many and varied progeny, including amusement and theme parks, reconstructed and fantasy towns and villages. Allowing visitors to experience the whole world in one concentrated place, world’s fairs have brought together huge numbers of people from all walks of life. Between 1851 and 1939, nearly one billion people visited world expositions. As historian Robert W. Rydell points out, “The manifest importance of these events for shaping the modern world, in everything from architecture to patterns of globalization to fundamental matters of human identity, is why their study is so important” (“Foreword” vii). The specific impact of the 1925 Paris Exposition is difficult to overestimate; indeed, historians claim that it was probably the most influential, and certainly the largest, exhibition of design ever held (Luckhurst 173). The sheer number of visitors and the extensive media coverage (radio, newspapers, newsreels, specialized magazines and journals) which it received around the globe brought attention to the new aesthetic, to say nothing of the posters, numerous guides, catalogues, pamphlets, and other publications (including a twelve-volume encyclopedia), as well as associated memorabilia (stamps, picture postcards, souvenirs, and so forth) produced both before, during, and after the Exposition. Official delegations, diplomats, representatives of associations, industrialists, retailers, artists, designers, architects, writers, manufacturers, businessmen, politicians, advertisers, students, tourists, and the ordinary citizen came to Paris to see international examples of the mutually enhancing relationship of art and industry in a time of peace and social reconstruction.2 The Paris expo of decorative and industrial arts became the key event which drew world attention to, and helped disseminate, the syntax of the modernist style or, more accurately, modernist styles, for despite its aim of achieving a single, unifying style, the fair brought forth two broad responses to modernity, synecdoches of two incompatible

6  April in Paris

visions of the world. These were, one the one hand, the luxury, elegance, and conspicuous consumption associated with what we now call Art Deco, most prominently featured in French pavilions and displays (soon embraced around the world),3 and, on the other hand, the austere, functional, overtly propagandistic, and visually aggressive modernism most evident in the Soviet contributions. The Soviet exhibits came to have both an immediate and a long-lasting impact that went far beyond theatre and design: they helped normalize international relations and contributed to the already developing myth of a firm connection between political and artistic revolutions, a myth which has not entirely disappeared today. In various quarters they also seeded the ground for a sympathetic hearing for Soviet art, culture, and politics. Theatre and Space Over the past three decades, theatre studies have taken a decidedly “spatial turn.” Theorists have given penetrating attention to theatres as architectural, physical, and social spaces, not simply as the locus for the production of dramatic texts. Augmenting these, as well as historical and aesthetic studies, are broadly cultural, sociological, anthropological, and political studies that have viewed theatre as an influential institution deeply embedded within social and political structures. Benjamin Wihstutz, for example, has forcefully argued that every production is necessarily linked to a “politics of space”: Each staging of a performance divides the space into observers and those being observed, thus positing a performative space in relation to the public nature of the theatre and therefore at the same time to a societal “outside.” Although every performance is inscribed in a place and space within a specific social order, as an artistic event it can just as well distance itself from this order, reflect it, or even endow it with utopian qualities. (3)

Focusing on architectural space, and the location of theatres within their surrounding structures and neighbourhoods in order to reveal the social and cultural position of the theatre in its community, Marvin Carlson has traced the foundations of interest in space back to Brander Matthews in the USA (A Study of the Drama, 1910) and Max Herrmann in Germany (“The Theatrical Experience of Space,” 1931). These pioneers, he argues, re-oriented theatre studies from a focus on drama to a study of the three-dimensional, spatial reorientation of drama’s staging

Introduction 7

(18). For his part, working both with and against Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopian space, Ludger Schwarte has argued that theatre spaces, including architecture, can “strengthen, open, or transform societies” (131); space has significant performative and political power, bringing together, forming, and or reflecting societies: The political performance of those theatre spaces is not restricted either to a utopian ideal image or a heterotopian mirror image. It must instead be viewed as enabling new concrete modes of perception and experience. A space does more than simply posit a framework, which, as an index of the “here and now,” refers every performance to a cultural context. The tensions between heterogeneous materials (such as those between the space of light and the space of sound), unexpected interventions, conversions, and revolutions also belong to the architectural performance. Space does more than mark the circumstances surrounding performative acts, that is, it is not simply an accessory to their success; in spite of its inadequacies, space is also a performer. (138)

Never simply an empty container or frame, space is neither neutral nor transparent; it is political and strategic (Lefevbre, “Reflections” 170). Following Henri Lefebvre, theatre theorist Gay McAuley has analysed the spectrum of theatre space and its relations to power. Space is “an active agent” that “shapes what goes on within it, emits signals about it to the community at large, and is itself affected … the space of performance provides a context of interpretation for spectators and performers alike” (41). Space invites us to consider questions such as Who? For whom? By whose agency? Why and how? The concept of space also necessarily includes presentational space, that is, the architectural features of the stage, and the organization of this space for a production. Within this space, scenography or décor always functions in a dynamic way, not simply as a backdrop. Although theatrical space has become a topic of productive scholarly inquiry, one particularly salient manifestation, the Paris expo, though a vivid and persuasive example, has not yet been examined in this light, nor has its pioneering influence been recognized. April in Paris: Theatri­ cality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo argues that this expo was one of the seminal moments in the development of the study of space – especially of space’s potential for radical uses, functions, and values. Indeed, as subsequent chapters will show, space was much debated, discussed, even feared, and certainly acknowledged as a key, if

8  April in Paris

not the most important, component of modernism. While Antonin Artaud has often been identified as one of the most significant figures in the development of new thinking about theatre (particularly in his recognition of the function and importance of space, but also of the need to reverse the hierarchical subordination of theatre to the literary), the 1925 Paris show, to which the Soviets made a crucial contribution, brought all those ideas to the forefront and well before Artaud penned his articles in the 1930s. Employing some of Lefebvre’s key terms, such as the interlocking triad of spatial practice (used social space; e.g., particular locations), representations of space (conceptualized space; e.g., pavilions and other structures embedded in a particular spatial context), and representational (lived) space, this study will engage with concepts of space to help illuminate the deeply divided Western responses to the Soviet theatre exhibits and their consequences for a dissemination of theatrical modernism. A combination of fair (amusement, commerce), exhibition (display, education), and show (“theatre”), expos are complex entities that require multi-vectored approaches of analysis. April in Paris turns the spotlight on the cultural politics of space at the Paris Exposition: the used space of the expo in the heart of the city of Paris; the representational space of the model Theatre of the expo; conceptual space as ­revealed in the Soviet pavilion, and in the displays of theatre arts at the Paris and, later, at the 1926 New York exhibition. As Lefebvre explains, representational space is “alive: it speaks.” It has an “affective kernel” or centre such as a building, house, square, church, or graveyard. “It embraces the loci of passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus immediately implies time. Consequently it may be qualified in various ways: it may be directional, situational or relational, because it is essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic” (Lefebvre, Production 42). The affective kernel of the core of Paris will be examined from this perspective. The city’s pre-existing traditional buildings, representing the past, framed the “action” of the expo and were in active tension with the thematic space of the expo that aimed to display representations of a modernist future. The expo’s pavilions modified, interrogated, and sometimes clashed with the space of the city centre, projecting a possible new spatial context and texture. The architectural and urban design displays, the reorganized interior of the Grand Palais, the model Theatre, and the extensive theatre arts exhibits proffered representational spaces as symbolic and ideological works, and thus as new ways of conceiving of society.

Introduction 9

Fashion Theory Underpinning the central importance of theories of space to this study will be borrowings from fashion theory. In particular, fashion theory will be used to help answer the question why, if both the French organizers and the various international participants were ostensibly united in their self-conscious intention to embrace a new modernist style, the process of its creation and acceptance was not immediate but, instead, took many decades before it became rooted in theatrical practice. Fashion theory was first articulated in the 1960s by social economist Charles W. King in a challenge to earlier theories (e.g., Thorstein Veblen, Georg Simmel), most extensively developed by George B. ­Sproles, and subsequently nuanced by Christo­pher M. Miller, Shelby H. McIntyre, Murali K. Mantrala, Wilfred Dolfsma, and others. Scholars working in this field define fashion in the broadest possible sense as any culturally endorsed form of expression, material or non-material. Sproles has argued that the fashion “object” may be any stylistic product, innovation, service, or intellectual pursuit; in fact, it may be any non-material phenomenon, including “any behavioral practice or ideological philosophy” or, we may add, “ism” (e.g., modernism, postcolonialism, new historicism, etc.) (Sproles, “Fashion” 464). Concurring with Sproles, other scholars have asserted that fashion cycles operate in all areas of life. Thus, the utility of fashion theory may, deductively, be of use in analysing phenomena well beyond the realm of consumer behaviour; indeed, it may be helpful in outlining changes of cultural and or social significance. As Miller, McIntyre, and Mantrala insist, “To limit fashion to the field of costume and adornment is to have an inadequate idea of the true scope of its occurrence” (142). Sproles contends that fashion should be understood as both an “object” and a process. As object, fashion (whatever its material or nonmaterial nature) usually displays a number of characteristics, of which the following are the most salient for our purposes: 1. It is non-permanent; that is, it must be subject to change, obsolescence, and replacement. 2. Its acceptance must be based on qualities other than utility, including aesthetics, social acceptability, status symbolism, and other psychosocial qualities. 3. It must symbolize the “collective tastes” of social system members who have taken up the fashion “object.” 4. When initially introduced, the fashion object must be perceived

10  April in Paris

as obviously new and novel. This characteristic eventually disappears with time, when the fashion is accepted by a large number of people. 5. The social characteristics of the fashion object (e.g., high social visibility, high ego-involvement) may constitute the critical motivations for the fashion’s acceptance. 6. The fashion object may appear to be newer, more appealing, or otherwise more attractive, as compared to other alternatives. Further, Sproles defines the fashion process as a complex, dynamic mechanism involving a number of stages in which the potential fashion “object” goes from its creation to public presentation and public acceptance. As process, fashion change resembles the life cycle: creation (introduction by “change agents,” that is, innovators or opinion leaders); adoption by fashion leaders who provide social visibility for the new fashion (“social contagion”); growth (increasing acceptance by others through the infiltration of different social networks); maturation (mass use or conformity), and inevitable decline and obsolescence (Sproles 1981). Sproles’s description of the process differs from traditional diffusion processes that are defined by changes brought about and motivated by innovations resulting from functional utility or technical advances. In­ stead, Sproles insists that fashion is a process predominantly (although not exclusively) motivated by social communication and social influence. In his view, collective forces of the mass market are infinitely more powerful than upper class leadership or social competition between classes for symbols (Sproles 1981, 122). In subsequent work, Sproles identified the “frontier topic” of fashion theory as the “perceptual processes by which consumers identify and mentally process the existence of new styles.” Important questions he raises are how much change is tolerated and when is a style perceived as too innovative. Here, he calls upon scholars in perceptual psychology, aesthetics, and information processing theory to add their contributions to his findings (Sproles 1981, 121). The lacuna in this list is politics, an absence made even more odd by the fact that Sproles observes that fashions are diffused within social networks that are composed of like-minded people of a similar or the same social class, and who share similar values, needs, and lifestyles. Although Sproles long ago suggested that fashion theory could have significant implications for the work of “cultural scientists,” to my knowledge no one seems to

Introduction 11

have taken up his challenge. April in Paris will test the fashion diffusion model and its potential utility for cultural studies in a case study in which the organizers of the Paris expo consciously aimed at creating a new, modern style which would be identified with the French, would be disseminated around the globe, and would be accepted by the widest possible audience. Terminology “Expo,” the shortened form of “Exposition,” is the term most frequently employed in this study, although it will also be used interchangeably with other terms such as “exhibition,” “show” and “fair,” not only for stylistic reasons but also because the Exposition shared many of their characteristics.4 The organizers aimed both at commercial ends and at worldwide aesthetic leadership.5 As will be seen, these goals were to be achieved by a deliberately created show displaying the city of Paris and France itself in a sumptuous, glorious, theatrical manner. Many contemporaries also referred to the Paris expo as a world’s fair. Subsequent­ ly, the expo was featured in numerous historical accounts of world’s fairs as well as in encyclopedias and dictionaries – a testament to its far-­reaching importance and to the large number of its international participants. In addition to France and some of its colonies, these included Austria, Belgium, Britain, China, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Den­ mark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the USSR, and Yugoslavia.6 However, three years after the Paris expo and in response to the continuing and unrestrained mania for world’s fairs (initiated in 1851 by London’s “Great Exhibition” and replicated around the globe with increasing frequency thereafter), the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) was created to regulate both their quality and occurrence. Retroactively, the BIE rejected the Paris expo’s claim to being a world’s fair, basing its decision on the fact that the focus on art, design, and industry was more limited than that of other universal and world’s fairs. Origins To contextualize the unique characteristics and highlight the achievements of the 1925 Paris expo (especially its embrace of theatre arts) and because scholarly work on the world’s fair is generally unfamiliar to

12  April in Paris

theatre scholars, its genealogical roots and its most salient features are rehearsed here. World’s fairs have claimed a number of significant eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century ancestors. One point of origin was the Royal Society of Arts exhibitions, first launched in 1761 as a seven-week exhibition of British technological innovations and thereafter offered on an annual basis (Findling and Pelle, “Preface” 5–6). A second was the professional exhibition. Mechanics Institutes’ exhibitions, organized throughout England, were intended to convey scientific principles to working-class people beginning in the 1820s (Findling xvi). In addition to educating visitors, they also appealed to their sense of wonder by including some rare sights: exotic animals and fine arts. As there were no art museums in Britain or North America during this period, these exhibitions served the important function of displaying art in a public space, though this section was small and of secondary importance to the overriding interest in technological innovation.7 It is generally accepted, however, that French exhibitions of various products, initiated by the Marquis d’Avèze and François de Neufchâteau, Minister of the Interior, in 1798 (and maintained into the 1840s) in order to stimulate commerce after the devastating events of the French Revolution,8 offered the British the direct inspiration for the creation of that grand event commonly accepted as launching the tradition of world’s fairs: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, better known as London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Attracting six million visitors, the Exhibition, championed by Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, focused on raw materials, machinery, and manufactures, and also included a fourth, smaller, and less adequately displayed section of fine art (Andia 11). Because the arts were required to display technological innovation in order to be allowed a space in the Crystal Palace, paintings were not shown, although sculptures, not integrally connected to any of the exhibits and serving mostly a decorative function, were scattered throughout the building. The situation changed in 1855, when the French took up the world’s fair, putting their own stamp on it by displaying over 5,000 works of art in the Palais des Beaux-Arts (A. Jackson 68). All subsequent expos were to follow suit. As historian Paul Greenhalgh observes, the French thus “added the final ingredient to the newly established tradition” (Ephemeral 14). Decorative arts, of which theatre arts were considered a part, were judged as “minor” and thus continued to be excluded from all exhibitions until 1892, when they first formed part of a

Introduction 13

specialized, professional exhibition of music and theatre arts in Vienna (Bréon, “L’Exposition internationale” 155).9 Among the many innovations of London’s Great Exhibition was the central fact of its international and therefore comparative (and competitive) nature. Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus and Anne Rasmussen have shown that such a competitive spirit already existed in nineteenth-­ century France, though this was directed at one country only. As they note, the emergence of French industrial exhibitions was explicitly conceived at their point of origin in 1798 as war machines launched against England (“explicitement conçues à leur origine, en 1798, comme des machines de guerre lancées contre l’Angleterre”) (7). For their part, the English regarded the French exhibitions as “nothing more than futile efforts to promote the absurd notion that French products were superior to English ones” (Findling xvi). The 1925 Paris Exposition was no different in conceiving its purpose as an alternative form of warfare. Writing three months before the expo’s opening, French art historian Edmond Claris assured his countrymen that the expo would be a “pacific battle engaging most civilized nations for the triumph of a new style,” one that would live on and forever in the history of Art, just as did the gothic, the art of the Italian Renaissance, that of Louis XV, and the Empire.10 From its earliest beginnings, then, a competitive spirit reigned; it has remained a distinguishing characteristic of all international fairs. In this, as well as in its display of the best achievements of each nation, it resembled the Olympics11 – a movement that also had its roots in the nineteenth century and one with which it shared a number of elements: collaboration, international participation, a Darwinian sense of progress, and the notion of national prestige and pride, particularly of a nation’s history and culture (Schroeder-Gudehus and Rasmussen 7; Ekström 6). Accordingly, one of the paradoxes at the heart of the world’s fair (and of the Olympics) is that it is simultaneously both international and fiercely national in nature. Education was also a key aim of expos, as the Paris organizers affirmed: “Education is at the basis of it all. The Exposition is itself a form of education.”12 By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many expos had begun to take on specific themes; these presented an inventory of past and current achievements in industry and technology; and, most especially, they projected a view of the future. Created by small elites, though involving a vast network of contributors from all walks of life, expositions were successful modes of propaganda that influenced both individuals and societies.13 As we shall see, the 1925 Paris

14  April in Paris

Exposition’s orientation was to the future and would perfectly serve the propagandistic goals of the newly created USSR, with its teleological vision of the inevitable forward march of socialist humanity into a glorious future of great progress and prosperity. In their emphasis on progress, the Soviets echoed the strong idealistic strain that ran through world’s fairs: the belief, or at least frequentlystated claim, that international participation, and thus cooperation, would lead to the improvement of humanity. Peace and progress became the “great mantras” of expositions, even when competition and rivalry were evidently the true catalysts (A. Jackson 14). “More than anything else,” notes Anna Jackson, curator of Expo: International Expo­ sitions 1851–2010 (Victoria and Albert Museum), international expositions were conceived and perceived as the visible manifestation of the notion of progress. They were staged not only to reveal the achievements of the present, but also to suggest that civilization was advancing towards a utopian future. The primary vehicle of the achievement of this goal was technology … linked to Darwinian notions of evolution, making progress an inevitable and unstoppable force for good. Technological progress, it was believed, would transform the world and lead inevitably to social progress and a better life for mankind. (14)

The success of London’s Great Exhibition made it evident that the international exposition was a powerful new medium for conveying complex ideas; in recognition of this fact, fairs began to proliferate, at first mostly in Europe, then, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in the USA, where, despite the absence of an earlier tradition of professional or industrial fairs, they became enormously popular and successful (though more focused on amusement than in their European counterparts). The widespread fashion for expos was also closely connected to industrialization in the Western world, travel, and to imperialist expansion (into Asia, Africa, and Latin America) (Rydell 1984, 8). By the twentieth century, world’s fairs also included the engagement of museums, scientific societies,14 and the corporate and commercial worlds. Indeed, the tentacles of the world’s fair reached deeply into all quarters of the social fabric. Scholars of world’s fairs have shown that the preparations for fairs involved a intricate network of people encompassing, in addition to the obviously required administrators, captains of industry, national and civic leaders, and ordinary citizens, including women and children, who helped prepare exhibits for display, thus

Introduction 15

lending credence to the claim of the Secretary General of the Bureau International des Expositions that “No other human event has the same force of involvement” as the world’s fair, bringing together, as it does, countries, governments, civil society, corporations, and ordinary citizens (Loscertales 1). Extensive interest in world’s fairs was also ensured by a variety of communicative tools. Complementing the use of print media, newsreels, and promotional films helped advertise fairs and their innovations and brought them home to those who did not have the means to travel.15 Symbolic Worlds Frequently described as the world’s universities, international and world’s fairs allowed their spectators to believe that they could, within a certain circumscribed geographical space, visit much of the globe and come away with an idea of the values, sights, and culture of the each participating nation. The influence of expositions is due, in part, to their ability to convey powerful and complex ideas in a comprehensible, visually attractive, and sensorially rich manner. They unite the high and the low, the popular and the scientific, the classical and the modern. Anna Jackson points out a typical example: “At the Paris Exposition of 1900 it was possible, within the space of a day, to view masterpieces of European painting, listen to an orchestra, try out the latest inventions, descend into a mineshaft, walk through ‘Old Paris,’ visit the Swiss alps, travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway Panorama from Moscow to Beijing or take a Tour du Monde …” (81). Simultaneously both spectacular and “realistic” (i.e., suggesting that their displays accurately reflected some external reality of which these were the models or metonyms), international fairs aimed to present the world in a “nutshell.” Writing about Italian fairs, Cristina Della Coletta has suggested that “reality-objects bestowed the pleasure of immediate contact and full disclosure, and through direct observation they evoked the phantasmatic charms of unknown and exotic worlds still brimming with untapped potential and capable of yielding exciting new discoveries” (43). By tradition architecturally flamboyant, if not always innovative, the fair’s pavilions displayed exhibits that presented a unified vision of a particular country, bringing together a range of achievements from different spheres of endeavour into an ideologically coherent “symbolic universe” (Rydell, “Introduction” 2).16 Indeed, as anthropologist Scott A. Lukas argues, the combination of architecture and spatial effects

16  April in Paris

(i.e., unified, organized, thematic spaces) results in the evocation of a sense of “awe, the sublime, mystery, and magic,” and thus has a profound and personal effect on the visitor (396). As multifaceted organisms, expos bear some relationship to museums. They put objects on display, classify, arrange, describe, and thus create a narrative. Anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi has observed that an object “begins to reveal a somewhat different meaning when it is drawn out of its original context and put into a setting that evokes the totality of cultural relations and makes that totality part of its defining frame … Display … is the artistic creation of new sensitivities toward the world” (61). A similar point is made by sociologist Tony Bennett: museums, fairs, and expositions share an “exhibitionary complex.” They both show and tell; that is, they display and present a narrative that is “calculated to embody and communicate specific cultural meanings and values” (6). As will be seen in the chapters that follow, this was especially the case with the Soviet contribution to the 1925 Paris Exposition. New attitudes were created, as both the objects displayed and the architecture of its pavilion metonymically represented the new state, the USSR, as an exciting, forward-looking – not backward, agricultural – entity. Simultaneously, its participation in the expo suggested that, despite revolution, the creation of the USSR had not resulted in complete rupture with old traditions; it continued to be part of the international world of commerce and culture. Over the past two decades, scholars have given the intersections of theatre, museums, and exhibitions prominent attention. Lukas has studied the way in which the world’s fair effectively controls thematic space by “giving a re-created place its three-dimensionality, its performativity, and its corporeality” (399), while theatre scholar Robert Davis has examined the strong interrelationship of the fair with performance traditions of American popular culture. More broadly, museum consultant Elaine Heumann Gurian has suggested that the way in which the organization of exhibitions, with its necessarily collaborative, teambased approach, resembles the creation of theatre. Historians Spencer R. Crew and James E. Sims have pressed the claim of similarity much further, presenting the intriguing idea that the museum exhibition itself may be viewed as a kind of dramatic art that brings together past, present, and future (173). Theatre historian Sylviane Leprun, on the other hand, refers to the Exposition as a type of theatrical installation, “an exceptional space for artistic and commercial exchange in which the

Introduction 17

visitor-spectator will also be an inter-active actor communally solicited by the actions, the performances, of the exhibitors.” She asserts that the success of the Exposition depends largely on “exchange and sharing, on emotion and on questioning, on exoticism and realism ... Because the narrative of the Exposition multiplies spatial confrontations, solicits the gaze and the plurality of the senses, and condenses forms in becoming the living spectacle of the arts of the street” (38).17 Such theoretical approaches to understanding museum culture also offer extremely fruitful avenues for an analysis of the world’s fair, which shares many of these same characteristics. We may consider the expo as being very similar to promenade theatre, in which the ambulatory spectators create their own meaning by the myriad choices that they must make as they traverse the geography of the fair; in effect, they co-create its meaning. In this respect, expositions invite an active rather than passive participation from its visitors. Indeed, exhibitions are places of free choice, where – despite the strongest efforts of the organizers – the visitors decide what they want to see, when, and in what order. While, on the one hand, regarded (and often advertised) as utopian, fantasy worlds – beautiful, ephemeral, and future-oriented – on the other hand, world’s fairs have nonetheless had a long-lasting, even permanent, impact both on their host countries and in some cases on countries around the globe. In addition to the creation of a massive new infrastructure, a number of buildings and structures erected for fairs have not only survived their initial purpose but have become symbols of their cities (most famously, the Eiffel Tower) or have been turned into permanent museums (e.g., in San Francisco).18 The organization of world’s fairs, including experience with crowd control, has had an important effect on the design and layout of amusement parks (Bennett 5); these, in turn, have affected changes to the ordering of displays in museums.19 The exhibits themselves have also been of central and, in some cases, lasting importance: ethnographic, commercial, and technological exhibits from world’s fairs have gone on to becoming the founding collections of museums such as the Smithsonian, the Museum of Man (San Diego), the Commercial Museum (Philadelphia), and others (Rydell, World 31). Encyclopedic endeavours that seemed to function like “an enormous experimental laboratory” (Eco 306), a “platform” for innovation (Loscertales 1), an inventory of achievements, and a mirror of its times

18  April in Paris

(Rydell, “Foreword” vii; Villechenon 122), world’s fairs were a place for dreaming and stirring the imagination. As Mark Jones, former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has pointed out, expos offered new ideas about how to live by presenting new technologies and setting them on the road to acceptance (7). They first introduced the broader public to such innovations as the Ferris Wheel, refrigeration processes, the telephone, the precision revolver, Krupp’s canon, sewing machines, the megaphone, phonograph, steam engine, light bulb, television, and moving sidewalks. Despite awakening spectators’ imaginations and challenging received ideas, expos have also had a darker side, helping to shape visitors’ ideas about race, ideology, gender, progress, and empire. Thus, for example, French colonials from Africa, Asia, and Oceania were presented purely as objects of display, living on the grounds for the duration of the 1900 Paris expo (A. Jackson 75). This literal staging of peoples, which occurred between 1889 and 1914, reminds us that world’s fairs are places of contradictory values, where innovation and idealism clash with hierarchization, exploitation, and propaganda. As theatres of power, expos present nations, their values, and ideas to the world; they distract and amuse, but can also indoctrinate (Greenhalgh, Ephemeral 49). This was a lesson not lost on the leaders of the Soviet state, who carefully prepared for the 1925 Paris expo.20 Lastly in this overview, it is necessary once again to insist on the sheer number of people that visited international fairs. As Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan point out, hundreds of people might attend a concert or performance and several thousand might read a book or magazine, but “millions visited Expos and World’s Fairs, hundreds of thousands saw trade exhibitions and festivals … [presenting] a myriad of opportunities for involvement and connection at the same time. Their influence is, perhaps for the very reason of scale, incalculable” (11). Indeed, as Greenhalgh claims, international expos were “the largest gatherings of people – war or peace – of all time. On both a high and a popular level they ranked amongst the most important events held in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they remain unsurpassed in their scale, opulence and confidence” (Ephemeral 1). Acting as witnesses to their societies’ values, potentialities, complementarities, and crises, expos have offered the opportunity for collective introspection and debate by way of cultural forms that both reveal and mask their contradictions (Villechenon 122).

Introduction 19

Theatrical Modernism In choosing the overarching theme of the conjunction of modernism and modernity for the 1925 Paris Exposition, the French organizers aimed at directly appealing to the emotions and imagination of the spectators and their situatedness in postwar circumstances. They also posed a special challenge to all the participating nations, including themselves, by insisting that historicism was to be avoided and only “the new” was to be exhibited. (As we shall see in subsequent chapters, few actually adhered to these stringent principles.) Pierre Contreau pointed out that such a programmatic obliteration of the past was, in part, a response to the recent world war: For four years the terrible cataclysm had terrorised men, had daunted their souls by destruction both possible and actual, had forced life, for its better protection, into underground shelters, similar to those of our primitive ancestors. The advent of victory annulled these sufferings only on condition that existence should be given a new savour, and that the taste for higher pleasures should be reawakened. The union of artistic research with industrial activity appeared indeed a most attractive programme, and at an epoch when it seemed possible for materialism entirely to spoil our guarded ideas, the time seemed opportune … With the aim of freeing the memory from its former terrors all the past was blotted out, and the programme of work did not permit any inspiration, any adaptation, drawn from the classic productions of historic times. (9)

From the outset, the terms “modern,” “modernism,” and “modernity” sparked debate and controversy about their meaning.21 Circulating “clamorously” at the turn of the twentieth century, “modernism” was a “fighting word, being fraught from the start with strident and contestable claims about the meaning of the experience of history in general and contemporary history in particular,” asserts Vincent Sherry (1). His Cambridge History of Modernism (2017) is framed by the word modernism itself, an indication of the continuing controversy still swirling around the concept. Michael Levenson has declared that modernism is a “conveniently flaccid term” that has been used to cover a range of works and movements “sometimes deeply congruent with one another, and just as often opposed or even contradictory” (3). Similarly, Sean Latham and Gayle Rogers have argued that, in fact, “there is no such

20  April in Paris

thing as modernism – no singular definition capable of bringing order to the diverse multitude of creators, manifestos, practices, and politics that have been variously constellated around this enigmatic term … even for the experimental authors most often associated with it, modernism was a mobile, expansive, and ultimately unsettled concept” (1). Daniel Albright, however, has argued that a possible definition of modernism may be that it is a “testing of the limits of aesthetic construction” [sic] (Albright 5). The organizers of the Paris theatre arts exhibition would have concurred with the recognition of these difficulties in terminology; indeed, they found the number and variety of modernist approaches to art and design bewildering. Inviting the international prime movers to Paris would, they hoped, ultimately result in the substitution of a dizzying number of experimental styles and movements with a single, common standard, a Modern style that would reflect the spirit of the times and would be as recognizable in the future as, say, the Louis XIV style was both in its day and thereafter. Such an attempt to create a distinctive, singular style by means of an international exposition was an unprecedented, ambitious project. It may also be regarded as a call to order, that is, as an attempt to solidify the many experiments that had taken place in previous decades and to move towards rebuilding the world after the destruction caused by the war. Thus, at the same time as it focused on fixing modernism into a single, recognizable style that seemed to gesture towards the future, the expo also paradoxically looked to the past. International in scope, it also confirmed the emotive importance of regionalism and nationalism. Still vastly understudied, theatrical modernism is often subsumed or overshadowed by literary studies of modernism, especially of the Anglo-American variety. Ben Hutchinson’s Modernism and Style (2011) is typical; focusing on poetry and prose, it fails to mention theatre or theatre arts, despite the author’s assertion that “modernist style since Flaubert can be understood in the first instance as performative, in the sense that it enacts its own concerns with the possibilities – but also with the limits – of aesthetic expression” (10). Latham and Rogers’s Modernism: Evolution of an Idea (2015) similarly omits mention of theatre arts, only once using the word “drama” in passing. Peter J. Kalliney correctly argues that “So long as we continue to define modernism and modernity in the same old way … we will keep finding them, roughly, in the same old places and saying many of the same old

Introduction 21

things” (19–20). Despite this cogent observation, Kalliney, like most scholars in the field, privileges a literary lens: “Examining modernism through literary institutions shows both the extent of modernism’s global circulation and the debates for which it has served as a catalyst. Studies of little magazines, independent publishers, literary conferences and festivals, and international prize culture show that modernism developed networks across the world” (119; my emphases). Canadian theatre historian Christopher Innes has perhaps best articulated the anomalous position of modernism in the theatre, refuting the traditional paradigms, chronologies, and narratives of modernism and their Anglo-American focus. As he points out, modernist drama and theatre, launched at the very beginning of the twentieth century, were always international in scope and adhered to a chronology different from that of the literary arts. Modernist principles were diffused later than those in literature (the 1925 Paris Exposition was central to their dissemination) and are still active today; indeed, as Innes suggests, today modernism “has become the norm for drama” (154). The particular nature of theatre – as both a collaborative art and a type of mass medium that must be responsive to its spectators – inevitably shaped a modernism that could not be essentially elitist or narcissist, common descriptors applied to literary high modernists.22 As Jeff Wallace suggests, “If there is one defining characteristic of performative modernism, it may be the tendency towards individual works of collaborative and interdisciplinary originality which combine or baffle” categories such as drama, film, and dance (249). He continues, Modernist innovation in drama was therefore to be wider than linguistic or textual; it became a question of stage, space and apparatus as much as of “the play.” It needed to address the imaginative implications of modern conceptions of time and space, so that the stage itself (and the tradition of the Aristotelian proscenium arch framing the action) could make way for new possibilities of relationship between audience and performance … This newly interactive space could also be more fully dialectical, not only bringing the stage closer to the real everyday world, but also vice versa, revealing the performative and ritualistic aspects of the real and the everyday. (254–5)

While in many respects differing from the literary arts, modernist theatre did share some of its characteristics. One of the pervasive concerns

22  April in Paris

of the modernists was the construction of meaning and, related to this, the question of how to live within a new world view and in the context of new concepts of thought (M. Bell, 16, 10). The “truth value” of realism and verisimilitude, of history and myth, were subjects of debate, while science was regarded not as providing definitive answers but as descriptions of “what happens in given conditions” (M. Bell 11). Paradoxically, “the most sophisticated achievement” of the modernist present was a “return to, or a new appreciation of, the archaic” (M. Bell 20). As subsequent chapters in this book will show, this was precisely the case of theatrical modernism in its turn, or, more accurately, return, to older, more archaic, forms. The focus on genre and technique was another significant area of similarity between theatre and literature, “the recognition that every element of the work is an instrument of its effect and therefore open to technical revision. Nothing was beyond the reach of technical concern … not the shape of a stage, not the choice of a subject, not the status of a rhyme” (Levenson 3). Yet another was the prevailing idea of art in crisis. In the West, the First World War and its consequent social cataclysms provided one view of the world in crisis: dehumanized, fragmented, decadent, destroyed. In the East, a combination of factors inspired a different kind of modernism. The Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, world war, civil war, declarations of independence (e.g., in Ukraine), and, eventually, the creation of the new polity, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922), created the circumstances for a completely different dynamic between modernism and modernity than in the West; it was also necessarily expressed differently. Drawing from other arts, as well as from developments in science and technology, the Soviet theatre arts brought the essential characteristic of modernism – kinetic energy – to the fore and coupled this with the exploration of space and form – experiments which could also be applied to other formats and places. Their revolutionary uses of space and the implications they carried for broader social change were intuited, feared, and sometimes celebrated – if not always understood – by critics and visitors to the Exposition, a place of cultural exchange and debate, of “contact zones” among nations (to use Hispanist Mary Louise Pratt’s term). The varied and profound contribution of the Soviets to the dissemination of the modernist spirit in theatre is still both underestimated and understudied. Their participation in international exhibitions is also almost entirely unstudied.23 April in Paris examines the Paris

Introduction 23

Exposition as, among other things, the locus of deep international (and national) divisions that continued to grow in the decades to come.24 Chapter 1, “Theatricalizing the City: Space, Modernism, and the Paris Expo,” studies the reconfiguration of lived space – its theatricalization – in the twentieth-century festival city: in Paris, in preparation for the international expo, and in the USSR, one of the most significant contributors to the 1925 show. Cities provide a festival’s “language” – its buildings, its streets, its squares – and their configurations shape what is and is not possible. Designed to help France regain its aesthetic and cultural centrality on the world stage, and specifically aimed at creating a new style and a new standard of design for the twentieth century, the Paris Exposition was significantly located at the heart of the city, its traditional monuments and buildings framing the pavilions, many of which focused on the new concepts of display, publicity, and consumption, and employing the latest technology of sensation: electrical lighting. The space of the 1925 expo was thus alive to and redolent of France’s past glories; through its temporary structures, it also looked to the future. The dynamic and conflicting relationships of its spaces reflected many of the tensions and contradictions involved in France’s attitude to modernism and its relation to modernity. Electricity was also one of the ways of theatricalizing the Soviet city and signalling its post-revolutionary rapid embrace of industrialization. One among the many participants in the expo, the fledgling USSR had, for some years already, taken on the slogan “Theatricalize Life!” In Moscow and Petrograd, during mass and other festivals, monuments, squares, streets, and buildings – markers of the old tsarist regime – were disguised or toppled. Such a re-conception of city space was intended to signal the creation of a new society. Although merely temporary transfigurations of the city, radical decorative displays created by avant-garde artists were nonetheless both a means of driving home the message of the Revolution and a signal of the desire for different kinds of permanent spaces. However, since the impoverished state of the post-revolution and postwar economy prevented the immediate overhaul of urban and architectural spaces, in the interim the theatre served as a laboratory for experiments in the re-imagining of space. On display at the Paris show, the Soviet theatre arts, as well as their austere pavilion, garnered the most attention, particularly for the radical way in which space was employed. By conceptually linking art, space, life, and industry, the USSR considered itself – not France – poised to

24  April in Paris

become the natural leader – the change agent – of a fair as felicitously and aptly titled (indeed, almost tailor-made) for Soviet purposes as the Exposition des arts décoratifs modernes et industriels. Chapter 2, “April in Paris 1925: Staging the New Spirit,” examines the 1925 international exhibition as designed to be a symbolic turning point in France’s recovery from the consequences of the Great War through the staging of a glorious revival before a worldwide audience. Innovative and daring in focusing an exposition on all aspects of design and in taking as its theme the nexus of modernism and modernity, the organizers of the Paris expo were confident that no other country but France would become the change agent that would give birth to a new style to reflect the new spirit. That spirit, brought about by a vast range of scientific and technological changes, had yet to find its aesthetic objective correlative. While, for the past quarter century, the world had been filled with new ideas, theories, and all kinds of technological and scientific advances that sharply accelerated the activities of daily life, people continued to be surrounded by urban and domestic spaces dominated by the styles of the past. The Paris show was intended to rectify this disjunction by focusing on a revolution in art and design that would finally bring the aesthetic in line with the scientific and technological. While calling for another Renaissance, France was, nonetheless, deeply wedded to tradition, as the long, drawn-out preparations for the expo revealed: heated debates about the concept and value of modernism, the nature of art, and the influence of foreign aesthetics continued both before and during the final run of the fair. Such strains were also punctuated by other, expressed concerns about their commercial rivals, particularly the British, who (while uninterested in modernism), were like the French in focusing on reviving their postwar economies through the medium of an international exhibition – traditionally competitive ground for a display of national identity, power, prestige, and authority. Among the many “firsts” at the Paris expo was the embrace of theatre arts. Here, the idea of modernism and its relation to modernity was subjected to particular stress, debate, and critique. The positive rhetoric of the organizers and their intention to bring theatrical change agents to Paris were contradicted by the ultimate decision to separate out the theatre arts exhibits, the model Theatre, and the monumental theatricalized space of the newly reconfigured Grand Palais. In the last of these, traditional pageants and fêtes were played out, modernized only by the technology of lighting.

Introduction 25

Chapter 3, “Conquering Space: The Soviets in Paris,” focuses on the Soviet preparations for the Paris show and the USSR’s understanding of the place of arts and culture in the service of diplomacy, trade, and propaganda. Belatedly invited to the Exposition, the Soviets nonetheless seized the opportunity to present an impressive display in order to influence opinion about the validity, viability, and dynamism of the new polity. The narrative that the exhibits communicated was that of a forward-looking state whose innovations, power, and creativity were mirrored by its art and culture. Simultaneously emphasizing novelty and continuity, friendly ties and aggression, they strategically played to the conformity of social systems with a savvy use of marketing, communications, and well-publicized visits by key officials. The USSR pavilion, designed by Konstantin Melnikov and taking up prime space originally intended for the USA, was one of the few buildings that adhered to the French organizers’ demands for a modernist new aesthetic. Intended as a volley against Western luxury and subsequently raising a storm of debate, the pavilion nonetheless employed a “shop-window” strategy similar to that of the opulent boutiques and pavilions.25 While garnering much scholarly attention in later decades, it was not the only or first object exhibited to offer an insight into the new Soviet state; this achievement was to fall to the Soviet theatre arts exhibits. Chapter 4, “Great Expectations: Space and Theatre Arts,” examines the intent of the organizers of Classe 25, Theatre Arts, to display and test the full panoply of ideas about theatre that had been developing over the past two decades by theorists and practitioners from across Western and Eastern Europe. Excited by this first-ever entry of theatre and theatre arts into an organic relationship with an international fair, the organizers planned both the creation of a model theatre and a display of theatre arts. Auguste and Gustave Perret, assisted by André Granet, created the expo’s Theatre that was to serve as a giant maquette or “laboratory” on which the most recent theatrical approaches, presented by change agents – prominent French, British, and European companies – could be tested. Perret’s innovative tripartite stage, electrical lighting gallery, and swiveling seating created a sensation. But French attachment to passéisme, a nostalgia for the past, prevented the embrace of modernist and avant-garde experimentation. Commandeered by the upper echelon of the expo’s organizers, The Theatre, with its innovative stage space, did not live up to its intended promise. Instead, with few exceptions, amateur, regional, and old-fashioned productions and performances dominated. Despite its advances in theatre architecture, The

26  April in Paris

Theatre would be dismantled at the end of the Exposition and its leading-edge design and effort to re-think theatrical space would not be followed up for many decades to come. The French theatre arts exhibits, meant to complement the theatre research carried out on the boards, met a similar fate. Meager in number, they were poorly displayed. As a result and by contrast, the strategically prepared displays of the Soviets had an especially potent impact on the visitors to the Exposition. Chapter 5, “Trial by Space: Incarnating the Revolution,” focuses on the Soviet theatre arts, their achievements, and, especially, their reception. It argues that the Paris Exposition presented a dramatic moment on the world stage in which ideologies and concepts of society were fundamentally put into question by their very different representations, uses, and concepts of space. Tradition and revolution sparred with each other on the field of stagecraft; yet, while opposed, the two were also linked in their struggle. The theatre became the experimental forum for their agon. Of all the exhibits, that of the Soviet theatre arts was deemed the most radical and most modern. The designs of artists such Alexandra Exter, Vadym Meller, Isaak Rabinovich, and Liubov Popova ignited deeply divided opinions and anxiety, and elicited much commentary from the French, British, and Americans, particularly in contrast to the more reassuring, traditional designs, such as those presented by the Maddermarket Theatre. Yet, despite the controversy, the Soviet exhibits were nonetheless understood to have re-introduced theatricality, dynamism, and movement – some of the fundamental characteristics of modernity – into the theatre. Yoking together art, industry, and everyday life in their re-conceptions of space, the Soviets were convinced that they would become the world’s leading change agents in the creation of a new style that would sweep the world; but, for that to occur, an even wider dissemination of their ideas would be required. Chapter 6, “Battling Traditional Space: Bringing Modernism from Paris to New York,” focuses on one of the first and most important consequences of the Paris theatre arts exhibits: their transfer to New York as part of the International Theatre Exposition, then the largest such exhibition in the world. At the initiative and with the support of Jane Heap, influential editor of The Little Review, Austrian architect and designer Friedrich Kiesler brought the whole foreign theatre arts exhibits of the expo, over 1,500 items, to the USA, giving Americans their first extensive glimpse into the experiments that had taken place on the stages of Europe and the USSR over the previous two decades. Augmented by hundreds of American designs, the expo was intended to overturn the

Introduction 27

impression that America was unreceptive to modernism. As they had in Paris, in New York the Soviet Constructivist exhibits attracted the most attention and debate. They also deeply influenced left-wing intellectuals, scenographers, and playwrights. For those outside these circles, however, the radical “naked” stage, with its multiple levels and mechanical constructions, aroused fears and anxieties about bolshevism inside and outside the theatre. Chapter 7, “Transformative Space: Into the Future,” concludes this study by briefly assessing the impact and effectiveness of the Paris exhibition as a catalyst for change. The fair re-established France as the centre of elegance in design. In that respect, it both influenced the ­appearance of future international exhibitions and had an immediate effect on design around the world. It was also directly responsible for an expanding, broad interest in everything related to theatre arts and spawned numerous theatre arts-related exhibitions in Europe and elsewhere. These expositions continued to show that the Soviets were adept and effective contributors to the international scene. Their theatre arts exhibits in particular accelerated the debate about the role and function of theatre in postwar and post-revolutionary societies. The Paris and New York expos also acted as catalysts to other nations for a thorough review of the state of their own art and design, including the USA, Germany, and Britain. The New York show in particular marked the beginning of the third stage of fashion diffusion: its further social acceptance, achieved by infiltrating different social networks through a process of social contagion. And yet the Soviet practices failed to achieve Sproles’s fourth stage of fashion diffusion – frequent and visible use by many people – until nearly fifty years later. This chapter traces some of the reasons for the belated acceptance of new concepts and functions of space. From the latter half of the twentieth century, the modernist stage with its simplicity, angularity, and economy of means – but shorn of its revolutionary message – became one of the dominant, if not the default, method of organizing stage space. France’s 1925 goal of creating a new style finally, though belatedly, was achieved.

Chapter One

Theatricalizing the City: Space, Modernism, and the Paris Expo

April in Paris, this is a feeling That no one can ever reprise…. (Duke/Harburg)

Paris Visible at night from as far away as the English Channel, a red flare topping the Eiffel Tower enticed visitors to come and experience one of the most important and influential artistic events of the twentieth century. Between April and November 1925, over fifteen million paying visitors heeded the siren call from “the largest sky sign in the world” urging them to visit the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, whose shortened title would, later in the century, retrospectively provide the name for a style that we now call Art Deco (“Eiffel” XX7).1 The Paris exhibition was organized with the intention of restoring France to the centre of spheres of influence in the artistic and fashion world, and of drawing attention to the mutually enhancing relationship of art and industry in a time of peace and social reconstruction. The Eiffel Tower, the once much-debated iron structure created for the 1889 World’s Fair but now an icon of the city, was costumed in one of the great markers of modern technological achievement: electricity. “Was not electricity the symbol of the perfect union of beauty and modernity”– rhetorically inquired the Ministry of Commerce, Labor, and Fine Arts – and thus a fitting and large part of the Paris show that examined the juncture of modernism and modernity? (qtd. in Bonnefoy 54–5).2 In

Theatricalizing the City 29

Figure 1.1  Exposition poster. Design: Robert Bonfils. Paris: 1925.

30  April in Paris

huge letters spanning twenty to twenty-five metres, over 200,000 electric lamps illuminated in six different colours forming different patterns and connected by thirty-five miles of wire, proclaimed the source of the Tower’s energy: a plant expressly built for this purpose by Citroën, the automobile manufacturer.3 It was the first time that the Tower was used as a medium for publicity (“France” RPA5).4 Publicité – advertising and display, one of the characteristics of modernity – was also necessarily one of the major features of this expo.5 With a more precise and narrower theme than the last universal exposition held in Paris in 1900, the 1925 fair proved to have a far greater global resonance, influencing style throughout Europe, China, Japan, Australia, and North America for many decades to come. Indeed, in terms of stylistic influence, it was the most influential international fair ever held.6 It became the key event which drew world attention to, and disseminated, the syntax of modernism by displaying objects from all aspects of daily life, from letterboxes and garden urns to architecture, fashion, jewellery, china, books, film, photography, toys, furniture, and theatre design. Journalist Edmond Claris boasted that, more than mere display, the expo would affirm the “ennoblement of the surroundings and accessories of everyday modern life, individual and collective, in all its domains.”7 An avid promoter of the Exposition, architect HenriMarcel Magne excitedly explained that the expo was a necessity; it would join together art, industry, and science in a collaborative effort that would respond to a world animated by the modern spirit – the result of an evolution in ideas and mores, scientific discoveries, new materials, and technological progress.8 Writing for an American audience, Helen Appleton Read insisted that With the Expositions des Arts Décoratifs a new style is established to take its place with the historic periods. To the Renaissance, the Jacobean, the Georgian, the Rococo and the Colonial is added the Modern. It can no longer be said to be in a state of experimentation representing isolated examples by the more venturesome of the designers. It is a concerted movement representing the fruits of many minds and many years’ experience. For the first time there is revealed to the public the spirit and achievement of the whole modern decorative art movement … (94)

The organization of the expo, the publication of official documents and catalogues, the lively if often heated debates, the extensive discussions in newspapers and magazines, all point to the unparalleled,

Theatricalizing the City 31

Figure 1.2  The Eiffel Tower at night, used for the first time as a tool for advertising. Here, lit up with 200,000 lights to promote the automobile maker Citroën. Photo: Wide World. (Reproduced from Legrand-Chabrier. “Les fêtes.” Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art Vivant. Paris, Librairie Larousse, 1925, p. 138.)

focused ambition to create a new style that would speak to the new age: a Modernism that would respond to modernity. While previous world’s and international fairs also had looked to the future as well as offered a view of past achievements, none had had the single-­minded and overtly articulated emphasis on achieving a very specific goal that would have  repercussions for all aspects of living. What the Paris expo’s

32  April in Paris

organizational plan suggested was both a renaissance and a revolution in cultural thinking for a global community. “Revolution” and “Renais­ sance” are, in fact, two terms that recur as a constant refrain in the official and unofficial documents of the time.9 One of the key organizers, art critic, poet, and Secretary General of the Exposition, Yvanhoë Rambosson, claimed that participants of the expo were witnesses to a transformation as important as that of the Renaissance (“Conclusion” 363).10 In his review essay of the Exposition, the Soviet art critic Yakov Tugendhold observed that “Paris, 1925 is more than Paris, more than the quintessence of France; it is the focus of the whole development of postwar Europe” (“Stil’” 33). Reporting on the expo to his British government, painter and theatre designer George Sheringham called it “one of the events of modern art history” (51). Similar claims were made by legions of contemporary commentators and visitors.11 Like other expos and world’s fairs, this fair aimed to re-evaluate the most significant developments of the recent past – the work of change agents – and to look to the future. Henri Clouzot, curator of the Musée Galliera (formerly the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris), imagined the expo as but a brief but glorious stop on the route of the steam-­ powered Train of Art which cuts through space and time. The Paris “stop” would permit the world to evaluate the distance travelled in the past twenty-five years, a moment when a “sincere examination of our [French] conscience” could take place (Clouzot 214). Mixing the metaphor of Catholic confession with that of the train, one of the great technological achievements of the past century, Clouzot acknowledged France’s hitherto retrograde response to modernity.12 For his part, Rambosson also insisted that, rather than presenting the end point of a series of past achievements, the show would mark the point of departure for a new cycle in the history of art, it being understood that France would take the lead in creating this new style for the new era, a style that would live forever in the annals of the History of Art (“L’Exposition Internationale” 213). The organizers thus conceived of the expo’s goals and its ultimate effects as the result of a complex interrelationship of spatial codes: theatrical, ephemeral, dynamic space looking both backward and directed forward towards a progressive future. In an age of increased means of mechanical reproduction, it was important to come to terms with what Rambosson (and, before him, René Guilleré, president of the Société des artistes décorateurs) regarded as a long-standing rupture between artists and producers. This rupture, with its key question of what constitutes creativity (and, more particularly,

Theatricalizing the City 33

art), needed to be faced head on, even though it had, to some degree, already been confronted much earlier in the past century, when the discovery of photography first provoked this, as well as other, important and related questions, such as the relationships between art, realism, and illusion.13 Industrialization, mass production, new technologies, and uses of materials in new combinations (such as concrete, glass, wood, iron, and steel) required a thoughtful response to these issues, which hitherto had been of lesser concern in France. As The New York Times then pointed out, until recently, the machine was regarded as the “arch-enemy of the creative spirit,” but, it should be clear, “However produced, beauty is beauty, and there’s an end to it!” Now, the Paris Exposition was “destined to impress this conception upon the popular consciousness” (“Art in Industry” 18).14 France’s great ambition for the expo – to lead the world in creating a new standard of style – was, as has already been noted, in part tempered both by its past and its current context.15 While studiously avoiding mention of the precedent that had already been set by the Italians, the French organizers insisted on novelty at their fair; no historicism, only the new would be displayed. The American press reported with some surprise, “No replica of the art of another generation will be admitted, not even the repetition of classical designs” (“Art in Industry” 18). The works chosen by the Jury d’Admission for the exhibition purportedly had been selected not on the basis of their creators’ previous achievements and reputation, but, rather, based on their adherence to the aims and spirit of the expo. Both young and experienced artists and artisans would be encouraged to display their work. The Paris Exposition would thus bring together innovators of design in order to synthesize and create, through an alchemical mix of “isms” and by way of practical applications, a new standard for the new century. Taking up over seventy-two acres and occupying both temporary pavilions as well as a few existing permanent structures, the Exhibition formed, in effect, a little city within the heart of Paris, with exhibitions spilling out unevenly in a cruciform pattern over both sides of the Seine. The centrality and accessibility of the Exposition’s setting – the core of Paris – was the best indicator of its importance, and one way of ensuring its success. It was also a location loaded with symbolic freight. The main vertical axis of the expo’s site plan was anchored on the north side of the Seine by Les Invalides – a monument to those who sacrificed their lives for France, as well as the final, majestic resting place of Napoleon – and, on the south, by the opulent Grand Palais and Petit

34  April in Paris

Palais, created for the Paris 1900 Exposition, one of the largest and most successful fairs in history. Linking these historic structures together was the ornate Alexandre III bridge. On the horizontal axis, the expo stretched out along both sides of the river, along the Cours la Reine to the West as far as the Alma bridge commemorating the British-French defeat of Russia in 1854; to the East, along the Quai d’Orsay towards the Place de la Concorde, replete with fountains and statuary, reminders both of the grandeur of the Ancien Régime and of revolution. Read as a thematic space, this heartland of Paris offered a powerful narrative of history, tradition, and patrimony. The future-oriented 1925 expo was thus contained and rooted within the framework of France’s grand history, its traditions of spatial practices and collective memory. Connecting iconic buildings to the fair’s temporary, fanciful structures, this central space also implied that the heart of Paris was the centre of civilization, the place not only of past greatness but also, now, the place of the most advanced and progressive ideas in the world.16 Here, a new style would be born out of a representational space that linked past, present, and future. Space and time were re-imagined and reconfigured, since (as Henri Lefebvre has reminded us), space is “alive”: “It embraces the loci of passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus immediately implies time” (Production 42). The insertion of this international exposition into the historic core of Paris both played with and modified the city’s “spatial textures” (Lefebvre’s term) by putting into dynamic “conversation” the ephemeral, fanciful architectural constructs, artificial illuminations, and temporary monuments that spoke of a possible future, with its spatial context of symbolic historic monuments that spoke of a resonant past. In re-imagining this space, the French hosts put a great deal of effort into what Anna Jackson has termed “sensation” (99). Like the Eiffel Tower garbed in its new, luminous clothes, the centre of Paris was similarly transformed by the insertion into the cityscape of a fairyland of elegant boutiques, pavilions, kiosks, and other structures that blurred the boundaries between “real” Paris and its newly donned ephemeral self. The ornate Alexandre III bridge was barely recognizable; on both sides, it was costumed as a street of elegant boutiques with seductive large store-front windows innovatively exhibiting a great variety of luxury goods.17 Jets of water, illuminated with different colours at night, cascaded from the bridge’s edges into the Seine to create one of the many magnificent signature fountain displays of the expo. Exotic-looking pavilions,

Figure 1.3  Map of the Exposition indicating the location of the pavilions, boutiques, restaurants, and other services. Catalogue général officiel: Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris, avril–octobre 1925. Ministère du Commerce et de L’Industrie des Postes et des Télégraphes. Paris: Vaugirard.

36  April in Paris

Figure 1.4  Alexandre III bridge with boutiques and the dome of the Grand Palais in the background. Contemporary postcard. (A. Papeghin, Paris-Tours.)

gardens, and sculptures further masked the city. Even the trees in the gardens were lit up with electric lights. According to André Rigaud, the whole Exposition was illuminated with the equivalent of 300,000 candles (655). For those with some familiarity with Paris, the city resembled a theatrical mise-en-scène, an extraordinary locus for the spectator’s interaction with spaces that were simultaneously familiar, strange, and new. The theatricality of the expo was further underscored by the fact that the pavilions were all temporary structures that would be demolished when the fair ended. The huge crowds of visitors seemed to be participants at a theatre rehearsal or at a music hall, except that the décor was “epic” (LegrandChabrier 136). For many, noted Read, [T]he first impression of the Exposition is startling. Passing through the silver obelisk-like towers of the Porte d’Honneur one comes at once upon a cubist dream city or the projection of a possible city in Mars, arisen overnight in the heart of Paris, its unlikeness to any hitherto known architecture enhanced by its proximity to such traditional structures as the

Theatricalizing the City 37

Figure 1.5  General view of the Exposition from the Esplanade des Invalides. Contemporary postcard. (A. Papeghin, Paris-Tours.)

venerable grey facade of the Louvre, the tarnished grandeur of Les Inva­ lides and the fast-mellowing floridity of the Grand Palais, permanent ­memorial to the exposition of 1900. (96)

Just as in the theatre, Paris – re-staged and costumed in new apparel – played with “the possibilities of revelation, with the relationship between the shown and the not-shown, the shown and the partially shown.” One of the most important means of this “hiding/revealing dialectic” was created by artificial lighting (McAuley 75). The Seine was transformed and re-animated, not only by illuminated fountains which magically arose at night in its midst, but also by yachts and barges metamorphosed into floating restaurants, nightclubs, and dance halls (Magne 22). Contemporary commentators frequently resorted to theatrical imagery – especially that of lighting and staging – to describe the expo’s wonders (Gronberg, “Cascades” 12; Leprun 38). The transformed space, with its combination of exotic architecture, spatial and lighting effects, created a sense of mystery and magic. Everything was done with the intent to enthrall. As historian Philip

38  April in Paris

Whalen has noted, this expo “amused, dazzled, and overwhelmed visitors’ aesthetic sensibilities with obtrusive radiance, extravagant luxury, cheeky sumptuousness, and occasional austerity” (237). Recollect­ing the Exposition fifty years later, British architect Frank Scarlett and artist-­ designer Marjorie Townley lovingly described the changes wrought on the city centre. They also alluded to the power of its representational spaces, its iconic buildings or what Henri Lefebvre called “affective kernels” (Production, 42) that butted against modernist intrusions and reminders of colonial “Others” located at the margins of the expo’s spaces: The site gave the Exhibition incomparable advantages. The Grand Palais, its  interior transformed and amplified, the trees and existing classical buildings of the Cours La Reine formed a suitable backcloth to the national pavilions. The bridge and the river with its quais [sic] by night and day gave a focus and spread the brightness of La Ville Lumière, while the dominating Dôme des Invalides was a reminder of the traditions and heart of Paris when Paris was the heart of the world. From the Porte d’Honneur, the national pavilions spread along the river frontages to the left and to the right. The British Pavilion shared with the Italian the most honorable position on the right of the main entrance … On this side also was the Russian [Soviet] Pavilion. Although disparaged at the time, it was, perhaps, the most original creation of all and only recently has received belated approbation. Tucked away in a far corner was the Pavilion de l’Ésprit Nouveau … In this area was also built a number of French colonial pavilions … The river frontage was developed with restaurants and cafes on the upper level and barges moored to the lower quays. (Scarlett and Townley 10–11)

By 1925, electric lighting had not only been firmly established as “a new symbol of the emergent modern world” but also as an expected and much-anticipated sensational feature of all fairs (Jakle 56). André Rigaud, who, as a self-identified flâneur, regularly reported on the Exposition, took great pleasure in describing the “ecstatic” nighttime crowds that continued to gather along the Alexandre III bridge, as may be seen in contemporary postcards (see Figs 1.6 and 1.7). People were hypnotized by Paris’s aquatic fireworks, including by the luminous fountain, whose continuously changing colours and forms resembled a “liquid fuse, sparkling like a powder of jewels.” Although the moon itself shone brightly, Rigaud proudly commented that it was unable to match the fountain’s enchanting effect: it could not change colour (655).18 (See Plate 1.)

Theatricalizing the City 39

Figure 1.6  Spectators lining the Alexandre III bridge and the banks of the Seine watching the aquatic illuminations. The British pavilion is in the distance. Contemporary postcard. Photo: Henri Manuel. (Éditions Henri Manuel, Paris.)

In de-familiarizing and heightening the importance of familiar landmarks of the city, such as the Eiffel Tower, fountains, and the bridge of the Seine, artificial lighting – arc lamps, spotlights, floodlights, and individual lights – contributed to the theatricalization of the city and to the extension, re-ordering, and re-conceiving of space and its uses. By editing out the unimportant and the ugly, that is, by leaving these in obscurity, the sense of the magical night-time city was heightened as a distinctive space, a theatre stage “on which the drama of life was made to play out as spectacle” (Jakle 141). Paris became a theatre, a stage where illuminated windows, fountains, buildings, and bridges created a fantasy world in which passersby were both audience and actors. Time, as well as space, was transformed by artificial illumination. Night, turned into day, made possible the crowds that could participate on a wide and fairly democratic scale in viewing with amazement the technological wonders of the modern age. Creating a festive atmosphere, electric lighting, used to such spectacular, orchestrated purposes, united the participants in their sense of national pride at their

40  April in Paris

Figure 1.7  Crowds of spectators watch with fascination the cascades of water. Contemporary postcard. (Édition d’Art YVON, Neuilly-Paris.)

country’s technological achievement, the aesthetic beauty of its deployment, and the awe-inspiring magnitude of its extensive use. Rejoicing in France’s attainments, Rigaud claimed that Americans could only “dream of what could be done with Niagara Falls” (655).19 The presence of the dazzling element of engineered, artificial illumination was an essential feature of successful fairs. As David E. Nye has pointed out, “After 1881 all fairs emphasized dramatic lighting and many made illuminated towers their symbols … Electricity became more than the theme for a major exhibit building; it provided a visible correlative for the ideology of progress” (Nye 35). Paris had long been in the vanguard of the exploration of the technology of artificial lighting. No longer a complete novelty in 1925, electricity was, however, used to a new purpose, publicité, which embraced the idea not only of the Eiffel Tower, but also of the whole city as a “shop-window,” revealing its wares within an enchanting presentation of illusions. As Wolfgang Schivelbusch has observed, “Any artificially lit area out of doors is experienced as an interior because it is marked off from the surrounding darkness as if by walls, which run along the edges of the

Theatricalizing the City 41

lit up area” (148). Connecting the theatrical to the city, we may concur with his terse assertion: “In the dark, light is life” (221). The theatrical metaphors employed to describe urban lighting were entirely appropriate, since theatres were among the earliest users of electricity.20 Already in the 1880s the Swiss stage designer and theorist Adolphe Appia and the American theatrical director David Belasco had worked with electric lighting, adapting projectors and spotlights to create atmospheric moods and to fully reveal actors who could now move all around the stage without disappearing into the darkness. Light changed and activated space. The flat, painted backdrops, however beautiful, of traditional stages now looked odd and unconvincing; they contrasted unfavourably with the actors’ three-dimensionality. Flexible and creative use of light transformed the theatre: the primacy of language began to wane and be replaced with a fascination with stagecraft (Nye 48). The organizers of the 1925 Paris expo well understood the intertwined concepts of theatre, city, modernism, and lighting. In preparing for the fair, regulations were created for thirty-seven types of “classes”­ or exhibits that were, in turn, divided into five broad categories: Archi­ tecture, Furniture, Clothing, Arts of the Street (Theatre, Gardens, Urban Design), and Training (Enseignement). The fourth category, Arts of the Street, reflected the new thinking about space and spatial practices, and, more particularly, referenced the novelty of a recently created discipline, urban planning.21 In addition to the display of the designs of town planners, including projects for the circulation of traffic, posters (and publicity more generally), gardens, public festivals and parades, illuminations of cities formed part of this broad category. Here, the attempt to reconfigure representations of space (conceived space, in Lefebvre’s terms) was most obviously in evidence. One final but important point needs to be stressed. If, across the Atlantic, a giant replica of the Liberty Bell covered with 26,000 electric incandescent bulbs shone out proclaiming the theme of democracy at the 1925 Sesquicentennial Exposition of Philadelphia (Jakle 161–2), in contrast, in Paris the Eiffel Tower proudly proclaimed the commercial source of its energy, Citroën. Commerce, made possible by electricity, offered a new concept of the modern city. Since the mid-nineteenth century, it had become possible to produce huge sheets of glass, thus ­allowing shop-fronts to present their goods in an entirely new way. In combination with lighting effects, including the illumination of individual objects to heighten their importance, the shop-window display

42  April in Paris

Figure 1.8  Spotlight illuminations theatricalizing the Alexandre III bridge and its boutiques. Photo: Manuel Frères. (From Henri Clouzot, “L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs à la vol d’oiseau,” La Renaissance de l’art français et des industries de luxe. May 1925, p. 203. Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France.)

Figure 1.9  The “street” of boutiques on the Alexandre III bridge with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Maurice Dufrène, architect. Contemporary postcard. (Jungmann et Cie.)

Theatricalizing the City 43

began to resemble the stage (Schivelbusch 148), a resemblance magnified by the introduction of life-like shop-window mannequins in the 1910s. Three-dimensional space, the stage, the street, and the shop-­ window came into dynamic – and sometimes conflicting – relations, nowhere more so than at the 1925 Paris expo. Bringing together “diverse commodities in the context of spectacle and entertainment,” Paris served as a shop window for objects as well as for the city of Paris itself, a mecca for tourists (Gronberg, “Cascades” 14). Indeed, the double row of fifty-­one boutiques designed by Maurice Dufrêne, situated as they were on the Alexandre III bridge, heralded a new idea of the city: a city dominated by “an avenue of windows” that expanded notions of space: The space defined by the shop window is an unreal space, like that of a Cubist painting: it is situated both in front of the glass (due to the reflection) and beyond it (but here compressed and subject to definite constraints). The objects it contains derive much of their power from the decorativity of their arrangement and the effect of “display”; … the central meaning lies neither before, nor after, but in the “crossing” from one side to the other of the contemplative glance for which this maze of illusions was created. (Bouillon 163)

Moscow and Petrograd On the other side of Europe, Soviet satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko opened one of his short stories from 1925 with the leading question: “What is the most up-to-date word these days, fellows, huh?” and answered, “These days the most absolutely up-to-date word is, of course, electrification” (141). If electricity marked out a new sense of urban space in the Western world, in the East electricity similarly featured as a much-­ touted synecdoche of progress. Lenin’s famous and oft-repeated formula, “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the entire country” (qtd. in Zheltova 151), reflected his utopian dream of the complete electrification of the Soviet state. It was an idea that he would vigorously promote, beginning with the creation of a State Commis­sion for the Electrification of Russia (GOELRO). Electrification was linked to the idea of enlightenment – that is, to the idea of an escape from backwardness and ignorance; it was expected literally to light up people’s lives, alter their domestic and work spaces and therefore their minds; it would, in other words, change perceived space. Connecting villages with cities, electrification would, moreover, change the whole nature of landscape

44  April in Paris

and concepts of the State. Encouraged by Lenin, party activists were sent across the USSR to deliver passionate speeches about electrification, production, and manufacturing. Public festivities, such as “Days of Electrification,” further spread the word. With this early politicization of electrification, “communist power was portrayed as a miraculous apparition … a harbinger of a future bright life” (Zheltova 155).22 Similarly, the machine was much admired. Upon signing the treaty to end the war with Germany, Lenin noted: The war taught us much, not only that people suffered, but especially the fact that those who have the best technology, organization, discipline and the best machines emerge on top; it is this the war has taught us, and it is a good thing it has taught us. It is essential to learn that without machines, without discipline, it is impossible to live in modern society. It is necessary to master the highest technology or be crushed. (Lenin, Polnoe sobranie, vol. 26, 116, qtd. Bailes 49)

In these early Soviet years, urban space was deliberately reconfigured not just to represent, or reflect, but to create the new society: “Theatricalize Life!” was a recurring slogan. To influence the people and to turn them into proletarians, the Bolsheviks believed that art should be brought out into the street, the workplace, and the factory – that is, to the most accessible places possible to the greatest numbers of citizens. Harnessing the affective power of art to that of electricity was essential to the revolution. Lenin set out a three-part plan to achieve a re-conception of public space. Old markers of public space, such as churches, monuments, and statues that reflected the values and ideologies of pre-revolutionary society, were to be destroyed and replaced by new ones that would signal revolutionary change. Streets, squares, and bridges (later, villages and cities) were to be renamed, while monuments to the tsars and their officials were to be leveled and replaced by those of heroes of the Revolution. The “Great Upheaval”23 – massive social, political, and cultural transformation – was to be evident in the way in which space was reconfigured; in turn, these new spatial markers and symbols would create new spatial practices by affecting the “psychological precondition for socialist production” (Kachurin 51). Painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin was charged with decorating mass festivals and for carrying out Lenin’s “Plan for Monumental Propagan­da.” Art, education, and ideological training were considered essential to the new state, both in its immediate survival and its long-term existence.

Theatricalizing the City 45

Mass festivals celebrating revolutionary and special events (such as the First of May and the Festival of the Machine) were another way in which the Soviet cityscape could be reinterpreted. Inspired by models taken from the French Revolution, and understanding their power to reshape old historical narratives, the Soviets lavished considerable attention and manpower on festivals and mass spectacles.24 Art, brought out of the studios and onto the street, thus aimed to literally engage in what Soviets termed “social construction” (Cooke 99). Festivals shaped the past “into a myth of destiny,” in which the Bolshevik October Revolution stood at its historical apex – thus legitimizing Bolshevik power – and led into a glorious future (von Geldern 12). As Slavic scholar James von Geldern notes, “Time and space could be disintegrated in a festival and then reintegrated. A festival is a recollection, a temporary transcendence of time and space that links past and future. Ideally, it refers back to an experience common to all participants and evokes a time of unity … The past is selected and organized …” (43). Mass festivals at which oversized revolutionary posters and banners adorned, or sometimes hid, buildings and tsarist-age monuments, recostumed the existing spatial markers. Houses and hotels were painted with enormous frescoes and hung with gigantic panels; others were covered with caricatures, mottoes, and quotations (Fülöp-Miller 92). Trains, trams, and wagons, painted with propagandistic images and slogans, were similarly converted into dynamic, moving instruments of propaganda. Budding artists and scene designers, such as Boris Aronson, transformed the facades of buildings as they might film sets (Rich with Aronson, Theatre Art 4). Although merely temporary, these transformations were meant to signal permanent change. Thus, oncefamiliar urban sights that had held potent cultural memories were converted into new spatial messages of radical change and dynamic forward movement. The most notable of these early mass festivals, a celebration of the third anniversary of the October Revolution, was The Storming of the Winter Palace (1920), directed by Nikolai Evreinov. Taking place on the precise location of the actual historical events, this event reframed and re-costumed Petrograd’s city square, turning it, as well as neighbouring streets, into a theatrical vision of the struggle between the “goodies” and the “baddies.” Tens of thousands participated in this “re-creation” of the events of 1905, blurring the distinction between spectator and actor, received myth and reality, past and present. This was literally

46  April in Paris

Figure 1.10  Bolshevik propaganda train. (Reproduced from Harrison E. Salisbury, Russia in Revolution 1900–1930, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1978, p. 222.)

“total theatre”: a performance consisting of 6,000 actors, 500 musicians, and 100,000 spectators – although sometimes it was difficult to distinguish actors from audience, especially since the director used some of the actual participants in the historical events as his actors. A potentially ungainly mass spectacle, the festival was converted into theatre in part by artificial lighting in the form of 150 search lights which sharply distinguished each episode from the other by guiding the spectators’ attention from one scene and stage to another. James von Geldern has made a detailed study of this remarkable event.25 As V. Vladimirov observed in a reversal of the usual Soviet formula, “Art electrifies political-­ enlightenment work among the masses” (12). In confronting the issue of space, the Soviets anticipated the work of Henri Lefebvre, who has argued that

Theatricalizing the City 47 A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential; indeed it has failed in that it has not changed life itself, but has merely changed ideological superstructures, institutions or political apparatuses. A social transformation, to be truly revolutionary in character, must manifest a creative capacity in its effects on daily life, on language and on space – though its impact need not occur at the same rate, or with equal force, in each of these areas. (Production 54)

The Soviets attempted just such a re-conception of space that would braid together Lefebvre’s interrelated conceptual triad of spatial practices (perceived space), representations of space (conceived space), and represented (symbolic) space (Production 33). In these early Soviet years, avant-garde artists were invited to re-imagine the city for mass festivals (as noted above) by disguising markers of the old tsarist regime and signalling the creation of a new society. A city provides a festival’s “language”: its buildings, its streets, squares, and their configurations shape what is possible. In Moscow, for instance, the immense square in front of the Bolshoi Theatre was transformed with colourful panache: trees were spray-painted in lilac, and bushes were covered with muslin of the same color. The grass was given a coat of paint through a fire hose. Hunter’s Row, an outdoor produce and meat market, was also given a face-lift … Covered … with bold geometric designs in bright reds, blues, oranges, and purples. A garland of flags stretched over the row between two masts – a traditional decoration for Russian fairgrounds. (von Geldern 95–6)

In contrast, Petrograd’s imperial grandeur and its central square (Palace Square), so closely associated with autocratic power, rendered revolutionary decorations jarring and unconvincing. Revolutionary symbols could only obtain meaning within an interpretive framework, and through the ideas with which they have been associated; Petrograd’s city core made the task to create a new symbolic space more difficult (von Geldern 74, 90). Although merely temporary transfigurations of the city, radical decorative displays were nonetheless both a means of driving home the message of the revolution and a signal of the desire for different kinds of permanent spaces.26 The perilous state of the postwar, post-­revolutionary economy made any major architectural or other changes to the urban environment nearly impossible to implement in the short term. Streets

48  April in Paris

and squares could be (and were) quickly renamed; old tsarist monuments could be toppled, but the creation of new monuments, buildings, and other symbols required more time and planning. While Soviet artists often proposed or created models of towers, intended to replace church spires and tsarist palace turrets as well as to symbolize the message of progress, most of their plans were never realized (Blazwick 123). One of the best known of these, Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, shown in large model-form at the 1925 Paris expo and often referred to as Tatlin’s Tower, confronted head-on the paradox of celebrating the still-evolving idea of revolution with that of a permanent structure. Intended to house the headquarters of the Third Communist International (COMINTERN), dedicated to world revolution, the Monu­ ment was envisioned as reflecting the dynamism of its ideological centre. Unlike traditional monuments which were “closed,” Tatlin’s model seemed to engage with the cosmos: it was “slated at the angle of the Earth’s axis and incorporated actual movement, like a cosmological clock pointing to the heavens (Lodder, “Vladimir Tatlin” 246). In response to the challenge of creating a monument to a revolution that was still in progress, Tatlin conceived of a dynamic monument that would change with time. Art harnessed to technology in a splendid synthesis was the aim and the “logical extension of the Revolution and a true reflection of the age” (Bowlt, “Russian” 189). Tatlin insisted that, “The modern monument must reflect the social life of the city, the city itself must live in it. Only the rhythm of the metropolis, of factories and machines, together with the organization of the masses, can give the impulse to the new art. Therefore the forms of revolutionary propagandist sculpture must go beyond the representation of the individual, and spring from the spirit of collectivism” (Tatlin, qtd. in Fülöp-Miller 99). Only the machine, with its constant movement and utilitarian purpose, could fulfil such a function. Art critic and a close friend of Tatlin, Nikolai Punin, described this remarkable monument that was intended to be in perpetual motion: These chambers are arranged vertically above one another, and surrounded by various harmonic structures. By means of special machinery they must be kept in perpetual motion, but at different rates of speed. The lowest chamber is cubiform, and turns on its axis once a year; it is to be used for legislative purposes; in the future, conferences of the International and the meetings of congresses and other bodies will be held in it. The chamber above this is pyramidal in shape, and makes one revolution a month;

Theatricalizing the City 49

Figure 1.11  V. Tatlin. Model of the Monument to the Third International on exhibition in Moscow, 1920, with Tatlin in front, holding a pipe. (From Punin, Tatlin Protiv kubizma, 1921; Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism, p. 63.)

50  April in Paris administrative and other executive bodies will hold their meetings there. Finally, the third and highest part of the building will be used chiefly for information and propaganda, that is, as a bureau of information, for newspapers, and also as the place from where brochures and manifestos will be issued. Telegraphs, radio-apparatus, and lanterns for cinematograph performances will be installed … The use of spirals for monumental architecture means an enrichment of the composition. Just as the triangle, as an image of general equilibrium, is the best expression of the Renaissance, so the spiral is the most effective symbol of the modern spirit of the age … the spiral, which, rising from the earth, detaches itself from all animal, earthly, and oppressing interests, forms the purest expression of humanity set free by the Revolution. (Punin, qtd. in Fülöp-Miller xx, 101–2)

Tatlin thus conceived of his Tower as departing significantly from the historical monuments of the tsarist period. Not just a monument, his Tower would also be a building and a major tool of agitational propaganda. With its continuous movement, it would visually express the Bolshevik vision of a new dynamic society that fully embraced the cutting-edge technologies of wireless telegraphy, radio broadcasting, and film. Centrally placed in the Soviet exhibits at the Paris expo, Tatlin’s model of this Tower served its purpose as an exhibition piece and an object for debate. In its spiral form and yet in its resemblance to a megaphone, it reached out to the world and to the cosmos, trumpeting revolution within a new framework of space. In form and function it existed in “a context between architecture, sculpture, and performance” (Ursprung 264). Tatlin’s Tower, like other Soviet projects of the time, was utopian. The problem was that such monuments required extensive planning, money, engineering expertise, and time for their construction. There was another medium that could provide an immediate response to the creation of a new space: the theatre. Indeed, Tatlin himself turned to the theatre in 1923, when he produced Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov’s Zangezi, for which he created the sets, props, costumes, mise-en-scène, and in which he even played the main role. As Linda Schädler points out, with the rise of the director in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, “a fundamental shift” became apparent “in the hierarchy of a theatrical work: the staging or mise-en-scène moved to the forefront, so that the interplay of bodies, spaces, images, sounds, and words became the central focus. The stage was regarded as a site predestined to synthesize the arts, and often described as a total work of art” (272).

Theatricalizing the City 51

The theatre could immediately and fruitfully engage in experiments with the re-imagining of space; moreover, in the early Soviet years, there was an explosion of interest in the theatre, hitherto subject to monopolies and to tsarist censorship. Multiple companies sprang up, and sometimes disappeared, as quickly as mushrooms. Alexander Tairov, Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Nikolai Evreinov, Alexei Granovsky, Les Kurbas, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Sergei Radlov: each of these names represents a different response to the aspirations for a new theatre and a new society. As eyewitness cultural historian René Fülöp-Miller explained, Soviet theatre artists “hoped for the birth of a new style, new forms, and new rhythms” (134). Theatre companies experimented with a variety of approaches intended to dislodge old, staid theatrical practices; indeed, they had done so well before the Bolsheviks took power. Many also understood revolution in theatrical terms: “there was a strongly perceived analogy between theater and revolution; theater lives in a similar emotional atmosphere and draws its energy from the polarities that drive revolution” (von Geldern 62). Returning to the slogan “Theatricalize Life!” we may see that it was in the theatre that the interrelationship between space and life could be profitably and efficiently demonstrated – and tested. Theatre could serve as a laboratory for the investigation of spatial structures, of perceived and represented space, and then as a model for a completely new concept of living space. Among the various experiments, Construc­ tivist architecture was first realized on the stage, where it held important sway. Moving platforms and other principles of Tatlin’s Tower (such as “I” and “T” beams) were introduced into Alexander Tairov’s production of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday during the Kamerny Theatre’s 1922–3 season. Initially developed in 1920 among those who promoted mass drama, Constructivism was intended to have a specific effect on social and cultural consciousness: its use of space was to re-define and re-orient society. Focusing on the creation of a total environment (such as mass festivals, but with a permanent effect), Con­ structivism aimed to create the proper, all-encompassing space for a socialist culture (von Geldern 150). The Paris Exposition offered a unique and early opportunity for the Soviets to share and disseminate their ideas about space, especially through their dynamic theatre designs. Visitors to the Paris Exposition had already been primed to expect the “exotic” from the Russians because of the scandalous pre-war productions of the Ballets Russes, which had brought together into a heady mix the work of contemporary musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy; painters

52  April in Paris

and designers such as Pablo Picasso, Natalia Goncharova, and Alexandre Benois; choreographers such as Michel Fokine and Bronislava Nijinska; and great, charismatic dancers, particularly Vaslav Nijinsky. Soviet art and theatre critic Abram Efros made sure to disabuse the Parisian visitors to the 1925 expo of their outdated assumptions about the Russians by insisting on the new status of the Soviet theatre, one far removed from its old decorative, pictorial traditions: “The West considers Russian theatre as a Sleeping Beauty, dormant and fixed in the past, in the supremacy of Diaghilev. In fact, it has gone through a long stage and even the most retrograde and academic of theatres doesn’t doubt that the Diaghilev époque is long since over. Instead, there is a ‘healthy and lively sense’ that a new Russian art has grown up since the Revolution” (Efros 67). While British and French critics frequently resorted to the trope of a sick patient to describe modernism and modernist theatre, the Soviets styled their modernist theatre as a vigorous, reborn member of the new society. Efros declared: “The theatre incarnated the Revolution, the Revolution raised up the theatre. The theatre offered to the Revolution its directors, artists, its art – the first in all of Europe – and the Revolution gave it a new spectator, a fundamentally new moving spirit, and a new social direction” (71).27 The Soviet theatre strived to bring art, politics, the masses, and the creators into one unified collective. Carrying on a dominant nineteenthcentury Russian tradition, the Bolsheviks believed that culture must be purposeful; it must enlighten and not be mere entertainment. Richard Stites has referred to such a view of the place of culture in society as essentially “ecclesiastical” (38). It is therefore not surprising that its adherents were drawn back in time to medieval theatre, with its concept of eternal time and space; to Shakespeare’s early modern theatre of heightened emotions and moral-ethical issues, as well as to its “minglemangle” of clown and king, high and low, comic and tragic; to the spontaneity of the commedia dell’arte; and to the Greek theatre of ritual and communal engagement. The influence of the German Romantics and Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk also strengthened the roots of the Bolshevik idea of theatre as a communication between stage and audience, and, notably, of the concept of audience as representative of the collective as a whole. As Slavist Lars Kleberg has observed, it was thought that a utopian program for theatre would lead to the restoration of theatre’s central position as an arbiter and leader of significant moral and political authority. Interestingly, one of the key theorists of open-air mass

Theatricalizing the City 53

spectacles, Platon Kerzhentsev, argued for a people’s theatre that would originate from the people themselves. Inspired by the example of the French Revolution and by the ideas developed in Romain Rolland’s book The People’s Theatre, Kerzhentsev also drew from his own experience of having viewed the revival of pageant theatre both in England and in the USA.28 Through the representative auditorium, the audience, the theatre would once again speak to the collective (the nation, the people) and “would stand at the centre of all society” just as it once had in ancient Greece (Kleberg 65). Recalling the exciting, volatile period to which he bore witness, Efros enthused: “There were never such stormy premieres as in these last few years, never discussions as passionate, with masses that bonded the auditors with hoarse orators, with hooting adversaries, with frenetic epithets, with academicians and innovators using pugilistic arguments” (79).29 The elitism of theatre was banished and was to be replaced by a widely shared, democratic experience that drew from popular cultural genres such as the circus, the musical hall, and puppet shows. Bearing in mind these early ideas, it is a great irony that, in reconceiving space, the Bolsheviks’ “most critical innovation” was the tribune, a designated space where the country’s leaders were separated from the people and “marked as primary spectators” (von Geldern 194). In contrast to Paris’s ephemeral expositionary garb – its coloured fountains, electricity, gardens, boutiques, and pavilions – the Soviets’ displays, so the Russians asserted, would be permanently etched in the minds of visitors and, moreover, they would serve as the aspirational models for change elsewhere. Claiming that they, not the French, were the true inheritors of the Revolution of 1789, the Soviets resolutely affirmed that although they had once been “voluntary students” of the West, particularly of France’s plastic arts, their one domain of complete mastery and independent creativity was the theatre, which was “imprinted with the beautiful sensation of liberty” (Efros 68).30 The Soviet utopian vision of the forward-march of socialism into a bright future perfectly dovetailed with the Paris expo’s focus on the nexus of modernity, modernism, and progress, and thus of the necessity to change the conception and representation of space, both on-stage and off. Already in 1922 Soviet scene designer and architect Alexander Vesnin, whose works were displayed at the Paris expo, insisted, “The tempo of modernity is fast, dynamic, and its rhythm is clear, precise, straightlined, mathematical … the contemporary artist must enter into life as

54  April in Paris

an active force, organising the consciousness of the individual, operating upon him psycho-physiologically, arousing an upsurge of energetic activity in him” (98). The machine, like technology as a whole, was regarded as an essential part of the progressive march of socialism. In this respect, it is worth underscoring that Frederick Taylor’s hugely influential 1911 book, The Principles of Scientific Management, was translated and published in Russian in 1924, encouraging a fascination with, if not fetishization of, the machine and the idea of efficiency.31 Thus, by conceptually linking art, space, life, and industry, the USSR considered itself poised to become the natural leader – the change agent – of a fair as felicitously and aptly titled (indeed, almost tailor-made) for Soviet purposes as the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs modernes et industriels.

Chapter Two

April in Paris 1925: Staging the New Spirit

On 28 April 1925, to the sound of guns thundering across the Place de la Concorde and the Jardin des Tuileries, the President of the Republic, Gaston Doumergue, officially opened the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. The New York Times reported that the president was accompanied by various ministers, senators, members of the municipal government, presidents of banks and of academic institutions, diplomats, exhibitors, and other prominent Parisians (“Doumergue”). Two impressively long formal lines of mounted guards were positioned outside the Grand Palais, overseeing the arrival of the 4,000 invited guests, mostly men in frock coats and top hats. Wireless radio was installed to ensure that the grand event was simultaneously experienced by and celebrated with listeners throughout France and all of Europe. Open to the public the following cold spring day and recorded by newsreels for viewers everywhere, the expo attracted, in addition to large official delegations from all around the world, tourists, journalists, artists, designers, architects, manufacturers, captains of industry, museum directors and their staff, retailers, trade commissioners, pedagogues, administrators, students, and curious visitors of all kinds.1 They crowded together, making their way through one of the eighteen monumental specially-created gates for a glimpse of the new art of the new century. In months to come, millions would pass through the same gates. Among the various delegates and representatives whose presence was carefully recorded by day and month were such varied groups as the International Congress of Stenography, the Austrian Intellectual Workers, the Congress of International Free Thought, the Association of Goldsmiths, governors of the Red Cross, the Protestant Churches of America, the American University Student Union, Officers and Officer

56  April in Paris

Designates of the Marine nationale, representatives from high schools in the USA, teachers and pupils from Canada, student groups from England, Belgium, Italy, and many, many others.2 Guillaume Janneau, a director of Mobilier national, underscored the enormous effort that had been undertaken in order to prepare this expo which, for the first time, would reveal to a non-specialist public the “coherent nature of studies pursued since the 1890s; better still, the existence themselves of these studies” in the domain of decorative and applied arts (“Introduction” 17).3 The expo was the “complete expression of a sensibility conditioned by the new psychological stimuli which aspired to ‘fix’ the generation of 1919–1925. The artists themselves have enumerated these stimuli as science itself with its relativism and its enchantment, cinema, electricity, speed” (“Introduction” 132).4 Once again, Helen Read voiced the general reasoning behind the Exposition for her American readers: “We in the twentieth century present the curious anachronism of a people living in the age of the telephone, the radio, the aeroplane and automobile, yet persisting upon Louis XIV or Queen Anne backgrounds.” The magic of radio, electricity, theories of relativity, meant a new Zeitgeist which, in turn, required a “style in harmony with its special ideals and needs” (Part I, 96). Read’s views – and those of the French organizers – were enthusiastically shared by many.5 Yvanhoë Rambosson more assertively claimed that “Our epoch, at last disgusted with living among the bric a brac of the past, determines to construct, to furnish its own house and logically to design the ornamentation of its life. This Exposition is the first effort of willing creators to synchronize tendencies whose differing aims have points in common. I have said ‘the first effort’ for we are but at the dawn of a renaissance which will overturn the world of decoration” (“L’Exposition de 1925” 3). Similar thoughts about the importance of this exposition as marking the dawn of a new age were shared by visitors and observers alike. Harry Wearne, a member of the American ­delegation appointed by the US Secretary of Commerce, wrote to his French hosts, “Regarding the Exhibition, I feel that the ‘Modern’ movement is in the air, and that, thanks to the courage and vision of the Decorative Artists of your great and noble country, we are on the eve of an astonishing awakening” (Wearne). While both foreign and French visitors arrived in great numbers for the opening, in fact many of the pavilions had not yet been completed. The British pavilion did not open its doors until 20 May, the Soviet, on 4 June.6 These were not exceptions. Only France, Sweden, Japan, The

April in Paris 1925 57

Figure 2.1  Visitors to the expo at the entrance to the Jardins de la manufacture de Sèvres. Contemporary postcard. (Édition d’Art YVON, Neuilly-Paris.)

Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Austria opened on time. Writing to his colleagues back in Moscow, the artist, art historian, and museum director Boris Ternovets complained that the French organizers had refused to delay the opening, maliciously speculating that they didn’t want to give up the 2 francs 25 centimes that they collected from each visitor. Ternovets, one of the members of the organizing committee of the Soviet exhibits, is an invaluable source of information about the show. His letters, published articles, and official reports offer a unique window onto the Exposition from someone who knew the city and spoke its language. He had been in Paris in the early 1910s as an art student in the studio of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, where he found himself among other Russian and East European students, including Vadym Meller, who was to garner one of the gold medals at the 1925 Paris show for his maquette of the Berezil Theatre’s production of the Secretary of the Labour Union (incorrectly translated in the expo’s literature as The Professor’s Secretary). Ternovets recorded that hordes of visitors to the Exposition kept coming all day without stop. The head of the Soviet delegation, Petr Kogan, President of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian SSR,

58  April in Paris

anxiously traversed the grounds of the expo in his top hat and tails checking this and that, while curious visitors swarmed the exhibition grounds, interfering with the building of walkways, pavilions, and gardens, and, moreover, ignoring, at their peril, signs marked “Défense d’entrer” and “Entrée interdite” as they pushed forward in order to get a closer look at the pavilions and exhibits that were still in the process of being mounted (Pis’ma 166).7 Despite the tensions associated with preparations for the fair and some clashes with the organizers, Ternovets conceded that Paris remained a city like no other. He lovingly noted the “theatre” of the streets, the bright lights, the green parks, the gardens, and the boulevards, all of which gave the city the stamp of celebration and presented the impression of being “dressed-up” for this special occasion (Pis’ma 167). Visitors coming to Paris would, like Ternovets, have found not only the excitement of a major exposition but also that of the extraordinary city into which it blurred. Over the past two decades, artists, intellectuals, and émigrés, many from Central and Eastern Europe, had been drawn into the city’s cultural vortex, creating a rich intellectual and artistic brew.8 Strolling down its avenues, lingering in its cafés, frequenting galleries and museums, clubs, and music halls, applauding the “rough magic” (to appropriate Shakespeare’s phrase) of Josephine Baker and of the Revue nègre, were also many Americans, among them Ernest Hemingway, Aaron Copland, Man Ray, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, Jane Heap, Margaret Anderson, and Vernon Duke (born Vladimir Dukelsky in Minsk). Only a few years later, Duke would compose the music of the evocative song April in Paris (lyrics by Edgar “Yip” Harburg).9 Although the USA declined to be officially represented at the exposi­ tion, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover sent 108 observers.10 Architect Alfred C. Bossom, Chairman of the Foreign Exhibits Commit­ tee of the New York Architectural League, noted that “In fact, there were so many Americans over there as observers, official and unofficial, that Paris seemed like New York by the Seine. Everybody was talking of the effect the Exposition would have on this side of the Atlantic. We certainly will feel the reflex of this new spirit in art, architecture, in fashion and in decoration.” It was a spirit which indicated the dawn of a new artistic era and which, in creative genius, he compared “with the inspiration which built the Maya architecture in the New World” (“Sees Europe”). Another delegate similarly applauded the exhibits of the Paris Exposition, which he likened to “a Stravinsky composition in the

April in Paris 1925 59

music field – something that is a radical departure from the old and a pacemaker for the new, but which can be followed without being directly imitated” (“Expects New Trend”).11 Many referred to the advances in science and technology as proclaiming the urgent need for a new style to reflect this new era.12 The New Spirit Since the end of the nineteenth century, enormous transformations had occurred in the arts which gave birth to a vast range of “isms,” each defining the period in different ways. As a result, one of the main goals of the Paris expo was to attempt to address and fix a specific meaning or direction to what was evidently a new modern spirit. This endeavour was intended to give spatial “voice” to a feeling that had been expressed by writers, artists, and creators throughout the past two decades of the twentieth century. Before the war, references to “the new” multiplied “promiscuously” across Europe, as Jed Rasula has shown in his exhaustive study of the geographic and temporal perambulations of this phrase (715). The creative talents of various artistic traditions and persuasions felt the new spirit on their pulse, one that throbbed with an effervescent dynamic still unfolding between modernism and modernity. It was a dynamic that reflected, and was in tandem with, the upheavals in economic, scientific, and social realms. Indeed, the range of scientific and technological changes of the past few decades before the Paris expo is astounding. Sir Sandford Fleming’s introduction of Standard Time had suggested the simultaneity and fluidity of time, while the discovery of X-rays and the electron, the theories of Max Planck (theory of radiation, 1906) and Sigmund Freud’s exploration of the psyche undermined rationalist ways of understanding the universe. Direct, empirical viewing – like the perspectival stage – was evidently deceptive and incomplete. Coming to his relativity theory by nonverbal, even aesthetic means (argues Arthur I. Miller persuasively), Albert Einstein revealed a space that was not empty but elastic and filled with movement, with fields of invisible energy.13 New technologies – including the locomotive, automobile, airplane, telegraph, electricity, telephone, phonograph, antennas and receptors, pocket watch, microphone, cinema, different methods of recording the human voice and movement, and new ways of mechanical reproduction – all seemed to sharply accelerate the here-and-now of everyday life. A wide spectrum of experiments, embodied in the different “isms”

60  April in Paris

(Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Futurism, Cubism, Purism, Surrealism, among others) and promulgated through manifestos, were charged with this notion of a “new” or “modernist spirit.” Rather than signifying a definitive or even common understanding of the age, the modernist spirit was a reverberative phrase that, however loose, signalled more generally both the profound changes that had occurred and the necessity of imaginatively responding to them. As Stephen Kern noted in his magisterial book, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918, “The new technology changed the dimensions of experience so rapidly that the future seemed to rush toward the present” (88). This distinctive sense of the significance of the present bred anxiety and fear in some quarters, exultation and excitement in others. As Denis Bablet has observed, it was “an epoch of crisis similar to Renaissance times,” with an “explosive encounter between the past and the future” (7). After the war, the idea of a new spirit continued to circulate, usually with a more political edge. Socio-political changes, a result of the devastating consequences of the First World War, including the rise of democracy and its obverse, the weakening of class divisions in the West, and revolutions and civil war in the East, contributed to the existing scientific and technological changes by making traditional forms of human expression, from architecture to the visual arts to the theatre, appear even more inadequate to the task of speaking to these new and volatile conditions. In 1920 the phrase “the new spirit” was embraced as the title of a new journal, L’Esprit Nouveau (1920).14 First edited by Paul Dermée and Michel Seuphor, it was later taken over by architect and urban planner Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), with contributions from artist, architect, and designer Amédée Ozenfant. Le Corbusier would come to worldwide attention at the Paris expo with his pavilion of the same name, L’Esprit Nouveau, which embodied ideas that he had proposed in his journal, most notably the contentious notion of the house as a “machine for living.” While Le Corbusier was promoting the new spirit in architecture, the young poet André Breton announced that an “International Congress for the Determination and Defence of the Modern Spirit,” organized by himself, the composer Georges Auric, the writers Jean Paulhan and Roger Vitrac, and the painters Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, and Amédée Ozenfant, would be convened in March 1922. Among those prepared to attend were Jean Cocteau, F.T. Marinetti, Hans Arp, Constantin

April in Paris 1925 61

Figure 2.2  The first issue of L’Esprit Nouveau. Wikipedia Commons.

Brancusi, Man Ray, and André Malraux. Everyone, “without distinction of age, quality, or beliefs,” would be welcome at the Congress, its two main goals being to signal adhesion to the “modern spirit” (Comoedia 3 Jan. 1922, 2) and to raise the alarm against any return to traditional notions of art.15 Like the organizers of the Paris expo, Breton hoped to bring together various “isms” in order to find a single expression for the diffuse currents of modernism (Comoedia 3 Jan. 1922, 2). Although it never took place, the Congress was aimed at defining or at least locating a common direction for the modern spirit and thus intended to help chart the future course of society. Only in Paris, and Paris alone, Breton insisted, was the modern spirit being forged (qtd. K. Jackson 317). Al­ though personal and political conflicts scuttled the Congress, causing its organization to quickly fell apart, the impetus for such an event signalled, once again, a broad sense of the need to digest and synthesize the radical changes of the recent past and to find appropriate creative expression for them.16 Not confined to the French, change in the air was also felt by the Americans. Art and drama critic Sheldon Cheney claimed that “More than changing political institutions, more than the crumbling of the religions of faith, and more than the spread of the scientific spirit, the conquest of mechanics has changed the conditions under which the ­individual lives, and has affected the course of so-called civilization” (“The Theatre” 504). The great technological changes, he insisted, not

62  April in Paris

only affected daily life but also man’s “thinking and his emotional responsiveness; and a new art must grow out of this new life, if we are not to die spiritually, an art expressive of a new set of truths and understandable to the machine-age mind and emotions” (“The Theatre” 504–5). Like Breton and company, Cheney argued for a turn away from tradition towards a new art that would be direct in its expression, clear, precise, intense, and free from ornament. Jane Heap, among others, located the new spirit in the machine, which she brought together in an exposition that showed actual machines as well as drawings, photos, and “apparatuses,” in juxtaposition with visual art, sculpture, and other constructions. Arguing that “The Machine is the Religious Expression of Today,” Heap regarded the machine as a thing of beauty. The great “new race” was the race of the Engineer: “The men who hold first rank in the plastic arts today are the men who are organizing and transforming the realities of our age into a dynamic beauty. They do not copy or imitate the Machine, they do not worship the Machine, – they recognize it as one of the realities” (22–3). In Britain, writer and lecturer Huntly Carter hammered home the message of a new age through a series of eye-witness accounts: The New Spirit in Drama and Art (1912), The New Theatre of Max Reinhardt (1914), The New Spirit in the European Theatre (1925), The New Theatre and Cinema of Soviet Russia (1924), The New Spirit in the Russian Theatre 1917–1928 (1929), and others. He identified “the cultural feature of the moment” as “the gradual destruction of the old form of Theatre and the creation of a new one,” to which “mechanical contrivances are contributing” (1929; xi). The New Spirit, he argued, was evident in a new sense of purpose and function: “This spirit is re-forging the Theatre as a new tool capable of helping to solve the new social problems that have presented themselves,” and this spirit, he argued, was prominently lodged in the USSR (xxi). “For the first time,” he exulted, “the stage is seen in eruption. There is harmony between it and the scenery, between these and the performance.” Influenced by the new mechanical spirit, stage movements are derived from “the factory, the workshop, and every-day jobs,” that is, they are carried out with “intelligence, perception, precision, imagination, daring and sternly disciplined severity” (29). The Paris expo was to bring these ideas together into fruitful collaboration. Le Corbusier predicted with confidence, “Right now one thing is sure. 1925 marks the decisive turning point in the quarrel between the old and new. After 1925, the antique-lovers will have virtually ended their lives, and productive industrial effort will be based on the

April in Paris 1925 63

‘new.’ Progress is achieved through experimentation: the decision will be awarded on the field of battle of the ‘new’” (qtd. in Arwas 49). The Paris expo was thus one of the many indicators of an urgently felt need to respond to the present by addressing, synthesizing, and debating the results of the great changes that had occurred over the past two decades. But perhaps nowhere was the quest for experimentation and the break from authority and conformity more evident than in the USSR, and this rupture would become apparent at the 1925 exhibition. As the fair would reveal, the Soviet theatre arts exhibits, with their use of broken-up planes, the reconstitution of depth of space, and the aggressive dynamism of its action, would seem best – and most radically – to mirror such discoveries, to explore, and to exploit them. Rivalry, Commerce, Modernism The expo’s confident display of formality and grandeur at its moment of inauguration, on the grandiose staircase of the Grand Palais,17 was one of many pieces of theatre: it belied France’s continuing economic and political woes. Although the country survived the worst of the consequences of the Great War, it remained in a volatile position. Unable to secure reparations from Germany, even after its controversial invasion and occupation of the Ruhr valley (1923), France was suffering both from inflation and other significant economic issues (including financial losses due to the maintenance of a military presence in the valley). Amid general social unrest, the French Communist Party had been founded in 1920. Established in 1923, the Cartel des Gauches, an alliance of left-wing groups, met with rapid political success, winning the elections on 11 May 1924.18 Édouard Herriot was invited by President Doumergue to preside over the governing, mostly left-wing, Council. A government was formed in June and, in October 1924, it recognized the USSR. An invitation to the USSR to participate in the expo followed almost immediately.19 In addition to its own particular socio-political troubles, which it had hoped to forget with this ambitious expo, France looked anxiously across the Channel, where its traditional rival was about to hold the second year of its British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, held over from 1924 in order to recoup its financial losses. Opened on the symbolic date of 23 April 1924 (St George’s Day and, by tradition, Shakespeare’s birth and death day), Wembley was the largest international fair held in Britain since the Great Exhibition of 1851, attracting twenty-seven

64  April in Paris

million visitors over two years (Geppert 226). Considered a “family party” by the British – since it intended to stimulate trade and links between the Mother Country, her Daughter Nations, and Sister States (according to the Official Guide) – it was dismissed by the French as essentially a “local,” not a truly international, exposition.20 Wembley nonetheless caused France considerable unease, in part because both countries’ expos shared at least two goals: to strengthen their weak postwar economies and to cement their postwar national identities through international expositions.21 While Britain looked to the farflung dominions of its own empire, France encouraged the whole world to visit its capital. Aiming to outdo not just the British fair but all other previous fairs in the realm of aesthetics, the sumptuous 1925 Paris show – as its official Catalogue unabashedly observed – was equally directed at speeding up economic recovery by encouraging international commercial relations, and identifying and opening up new markets for the purchase and consumption of French goods. The British and the French expos were not the only fairs held in 1925, nor were they the only events at which their rivalry could be expressed. Concurrently, numerous other expos were competing for visitors’ attention (and their pocketbooks), including in the British colonies. In Toronto, for example, The Canadian National Exhibition, attracting just over 1.4 million visitors, also housed British and French exhibits in its International Pavilion. Although recent wartime allies, both countries were now once again generally acknowledged rivals at home and abroad.22 Officially reporting on the Paris Exposition to his British government, Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith commented that “The Paris Exhibition may be regarded in two aspects; as an arena of international rivalry, or as a source of light, inspiration and warning” (37).23 The opening day of the Paris show was purposefully organized to occlude all such contemporary tensions and concerns, as well as to paper over the history of the expo’s difficult and protracted birth.24 Nature, however, refused such oblivion: the tempestuous weather seemed to reflect on both the expo’s past and present. First proposed in 1906, the idea of an exposition that would bring together art and industry had been received with less than lukewarm approval, despite support from the Ministère du Commerce, du Travail et des Beaux-Arts. Instead, hot debates ensued. These concerned, in large part, the question of what could legitimately be called “art.” Many considered the decorative arts “minor,” not worthy of the effort and expense of a whole exposition.25 Indeed, the decorative arts had only been admitted to exhibit at an

April in Paris 1925 65

Figure 2.3  The Palace of Industry. The British Empire Exhibition 1924–5. Wembley. Contemporary postcard. Photo: Campbell Gray. (London: Fleetway Press Ltd.)

Figure 2.4  The Palace of Engineering. The British Empire Exhibition 1924–5. Wembley. Contemporary postcard. Photo: Campbell Gray. (London: Fleetway Press Ltd.)

66  April in Paris

international fair as late as 1892 – nearly four decades after London’s Crystal Palace had initiated the craze for world’s fairs, and after countless fairs around the world had taken place. In France, the decorative arts had an especially low pre-war status, in part because, unlike England and Austria, they had no champions of the stature of William Morris or John Ruskin, no movements like the Arts and Crafts or institutions like the ones in Munich that encouraged the interconnections between art and industry.26 Fervent French proponents of a decorative arts expo acknowledged that their country lagged far behind other countries, preferring to reprise older decorative traditions. For its staunch advocates, the Paris Exposition would be a chance not only to play catch-up with the rest of the world, but also to help France regain what they considered its rightful place as the leader in all aesthetic categories. The international exhibition was to mark a symbolic turning point in France’s recovery from the consequences of the Great War by staging a glamorous revival before a worldwide audience.27 Yet memories of the war were hardly dulled by preparations for this event. A competitive and aggressive spirit lingered, reappearing in the use of military metaphors. In describing France’s intentions in hosting the Exposition, for example, Yvanhoë Rambosson suggested that the fair would represent “a new ‘Battle of the Marne’,” with consequences as considerable in the area of cultural exchanges as those of the military clash had been in world history. All of France was to be mobilized into action: “all the citizens of this country should find themselves transformed into soldiers of French modern industrial art … it is a conscription that this patriotic task imposes upon us” (“Arts” 1).28 More than a decade earlier, the Rapport sur une exposition inter­ nationale des arts décoratifs modernes Paris 1915. 1er juin 1911, penned by René Guilleré, president of the Société des artistes décorateurs (founded in 1901), emphasized the backwardness of his country’s response to modernity. He pointed out that the Italians had first mounted an exhibition in Turin in 1902 that had set out the ground rules: only original works that would show the tendency towards a clearly marked or renewed aesthetics of form. Imitations of old styles and industrial products devoid of artistic inspiration were not to be admitted.29 Turin’s opening gambit was repeated in Milan in 1906 and again in Rome in 1911.30 The French had still not responded. Guilleré urged his compatriots to allow France to take the lead, to encourage young talent to create and diffuse a new style, and to foster economic and commercial links.

April in Paris 1925 67

In response to his own question about hosting a major exposition – “Mais quelles raisons de ces fins?” (But to what end?) – came his resounding answer: “Raison d’honneur d’abord!” (First of all, for honour!) (qtd. in Brunhammer 15). Like past fairs, the 1925 expo was to be a means of combating France’s commercial rivals, above all the English and the Germans. And how should one do battle with them, inquired Guilleré? His reply: by paying attention to the smallest detail of every object and its display; everything in the Parisian expo must have an artistic character. After all, insisted Léandre Vaillant, what differentiated France from “the others” was “taste” (le gout) (3). Even the simplest object must be beautiful. Such attention to aesthetics would, Guilleré insisted, provoke a veritable renaissance, creating a decorative art that would satisfy the daily needs of those of more modest means, as well as of those able to indulge in luxurious whimsy. Guilleré emphasized how the Société wished to create useful art and useful objects that would be mass-­ produced and sold cheaply. Thanks to such an exposition, there would be the possibility of a truly democratic art available to all, one that would bestow joy and beauty upon even the most modest of homes.31 Such an exposition would also mark the end of disdain for the machine, and would thus bring a halt to the old antagonism between the engineer and the architect. It would obliterate the division between “fine” and “applied” arts. Such an exhibition would include all of the arts, including theatre, music, and dance, as well as arts of the city, the street, and the garden. Decorative and applied arts are, he insisted, above all social; they reflect the transformation into a modern society. Such an expo must be international because competition provides an active stimulus to change (qtd. in Brunhammer 18). Guilleré’s impassioned argument for the mounting of an international exposition did not persuade everyone. A window onto the controversies, and particularly the pejorative view still held of the decorative and applied arts by French academics and by municipal and state authorities, may be easily discerned, even in the official guides, such as Arts décoratifs 1925. Guide de l’Exposition and the Catalogue général officiel: Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes.32 These ingrained prejudices required spirited defence. Leading the charge were Yvanhoë Rambosson, Secretary General of the Fédération des sociétés françaises d’art appliqué (later Secretary General of the 1925 expo), and Henri-Marcel Magne, artist and professor of applied arts at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (later a technical

68  April in Paris

Figure 2.5  Cover page of the Catalogue général officiel.

April in Paris 1925 69

adviser to the 1925 expo). Both insisted that there were no hierarchies in art, nor were there many distinct arts; rather, there was only a single and indivisible art to which the decorative arts, among others, belonged. With this expo, Rambosson passionately argued, the applied and decorative arts would no longer play the part of the Cinderella of the arts. Decorative arts – he heatedly insisted – were not, “as people have long thought, the recreation of young girls, but they are themselves the arts of Life which encircle everything, from the building which shelters us, to the garments which protect us, and the automobile that transports us” (“Conclusion” 364).33 This art created automobiles as supple and elegant as thoroughbred horses, airplanes as beautiful as coral, and ships as thrilling as cathedrals (“Conclusion” 363). The enthusiasm of the expo’s supporters, bolstered by detailed studies, statistics, and thick reports, finally persuaded officials of the merits of hosting such a show. François Carnot, Joseph Reinach, Marcel Sembat, and Maurice Barrès – all members of Parliament – had proposed a law in 1912 to authorize an exhibition of decorative arts for 1915. Before any work could begin, however, the First World War erupted, halting all progress. The idea was once again taken up soon after the armistice but received no better reception, as the debate about the value of the decorative arts – indeed, the very definition of art – was re-ignited. Among the various obstacles to supporting the venture was the proposed name of the expo: modern art. Municipal authorities found the term simply baffling, if not distressing. Nor was the anxiety provoked by the term “modernism” confined to the French.34 Other suggestions for the expo’s name were put forward, including “contemporary.” However, after lengthy debates and unsuccessful efforts to find a more satisfactory alternative, “modern” finally prevailed. Through similar strenuous lobbying, the Société d’encouragement à l’art et l’industrie succeeded in adding the word “industry” to the proposed expo’s title. Once the formidable campaign launched by the expo’s proponents had finally vanquished each of the oppositional sectors, the real work began. In 1921, Fernand David, a senator and a former minister, was appointed Commissaire Général. After much diplomatic manoeuvring, it was agreed that the fair was to be located in the centre of the city. Paris itself would serve as the stage on which the illusion of a new city was to be created and from which it would ultimately disappear. The first stone was laid in March 1924 and, by April of the following year, a city arose within the city: 15,000 exhibits were housed in 150 pavilions, galleries, shops, and buildings – including a theatre – thanks to

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the work of over 20,000 people (“Genèse” n.p.). Among others, the President of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs, François Carnot, would opine that the expo was merely a “dream” city, a city of “illusion” with “theatre stage-sets” instead of buildings or permanent structures (qtd. in Gronberg 1998, 6). There was to be no equivalent of the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Palais remaining after this show.35 Once the flags were lowered and all the revels were ended in October,36 the “cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,” and the whole “insubstantial pageant” – like Prospero’s masque in Shakespeare’s The Tempest – would dissolve, leaving “not a rack behind.” The space of central Paris would return to its former self, affirming the idea of the expo as an ephemeral theatrical event. As discussed in greater detail later in this book, the decision not to create a permanent architectural marker of the expo – one that would change the space and spatial practices of Paris – reflected the conflicted attitude of the French to modernism and, indeed, their preference (despite all the rhetoric) for historicism. In  making such a decision before the Exposition, the revolutionary ­moment of modernism in France was already compromised; for, as Henri Lefebvre has noted, “A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential” (Production 54).37 Calling the Universe to Paris The official Guide to the Exposition noisily proclaimed that France had called the whole Universe to a fête of “Fraternité et de la Paix” in which countries would work together towards a common cause. The 1925 Exposition offered the opportunity for nations to better know and understand each other. Through commercial “horse-trading” and with the help of artistic enthusiasms, more solid, durable relationships and agreements would develop. No peoples were excluded. If any were absent – the Guide claimed – it was because they did not wish to come; the organizers of course regretted any such absences (an unsubtle jab at Germany).38 These sentiments echoed those of many previous world’s fairs with their forward-looking and idealistic view of expositions as peaceable, collaborative events that would lead to the betterment of humanity. Nearly two dozen countries took part in the Paris show: Austria, Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, Greece, The Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the USSR,

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Figure 2.6  The elegant Pavilion of the City of Paris. Roger Bouvard, André Vincent, Six and Labreuille, architects. Contemporary postcard. (A. Papeghin, Paris-Tours.)

Yugoslavia, France and its colonies in Africa and Indochina. In addition, representations, generally in the form of entertainment, came from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Estonia, Guatemala, Norway, Palestine, Peru, and Portugal. The government of Canada declined to participate. Also missing was Australia. Most keenly felt, deeply regretted, and often remarked upon by the French hosts was the absence of the Americans. The US government felt that it had nothing to contribute and sent observers rather than exhibitors. Despite their absence, the impact of the fair would be deeply felt across America for decades to come.39 The most conspicuous presence – excepting that of France, which took up nearly two-thirds of the exhibition grounds – was the USSR which, proportionally, was granted a surprisingly large area; indeed, it devoured the space that the French had set aside for the Americans.40 As we shall see, the Soviets not only embraced this space but also the symbolic value of America as a forward-looking, dynamic, young entity. The Guide’s professed universal sense of fraternity masked both the sympathies of the reigning Cartel des Gauches for the Soviet Union, and France’s continuing antagonism to its pugnacious neighbour,

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Germany. Like Germany, the Soviet Union had been belatedly invited but responded very differently. On 1 November 1924, and just days after France officially recognized the new polity, Édouard Herriot, Presi­ dent of the Council, eagerly extended the invitation to the Soviets. A great supporter of the USSR, he had been one of the first French socialists and communists to travel there and, subsequently, to publish his memoirs of the “New Russia” (Starr et al. 22). The French may have may subsequently regretted extending this invitation. As will become evident, the Soviets would, in effect, de-rail the French from full leadership of the new art of the new century. Rather than driving the steam train of modern decorative and applied arts, France would become (as Henri Clouzot had presciently observed) just one stop – although a very important one – among many on the cultural map of the intersections and exchanges of modern and avant-garde art.41 Official guides to and catalogues of the Exposition – a myriad, both in small and large formats – explained the nature and history of the organization of this international fair, provided maps, described the notable features (often in an editorial manner) and location of the pavilions. Significantly, they also controlled space and its interpretation. With a view to creating an informed visitor who could appreciate and interpret the displays, a brief history of the major changes during the past twenty-five-odd years in each of the decorative and applied arts was also included. In addition to these overviews and pamphlets, specialized catalogues were published by many of the country-­participants; these described, in detail, the contents of the exhibits of each pavilion and their general aims and principles. Most impressively, a general report in the form of a twelve-volume Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle was issued to document the Exposition and its exhibits; it provided a substantial, permanent contribution to an understanding of the field and, moreover, instantly served as an invaluable sourcebook of information.42 As the Minutes of the 6 December 1926 meeting of the Conseil d’administration indicate, the general report on the expo was to encompass eighteen volumes, the first eight to be made available for sale in 1927, the others within the following three years. The import of this publication was clear to the organizers who wished to publish the volumes as quickly as possible, not only in order to document the event but also to ensure that its messages were progressively absorbed by the larger public. If, on the one hand, the various publications reflected the fact that the organizers were deeply cognizant of the historical importance of the

April in Paris 1925 73

Exposition and of the necessity of widely disseminating information about it, they also were pragmatically inclined to boldly take up one of modernity’s novelties: advertising. Following the example of the Citroën-sponsored electrification of the Eiffel Tower, the guidebooks were peppered with a vast array of advertisements promoting luxury goods (such as jewellery, gloves, and hats) as well as restaurants, theatres, banks, and even guided tours of the battlefields of the recent world war. A special structure, the Pavilion of Tourism, designed by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, symbolized the French government’s official recognition, for the first time, of the importance of the tourist trade. (By contrast, the British Department of Overseas Trade recommended against state involvement in tourism until the 1930s, believing that it was “a matter for private enterprise” [Beckerson 141].) Although the Paris show was an “exposition” and thus intended primarily to display rather than sell commodities, the widespread use of advertisements revealed the hardly hidden economic agenda of the organizers, who, not satisfied with simply showing French goods to visitors, actively encouraged their purchase. The emphasis on tourism did not end with commercial goals. As Hartmut Berghoff and Barbara Korte have pointed out, tourism is “not only a social and economic fact but a semiotic and media-based phenomenon. Significantly, the tourist industry has never confined itself to selling transport and accommodation, but has always offered a more comprehensive set of culturally pre-constructed promises” (7). These include such “elusive phenomena” as “images, experiences and prestige” (Berghoff 168). The 1925 Expo promised its visitors the romance and prestige of Paris: that is, beauty, glamour, fashion, and excitement in the City of Lights. Excitement was heightened by the promise of exotic but comfortable virtual travel to the various participatory countries. The centrality and accessibility of the expo’s location was of great significance since, as Berghoff and Korte assert, the making of tourist sites “hinges on fixing, framing and positioning as well as signifying and interpreting specific views in order to endow them with cultural significance” (7). The fact that the Exposition was cradled in the very core of Paris and anchored by the Grand Palais and the Invalides, fixed, framed, and positioned the exhibits of all of its participants, lending them some of the mystique of Paris the city, the dream. Even the Soviet exhibits, with their message of rupture with the past and their visual confrontation of the expo’s call

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Figure 2.7  View of the expo from the Tour de Bordeaux. Contemporary postcard. (Édit. Cosson.)

for display and consumption, were somewhat neutralized within the space of elegant central Paris. Each of the pavilions, both through their exhibits and their catalogues, presented a narrative of their country’s achievements and ambitions, thus influencing visitors who could have their preconceptions of national stereotypes confirmed, adjusted, or overturned. Indeed, all of the official promotional materials aimed at shaping the opinions and the sensibilities of the visitors, informing them, as well as literally directing their steps. Guidebooks proposed detailed itineraries of various lengths of stay, from a single day to one week or longer. They pointed out what, in their editor’s view, were important and not-to-be-missed features. What they all had in common was that each of the proposed routes first took the visitor to the Grand Palais, the heart of the fair and the location of all formal ceremonies and receptions. Positioned close by the Porte d’Honneur on the Avenue Alexandre III, the Grand Palais lived up to its name: it was one of Paris’s grandest  and most recognizable structures, originally built for the 1900 world’s fair.

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Figure 2.8  Advertisement for glamorous undergarments and hosiery. (Catalogue général officiel.)

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Figure 2.9  The distinctive profile of the Grand Palais from the Alexandre III bridge, as it looks today. Photo: I. Makaryk.

For the 1925 show, the interior had been completely renovated; its most imposing feature was a newly created monumental central staircase. Scarlett and Townley recalled that “The doors of the Grand Palais led to the monumental Escalier d’Honneur, which occupied the whole of the central court and was erected over a forest of carpentry solely for the exhibition and to be dismantled at its close. The Escalier ascended in a series of recessed landings to the Salle des Fêtes. The scale of its basically simple forms was most impressive, with decoration in low relief and the source of both day and artificial light concealed” (22). Official guides boasted that the amplitude and audacity of the architectural proportions created by architect Charles Letrosne’s renovations created a “grandiose” effect that recalled nothing less than that of Egyptian temples or Babylonian palaces (Arts décoratifs 235). Even their rivals, the British, found the staircase “magnificent” and, in praising Letrosne’s construction, noted how photos did not do it justice (Smith 32). In the cavernous foyer of the Grand Palais, which could hold up to  2,500 people, official delegations were welcomed, speeches were made, and important functions carried out.43 One of the large landings of the great staircase was dedicated to the presentation of special para-­ theatrical “gigantesques scènes” (Arts décoratifs 235), such as the inaugural event, and the “particularly sumptuous” Fête du Thêatre et de la

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Parure, also referred to as La Nuit du Grand-Palais (Encyclopédie, X, 34). Held on the evening of 16 June, this event melded the theatrical and fashion worlds, both of which so heavily depended upon notions of illusion, seduction, and display. Professional fashion models, dancers, performers from the Opéra, Opéra-Comique, Comédie-Française, various theatres of Paris, music halls, casinos, as well as the corps de ballets, even circus clowns, took part in what was essentially a “parade” or march-past culminating in a few tableaux vivants, short scenes, and dance routines. Like theatres, which had eagerly taken up the new technology of electricity, the Grand Palais was also carefully lit up by the ingenious placement of lights concealed among the pillars and around the monumental staircase, stretching all the way to the back of the grand hall/ foyer. Lighting, the Encyclopédie reminded readers, was the most modern instrument of scenic art. “Light suffices to create an imaginary world of action. Contrasting with the dark zone into which the rest of the room is plunged, it establishes the boundary between this fictional and the real world. It makes the actor’s and the groups’ movements stand out. In making use of the modelled elements of set design, it raises shadows that occur with it, and creates harmonious oppositions. Finally, by its variations in intensity and by its diverse colours, it suggests the place and atmosphere of the play; when needed, it evokes astonishing fairylands”44 (Encyclopédie, X, 26). Among the participants of the Fête costumed by designers (the Russian Leon Bakst, the Frenchman René Piot, the American Norman Bel Geddes), as well as by the grand couturiers of Paris, were the “queens” of French theatres (sixty of the most actresses) who paraded down the staircase and into the hall; notable actresses such as Ida Rubenstein, who personified the Archangel of Gold; dancers such as the American Loïe Fuller simulating the “eternal rhythm” of La mer immense (well before the Exposition, Fuller had embraced the use of lighting with her “danses lumineuses”); the energetic Tiller Girls, kicking up their heels for the Danse des fleurs de lune; and a “saraband” of clowns dressed in Cubist costumes (Encyclopédie, X, 26, 34). To these, among many other extravagant elements, were added a parade of models dressed in the latest Parisian fashions; a “Vision of the Orient” presented by the eurhythmic dancer Jeanne Ronsay and her École Française du Rythme; a “picturesque” tableau of a Spanish Caprice presented by “The Argentine” (Argentina’s only contribution to the Exposition); and an interpretation of the majestic Court of Asahuerus.

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Figure 2.10  Vision d’Orient. Dancers Jeanne Ronsay and Nell Haroun on Charles Letrosne’s monumental staircase in the Grand Palais. Photo: V. Henry. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate XX.)

Pierre Chéreau, Director General of the Opéra, was responsible for directing this huge and diverse group of performers organized by theatrical impresario Gabriel Astruc45 and aesthetically arranged by Paul Poiret, the famous designer of elegant women’s fashions. With the exception of the use of electrical lighting, the Fête du Théâtre et de la Parure resembled, on the one hand, an old fashioned pageant,46 which served as an allegory of the spectrum of French taste, its grandiose space and number of participants reflecting the high ambition of the French hosts. On the other hand, the event drew from the distinctive French genre of the revue, characterized by Alexander Schouvaloff as “pure entertainment, glamorous extravagance, tasteful eroticism,

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Figure 2.11  La Rivière de diamants. The Tiller Girls of the Casino de Paris kicking up their heels at the Fête du Théâtre et de la Parure. Photo: Valéry. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate XI.)

oomph, bezazz, and the nudes ... Revues always have a regular pattern of programme: a big ‘dressy’ number followed by a big ‘nudey’ number: Versailles, perhaps, followed by the Nile, followed by a game of chess. Always in good taste but always the contrast ... French revue is fanciful but pure. Number has to follow number in quick succession. No number can linger into familiarity. The program is a crescendo of surprises. Revue is an immense logistical problem to the designer for organizing all the sets and costumes. Therefore a single revue is often designed by a number of different artists … Invention is all, and style. Revue is fun and fantasy for all the family” (25). The Paris Fête du Théâtre et de la Parure theatricalized and displayed both consumer goods and humans – fashion models, actresses, and dancing girls dressed in luxurious and outrageous costume designs – to

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Figure 2.12  Music hall mannequin displayed at the Paris expo. Embroidered costume enriched with diamonds and rich gems designed by Jean Pascaud. Photo: R. Sobol. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate VI.)

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be “consumed” as part of the showcasing of French commodities set against the backdrop of the city, itself lavishly costumed in electric lights, countless fountains, gardens, statuary, and exotic pavilions. Like earlier French colonial exhibits, the Fête invited its spectators to admire French glamour and pre-eminence in taste and design. It also blurred the lines between “real” Paris “out there” and the dream city here, where the performers processed, cavorted, and danced, displaying as props some of the luxury goods that the French government hoped its visitors would be seduced into purchasing. As Tag Gronberg has pointed out, “It was precisely the theatrical devices of staging and lighting that enhanced what Simmel had referred to as the ‘aesthetic appeal’ of the exhibits … cascades of light were deployed in order to celebrate specifically modern and urban rituals – those of shopping and consumption. The jet d’eau defined a city that was every bit as modern as that proposed by Le Corbusier who, in his Plan voisin prepared for the expo, showed huge skyscrapers and wide avenues broad enough to support the constant movement of speeding motorcars.” Indeed, he had re-imagined the city with his urbanisation plan based on the premise that the automobile had completely changed the concept of the metropolis. His, however, “was the ville lumière of glamour not reason, of luxury not hygiene. Thus could postwar France national identity be presented in terms of both continuity and renewal, tradition and modernity” (“Cascades” 16). The extravagant pageant also had little to do with the purported aims of creating a useful and democratic art that would find its way into even the most modest of homes. Rather, it conformed to traditionalist tastes and, moreover, to sociologist Colin Campbell’s view of tourism as essentially “a form of imaginative hedonism” centred on “dreams and desires of alternatives to everyday life” (119). Although the Grand Palais’s theatricalized spectacle involved performers and theatre designers, it was not part of the theatre arts exhibition (found elsewhere in the same building); rather, it was regarded as a mass or a “collective demonstration.” The subsequently published Encyclopédie observed that, logically, the two should have been brought together (X, 33) – and indeed, theatre, fashion, illusion, and commerce blended into each other and had been classified as part of one of the five major groupings; yet they were also separated as two distinct “classes.” Like the space of central Paris in which the expo was nestled, so this division of space metonymically displayed in tension the two faces of the expo and of France itself: one looking backward, the other – despite

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all the official rhetoric – only reluctantly forward.47 If the revue had any relationship with concepts of modernism, it was only to be found in its constant movement. Aimed at displaying the new, the organization of the Exposition had been placed in the hands of traditionalists, a decision which led to various contradictions, this event being only one of many.48 By reprising the pageant style of previous expos, the peopled, sumptuous Fête introduced nothing innovative. In this, it was also of a piece with the luxurious pavilions of French department stores, the Embassy of France pavilion, the Collector’s Pavilion, and, more immediately, of exhibits found directly to the right of the great staircase in the Grand Palais, where the French sections displayed expensive jewels, accessories, couture, and perfumes.49 Visitors would need to climb to the top of the staircase to encounter the remarkable and the audacious: the Soviet theatre arts exhibition. It dominated the foreign section by sheer size and audacity. Taking up six rooms in the Grand Palais, the Soviet theatre arts immediately became the talk of the Exposition. Llewellyn Smith somewhat mournfully observed that “The excellence of the Russian exhibit was due to the way in which the government has identified itself with the most lively movements in the theatre” (180). Located in the most important building of the expo and opened well before the Soviet pavilion itself, the Soviet theatre arts exhibit could be seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, thus exposing them to the vision of a new Soviet art, the product of what appeared to be a modern, dynamic state. If the Soviet exhibits failed to offer the visitor “hedonism” or the stuff of dreams, they most certainly presented imaginative, novel alternatives to the rest of the expo’s sumptuous exhibits.

Chapter Three

Conquering Space: The Soviets in Paris

Rival Change Agents Anatoly Lunacharsky, Commissar of Enlightenment and chief organizer and overseer of the Soviet exhibits in Paris,1 voiced his hope that the Paris Exposition would “confirm our [Soviet] thesis … that the new and the old … have begun to construct a new civilization, a civilization without precedent.”2 The “correct” relationship between the old and the new, a foundational issue for the USSR, touched all aspects of Soviet life, from political and economic structures, culture, social relations to language, including terminological issues, such as the very name of the new polity. So central to early Soviet debates, the dynamic between the old and the new was then, and remains today, the pivot in the process of the transformation of all fashions, whether of material or conceptual forms. The USSR was especially well poised to respond to the Paris expo’s challenge of displaying only the new and of tying art to industry. Very few participating countries succeeded in passing the same test. Most of the 15,000 or so exhibits were displays either of traditional craftsmanship or sumptuous luxury rather than modern industry. In part, as was suggested at the conclusion of the previous chapter, this was the result of placing the expo’s organization into the hands of conservatives who resisted modernist trends.3 Such an organizational decision already implicitly placed conflict and contradiction at the fair’s core. Thus, just as with the expo’s long and difficult gestation, the show continued to spark highly charged debates. These disputes about what constituted modernism and modernity, of what the new style for the new century should be, were, in fact, debates about concepts of

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society, the various positions taken reflecting the characterization of a particular world view or ideology.4 A much-publicized and infamous indicator of the entrenched views of style is evidenced by the organizers’ extreme reluctance to have one of the few examples of the French modernist aesthetic displayed. Charles Plumet, chief architect of the Exposition, urged Le Corbusier to have his unadorned “machine for living,” the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, hidden from view. Until the last moment surrounded by an eighteen-foot tall fence, its display was finally permitted only with great reluctance shortly before the Exposi­ tion opened.5 Similarly considered antithetical to the “French spirit,” the modernist panneaux created by Fernand Léger and Robert Delaunay, hanging in the pavilion of the French embassy, were removed. If the old-new dynamic was contested in France, this contestation was at the core of debate in the USSR. For the Soviets, culture (conceived as “high” culture) was “one of the primary spheres of revolutionary contestation, like politics and economics. It was a locus for struggle, an arena in which power (hegemony) could be won or lost” (Fitzpatrick 2).6 Deep divisions marked the Soviet culture wars, both between the Bolsheviks and their presumed opposites, the intelligentsia, as well as within each of these groupings. In the latter, the struggles for power and ascendancy occurred among “avant-gardists, traditionalists, preservationists, realists, symbolists, Marxists, and those who either were or were not prepared to be ‘fellow travelers’ of Soviet power” (Fitzpatrick 4). For the small strident circle of the avant-garde, change represented a positive value and formed part of the rhetoric of the Revolution. Change was also a key modernist concept widely embraced by writers, artists, and intellectuals of various nationalities, many of whom had found themselves in Paris. As social economist Wilfred Dolfsma has pointed out, “Change, in a modernist conception, is almost inherently good[,] as it is a break with the past and with traditions, creating something new for a better future” (354, n2). Such a future-oriented attitude also fit perfectly with the stated teleological views of the USSR. From the moment of their seizure of power, the Bolsheviks made strategic, concerted efforts, by way of a variety of cultural means, to influence the West. Revealing themselves as masters of communication, they were (as James von Geldern reminds us) “journalists long before they were state leaders, and they never forgot the impact of a well-aimed message” (xi). The Bolsheviks created an international network by which to shape the world’s view of their new state. La Société des

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Figure 3.1  Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion at the expo. Photo: Wikipedia Commons.

relations culturelles entre l’URSS et l’Étranger was established to “respond to all questions from foreign countries and to facilitate the intellectual and scientific rapprochement of the USSR with the whole world” (Kameneff 12).7 The Society was responsible for exchanges between European and Soviet scientific institutes, including exchanges of books and other materials. It also published informational bulletins.8 Thou­ sands of photographs of Soviet life and its peoples were published and widely distributed. Organizations sympathetic to the USSR were set up in Germany, England, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Austria, France, and Italy (Kameneff 10). Soviet scholars were sent abroad to participate in conferences.9 Journalists and writers were urged to contribute to (especially pro-Soviet) Western newspapers and journals, as well as to a regular bulletin, published in Moscow and distributed throughout Western Europe and North America, which summarized news about the sciences, arts, and new life in the USSR. Together, these efforts were aimed at actively countering what the Soviets termed

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“fabricated” (fabriquée) and “absurd” (absurdes) views published in some Western newspapers and journals (Kameneff 13).10 International expositions were understood to be a particularly effective means by which to persuade the world that “Russian civilization was far from perishing under the communist regime, quite the contrary” (Kameneff 10).11 The Paris expo marked one of the first appearances of the Russians on the world stage after a ten-year hiatus.12 As one Soviet diplomat posted to the UK noted, “Far from killing the Muses, … the Revolution has given them new life” (Rakovskii 10).13 Paris represented a special opportunity. Olga Kameneva (sister of Leon Trotsky and wife of one of the Soviet Union’s triumvirs)14 asserted that, despite varied numerous “sorties” to foreign countries to clarify or explain this or that issue, “it was only at the Paris Exposition that, for the first time, it was possible to present before the whole universe a more or less accurate and complete picture of the Federated Republics” (Kameneff 10).15 Anatoly Lunacharsky was charged with organizing the Soviet exhibits. He, along with the leadership of the USSR, understood that “The 1925 exposition, unlike any before, provided the Soviet government [with] a potent forum in which to demonstrate to the West that socialism is not mere ideology but that its precepts have concrete and practical application” (Mudrak and Marquardt 75). Olga Kameneva was responsible for cultural relations with foreign countries and was appointed Chair of the Artistic Committee of the expo. Only a world’s fair, she asserted, could present a unified, carefully scripted, “rounded” image of the USSR – in effect, a “symbolic world” that could effectively and immediately speak to hundreds of thousands, even millions of visitors, by way of the spectrum of its exhibits, publications, and the architecture of its pavilion. The expo offered the Soviets the opportunity both to preen about their successes and to belie rumours about the terrors of the Revolution and its aftermath. In an internally published documented marked “Working Copy” (Rabochii eksempliar), Lev Kamenev commented: “France has long known Russia – its tsars and financiers. It should get to know the new Russia – the workers and peasants – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Knowing it, France will understand that the Union is stronger than the Romanov monarchy and serves as a larger guarantee of peace than all the other ‘guarantees’ of Europe” (5). The expo would also significantly and successfully contribute to the creation of a master narrative repeated and widely circulated for decades in the West: the myth of a necessary correlation between the

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Revolution and avant-garde art. Ironically, in the USSR, this narrative was rejected by many segments of what historian Sheila Fitzpatrick calls the “creative intelligentsia” as well as by the Party leadership. Indeed, the fierce struggles for power over culture continued and the narratives had not yet been fixed.16 The titular head of the Paris mission, Lunacharsky, born in Poltava, Ukraine, had first discovered Marxism in Kiev (Kyiv). He had spent many years before the Revolution in Europe, including in Paris, and held many of the same views on culture as the non-Bolshevik Russian, Ukrainian, and European intelligentsia (Williams 36). Many of his interpretive comments about the Soviet exhibits indicate his acknowledgment of the new art’s energy, at the same time as it registered his discomfort precisely with that avantgarde so highly praised by many at the Exposition. As he noted somewhat apologetically, “Our new decorative art, naturally, is still a child. But we hope to show and make understood that it is able to grow and has great promise” (Lunacharskii, “S.S.S.R.” 4). By participating in the Paris expo, the leaders of the USSR wished to assure the world that, at least in some respects, it was “business as usual” with Russia. Indeed, business was part of the Soviet agenda: the NEP (New Economic Policy) permitted some “accommodation with ideological enemies in pursuit of market opportunities” (Dickerman 72). Accommodation was an important message to convey, since, to paraphrase Wilfred Dolfsma, too much novelty will result in a message that cannot be understood, while too much commonality means not signalling the proper (in this case, revolutionary) values.17 Russia had regularly contributed to pre-revolutionary international and world’s fairs, including to the Paris 1900 Universal Exhibition at which the Alexandre III bridge, named after the then reigning tsar’s father, had been officially opened. Warm Franco-Russian relations (despite Napoleon’s invasion) also had a lengthy history going back to Catherine the Great. Numerous members of the Russian intelligentsia had regularly visited the French capital over the past century, among them, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Trotsky, and Lenin. By the early twentieth century, russophilia and francophilia were especially pronounced, with the successes of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and with the presence of the École de Paris artists who hailed from various corners of the Russian empire and maintained a considerable presence in Parisian cultural circles. The Ballets in particular had instilled in the French the expectation of  another thrilling exotic contribution to the 1925 fair. In fact, the

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Figure 3.2  The ornate Alexandre III bridge (1897) officially opened at the Paris exposition in 1900, as it looks today. Photo: I. Makaryk.

fellow-feeling for Russians was so strong that, when actor and director Charles Dullin resigned from the Theatre Arts organizational committee of the 1925 Exposition on the grounds that the Russians and the Germans had not yet been invited to participate, Yvanhoë Rambosson assured him that, whatever happened (i.e., if France did not recognize the USSR), the Russian artists would nonetheless be allotted a place in the French section, as had been decided by the Commissariat Général.18 The Bolsheviks, however, were determined to continue to participate in the tradition of world’s fairs,19 which they recognized as performing a key “agitational” (i.e., propagandistic) as well as commercial role. V.N. Ksandrov, representative of one of the Bolshevik banks, insisted that participation in the Exposition represented “a new form of struggle for a communist world” (15). Their exhibits would show their hosts and fellow-participants that their formerly Russian – now Soviet – partners could not only prepare and present on time, but could do so eminently well. What the Soviets understood was the importance of the politics of display. As Françoise Forster-Hahn observes, displays do not “merely reflect or mirror society and a particular historical moment, but actively function as agents that shape the historical process itself. Displays are, therefore, the locus where the previous history of a work

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and its past critical reception interface with contemporary responses determined by the specific historical moment of its presentation. Hence, the duality of past and present embraces both the historical as well as the aesthetic dimension of the displayed object.” She goes on to argue that displays, as “visual narratives of mental constructs … often crystallize specific historical moments by imprinting images in the public mind that are more powerful than texts” (174, 179). Despite world war, civil war, revolution, famine, and many other calamities, the Soviets had survived, and their New Economic Policy appeared to be working. The presence of key political figures in Paris, who explained their exhibits and held friendly meetings with the international community, suggested continuity of commercial and political relations rather than any real rupture. Before travelling to Paris, Kameneva penned the opening essay of the Soviet catalogue, “L’Exposi­ tion de Paris doit aider à faire connaître l’URSS” (The Paris Exposition must help make the USSR known) that set out the goals, themes, and intended outcomes of the Soviet participation in the exposition, the primary one being to encourage visitors to pursue an “impartial study” of the new state. Where previously France had only known the “sumptuous façade of monarchical Russia,” now, Kameneva insisted, it was invited, along with the rest of the world, to view the true face of Russia: its workers (Kameneff 9).20 It was a claim at least partially belied by the nature of the exhibits themselves. With the intent to reassure Westerners, to restore diplomatic ties, and to ensure recognition of the USSR where this had not yet taken place, the old rather than the new was emphasized: official catalogues and guidebooks made little effort to distinguish between “Soviet” and “Russian.” The Soviet participants in the Exposition regularly referred to themselves as Russians rather than Bolsheviks;21 they generally avoided calling themselves communists (like Bolshevik, a term of opprobrium in the West for most of the twentieth century) or the even the more neutral “Soviets.” They also frequently referred to their new state as “La nouvelle Russie” (the New Russia) rather than the USSR. For the West, the new name of what was the old empire was still unfamiliar and appeared odd, if not bizarre. Even sympathizers like painter and art critic Gaston Varenne judged the lengthy title of the state as “interminable” (113). A visitor consulting the alphabeticallyorganized general guide to the Exposition would have searched in vain for the entry on the USSR which, instead, appeared in bold font under “Russie,” followed by the rather apologetic phrase, “Ou plus

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Figure 3.3  Cover, Soviet catalogue for the 1925 expo. Design: Alexander Rodchenko.

exactement U.R.S.S., Union des Républiques socialistes soviétiques” (Russia. Or, more exactly, the U.S.S.R., the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) (Arts Décoratifs 1925, 266). In the Soviets’ compact catalogue, the name of their new state appears as “République Socialiste Fédérative Soviétique Russe” (Federated Socialist Soviet Russian Republic; emphasis added), underscoring its Russian core and thus a certain association with the previous (tsarist Russian) state. In the same catalogue, on the title page, the polity’s name appears as Union des Républiques Soviétistes Socialistes (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). To such looseness of terminology may be added the confusion of the territories and their political status within the USSR. Guidebooks and catalogues occasionally referred to the “nations” which comprised the Soviet Union; at other times, autonomous regions and republics were mixed with “national minorities” or “peoples.”22 Soviet art critic and historian Yakov Tugendhold claimed that the old “prison-house of nations” had been demolished when the Russian empire was destroyed, and that Fraternité and Égalité (phrases chosen to deeply resonate with their French hosts) had been established both through the granting of minority language rights23 and the establishment of local governments (“L’Élément” 31–2). In fact, old paternalistic,

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if not outright imperialist, attitudes and hierarchies prevailed, as was evident in the preparations for the Paris expo. The vast bulk of literature produced for the fair by the Soviet organizers focused on Russia proper, its art, and artists. Theatres outside of Moscow were not even mentioned, nor were members of their companies issued visas. The contributions of other republics were generally confined to sections devoted to the kustari, small artisans or peasant craftsmen, a decision that seemingly confirmed the stereotype of a folkloric or amateur artistic culture outside of Russia (Moscow) proper. Yet, as historian Robert C. Williams has pointed out, “Russian revolutionary artists of the avantgarde were not always as Russian, as revolutionary, or as innovative as these terms suggest” (4). Many were Ukrainian. Indeed, Ukraine was especially rich in artists of this generation, and Kiev, as Williams notes, was a traditional entry point for Western ideas as well as for their wider dissemination (36).24 Slavic scholar Myroslav Shkandrij has pointed out that one of the first avant-garde art exhibitions in the Russian Empire took place in Kiev (The Link, 1908) and that Ukrainians participated “heavily” in all the early avant-garde exhibitions of the Empire (219). A constellation of artists and cultural change agents thought of as Russian were actually born in Ukraine and spent their formative years there, among them Alexander Archipenko, Alexandra Exter, Kazimir Malevich, Sergei Eisenstein, David Burliuk, Vladimir Tatlin, Grigory Kozintsev, Sergei Yutkevich, Isaak Rabinovich, Nisson Shifrin, Serge Lifar, Vadym Meller, and Boris Aronson. Vetrov (Ivan Sergeevich Knizhnik-Vetrov),25 author of the section on the Soviet theatre displays, persistently referred to “Russian” exhibits throughout his text, a fact which contributed to the impression of the synonymy of “Soviet” with “Russian.” Such conflation worked in favour of the new Bolshevik regime, reassuring much of the West that this was old wine in new (if admittedly rather strange) bottles. It was also to be a forecast of the future, in which the two terms would, invariably, continue to be used synonymously in the international arena until the fall of the USSR in 1991 and even at times afterwards. For Soviet Russians, the Paris expo was an opportunity to showcase their country’s best talents; this meant that they were little concerned with what was going on in the “provinces” (i.e., other member republics). As John Findling and others have observed, “world’s fairs have consistently demonstrated a strong streak of nationalism, or the notion of boosting the national image, and the people’s pride in it”

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(“Introduction” xviii). The Exposition provided a useful platform from which to project the image of a forward-looking Russian state ready to embrace the technological advances of modernity and the most recent innovations in art and culture; even more, to be viewed as being in their forefront. Their exhibits simultaneously revealed both Soviet pragmatism (the desire to appear “bourgeois” and non-threatening) and audacity, and above all a deep understanding of the power of representation, particularly through the force of images. As W.J.T. Mitchell has observed, “Culture … is inseparable from questions of representation. Politics … [are] also deeply connected with issues of representation and mediation … [with] the production of political power through the use of media” (Mitchell 3). In their ability to appear to provide direct knowledge of the newly created state, both images and tangible objects reassured as well as provoked their viewers. More than simply displaying their cultural achievements, the Soviet exhibits were thus carefully crafted tools of propaganda and public diplomacy, intended to help normalize international relationships which, in turn, would both speed up the process of the political legitimization of the newly created USSR and re-instate old, as well as develop new, commercial relations. As much as France had hoped that the expo would help recover its economic fortunes, the Soviets had an equally keen eye on the same goal. The Soviet catalogue included dozens of pages of advertisements: first- and second-class cruises on the Volga, “superior quality, gilt-edged” playing cards, Russian furs, ivories made from Siberian mammoth teeth, gems, and precious stones. Although the Exposition was not primarily a commercial fair, Soviet kiosks, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, sold new Soviet stamps and books but also products typical of pre-Soviet (Russian imperial) contributions to world’s fairs, including porcelain, carpets, shawls, brocades, velvets, laces, toys, and embroideries. In projecting the image of a new Russia, Soviet literature prepared for the expo, like the items offered for sale, revealed a bifurcated strategy of representation which mirrored the much-contested dynamic between old and new. On the one hand, their messages were conciliatory and reassuring; on the other, pugnacious, even bellicose. The first, a tone of relative impartiality but full of exuberance and enthusiasm, runs through many of the essays in the Soviet catalogue. This “voice” acknowledged the major upheavals of the previous decade and encouraged the West to re-acquaint itself with Russia; it both urged the reactivation of old ties between Russia and France while simultaneously

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stressing the novelty and vitality of the new state, its peoples, and their creativity. Thus, Lunacharsky (one of the moderates), in his contribution to a special collection of essays produced in French for the fair (L’Art décoratif U.R.S.S. Moscou-Paris 1925), enumerated the various kinds of calamities that had been recently endured – famine, war, contagious diseases, a high rate of infant mortality. He did not fail to mention ideological crises, including the struggle between the left and the right, the hostility of many to the new regime both inside and outside the state, as well as the consequently large flood of émigrés who chose to flee rather than to accept the new regime. He also laconically referred to aesthetic-ideological debates and struggles. Many readers of the Soviet catalogue would have been relieved by Lunacharsky’s defence of the “old civilization,” particularly by his acknowledgment of the continued importance of the place of museums, palaces, churches, and monuments in the new Russia.26 He openly voiced his opposition to those inside the USSR who wished to destroy all of the remnants of the past. Such comments went a long way in contradicting refugee claims about vandalism and destruction, to say nothing of stories about arrests, imprisonment, or executions. Lunacharsky further explained that “The Soviet government understands very well that the treasures of the arts of the past (and even more so, those of science) contain a quantity of valuable components, useful and absolutely indispensable for the development of a new civilization” (“Développement” 16).27 Such treasures also included the classics of world drama. If Lunacharsky defended the need to retain the best of the past, he also explained that the Soviet authorities wished to push art out of its current position, that is, out of the stasis and torpor of routine. Instead, art, in conjunction with science, was to respond to the new exigencies of life; it was to observe it with “open eyes and render it, in all its detail, with passion and truth”28 (“Développement” 16). Citing Soviet achievements in letters and in art, he casually noted “a certain degree of progress in drama” – a phrase which alluded to the poverty of the early Soviet dramatic repertoire (“Développement” 18). Regrettably, Soviet Shakespeares had not yet emerged; a return to the classics would thus become as much a necessity as a principled ideological decision.29 Thus, like their French hosts, the Soviets took on the mantle of conscious change agents; they were deeply engaged in the process of creating a new style, though with the difference that this new style was to reflect the revolutionary qualities of the new state and its progress into modernity.

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Figure 3.4  Display of Soviet books, pamphlets, and various propaganda. Photo: Harlingue/Viollet. (From Pierre Cabanne. Encyclopédie Art Deco. Paris: Somogy, 1986, p. 73.)

The theatre arts flourished in the USSR. Indeed, as Lunacharsky remarked, achievements in this domain were on a “higher plane,” especially in Moscow and Leningrad, than in other cultural domains: “The modern Russian theatre is extremely rich and nuanced: not only the large organizations but also the smaller theatres and the studios (the associations of young theatre artists) have mounted shows of great aesthetic importance. The old theatres, such as the Bolshoi, the Maly, and the Art Theatre of Moscow, have showed a marked movement in the direction of responding to the call of contemporaneity. This movement is, par excellence, concentrated in the new theatres of the left theatre arts” (“Développement” 18). As Lunacharsky’s remarks obliquely indicate, the Russian embrace of modernism and modernity in the theatre was not uniform. Well before coming to praise Vsevolod Meyerhold’s

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Theatre of the Revolution, Lunacharsky had cannily lauded the First Studio/Second Art Theatre (made up of young theatre artists) for mounting four excellent productions: The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, Eric XIV, and The Flea – hardly a revolutionary repertoire. Praise was also heaped on the Studio of Musical Theatre Art for its “brilliant mise en scène” of a production of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata (“Développement” 18). Such references to the classics, like those he made concerning other monuments of the past, were, once again, reassuring to Westerners, since the assumption behind these symbolic objects was that of a recognized, admired, and shared cultural tradition. As Christopher M. Miller, Shelby H. McIntyre, and Murali K. Mantrala explain, the classics are representative of a “long cycle” of fashion, that is, “a convergence within the society on the meaning of a symbolic item that is relatively stable over time” (143). The political-aesthetic see-saws suggested by Lunacharsky’s remarks may be found in the other essays that made up the anthology. So, for example, David Arkin referenced the creative energy and inspiring example of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement; Yakov Tugendhold praised Gauguin’s rejection of the monotony of academic art and the turn to the primitive and archaic; and Abram Efros noted with pleasure how much Russia had been influenced by the achievements of the West, particularly of France and not least by its revolution (Arkine 44; Tugendhol'd, “L’Élément” 28; Efross 68, 70). Old cultural and commercial ties between France and Russia were nostalgically recalled, and the 1925 expo, as an example of the continuation of this historic relationship, was especially lauded. In his Preface to the compact catalogue, Petr Semenovich Kogan,30 President of the Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Commissaire Général of the Soviet exhibition, extolled the “profoundly democratic idea” which had inspired the 1925 Exposition, this celebration of peace. He greeted France’s “noble and grand initiative” of “this historical enterprise” (“Préface,” Exposition 12). For their part, he noted, the Soviets would showcase their “iron will” and the development of their energy, vigour, and unity under the banner of the hammer and the sickle (14). Their exhibits would reveal their emancipation from all barriers – not only from class divisions but from all compartmentalization, such as that which hitherto separated art from the spirit, art from life and industry: “Life must fully become art; man as manufacturer and man as artist must become inseparable, indivisible” (11).31

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The Soviet exhibits in the Exposition showed – insisted Kogan – that the USSR was not, as the Western world erroneously believed, a “vast desert” peopled by “wild men”; Soviet art alone clearly demonstrated the contrary. It also “proved that a new generation had made its appearance in Russia, that a new youth was being formed there, and that new social groups were animated by the unique and moving idea of communism” (“Préface,” L’Art Décoratif 6).32 Citing the “best representatives of France – the men of letters and the most gifted of artists” – as the first group to champion the idea of understanding the Revolution through Soviet art, Kogan insisted that the Soviets had “much to say to humanity.” Through art, “the true meaning of our struggle” would be grasped; “it is with this conviction that we resolutely enter the lists in a new artistic competition among nations” (7).33 Kogan’s prefatory remarks encapsulated many of the oxymorons of world’s fairs. On the one hand, his comments alluded to the idealistic themes of past world’s fairs as promoters of human progress, creativity, and of fraternal, peaceful, international relations; on the other, his jousting metaphor acknowledged the fair’s competitive, even combative, and intensely national, nature. Carefully prepared Soviet catalogues accompanying their large and well-considered contribution to the Paris show actively sought to persuade l’Occidentale of the great achievements already brought about by the “refreshing storm” (l’orage rafraichissant) of the October Revolution, as Yakov Tugendhold called it (“L’Élément” 31), as well as achievements yet to come. These accomplishments, they insisted, were made evident by the way that they were able to triumph over any adversity. Kogan boasted that the belated invitation extended to the USSR to participate in the 1925 expo simply gave the Soviets the opportunity to reveal their will, dedication to work, and ability to muster great collectives (“Préface,” Exposition 14). The Moscow-produced catalogue more stridently made the same claims and pointedly declared the Soviet resolve to dispel Western perceptions about the decline of art and culture after the Revolution, while the Paris-printed compact catalogue rhapsodically described the new Soviet age in which art and life were being brought together into a harmonious whole (“Préface,” Exposition 11). The timing (shortly after the creation of the USSR in 1922) and the subject of the expo – art and industry – seemed tailor-made to display Soviet goals and values. As Kogan observed, the Paris Exposition was very dear to Soviet hearts because it was an exhibition of industrial arts: “In fact, it was our Revolution which emphasized this idea that art

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must, above all, incarnate real life, it must construct reality; true beauty consists in adapting the object to its use-purpose. This, too, is the principle behind the Paris Exposition of 1925” (“Préface,” Exposition 5).34 Such a theme of the primacy of Soviet leadership in connecting art to industry ran through all the materials prepared for the expo. Thus, Viktor Nikolsky remarked that in the USSR the artist and the worker had been brought together in a new alliance to “ennoble art”; they would construct a “new genre of beauty – the beauty of perfect correspondence between the object and its purpose; to exclude all banality, and create the new beauty by purifying it, so to speak, in the fire of true art” (26).35 Arkin similarly claimed that, by reorganizing training and education, a new type of artist was being created, one for whom the methods of the machine were “neither foreign nor hostile, and for whom the languages of technical formulas were no longer an incomprehensible idiom” (43).36 The world was invited to take note that a renaissance in art had taken place in the USSR. As striking evidence of this fact, Kogan drew attention to the new subject matter of the peasants’ popular art. No longer were they rendering images of saints or lords, images of the old patriarchal era; instead, their works were inspired by the lives of Red Army soldiers, by “pioneers,” and by the electrification of the countryside (“Préface,” Exposition 6). This was true of other areas of applied art as well. The manufacture of porcelain, which hitherto had served the “false taste of a degenerate aristocracy,” now flourished thanks to the work of “the best artists working with rich new subject matter” (“Préface,” L’Art Décoratif 6).37 Most importantly and most effectively, he insisted, the Revolution could be found in the theatre: “one of the most interesting sections of the Exposition is without doubt that of our theatres, where our maquettes attest to the audacity and the rich inventiveness of our scenographers [décorateurs] and our directors; it [the theatre arts section] will become the subject of the study and admiration of all those who are not stuck firmly in the mud of the bourgeois theatre, of those who wish to understand the blast of a new art” (7).38 While full of revolutionary zeal and enthusiasm for the new state, these voices were part of a transformed, but – to Western eyes – still recognizable, Russia. The inclusion of a large exhibit of folk art and crafts added to this impression. In their many references to pre-­revolutionary ties with Western nations and traditions, the Soviets suggested compromise and continuity with the past. Lunacharsky in particular struck a

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conciliatory note, praising the fresh new talents that had sprung up with the Revolution while also critiquing the excesses of some of their practices and of “isms” such as Cubism and Suprematism (“Développe­ ment” 20). But, as has already been suggested, there was also a second, more troubling, representational voice at work in the Soviet publications: a strident, aggressive, insolent one. The contributors to the catalogues also insisted on Soviet superiority over all other countries. Barbed comments about the West are found throughout the catalogues. Europe was attacked for its imperialist and destructive politics. While perhaps few could disagree with these sentiments in the aftermath of the Great War, nonetheless the tone, sometimes smug, other times belligerent, would have rattled.39 Tugendhold haughtily insisted that the USSR had nothing in common with the “mechanical union” of the “parties that composed the British Empire or with those permanent internecine wars of nationalities in what, until recently, characterized Austria-Hungary” (“L’Élément” 32).40 Critic of art, literature, and theatre, and head of stage design at the Moscow Art Theatre from 1920 to 1926, Abram Efros lambasted the theatres of the world, focusing particularly on what he regarded as the contemporary inadequacies and inferiority of the American, English, German, French, and Italian theatres (68–9). If Western artists and designers were elsewhere lauded for inspiring the Russians, they were also attacked for coming up short, for not pursuing their ideas to their logical ends. Most disturbingly was a prominently placed photograph heading Tugendhold’s chapter on the national element in Soviet arts. The essay opens with an explanation of the revolutionary aims of the USSR as internationalism: “the creation of one general civilization for all of humanity” and “the end of all differences and national prejudices that are always charged with the spark of war” (27).41 In contrast to this idealistic and pacifist view is the seemingly innocuous image of two decorative plates resting just above Tugendhold’s comments. The by-line laconically reads: “Two modern Ukrainian plates (manufacture of Mejigorié)” (Fig. 3.5). While their point of origin is explained, the mottos inscribed on them are not translated for the Western reader. On the right, the more benign communist slogan “Don’t expect any help from gods or tsars!” encircles the central image of a worker holding the hammer and sickle. On the left, a soldier striding aggressively forward with a bayonet proclaims a more sinister message: “U.S.S.R. We will grind all of you into dust!” (L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S., 27). It was unlikely that anyone except Ukrainian émigrés could read it.42

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Spaces of Modernity The Soviets’ large and imposing presence at the Paris Exposition dwarfed that of all other participating foreign nations. In addition to their own pavilion, six rooms on two floors of the Grand Palais were dedicated to their exhibits; a section in the Galérie de l’Esplanade was set aside for Alexander Rodchenko’s Worker’s Club and the Izba Reading Room. In the Education and Training section works from VUKhTEMAS, the state art and technical school founded in 1920 to train artists-designers, were displayed.43 On the ground floor of the Grand Palais, visitors encountered examples of peasant art from all the regions of the USSR, including clothing, embroideries, metal works, toys, leather work, lacquer objects, and other decorative designs. They could also find posters, photographs, maquettes for scenes from films, books, glass works, textiles, Soviet banknotes, postage stamps, medals, and coins. Soviet architecture and ambition were represented by Tatlin’s soaring model for a Monument to the Third International (its planned size: a third higher than the Eiffel Tower), as well as by designs and sketches by various hands for the Soviet Agricultural Exhibition held two years earlier in Moscow. An indication of the high regard in which the Soviets held the theatre arts was their allocation of one hundred square metres for the display of maquettes, drawings, sketches, photos, and costumes – as much space as was dedicated to architectural projects, traditionally the “queen” of decorative and applied arts; more than double the space of Rodchenko’s Worker’s Club; and four times as much as set out for the book display. The largest exhibit, however, was that of peasant art – the kustari, with 425 square metres of space (Khazanova 190). Engaged in the double game of playing on innovation on the one hand and adherence to tradition on the other, the Soviet exhibits presented a visual attack on Western notions of what constituted modernity and modernism. If theatricality, luxury, publicité, and illusion were the central features of the French exhibits (including the staging of Paris itself), then Soviet exhibits, which combined simple materials with bold colours, appeared to offer up not just a window onto the USSR but, moreover, a brash manifesto-spectacle of modernity.44 The architectural “bomb” of the expo (Cohen 9), Konstantin Mel­ nikov’s pavilion, was one of the great, controversial hits of the show, with people enduring long line-ups in order to see it. Paraphrasing Le Corbusier’s idea of the house as a machine for living, Tugendhold referred to Melnikov’s pavilion as a “machine for agitation” (“Stil’” 42).

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Figure 3.5  Two Soviet Ukrainian porcelain plates manufactured in Mezhyhiria, Ukrainian SSR. On the left, the motto reads: “U.S.S.R. We will grind all of you into dust!” On the right: “Don’t expect any help from gods or tsars!” (Les Arts décoratifs et industriels de L’U.R.S.S., p. 27.)

With great assurance, Soviet officials predicted that their art would subsequently “travel across the face of Europe” and dominate “as the new creative form” (Kemenov 1). At the pavilion’s opening, some parts of the crowd welcomed the “victory of Soviet art,” cried out “Long Live the Soviet Union,” and then belted out a rendition of The International. The next day, monarchists appeared and countered with shouts of “Long Live the King!” On the streets, in the press, and among designers, the pavilion sparked a tempest of controversy.45 Yvanhoë Rambosson criticized the structure for looking like a stylized guillotine, while the contributors to the left-wing L’Humanité predictably praised it for exalting Humanity rather than luxury (qtd. in Cohen 23). In his contribution to the British Reports on the exposition, H.C. Bradshaw commented that “As a contrast to the over-decorated interior of the ordinary Paris theatre this simplicity came as a relief – though some might have found its restraint rather cold and forbidding” (47). Architect and scholar Catherine Cooke has observed that much of the “scandal” of the pavilion “derived from precisely the ‘nakedness’ of Melnikov’s undecorated structure and open glazed walls” (143). Despite a grudging admiration for some of its features, Bradshaw

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Figure 3.6  Melnikov’s proposed Soviet pavilion for the 1925 Paris expo. (From Serge Romoff, “Le Pavillon de l’URSS,” Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925, p. 125.)

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noted with frustration that “Architecture in Russia, if it was to be judged by the Russian pavilion, has ceased to be an Art based on any reasonable principles or related to any known requirements” (41). Some French commentators similarly characterized the pavilion as “a violent effort to break with national and imported styles of architecture at one and the same time” (“Une Visite” [2]). However “bizarre,” Rambosson noted that one had to appreciate the structure’s value as publicity: “c’est bien un pavillon publicitaire” (“L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. La Participation Étrangère II” 172). This polarization of views extended to the response of other nations. The Architectural League of New York hotly debated the pluses and minuses of the new architecture but its members nonetheless agreed that, whatever the outcome, the Exposition would indeed have a lasting effect on architectural design. Favouring the modernist preference for geometric shapes on display in Paris, a number of them strongly urged their fellow Americans to move away from backwardness and embrace the future. Melancholically, they acknowledged that America “could not enter the French exposition because she failed to create a single original design.”46 Raymond Hood, architect of the Chicago Tri­ bune Tower (1924), approvingly noted that “the one fine thing” about the new architecture exemplified at the Paris Exposition was “the game of the parasite was discouraged” (“Changing” R2).47 The Soviet pavilion’s doubly fortuitous and prominent location, across from the Grand Palais and set between the strangely eclectic design of the pavilion of Great Britain48 and the bloated one of Italy, made it impossible to miss.49 Boris Ternovets applauded the generous hand of fate (assisted by the Americans’ absence) that had made this possible, ensuring instant visual comparison and thus setting off the pavilion’s architectural novelty.50 Before the expo, at a spring meeting of the Acad­ emy of Artistic Sciences of the USSR, its president, Kogan, had explained the ideological principles behind the creation of the pavilion: it was decided to oppose the banality of the richness and luxury of foreign pavilions with a “fresh” and “original” structure that – through the use of simple materials, stark geometric forms, oblique angles, and arresting red paint – would strike the viewer with its simplicity and audacity. Soviet culture, accessible to the common man, would be revealed in its opposition to typical European exhibits such as The Collector’s Pavilion, one of the most sumptuous of the expo. Melnikov’s structure, Kogan continued, would give hope that sensitive, receptive artistic circles of the French capital would experience the resonance of

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Figure 3.7  The opulent pavilion of the Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette. Hiriart Tribout, Beau, architects. Photo: Manuel Frères. (Catalogue général officiel.)

the new creative power emanating from Soviet Russia.51 For the contemporary artist, he averred, only two cities were interesting: Paris and Moscow; they represented two styles, two opposites (“O Parizhe” 5). It should be noted, however, that Melnikov’s design was, by his own admission, as much a practical as an ideological move, carried out in his signature style and in line with his contribution to the 1923 AllRussian Agricultural Exhibition for which he created the “Makhorka” (tobacco) pavilion.52 There was little time and not much funding by which to mount a pavilion that could be anything like the previous, ponderously monumental Russian pavilion created for the Paris 1900 show, dubbed “Le Kremlin du Trocadéro” (Starr 44). Much of it prefabricated in Moscow, Melnikov’s pavilion was shipped in boxes by rail to the expo grounds, where French carpenters were responsible for the detailing (Cooke 150).53 Numerous scholarly studies have analysed the specific achievements of and debates concerning Melnikov’s pavilion, which obviates the need for any extensive discussion here.54 It is, however, important to

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underscore one point made by Leah Dickerman: Melnikov’s pavilion and Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club (mounted in the Invalides) served as anti-monumental critiques of the rest of the Exposition by virtue of their emphasis on the social, collective, and communal. By comparison and despite its austere features, Le Corbusier’s pavilion seemed much less radical; indeed, with a maid’s room at the back, a sun-roof terrace, and two guest rooms, it was a “technological revamping of a traditional upper-crust living room” (Dickerman 73). If Melnikov’s pavilion shared Le Corbusier’s simplicity of design, the similarities ended here. In appearance, Melnikov’s pavilion united some of the features of Soviet constructivist stage designs: austerity of design, unexpected asymmetrical angularity, anti-ornamental geometric forms, surprising use of vertical space, bold colouring (painted red, grey, and white, at Alexander Rochenko’s suggestion),55 modular parts, and modest construction materials. All of these features set this building apart from the many opulent and fantastical pavilions of other countries, particularly those of France, which were stylistically more or less uniform. Unpretentious yet striking, Melnikov’s pavilion was designed specifically for its particular location and for the purpose of the expo; that is, its inexpensive components were quickly fabricated from standard pieces for its main purpose as a short-lived exhibition object. From the outside, the building seemed spacious. As Cooke has pointed out, “Melnikov’s ‘trick’ was to give it an impression of size from the outside by extending one horizontal dimension to maximum length, and by raising one corner to maximum height” (143–4). This daring, imaginative treatment of space drew the attention, for good or ill, of all visitors. Similarly attention-seeking were the bright red and white colours with which the simple timber framework was painted. These enclosed the rectangular exhibition space of a huge glass window. On one side of the window, the entrance opened onto a staircase which took the visitor up to the first floor, then down again on the other side. Dividing the exhibition space on a diagonal, the staircase created two triangles. As seen in the contemporary postcard (Figure 3.6), the staircase was open to the elements and was topped by decorative panels created in “X” shapes. The Soviet flag proudly waved from the pavilion’s wooden tower. In conceiving of huge glass walls that allowed everyone who passed the Soviet pavilion to look inside, even those who decided not to enter, Melnikov adhered to the same “shop-window” manner of display that characterized most of the Exposition. The first floor exhibited recent Soviet publications, all (Rodchenko ruefully commented) with Lenin’s

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Figure 3.8  Melnikov’s unfinished pavilion, showing earthworks. Contemporary postcard.

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image on their covers (317). The seductive openness or apparent porousness of the enormous glassed-in space and its invitation to link the viewer with the objects inside was a strategy that (as noted above) had transformed Paris at this fair into a twentieth-century city focused on publicité, fashion, shopping, and, especially, the female consumer.56 Art historian Elena Strutinskaia has claimed that the pavilion was a mask, a “huge theatrical installation,” disguising the true face of early Soviet culture (74). But Melnikov’s use of space was more complex: rather than suggesting a complete antithesis to Western consumerism, instead it simultaneously played with and against it, much like the double-­ voicing of the Soviet literature produced for the expo. Not as far apart as critics claimed, the expo’s ideological and commercial concepts of space were, instead, in dynamic tension. The Soviet architectural contribution to the Paris expo was, however, not the visitors’ first introductions to the new polity. Despite the Soviet hype about their “iron will” and ability to mobilize collective strength, Melnikov’s pavilion was not ready for the official opening on 28 April.57 Nor was Alexander Rodchenko’s equally famous, harmoniously constructed Worker’s Club completed by that time either. In fact, the USSR section was not officially launched until 3:00 pm on 4 June (Rodchenko 177). In the meantime and for well over a month, the theatre arts exhibits, displayed in imposing eight-metre-high rooms at the Grand Palais, served as the window onto the USSR and the first flashpoint for controversy about the Soviet presence at the fair.58 Official French guidebooks, never failing to direct the visitor to the Soviet exhibits, remarked that they were “très importante, parfois curieuse” – very important, sometimes odd. They were also regarded as a reflection of the new (strange) Soviet society (Arts décoratifs. Guide de l’Exposition 309). By common consent the most impressive and radical section of the entire fair, Soviet theatre arts achieved the greatest success, the largest coverage, and greatest influence. In his “Introduction” to the catalogue of the Soviet exhibition, “B.T.” (Boris Ternovets) acknowledged the special quality of the theatre arts exhibit: “[T]he new culture is asserted perhaps most aggressively, most fearlessly, and mercilessly in terms of its response to outdated forms by our Theatre Section” (“En guise” 19).59 In his report on the USSR’s participation in international expositions, Ternovets declared that the universal opinion concurred: Soviet theatre arts unquestionably lead the world. Similarly, Alexander Rod­ chenko happily wrote home in June, “Almost all the newspapers are writing about the Russian exhibition, this much hasn’t been written

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about any of the others, and this – is a definite kind of success” (Aleksandr Rodchenko, Experiments 186). In his personal correspondence, Ternovets gives a lively account of journalists bustling about, requesting information and photographs, and then looking on in perplexity at the display of constructivist60 theatre maquettes (Pis’ma 166). Although the press was polarized, nevertheless (as Ternovets pointed out) it was evident that “all of artistic Paris” was fascinated (“Vystavka” 172). Artists, museum directors, gallery owners, writers, and intellectuals flocked to meetings with the Soviets. Among the many who attended official gatherings were Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Francis Picabia, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens, and Albert Gleizes – a veritable “who’s who” of great contemporary (left-wing) artists (Pis’ma 167). For their part, Soviet officials returned the favour. Kogan, for example, visited Picasso, Paul Flora, Georges Duhamel, and others, “fashionable and unfashionable artists, writers, intellectuals,” as he somewhat disparagingly put it (“O Parizhe” 5). Contributors to newspapers and specialized art magazines repeatedly requested photos, information, and articles about the Soviet exhibits, overwhelming the Soviet organizers. Some, like the journals L’Art vivant and L’Amour de l’art, dedicated special issues to the Soviet achievements. It was evident, Ternovets asserted, that not only had the USSR passed its stiff international examination with flying colours, but it also had much to teach the rest of Europe, particularly in the domains of theatre and graphic arts (“Vystavka” 174). S.P. Kemenov went further: Soviet theatre arts had no equal at the Exposi­ tion (1). It was an opinion shared by the jury that meted out awards at the conclusion of the expo.61

Chapter Four

Great Expectations: Space and Theatre Arts

An evident, palpable excitement was felt in French theatrical circles about the decision to include the theatre arts in the Exposition inter­ nationale, the first time that they would form part of a world’s fair. It was a decision that acknowledged the great changes that had occurred in stagecraft since the turn of the century. Indeed, as journalist and sometime actor Pierre Scize (born Michel-Joseph Piot) observed, “One can be sure, without fear of contradiction, that in the midst of all of this feverish activity that is demonstrated in all branches of Art, the Theatre is perhaps the genre that has undergone the greatest transformation” (193).1 A sign of this great transformation could be seen, claimed Scize, in the way in which the reputations of theorists Edward Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia had shifted. In 1910, they were generally regarded as “dangereux chimériques” (dangerous fantasists); now, in 1925, though still respected, they were thought of as rather tardigrade and insignificant (“un brin tardigrades”) (193). Theatre arts were among the novelties introduced at the expo as “Arts of the Street,” which also embraced film, fashion, and urban and landscape design. Their inclusion in the fair pointed directly to the importance of confronting the issue of modernity and its relation to space. In bringing all these categories together for the first time, the French hosts expected to become the influential change agents of the postwar era in all these arts; at the very least, they anticipated that their expo would be the crucible in which the present confusing swirl of “isms” would finally settle and be transformed, through the alchemical process of display, debate, and exchange, into a single, uniform, and generally accepted style that would be patently modern.

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Film, a particular source of French pride because of its development by the Lumière brothers Auguste and Louis, had already been introduced at the Exposition Universelle in 1900. By 1925, it had begun to achieve considerably more prestige and acceptance as an art form, especially one that melded technology and creativity. In its constant movement, it magnificently dovetailed with the modernist emphasis on dynamism and on the expo’s theme of art and industry. Fashion was seriously treated at the expo, as it directly fuelled France’s economy through its major contributions to design, haute couture, the textile industry, and manufacturing. The 1925 expo re-emphasized Paris’s longheld supremacy as a centre of elegance, while associating couture more generally both with commodity culture as well as with theatre.2 The hallmark of the modern woman’s couture was the new, and theatre constituted an important source of its inspiration. The fashionable woman was thus considered “an artist of stage effects” successfully deploying various illusory techniques to create an image of femininity and coquetry.3 Fashion was therefore a theatre of the streets, creating illusions and offering seductive displays, just as the expo was a theatricalization of the city itself – artfully revealing, emphasizing, or occluding. Much more than dress, fashion was (and remains) an index of its contemporary culture as well as a barometer of social transformations. Intimately related to theatre, it included performance, gestures, and behaviour, all elements crucial to the reshaping of public and private space. The expo, with its emphasis on the relations between art and industry, helped advance this fertile “contamination” among theatre, urban space, and other areas of endeavour.4 Yet, despite theatre’s position as a vital element – indeed, as the centre of a complex system of cultural mediations – the inclusion of theatre and the theatre arts as a separate category within the context of an international expo was not without controversy. Various justifications for their inclusion are found in official and unofficial documents, as well as in the subsequently published Encyclopédie. It should be noted that the theatre arts had only fairly recently begun to establish their own tradition of professional exhibitions and thus to acquire some measure of acknowledgment of their importance.5 France’s decision to embrace theatre and the theatre arts was prompted – it was explained – by their direct connection to the decorative and applied arts. The predominance of visual elements made theatre arts a “true spectacle”; moreover, recent and extensive “passionate” research into stagecraft, still unknown

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to the general public, made it necessary to include these arts in the fair.6 A steadfast supporter of theatre, writer, historian, and journalist Georges-G. Toudouze insisted that “It is essential that this Exposition reveal the face and soul of France with incomparable brilliance. And how can this vision come about without the theatre taking the prominent place that is due to its power and majesty?” (101).7 Still, a lingering issue was whether theatre arts were art, a question stemming from a historic connection with para-theatrical events. Such events had long formed a part of international and world’s fairs, though they were hardly regarded as serious contributions to art or industry; rather, they took on a purely entertaining and, at most, a decorativeallegorical character.8 As early as 1855, the history of Paris had been represented on the world’s fair stage in the form of a pageant. Similar pageants celebrating the host city and its achievements continued to be a common, then expected, feature of international fairs (and Olympics), were often very expensive to produce, and involved thousands of participants. Across the Channel, for example, the Empire pageant at Wembley involved 15,000 performers and hundreds of animals in a portrayal of the history of Britain. Sir Edward Elgar was commissioned to compose the grand music, and the whole was conceived as an “interpretation of the deep significance, spiritual and material[,] of the British Empire Exhibition” (Knight and Sabey 101).9 The Paris 1925 Fête du Théâtre et de la Parure (discussed above) served a similar purpose. Performances of other kinds at international fairs included re-­ enactments; for example, part of the American Civil War recreated during the Seattle-Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (1909), “Scenes from the Opera of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), and major historic naval engagements on a great water stage (Wembley, 1924). Other theatricalized happenings included dressup events such as Carnival Fortnight, with 7,000 participants, processions, and fancy-dress parades (Wembley, 1924). Theatre productions, however, continued to be presented outside the boundaries of the fair in traditional locations rather than within the fairs’ precincts. More problematic uses of the conventions of theatrical representations were found at colonial exhibits, where people had been put on display. Human “zoos” were shown in Sydney, Australia at the Intercolonial Exhibit of 1870. France was perhaps the most active proponent of such exhibits, which blurred reality and theatre. Colonial peoples were displayed at the “Negro Village” in 1878, and again in 1889, when

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as many as four hundred men, women, and children, pretending to go about their usual activities, were displayed as a central attraction. At the Paris 1900 world’s fair, the “Living in Madagascar” exhibit yet again played with the illusion of the visitor/spectator as a “fourth wall” watching the “natives” going about their business. Nor were the French the only ones to display people. As Robert Rydell has shown, the Brit­ish and the Americans created similar “villages” employing colonial, and sometimes aboriginal, peoples. Such living “theatre” created and confirmed racial stereotypes, asserted the power of the colonizer, and confronted notions of representation and display.10 Such a brief glance at forms of performance at earlier expos suggests the unproblematized way in which theatre and theatre arts, broadly conceived, had been employed in previous fairs. It also points to the way in which many theatrical techniques and conventions were being exploited while sidestepping an exhibition of theatre arts themselves or of seriously considering the methods and implications of representation. The Paris Exposition of 1925 thus marked a major departure from all other previous expos in intending to exhibit and focus attention on the domain of the theatre arts both as a distinct area of endeavour and as a technique employed by organizers; it was here that a “revolution of exceptional originality” (une révolution d’une rare originalité) (Clouzot 227), with its new representations of space, had taken place. Indeed, the theatre “was a key site for debating the significance (political, social, and artistic) of life in a modern, industrialized society. For many artists, performance offered the means of encouraging audiences to see – and understand – the world in different ways. Theatre acquired a new urgency, not only as the means of depicting a changed world, but also (in some cases) as an intrinsic component of bringing about change” (Gronberg, “Performing” 113). We have already seen that the Soviets very much shared this point of view. International fairs offered the opportunity for encounter and exchange between East and East; in George B. Sproles’s terms, it was the occasion for social visibility and communicability. Theatrical practices, new theories, and new methods of stagecraft could be displayed, shared, and debated in the course of the six-month exposition framed by the central stage of Paris itself. The great change agents who had shaped the course of theatrical practice over the past two decades – names like Stanislavsky and Meyerhold – would be able to demonstrate their innovations to an international audience. The various arts would blend

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together to create a great new style that responded to the new spirit of the postwar age. Yet, as we shall see, for all the Exposition’s expressed goals of displaying novelty and of initiating and disseminating a new style, it failed to entirely divest itself of the old. Bringing Theatrical Innovation to France Beginning on 14 April 1924, the organizing committee of the Arts du Théâtre, Classe 25, met nearly every week in preparation for the Expo­ sition, debating financial matters, hotly discussing what to display, how and where best to do so in the Grand Palais.11 Guillaume Tronchet agreed to assume the role of architect-arranger of the exhibits, and Léon Moussinac that of rapporteur. Like other decisions made about the Exposition’s organization, this one was indicative of a deep division of world views. Well-established, Tronchet was a traditionalist who continued to design his buildings in the neoclassical style.12 Moussinac, on the other hand, had been drawn to the artistic revolution that was taking place in Europe and, especially, in the USSR. A writer, journalist, film critic, and historian, he had joined the French Communist Party in 1924.13 In the lead-up to the fair, his enthusiasm and his great expectations were easy to discern. But it was an enthusiasm, he emphasized, that was widespread rather than particular to his case. The desire to examine the status of the theatre arts and to make sense of the current great “confusion of ideas” could be gauged, he noted, by the recentlyheld international technical exhibitions in Amsterdam (1923) and Vienna (1924). Unlike these specialized, professional fairs, the Paris Exposition promised to offer a great opportunity within the confines of a world fair to review all the “isms” being explored in the theatre arts around the world and, most importantly, to do so before the widest possible audience. Such an event would help theatre (particularly French theatre) to liberate itself “from certain kinds of preconceptions, from various routines, from false conventions, and from an evident literary confusion, in order to adapt itself as well as possible to the new needs of the times, to the Spirit of the Epoch.”14 Journalist Pierre Lazareff commented that “It would certainly be pretentious to say that we are on the eve of a profound change in dramatic art, but one can affirm with joy the profound evolution in the taste of the audience at a moment that is particularly propitious for the development of a new Theatre.”15 Moussinac and his colleagues were unanimous in their belief in the absolute necessity of displaying both the very latest technological and

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theoretical innovations which, they were sure, were not widely known, even among playwrights. They also held the shared goal of inspiring – or, rather, goading – writers into responding to the new spirit of the age by creating works which were truly theatrical.16 As Moussinac explained, a theatre arts exposition “had to take on the character of the avant-garde, because it was the authors who suffered from the weight of, and who submitted to, dead traditions without reaction. It is the stage directors (metteurs en scène) who can lead them and who can help them deduce the future of the theatre, its true modern destiny” (“Rapport” 9).17 In order to critically assess the state of the theatre, the organizers of Classe 25 required that the exposition contain two essential ingredients. First, a display of maquettes, drawings, costumes, and photographs; these would be “projects of spaces conditioned by the presence of the living and mobile actor.” Since, as Moussinac explained, “an exposition must also be a demonstration,” a second element was indispensable: a theatre, built expressly for the expo, on whose stage the new ideas, techniques, and technologies could be displayed and tested. “One without the other remains fragmentary,” he believed. “In a way, we will have two expositions in one: on the one side, the rooms designated for architecture, installations of techniques, ‘decor,’ maquettes and costumes; on the other, the large rooms arranged for the changing composition of space in three dimensions and at the scale of the human body” (“Rapport” 7–9).18 Together, the exhibits would present a complete image of the theatre of the day and would chart the way for the possibilities for its future. Moussinac’s comments reveal how central a re-conception of space was to the development of a new style, and a new way of thinking about and creating theatre. In preparation for the expo and over a period of four months, the Association française d’exposition et d’échanges artistiques, led by its founder, eminent music and dance critic Robert Brussel, conducted a massive survey involving 350 correspondents, mostly consular and diplomatic officials, in thirty countries. Tabulating and assessing the results, the organizers issued invitations to a variety of theatre groups both in France and around the world, requesting their participation in this unprecedented international endeavour (Brussel 112). As with other aspects of the Paris Exposition, the theatre arts exhibition was intended both to look backward – to analyse the innovations that had occurred over the past two decades – and forward – to establish a new standard of the art of the theatre and of the theatre arts.

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Kiev-born dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar (later ballet master of the Paris Opera) explained the important distinction between the two: “The first is performance, what the spectator sees on stage, the living picture peopled by actors in costume, bringing the scene to life. It is real but it is ephemeral. Theatre art is set and costume design which continues to exist after the performance is over” (13). It was essential to show the interaction of the two. Theatre artists agreed that, by the nineteenth century, design – or, as it was commonly called until the Paris expo, “decor” – had “degenerated into a mediocre craft” (Lifar 14). Sets were often either completely irrelevant to the action portrayed on stage or, as a result of the influence of the Duke of Meiningen’s company, focused on the re-creation of historical minutiae. The new stagecraft rejected both approaches. Instead, the proponents of the modernist spirit argued that theatre design should be “suggestif et non imitatif” – suggestive and not imitative – and should be aimed at creating an atmosphere so appropriate to the drama that at no point would the spectator be distracted from the action by the designer’s talent or his skills (Drésa 481–2). The “modern decorator” or designer (a new term; the shift in terminology is important) was called away from unnecessary ornamentation to a larger task: to become the intelligent, ingenious, and intimate collaborator of the author, “without preconceived ideas of simplification or excess, but rather, but with the sole aim of putting the play at the centre of attention.” Such an approach, noted artist Jacques Drésa, meant a “revolution of ideas even more profound than that of the profession, and one which would place the theatre artist at the forefront of a noble art in which the artist creates a work not only with a palette of colours, but also with the moving tones of fabrics, and one that is modelled to his taste with real light” (482).19 A “rediscovered art” of the twentieth century, theatre art was now to become “once more not only respectable, but also respected” (Lifar 13). The Paris expo would showcase the changes that had taken place in the theatre arts over the past two decades by bringing to France all the major change agents of the world (while pointedly snubbing Germany). A potent combination of technological advances, scientific discoveries, new theoretical approaches, and cross-cultural and interdisciplinary influences transformed thinking about the theatre and, together, created a strong reaction against realism and naturalism. Advances in technology included lighting, especially the use of electricity (as discussed above); the development of stage machinery, such as the rotating stage;

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research into acoustics and optics; the discovery of the reciprocity of colours; the discovery of motion pictures; new systems of electronic communications; mass printing and mass production; and the automobile and airplane, and, most notably, the speed associated with them. At the heart of the new movements, as both specialists and generalists repeatedly stressed, was science: the discovery of the X-ray, Einstein’s remarkable investigations into the relationship of space, light, and time, and Freud’s explorations into the human mind.20 Old theatrical conventions failed to reflect such major transformations in technology, science, and thought. A new direction was needed. The arrival in Paris of the Ballets Russes in 1909 under the management of the charismatic Sergei Diaghilev had presented one phase in the transformation of the stage. The unprecedented riot of outrageous colours that was used in the painted backdrop (the result of the work of such luminaries as Leon Bakst, Natalia Goncharova, and Alexandre Benois), the exotic, orientalist costumes, the ingenious and often scandalous choreography, and the “barbaric” music took Paris by storm, continuing to influence the French stage well into the 1920s.21 The Russian designs were recognized as having roused the French stage from somnambulism. Yet, despite their continuing popularity with the public, they were attacked by critics such as Moussinac for diverting the attention of the spectator away from the action and directing it to the painter. Worse, some theatre commentators argued, the Ballets Russes had actually presented an approach as false as that of trompel’œil: the two dimensional surface conflicted with the three-dimensional actor and thus could never create a scenic unity. As a painted canvas, a decorative tableau was unable to play with lighting or movement (Ency­clopédie, X, 21). Although undeniably sensuous and beautiful, critics opined that such an approach to theatre marked a dead end rather than a springboard for innovation. French theatre artists and historians argued that not only were the Ballets Russes now passé but, more importantly, also at odds with the new concepts of space and time. (It is telling that Bakst’s role in the 1925 Paris expo was confined to designing some of the costumes for that grandiose pageant, La Nuit du Théâtre et de la Parure, discussed earlier.) Guillaume Janneau insisted that the exhibit of theatre arts at the Paris expo would require the complete revision of fundamental principles, not merely the replacement of one decorative system by another (“Introduction” 176).22 At the core of new thinking about the theatre was the re-conception of space as a dynamic environment in which actors

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and audience, no longer separated by a proscenium arch, would enter into a new, cooperative relationship. On stage, the “construction,” “architecture,” or “spatial décor” would be presented as a three-­dimensional “harmonious ‘space’” organized around the “actor, permitting “the maximum of expression” (Encyclopédie, X, 22). The vocal, visual and physical were to be melded together into a new unity that was overtly theatrical; the stage was no longer just a platform for the recitation of a literary text. The text would “live” through the dynamic actor moving in a complex volumetric space. Such changes depended as much upon re-theatricalizing the theatre as recognizing the theatricality of everyday life, a notion which chimed with the theatricalization of the city of Paris itself in fresh finery created for the 1925 Exposition. The new, more reciprocal, relationship established between audience and actor occasioned by the breakdown of the concept of the “fourth wall” also harmonized with the idea of the “shop-window” which opened up interior space, that of the boutique, to that of the street.23 Passersby became the audience to the staged luxury goods effectively displayed with a judicious use of artificial lighting and careful positioning. While perceived as sensationally “modern,” ironically the new approach to theatre was also a return to earlier theatrical traditions: to a renewal of the dynamic relationship between audience and actors, to a synchronic rather than diachronic view of space and time, to simultaneity, movement, and to a variety of playing spaces. Commentators drew special attention to the Soviets, who had successfully revivified their theatre by returning to the periods of the grand théâtre populaire: Medi­eval, Greek, Chinese, Shakespearean, and Spanish theatre, as well as to the Italian commedia dell’arte (Ozenfant 75).24 Critics and innovators alike considered this an essential move. By leaping back over the centuries, theatre would regain its power, validity, and legitimacy (Rambosson, “Conclusion” 363–4).25 As a first step in moving forward, argued Yvanhoë Rambosson, it was necessary to accept the fact that the theatre is “the son of lies” (“Conclusion” 363). While the Soviets had made their slogan “Theatri­ calize Life!,” Westerners like Rambosson took up stage designer and theorist Georg Fuchs’s call to “Re-theatricalize the Theatre.” Realism, argued Rambosson, had taken facsimile surface for reality, using the pretense of a fourth wall in order to allow the audience to view “reality”; in actuality, it merely drew attention to the disparity between illusion and reality. Realism, he insisted, was “tainted in its principle; it misrecognized the irreparable antagonism between the exact and the

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true … [T]o insist upon exactitude was to open up a comparison with its inevitable inconsistencies.” The source of inspiration was cut down. Citing Schopenhauer, Rambosson insisted that “To show everything, to make everything precise, was to prevent the imagination from exploding” (Encyclopédie, X, 15).26 Léon Moussinac urged that the French theatre (whose situation he described as being in particularly “acute” crisis) to take up the ideas of Fuchs, who had insisted upon a return to the foundational principles of theatre: the actor, the audience, the stage, and the principle of rhythm. It was important “to rejuvenate the place of the drama [lieu dramatique],” to restore it to “a locus of ‘virginity’ and authentic inspiration.” Preeminent, absolute value must be returned to the theatrical event: “Theatre must be liberated from the accidents of the picturesque and from the perspectives of all literature; it must regain its profound sense of the plastic (which includes the idea of planes, the circulation between planes, the organization of space on stage) … The principle and the doctrine, the schema of a future dramatic architecture that would serve as the pure locus of drama and for its expression of itself, just as the medieval cathedral served as both a locus and an expression” (“Rapport” 5).27 Once the dramatic locus is regenerated and freed from the “servitude of the picturesque and the literary, theatre will reconquer its autonomy and once again will become truly theatrical … The disaffection that is found with contemporary theatre, particularly in France, comes from the fact that one does not find on the stage the equivalent of the substance or the emotion that one receives from other spectacles: music hall, sports, moving pictures. The literary theatre is a fossil … The theatre thus awaits its dramatic authors” (“Rapport” 5–6).28 Innovation and reform in theatre meant not simply changes in play texts, acting styles, or in theatre arts (scenography) but also, ultimately, in the re-conception of the theatre building itself – the space and place where the actor functioned. The old traditional, rectangular theatres with their proscenium stages, hierarchical, Italianate designs, and, especially, with their enforced gulf between audience and actor (exacerbated by the intermediate placement of the orchestra), prevented revolutionary change so ardently wished for by the French hosts. To embrace and encompass the new spirit, a new space was required which would re-think the relationship of audience, actor, and scene design. Although they held divergent views, the members of the Theatre Arts organizing committee were uniformly enthusiastic about the imminent Exposition and its potential significance; consequently, they were of one

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voice when faced with unexpected news at their regular gathering on 23 June 1924: an official theatre was being built without their involvement or approval and, moreover, it was to be physically considerably distant from the theatre arts exhibits to be displayed at the Grand Palais. The unwelcome news was to prove an omen of what was to come. The geographical distance separating the two was to be a visible marker of entrenched divisions and of anxieties about modernism. It would also hamper the stated aims of the expo hosts in creating, consolidating, and disseminating a new style. Protesting with a letter to Fernand David (the chief commissioner responsible for the entire Exposition), the committee – in vain, as it turned out – insisted that, in future, a “complete liaison” be maintained between the two groups. Not an entirely unwelcome choice, architect Auguste Perret, newly lionized for creating the modernist church of Notre-Dame du Raincy (1923), had been commissioned to design and construct the official theatre for the Exposition. He was to be assisted by his brother, Gustave, and their younger colleague André Granet. De­ spite the initial fears of the Theatre Arts committee, Perret seemed to grasp very well the requirements of the model theatre and the exigencies of the new modern spirit.29 In approaching the task, he conceived of two interrelated goals. The first was to construct a temporary structure that would be able to accommodate a wide variety of different types of theatrical productions; the second was to employ that theatre as, in effect, a giant maquette. By testing some of the contemporary theories and displaying the latest reforms, his temporary structure – he expected – would serve as a preliminary model for a perfected and more significant permanent edifice that would represent all that was best and most innovative in theatrical architectural construction. In this respect (i.e., in the spirit of both the display of the present and the projection of a standard model for the future), Perret’s theatre paralleled the efforts of Le Corbusier, who, with his L’Esprit Nouveau, attempted to achieve the same ends in the domain of housing, and those of Konstantin Melnikov, with his pavilion of the USSR, in that of institutional buildings. Indeed, in an interview with Charles Fraval, Perret was quoted as saying that his aim was to create the most modern theatre possible, one that broke with the three-centuries-old tradition of Italianate illusionistic theatre (11). A guide to the expo summed it up as follows: “As we know, the modern theatre was the first to participate in the evolution of the applied arts which industrial progress had completely transformed. Decor,

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machinery, lighting, everything must be new in the new theatre, conforming to the general aesthetic principles of utility” (Arts décoratifs, Guide 296).30 The Theatre was to be more than a purpose-built unique auditorium for the performing arts. It was also to have “the value of a symbol. It is the living protest against routine which still reigns in our [French] theatrical presentations. The construction, optics, acoustics, electricity have, by their enormous progress, transformed the conditions of existence.” This theatre was to serve as “a laboratory for drama, a workshop of attempts conceived in an economical manner in order to permit the most varied of uses” (317).31 Emphasizing the rough, workshop-like purpose of his creation, Auguste Perret frequently referred to The Theatre (it never acquired any other or official name) as an “atelier” or as “Théâtre Fruste” (“coarse” theatre).32 From the outside an unprepossessing box-like structure economically built from a mixture of wood, concrete, and steel, inside, Perret’s theatre included a number of singular innovations which harked back to ancient theatres of the past, particularly Greek, Elizabethan, and Kabuki. Eschewing all ornamental decoration, the 700-seat theatre was, instead, completely painted in a uniform light grey colour. Three innovations were regarded as particularly “sensational” (Rambosson, “Expo­ sition” 322). The stage was designed as a triptych that would, by its very structure, necessarily banish illusionism. Its playing space slightly jutted out into the audience in a curtailed Elizabethan “apron” which was divided into three areas – one central and two lateral – by twelve columns. Each space included independent trap doors and curtains “à l’italienne.” These separate spaces could be used to show simultaneous (or juxtaposed) action, as well as different settings (e.g., indoor and outdoor). Unused spaces could be curtained off; they could also be used separately or consecutively. Reunited, all three areas could form a single large playing space. In an interview, Perret explained that the three areas were created in the manner of medieval playing spaces where, on the left, one found the Hell-mouth, on the right, Heaven and its delights, and, in the middle, the Earth. While inspired by the past, his Theatre, he insisted, nonetheless proceeded “from the spirit of 1925, that is, from a revolutionary spirit” (qtd. in Fraval 11).33 In order to further extend the playing space when needed, an additional floor could also be added to divide the stage in height. The platea could be taken apart and modified in five different ways, depending whether musicians were required in that space or not. From each side of the tripartite stage, two galleries ran laterally along the auditorium,

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Figure 4.1  The Theatre of the Exposition. Exterior view. Architects Auguste and Gustave Perret with André Granet. Photo: Chevojon. (Reproduced from André Blum, “Le Théâtre.” Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925, p. 18. Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France.)

reminiscent of the English and Spanish Renaissance theatres; here, the audience would be required to remain standing, a fact which was to add liveliness to the atmosphere of the performance.34 Such an experiment, with groundlings milling around the stage, would not be seen again until the late twentieth century, when Sam Wanamaker’s project of the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London was completed and opened to the public in 1997. Perret devised a number of interesting solutions to address the perennial issues of sight-lines, of inadequate space on the stage and in the dressing rooms, as well as issues of acoustics, lighting, and air quality. A sense of spaciousness was created by keeping the supporting

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thirty-four wooden beams hugging the perimeter of the auditorium; these held up a ceiling of concrete and slag. “Constructed according to the rhythm and the character of the apse of a temple,” remarked Robert Brussel, The Theatre was now “ready to receive the officiants of the new religion” (Les Annales 425). Although not constructed in a semi-circle, the graded auditorium nonetheless aimed at providing something of the sensation of the ancient theatres of Athens and Rome. The seats could swivel, allowing the audience to change their viewing direction depending where the onstage action took place. Not only did no other theatre in the world possess such an unusual configuration but, enthusiastically remarked Brussel, the whole project arose from a reasoned, logical approach to the requirements of the theatrical event. It pleased spectators who could, in comfort, turn and view the changing action; moreover, the tripartite stage did away with long scene changes which disrupted the “poetry” of a work (Les Annales 425). While in general concept Perret’s theatre space harkened back to the theatres of Greece, Rome, and the English Renaissance, it also employed the latest technology.35 As Perret remarked, “Our theatre is an antique theatre but with the heavens replaced by an electrical sky” (qtd. in Fraval 11). Aiming at the equivalent of universal lighting, Perret made extensive use of a variety of sources, both natural daylight (clerestory windows) and artificial lighting. At the back of the stage, a “horizonwall” (horizon-mur) could, thanks to the electrical lighting, present the illusion of infinity. Boxes of lights were placed under the stage which allowed for unusual lighting effects, while above, attached to the ceiling at the upper ends of the hall, a lighting gallery grouped together in a “rigorously symmetrical manner” all the electrical sources of light – concealed projectors and lamps – directing them equally at the stage and at the auditorium, and permitting all kinds of combinations of effects. From this vantage point, the chief electrician could direct manoeuvers “just like a quartermaster” (Rambosson, “Exposition” 322).36 Comfortable green rooms for the performers and a spacious public foyer completed the project. The result of Perret’s innovative creation, all commentators agreed, was that many old, tired conventions could now be suppressed, including trompe l’œil. “Truth” rather than “trickery” would prevail: not twodimensional painted backdrops, but also not necessarily Cubist-designs either; rather, “simple forms, not those tortured ones of the Italian theatre that had, for so long, exercised their influence on France”; The Theatre would allow exactly that “perfect harmony” between actors and

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Figure 4.2  The Theatre. Interior. (Art et décoration. May 1925, p. 216.)

audience that was required by the new spirit (Blum 19).37 To some, like André Warnod, it was evident that this novel approach was, in fact, a renewal of “very old traditions from elsewhere, beginning with the representations of the Mysteries and going up to the theatre of Shakespeare” (2–3).38 The old-new concept of space was intended to be flexible enough to accommodate the greatest possible range of classical and contemporary plays. In advance of the expo, the writer Gabriel Mourey invited Parisians to contemplate the wonders that might be produced on this “sober, pure, discrete, and beautiful” stage: plays by Sophocles, Racine, Shakespeare, Molière, a comedy by Musset, perhaps a fairy tale by Théodore Banville or a dramatic poem by Paul Claudel (306–7).39 The Administration of the exposition was immediately seduced by its first view of the plans of the building.40 Theatre artists, journalists, and the public were also enthralled and were full of expectation of the experiments that might be produced on its boards. Janneau referred to Perret’s and Granet’s re-conception of space in his Theatre as “leur délicieux théâtre – la réussite de l’exposition” (“their delicious theatre, the success of the exposition” (“L’Exposition” 186); Georges-G. Toudouze called it “ideal” (101). Finally, there was to be an appropriate structure that would permit in one place the comparative study

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Figure 4.3  Projectors, part of the much-vaunted electrical lighting of the model Theatre. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate XVI.)

of theatre research carried out over the past two decades in such far-flung places as Moscow, Vienna, Warsaw, Rome, London, and Copenhagen (Lazareff, “Le Théâtre” 11). The Theatre Arts committee anticipated the logical conclusion of such innovation on display: from this would emerge a new modern style of theatre, one which would make sense of, and would supersede, the existing jumble of “isms.” Perret’s Theatre would signal “the triumph of theatrical modernism” both by means of its use and display of the most advanced technology, as well as by the participation of the great innovators of the contemporary performing arts – directors, writers, and performers such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Luigi Pirandello, Alexander Tairov, Edward Gordon Craig, Gaston Baty, and Bronislava

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Nijinska (Charnesol, “Le Théâtre” 328). The theatre arts exhibition would not only reveal the latest innovations to many still unaware of their possibilities, but would also, by repeated example, encourage their use, emulation, and dissemination (Charnesol, “La décoration théâtrale” 193).41 Bringing change agents together was regarded as a major goal of the theatre exhibition, one matched only by a second: to bring these achievements to a larger public, the aim of expositions ­generally in educating their visitors (Encyclopedie, X, 27). In George Sproles’s terms, by means of the 1925 expo, theatrical fashion – the concepts of theatrical style and practice – would be changed through the dissemination of new ideas to a broad public, through wide social visibility and communicability. Stage three of fashion change would thus be achieved. While insisting on technological and architectural innovations, many theatre theorists, practitioners, and historians were content to employ the classics as their testing ground. Thus, for example, André Blum explained that “For this very intelligent conception to find a practical realization, it is necessary to choose an interesting repertoire to take advantage of these new techniques. It is not necessary to attempt to flush out unknown authors in order to use this original structure. It will suffice to rejuvenate the chefs-d’œuvres of our French and foreign repertoire in adapting it to a more enlightened curiosity. The aim could be double: to reconstitute the past following exact scientific données, and founded on graphic documents, and, at the same time, making it alive and contemporary” (20).42 Of course, the great works of the past had many advantages. Because they are well known and are therefore part of the long cycle of fashion, they constituted a common cultural language that enabled easy international exchange and debate about the latest techniques, approaches, and “isms” without the distractions of (new) subject matter, genre, or theme. The focus could clearly remain on the creation of a modernist style. As the Theatre Arts committee continued its work, it periodically announced its strenuously ambitious program in journals such as the elegant Art et décoration, which printed the preliminary schedule of daily and, occasionally, twice-daily performances at The Theatre. These would begin in the second half of May and were to include such groups as the London Players, the Abbey Theatre of Dublin, the Ulster Players, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Opera and Burgtheater from Vienna, the avant-garde theatres of Hungary, Poland, and Romania, the eurhythmic dances of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, the Municipal Theatre of

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Czechoslovakia, the Russian theatres of Stanislavsky, the Kamerny, and the Opera and ballets of Moscow, the Eslava Theatre of Madrid, and the Jaume Borras Theatre of Barcelona – among many, many others. It was to be an exciting program of theatrical events that would bring together the world’s greatest performers and directors into a heady mix and clash of “isms.” Paris would triumph as the showcase of the new theatrical art, and France would gain the mantle of leadership of the new spirit. A new global style would be born and it would have originated in France. In the lead-up to the Exposition, numerous articles in the press discussed the great expectations for the future of theatrical art, especially for France, the venue for the theatrical experiments, and the opportunities that it would offer for reform. In writing about the marvellous innovations, André Blum also suggested that the Grand Palais could offer another, natural site for theatrical performance: the monumental staircase designed by Letrosne. With its elevated landings and with the sheer size of its space, it could easily accommodate large numbers of performers, and so could serve as a natural locus for the mass spectacles of Max Reinhardt or Firmin Gémier. Movement and the impression of grandeur, Blum observed, would be easily conveyed there (20). Blum’s linking of the two theatrical spaces – The Theatre and the staircase – was another bad omen. In fact, the two did become linked, but not as he had imagined. As we have already seen in an earlier chapter, Letrosne’s staircase was commandeered into serving such grandiose events as the Fête du Théâtre et de la Parure, which had little to do with modernist theatre or dramaturgy. Similarly, despite the best efforts and protests of the Theatre Arts committee, Perret’s innovative building was soon commandeered by the Administration for use in “manifes­ tations diverses” (“Procès verbale”). Both playing spaces were placed under the supervision of the Commission du Théâtre, des Fêtes et des Attractions chaired by Robert Brussel and assisted by Félix Camoin, who took control of the presentations made there. The Theatre Arts committee was neither allowed to shape the program, nor instal the theatre arts exhibits around the Theatre.43 Officially inaugurated on 25 May 1925 with the one-act melodramatic musical comedy L’Aventurier by Jean Variot, Perret’s Theatre, rather than hosting innovative performances and testing new approaches and theories, was, like the grand staircase, given over to many events of a distinctly commercial and amateur rather than experimental nature.44 As Gabriel Boissy had pointed out a month earlier, The Theatre was inevitably subject to two contradictory aims: it was purpose-built to

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Figure 4.4  Letrosne’s imposing staircase in the Grand Palais. (Art et décoration. May 1925, n.p.)

undertake research on contemporary theatre but it also needed to be an attraction for a wide variety of spectators; seats needed to be filled. Art and commerce were at odds, as the organizers scrambled to lease out the space which proved too expensive for many foreign participants (Boissy 36–7). At times there were even more people on the stage than in the auditorium. Some pre-planned theatrical productions did take place: Ben Greet and W. Edward Stirling’s The English Players staged Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell; the newly created company Théâtre de l’Art “Le Chariot” staged Machia­ velli’s Mandragora; and the Jaume Borras company from Barcelona presented five Catalan plays. For the most part, the six month season was heavily dominated by music, dance, and folkloric entertainments rather than innovative theatre: French regional choirs; musical evenings

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Figure 4.5  Official program for the inauguration of the model Theatre. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Théâtre des Arts Décoratifs 1925. Vol. 2. RT 12781.

such as “The Art of Ethnographic Russia (USSR)” (featuring Kirghiz, Uzbek, Tatar, Bashkir, Russian, and Ukrainian songs); operettas, symphonic and other concerts. Contemporary dance included the androgynous couple Alexandre and Clotilde Sakharoff, Loïe Fuller, Berthe Roggen, Jeanne Ronsay and her company, and Rodolphe de Laban (a.k.a. Rudolph Laban). There were also presentations of scenes from wellknown productions by the Comédie-Française (e.g., Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin and Les Précieuses ridicules) and by the Théâtre de l’Œuvre. More familiar than ground-breaking, some performances

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Figure 4.6  Coupon admitting two to the Theatre. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Théâtre des Arts Décoratifs 1925. Vol. 2. RT 12781.

were even pedestrian and amateur, and made no use of The Theatre’s innovative features. A particularly scandalous event (dubbed “niai­ series” – nonsense – by Georges Charnesol) involved a group of young schoolgirls who stammered through a recitation of the fables of La Fontaine on Perret’s austere stage (Charnesol, “Le Théâtre” 328).45 Such events merely confirmed, rather than reversed, the view of the current status of the French theatre as not just lagging behind other nations but, more damningly, still in thrall to passéisme – an excessive, nostalgic attachment to the past, to tradition – as well as to an infatuation with regionalism.46 Perret’s wonderful innovations in his conception and distribution of space thus failed to attract any substantial testing, nor did it lead to further innovative practices. Stringent financial requirements imposed by the administrators of the expo ultimately discouraged the participation of most international groups. The grand project of a comparative analysis of modernist theatre was in tatters. André Antoine, founder of France’s famous Théâtre Libre and champion of realism and naturalism, continuously grumbled

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Figure 4.7  Dancers from the Institute Roggen. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate XXX.)

in his various regular contributions to the Paris press. Bitter complaints were also lodged by Moussinac, especially and extensively in his postexposition report. Rather than celebration, he recorded what he believed were France’s humiliation and disgrace. Even most French companies and performers could not meet the unexpectedly high financial demands required for their participation by the Administration (10–11). Charnesol mournfully observed in the journal L’Amour de l’art that The Theatre was unable to live up to its organizers’ expectations; it did not stage or test the research of Tairov or Meyerhold, nor, for that matter, any of the French innovators, most of whom deserted the venture when the regulations and costs became publically known.47 Letters from leading theatrical and artistic voices, such as Gaston Baty, Jacques Copeau, and Fernand Léger, complaining to the Administration that the overseer, Félix Camoin, was uninterested in and ignorant of modern theatre, fell on deaf ears.

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Writing despondently in July 1925, “Nozière” (Anatole France), among others, noted with great chagrin that “It is necessary to say and to repeat: nothing was done at the Exposition Theatre. No production was presented that attracted the public. Neither method nor enthusiasm was felt. It was completely unnecessary to create an auditorium if it was decided not to try anything … It is important to reconquer the estimation of other countries. We lost it a number of years ago … The Theatre has a national mission to accomplish. Nothing seems to have been understood. Nothing was done! Not even the most simple attempt! Absolutely nothing!” (Nozière).48 Anatole France’s outrage and sense of shame at the situation was echoed by countless theatre artists and commentators, among them, Alphonse Franck, chairman of Classe 25 and honorary president of the theatre managers. The initial enthusiasm for the exposition and the expectations of what grand concepts might evolve from it were quashed. Many French artists who could, refused to take part; others simply could not.49 At the Grand Palais, the exhibits of French theatre arts fared little better. Display space was assigned very late, despite pleas from the Theatre Arts committee members who understood how important it was for the exhibitors to have this information well in advance. As the Minutes of their meetings indicate, up until the exposition opened, the Theatre Arts committee continued to actively lobby for more rooms and better space. An indication of this up-to-the-last-minute manoeuvring may be seen in the contradictory information presented in some of the guidebooks concerning the location of some of the displays.50 The French theatre arts exhibits were relegated to an obscure, awkward, and poorly lit space. On 28 April 1925 (the inaugural day of the expo), Franck’s interview with Georges Marlin in Le Soir stated the problem clearly: nothing was ready yet (Marlin 378–9). Three rooms were eventually assigned to them in the Grand Palais at the top of the staircase, but Tronchet was still working on arranging the materials. In the central space, he had created a small round room, a minuscule theatre, where presentations could be made; but, because of their restrained space, the mini-theatre was unable to serve either as a model or as a large maquette in the service of testing and creating a new style. On the periphery of the theatre arts exhibits, the French displays showed, in one room, different types of theatre furniture supplied by manufacturer-specialists. In another were exhibited two elegant loges des artistes – actors’ dressing rooms: one designed by Paul Poiret and the other by Jeanne Lanvin,51 Paris’s famous fashion designers, with

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mannequins supplied by the luxury department store Printemps and by La Maison Pascaud. The loges were in line with traditional French luxury and fine taste; the sumptuousness of the fabrics, materials, and general presentation was of a piece with the ostentatious display of the Fête de la Parure, a style of opulence that, while unattainable by the average visitor, nonetheless stirred the imagination. It was the stuff that dreams were made of, and which Hollywood films with Art Deco décor would soon emulate. Antoine complained that while unquestionably elegant, the exhibits gave no indication of “perfectionnement” (development); they merely restated familiar techniques and styles without presenting even a hint of single, practical idea (pas une idée pratique) (349). A third, small room was devoted to the new spirit: maquettes of stage designs, drawings, costumes, and stage accessories. But these were, as Moussinac reported, only a meager and unrepresentative selection of France’s creative talents. The Opéra and the Comédie Française had, in the end, declined to participate in this section, a decision which set a “deplorable example and pushed many other artists to abstain from participating” (“Rapport” 14–15).52 In addition to being embarrassingly small, the exhibit of French theatre arts was, with few exceptions, marked either by the “mediocre” or “the exclusively commercial (such as the Maison de Radiana), a fact which provoked the withdrawal of the participation of Jean Cocteau” (“Rapport” 13–14).53 In despair, and in an attempt to shame the administration of the Exposition into action, Franck turned to the press. In rhyming satirical verse, he attacked the “cellar” (cave) to which the French theatre exhibits was relegated, and the lack of funding and attention that the Commissaire Général and his colleagues paid to the theatre. He concluded optimistically, though not convincingly, in biblical terms, with a prediction that the last shall be first (347). While not made widely available, the most damning assessment would come from Moussinac. Having witnessed the expo’s organization unfold in all its hopes and expectations, he filled his report, submitted at the close of the Exposition, with months of pent-up frustration and anger. The golden dream of showcasing France to the world and the world to France was a devastatingly lost opportunity from which it would be difficult to recover. Presented in two parts, the first section of his report outlined the theory, principles, and requirements of a theatre arts exposition within the context of an international determination to revivify the theatre, to restore its “truth” and its “power of expression” (toute sa verité et sa puissance d’expression) (“Rapport” 2). The second section presented the reality of

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Figure 4.8  Sumptuous attire and Loge d’artiste (theatre artist’s dressing room) designed by Jeanne Lanvin. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate IV.)

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the event – a litany of disasters: the organizers of Classe 25 were badly informed, had no unity of point of view, no authority to make decisions about ensembles, no ability to provoke original ideas, and could not inspire or even adequately fund the artists’ participation. Having had many French theatre artists, designers, and companies defect from exhibiting or performing at the Exposition, playwright, critic, and director Paul Blanchart ruefully observed, “We have arrived at this paradox that the best and most complete realizations of the French section were due to artists of foreign origin living in Paris.” Among these were Simon Lissim, Ladislas (Laszlo) Medgyès, Gerold and Werner Hunziker, and Walter-René Fuerst – names, as Blanchart pointed out, which did not derive from the Ile-de-France. In the absence of provocative productions in The Theatre, and, in addition, with the meager exhibit of French theatre arts at the Grand Palais, foreign theatre arts – especially the Soviet – took on an even greater importance and interest. Unlike the French, they were, Moussinac underscored, intelligently organized and presented (“Rapport” 16). Indeed, the Soviet theatre arts became a source of close scrutiny and the subject of great polemical debate. Incontestably – as André Antoine (and the world) concurred – the Soviets far outstripped their competition in this category (349).

Chapter Five

Trial by Space: Incarnating the Revolution

Upon viewing the Soviet theatre arts exhibits, Gaston Varenne, painter, engraver, and art critic, rhetorically inquired, “Is not the art of the theatre the great national art of Russia? It is comprised of violent effects that strike the masses, of audacious simplifications, of abridgements, and occasionally a disdain of all verisimilitude in their sole desire of attaining the absolute” (114).1 Similar opinions were expressed by playwright, critic, and director Paul Blanchart, who regarded the Soviet exhibits as possessing both a “primitive, violent, and frequently aggressive modernism” but also “an astonishing wealth of ideas” (341–2),2 while journalist and art and film critic Georges Charnesol advised visitors to the Paris Exposition to be sure not to miss the Soviet theatre arts section and to give it careful study (330). Not all visitors found their imaginations similarly stirred with pleasure. Many responded with vaguely expressed anxieties. The displays appeared uncomfortably novel, baffling, bizarre, even threatening. While acknowledging their innovative qualities, André Antoine confessed his “utter confusion” before the Soviet exhibits, which had made a complete tabula rasa of the past. The stage as we know it, the decorative composition, the arrangement of the stage, everything has disappeared. Cubism everywhere imposes an exclusive preoccupation with volumes, the deformation of objects, a kind of geometric obsession. Platforms, descents, passages, disks are juxtaposed. Lines are pitted against each other in a stupefying frenetic chaos. It is a rebus to which one does not have a key but which one nonetheless must regard with seriousness because this wave has begun to engulf everything. (349–50)3

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Figure 5.1  Staircase in the Grand Palais leading to the USSR Theatre Arts exhibits. Photo: Henri Manuel.

A regular contributor to the French press, Antoine filled his columns with war metaphors, writing of “assaults,” “attacks,” “offensives by puissant powers,” and “betrayal” – the latter in reference to France’s Latin “sister-countries” Italy and Spain, which, on the evidence of the exhibits at the Exposition, had succumbed to the influences of France’s “adversaries,” Russia, and the absent presence, Germany (351). Reporting to his British government, Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith observed that there were two possible and diametrically opposed responses to the exhibits: “the critical student of the psychology of postwar art development probably found the predominance of the abnormal element which characterised the Exhibition a valuable assistance in his task”; however, he continued, “those who visited the Exhibition, free

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from all pre-conceived notions or special ulterior objects, who were ready with open and receptive mind to absorb its impressions and react to its influence, might well find in ‘its variety, its multitudinousness, its unending vitality, its instant ever changing appeal’ much of the interest, stimulus, charm and ‘radiant promise’” (15). If, as sociologist Tony Bennett has argued in his important study of the “exhibitionary complex,” expositions, fairs, and museums both “show” and “tell,” that is, display and present a narrative that is “calculated to embody and communicate specific cultural meanings and values” (6), then what, exactly, were the meanings and values expressed by the Soviet theatre arts exhibits? Why was there such a sharply divided response to them? Searching for a way in which to analyse the varied approaches to the then current understanding of the theatre, and stage design in particular, contemporary critics and commentators4 distinguished between two major groups and their methods: the pictorialists (or coloristes) who depended upon the idea of the stage as a picture, and the Constructivists who created a stage architecture.5 While undeniably useful, this broadstroke distinction between the two was restricted in what it could reveal about the apprehensive – or enthusiastic, as the case may be – response to the Soviet theatre arts exhibits and to the narrative that they created. Here, the work of theorists of space, particularly Henri Lefebvre, is helpful in augmenting and deepening the discussion. Critics such as the appalled Antoine had indeed rightly sensed an unmistakable aggression in the Soviet displays that seemed to stretch far beyond the mere dismissal of traditional theatrical conventions and was of a piece with more obviously “agitational” creations. What they implicitly understood was that these stage designs were ideological; they conceived of space, and therefore of society, in a new, radical manner that challenged the status quo. No longer referencing historical or beautiful landscapes with their painted backdrops, nor possessing easily recognizable Italianate or sensuous, gorgeous décor depicted in riotous colours (as in the Ballets Russes productions), the Soviet theatre arts exhibited an ascetic acting space of skeletal structures and platforms that eschewed beauty for functionality and had much in common with the machine. Shorn of traditional “velvet curtain” theatres, these displays seemed to proclaim the harshness of the Soviet turn away from traditionalism and the embrace of industry and mechanization. If in print – through their catalogues – and in their public relations – the Soviets appeared to smooth over the revolutionary qualities of

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their revolution, their theatre arts exhibits unabashedly proclaimed their rupture with tradition. For Antoine and others, the Soviet stage designs implied a frightening scenario: more than a revolution in stagecraft, this radical use of space suggested another, unwanted revolution, a transformation of society itself. As Huntly Carter put it, “The general theatrical tendencies gave Russia the air of a country in dramatic eruption” (139); its theatrical productions revealed a social, not an art-for-art-sake, purpose; indeed, it revealed a social revolution. The Soviet designs were an affront to orderly and aesthetic French culture itself, since theatre was regarded as “the artistic expression most representative of Frenchness” (McCready xi). In shifting attention away from the beauties of language and décor to the visual “trickery” of the three-dimensional set, the Soviets seemed to be undermining the whole French literary tradition. Such foreign fashions had to be dismissed. Antoine attempted to rally the theatrical troupes. Something needed to be done. Courage and conviction in the belief of the strength and rightness of national traditions were required. Wrote Antoine, In general, we [the French] don’t exist anymore. The Russo-Germanic wave has engulfed everything. What will come of this mix of the good and the bad? I believe that we won’t know for a long time. I stay persuaded that, in this confrontation, where the tradition of many centuries is juxtaposed to the spirit of a renewed world, we will have a considerable role to fill. Instead of giving ourselves up to all the external currents, here at home we must try to link up the past with the future by means of the equilibrium of our race. We find ourselves in the face of a powerful offensive for having too frequently looked outside our borders over the past twenty years. Are our mise-en-scènes nothing more than a copy of others, but without their vigour and originality? However nothing in our dramatic production calls up such excess beyond measure. Do we need enigmatic if not incoherent décor to serve our classics and even our new dramatists? Tairov’s Phaedra has shown us the danger. Let us borrow from our rivals the practical systems of machinery, let us improve our auditoriums, but let us keep our own vision intact. It is only in politics and sociology that bolshevism is dangerous. (350)6

Antoine’s strident response is a curious coupling of the rhetoric of nationalism and race with attention to the practicalities of creating, and reviving, the French theatre. The turn, he argued, should be inward and

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Figure 5.2  The balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet directed by Alexander Tairov for the Kamerny Theatre. Designer: Alexandra Exter.

away from dangerous, although admittedly original and dynamic, external influences. The Paris expo had brought to the fore anxious fears that French tradition and culture were about to be engulfed by foreign ideas; these could – Antoine, Gabriel Boissy, and others argued – be staved off by a return to tradition, to nostalgia, and to the invocation of what appeared to be a lost unity. One response was the renewal of folk traditions: théâtres de la foire, regional traditions, and songs. Antoine’s

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Figure 5.3  Phaedra at the Kamerny Theatre directed by Alexander Tairov. Costumes by Alexander Vesnin. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol.X, plate LII.)

vitriolic attack on Tairov’s scenic treatment of Racine’s Phaedra encapsulated the sense of betrayal and anger at taking on, and then deforming, an exalted classic of the French theatre. Language, that which made Racine a pinnacle of French culture, had been replaced by the visual, “threatening not just the institutional theater, but French culture itself” (McCready xi). Such anxieties about the representation of theatrical space coincide with Henri Lefebvre’s claims that It is in space, on a worldwide scale, that each idea of “value” acquires or loses it distinctiveness through confrontation with the other values and ideas that it encounters there … Trial by space invariably reaches a

140  April in Paris dramatic moment, that moment when whatever is being tried – philosophy or religion, ideology or established knowledge, capitalism or socialism, state or community – is put radically into question. (Production 416–17)

The Paris Exposition presented just such a dramatic moment on the world stage, where ideologies and concepts of society were fundamentally put into question by their very different representations, uses, and concepts of space. Tradition and revolution sparred with each other. Yet it is important to note that the two, while opposed, were also linked in their struggle. In the words of French sociologist and anthropologist Bruno Latour, “the modern time of progress and the anti-modern time of ‘tradition’ are twins … The idea of an identical repetition of the past and that of a radical rupture with any past are two symmetrical results of a single conception of time” (76). Both were responses to the condition of modernization and modernity. This tension between tradition and the modern was also apparent in images and maquettes from theatres, such as that of the well-, if not over-, represented British Maddermarket, which garnered a bronze medal at the Paris expo. Lauded in Britain in the early 1920s as a truly experimental theatre (Hildy 49), Maddermarket was founded by W. Nugent Monck, the creator of numerous historical pageants, and designed by Canadian Noel Paul, who helped transform a former Roman Catholic chapel into a playhouse. Opened in Norwich in 1921 as the first permanent recreation of an Elizabethan theatre since the Common­ wealth, it resembled but was much smaller than the indoor Blackfriars or Fortune theatres of Shakespeare’s day (it could seat about 270); rectangular in shape, it had an end-stage surrounded on three sides by a long gallery. Linked to earlier antiquarian reconstruction efforts, such as the Elizabethan Revival of William Poel (with whom Monck had worked), Maddermarket had little to do with the modernist impulse underlying the Paris Exposition, particularly when compared with the Soviet models. Its restorative nostalgia7 (which included pageants, an important part both of the competing exposition at Wembley and of those held on the grand staircase at the Paris expo) appealed to the fantasy of a simpler, more cohesive time and place, and thus was intended to evoke, even forge, a sense of community, especially in the wake of the First World War; indeed, when the Paris expo closed, there was a marked revival in historical pageants in Britain.8 Although Monck himself strongly disputed such an intention, the Tudor-beamed

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Figure 5.4  Maddermarket production of The Taming of the Shrew. (Reproduced from Charles Rigby, Maddermarket Mondays. Press articles dealing with the famous Norwich Players. Norwich: Roberts & Co., 1933, following p. 14.)

permanent back wall contradicted his claim. Its evocation of space as continuity with the tradition of Elizabethan stage space – that is, with the past – implied connection rather than rupture, the familiar rather than the strange. Other features of the playhouse also aligned it with its Elizabethan forebears. As Franklin J. Hildy noted, “In 1921 the recognized features of the Elizabethan stage were a large platform backed by a permanent architectural façade. In that façade were two doors, a balcony and an inner stage or performance space under the balcony that could be closed off with curtains” (62). These also were part of the Maddermarket design. Like the French tendency to turn back in quest of order in the postwar period, so Maddermarket revealed some of the same impulses and contradictions. Yet, in turning to older conventions, Monck attempted to challenge the stagnation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

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century stage, with its proscenium arch and ponderous realistic scenery which so tried the audience’s patience by taking forever to change. Drawing inspiration both from Elizabethan sources and contemporary variants, such as the minimalist theatre of Jacques Copeau’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, Monck focused on quick verbal delivery, minimal scenery, direct lighting of the actors, and unbroken continuity of action. Traverse curtains, opened and closed in full view of the audience, allowed for the alternation of scenes – though not without problems. Charles Rigby, who reviewed many of the productions of this amateur theatre, grumbled, “Something ought to be done about those curtains. The racket they make is like having a stone in one’s shoe, and is as disconcerting to the players as to the audience” (73). While exaggeratedly lauded at the time by Basil Maine as a firmly British theatre distant from Continental experimentation and as “one of the most vital units in the European theatre” (vii), today most would concur with theatre scholar Dennis Kennedy’s assessment of these amateur performances as “of small interest and smaller effect” (153). Rigby contrasted Monck’s efforts with those of Terence Gray at the Cambridge Festival Theatre. Next to Gray’s, Monck’s productions, Rigby claimed, “seemed as inanimate as an old painting” (103). On exhibit in Paris was a scale model of the Maddermarket theatre; designs for Cymbeline, Hamlet, The School for Scandal, and The Tempest by their regular designer Owen Paul Smyth; and two photos of their production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In his contribution to the official British Reports on the Paris expo, A.P.D. Penrose praised the Madder­ market model and designs as “beautifully constructed,” but regretted that they did not show “more examples of the way in which it is possible to transform the stage for different plays.” On the general quality of the British theatre arts exhibits, Penrose was more scathing. The exhibits were “altogether too genteel.” Vulgarity and extravagance were avoided, but often at the expense of dullness. And the dullness of the British exhibit, in contrast with those of other countries, was its most striking defect … a depressing lack of variety and vitality. The experiments mostly followed the same lines. There was no search for a new relation between audience and stage as in the Austrian section; no attempt to work out new systems of decoration in relation to the actor as in the Russian; and a less vigorous interest in the use of new materials to obtain fresh effects than in the French … He [the decorator] must capture by assault; dullness is a crime in the theatre. (181)

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Figure 5.5  Owen Paul Smyth. Set design for Hamlet at the Maddermarket Theatre. (Reproduced from Charles Rigby, Maddermarket Mondays. Press articles dealing with the famous Norwich Players. Norwich: Roberts & Co., 1933, following p. 70.)

Like the British, the French also generally resisted the foreign ideas that had landed on their shores. Despite the mountains of ink spilled by French avant-gardists and by the writers of official catalogues who extolled dynamism, movement, and the machine aesthetic, what prevailed at the Exposition was a celebration of regionalism “as the ultimate prophylactic against the debilitating infiltration by things foreign” (Golan, Modernity 88). As we have already seen, French regional performers dominated on the stage of Perret’s Theatre. In addition, the expo’s village français, though created with modern materials, was “mostly downright pastiches of vernacular styles” and served as “the official model for postwar reconstruction” (Golan, “Modes” 348). Art historian Romy Golan has pointed out that “regionalism stood for the particularities of the vernacular as a way of reviving the past” (Moder­ nity 23).9 In this regard, it is also notable that the Soviet critic Yakov Tugendhold similarly insisted that the real note of freshness at the expo

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arose from the organic, hearty root of folk “juices” (“Stil’” 50) – a prolepsis of the primacy folk arts would take in the USSR after 1934. Two major ideological force fields that were to clash in the not-toodistant future were thus revealed by means of the exhibits and pavilions of the Exposition; yet their two opposing concepts and uses of space – revolution vs restoration, tradition vs novelty, internationalism vs nationalism and regionalism – suggest that they were, in fact, linked. Indeed, aimed at creating unified collectives, they were ways of addressing rapid changes in a volatile period of history. As Svetlana Boym has perspicaciously pointed out, “Nostalgia and progress are like Jekyll and Hyde: alter egos. Nostalgia is not merely an expression of local longing, but a result of a new understanding of time and space that made the division into ‘local’ and ‘universal’ possible” (xvi). The tone of aggression directed at foreign influences would sharpen in years to come. Thus, for example, writing just two years after the Paris expo, Henri Massis, in his Défense de l’Occident, would insist that France “ultimately had to become the bastion against Asiatic, German, and Bolshevik perils” (qtd. in Golan, Modernity 85). In the USSR, the tide was already turning and sometimes in similar directions. Yakov Tugendhold lauded folk art while castigating “isms” such as Cubism as “bourgeois,” not revolutionary, approaches to art (“Stil’” 50). The Soviet Theatre Arts Exhibits Participating in the theatre arts exhibition were 247 exhibitors from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Latvia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia.10 As has already been noted, Germany was belatedly invited and therefore declined to participate. Also absent were the USA, Canada, and Australia. If British and French stage designs displayed at the expo generally seemed to ignore modernity, the Soviet theatre arts exhibits responded directly and viscerally to such ideas as the space/time relation. Alexander Rodchenko, Isaak Rabinovich, and Georgy Yakulov were assigned the task of designing a bold Soviet installation of theatre arts to display all the images and maquettes.11 Although this was a Soviet, rather than a Russian exhibition, its Russian organizers12 chose few examples for display from theatre companies outside of Moscow and Leningrad. Despite the internationalism of communism and the then official nationalities policy of korenizatsiia (literally, rootedness or

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indigenization) that was meant to reverse centuries-old policies of russification, there was little inclination on the part of Russian Soviets to inform themselves or others about the state of theatres elsewhere, traditionally only “provinces” of the Russian empire. At the Paris expo, the overview of the work of Russian theatres over the past decade was extensive and complete. It included the Bolshoi, Maly, and Kamerny, the Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio and its Second Studio, the Vakhtangov Theatre, the Moscow State Jewish Theatre, the Moscow Children’s Theatre, the Meyerhold Theatre and also Meyerhold’s Theatre of Revolution, the Leningrad Academic Theatre of Drama, the Leningrad Theatre of Young Spectators, and others. However, the selection committee chose to include only a few items from one theatre in Georgia, that of Kote Marjanishvili (who had previously worked in Russian theatres where he was known as Konstantin Mardzhanov), and two theatres from Ukraine – Les Kurbas’s innovative Berezil Artistic Association (commonly known as the Berezil Theatre, Kharkiv) and the short-lived Yiddish Theatre of Ukraine (Kiev), already defunct by 1925. As has been previously noted, Ivan Vetrov, who authored the section on the Soviet theatre displays in the official catalogue, persistently referred to “Russian” exhibits throughout his text, a fact which contributed to the impression of the synonymy of “Soviet” with “Russian.” Such conflation worked in favour of the new Bolshevik regime (suggesting continuity) but also worked to suppress the achievement of theatre companies outside Russia.13 It also implied a hierarchy of values – with Moscow at its apex – which was to remain in place for the next seventy years. Yet, as John E. Bowlt and others have pointed out, the “Russian” avant-garde was multinational and owed much of its inspiration to non-Russian traditions: not just ethnic Russians but also Armenian, Georgian, Latvian, Ukrainian, and Jewish (Bowlt, “From Studio” 17). Visitors to the Soviet exhibits in the Grand Palais were greeted by Vladimir Tatlin’s small-scale model of his famous spiralling structure, the Monument to the Third International, pointedly designed to outstrip the Eiffel Tower in height but never actually built (discussed in a previous chapter). The Tower’s ambition was echoed throughout the exhibits, not the least by Vadym Meller’s maquette (which garnered a gold medal) for the Berezil Theatre’s production of The Secretary of the Labour Union, a Ukrainian dramatization of Leroy Scott’s novel The Walking Delegate. A soaring filigree-like structure, Meller’s model eschewed all

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Figure 5.6  Irakly Gamrekeli’s stage design for Hamlet directed by Konstantin Mardzhanov (Kote Marjanishvili) at the Rustaveli Theatre, Tbilisi, 1925. (Reproduced from Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theater 1905–1932, trans. Roxane Permar. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988, p. 115.)

decoration for scaffolding upon which actors could move about. Moreover, the stage could rotate, thus presenting limitless acting possibilities and making rapid scene changes possible. Dynamic stage set movement, the key element of avant-garde theatre, was complemented by the unity and thoughtful choreography of the actors’ movements, buttressed by costumes that hinted at rather than imitated realistic dress. Together, these elements created a unified, total work of art: balanced, rhythmic, dynamic.14 Such structures enabled a new way of acting, one which focused on an expressive and strong body and which, in versatility of technique, reached back to pre-Enlightenment theatre: to the Medieval mysteries, the theatres of Shakespeare, Calderón, and Molière, to the commedia dell’arte, the fairground booth, and to the circus. Such a notion of theatricality, argues Michel Aucouturier, represented a “nostalgia for a return to a primitive or pre-cultural condition” that sought out living art, that is, “art as a vital function (instead of just a cultural habit)” (17).

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Figure 5.7  Scene from The Secretary of the Labour Union directed by Borys Tiahno for the Berezil Theatre, 1924. Designer: Vadym Meller.

A maximally dynamic stage space, Meller’s stage maquette incorporated a Constructivist idea with that of the rotating stage first used by Reinhardt in his famous 1905 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But where Reinhardt’s stage was decorated with realistic-looking trees and grass, Meller’s presented only a stage skeleton on which action could be performed. Resembling nothing that had been seen before, the maquette could also easily be perceived as the stage equivalent of Tatlin’s Tower: stable yet in perpetual motion, just like the revolution which continued to unfold. Such a comparison is fruitful in drawing attention to both creators’ assault on space. Indeed, what perplexed critics implicitly understood was that these stage designs were ideological; their creators conceived of space, and therefore of society, in a fresh, radical manner. (See Figs. 5.7 and 6.6.) Iwona Blazwick has suggested that visual artists of the twentieth century considered abstraction as a kind of “promontory onto the horizon of progress. Its very blankness represented the exhilarating void of the unknown and a springboard for the imagining of new tomorrows. Geometric abstraction – as painting, photograph, or object – became linked to the proposal of new models of social organization” (“Utopia” 15). Building on her ideas and applying them to the theatre, we may

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consider the constructions of Soviet stage sets as presenting that very same idea of “blankness” or abstraction which rejected the traditional backdrops. Pictorial décor – even, or especially, when the same backdrop is used for different plays and productions – implies a connection, a unified idea of an aesthetic; it implies depth, a space that also opens up to a unity with the past, with ideas of the beautiful, aesthetic, and romantic. The Soviets regarded such pictorial space as being “at death’s door” and, moreover, as a pernicious individualist tradition that needed to be replaced by utilitarian, communal creative work (Szech 229). Shorn of painted backdrops, Soviet scenography revealed an absence of any attempt at illusionistic space. The images of their productions trumpeted their blank slate, refusing continuity and tradition. With no backdrop, no pictorial frame, there could be no connection to the past. Such an “abstract” space – a space unfettered by ties with a traditional past – insisted on the “now,” the new spirit, the moment of revolution, of industrialization, of the machine; at the same time, such a space could project an imagined, new future. Space was conquered and unified through the rhythmic, active, energetic, full use of the stage in height, depth, and width. Machines and other mechanical devices reinforced the idea of this radical re-conception of space as social rupture. Rejecting the past, insisting on geometric forms, ahistorical and unspecified locations, places of action, of work, of “dynamic resolutions” wherein scenography and performers played equal parts, Soviet theatre presented a new vision of social reality, one that was deeply unsettling to many visitors to and commentators about the Exposition (Bowlt, “From Studio” 20). American art educator Royal B. Farnum, a contributor to the US official Report on the Paris show, found the Russian exhibition “unnatural, weird and peculiar in the extreme,” as well as void of “all attempts at aesthetic expression” (94). In reviewing the materials for a Soviet course on architecture, he was surprised to see that six points of emphasis were taught: surfaces (planes of different shapes and positions); volume (solids of various shapes in different positions); masses (weights and forms superimposed); construction (structural phases of form; the tying together of many masses); space (distances and areas between masses and planes); and “dynamique” (the arrangements and placing of planes and masses in relation to each other; action and movement in form and through space). The results, as seen in the models for various buildings and monuments, seemed to Farnum to be in a “state of partial collapse” and thus “queer” and “chaotic.” Similarly, Soviet theatre

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art was “strange and unlike the more normal effects usually to be observed” (94–5). Rather than inviting the audience to look at the stage as a pretty picture, the Soviet productions instead provided a rhythmic, organic construction that was made up of many units subordinated to one main idea or theme. Architecture replaced framed painting; movement ousted the primacy of language; speed, sub-operatic stasis. Encouraging the view of revolutionary enthusiasm were busts and images of Lenin that dotted the Soviet exhibit of over three hundred items – maquettes, sketches, costumes, and photos of productions and of theatre artists, designers, and directors.15 Like their printed material, the theatre arts exhibits demonstrated double-voicing, beginning their display with a reassuring start and ending on a radical note. The first two of the numbered displays were Mikhail Libakov’s traditional designs for Hamlet (Second Studio, Moscow Art Theatre, 1924; see Figs. 5.8 and 5.9) followed by designs for other Shakespearean works: Julius Caesar by Yevgeny Lanseré (a.k.a. Eugene Lanceray), associated with the World of Art (here, representing the Maly Theatre, 1924); and set and costume designs for Antony and Cleopatra by the neoclassically oriented Vladimir Shchuko (Leningrad Academic Theatre of Drama, 1923). Among designs for other classical works, we find productions of plays by Aristophanes (6 items), Sophocles (9), Calderón (17), Racine (6), Molière (2), Carlo Gozzi (13), and Schiller (4). The inclusion of the classics was not accidental. In 1923, the Soviet Theatre Commission had listed Shakespeare, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Lope de Vega, and Schiller as among the acceptable classic writers for production and study. The leadership of the Bolshevik party, including Lenin and Luna­ charsky, was conservative and preferred the classics and melodrama to contemporary agitational plays. The classics offered a common language for international discussion and a means of sharp comparisons. But they could also mark the point of heated debate, since they were related to strongly held concepts of value, community, and canon. If, as Ukrainian theatre scholar Iryna Verykivska has remarked, “The question of the relationship to the classical heritage became the keystone in this period in all spheres of art” in the USSR (9), the same was true in the West. The whole Soviet exhibit ended with eight designs by Alexandra Exter, including three of her sketches intended not for the stage but for the science-fiction silent film Aelita.16 The alpha and omega of this exhibition thus suggested the bold Soviet embrace of the past and its

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Figures 5.8, 5.9  Mikhail Libakov’s costume sketches for the Ghost and Polonius. Hamlet at the Second Studio, Moscow Art Theatre, 1924. Directed by Valentin Smyshliaev, Vladimir Tatarinov, and Alexander Cheban. (Reproduced from Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theater 1905–1932, trans. Roxane Permar. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988, p. 114.)

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Figure 5.10  Antony and Cleopatra at the Petrograd Academic Theatre of Drama, 1923. Designer: Vladimir Shchuko. (From Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theater 1905–1932, trans. Roxane Permar. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988, p. 166.)

reaching-out to a utopian future through a wide range of genres and through experimental approaches to the conception of stage space – from Cub­ism and Futurism through Constructivism and Expressionism to Sci-Fi Surrealism and various hybrid versions in-between. In his summative essay in the British Reports, Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith nevertheless observed that in the USSR the break with the past was evidently complete: Apart from these non-modern exhibits [folk arts] the principal Russian works shown, including the Pavilion, offered the most extreme example of the effort to break with the past, and to create a completely novel Art, immune from all outside influences, even at the sacrifice of intelligible meaning and purpose. It is highly probable that these exhibits owe something both to native tradition and to foreign influences, but it is difficult to

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Figure 5.11  Costume design for Aelita, Queen of Mars, 1924, directed by Yakov Protazanov. Designer: Alexandra Exter. (Reproduced from John E. Bowlt, Nina and Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky, and Olga Shaumyan, Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design, 1880–1930 (in two volumes). Antique Collectors’ Club, 2012. With the kind permission of Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky.)

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Throughout his official account, Smith frequently turned to a disease/ health metaphor, posing a series of important questions about the nature of British art and design: How far may the relative imperviousness of British Industrial Art to the forces which have been sweeping over the Continent of Europe, be rightly ascribed to the superior resisting power of a sound and healthy organism to the microbes of disease? Or how far on the other hand do the qualities observed in the British Section imply a degree of rigidity and ossification which are well-known marks of impaired health and organic decay? How far again is the British reluctance to break with past practice a sign of the vigorous persistence of living tradition, or how far is it the mere clinging of a parasitic plant which has lost the power of independent growth and life? (37–8)

Smith’s rhetoric echoes sentiments similar to those that had been expressed by André Antoine. In his perception of British society as a healthy organism resisting the disease of “sick” cultures are faintly heard the tropes of early twentieth-century scientism and racism. Not all of the observers were flummoxed or so deeply troubled by Soviet stagecraft. In his report to the British government, A.P.D. Penrose provided a thoughtful response to the examples of the new scenography, particularly to the Soviet exhibits, “the largest and probably the most representative collections of models and designs” (175). While an antiquarian himself (he was one of the founders of the Friends of Ancient English Churches), he responded positively to the experiments on view. These, he noted, are leading towards a very different theatre from that to which the stages of London have accustomed us. The logic of the new relation between actors and audience involves a change in the whole technique of acting, production, decoration and theatre construction; we are now in process of re-orientation. The realistic theatre used every device of lighting and scenery to assist in separating the stage from the auditorium and producing a powerful objective illusion of reality. But once the actor is allowed to step outside his frame and to be seen in relation to the real people in the auditorium, the illusion dissolves. It then becomes necessary to re-adjust the

154  April in Paris point of view, to accept him purely as an actor and to surround him with a new set of conventions. Such conventions must of necessity be based on, and even emphasise, the fact that the actor is not a real person and that the stage is not the actual world. The actor must now be surrounded, not by exact reproductions of real objects but by such colours and forms as are thought to assist his action, and to be relevant to the play. When these represent real objects it is better that they should imitate only at a distance, admitting frankly that they are only imitations. The stage designer is thus freed from the necessity of copying what already exists, and can apply himself to the business of creating, for its own sake, what is beautiful and significant. (174)

The dynamic use of space meant a rethinking of all aspects of theatre, from the physical building to the actor and his body. Pinpointing one of the distinguishing features of the Soviet theatre arts as its ability to draw both from popular art and from industry, Penrose also seized on what he perceived as a decidedly new attitude to the classics: The familiar apparatus of the circus and the landscape of the factory have found their way on to the stage and combined to bring about the new species of stage decoration already referred to … Nothing is accepted on its own merits. Old plays are freely adapted to express sentiments approved in official circles, and in order that they may become understandable to audiences of workpeople. Such methods sometimes involve the mutilation of great works of art, but they are at least constructive in aim, in so far as they make for the creation of new modes of expression relevant to the particular needs of the time. In England the re-action against the highhanded methods of the old actor-managers has often resulted in a too timorous respect for the works of Shakespeare and the old dramatists. It has sometimes been forgotten that the theatre is a living art and not a department of archaeology. (176–7)

Penrose speculated about both the origins of this new art and on its implications. Recognizing the general dissatisfaction of the new stagecraft with the old realist dedication to, if not sometimes obsession with, facsimile surface, he noted that to move forward was to look backward, especially to medieval and Renaissance traditions. Creating new stage spaces comparable to the Elizabethan thrust stage and to multilevel, multi-purpose medieval and early modern playing spaces, the Soviet designs – Penrose understood – necessarily created not only a new

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relationship between actors and audiences but also a new theatre. As he astutely remarked, this meant much more than cosmetic changes; it followed that a whole new process of re-orientation was required for all aspects of theatre, from the physical building to the actor himself (174). Amédée Ozenfant similarly lauded the new Soviet theatre for its spirited reaction against psychological realism and excessive decoration, which had made the painter the master of the stage. He, too, recognized that Soviet theatre artists had turned for inspiration to the great traditions of popular theatre; in all of these, argued Ozenfant, the actor’s every word and gesture carried significance (Ozenfant 75). Indeed, a rigorous examination of popular, pre-eighteenth-century traditions and of the classics in particular formed a significant aspect of the research of some Soviet theatres. It was, for example, at the centre of the Berezil Theatre’s experiments led by the charismatic stage and film director Les Kurbas. As Kurbas insisted, the director’s aim should not be to revive a pseudo-classical Shakespeare, a task which was, in essence, both unnecessary and impossible; rather, the director should represent the work “as it is fractured by the prism of the contemporary revolutionary world-view” (“Do postanovky” 6).17 Anticipating the Polish theatre critic and theoretian Jan Kott (Shakespeare, Our Contemporary) by three decades, Kurbas insisted on making the classics his contemporaries. Penrose responded positively to the freshness of such an approach to the classics and to the liberation it could offer, while at the same time drawing attention, with regret, to his compatriots’ deeply ingrained conservatism. Anticipating opposition to radical designs such as those of the Sovi­ets, he emphasized their affective and conceptual power: Whether these exhibits attracted or repelled, there could be no two opinions as to their vigour. They might be thought crude or childish, but it could not be denied that they were alive. They were the result of thought, and they related closely to a scheme of life which was actually in being. They showed a certain liveliness of imagination and, above all, a sense of the theatrical, which was certainly not present to the same degree in any other body of work to be seen elsewhere in the Exhibition. (176–7)18

While sensitive to the intentions and nuances of the new theatrical art, Penrose did not believe that all of the recent developments and experiments were equally useful or effective. Although he praised the scenography for ­Alexander Tairov’s Kamerny Theatre, especially the maquette for The Tidings Brought to Mary, the stylized costumes of Fyodor

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Figure 5.12  Scene from Leon Gordon’s White Cargo presented by the English Players. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate XXXVII.)

Fedorovsky, Isaak Rabinovich’s design for a production of Lysistrata (Moscow Art Musical Theatre; see Fig. 5.13), and Boris Ferdinandov and Boris Erdman’s Oedipus (Experimental Heroic Theatre), all of which were still somewhat bound by tradition, Penrose critiqued Meyerhold’s “bleak platforms” and properties for Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Forest, and Konstantin Vialov’s “naked and confused” models. Perhaps, he suggested, the Russian reaction against realism may have gone too far. Some of their designs “appear needlessly confused and arbitrary, and their effect often lies solely in their strangeness” (176). Nonetheless, there was no doubt that the Soviets appeared to have most effectively, directly, and fully attempted to address the contemporary spirit in all of its complexity.

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Figure 5.13  Isaak Rabinovich’s design for a production of Lysistrata. (Reproduced from Serge Romoff, “Le Pavillon de l’URSS,” Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925, p. 124.)

Penrose’s analyses of the Soviets’ exhibits were upheld by other commentators who concurred that they were the most impressive of all of the theatre arts exhibits. Like Gaston Varenne and Penrose, Georges Charnesol paused for a longer discussion of the “Russian” theatre maquettes which, in his (mistaken) view, showed no mark of the influence of major theorists and designers Edward Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia. He underscored the fact that the Soviets employed “all the elements needed to further the action and that would exclusively serve the movements of the actors. The scenic constructions were, in general, practical and light: passerelles, staircases, ladders … In summary, the metteur en scène suggested more than he represented, and was concerned more with creating an atmosphere with the help of summary indications rather than with logically-established ‘décor’” (330).19 He

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drew attention to a few examples of particularly “ingenious discoveries” (“trouvailles ingenieuses”): Isaak Rabinovich’s set design for Lysis­ trata, Meller’s maquette, the designs of Alexandra Exter, Alexander Vesnin, and Georgy Yakulov for the Kamerny Theatre, and those of Alexei Granovsky for GOSET, the Moscow State Jewish Theatre (330).20 Generally, the maquettes and designs held up for praise were those which gestured towards a comprehensible mood and at least an allusion to place. In this category was Rabinovich’s set for Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, with its soaring pillars crowned with semi-circular mounts that evoked the idea of Grecian temples. This austere set, which combined recognizable columns with numerous levels of abstract playing spaces (platforms linked by staircases), conformed to the type of unit set that Dennis Kennedy has described as “a conceived site extracted from the dramatic and emotional requirements of the script. It suggests locale without insisting upon it” and provides “a functional and rhythmic structure in which to act the play” (96). Similarly, Alexander Vesnin’s design for Phaedra at Tairov’s Kamerny Theatre (see Figs 5.2 and 5.14), as described by Gabriel Boissy in 1923, included pyramidal forms to the left and cylindrical ones to the right. These created the impression of massive blocks, slabs for very modern naval constructions, and lent the stage gigantic proportions. Downstage right, the forms arranged in a semicircle serve as seats, and a few large steps come down from there or, more accurately, serve as an abstract means of descent. Further upstage, with a bold stroke, the playing area, which resembles the deck of a ship, rises into the distance and ascends over the pale blue abyss. The impression is intensified thanks to a brightly painted triangular flat that descends with the bulge reminiscent of a sail. (“Phaedra” 178)

Alexandra Exter’s designs for Romeo and Juliet for the Kamerny Theatre articulated the rupture with past conventions through their presentation of a futuristic set of aggressive, dynamic, fragmented planes, and through the creation of magnificent costumes. Platforms, staircases, arches, and rope ladders filled the entire stage space and acted as a visual representation of the tangled complexity of the lovers’ lives and the obstacles that they faced in trying to achieve happiness. Her costume designs, swirling and colourful, erupted on the stage space like a “volcanic explosion” (Kolesnikov 87). (See Plates 5 and 6.)

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Figure 5.14  Phaedra at the Kamerny Theatre directed by Alexander Tairov. Costumes by Alexander Vesnin.

One of the most important figures of twentieth-century theatrical art and one of the few avant-gardists to create her own school, Exter attracted a great range of creative talents to her circle, many of whom exhibited works at the Paris expo and some, like Boris Aronson and Simon Lissim, who would soon move to the USA where they would influence other generations. Close friends with Bronislava Nijinska, the dancer and choreographer who was the first to create a non-objective choreography, Exter was also one of the important figures responsible for the fertile cross-pollination of ideas; she frequently travelled to Moscow and to Paris, where her circle of friends included such creative talents as Picasso, Braque, Marinetti, Apollinaire, and Léger. In Kiev from 1916 to 1919, her studio formed the centre of artistic and cultural life. She was surrounded by a plethora of poets, writers, and artists which included Benedikt Livshits, Pavel Tchelitchew, Klyment Redko, Ignaty Nivinsky, Nisson Shifrin, Alexander Tyshler, Mark Epstein, Isaachar Ryback, Boris Aronson, Sergei Yutkevich, Grigory Kozintsev, Vadym Meller, Isaak Rabinovich, Simon Lissim, and Anatoly Petrytsky (Krusanov, vol. 2, 252; Kovalenko, “Boris Aronson” 12). Exter’s connections with Paris continued after the Paris expo closed. Charnesol announced in the journal L’Amour de l’art that she would be soon be opening a course on theatre art and scenography at 154, rue Broca (447).

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It is not surprising that the set and costumes designs created for the classics were much commented upon, for they encouraged a discussion that, even if polarized, had the virtue of a recognizable, common ground. More difficult for many to engage with were works such as those of Liubov Popova’s stage design for Meyerhold’s Magnanimous Cuckold. An understanding of its severely abstract, mechanical properties was not helped by the unfamiliarity of the dramatic text for which it was created. Art historian Georgy Kovalenko described Popova’s remarkable work as follows: Popova did not paint a set, but instead built a construction, an autonomous installation that could function anywhere – on the street or onstage. The wooden structure was composed of two windows and two doors, ladders, platforms, wheels, and the blades of a watermill. The construction seemed to lack semantic value; it harbored no metaphors or veiled signs. Essentially it was a spatial formula whose components, as well as their interactions and correlations, were abstracted and reduced to a minimal level of expression. The functional quality of the construction is said to have resembled a clock whose dial had been removed. To some extent, it does suggest the exposed interior workings of a mechanism whose exterior coverings have fallen away, only the most important components remaining. To then remove or change anything would mean the system’s collapse. (Kovalenko, “Constructivist” 145)

Writing in the early 1920s, Soviet director Sergei Radlov speculated about the future of these new theatrical practices: “perhaps the most important thing in stage constructivism is its essential abstraction. Constructivism does not seek to portray anything: it exists on its own. That is why there is such a large number of constructions on which it is possible to perform any play. Exter’s Romeo and Juliet, Rabinovich’s Lysistrata, Levin’s The Fall of Elena Ley, I don’t remember whose Earth Rampant – all these constructions, practically unrelated to the dramatic structure, let alone the plot, of these plays. But if we follow this path, isn’t it more logical to make a stage construction once [and] for all and perform the whole repertory on it practically without any scenery? This was the setup of the Shakespearean and ancient stages” (210). A decade later, Soviet stage designer Nisson Shifrin explained that, “In its time, Constructivism played a foundational role in purifying the stage of its passive naturalistic agglomerations, of clogging from its unnecessary details and from aesthetic embellishment. It laid down the beginnings

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Figure 5.15  Liubov Popova’s set design for Fernand Crommelynck’s The Magnanimous Cuckold directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. 1922. (Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle, vol. X, plate LV.)

of a concept of a functional scenic space” (128). It was a logical path that would indeed be followed around the globe in stage design – but not until the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing hungrily and fruitfully from other arts – painting (especially Cubism), sculpture, music, cinema, and dance – as well as from technology, the Soviet theatre arts brought the essential attribute of modernism, kinetic energy, to the fore and coupled this with the deconstruction of space and form. Dynamism and movement also linked art to life “as a paradigm for a new social organization” (Mansbach 44). The theatre thus constituted a laboratory which embraced and explored new forms and ideas, and brought together technology, science, and the arts. The new concepts of theatrical space could also be fruitfully employed beyond the stage, including at mass festivals and demonstrations (as seen in an earlier chapter). Because of this marriage of technology and abstraction, the theatre helped make Constructivism the archetypal revolutionary art form (Roman, “When All the World” n.p.).

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American Responses American Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was sufficiently perturbed by the implications of the Exposition that he appointed a special committee to visit and report on the show and, in particular, to study the significance of machine-made art, hitherto considered an oxymoron.21 A total of 108 Americans, many delegates of trade associations but also “persons prominent in the fields of decorative and industrial art” (including representatives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Architectural League of America), spent two weeks in Paris from 20 June to 4 July 1925 (Richards et al. 5). Many of them later made reports to their own specialized associations, thus sharing and disseminating ideas about modernism observed at the Exposition. Unlike their British or Soviet counterparts, however, American officials did not consider the theatre as anything more than a domain “of specialized interest and technique,” and therefore declined to comment on that part of the Exposition in the main body of the official government Report, choosing instead to relegate this discussion to Appendix E. Lawrence Langner, playwright, producer, and founder of the Washington Square Players and (later) of the Theatre Guild, was invited to contribute this addition to the Report (Richards 63). Langner seized this opportunity to castigate all levels of American government for failing to encourage or assist “the development of the American theatre in the way the theatre is encouraged and assisted in other countries” (90). He also noted with regret that the American national disposition as a whole was “to doubt the cultural value of the theatre” (90). By contrast, he lauded “the gallant adventure of the French Government in promoting an exhibition” of that “most modern of art forms,” the theatre (93). Assessing the exhibits shown in the Exposition, Langner emphasized their efforts “to get away from the old forms of theatre decoration, to evolve new and original concepts” (91): The models which form part of the theatrical section of the Exposition are often of striking novelty. They are three-dimensional rather than two-­ dimensional, and represent adaptations … of the art movement which has already produced such developments as cubism and futurism. One of the most interesting of the developments is that known as “Constructionism,” [sic] emanating from Soviet Russia and Mid-Europe, in which all attempts at conventional scenic representation are dispensed with, the acting [of the] spectacle taking place upon platforms arranged at different levels to

Trial by Space 163 which access is had by stepladders or steps. In other forms of constructionism, the theatrical action takes place on spirals … resembling machinery, which occupy the floor of the stage. (91)

Singling out the work of Tairov and Rabinovich as “of especial interest,” Langner more generally drew attention to the disparity between the Soviet productions (as represented in the photos and maquettes on display) and those he commonly saw in the USA and England. What struck him most – as it did others – was the re-conception of space (91). The Soviets had conquered space: they opened up the possibility for the stage action to develop horizontally, as well as in depth, in breadth, and in height (Bowlt, “Modern Russian Stage” 18). While many of these achievements had been made prior to the creation of the USSR and even before the Revolution of 1917, this was the first time that these Russian experiments had been seen on such a large world stage. Radical, yet affecting, these exhibits were, in Langner’s view, without question the most important and thought-provoking of the whole exposition. Following behind the Soviets and ranked at a second-tier level of interest by Langner were the displays from Austria (particularly Friederich Kiesler’s stage constructions) and from Italy (the Futurist works of Prampolini). Lagging far behind were the British and the French (“uninteresting and unworthy of the theatrical tradition of the country”) (92).22 Among the general observations that the authors of the official Report to the US government – Charles R. Richards (Chairman of the Hoover Commission), Henry Creange (art director of Cheney Brothers, silk manufacturers), and Frank Graham Holmes (artist and designer for Lenox, a major bone china manufacturer) – was their surprise that the creative stage designer occupied “a position of much greater importance and dignity in France than in the United States” (Richards et al. 20). They mournfully noted of the USA that, “As a nation we now live artistically largely on warmed-over dishes … We copy, modify and adapt the older styles with few suggestions of a new idea” (22). Since, he argued, the modern movement will play “a large part in the near future in many important fields of production throughout the western world,” and since this movement would soon reach America, it was imperative that homegrown talent be created; otherwise, the USA would be dependent upon the creativity of foreigners (21). Henry Creange concurred with Richards’s assessment. In his contribution to the Report, he urged that “America should lead in the

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Figure 5.16  A section of the Soviet theatre exhibit. Isaak Rabinovich’s maquette for Alexander Tairov’s Lysistrata (1923) in the centre. Behind, Vadym Meller’s maquette for Boris Tiahno’s The Secretary of the Labour Union (1924). On the right, photos of Meyerhold and his actors, and the maquette for his D.E. (1924). On the far right, Alexander Vesnin’s costume designs and maquette for Alexander Tairov’s production of The Man Who Was Thursday.

establishment of national as well as international industrial art agencies for the classification and dissemination of art and fashion knowledge, for nothing is so international as art” (36). At the same time as he expressed the hope that “individual initiative must be developed in the fields of ‘Art’ and ‘Creation’” (38), he also implicitly warned against following the Soviet example: To blend the old with the new, to embody some element that has already been accepted by the public, is to start that creation with a very fair chance of life. Creation that departs too radically from the past; that throws into the discard all that has gone before, is apt to be short-lived. The continuity of nature, the natural law that creates new forms step by step, by an evolutionary process in contradistinction to a revolutionary one, may well be followed in the industrial field. (32)

Once again, the language of scientism permeates the discourse. Cre­ ation, production, and distribution, he argued, are linked in “an indissoluble chain” in which “the slowest unit … regulates the speed of the whole” (32). Similar sentiments had been voiced by Penrose: “We are now, as it were, attempting to digest in one day food which would have

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provided ample nourishment for two or three” (176). These radical changes, caused by the breakdown of “old standards of behaviour” and the release of “passions which had been long suppressed … has helped to drive the new movements often along extreme and hysterical lines” (176). If Western critical opinion about Soviet exhibits was divided, it was mirrored by the Soviet organizers who similarly expressed their attraction-repulsion to their own exhibits – a response that was but a mild acknowledgment of the deep cultural divisions and cultural power struggles taking place in the USSR, where the foremost modernists were not at all as firmly entrenched as their prominent place at the Paris Exposition might suggest.23 Indeed, their days were numbered. In his Preface to the Soviet catalogue, Ivan Vetrov presciently noted, “Perhaps it’s still too early to appreciate the exact value of the audacious pursuits of the reformers of the Russian theatre. But whether one accepts or rejects them, one is obliged to recognize that they mark a significant stage in the development of modern theatre art” (99).24 The similarities in the critiques of commentators as ideologically different as Creange, Penrose, and Vetrov point to the difficulty of radical fashion change. None expressed motivation for change (e.g., the goal of the organizers of the Paris expo) nor were innovative change agents themselves sufficiently strong forces to overturn tradition and to create a new style that would be quickly embraced by others. As the work of fashion theorists such as Charles W. King, Lawrence J. Ring, and George B. Sproles has shown, innovations first require adoption by wider social networks, then their broad dissemination and repetitive viewing before being finally accepted. Placed within a commercial and luxurious expo, Soviet theatrical modernism, art, culture, and politics received major visibility and communicability. Simply by their participation in an international show in the elegant city of Paris, the Soviets and their exhibits suggested the new polity’s at least partial conformity within and across social systems. While strange to most eyes, the modernism they brought to the fair was in an uneasy and complex dynamic relationship with the rest of the opulent displays, but was also unquestionably a thoughtful response to modernity. For others to take up the task, another exposition was necessary: New York.

Chapter Six

Battling Traditional Space: Bringing Modernism from Paris to New York

“THE GREATEST AND MOST COMPLETE EXHIBITION OF MODERN THEATRICAL ART IN THE HISTORY OF THE THEATRE” (Announcement, International Theatre Exposition, New York, 1926)

Among the many visitors to the Paris Exposition who were stunned by the foreign works was Jane Heap, then editor of one of the most influential art and literature magazines of the first part of the twentieth century, The Little Review, responsible for publishing the work of many giants of modernism, among them James Joyce, Ernest Heming­ way, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, and Jean Cocteau. From Paris, Heap wrote to Florence Reynolds: “Caesar [Zwaska]1 and I are leaping in and out of the Exposition almost every day. I find it thrilling – just physically. I have visited every section now – sometimes twice and I am going again and again … I see every­one, do everything” (Letter, 16 July 1925; Baggett 108). Her letters reveal her state of excitement and her wide social network: “a trip around the Exposition – with the dictator of Art of the  Soviet Republic” [Luna­charsky?], an Austrian theatre designer [Friedrich Kiesler?], two German Dadaists – and six Tunisians in costume” (Letter, 16 July 1925; Baggett 107). Dashing back to the Exposition for a coffee at the Viennese pavilion, Heap later met up with composer Vlad Dukelsky (soon to take the name Vernon Duke), Monroe Wheeler (later director of publications at the Museum of Modern Art), artists Pavel Tchelichew (also spelled Tchelitchev), Theo Van Doesburg, and Man Ray, Ernest Heming­way, and American heiress Nancy Cunard. With

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Dadaist Tristan Tzara, Heap discussed “big plans” (Letter, 22 July 1925; Baggett 114). The arresting nature of the set and costume designs, photos, maquettes, costumes, sketches, and posters, unlike anything seen in the United States, inspired Heap to bring the whole foreign section of the Exposition from Paris to New York, where she made it the core of the International Theatre Exposition, a project “fathered” by The Theatre Guild, Provincetown Playhouse, Greenwich Village Theatre, and Neigh­ borhood Playhouse – the “rebel” theatres of New York, as drama critic and film producer Kenneth Macgowan called them (9). Heap arranged for Kiesler, organizer of the theatre section of the Austrian exhibition at the Paris expo, to bring the exhibits to the USA.2 Americans were astonished when, expecting a compact show, Kiesler arrived with twenty-eight crates of material consisting of well over 1,500 items. In addition to the exhibits taken from the Paris Exposition, Kiesler had also brought with him (on the aptly named ship Leviathan) selected material from an earlier show in Vienna (Internationale Aus­ stellung neuer Theatertechnik, 1924) and some works he had directly acquired from leading designers. Nineteen countries were represented at the New York exhibition: Austria, Belgium, China, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, Yugoslavia, and the USSR. An American jury, consisting of scenographers Lee Simonson, Robert Edmond Jones, Cleon Throckmorton, and Aline Bernstein, selected hundreds of designs from thirty-nine American designers to augment the foreign exhibits and to showcase American talents, thus asserting that America was not, as its absence at the Paris Exposition implied, old fashioned, but rather decidedly modern.3 In combination with the imported exhibits, the American additions made this the largest theatre exhibition in the world. As the Brooklyn Eagle observed, “It is really in the nature of a ‘world exposition’ of the arts of the stage, as those arts have been affected by ‘modernism’. Nearly 2,000 models, drawings and ‘constructions’ are on view” (“Theater Exposition is Comprehen­ sive”). E.E. Cummings, in his brief role as contributor to “The Theatre” section in The Dial, wrote in May 1926 of the International Exposition as one of the three events of “extraordinary theatric import” (432). Writing at the opposite end of the century, Peter Morrin, director of the J.B. Speed Gallery, called this “the most adventurous and innovative

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Figure 6.1  Frederick Kiesler arriving in New York. New York, 1926. Photo: Underwood & Underwood. PHO 2808/0. Copyright 2016 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

moment in the history of stage design.” As the critics had observed about the exhibits in Paris, so in America it was evident that the new concepts of stage space pointed towards changes in other spheres; they noted the impetus towards “mass appeal, socio-political messages, utopian aspirations and artistic innovations” (Morrin n.p.). A new era seemed to be dawning and it was revealed through the remarkable reconception of stage space. The complete Winter issue (1926) of The Little Review was dedicated to the Exposition and also served as a replacement for the program catalogue, which would not be ready until after the show opened.4 The magazine’s table of contents proudly announced, in bold font, “With 75 reproductions … presenting the work of the foremost theatre-artists.” In addition to the many illustrations and two short plays, the magazine

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Figure 6.2  Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap with assistant preparing the International Theatre Exposition. New York, 1926. Photo: Wide World Photos. PHO 6578/0. Copyright 2016 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

was filled with essays and overviews, pronouncements and manifestos, on a range of topics: cinema, opera, the marionette, rhythm, the Swed­ish ballet, new musical instruments, theatre design in Poland, in the Kamerny Theatre, in Russia, and in America.5 In the Foreword to the program catalogue, Kiesler proclaimed: We are working for the theatre that has survived the theatre. We are working for the sound body of a new society. And we have confidence in the strength of newer generations that are aware of their problems. The theatre is dead. We want to give it a splendid burial. Kiesler (Program Catalogue 1)

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Heap’s contemporary, art critic Clarence Joseph Bulliet, commented: “The current number of Jane Heap’s ‘The Little Review’ is devoted exclusively to the exposition and to the new theories that have come into stage art, and a most fascinating number it is, from cover to cover. It is by all odds the most illuminating and the most important single treatise on the subject that has appeared in America” (n.p.). The exhibition was held on two floors of the recently opened Stein­ way Building at 109–113 West Fifty-Seventh Street, “one of the handsomest buildings in New York” (Advertisement, Program Catalogue), and was to run from 27 February to 15 March 1926. Open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., its two-week run was extended by a third week due to popular demand (New-York Tribune, 11 March 1926). Augmenting the exhibits themselves was a flurry of related activities overseen by the Executive Committee: Helen Macgowan, Jane Heap, Bella Blau, Paul Moss, Eleanor Fitzgerald, and Lawrence Langner. Opened first for a private viewing with a reception and speeches by Kiesler, Langner, Christian Brinton, Frank Gilmore, and Kenneth Macgowan, and later that day to the general visitor, the exhibition, noted the press, included a foreign section which “is radically modernistic” (“Theatre Exposition Today” 12). Visitors could obtain information about the new directions of the theatre by purchasing books on drama, the arts of the theatre, and related subjects at the bookshop located within the precincts of the exhibition (Advertisement 16). They could also attend the public lectures held daily at 4 p.m. and offered by the twenty-one-member Lecture Committee, among whom were John Anderson, Lawrence Langner, Oliver Sayler, Kenneth Macgowan, Aline Bernstein, Barrett W. Clark, and Irene Lewisohn. Actor, playwright, producer, and director of silent films John Emerson chaired the forty-six-member Actors Committee, which included such luminaries as John and Ethel Barrymore, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Eva Le Gallienne, Edward G. Robinson, and Katharine Cornell. An Honorary Committee of an additional forty-five members was chaired by investment banker and patron of the arts Otto Kahn. The impressive constitution of all of these committees attests to the formidable nature of the expo’s organizational machine. With their extensive social connections, the organizers were able to secure broad press coverage that provoked significant interest in the show, beginning with the moment of Kiesler’s departure from Europe for America.6 The New Yorker wittily commented that the International Theatre Exposi­tion which “opened with a flourish,” had the major advantage of “large committees of influential people. One may be sure that all the people

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Figure 6.3  Cover. The Little Review dedicated to the New York International Exposition.

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Figure 6.4  Advertisement, International Theatre Exposition, New York, 1926. The Little Review, Special Theatre Number, 1926.

Plate 1  The spectacular Fountaine des Totems with its changing colours and lights. Paris, Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels, 1925. Contemporary postcard (Braun & Cie, Paris)

Plate 2  Bird’s-eye view of the expo with the Grand Palais on the right. The Soviet pavilion is circled in red (from S. Frederick Starr, K. Mel’nikov, Le pavillon soviétique, Rome: Edizioni Rome, 1979; L’Equerre, 1981, n.p.)

Plate 3  Cover. Catalogue of the USSR pavilion. Paris, 1925. Design: Alexander Rodchenko

Plate 4  Alexandra Exter (Ekster). Lighting study, 1930. Silkscreen on paper. 32.8 x 50.8 cm. National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv. Photograph: Ernest Mayer, courtesy of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Note the similarity of the theatrical lighting to that of the illuminated city of Paris during the 1925 Exposition (see Fig. 1.8).

Plate 5  Alexandra Exter. Costume sketch for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Kamerny Theatre, 1921. Director: Alexander Tairov. With the kind permission of the Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Plate 6  Alexandra Exter. Costume sketch for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Kamerny Theatre, 1921. Director: Alexander Tairov. With the kind permission of the Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Plate 7  Vadym Meller. Mask. Kiev, 1919. Choreographic sketch of Bronislava Nijinska dancing to music by Chopin. With the kind permission of the Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Plate 8  Alexandra Exter. Sandwich Man (L’Homme sandwich) 1926. Marionette advertising the International Theatre Exhibition, New York, 1926. 103187. Collage on cardboard and wood, cotton, string, book cloth, copper, sequins, steel tacks, and bridge nails. 53.5 × 30.5 × 10.5 cm. With the kind permission of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1977

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who count and a great many who do not will be there … obstructing each other’s view” (“Stage Decorations”). George Sproles’s third stage of fashion change had been reached: theatrical modernism was gaining further acceptance by reaching into new social networks through the process of social contagion. The vast scope of the exhibition included a few traditional but mostly modernist designs, choreographic plans, masks, costumes, puppets, maquettes of full-scale theatres and unit sets, posters, and photographs. As in Paris and with the same results, theatre productions, ballet, and demonstrations of film were intended to form part of the exhibition; however, despite its 15,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Steinway Building proved too small. (Heap and Kiesler’s original plan, to hold the show in Madison Square Garden, proved too costly.) Films were shown elsewhere in partnership with the Franco-American Society and with the International Film Arts Guild (e.g., “Lubitsch Weeks” at the Cameo Theatre at 42nd and Broadway). Advertisements in the Exposi­ tion catalogue announced productions of Eugene O’Neill’s The Great God Brown, Ansky’s The Dybbuk, Max Reinhardt’s The Miracle (“The most stupendous production in the history of the world”), the first appearance in the USA of the Moscow Art Musical Studio (“the World’s foremost Stage in a Repertory including … Bizet-Mérimée’s Carmen, Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, with settings and costumes of both productions designed by Isaak Rabinovich, winner of first prize in the international Exposition in Paris”) (Kiesler 21). Like much else written by Kiesler, the last claim was over-stated. Highly praised, Rabinovich was a member of the jury and therefore ineligible for a prize. Kiesler created special modular supports to display the expo’s images. First created for the Vienna exhibition and repeated later at other venues, including at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery in New York (1942), these transportable, freestanding supports became one of his trademarks. A contemporary described them as “high semaphore-like arrangements of rectangular frames mounted on vertical posts” that took advantage of the limited space available for display (qtd. in Held 23). Images could be either attached to the pivoting posts or to the slatted panels. The idea was to create modernist supports for modernist images. Not everyone was pleased by Kiesler’s solution. Some complained that it was difficult to properly see the images and that only bodily contortion made viewing possible. Again, in an echo of the Paris Exposition, modernism, commerce, and traditionalism were put into uneasy juxtaposition. Kiesler’s skeletal,

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modernist stands were located on two floors of the Steinway Building “designed and built expressly as a showcase and salesroom for ‘The Instrument of the Immortals’” (i.e., the piano; “Steinway” n.p.). Arriv­ ing at this prestigious address, visitors would have to pass by the rotunda to reach the exhibits. Steinway’s promotional brochure describes the interior as follows: “The heart of the main showroom is the rotunda – 45 feet in diameter, two stories high with pillars of Italian striated marble and green marble trimmings from Tinos in the Greek Archipel­ ago. Between the columns, original oil paintings by N.C. Wyeth and Charles Chambers depict scenes from great musical works. From the largest work of art – Paul Arndt’s handpainted, music-themed, domed ceiling, a 19th century Viennese crystal chandelier is suspended” (“Steinway” n.p.). One of the building’s most important features, however, was not the rotunda but something nearly invisible: a great shop-window. “Rectan­ gular and contoured with mirrored right angles at either side, this reflection-free window at Steinway hall gives the illusion of no window at all” (“Steinway” n.p.). The great instruments for which this shopwindow was designed were luxury items for most Ameri­cans. The architectural, physical, and social space of the Steinway made it an unlikely place for the much-heralded People’s Theatre. Situated in the heart of affluent New York, framed by a newly built opulent building, and championed by well-placed, socially prominent cultural leaders, the International Theatre Exposition, like that of the theatre arts exhibition in Paris, gestured at the contradictory impulses of the modernism project: it seemed to sharpen, rather than collapse, distinctions between high and low, traditional and revolutionary, commercial and experimental. On the eve of the exhibition’s opening, the New-York Tribune proclaimed: “Those who have been privileged to see parts of the exhibition in the unpacking period are prophesying constructivist numbers in our revues – and what unparalleled opportunities are given here to the gymnastic actor! – and Shakespeare and Sheridan, and even Ibsen, in ‘skeleton lay-outs … the exhibition has many other things in the foreign section, and a large American section besides – but constructivism is likely to carry the day” (“Constructivism”). For many Americans, the nearly 2,000 items on display represented their first view of a bewildering panoply of styles, often bundled together by the press as Futurist or as Constructivist; the visitors’ reactions ranged from bemused observation through satirical comment to

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Figure 6.5  Rotunda of Steinway Hall, New York. Photographer unknown. Publicity photo from “Steinway Hall New York – Piano Mecca” (brochure).

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Figure 6.6  Frederick Kiesler and Jane Heap preparing for the International Theatre Exposition. In the foreground, Vadym Meller’s revolving set for The Secretary of the Labour Union. New York, 1926. Photo: Wide World Photos. PHO 6456/0. Copyright 2016 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

anxious expression. The Toronto Star, for example, reported that, as a result of the complete absence of realism and the “bizarre” treatment of costumes and set design, one critic perceived “bolshevism in stagecraft” (Bridle 10) – an echo of the fears expressed the previous year by André Antoine in France. With so many “isms” on display (Expression­ ism, Futurism, Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, Actorless Theatre, Mechanical Theatre), journalists and visitors had difficulty finding an appropriate terminology and framework by which to discuss the exhibits. An adherent of the new stagecraft, Kenneth Mac­ gowan attempted to create some kind of taxonomy.7 Historicizing the

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achievement of the works on display by invoking some of their forerunners (Appia, Craig, and Reinhardt in particular), Macgowan distinguished three major trends among the many items displayed. He dismissed two – the actorless theatre and Futurist scenery, which generally drew the most critical ire and mockery – and took up the third, Constructivism, as “the most interesting and the most hopeful of the three heresies of the new stagecraft.” Indeed, he recognized in this third, most “fecund,” theory one that made the greatest demands on the actor, who “must develop the bodily skill of a gymnast as well as achieve studied effects in vocal expression.” Sharing the insight of directors such as Meyerhold, Kurbas, and Tairov, Macgowan recognized that this type of stagecraft would require special training for the actors, something which was “sorely” lacking “since the coming of ‘naturalism’ to our stage.” He also suggestively argued that Constructivism provided the solution to the requirements of the work of many of the new playwrights, including Eugene O’Neill, who, in Desire under the Elms, “unconsciously [set] a problem only the constructivist could properly solve. Always an experimenter and a pioneer, he was writing our first constructivist drama” (23). Cultural critic Gilbert Seldes, one of the players in the huge organizational machine of the show, explained that the International Exposition brought together “the best work done in the theatre during the past twenty years, without regard to school and movements, but naturally emphasizing to an extent the novelty of constructivism which lends itself particularly to an exhibition of models” (“The Theatre” 258). Sheldon Cheney, editor of The Theatre Arts Monthly, explained the importance of Constructivism and the philosophy that underpinned it. Its utilitarian use of space is, he argued, part and parcel of a revolutionary creed that has stirred up bitter dissension in the fields of all the arts during the last decade, from literature to architecture. It is born of the laudable desire to rid art of excessive ornament, sentiment and high polish, characteristics of the weak 19th Century. If we do not get back to structure, naked emotion and expressive form as the bases of art creation, we might just as well resign ourselves to the continuing weak echoes of stylistic art that have persisted from Victorianism and before: with sentimental story-telling, with a photographically realistic theatre, with pretty reproductive and anecdotal painting, with architecture in watered [sic] imitation of the great outworn styles. (“Constructiv­ ism” 858–9)

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Constructivist setting, he maintained, was direct, truthful, and expressively beautiful; it was not anti-decorative but “decorative in its own different way” (859, 862). Moreover, it was inspired by American achievements: the boldness, “nudity and daring” of the skyscraper and the machine, including the automobile, with “its massiveness and its intricacy, its rightness, its perfect functioning, its precise shaping and its clean surfaces, its balance” (860). Lauding Tatlin’s design for the Third Inter­ national, Cheney recognized that it could have served as a “perfect model for a Constructivist stage setting” (860). Only a fool, he concluded, would not learn something from the Constructivists (862). These designs, that rely “on light, on atmospheric quality and color and lightand-shade composition, as a major resource for dramatic effect,” represent “the true modernism” which free up the playwright and make possible, once again, “great creative plays,” “noble plays,” and “noble acting” (864). One of the few to comment on Perret’s Theatre, he noted that it “comes as close as any to a typical early-machine-age expression” (“The Theatre” 511). The Brooklyn Eagle attempted a balanced appraisal of the expo: The entire foreign section is frankly dedicated to the radical thinkers and experimenters, to the men who believe that the war sounded the death knell of the old realistic-intellectual theatre. Particularly the exhibition plays up “constructivism,” the non-decorative, non-pictorial type of setting that finds its inspiration in engineering rather than in picture-­making. “Skeleton settings” some people call them, based on the use of framework, stairs, ramps, platforms and ladders rather than on walls and hanging. In their wilder manifestations these constructivist things result in the most amusing puzzle-like agglomerations, and in their more “profound” examples, they form amazingly impressive compositions, and in some cases complete theatres that imply new and finely vital types of drama. Everywhere this feeling of the machine-age is evident, the feel of steel and glass and mechanical precision. (5 March 1926, “Theater Exposi­tion is Comprehensive”)

If the “feel of steel and glass” was evident in the displays, it was because – as Kiesler explained speaking through an interpreter at the exhibition’s opening – of the “bidirectional” nature of the new stagecraft, and especially of the fact that America was its muse:

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Figure 6.7  Displays at the International Theatre Exposition. New York, Steinway Building, 1926. Photographer unknown. PHO 6445/0. Copyright 2016 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna. In bringing this exhibition to New York, I represent the youth movement in the theatres of Europe. There is a special fitness in this, because we who consider ourselves architects in the theatres look to America as the originator of a new-world architecture, and therefore in a sense the originator of the new types of staging that are here demonstrated. We are bringing you a thing that is in a sense new to you, and yet it is yours. Especially it is your spirit that has brought this new art into the theatre. (qtd. in “Exposition Reveals” 16)

The stark beauty of American silos, the sleekness and speed of the automobile, the ambition of the skyscraper, the productivity of factories, and the efficiency of labour-saving machines were lauded as the way of progress that was to be emulated to modernize both industry and agriculture. Rather than resulting in anxiety (as revealed, for example, in

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Western European Expressionism), American efficiency, Taylorism, and Fordism inspired creativity. In a series of articles, Cheney praised the achievements of the new artists in whose structures he found directness, freshness, honesty, “naked emotion and expressive form.” Such constructions afford “wonderful freedom of action, its nudity is a virtue in the greater opportunity afforded for spatial composition, and it solves as well as the formal stage the problem of running off many-scened plays without interruption” (“Constructivism” 862). Accurately predicting that the show would “prove not only a challenge but a landmark in the history of American stage design,” he categorized the New York exhibition as several jumps beyond the point where Reinhardt left off with his cleared stages and circus-theatre; and it ends in regions by turns so murky and so rarefied that one needs a considerable array of explanations, diagrams and manifestos to find one’s way about. But the thing as a whole is so living, the one or two examples of Constructionism [sic] on our stage so indicative of a new theatrical-emotional effectiveness, and the spirit behind the exhibition so clearly of the times, of the restless, mechanical, psycho-­delving age, that we shall all do well to give heed to it, to keep our minds most open, to study, turn our backs, reflect. (“The International Theatre Exhibition” 203–4)

Although the Germans had been invited to, and indeed participated in, the New York Exposition, their Expressionist works raised little debate or commentary. Instead, it was the “new names” – mostly Soviet – that seemed to “smother … all the familiar and famous designers of Europe,” a fact which suggested, as Macgowan wrote, “that here is still another revolution to be heard from” (9). To the already familiar names in the show, like those of Picasso and Fernand Léger, were added (among many) Kiesler, Alexandra Exter, Isaak Rabinovich, Nathan Altman, Alexei Granovsky, Anatoly Petrytsky, and Vadym Meller. As in Paris, in New York the Soviet stage designs dominated both by their sheer number (405 items – a quarter of the whole Exhibi­tion) and by their radical characteristics. The Soviet’s conquest of space captured the attention of both supporters and detractors. Theatre critic J. Brooks Atkinson, no great proponent of the foreign displays, nonetheless referred to the Constructivist designs as “the most interesting stage designs in the exhibition”; they “abandon representation for purely abstract creations, usually made

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of pillars, stairs, circles, affording three dimensions. What they may achieve in actual use with actors peopling the stage only the most imaginative workers in the theatre can define” (Atkinson, “Affairs,” X1). While averse to the term “Constructivist,” Atkinson understood that Constructivist design could have practical purposes. As he astutely observed, the conceptual, “unembellished” nature of these sets made it possible to “multiply the resources of dramatic representation by abolishing scene shifting” and serving for the whole play, or even for many plays. Rather than squeezing “the actor out of the theatre, as the calamity howlers would have it, the most intelligent settings displayed in models at the current International Theatre Exposition appear to reveal the actor more fully than ever, and offer him fresh opportunities while they place fresh responsibilities upon him.” Constructivist design yields everything to the actor. How many actors, queried Atkinson, would be ready for such a “perilous opportunity”? (“Affairs” X1). Similarly, Seldes speculated that, should this method assuredly eliminate the star-actor, everyone would accept these changes “without a murmur” (“The Theatre” 258). In addition to offering actors new opportunities and challenges, Atkinson recognized that several plays “might have been improved by use of abstract settings without pictorial representation.” As well as the works of O’Neill, he included in this group Lawson’s Nirvana and Anderson’s Outside Looking In. Some plays, he suggested, “might have come into sharper focus with less of the gratuitous art of the scene designer.” He wondered, “And why not ‘The Cocoa-nuts,’ an especially elaborate production? What the Marx brothers might do with ‘two trestles and four planks’ to jump around and on is an entertaining speculation. Of the revivals put on in New York, ‘Androcles and the Lion,’ the modern-clothes ‘Hamlet,’ and ‘The Master Builder’, and ‘John Gabriel Borkman’ lend themselves to unembellished staging” (“Bourgeois” 1). Beyond the constant reference to the denuded, abstract characteristics of the new stage designs, their synthetic, unified qualities appealed to many. Seldes, for example, described his delight at the new unity of the foreign theatre: what was truly special and surprising for him was that everything worked together (“The Theatre” 258). On the whole, however, Americans, like their British counterparts at the Paris show, were bewildered and unprepared for what they saw. As in the British Reports on the Paris Exposition, in American articles the word modernism usually appeared in quotation marks, an indication that many still

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had no clear idea of what it was. Doubtless it was in order to stem anxiety and to clarify the nature of the new stagecraft and drama that the Lecture Committee had been created. The North American press coverage was extensive. The New York Herald Tribune warned American students of the theatre that they ought to be prepared for “the shock of their lives” because nothing in America, not even the biggest innovations on Broadway or in experimental theatres had anything to match what they were about to see (“International Theater Show” n.p.). Toronto’s Globe emphasized the “remarkable,” “unusual,” and “extraordinary” display of the most “Advanced Models and Designs Ever Assembled.” The newspaper’s readers were enjoined to pause and contemplate the magnitude and diversity of this “epochal exhibition.” “Think of it!” – the Globe reader is urged. Whereas Toronto audiences were familiar with only one model of theatre (the traditional proscenium-arch), and only one type of drama (realism), here – the writer gasped – was an unimagined wealth of possibilities (“Exhibition of Stagecraft” 18). Many reports focused on the “curiosity” aspect of the show, as the titles of newspaper articles across North America suggest: “Stagecraft Shows Its Newest Heresies,” “Goodbye Poor Actors?,” “To Exhibit Novelties in Stage Scenery,” “Actors and Actorless Theatre – New Stage Designs,” “Play and Actor Count[,] Not the Stunty Scenery,” “Plans Laboratory of Modern Stage. Former Vienna Director Says He Will Develop ‘Fourth Dimensional Theatre’,” and “Theatre of Future May Have No Actors.” A number of articles satirized excesses in the work of Prampolini and Kiesler, and, in particular, focused on the idea of the actorless theatre, homogenizing all of the non-realistic designs as looming threats to the art of the actor. The New York Times concluded by suggesting that the actorless theatre was bunk (“An Actorless Theatre” 18), while Cheney called it “the glorification of the mechanical at the expensive of traditional acted drama” (“Constructivism” 863). Lauding the expo for representing “everything fruitful and growing in the theatre itself,” Seldes noted that, “For the general public the Exposition offers beauty, excitement, poetry. It recalls the Armory show8 by the completeness and variety of the experiments it brings together. Especially abroad the painters have turned to the theatre; finding in it something more interesting to handle, a medium more adaptable than canvas alone … the mason, the carpenter, the architect, the engineer, are the people whose influence we may expect to see on the stage.” He also speculated about the expo’s effect: it “will probably turn out a singularly useful starting point for those who enjoy speculation about the

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theatre. In that way it is like the theatre itself, having a double interest – the immediate entertainment or appeal of power, and the secondary quality of being something one is willing to remember” (“Newest” n.p.). The New-York Tribune grimly noted that the American hosts would probably find themselves under attack because “their own work in stage design is a little unprogressive and old-fashioned as compared with the sort of thing rampant in the show.” “[T]he point is that ‘constructivism’ is the big thing in the exposition. As a theory of stage design it dominates in the foreign section, and its examples in models and drawings are the most exciting and provocative individual items in the show. And while the ‘Youthful’ stages of Europe have undeniably ‘gone constructivist’ the so-called progressive stages of America have felt little more than weak reflection of this anti-decorative, revolutionary doctrine” (“Constructivism Big Thing” n.p.). Derision as well as praise was heaped in equal measure on the foreign contributions; they were perceived as making an “extreme departure” from “conventional ideas” – that is, from productions seen on Broadway and at Little Theatres (New-York Tribune, 7 March 1926). The New-York Tribune advised visitors to make sure that, even if they swallowed all the ideas of the expo whole, they should be “sure that they are thoroughly digested,” since the exhibits “all lean so far in the direction of cubistism [sic], constructivism, symbolism and other isms that they are liable to topple over” (7 March 1926). The Gilder described the Inter­national Exposition as a “freakish and depressing collection”: “The worst, it would seem, has been painstakingly selected and brought to America … a delegation of futurists of one sort or another, whose hysterical and frequently idiotic contrivances are at their best faintly amusing … The pageant as a whole often resembles a museum of freaks ... The contrivers of this shocking rot have probably no idea themselves of what it is all about” (11 March 1926). Atkinson similarly generalized: “many of the stage designs are novelties, freaks, and eccentricities” (“Affairs” X1). In his August 1926 editorial, “The Great World Theatre,” published in Theatre Arts Monthly, Howard Greenley referred to the New York exhibition as “this latest affliction to the senses and processes of orderly thought.” He continued, “Fortunately the work of some of our distinguished American stage designers was in evidence, enabling one to dispense with gas masks and other protective appliances in the small oases allotted to them” (559). Much of the criticism was levelled at the pronouncements and models of Prampolini and Kiesler. In his contribution

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Figure 6.8  Visitors examining displays at the International Theatre Exhibition. New York, Steinway Building, 1926. PHO 6449/0. Copyright 2016 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna.

to The Little Review, Prampolini referred to the actor as a “grotesque rag of humanity,” not only “a useless element in theatrical action” but “moreover one that is dangerous to the future of the theatre.” Arguing that scenography had to be replaced with scenic dynamism, Prampolini intended to replace the actor with light and sound, claiming that “the human on the stage destroys the mystery of the beyond, which must rule in the theatre, a temple of spiritual abstraction” (105). Kiesler’s pronouncement of the “Death of the Theatre” also received many mocking rejoinders; however, unlike his speeches elsewhere, his contribution to Heap’s magazine, “Debacle of the Modern Theatre,” dealt less mystically with the problem of stage space. Here, he outlined in a lucid manner the distinction between the pictorial and the dynamic stage space: “stage is space, picture is surface. The spatial junction of stage and picture produces a false compromise, the stage-picture”

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(“Debacle” 65). “Scene and actor negate each other. No organic cohesion is possible” (64). The current age, he insisted, required a new type of space to reflect its spirit: The contemporary theatre calls for the vitality of life itself, a vitality which has the force and the tempo of the age … Its breath fills the entire stage; it demands depth, freedom of movement, space in the truest sense of the word. It cannot get this on the picture-stage, where the action and the scenery are designed for a decorative frontal effect. The new spirit bursts the stage, resolving it into space to meet the demands of the action. It invents the space-stage, which is not merely a priori space, but also appears as space … Optically there is only one method for giving the experience of space with precision: namely, motion which is converted into space. (67)

Kiesler’s own model of a stage-space, however, proved much more contentious than his assertions made in Heap’s magazine. In fact, his model seemed to chime exactly with Prampolini’s extravagances. Kiesler’s Optophon Theatre, one of his very recent inventions, entirely disposed of the actor. His model consisted of a square stage-space around which the audience could sit. Coloured lights were projected into space rather than on any vertical surface. As R.L. Held has rather neutrally commented, this experiment was “the culmination of the architecture of Futurist theories” because it moved “the staging into space, out of the proscenium” (44). Kiesler’s Optophon marked the extreme position of the experimentation with artificial light, space, and colour. Without actors and even without marionettes (the latter, Gordon Craig’s preference to the unreliable actor), Kiesler pushed the use of theatrical experimentation into the realm of the completely abstract, using kinetic, artificial light and stage machinery to expand stage space into cyberspace, anticipating installation art of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Yet, however much expos and fairs were expected to startle spectators with innovative displays of artificial illuminations, this particular example was generally ill received. Referring to these exhibits as “weird,” the New York Evening Post claimed that “a woman who had been wandering distractedly through the foreign section of the show suddenly went cuckoo trying to get clear the difference between Kiesler’s Optophonic Theatre and his Endless Theatre and the uses, if any, of either” (“Stage Puzzles”).9 The dizzying number of “isms” on display seemed to have overwhelmed many of those reporting on the expo and, despite the daily

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lectures, deep scepticism concerning the necessity of American theatre’s flight away from realism remained.10 The novelties of the show appeared too much to process. As Wilfred Dolfsma has observed, creating a fashion is like trying to walk a tightrope: “too much novelty will result in a consumption good which sends a message that cannot be understood, while too much commonality means not signaling the proper, modernist values” (361). Writing in Theatre Arts Monthly, Thomas Craven lauded the tendency towards simplification of form as “a purgatorial measure essentially healthy,” but deplored the extreme acolytes of the new spirit as a “cult,” and their efforts as “capricious and inept, substituting rags for décors, converting actors into marionettes, and reverting to the scenic nakedness of the Elizabethans” (540). While agreeing that “the stage of Shakespeare is more plastic than the stage of to-day with its painted illusions,” he rejected the imposition of new methods on all drama (540–1). Like his French and English compeers, Craven dismissed the European “importations,” and recommended “an American setting of the static order” for American drama (541, 543). Arguing that the actor’s role is “more literary than plastic,” Craven insisted that character was “best relieved by a static background, by the modified Shakes­ pearean stage or the vehicles of the Chinese and Japanese.” Moreover, he argued that to surround the actor “by the violent discords of the modern extremists is to invite the destruction of the play as a literary art … In a dynamic setting the relationship of the lines, planes and colours is conducive to movement and unrest” (542). Insisting that dynamic design should only be used for ballets, circuses, prizefights, and spectacles, Craven asserted that drama required quiet stasis. The “cosmopolitan radicals” would do better, he suggested, in the movies. Most visitors, even sophisticated reviewers like Craven, had no key with which to unlock the seemingly mysterious codes of the exhibits. Exposition labels, belatedly attached to the displays, impeded comprehension, let alone analysis. Of little help, according to Gilbert W. Gabriel, was the “scrambled, unprepossessing arrangement,” the “dusty, funereal lack of a lighting system,” and the program, which he characterized as “incommunicative as a subway map” (n.p.). The program text appeared on the same page as advertisements, which took up the same or even more space; each section was separated by heavy black lines recalling (for some) In Memoriam announcements. As in The Little Review but with less success, the typography was intended to give the program a “modernist look”: texts were printed on a diagonal or in different directions. Yet, despite all the apparent confusion, attendance during the

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Figure 6.9  Cover. Catalogue of the International Theatre Exposition. New York 1926.

first week “exceeded all expectation” (“Stage Puzzles All Made Easy”) and, as has been noted, the popular demand to view the exhibits was such that the Exposition was extended for an additional, third week. The succès de scandale of the New York show went far beyond the boundaries of the city. Thanks to Heap’s magazine and her extensive and far-flung contacts, a glittering list of writers, artists, and intellectuals both in America and elsewhere became familiar with the new Soviet stagecraft, albeit they homogenized the exhibits as being all “Russian,” establishing a trend that would continue throughout the twentieth century. Although eight images from Les Kurbas’s Berezil Theatre appeared throughout the magazine, more than any other except for Meyerhold’s, there was no recognition of the Soviet Ukrainian theatre. Soviet Russian theatre, however, not only dominated in print but also on the road: the Moscow Art Musical Studio went on to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. Debate followed them along the way. Oppos­ ing the onslaught of European and “bolshevist” ideas, and troubled by the possible contamination and corruption of American letters, a small group of Americans established The Theatre Creative later that same year (Valgemae 1). With its executive office on posh Fifth Avenue, the group aimed to oppose the wave of European and Soviet influence, an effort lauded in the press as “All-American” and “Creative but Native.”11

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Figures 6.10, 6.11  Pages from The Little Review showing some of the Soviet contributions to the International Theatre Exposition.

Figure 6.12  Pages from The Little Review showing some of the American contributions to the International Theatre Exposition.

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For their part, left-leaning American writers and many stage designers fully supported the techniques, if not always the underlying ideas, of the modernist theatre. Some, like Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, Michael Gold,12 and John Howard Lawson, were already well aware of German Expressionism in film, as well as some Russian developments in the theatre (e.g., the well-travelled Tairov and his Kamerny Theatre had been allowed to perform throughout North America). They responded deeply to the concern with inner experience rather than facsimile surface, which could be found in German films, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), and in plays, such as Georg Kaiser’s Gas trilogy or Ernst Toller’s Man and the Masses (1921). The latter plays had been very successfully staged both in Soviet Russia and Ukraine. Les Kurbas’s 1923 masterly production of Gas in a dynamic Constructivist setting by Vadym Meller graced both the exhibition program and The Little Review – though in both publications it was incorrectly labelled. In the program, it appeared as Gas (Kaiser), Décor by Weller Theatre Bresil, Kiew; in The Little Review, as Gas (Kaiser), Décor by Meller Theatre Beresil, Kiew (90). Prior to the New York show, only a handful of Americans had been exposed to or influenced by the European avant-garde. After the Inter­ national Theatre Exposition, thousands had seen and read about it. Its role as catalyst for debate and change was paramount. Critics of Ameri­ can stagecraft and playwrighting used this opportunity to vent their disappointment at the current state of affairs and to urge young talents to innovate. Mournfully observing that the American drama lagged far behind in “evening clothes,” Atkinson hoped that the Exposition would be recognized as a call to arms for American playwrights to respond with “vitality” and imagination (“Affairs” xi). More colloquially, E.E. Cummings asked, “And now may we suggest some genuine home-brew?” (April 1926, 345). The consequences for American theatre and stagecraft were tangible and immediate. The Exposition encouraged and inspired some Ameri­ can playwrights and designers to embrace experimentation along with left-wing political ideals. In the winter of 1926–7, the New Playwrights Theatre was created, bringing together five experimental, left-leaning dramatists: John Lawson, John Dos Passos, Francis Edwards Faragoh, Em Jo Basshe, and Michael Gold, supported by millionaire Otto Kahn. They wrote plays and articles deeply influenced by the techniques they saw at the International Theatre Exposition.13 As Lawson revealed in personal interviews with American scholar Mardi Valgemae, “the impact of the exposition on him and his soon-to-be colleagues at the

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Figure 6.13  The entrance of the workers. Georg Kaiser’s Gas directed by Les Kurbas for the Berezil Theatre. Designer: Vadym Meller.

New Playwrights’ Theatre was tremendous” (86). In the spirit of the exhibition and on its first anniversary, the group issued a manifesto on 27 February 1927 which proclaimed “a theatre where the spirit, the movement, the music of this age is carried on, accentuated, amplified, crystallized. A theatre which shocks, terrifies, matches wits with the audience … In all, a theatre which is as drunken, as barbaric, as clangorous as our age” (qtd. in Valgemae 85). Valgemae described it as “an Artaudesque manifesto” that “mirrored the tone of the exhibits on display at the International Theatre Exposition” (85). One of the most active of the group, Lawson corresponded with Meyerhold and German theatre director Erwin Piscator, and contributed articles to New York newspapers and playbills in which he emphasized the “dynamic movement’ and “visual effectiveness” of the new theatrical approaches (Valgemae 84). Constructivist principles were taken up for the staging of a number of the works of the New Playwrights, including Lawson’s own Loud Speaker with designs by Mordecai Gorelik. Others who fell under the spell of the international show included Michael Gold (recently returned from Moscow). His Strike! (1926), which took as its subject textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey, has a workingclass hero not unlike Jimmie Higgins, the persecuted socialist worker of

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Figure 6.14  Scene from Jimmie Higgins (based on Upton Sinclair’s novel) adapted and directed by Les Kurbas for the Berezil Theatre. 1923. Designer: Vadym Meller.

Upton Sinclair’s eponymous novel. Transformed by Les Kurbas into a theatrical masterpiece using film along with live actors, Jimmie, one of the Berezil’s great successes, had a number of photos from its production included in the New York exhibition. Another enthusiast of the new trends was E.E. Cummings, who would soon write his own expressionistic drama, Him (1928), with its surreal language and dreamlike images, as well as its chorus of three Miss Weirds (Fates). Paul Green’s Tread the Green Grass; A Folk Fantasy in Two Parts With Interludes, Music, Dumb-Show, and Cinema, written in 1927–8 and in preparation for a fall 1929 performance by the Provincetown Players (though never staged),14 echoed the techniques which Kurbas used in his productions of Jimmie Higgins and in his 1924 Macbeth: a synthesis of film, mime, interludes, and expressionist and grotesque techniques. Written at about the same time, Green’s Supper for the Dead and The Man on the House (later, Shroud My Body Down) appeared to bear the impress of similar influences. Perhaps most spectacularly, the great American scenographers could hardly escape some influence from the powerful

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work of the Soviet designs. Among them were Robert Edmond Jones, Donald Oenslager, Lee Simonson, Cleon Throckmorton, Aline Bernstein, Jo Mielziner, and two émigrés: the Ukrainian-born designers Louis Lozowick and Boris Aronson, the latter, son of the Chief Rabbi of Kiev.15 As in France, in America debates raged about the efficacy of the new approaches. But these failed to penetrate a broader social sphere, including the commercial theatres of America. Although the New-York Tribune made the promising announcement on 7 March 1926 that a public debate would be held at the Klaw Theatre (the Avon after 1929) that afternoon to discuss the question “Is American Stage Scenery Obsolete?,” it also observed that the speakers were all “representatives of the Art Theaters of New York.” They were talking to themselves.

Chapter Seven

Transformative Space: Into the Future

“The sap is running strong in the tree of American dramatic art.” (Otto Kahn 79)

Eight days before the November closing of the 1925 Paris expo, Francis Paul, a regular contributor to Figaro Artistique, noted with evident satisfaction that, as the millions of visitors testified, the fair’s success had surpassed all expectations. Moreover, he continued, it was evident that modern art had triumphed with the middle classes, persons who had but “a rudimentary artistic education but were gifted with good sense.” After their initial shock at the encounter with the truly new, they returned, debated, and, finally, passionately embraced the new art (31).1 Repetitive viewing of modernist creations helped acclimatize spectators to the new trends and tendencies. Their acceptance (by some, but certainly not all, as Paul claimed) may be attributed, in part, to the inclusion of a separate class, the fifth of four broad categories of exhibits: Training. Indeed, the organizers of the Paris expo had held the general expectation that the most important innovation, the heart of the fair and its permanent legacy, would not be architectural (as in previous fairs) but, rather, inspirational. It was by means of workshops, architect Henri-Marcel Magne explained, that the public would comprehend that “modern life corresponds to a decorative and industrial art, that this art exists, and that it is not inferior to the arts of the past” (32).2 Over sixty ateliers, which demonstrated how objects were made, were intended to stimulate the next generation’s interest in taking up a vocation in the decorative arts. Artists, designers, and students came from around the world to see the latest objects created by the art and trade

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schools of France and other countries, including the USSR. From Great Britain alone, eleven art instructors and hundreds of their students had come to be “impregnated” with the spirit of the modern age (Bréon, “L’Exposition internationale” 162). The “artists-moderns” were lauded as innovators who were unafraid of mechanical reproduction or standardization; they brought their creativity to the daily uses of the world, not just to a small group of collectors (Bréon, L’Exposition des arts 12).3 The New York Times pointed out that, “Thanks to modern industry, the creative artist has power to touch with the spirit of beauty every utensil we use in daily life” (“Art in Industry”). Frank Scarlett and Marjorie Townley similarly insisted that the expo brought about “almost revolutionary change” in household items. “There is no doubt that the spirit of the Expo, or what might be called with justification, a spirit of rebirth or renewal in the industrial arts[,] had made an indelible impression” (100). Organizers such as Yvanhoë Rambosson placed great emphasis on the fact that the Paris show had given the world the “lesson of a practical and living art,” la leçon d’art pratique et vivant (“L’Exposition Interna­ tionale” 211). Explaining what visitors should take away from the Paris expo, he exalted its role as marking a new renaissance of the applied arts, a revolution that celebrated “Logique, vérité, harmonie” (Logic, Truth, Concord); these three words, he averred, summarized the doctrine of modern art. Routine and repetition had been thrown aside. Modern art was now to be fully lived and understood as everything that surrounds us (“Conclusion” 363–4). Henceforth, domestic space would be transformed by the example of the exhibits at the expo. Everyday objects would be endowed with magical beauty and a touch of the future. The focus on good design (not just utility), both in private and public spaces, was indeed to prove one of the main legacies of the expo. Design, as it was displayed at the Paris Exposition, captured the imagination of Americans. Helen Read assured her readers that modern design in all areas was “not a passing fad” but was here to stay (“Part II” 163). Americans needed to take note of this important legacy and of the expo’s challenges: The vital message [of the Paris expo] to the American designer is in helping to rid him of his inhibitions, and to stimulate the timid creative spirit which persists in this country in the domain of the decorative arts. The Exposition proves that the designer can dare to be himself, that he need not always remain a copyist, and that forms created in harmony with his time and the peculiar needs and ideals of his own people can be as

Transformative Space 195 aesthetically sound as those of any other people, past or present. It is proof of the enormous interest created by this exposition that many of the objects shown there are to be brought to the United States this winter and made the  occasion of special exhibitions in such of our art museums as the Metropolitan and that in Newark, New Jersey. Thus our students of the arts of design in particular will have an opportunity to see at first hand some of the manifestations of this new decorative spirit in the arts. (“Part II” 165)

In addition to the official report presented to designers and manufacturers (and, ultimately, to the American public) by Charles Richards, president of the American Commission and director of the American Association of Museums (AAM), many of the American observers also submitted articles to scholarly journals, trade papers, newspapers, and magazines, thus furthering the discussions and debates raised by the displays at the Paris expo. Subsequently, Richards arranged to bring over four hundred objects from the expo to nine major art museums in the USA, including those in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York (Kaplan 335). The Exposition also had a trickle-down effect on all aspects of style, not just in the USA but also around the world. Fashion-conscious women were encouraged to be truly chic by wearing modernist colours and shades inspired by the expo as featured in the Textile Colour Card Association of the United States, Inc.4 Department stores quickly took up the public interest in the Paris expo both in their advertising and in their display, which became more theatrical in design. In 1928 Macy’s hosted an Art and Trade Exhibition, while Lord and Taylor held a furniture show. The Metropolitan Museum of Art arranged for an exhibition titled “The Architect and Industrial Arts” which was so immediately popular that, while originally scheduled for six weeks, the show eventually ran for over six months (Gersell 9). Although the Architectural League of New York continued to debate the value of the new architecture, its members nonetheless agreed that the Exposition was having a lasting effect on architectural design. France’s attention to the arts of display had set a new standard that would henceforth be expected, and that would be followed at future expos, organically and permanently linking these arts with theatrical practices and strategies. The luxury and glamour of the French pavilions, their street of boutiques, and their opulent materials and elegance, found a receptive and natural home in the world of film, most notably in Hollywood, where the costumes, sets, and interior lighting of Art Deco became a visual

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synecdoche for modernity (Wood 325). While their context was Ameri­ can, the film industry was dominated by Europeans, especially Eastern Europeans. Created for a mass market which, in the 1930s embraced over eighty million people per week, the film industry most rapidly and widely disseminated Art Deco (then known as Art Moderne and Jazz-Moderne); it would continue to be popular until the early years of the Second World War. Ironically, then, popular culture embraced the luxurious style, granting it mass appeal and wide visibility, rather than embracing its more radical, democratic, and utopian sibling, Modern­ ism; one looked to the past, the other to the future (Wood 332). Two different and hostile tendencies, they revealed deep social and cultural divisions which would play out in the decade to come. Both, however, shared the rhetoric of “the new” and each, in its own way, responded to the pressures of the times. Expositions and the Theatre Arts The Paris and the New York shows once again confirmed the fact that the exposition was a potent and influential forum for disseminating new ideas. In 1936 Simon Lissim, in his preface to the catalogue for the New York Exhibition of the Decorative Arts in the French Theatre, identified the 1925 Paris show as being directly responsible for the ever-expanding, wide interest in everything related to the theatre arts (n.p.). That expo, he argued, was the originary laboratory and spiritual home of modern theatre arts (le centre spirituel de la décoration théâtrale moderne). As proof, he enumerated all of the exhibitions that had taken place since the 1925 show had ignited such an interest: Exposition des arts au théâtre at the the Galerie Charpentier in Paris; the New York exhibition; the various exhibitions organized by René Chavance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; those organized by Raymond Cogniat at the Galerie de France; those at the Galerie d’Art contemporain; to say nothing of the individual exhibitions of designers such as Alexandre Benois, Erté (Romain de Tirtoff), Alexandra Exter, Ladislas (Laszlo) Medgyès, and countless others; the great exhibitions in Barcelona, Magdeburg, Vienna, and Cologne; as well as the theatrical section of the Salon d’Automne, organized by Cogniat (since 1930, a recent addition to the Salon). The Soviets also recognized the fair as a valuable tool in their arsenal for persuading the world of the notion that the USSR was a forward-looking state supporting forward-looking art and culture. The USSR took part in

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the 1927 “Mostra internazionale delle Arti Decorative” in Milan; the 1928 Exposition d’art russe ancien et moderne in Brussels; in “The Exhibition of Soviet Art” in London in 1929, as well as art exhibitions in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, and Zurich in the early 1930s. The interest in stage design continued abroad, as well. The National Gallery of Canada’s 1938 exhibition “Theatre Art: Contemporary Stage and Costume De­ signs” presented designs from the Russian SSR, Britain, France, Hungary, Austria, and Poland (many of which were in the 1936 French Theatre exhibition in New York). James Laver, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, contributed the “Foreword,” in which he noted the “somewhat less satisfactory” and “obstinately conservative” status of English theatre arts, which resisted the new developments on the Continent, in the USA, and in the USSR. While he described German Expressionist theatre as “tortured but most interesting,” he lauded the Russians for offering “a series of startling innovations in all manner of presentation” (5). It is no exaggeration to speak of the 1925 expo as leading a “revolution” or “rupture” with the past” in stagecraft. In France, the so-called Cartel of directors – Gaston Baty, Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet, and Georges Pitoëff – worked throughout the 1920s and 1930s to bring French theatre from naturalism into abstraction, laying the foundation for contemporary stagecraft, as Susan McCready has pointed out in Staging France between the World Wars (ix). While she focuses on specific theatre productions, she makes no mention of the huge theatre exhibition that had formed a part of the 1925 Paris expo. The movement to re-theatricalize the theatre by embracing a new and more liberal approach to the text surely received impetus from the Exposition and from the debates about theatre that took up so much space in the journals and newspapers of the time. Theatrical reform was in the minds not just of the French, but of the various contributors to the theatre exhibits of the fair. The turn to minimalism, to abstract evocations of time and space, was part of a larger movement, as has already been suggested. It was also part of the debate about the role and function of theatre in postwar and post-revolutionary society. Copeau’s austere stage, Baty’s call for a “total theatre” of music, dance, mime, and even Artaud’s challenge to traditional theatre by overthrowing the text in favour of gesture, sign, and symbol, a dramaturgy of sound and light: all this was – as McCready points out – “at the same time a nostalgic quest for the roots of theater and a move to delegitimize contemporary theatrical institutions as essentially inauthentic” (140). The Cartel and its heirs (among them Artaud) need to be

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seen within the framework of the Paris expo, where culture, value, canon, and national identity, came under fierce debate. Although it is claimed that Artaud began to formulate his ideas about theatre after seeing Balinese dancers at the Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1931, surely the 1925 expo, that featured theatre and theatre arts for the first time, also acted as a catalyst for his radical dramaturgy. The debates, discussions, polemics, and general attention lavished on their theatre arts as a result of the Exposition indicated strong global interest, curiosity, and even, in some quarters, much sympathy, for the new Soviet state – a message not lost on the Soviet leader, who recognized the importance of such cultural fairs as a means of effectively advancing the process of the normalization of international relations. During the 1924–9 period alone, the Soviets took part in thirty-two international fairs held in sixteen different countries (Pavlov 11–12). Beginning in Paris, then in New York, and in other cities around the globe, both visitors and media brought continuing attention to the new state and its achievements, especially in the cultural sphere. The Exposition also initiated some navel-gazing, including on the part of the Soviet Russians. In 1927, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, an exhibition of all the peoples of the SSR was held in Moscow. Both the catalogue and a monograph published in the same year underscored the fact that the Russians had little information about the great theatrical experiments that were happening in other parts of the Soviet Union (Tugendhol’d, “Introduction” 3). Not only were they uninformed about what was going on in Kiev, Tbilisi, and Baku, Rus­ sian audiences had, on some occasions, even boycotted other national theatres. The tenth anniversary celebrations of the Revolution were meant to dispel such prejudices and to introduce hitherto unknown names and talents to a broader Soviet audience. The Paris and New York expos also acted as catalysts to other nations for a thorough review of the state of their own art and design. The Germans, for example, snubbed by the belated invitation to the Paris fair, almost immediately began making plans for their own exhibition of theatre art. Slated for 1926, the Deutsche Theater-Ausstellung opened in the spring of 1927 in Magdeburg. Without repeating exactly the terms of the French Exposition, the German fair mimicked Paris’s focus by insisting on the contemporary moment. Historical material would be displayed only when it had not formed part of the previous exhibition in Germany (1910). In fact, as in Paris, there was a great deal of

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the historical. Focusing on the theatre arts and, in particular, on their relationship to technology, the German exposition, like that of Paris, also included the building of a model theatre. Publications, posters, and graphic art also formed part of the show. Die Vierte Wand (The Fourth Wall), the official publication of the German exposition, reported that representatives of various departments were invited to hear Magdeburg mayor Beims’s speech about the crisis in which theatre had found itself: The Germans’ love of history, he claimed, was greater than that of other peoples but this positive characteristic was also a weakness: they sometimes looked backward, rather than forward into the future. The exhibition was thus intended to correct this tendency, to display German talent and skill, and to show foreigners that German art wouldn’t be left behind that of other nations. Theatre was not only very important; it was, he insisted, the strongest binding agent for a nation (Gelmar 15). Just as the British had drawn their dominions to their Mother Country at Wembley, so at Magdeburg other Germanic countries were invited to participate (e.g., Austria and Switzerland) as well as German companies located in foreign countries. After perusing the many impressive displays, American Lincoln Eyre nonetheless complained in The New York Times about that expo’s limitations and occlusions: international influences on German theatre, including American jazz and cinema, Italian opera, Shakespeare, Molière, as well as modern English, French, and Scandinavian playwrights, were “sadly neglected” (25). If AngloAmerican influences were disregarded, the Soviet was not. The USSR made its first, albeit limited, appearance in Germany, but only Tairov’s Kamerny Theatre was permitted to participate (Reinhardt 64).5 The rapid growth of nationalism, nativism, and traditionalism, already in evidence at the Paris expo in both the attitude of France and Britain, was also revealed here in Germany. These trends, which would result in dangerous world-changing ideologies, would also prevent the embrace and understanding of the modernist experiments with space. In the USA, some of the same inwardness was apparent. The New York International Theatre Exposition had not been conceived with the same ambitious goal of creating a new style for the next century as had the Paris expo, but, rather, like the German, with the more modest aim of introducing its citizens to the great changes that had taken place in Western and Eastern European theatre over the past two decades. There were, however, some Americans who looked to broader horizons.

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Gilbert Seldes was one of these. He announced his thoughts about what the Exposition might do for American theatre while tacitly condemning its current state. The settings and designs should have some aesthetic interest in themselves, but for those who care for the theatre there will be another interest – in speculating as to the outcome of these feats of engineering on the theatre as a whole, on the actor, and the playwright. Tairoff, in the Kamerny Theatre, considers a play as raw material and prefers to take plays of the classic or neo-classic type, feeling freer to handle them than he might be with a contemporary work. To him it is not a play to produce, nor is the actor a person to act; they and everything else are combined to create a new unity … If we can do what the Europeans can do, use our machine as material for art, perhaps we shall arrive at something approaching mastery. (Seldes, “The Theatre” 258–9)

Seldes’s understated speculations brought together some of the conceptual threads apparent at both the Paris and the New York theatre arts exhibits: the new relationships that could be forged between actor and playwright; the use of the classics as a way of enfranchising the director; the unifying vision that could be created with the cooperation of director and scenographer, and the use of the machine in the service of art. Rather than recommending a wholesale appropriation of the Soviet innovations, Seldes’s comments also suggest a practical cast of mind, an understanding that the young American theatre would take some time to evolve and that it would do so in its own particular way, and in its own time. In his contribution to The Little Review, “The American Stage. Reflections of an Amateur,” patron of the arts and investment banker Otto Kahn remarked, “There is no people anywhere more malleable than this new race of ours, a race which is the composite and resultant of strains so multifarious, and still in full process of evolution and development” (81). Evolution, then, was to be the watchword, not revolution. Still, a grudging admiration for and fascination with Soviet experiments continued. The Russian Exposition of the Soviet Union opened in New York in 1928. The catalogue of Group 14, “Theatrical and Musical Art in Soviet Russia,” briefly described the state of theatre and theatre arts in the Russian SSR, in many ways replicating the bifurcated and much more lengthy descriptions in evidence at the Paris show. Here, the

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theatre arts were said to be a part of the “traditional aristocratic culture” that was enjoyed by Russians who valued and zealously preserved this “artistic heritage of great value … throughout the difficult years,” while also spreading it to the masses (Russian 19). Setting aside the more radical experiments of the exhibition, Sheldon Cheney presciently mused about the future: a different formal stage may evolve which, without being a compromise of the underlying principles of modernism, will unite principles out of the three types: a basic permanent platform and neutral background, wide and unhampered working and lighting space, and means for constructing easily and quickly when needed the platforms on different levels and the barest intimations of locality that Constructivism affords. (“Constructivism” 864)

What Cheney described as what might happen, did happen. The foundation for current theatrical practices, including theatre architecture of the second-half of the twentieth century, with its thrust stages, flexible stage spaces, and multiple levels of acting, may be traced back to these exhibitions, which sparked many debates, theories, and pronouncements (Condee 167). The question arises: But why, if both the Paris Exposition and the New York exhibition reached such large audiences, did the modernist approach to staging plays not take firm hold in North America until the second half of the twentieth century? One answer, alluded to above, lies in the retreat of individual countries into nativism, regionalism, nostalgia, and nationalism, particularly in the face of the fear of imported revolution, not only on the stage but also in the political sphere. Another answer may be found by returning to George Sproles’s model of fashion diffusion. As we have seen, the Paris expo conformed to the second stage of fashion diffusion. Having been introduced by change agents (stage one), the new concepts then acquired significant social visibility and communicability by way of international exhibitions (stage two). The Paris fair attracted both great numbers and a wide social and political spectrum of international visitors, not just lovers of theatre or theatre practitioners. It placed the theatre arts in the widest possible context of design and brought to the attention of the world the spectrum of achievements of Soviet theatre arts that were hitherto unknown in North America. As Sproles has argued, at this point in the process of fashion dif­ fusion, the new goes into a “use cycle,” principally by change agents

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operating within their own social systems. Because of its novelty, a new concept, style, or, more broadly speaking, fashion, “emerges as a highly visible and communicative alternative to the existing fashions” (“Fashion” 469). We noted how the Soviet exhibits attracted an international group of left-wing intellectuals, artists, and patrons in France. Jane Heap and the organizers of the New York International Theatre Exposition introduced the innovative foreign theatre arts into their own social systems, and thus presented an alternative to the prevailing conservatism of Ameri­can stage practices. The New York show thus marked the beginning of the third stage of fashion diffusion: its further social acceptance, achieved by infiltrating different social networks through a process of social contagion. And yet, the Soviet practices failed to achieve the fourth stage: frequent and visible use by many people. In contrast to the Paris expo, The New York International Exposition was a specialized event. As such, it attracted mostly like-minded critics, patrons, playwrights, actors, and other creative talents. Although their social networks were extensive, their members held fairly uniform views and values. We may see this, for example, in Alfred Richard Orage’s contribution to Heap’s special issue on the exhibition, “A Theatre For Us.” Orage, editor of the weekly The New Age and a vocal advocate of socialist politics, modernism, and mysticism, began his essay thusly: “In conversation recently with a number of the intelligentsia (meaning no less, in America, than people interested in the ‘Little Review’) the topic perambulated round to the theatre.” Later on in the essay, he insisted, “remember I speak as an intelligent to the intelligent – none of your ‘of, by or from’” (Orage 30, 31). The assumption, then, is of a like-minded, educated, upscale audience already partly “in the know.” The general public, however, made its acquaintance with the new approaches through the press and other media, not through art and culture magazines. As we have seen, newspapers often emphasized the outlandish qualities of the foreign, especially Soviet, displays. These were, often justly, equated with other kinds of revolution, particularly with the “bizarre” new political state of the USSR that threatened to expand its bolshevist roots into America and elsewhere in Europe. As a consequence, it was not only easy, but perhaps imagined to be necessary, to dismiss and oppose the innovative theatrical techniques. The founding of the conservative Theatre Creative suggests precisely this type of response.

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The then comparative poverty of American cultural life was also a contributing factor to the delayed acceptance of modernist approaches. Kahn alluded to this in a critique couched in optimistic terms: The interest in art, the appreciation of art, the cultivation of art, are steadily broadening and deepening among the people of America. In no other field of artistic activity is that quickening of popular interest more noticeable than in that of the stage, notwithstanding the apparently contradictory fact that, for the time being, so many of our cities are without the theatre of the spoken word, a fact arising from circumstances which, I feel sure, are temporary and peculiar to a period of transition. The sap is running strong in the tree of American dramatic art. (79)

America was young, brash, and optimistic. Arriving in New York in 1920, composer Vernon Duke found the city “even dirtier than Con­ stantinople, but there was electricity and feverish promise in the air. The town was new, ungainly and cockily, awkwardly young, rather like a wolfhound pup with legs too long for the rest of his body” (82). The city was also conservative in taste and a far cry from Kiev, where the avant-garde took early root. In 1914, Duke saw “futurists, like the Burliuk brothers, Kruchenikh, Khlebnikov, and others of that ilk … [who] donned eccentric garb, wore carrots and radishes in their buttonholes, painted their faces blue or green and created disturbances in theaters and other gathering places, to attract publicity” (22–3). Of course America had Broadway, but even there the theatrical preferences were for productions of melodrama, vaudeville, and music-hall in traditional proscenium-stage settings with painted backdrops. Without the deep impress of the Great War that Europe experienced, America experienced modernism in a different fashion. As Christine Stansell has cogently argued with respect to its writers, “The Americans moved in a different direction – not toward modernism’s exiled posture but toward Whitmanian affirmation … With them there is confidence, discovery, self-delight, not fine distinctions, irony, and refusal. These writers liked expansiveness and embrace, not doubt and mockery; crossing over lines, not drawing them. Their hopes for American culture – more precisely literary culture – were boundless” (149). This world view may be extended to the American view of theatre, where melodrama still reigned supreme. Those who visited the New York Exposition, read the little magazines, and travelled in these circles, continued to promote modernism.

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In the late 1930s, as John Bell has pointed out, the influence of the Soviets in particular was felt in the Federal Theatre Project’s “Living Newspapers”; it could also be found in the work of individual designers and creators such as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Mordecai Gorelik, and others (163). The work of Norman Bel Geddes also reflected some of these influences, particularly his design for the General Motors Building, Futurama, for the New York World’s Fair of 1939, which, in its forward-tilting design recalled Tatlin’s model of the Monument to the Third International. Any immediate modernist incursions onto the commercial Ameri­ can stage were also hindered by some of modernisms’ proponents. On 14 March 1926, Kiesler announced that he was setting up a “laboratory of the modern stage on 2 East 78th Street for the development of the ‘fourth dimensional theatre’.” Arguing that the “old theatres” were “born in the spirit of imperialism” and therefore were inappropriate for America, the land of freedom and democracy, Kiesler explained the necessity of creating a new theatre “of the people” – a phrase that suggests a decidedly socialist bent, though he pointedly denied any Bolshevik connections. He went on to announce the imminent establishment of three labs or “chairs”: the psychological, scientific, and artistic, to be filled by Princess Norina Matchabelli (born Eleanora Erna Cecilia Gilli, stage name Maria Carmi), American medical doctor Bess Mensendieck, and himself. The psychological would “develop the power of the actors and also of the audience”; the scientific department would train the body “through knowledge of the origin of movement”; the artistic would take on the full spectrum of theatre design, including “everything mechanical.” The ultimate result of bringing together all of the elements of theatre would – he claimed – “be fourth dimensional” (“Plans” 19). Kiesler’s references to theosophical, mystical ideas made him a target of mockery. Even Kenneth Macgowan, particularly sympathetic to Constructivist approaches, was dismissive of models and ideas such as those of Kiesler and of Enrico Prampolini: “These things will be entertaining to look at and stimulating to think about … yet it seems to me a somewhat absurd and not altogether desirable thing that they should get mixed up with the word ‘theatre’” (“Stagecraft” 9). The spiritual was, however, an important connector between a number of the contributors both to Heap’s magazine and to the exhibition. Orage was one of the most prominent in this category. Heap herself had recently become a convert to the teachings of mystic and philosopher George

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Gurdjieff and, after organizing another major exhibition (“The Machine Exposition” of May 1927), would abandon both America and her magazine for spiritual studies in France, eventually moving to London to lead a group called The Rope, which would include among its adherents director Peter Brook (Baggett 7).6 Initial enthusiasm for some of Kiesler’s ideas about theatrical architecture waned fairly quickly. By 1928, he was creating window displays for Saks Fifth Avenue department store in New York. Breaking down the individually divided sections of display windows that were cluttered, Victorian-style, with many items, he created one long window display with a “clean” look that focused on particular objects. His innovative work in this field of design resulted in his book, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display (1930), in which he acknowledged that Americans would only accept modernism through mass production and commerce, “not through slow fostering of its theories and principles in academies and art schools, but simply by planting its creations down in the commercial marts” (64). Alfred H. Barr Jr, the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), who had also fought a long, uphill battle on behalf of modernism, concurred that shop window displays had accomplished more to popularize modernism than any “proselytizing critics” (qtd. in Marquis 40–1). Denuded of any socialist ideology, commerce and publicité, with their ability to reach a broad spectrum of the public, were thus central to the diffusion of new concepts of space and design. In the USSR, after only a few years of creative ferment, the innovations that caused such a storm in the West were curtailed by the continuing regression towards conservatism, and, especially, by the ever more strict political and aesthetic control over repertoire and design that had already begun in 1926. By 1934, experimentation was long dead. The First Soviet Writers Congress declared Socialist Realism as the only possible method of creativity. The nineteenth-century decorated surface returned to the Soviet stage, while the Soviet urban landscape returned to old practices. If statues of tsars and their ministers had been toppled, they were replaced with new ones of Lenin and other leaders. By the end of the 1920s, spontaneous celebrations of revolutionary anniversaries and events were forbidden; only scripted, officially approved mass festivals were permitted (Malte 36). The rapid decline of Soviet theatre into traditionalism was also hastened and exacerbated by the massive emigration of artists and critics to Western Europe and America. Only a few of their many numbers

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will be mentioned here. Alexandra Exter, one of the great and influential talents who (as has been previously mentioned), having travelled regularly between Paris, Kiev, and Moscow and intermittently lived in St Petersburg, Odessa, and Rome, finally made France her permanent home. Simon Lissim, who had worked at the Kiev City Theatre where he met Exter and came under her tutelage, followed her to Paris, designed scenery for the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, and contributed to international theatrical magazines. Awarded a silver medal for his set design for a production of Hamlet at the Paris expo, he eventually emigrated to the USA, where he taught stage design at City College in New York for almost thirty years (Susak 170). Another Ukrainian-born talent, Boris Aronson, along with Nissim Shifrin and Isaak Rabinovich, had participated in the first avant-garde exhibition in the Russian empire (Ring, Kiev, 1914) and had also come under the sway of Exter. In 1918 Aronson had helped transform Kiev with the mounting of monumental slogans such as “Religion is the Opiate of the People” and “Long live the Great Proletarian Revolution” (Horowitz 368–9). Frank Rich and Lisa Aronson describe these activities as extending the facades of buildings artificially, as if they were film sets (“The Theatre Art of B.A.” 4). Moving from Kiev to Moscow in 1921, Boris Aronson worked on scene designs under Exter’s wing for Tairov’s Kamerny Theatre. Briefly settling in Berlin in 1922, he participated in the famous First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen gallery. In Paris, he had boarded with El Lissitzky and Vladimir Tatlin, then moved to the USA a few years before the New York exhibition opened (Kazovsky, “Boris” 40). After working in Europe at the edge of the avant-garde, Aronson arrived in New York in 1923. “What Aronson didn’t know,” Frank Rich and Lisa Aronson observed, “was that the American arts, especially the theatre, were often as backward as American technological civilization was advanced. Even the psychologically realistic theater of Stanislavsky was still waiting to be transplanted to New York” (58). Aronson’s subsequent career in the USA offers a synecdoche of the issues facing these émigrés in a country that both inspired modernism and yet was reluctant to accept it. The connections and tensions among modernism, commerce, politics, and theatre continued. Aronson “marveled publicly that Broadway’s first new theater in decades, the Uris [opened 1972; now the Gershwin] could look ‘like a department store, while Bloomingdale’s looks like theatre’” (60). Like Kiesler, Aronson, would design shop windows and would contribute to fashion, publicity,

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Figure 7.1  Simon Lissim’s set design for a production of Hamlet. 1925. (Theatre Arts Monthly, vol. X, no. 8, p. 548.) The stage in this design resembles the stage of Perret’s Theatre and may have been created for the Paris expo.

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and magazines. These were the spaces where Americans would, en masse, see and, through repetitive viewing, finally come to adopt modernist design. For nearly five decades, Aronson’s creativity would be bifurcated. He would live a double life: his experimental designs were confined ­to the Yiddish theatres of New York, with their audiences of fellow-­ immigrants, while his work for commercial theatres had to conform to the realistic conventions with which Americans were most comfortable. Boris Aronson’s “work became more fashionable the older he got, as he waited for history to catch up with him … his ideal of theatricality was long out of sync with the American stage’s mainstream” (Rich with Aronson 52). By the 1970s, Aronson could finally employ the Construc­ tivist techniques that he had first encountered in Russia and Ukraine. For the Harold Prince-Stephen Sondheim musical Pacific Overtures, Aronson created an austere set of platforms and elevators that Rich has called “a two-level ‘urban jungle gym’” and “a simple metaphor for the entirety of a neurotic, technologically fixated Manhattan inhabited by alienated married couples living in high-rise glass cages” (Rich, n.p.). Rich commented on Aronson’s legacy: In the American theatre, he pioneered the notion that scenic design is not an adjunct of architecture or painting or the decorative arts but is instead a sophisticated, if little understood art in its own right … his designs transformed a playwright’s settings into three-dimensional environments that made little attempt to replicate reality but instead remade reality in the form of abstract visual metaphors. Aronson’s sets were as much concerned with the ideas and themes of plays as with the specific venues where the plays ostensibly too place. His visual metaphors would communicate those themes and ideas; such practical matters as where the actors might sit or enter or exit were thought about later, and were subservient to the abstract imagery that frequently dominated, indeed determined, the design. (Rich, n.p.)

Aronson disagreed, observing that this was not pioneering but, rather, continuing the work he had begun decades earlier in the USSR. The similarity of his designs with those of the Constructivists displayed at the Paris and New York fairs is readily apparent in photos, as in Figure 7.2, the set from the Sondheim-George Furth musical comedy Company.

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Figure 7.2  Boris Aronson’s set for Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company. 1970. Photo: Robert Galbraith. (Frank Rich and Lisa Aronson, The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, p. 226. With the kind permission of Marc Aronson.)

The change in America’s view of modernism came gradually and slowly. Its final embrace may partly be attributed to a change in demographics. Between 1933 and 1944, some 717 artists and 380 architects fled Europe, many settling in New York (Marquis 187). The Great Depression had also hastened the return from Europe of a whole generation of Americans that had witnessed the European innovations and shared in many of the new ideas. Bolstered by another huge wave of émigrés after the Second World War, they changed the face of North America and revitalized its theatre and art scene. Filtered through their use in commercial, decorative designs and tasks, especially in shop windows, magazines, and other forms of publicity, the modernist spatial practices were completely shorn of their agitational, revolutionary import. In a neat ironic reversal, modernist designs began to be

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perceived by some critics as symbols of democracy, particularly since fascist and communist regimes were intolerant of them (Marquis 326). Undergoing huge social and political upheavals in the 1960s, America was now ready for a modernist style that was over forty years old. The Constructivist system of organizing space with its simplicity, its angularity, its economy, and its geometric solution to surface arrangements was, as Sheldon Cheney had predicted, finally embraced for its practical purposes: flexibility, dynamic movement, rapid scene changes, and allusive power. Curiously, a dominant theatrical style or formal language had eventually emerged from the roots of the Paris and New York expositions, just as the French had hoped.

Notes

Introduction 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this book are the author’s. 2 A good idea of the range of visitors may be found in the Archives nationales (France) F/12/11928, dossier 5, Rapports au Ministre 1921–1925, which records, by date, the official visits of specific groups. 3 Art Deco gained almost immediate interest around the world but was most influential in Europe, China, Japan, and the USA. See Bréon, L’Exposition des arts décoratifs 1925, 7. Mary K. Grimes notes that the term “Art Deco” was coined quite recently and is used both to denote the period spanning the 1920’s and 1930s, and as a descriptor of the style of architecture and decorative arts. She cautions that the term has been applied to two very distinct and even opposing styles, although both arose from the same impulse: to address and express modern life. Grimes distinguishes between Art Moderne (functional, anti-ornament designs such as those of Le Corbusier) and Art Deco (eclectic but extensive use of ornamentation). Grimes, 4. 4 The term “exposition” gained general acceptance and widespread usage in world’s fairs studies after Montreal’s Expo ’67; it is employed by scholars as a fairly neutral term that implies large, extensive, organized events. See Findling, “Introduction,” xviii. It should be noted that there are national differences in describing expos. Americans tend to call them world’s fairs; the British, general exhibitions, and the French, expositions universelles. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 2. 5 The focus on commerce, specifically, on reviving the French economy, extended beyond the timeframe of the exposition. Thus, Le Grand négoce,

212  Notes to pages 11–13 “the professional organ of the French luxury trades,” published and widely distributed a special issue “to reveal to a larger public the marvels which have been exhibited. To this end we have recruited artists to indicate to us those objects, which, from the artistic point of view, chiefly have attracted their attention.” George Bloch, introduction to Rambosson, Le Grand négoce, 2. 6 Germany was belatedly invited and chose not to participate. The USA and Canada declined to take part. 7 On the history of world’s fairs, see Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas and Fair World; Findling, Historical Dictionary; and Findling and Pelle, Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs. 8 On the transition from national to world’s fairs (expositions universelles) in France, see Marc Gaillard, Paris. Les Expositions universelles de 1855 à 1937 (Paris: Les Presses Franciliennes, 2003). 9 See Julia Danielczyk, “Die Internationale Ausstellung für Musik- und Theaterwesen in Wien 1892 und ihre imagebildende Funktion,” in Stefan Hulfeld, Birgit Peter, eds., Maske und Kothurn. Jg. 55. H 2 (2009): 11–22. 10 “Dans un cadre merveilleux, au cœur de Paris, entre la ligne harmonieuse et sévère des Invalides et le décor unique et fastueux des Champs-Elysées[,] se déroulera la pacifique bataille engagée par la plupart des nations civilisées pour le triomphe d’un style nouveau dont les caractères demeureront précis et vivants, dans l’histoire de l’Art comme sont restés et resteront à tout jamais fixes l’art gothique et la Renaissance italienne, le Louis XV ou l’Empire” (Claris, L’Exposition Internationale, 1). 11 The first modern Olympics took place in Athens in 1896. Interestingly, a contemporary commentator, Margheriya G. Sarfatti, writing in the catalogue of the Italian contributions to the Paris Exposition, compared the latter to the Olympics: “Au lendemain même de la guerre, la France eut le grand mérite et immense courage de nous convier à ces nouvelles olympiades de labeur et d’art, pour bien prouver que notre civilisation méditerranéenne et latine, si durement éprouvée, n’en restait pas moins vivante et capable d’un splendide renouveau” (Even immediately after the end of the war, France had the great distinction and immense courage to invite us to these new olympiades of toil and art in order to prove that our hardtested Mediterranean and Latin civilization would nonetheless remain lively and capable of a splendid renewal), Sarfatti, L’Italie à l’Exposition internationale, 5. It should also be noted that the Summer Olympic Games took place in Paris in 1924. Art competitions were held as part of the Olympics from 1912 to 1948. These did not include theatre but rather

Notes to pages 13–17 213 architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture on sport-related themes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_competitions_at_the_ 1924_Summer_Olympics. Accessed 23 August 2013. 12 L’Enseignement (training) “est pourtant à la base du tout. Une Exposition n’est elle-même qu’une forme d’enseignement.” Encyclopédie, vol. I, 92. 13 On the connections between national identity, propaganda, and exhibitions see Burton Benedict, “International Exhibitions and National Identity,” Anthropology Today 7.3 (June 1991): 5–9; and Elfie Rembold, “Exhibitions and National Identities,” National Identities 1:3 (1999): 221–5. 14 Paul Greenhalgh notes that “The Paris show of 1900 included conferences on fisheries, libraries, publishing, dentistry, education systems, hypnotism, philately, photography, public health, memismatics [sic], ornithology and medicine” (Ephemeral Vistas, 21). Among the famous ideas promoted during a world’s fair was historian Frederick Jackson’s presentation of his frontier theory. Also on this point see Rydell et al., Fair America, 2. 15 For example, the promotional film for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition that took place in San Diego in 1916 was shown in 3,500 theatres across Canada and the USA. See Rydell, All the World’s a Fair, 231. 16 Rydell draws upon Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s concept of symbolic universe as “a structure of legitimation of that provides meaning for social experience, placing ‘all collective events in a cohesive unity that includes past, present, and future’; it establishes a common frame of reference for the projection of individual actions,” with the result that “the symbolic universe links men with their successors in a meaningful totality, serving to transcend the finitude of individual existence and bestowing meaning upon the individual’s death.” Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), 92–108. Qtd. in Rydell, All the World’s A Fair, 2. 17 “Une surface exceptionnelle de communication artistique et commerciale où le visiteur-spectateur sera aussi un inter-acteur, communément sollicité par les actions, les performances des exposants. Le succès de l’Exposition en effet, repose pour une large part sur l’échange et le partage, l’émotion et le questionnement, l’exotisme et le réalisme … Car l’histoire de l’Exposition multiplie les confrontations spatiales, sollicite le regard et la pluralité des sens, concentre des formes en devenir du spectacle vivant et des arts de la rue.” 18 Among other permanent structures were railway stations, sports stadiums, parks, and housing projects. Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 49.

214  Notes to pages 17–25 19 The Chinese American architect I.M. Pei famously sought inspiration about crowd control in Disneyland when he drew up his plans for renovating and expanding space in the Louvre Museum. 20 The lesson of the huge impact of international fairs and similar events on their visitors has also not been lost on the present leadership of the Russian Federation. The hosting of the Olympics in Sochi in 2014 and the successful bid for another major international event, FIFA (in 2018), by Russia, was certainly spurred by the understanding of the complex and effective narrative that is created by such events. 21 Jeff Wallace suggests that the term “modernism” emerged in the late 1920s, citing the title of Robert Graves and Laura Riding’s A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) as the point of origin. He fails to mention that this was the key term of debate just before, during, and in the wake of the Paris Exposition. Wallace, Beginning Modernism, 1. 22 On narcissism and modernism, see Hutchinson, Modernism and Style, 1–2. 23 There has been some work on the cultural politics of Soviet participation in later fairs, e.g., Masey and Morgan, Cold War Confrontations; Alison Rowley, “The New Soviet Woman at the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” 37–55, in Boisseau and Markwyn, Gendering the Fair; David E. Nye, “European Self-Representations at the New York World’s Fair of 1939,” in Cultural Transmissions and Receptions: American Mass Culture in Europe, ed. R. Kroes, R.W. Rydell, D.F.J. Bosscher (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1993), 47–64; Anthony Swift, “The Soviet World of Tomorrow at the New York World’s Fair, 1939,” The Russian Review 57.3 (July 1998): 364–79; and Nicholas J. Cull, “Overture to an Alliance: British Propaganda at the New York World’s Fair, 1939–1940,” Journal of British Studies 36.3 (July 1997): 325–54. Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914–1925 (Princeton University Press, 1989) concludes his magisterial book with a chapter on the Paris expo, but focuses on architecture, visual art, and sculpture, not on theatre. One area that has raised a great deal of interest and has produced numerous studies is architecture, particularly studies of Konstantin Melnikov’s pavilion at the 1925 show. See chapter 3, “Conquering Space: The Soviets in Paris.” 24 Ihor Junyk, Foreign Modernism: Cosmopolitanism, Identity, and Style in Paris (University of Toronto Press, 2013), examines the avant-garde in the milieu of French nationalism and xenophobia. 25 French government sources acknowledged the importance and the glamour of the shop window display, which was regarded as a major strategy for “staging” exhibits. See Gronberg, Designs on Modernity, 3.

Notes to pages 28–32 215 1  Theatricalizing the City: Space, Modernism, and the Paris Expo 1 Osbert Lancaster’s With an Eye to the Future (1967) appears to be the first book in English to employ the term “Art Deco.” See Hillier, “Art Deco Revisited,” 8. 2 La Société pour le perfectionnement de l’eclairage (SPE) was created in 1925 to perfect and standardize all types of lighting (Bonnefoy 55). Alexander Schouvaloff points out that the single most important invention for theatre was electricity, first used in England by Richard d’Oyly Carte in his new Savoy Theatre (London, 1881); thereafter it was picked up in Paris by the Théâtre des Variétés (1882), in Munich by the Residenz­ theater (1883), and by 1887 by fifty other theatres in Europe. The consequences of the use of electricity affected all aspects of theatre, including the actors and musicians who no longer had to battle with the constant hiss of gas. Schouvaloff 15. 3 A few seconds of the image of the lit-up Eiffel tower may be found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUlOWmTFbVY Paris 1900–1925. 4 Only the skeletal steel structure of the Eiffel Tower was illuminated during the Paris expo of 1900; it was not used as a vehicle for advertising. See Nye, Electrifying America, 43–4. 5 On display and its importance, see Gronberg, Designs on Modernity. 6 Frank Scarlett and Marjorie Townley suggest that the 1925 expo created “almost revolutionary change” in design of everyday objects (100). 7 “l’ennoblissement du cadre et des accessoires de la vie moderne, individuelle ou collective, qu’elle envisage dans tous ses domaines.” Claris, L’Exposition internationale, 2. 8 “Le monde entier est actuellement animé de l’esprit moderne, résultat de l’évolution des idées et des mœurs, des découvertes scientifiques, des matériaux nouveaux et des progrès de la technique.” Magne 8–9. 9 See, e.g., “Genèse,” Catalogue général, n.p. 10 Nous assistons en effet à un bouleversement aussi important que fut celui de la Renaissance.” 11 That this expo is generally accepted as having marked a watershed in art and design is indicated, for example, by the simple title of Yvonne Brunhammer’s book, 1925. Scarlett and Townley observe that, “Since those days, there has been much reappraisal and discussion of the place of the artist in industry. I think that the 1925 Expo was probably the first event that shook the manufacturers and public into an awareness of the need for

216  Notes to pages 32–4 better design and presentation, rooted in sound principles and unbiased by preconceptions” (68). 12 Through the posters of Cassandre (pseud. Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron), the train became an effective and visually immediately recognizable symbol of some of the values of the exposition and of Art Deco in particular, including speed, dynamism, energy, and technological innovation. 13 This was, of course, to be the subject of a deeply sophisticated analysis by Walter Benjamin undertaken a few years later in his influential 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 14 The antagonistic response to machine-made art is evident in various articles published in The New York Times both before and after the Exposition. John Cotton Dana examines some of these issues as they touched America in his “Art in Industry. Products of Machines Now Shown in Museums,” The New York Times (15 April 1926). He points out that the Metropolitan Museum of Art finally purchased a machine-made object in 1922: “This is a far greater revolution – rather it is a far longer step forward for the Metropolitan – than it may seem.” To that point, museums across the USA regarded factory-made works as “not worthy” of display (26). 15 Not able to outdo or even repeat the enormous exposition in 1900, this expo, in its thematically driven ends, was an international but not a “universal” expo: that is, not an “all-inclusive” world’s fair which would display the full spectrum of mankind’s achievements and would emphasize progress. Such a narrower focus, however, may have been one reason why the Paris show did well financially, unlike the British Empire Exhibition. 16 The choice of location was not without controversy, as press coverage indicates. There was a great deal of concern about the cost, the effect on traffic flow, and on the general appearance of the city core. See the file of press clippings about the “Grand Invasion” in “Rapports au Ministre 1921–1925, Exposition des arts décoratifs,” Archives nationales (France), F/12/11928, dossier 5. The 1900 Exposition Universelle, a much larger affair, also took place in Paris, and encompassed the Champ de Mars, Trocadéro, Bois de Vincennes, and the Esplanade des Invalides. 17 Marta Leśniakowska argues that, with this Exposition, Paris shed its reputation as a nineteenth-century city and, instead, took on the new image of the centre of fashion, shopping, and modernity, especially for women. Leśniakowska, “Czego nie widziano w Paryżu? Rok 1925 i ‘łakome oko’, in Joanna Sosnowska, ed., Wystawka paryska 1925. Materiały z sesji naukowej Instytutu Sztuki PAN Warszawa, 16-17 listopada 2005 roku (Warsaw: Instytut

Notes to pages 38–47 217 Sztuki, Polskij Akademii Nauk, 2007), 75–89. On this point, see also Gronberg, Designs, 26. 18 “Cette foule en extase est hypnotisée par un feu d’artifice aquatique: la fontaine lumineuse … Une fusée liquide, étincelante comme un poudroiement de pierreries, jaillit d’une couronne d’où ruissellent des diamants … l’eau brisée, pulvérisée, forme un nuage rougeoyant; des roues tournoient, soleils liquides, la girande change à chaque seconde de forme et de couleur.” 19 “Les Américains, rêveurs, songent à ce qu’on pourrait faire avec les chutes du Niagara.” Rigaud thus confirms John A. Jakle’s contention that artificial illumination conferred a kind of “social superiority,” a sense of technological accomplishment, and was therefore, he argues, “harnessed for social engineering” (Jakle 124). 20 Already in the mid-nineteenth century at the Paris opera, an electrical expert, L.J. Duboscq, was hired to create special effects. Despite its cost, electricity was brought into the theatres with considerable eagerness by theatrical managers who could see the immediate results of its implementation by their box office returns. Nye, Electrifying America, 30. 21 See “Préface, début du XXe siècle. Evolution des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes,” Encyclopédie, vol. I, 78. 22 Elena Zheltova notes that in cities, all Soviet institutions were illuminated first; in villages, only the houses of the poor were illuminated. Zheltova 155. 23 This is the opening phrase of the announcement of the first Der Blaue Reiter Exhibition (1911); it was subsequently taken up as the title of an exhibition organized by Tracy Bashkoff and Megan M. Fontanella for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “The Great Upheaval: Modern Art 1910–1918” (2011). 24 On Soviet festivals, see Malte, Soviet Mass Festivals, and Cooke, Russian Avant-garde. 25 For a detailed description and astute analysis of this, the most remarkable of the mass spectacles, see James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917– 1920 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P, 1993), 201–7; and František Deák, “Russian Mass Spectacles,” The Drama Review: TDR 19.2 (June 1975): 7–22. 26 After 1919, such modernist and radical displays began to disappear, falling victim to bureaucratic control as a result of heated attacks by conservatives, including Lenin. On Lenin’s preference for realism and classical works, see Anatolii Lunacharskii, “Lenin i iskusstvo (vospominaniia),” Khudozhnik i zritel’ 2 (February–March 1924): 3–10.

218  Notes to pages 52–6 27 “Le théâtre a incarné la Révolution, la Révolution a élevé le théâtre. Le théâtre a offert à la Révolution ses régisseurs, ses artistes, son art, – le premier de l’Europe, – et la Révolution lui a donné un nouveau spectateur, un souffle pathétique et essentiellement nouveau, un nouveau sens social.” 28 These included The Pageant of St George Hempstead, the St Louis Pageant of 1914, the Yale Pageant of 1916, the New Jersey Pageant of 1916, and the New York community masque, Caliban, 1916. 29 “Il n’y a eu jamais de premières aussi orageuses que pendant ces dernières années, de discussions aussi passionnées, avec des foules qui bondaient les auditoires, avec des orateurs enroués, des adversaires hululants, des épithètes frénétiques, des académiciens et des novateurs se servant d’argument de pugilats.” 30 “Le théâtre russe est empreint d’un beau sentiment de liberté.” 31 As Dennis Kennedy has pointed out, “The machine which crushed and humbled Expressionist man was to be the apotheosis of Soviet man and woman”; it “assumed the status of a great social force, the model not only of the new person but of the new order itself” (Looking at Shakespeare 93). It should be noted that this applied to the apotheosis of Russian Soviet society, a concept most closely associated with the work of Vsevolod Meyerhold, but was not held elsewhere in the USSR with the same admiration (e.g., Ukraine). 2  April in Paris 1925: Staging the New Spirit 1 See the British Pathé newsreel titled “The French ‘Wembley’ 1925,” showing the inauguration of the Exposition. La Vidéoteque de Paris (now, Forum des images) has a number of short films of the expo made by operators working for Gaumont. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=K_gMZq5BReo. 2 Inaugurations de l’Exposition de 1925. L’Exposition des arts décoratifs. Ministère du Commerce. Archives nationales (France), F/12/11931, dossier 2. Inaugurations, fêtes, visites 1925. 3 “Pour la première fois se révèle au public non spécialisé le caractère cohérent des études poursuivies depuis 1890; mieux, l’existence même de ces études.” 4 “C’est donc l’expression totale d’une sensibilité conditionnée par des excitants psychologiques nouveaux qu’aspire à fixer la génération de 1919– 1925. Ces excitants, les artistes eux-mêmes les ont énumérés: c’est la science elle-même avec son relativisme et sa féerie, ce sont le cinéma, l’électricité, la vitesse.”

Notes to pages 56–9 219 5 The various catalogues produced by the participating nations insist upon this. So, for example, Margheriya G. Sarfatti notes that speed and the mechanization of life require a new style. Sarfatti, “Art moderne et tradition en Italie,” 7. 6 Le Bulletin de l’art ancien et moderne. Supplément de la Revue de l’art complains that not a day passed without a new inauguration. See “Échos et nouvelles,” 181. Subsequent issues of this journal continued to provide lists of pavilion and exhibit openings well into July. For a look at the pavilions, as well as some of their interiors, see the well-illustrated volume of La Renaissance de l’art français et des industries de luxe (May 1925). 7 For a satirical view of the grounds still under preparation and the public’s inability to get close to many of the exhibits, see André Rigaud’s amusing “A Travers l’Exposition (propos d’un flâneur). Un dimanche sur l’Esplanade,” Les Annales politiques et littéraires 2190 (14 June 1925), 629. 8 See Vita Susak, Ukrainian Artists in Paris, 1900–1939 (Kyiv: Rodovid Press, 2010), on the “School of Paris,” which was more a “milieu” than a school, with artists of various nationalities (e.g., Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall) flocking to the city and raising the question for their host country whether they “belonged” to French art (13). 9 On Americans in Paris see Sophie Lévy, ed., A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American Artists in Paris, 1918–1939 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); Barnaby Haran’s useful review essay of this catalogue, “Americanism in Paris,” Oxford Art Journal 29.1 (2006): 149–54; and Nancy L. Green, The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 10 Helen Appleton Read considered the American decision not to participate “a national blunder” and attributes it to procrastination: “[W]e procrastinated, did not get together and appoint committees, get appropriations from Congress in order to build a pavilion and collect the material to go in it” (“Part II” 165). Wendy Kaplan suggests that the USA had refused to participate in the 1925 Exhibition because the government felt that they had nothing to contribute (335). Similarly, Victor Arwas claims that “The United States, apparently terrified by the Exhibition’s programme [modernism], declined, Herbert Hoover explaining that this was because there was no modern art in the United States” (14). 11 All the US observers seem to have been in agreement that the Americans were “imitators” or “copyists” accepting what was European or classical as necessarily good. See The New York Times article “Expects New Trend,” one of countless examples of this complaint.

220  Notes to pages 59–64 12 This is a point insisted upon in vol. I of the Encyclopédie; see especially “L’Esprit moderne dans les arts décoratifs et industriels,” 9–12. 13 Some of the ideas in this paragraph repeat those put forth by the author in her Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 22. 14 Jed Rasula provides an exhaustive study of the various permutations of meaning before and after the war of the “new spirit.” See his “Make It New,” Modernism/Modernity 17.4 (November 2010): 713–33. 15 See Marius Hentea, “Federating the Modern Spirit: The 1922 Congress of Paris,” PMLA 130.1 (2015): 37–53. 16 Marius Hentea has examined the complex and important polemics concerning the meaning and the concept of “modernism” that was at the heart of the Congress and its debates. These issues plague scholars to this day. Nonetheless, despite the varied and often contradictory definitions of the term “modernism, its continued use (as Hentea observes) demonstrates the concept’s “resilience and strength: scholars cannot do without it, even when its utility is called into question” (48–9). 17 “Notre Tribune” describes the inauguration as “bizarre,” since it was carried out on the great staircase of the Grand Palais, where the invited guests were grouped according to their importance on the various landings, as well as on the parterre. Upon arrival, they ascended this “mountain,” thus participating in the theatricalization of the space that literally placed them in their clearly marked position in the hierarchy of power and authority (129). 18 See Caute for a richly detailed examination of the Communist Party and left-wing intellectuals in France. 19 The USSR’s participation in the expo depended, of course, upon France’s recognition of its government. See the exchange between the Minister of Commerce and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Archives nationales (France), F/12/11932, dossier 6. Participation étrangère (e.g., letters of 30 August and 24 September 1924). 20 Wembley was, in fact, a huge expo. Fifty-six countries took part, all colonies of Britain. Like the French expo, Wembley was aimed at stimulating trade; it also hoped to strengthen the bonds between the Mother Country and the colonies. It had a large deficit in 1924 and, for this reason, was reprised the following year in the hope of recouping its financial losses. See “Wembley Exhibition Has Big Overdraft,” The Globe (Toronto), 5 March 1925. The rivalry between the two wartime allies was picked up by the Canadian press. See, e.g., the short note published on 20 June 1925 in The Globe that observed, gloatingly, “Apparently the Canadian National

Notes to page 64 221 [Exhibition] is the only exhibition that can play return engagements and continue to draw growing crowds.” “Notes and Comments,” The Globe (Toronto), 4, col. 4. The French disparagement of the British exhibition was upheld by most British citizens, including the Department of Overseas Trade, which regretted its conservatism. In their memoirs, Frank Scarlett and Marjorie Townley could remember little that was memorable about Wembley: “much of the design was, if not banal, at least rooted in a tired tradition that was a long way from William Morris” (18). Similar views about the “hyper-conservative” tastes of the British, and the absence of “flair and imagination,” are discussed in Woodham 233–5. “Tis,” however, admired his country’s insularity; see Apollo 2.8 (1925): 60. 21 For a detailed study of the British Exhibition, see Donald R. Knight and Alan D. Sabey, The Lion Roars; and Woodham 229–40. Woodham remarks on the “increasing insularism” of Britain and its general antipathy to the sponsorship of expos that showcased innovative design, while insisting on the importance of the Empire and its mutual relationship with the colonies (234). See also the press coverage at the time, including in Britain’s dominions; e.g., “Improving Wembley” (4), which focusses on the major task of educating all the peoples of the empire in understanding “the mutual economic advantages to themselves” of sharing their natural resources. For the British disparagement of the French, one needs look no further than the title of the British Pathé newsreel, “The French ‘Wembley’ 1925.” 22 The Globe (Toronto) reported that “Old Allies in War Rivals in Exhibits” (25 August 1925), 10. The political tensions between the two also continued (as indicated, e.g., by the troubled talks relating to the Geneva protocol). See “Chamberlain Urges German’s Inclusion in Pact on Security,” The Globe (Toronto), 9 March 1925, p. 1, col. 2. 23 In the same year, 1925, Philadelphia celebrated its Sesquicentennial, also with an exposition, which included a giant replica of the Liberty Bell covered with 26,000 electric bulbs. See Jakle 161–2. 24 For the protracted discussions beginning in the early 1910s, see the Exposition folder in the Archives of the Bibliothèque du Musée des Arts Décoratifs (D2) 96, which reveals the efforts of especially the Union centrale des arts décoratifs and the Fédération des sociétés françaises d’art pour le développement de l’art appliqué in promoting the expo before and even during the War (e.g., Rapport sur une Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs modernes. Paris 1915). See Carnot for a spirited defence of the idea of the expo and of the necessity for France to overcome “le culte de passé” (the cult of the past) (686).

222  Notes to pages 64–7 25 As Paul Léon points out, some asked why a cake was offered when bread was needed (i.e., the expo was superfluous in times of need): “N’est-ce pas offrir un gâteau à qui demande du pain?” (413). 26 On this point, see the untitled essay by Hans Schuerff, Ministre du Commerce, in L’Autriche à L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, Paris 1925. Guide, édite par La Commission Exécutive (Vienna, 1925), 13–16. 27 Fernand David, the Commissionaire Général of the expo, noted that the project has “une importance symbolique en montrant au monde que la France victorieuse renoue ses traditions artistiques et veut affirmer l’excellence de ses arts pacifiques” (a symbolic importance in showing the world that victorious France is renewing its artistic traditions and wishes to affirm the excellence of its pacific arts) (3). 28 Yvanhoë Rambosson, “Arts Décoratifs”: “L’Exposition de 1925 sera une nouvelle ‘bataille de la Marne,’ aux conséquences aussi considérables dans l’ordre des transactions que l’autre en eut sur le terrain militaire … Tous les citoyens de ce pays doivent se trouver par la force des choses transformés en soldats de l’art français moderne … c’est une conscription que le devoir patriotique nous impose.” Nor was this the first postwar attempt to gain global attention and to restore France’s prestige. In 1924, Paris had hosted forty-four nations and 625,000 spectators at its summer Olympic Games, an event immortalized much later by the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. The 1925 Exposition was to far exceed the number of visitors at that previous event, yet the road to its debut on the world stage was fraught with difficulty. 29 The regulations with its various articles are found in Exposition inter­ nationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Plan de projet (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1924). Article 4 reads: “Sont admises à l’Exposition les œuvres d’une inspiration nouvelle et d’une originalité réelle exécutées et présentées par les artistes, artisans, industriels, créateurs de modèles et éditeurs, et rentrant dans les arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. En sont rigoureusement exclues les copies, imitations et contre-façons de styles anciens” (14). 30 There were earlier, specialized exhibitions of decorative and applied arts in France. Each had a distinct theme; e.g., metalworks in 1880, the arts of wood, paper, and fabric in 1882, etc. See Brunhammer 21. 31 On everyday objects, see Theodore Menten, The Art Deco Style in Household Objects, Architecture, Sculpture, Graphics, Jewelry (New York: Dover, 1972). 32 See also the impassioned plea of Miguel Zamacoïs, for his countrymen to stop denigrating the exposition which was about to be opened, in “Petite

Notes to pages 69–70 223 plaidoirie en faveur de l’Exposition,” Les Annales politiques et littérairies 2182 (19 April 1925): 416. 33 It should be noted that while there had been other, earlier expos of decorative arts (the first in Turin in 1902), their focus was mainly on architecture. In contrast, the Paris exhibition displayed a vast spectrum of decorative and applied arts. On the Turin expo, see Alexander Koch, L’Exposition in­ ternationale des arts décoratifs moderne à Turin, 1902 (Darmstadt: Imprimerie de la Cour, 1902) and Rossana Bossaglia, Ezio Godoli, Marco Rosci, Torino 1902 Le Arti Decorative Internationali del Nuovo Secolo (Fabbri Editori, 1995) [catalogue]; for a more recent view of Italian fairs, see Della Coletta. 34 In the USA, for example, a New York pastor identified “modernism” as the term describing the ills of a world that, he believed, was fast moving toward judgment day. High divorce rates, theft, forgeries, the breakdown of parental authority, and the transformation of churches into “mere literary societies, social clubs and forums for the promulgation of modernistic and infidel views,” suggested such a complete breakdown of society. “Modernism Blamed for Evils of Today. N.Y. Pastor Warns That World Is Moving Toward Day of Inevitable Judgment.” The Globe (Toronto), 9 March 1925, p. 2. In the USSR, Lenin, Olga Kameneva, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and other conservative Bolsheviks were alarmed by the experiments of the avant-garde, with the result that, by 1923, the slogan had become “Back to Ostrovsky!” – that is, back to tradition and classicism. 35 Similar views were voiced by many others, including Guillaume Janneau in his L’Art decoratif Moderne [sic]: “Mais il n’en subsistera nul témoin matériel: ni quelque tour Eiffel, chef-d’œuvre scientifique, ni même un Palais des Beaux-Arts, qui, tout affligeant, marque une date” (32). Gabriel Mourey suggested that Auguste Perret’s creation, The Theatre of the exposition, was the only modern building that should have remained as a permanent structure (306). Le Corbusier was one of the most vocal critics of the architecture of the expo; he opposed his pavilion (a “machine for living,” as he called it) to the “plaster palaces” of the show (Gronberg, Designs on Modernity 17). The virulent attacks on his structure have been described and analysed in various books and articles. 36 In fact, the expo continued into November. 37 Lefebvre continues: “indeed it has failed in that it has not changed life itself, but has merely changed ideological superstructures, institutions, or political apparatuses. A social transformation, to be truly revolutionary in character, must manifest a creative capacity on daily life, on language and on space – though its impact need not occur at the same rate or with equal force, in each of these areas” (54).

224  Notes to pages 70–2 38 More specifically, it was argued that the Germans didn’t want to come: “C’est à une fête de la Fraternité et de la Paix dans le travail commun que la France a convié l’Univers. Il n’est pas un peuple dont la place n’ait été réservée ici. S’il est des absents, c’est qu’ils n’ont pas voulu venir et les organisateurs regrettent leur abstention … Chacun pouvait trouver sa place dans ce Concours mondial qui[,] tout en montrant la volonté pacifique de notre pays, fournit aux citoyens de tous les Etats une occasion de se mieux connaître, de ce mieux comprendre et d’établir, avec des tractations commerciales et des admirations artistiques, une base solide à des accords durables.” Anon., “Historique de l’Exposition,” Arts décoratifs 1925. Guide de l’Exposition, 233. 39 Kaplan, “‘The Filter of American Taste’.” On the reasons for America’s decision not to participate, see “Changing Styles in Architecture”: “America could not enter the French Exposition because she failed to create a single original design.” John Findling, however, attributes the American absence to isolationism and “non-entanglement with the Old World” (“Introduction,” Historical Dictionary, xviii). Helen Read, however, suggests that the Ameri­ cans were slow to respond and unenthusiastic, and appear not to have immediately recognized its potential significance (“Part II” 165). Canada’s absence was likely due to its participation in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. It also hosted its own annual show, the Canadian National Exhibition, in Toronto. Participation in Wembley was particularly costly for Canadians, and it is probable that financial considerations, more than aesthetic ones, were the deciding factor in their decision not to take part in the Paris show. This was also likely true of the Australians. 40 The list of countries directly and indirectly participating in the expo is provided by Emile Humblot, Président du Groupe de l’Art au Sénat et de l’Union Provinciale des Arts Décorateurs and Délégué Général à la Propagande de l’Exposition, in the Guide Album de l’Exposition, 5. The issue of space was raised by H. Llewellyn Smith in his section of the British Reports. He was concerned that the French exhibits took up over twenty times more space than the British ones, and that British manufacturers had to pay considerable amounts in order to exhibit, thus limiting the participation of many (“Introductory Survey” 11). 41 A similar view is held by Barnaby Haran: “It might be productive to consider New York and Paris as not just cities at the beginning and end of a transatlantic voyage but points on a cultural map that stretched potentially from Mexico to Moscow”; not necessarily a literal voyage, but rather

Notes to pages 72–8 225 “a network of exchanges” (152). Haran, “Americanism in Paris.” Oxford Art Journal (29 January 2006): 149–52. 42 Recognizing their significance, the French government made the publication of these volumes a high priority: “Il n’est pas possible d’accélérer davantage cette importante publication[,] non seulement parce qu’il faut réunir en France et à l’Etranger, une documentation complète qui ne laisse dans l’ombre rien de véritablement intéressant, mais aussi afin de permettre son absorption progressive par la public.” Conseil d’Administration, Séance du 6 décembre 1926, Archives nationales (France), Exposition des arts décoratifs, F/12/11931, 8. 43 See Rapports au Ministre 1921–1925. Archives nationales (France), F/12/11928 dossier 5. Exposé du Secrétaire Général, 27 mars 1925, 9. Not everyone was enamoured of the new look of the interior of the Grand Palais. Georges Le Fèvre, for example, referred to the “nouveau décor” as a “camouflage” that led nowhere and was not entirely successful (“Architecture” 10). 44 “C’est l’éclairage qui demeure l’instrument le plus moderne de l’art scénique. La lumière suffit à créer le monde imaginaire de l’action. Contrastant avec la zone obscure ou la salle reste plongée, elle établit la démarcation entre ce monde fictif & le monde réel. Elle fait ressortir les mouvements de l’acteur & des groupes. En jouant sur les éléments plastiques du décor, elle suscite des ombres portées qui produisent avec elle d’harmonieuse oppositions. Enfin, par les variations de son intensité & par ses colorations diverses, elle suggère le milieu & l’atmosphère du drame, au besoin elle fait surgir d’étonnantes féeries.” 45 Astruc had been connected with some of the most memorable events in Parisian theatrical history, including perhaps, most notably, his bookings of the Ballets Russes and of Mata Hari. See his biography at http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Astruc. 46 See Legrand-Chabrier [André Legrand], “Les fêtes,” for an enthusiastic description of these events. For a slightly more sober response, see the detailed descriptions in vol. X of the Encyclopédie, 34–5. Other pageants included La Fête de Provinces Françaises in which boys and girls, dressed in local costumes, danced and sang; France was represented in an immaculate robe bearing a flaming light (6 July 1925). On 27 October 1925, the Italians prepared a show that portrayed the splendour of Venice, with its doges and seigneurs, in a piece entitled Venise … Un roi passé. The Exposition concluded with a flag-carrying “Parade of Nations,” which then arranged themselves around the “tribune” where the expo’s prizes

226  Notes to pages 82–3 were awarded. Encyclopédie, vol. XI, 60. A full list of the fêtes is found in Inaugurations, fêtes, visites 1925. Archives nationales (France), F/12/11932, dossier 2. 47 As Tag Gronberg has observed, the Fête “presented the decorative and the street – decoration and the city – as somehow inextricably linked … As ‘shop-window’ the 1925 Exhibition … constituted the stage-set not only for the objects exhibited but also for the city of Paris itself” (Gronberg, Designs on Modernity 10, 13). Gronberg’s excellent Designs on Modernity provides a nuanced, detailed examination of the conjunction of consumer culture, fashion, and the city. Alain Lesieutre takes a slightly different tack, while acknowledging the “scarcely veiled hostility between the spirit of Deco and that of Modernism. Deco sustained the values of the past, while Modernism was committed to the future. What the Art Deco designers took over were certain motifs – Cubist ones chiefly – which they used for their own purposes. But these thefts should not deceive us into thinking there was an identity of aim” (10). 48 Gabriel Mourey went further in attacking “l’incompétence artistique de la plupart des personnalités” that formed the Commission Général (293). 49 To the left was the foreign section, with exhibits from Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Japan, Poland, The Netherlands, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Greece. 3  Conquering Space: The Soviets in Paris 1 In a decision by Narkompros, the organization of the Soviet pavilion was delegated to the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (Gosudarstvenna Akademiia Khudozhestvennykh Nauk), with ultimate oversight by Anatoly Lunacharsky. The committee examining the proposals for the pavilion included N.D. Bartram, Ia. A. Tugendhold, David Shterenberg, B.V. Shaposhnikov, and David Arkin. Vladimir Mayakovsky was tasked with preparing a poster and the general design of the catalogue. Lunacharsky and Mayakovsky together appear to have been responsible for the final choice of Melnikov’s project for the Soviet pavilion, a decision made on 18 December 1924. See V.E. Khazanova 190. The Exposition’s Committee was chaired by Petr Kogan; the artistic director was David Shterenberg, assisted by Alexander Rodchenko; the secretaries were B. Shaposhnikov and B. Ternovets. Members of the Committee included Arkine (Arkin), N. Bartram, I. Ionov, F. Lecht (Lekht), V. Nicolsky (Nikolskii), J. Tugendhold (Ia. Tugendhol’d), J. Jorgenson (Ia. Iorgenson), A. Zbar-Bronzilli, and A. Volter. See Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels

Notes to pages 83–5 227











modernes. Section de l’ U.R.S.S. Académie des sciences de l’art. Catalogue des œuvres d’art décoratif et d’industrie artistique exposées dans le pavillon de l’U.R.S.S. au Grand Palais et dans les Galeries de l’Esplanade des Invalides (Paris, 1925), 22–3. 2 A[natoly] Lunatcharsky [sic], “Développement d’art dans L’URSS,” 21. The full quotation is as follows: “Mais cependant nous espérons que cette exposition va confirmer notre thèse, à savoir que le nouveau et l’ancien, non sans lutte intérieure par moments, mais avec une sûreté et une puissance de plus en plus grandissantes, ont commencé à construire une nouvelle civilisation, – civilisation qui n’a eu aucun précédent et qui contient un monde si vaste d’éléments de nations et de classes, que jamais aucune autre civilisation connue de l’histoire n’en a contenu autant.” 3 See, e.g., Gabriel Mourey’s attack on the “artistic incompetence” of the organizers. “L’Esprit de l’Exposition,” L’Amour de l’art 2 (February 1925): 293. 4 This author concurs with the views of Wilfred Dolfsma, who regards modernism and postmodernism not as distinct historical periods, but rather as “characterizations of society, or better still as characterizations of worldviews (ideologies)” (353). Pierre Bourdieu’s comments are pertinent here: “Specifically aesthetic conflicts about the legitimate vision of the world – in the last resort, about what deserves to be represented and the right way to represent it – are political conflicts (appearing in their most euphemized form) for the power to impose the dominant definition of reality, and social reality in particular.” The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. and intro. by Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 101–2. On the relation between art and society, see also Pierre Auffray, “Architectures Soviétiques,” Cahiers d’art 6 (June 1926), 103–8. 5 Lesieutre 28. Yet another example of the prevailing French traditionalism and discomfort with modernism may be found in the choice of images and texts for the twelve-volume Encyclopédie. The first image in the first volume, for example, presents A.G. Perret’s Theatre of the Champs-Elysées. Though elegant, it was neither a modernist structure nor the one created for the expo. Romy Golan expresses similar views concerning the French preference for traditionalism, noting that prime spots at the expo were given to pavilions representing French regionalism while French modernist design and architects “played second fiddle” (58). 6 Sheila Fitzpatrick’s detailed analysis of this “cultural front,” in her superb study The Cultural Front, makes further discussion here unnecessary. 7 “une organisation ayant pour but de répondre à toutes les questions venant des pays étrangers et à faciliter le rapprochement intellectuel et scientifique

228  Notes to pages 85–6 de l’U.R.S.S. avec le monde entier.” Newspapers and magazines were also supported by Moscow; e.g., La Revolution prolétarienne, revue mensuelle syn­ dicaliste communiste founded in 1925. 8 Bulletin No. 10 dealt with literature, music, drama, and fine arts. The American Magazine of Art assessed this issue as “a significant document” of forty-one typewritten legal-size pages and quoted from it at length. It noted the French interest in Soviet arts and the fact that “The space allotted to the U.S.S.R. pavilion is considerably in excess of that allotted to other countries.” Only the Russian theatres of the USSR were discussed. See The American Magazine of Art 16 (January 1925 – December 1925): 493–6. The concerted effort to represent Bolshevik Russia in a positive light has been examined by David Caute, who notes, “In the effort to reach a broader and less exclusively intellectual public, communist intellectuals of varying calibre were employed on some seventy local papers and on journals meeting particular urban, rural or trade union interests” (47–8). 9 Of course, it should be emphasized that this was a Soviet claim made for public consumption abroad. In fact, travel was strictly controlled, even to the Paris fair. Les Kurbas and his theatrical collective, the Berezil Artistic Association (i.e., the Berezil Theatre), were unable to obtain visas despite the fact that their productions were on display in Paris. Kurbas opined that all the Russians were permitted to go, but not the Ukrainians. See Kurbas, “Shliakhy i zavdannia Berezolia,” 629. 10 As Kameneff (Kameneva) notes, some French journals wrote positively – and, she claimed, “neutrally” – about the USSR. These included L’Humanité, the organ of the Franco-Russian society, Amitié nouvelle, as well as L’Amour de l’art, which published a special issue dedicated to the URSS (12). NonFrench publications that were dedicated to the USSR were the Germanlanguage Czech newspaper Prager Presse, the Viennese Der Abend, and the Manchester Guardian; in Berlin, “dozens” of journals were friends of “Das neue Russland” (14). The Party could also rely on a number of publishing houses and presses, including Editions Clarté, Editions Rieder, Les Écrivains Réunis, and Librairie de l’Humanité (Caute 47). 11 “la civilisation en Russie était loin de périr sous le gouvernement communiste, qu’au contraire le travail dans le domaine des sciences et des arts n’a pas cessé de continuer.” 12 The USSR had also participated in the Venice Biennale in 1924 – shortly after having re-established diplomatic relations with Italy – and at the Mostra del Libro, the exhibition of books, in Florence in 1923. 13 “la Révolution socialiste, loin d’avoir tué des Muses, au contraire leur a donné une vie nouvelle.”

Notes to pages 86–90 229 14 Lev Kamenev, along with Grigory Zinoviev and Josef Stalin, then ruled the USSR. 15 “mais ce n’est que l’Exposition de Paris qui lui permettra pour la première fois de présenter à l’univers entier un tableau plus ou moins fidèle et complet des Républiques Fédérées.” 16 What is worth emphasizing, however, is that both sides (Bolsheviks and intelligentsia) shared the idea of culture as “something that (like revolution) an enlightened minority brought to the masses in order to uplift them.” Fitzpatrick 4. 17 Dolfsma’s exact phrase is: “too much novelty will result in a consumption good which sends a message that cannot be understood, while too much commonality means not signaling the proper, modernist values” (361). 18 The strong mutual ties between Russia and France are examined by JeanMichel Palmier. The Germans, however, were considered a different matter. Rambosson explained that he awaited a government ruling in the German case. See “Procès verbal” 5. 19 Writing in the 1950s, K.A. Pavlov surveyed Soviet participation in expos around the world since the inception of the USSR. Although his detailed chart includes a brief reference to the Paris exposition of 1925, the body of his essay fails to mention this important show, doubtless because, by this time, the Soviet participants – including architect Konstantin Melnikov and the theatre artists – had fallen out of favour, been silenced, or liquidated. 20 “Avant la Révolution on ne connaissait en France que la façade somptueuse de la Russie monarchique. Les capitalistes français savaient sans doute que le sol de l’énorme Empire renfermait des richesses incalculables et qu’il était très avantageux d’y placer leurs capitaux … le vrai visage de la Russie ouvrière d’autrefois n’était connu de personne.” 21 The Bolshevik Party took on a number of different names throughout the century. From 1918 to 1925, it was called the All-Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks); from 1925 to 1952, the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks); and from 1952 to 1991, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik (accessed 27 February 2012). Throughout the 1920s, the terms “Bolshevik” and “Communist” were in use. By the 1930s, “Communist” prevailed. 22 Arts décoratifs 1925. Guide de l’Exposition, 266–7. Thus, the general guide lists “Union des Républiques Russes: République du Caucase, de l’Asie Centrale, de la Russie Blanche, de la Crimée, de l’Ukraine et du Pays tartare.” In other places and guides, the list varies, sometimes taking in more, sometimes fewer, regions and national minorities. Ukraine occasionally

230  Notes to pages 90–3 appears separately from the “Russian” republics. Boris Ternovets lists Siberia, Ukraine, South-East and North-East Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and “other nationalities.” B[oris] T[ernovets], “Khudozhestevnnyie,” 129. 23 The same point is made by Boris Ternovets, who asserted that the politics of an artificial russification had been abolished and that, for the first time, there emerged “a clear blossoming of the national spirit, the integral expression of the soul of the peoples of our Union.” “En guise d’introduction” 16. 24 On the importance of Kiev (Kyiv) to the modernist movement and the avant-garde, see the various essays in Irena R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz, eds., Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). 25 Vetrov signed his essay with only his last name. According to the Library of Congress Name Authority File, he went by different versions of his name: Ivan Sergeevich Knizhnik, Knizhnik-Vetrov, Vetrov, Izrail’ Samoilovich Knizhnik, and Andrei Kratov. His original name may have been Israil Solomonovich Blank. He seems to have adopted the pen name “Vetrov” in 1897. 26 Statues and monuments of the tsarist period had already been destroyed and churches would soon follow. In the mid-1920s, however, Lunacharsky’s views were also upheld by other Bolsheviks, as attested by the various contributions to the first issue of Nauka i iskusstvo (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), including that of Natalia Trotskaia (Trotsky), “Muzeinoe stroitel’stvo i revolutsiia,” 29–53. It should be emphasized that many of the early Bolshevik leaders came from the intelligentsia and shared the cultural views of other intellectuals, both Russian and non-Russian. An excellent introduction to many of the personalities and their views of art, culture, and education may be found in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. October 1917–1921 (Cambridge University Press, 1970). 27 “Le gouvernement des Soviets comprend fort bien que les trésors de l’art passé (et d’autant plus ceux de la science) contiennent une quantité d’éléments précieux, utiles et absolument indispensables pour le développement de la civilisation nouvelle.” The careful attention paid to the “old civilization” may best be viewed in the fascinating first issue of Nauka i iskusstvo (1926), which details all of the branches of cultural and scientific endeavours in the USSR, the committees that were created to oversee them, the conferences, papers, publications, and the moneys dispensed to create new monuments and to protect existing ones.

Notes to pages 93–7 231 28 “l’art et la science répondent entièrement aux nouvelles exigences de la vie, qu’ils observant cette vie, – les yeux grands ouverts, – qu’ils la rendent avec passion et vérité dans tous ses détails.” 29 The path leading to the embrace of Shakespeare is explored in the author’s Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 30 The general editor of the catalogue of the Soviet pavilion was Petr Semenovich Kogan. A brief biography appears in the English version of the third edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 12 (Moscow: Sovietskaia Entsiklopediia Publishing House, 1973; New York: Macmillan, 1976), 563. Kogan (1872–1932) was a literary historian and critic, a professor at the First and Second Moscow Universities, and president of the State Academy of Arts Studies (1921). In the 1973 edition of the Encyclopedia, he is faulted for his “simplified and distorted sociological views.” 31 “Il faut que tombent les barrières qui séparaient l’art du métier, il faut en effet que la vie tout entière devienne un art, que l’homme constructeur et l’homme artiste se confondent inséparablement.” 32 “Pour tous ceux qui continuent à croire que la Russie ne présente plus qu’un désert hanté de fauves, ces œuvres d’art seront la démonstration du contraire; elles prouveront qu’une nouvelle génération a fait son apparition en Russie, qu’une nouvelle jeunesse s’y est formée, que de nouveaux groupes sociaux s’y composent animés de l’unique idée pathétique du communisme.” 33 “[B]eaucoup de choses à dire à l’humanité et que tout ce qu’il y a dans l’humanité de plus vibrant ne tardera pas à connaitre et à saisir à travers l’art le vrai sens de notre lutte; c’est avec cette conviction que nous entrons résolûment dans la lice du nouveau concours artistique des nations.” “Préface,” L’Art décoratif et industriel de l’U.R.S.S., 7. 34 “C’est en effet notre Révolution qui a accentué cette idée que l’art doit avant toute chose incarner la vie réelle, qu’il doit construire la réalité et que la vrai beauté consiste dans l’adaptation de l’objet à sa destination. C’est aussi le principe de l’Exposition de Paris de 1925” (“Préface,” L’Art décoratif, 5). 35 “C’est alors qu’a retenti l’appel d’ennoblir par l’art, de perfectionner par les moyens esthétiques la fabrication des objets les plus ordinaires et utilitaires, de démontrer et d’organiser ce qu’ils ont de beau, de créer un nouveau genre de beauté – la beauté de la correspondance parfaite de l’objet avec sa destination, d’exclure toute banalité et de créer la nouvelle beauté en la purifiant pour ainsi dire dans le feu de l’art vrai.”

232  Notes to pages 97–9 36 “Ces efforts forment un nouveau type d’artiste, auquel les méthodes de l’industrie mécanique ne semblent pas étrangères, ni hostiles, pour lequel la langue des formules techniques n’est plus un idiome incompréhensible.” 37 “Notre célèbre Manufacture de porcelaine d’Etat qui servait avant la Révolution les goûts faux d’une société aristocratique dégénérée est devenue actuellement un centre florissant des meilleurs artistes de la nation.” 38 “Faut-il dire que l’une des sections les plus intéressantes de l’Exposition sera sans doute celle de nos théâtres ou des maquettes attestant l’audace et la richesse d’invention de nos décorateurs et de nos régisseurs; elle sera un sujet d’étude et d’admiration pour tous ceux qui ne sont pas embourbés définitivement dans la fange du théâtre bourgeois, pour tous ceux qui s’entendent à saisir le souffle d’un art nouveau.” 39 Tugendhold’s contribution to the catalogue offers a good example. He notes that Soviet Russia does not need a Polynesia, Africa, or Mexico, since it itself holds the “richest bouquet of flowers” in the world; it occupies a seventh of the world’s surface and counts 134 million inhabitants of great and small nationalities who share a common “oriental [Eastern] tradition.” Tugendhold’s comments about Western imperialism do not make him any more attentive to Russian imperialism or less inclined towards paternalism. He generally refers to non-Russian Soviet groups by referencing their crafts rather than associating them with “high” culture, e.g., Ukraine, with its beautiful kilims and fantastic ceramics, Azerbaijan with its silks and metalworks, Central Asia with its embroideries, Northern Russia with its delicate sculptures in wood and bone, and so on (“L’Élément” 29). 40 “Dans ce sens l’U.R.S.S. n’a rien de commun avec l’union mécanique des parties composant l’Empire Britannique, ou avec cette permanente lutte intestine de nationalités qui, il n’y a pas longtemps encore, caractérisait l’Autriche-Hongrie. ” 41 “la création d’une civilisation générale de l’humanité entière, est notre idéal, le but de la partie révolutionnaire de l’humanité qui aspire à mettre une fin aux différends et aux préjugés nationaux toujours chargés de l’étincelle de guerre.” 42 The anonymously penned “L’URSS à l’Exposition” in Le Bulletin de la vie artistique 20 (15 October 1925), 450, notes the “most amusing” contrast between the exterior of the USSR pavilion and its interior where, the author claims, “the old Russian soul ” is revealed; the Revolution only succeeded in modifying, not changing, appearances. 43 VUKhTEMAS = Vysshiie Khudozhestvenno-Tekhnicheskiie Masterskiie (Higher Art and Technical Studios). On this section of the Soviet exhibits

Notes to pages 99–102 233 see, Claude Leclanche-Boule, “La section soviétique à l’exposition des Arts Décoratifs de Paris,” L’Ecrit-Voir. Special issue: Arts de l’Europe de l’Est (Université de Paris) 3 (Summer 1983): 49, who stresses the variance between Soviet claims about VUKhTEMAS and the actual situation at that time. While David Shterenberg’s essay in the Soviet catalogue touted the school’s unique qualities and achievements, at that very time, permanent staff was being reduced, machines were being sold off, and production rooms were empty. D. Sterenberg [Sheterenberg], “Trois tendances de la nouvelle architecture Russe,” L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S., 80–9. 44 Official guidebooks as well as other publications encouraged visitors to make time for a special visit of the Grand Palais. Thus, e.g., Georges Le Fèvre urged: “Le Grand Palais mérite qu’on lui consacre une visite spé­ ciale. Exigence raisonnable si l’on tient compte de ses imposantes dimensions et de la variété des stands” (“Architecture” 9). 45 For an interview with Melnikov and for some responses, including those of Albert Gleizes and Valdo-Barbey, see “À l’exposition, que pensez-vous du … Pavillon de Russie ” [listed as Pavillon des Soviets, on the Contents page], Bulletin de la vie artistique 11 (1 June 1925), 235–7. For the Soviet view, see Boris Ternovets’s “Khudozhestvennyie vystuplenia S.S.S.R. za granitsei.” Even two years later, the success of the Paris show was recalled as a high point for the Soviets. It should be noted that almost all the Soviet exhibits (with perhaps the sole exception of peasant handicrafts) created controversy. Some of the controversies surrounding the Soviet pavilion are detailed in Starr’s book. For Soviet views of the expo and its architecture, see Ia. Tugendhol’d, “Stil’ 1925 goda.” For émigré opinion of the pavilion (“horrible … hooliganism”), see M. Shumyts’kyi, “Mizhnarodna vystava dekoratyvnoho mystetstva i modernoi industrii v Paryzhi,” Tryzub. Revue hedomadaire ukrainienne 1.3 (Paris) (1 November 1925): 13–18, 17 in particular. For the French, see Eugène Marsan, Souvenir de l’Exposition (Paris: À l’Enseigne de la Porte Étroite, 1926): “ Le pavillon des Soviets … l’air d’une blague d’atelier” (26). For a positive view, see Varenne 101–12. See also Pierre Auffray, “Architectures Soviétiques,” Cahiers d’art 6 (June, 1926): 103–8, for an enthusiastic assessment of Soviet architecture and its presumed connections with the Revolution. 46 “Changing Styles in Architecture.” 47 Le Corbusier’s pavilion, L’Esprit Nouveau, was lauded as being “of particular interest to the Americans, because it owes its form partly to American engineering (to our factory building and grain elevator) and partly to the clean efficiency of shipboard before it has been smudged by the interior decorator.” Opposed to the luxury of many of the French

234  Notes to pages 102–3 displays, Americans admired the inexpensive materials and clean lines of Le Corbusier’s pavilion. They also admired his modesty: “It is surprising to find in one human spirit the dual personality of social consciousness and artist.” “L’Esprit Nouveau,” The New York Times (7 March 1926): X11, X12. 48 “G.L.F. [Georges Le Fèvre] in his assessment of the pavilion concluded that the British participation (i.e., their pavilion) had to be accepted with a smile and with good humour, just as one does those very brightly coloured Christmas cards. The smile froze, however, he continued, upon seeing the Italian pavilion which was simply a ‘crude effort,’ while the Soviet pavilion looked like the scaffolding for a bloody fire engine.” (“Il faut donc nous contenter d’accueillir leur [the British] participation à l’objet commun avec un sourire de bonne humeur, comme ces belles cartes postales aux tons vifs qu’ils nous envoient au moment de Christmas [sic] … Votre sourire amusé se fige immédiatement. L’Italie a fait un rude effort … [The Soviet pavilion was] un ‘échafaudage de pompier sanglant’.”) “Les pavillons étrangers,” 15–16. Yvanhoë Rambosson confessed that the French were rather “disillusioned” by the British participation in the expo (“L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. La Participation Étrangère II” 167). Bevis Hillier and Stephen Escritt suggest that the British pavilion and exhibits resulted in “an aesthetic more reminiscent of a heraldic festival than an exhibition of modern industrial arts … The impasse in the British decorative arts was variously blamed on the education system, the government, and the tastes of the British public. Given the hesitancy of the government in embracing the French rules for the Exposition, the final appearance of the pavilion is hardly surprising” (144). 49 A young Frank Scarlett working on the British exhibits noted with excitement: “There could not have been a greater contrast to the Italian Pavilion than the Russian Pavilion by Melnikov, which expressed the aspirations of the revolution in an exciting and spontaneous manner. It was a constructivist and romantic building, built of inexpensive materials on a minimal budget.” Scarlett and Marjorie Townley, Arts décoratifs 1925, 79. 50 Unimpressed by the architecture of the other pavilions, Ternovets privately critiqued them for their opulence, for adhering to outmoded styles and approaches, and even for their basic bad taste; these seemed to be simply the products of another world. Letter to O.I. Ternovets, 28 May 1925, Pis’ma 169. 51 Excerpt from Kogan’s presentation to the Academy, 25 March 1925. Len. OAOPCC [OAORSS], f. 255, od.1, d. 737, l. 165, reproduced in Khazanova, 191. The symbolic nature of the architecture of the national pavilions was generally understood and frequently remarked upon. So, for example, in the large format album of the Exposition, it was noted that “Here are the

Notes to pages 103–6 235 Colonial pavilions, still saturated with the vicissitudes of climate or of an ancient civilization. There are the pavilions of the Nations, symbolising for the most part, the essential vocations of each country, or the types of habitations which have become classic in them. A rose garden represents Luxemburg; a pavilion in classical taste, Spain; a rustic cottage, the YugoSlav countries … Italy, on the contrary, has distinguished itself by a grandiose affirmation of the perennial genius of Rome” (“Une visite,” [2]). It is not surprising that, in this virtual world of conventions, the Soviet pavilion should appear to be so radical. 52 See the interview with Melnikov by Fénéon, “Que pensez-vous.” Sadly, Melnikov’s fame dimmed shortly after the Paris exposition. As Starr’s detailed study of his work shows, Melnikov soon fell out of favour with those who kowtowed to Stalinist aesthetic policy. No detailed photos of his plans or work were published until much later in the century; hence his influence on architects around the world was not only delayed but also severely curtailed. Ultimately, the pavilion would be seen to accurately gesture towards the future, anticipating “the international style that would not emerge fully for two decades: regular glass rectangles set into unadorned horizontal and vertical supports.” Arthur Chandler, “The Right Bank: Foreign Nations. Virtual Visit.” A similar fate would await the innovative exhibits of Soviet theatrical arts. 53 André Rigaud suggested that the pavilion looked like a disassembled house where French workers, not understanding Russian, mixed up the boxes and, as a resulted created this “abstruse” architecture. See his “À travers les chantiers de l’exposition. Les derniers préparatifs (AvantPremière),” Les Annales politiques et littéraires 2182 (19 April 1925): 427–8. 54 Such as studies by Khazanova, Bréon, Chandler, Le Fèvre, Mattie, Starr, and Cohen. The only video produced about the expo takes architecture as its subject: Tim Benton, The International Exhibition of Arts, 1925, Series History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939 (Open University, 1975). In addition to architecture, the 1925 Paris exposition spawned an enormous number of studies (particularly on Art Deco in its various embodiments); not one, however, covers theatre arts, despite the fact that vol. X of the Encyclopédie suggests how important these arts were to the exposition. 55 Rodchenko, letter, 17 April 1925, “Letters to and from Paris (1925),” 332. Part of the first floor of the pavilion, a section on Gosizdat (the State publishing house) was decorated by scene designer Isaak Rabinovich. 56 For an analysis of Paris in the context of “shop-window” display, see Gronberg, Designs on Modernity. For a Soviet view, see Rodchenko’s letters to his wife, Varvara Stepanova: “There is a cult of woman as thing”

236  Notes to pages 106–7 (25 March 1925); “On the whole, one should visit America, and not female Paris” (5 April 1925), “Letters to and from Paris (1925),” 317–32. 57 In fact, a number of pavilions opened well after the official date, including the British one (20 May) (Ternovets, Letter to O.I. Ternovets, 21 May 1925, Pis’ma 167). The French organizers had been reluctant to change the announced opening date. Although many foreign pavilions were not ready for the April opening, the French had gone ahead, perhaps in the expectation that France’s achievements would be highlighted if other exhibits were not completed. 58 The letters of Alexander Rodchenko provide a good idea of the frustrations and delays in preparing the Soviet exhibits. The Grand Palais exhibits “came out wonderfully” (letter to his wife, Varvara Stepanova, 29 April 1925). See Aleksandr Rodchenko. Experiments 166. By 25 May 1925, the cinema, photography, and textile sections still remained to be hung. The theatre arts made a significant impact from the day of the official opening and continued to attract visitors through the six months of the fair (Aleksandr Rodchenko. Experiments 181). Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club was later donated to the French Communist Party. See Dickerman 72. 59 “B.T.” (Boris Ternovets), “Mais la nouvelle culture s’affirme peut-être plus combative, plus intrépide, plus impitoyable à l’égard des formes permîmes que partout ailleurs, dans notre Section théâtrale. ” 60 “The term ‘Constructivist’ was first used by the theorist Aleksei Gan, who published his book Konstruktivism in 1922. For Gan and artists such as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin, the term captured the particular Russian desire to use abstract geometric forms along with new industrial materials in projects that contributed to the pragmatic demands of building a new society. Based on geometric abstraction and materiality, Constructivism was easily adapted to industrial production as well as to the propagandistic needs of the new society. Adopting the persona of ‘constructors,’ progressive artists dissociated themselves from the bourgeois elitism traditionally associated with art. This social context was imperative for Russian artists, who enthusiastically supported the new social and political venture. By 1922, Constructivism was already operative in architectural designs, most notably in Tatlin’s Project for a Monument of the Third International, or the ‘Tower’ of 1920.” Roman and Marquardt, “Introduction,” Avant-Garde Frontier, 4. 61 What Ternovets did not report on were the details about the formal inauguration of the Soviet pavilion, which seemed disastrous. Following Soviet Ambassador Krasin’s remarks about the new and “significant character of the Russian art as an expression of the transformation that has taken place

Notes to pages 108–9 237 among the Russian people as a result of the Bolshevik revolution,” the French Minister of Education, M. de Monzie, spoke, greeting the new art “in cautious language” and intimating “quite clearly that just as the French Revolution had endeavoured to bend art to the service of politics without success, so in the end the Russian Communists would discover that art and politics, like oil and water, do not mix … [he] conceded, however, that the Soviet art, like all art, must be to some extent affected by the period and milieu.” He was quoted as saying “We are impatient to learn how the Marxian influence will affect art and what contribution it will make to the laws of beauty.” Shortly thereafter, a demonstration erupted. French Communist agitators seized the occasion for a “hostile demonstration against France and the Moroccan war.” Rodchenko reported that “There was a huge crowd of French workers at the opening who met Krasin with cries of ‘Long Live the Soviets’ and began singing the ‘Internationale’” (Aleksandr Rodchenko. Experiments 185). When the Soviet ambassador was unable to quell the demonstrators, the minister and a number of senators, visibly embarrassed, left without visiting the exposition; the police were called in to disperse the crowd (“French Minister”). Three weeks later, another official visit also produced a scandal when the French President paid his visit to the Soviet pavilion. In the absence of the ambassador, President Doumergue was received by the Secretary, M. Tichmeneff, who “instead of accompanying the President and pleasantly describing the collection of Red art assembled, immediately rushed him to a plush-covered table where there were four glasses of champagne and offered one saying ‘Your health,’ in true proletarian fashion.” The Soviets were roundly critiqued for being ignorant of the rules and conventions of diplomacy (“Offers Doumergue a Drink”). 4  Great Expectations: Space and Theatre Arts 1 “On peut l’assurer sans craindre de démenti, au milieu de cette activité fiévreuse qui se manifeste dans toutes les branches de l’Art, le Théâtre est peut-être le genre qui a subi la plus grande transformation.” Scize 193. 2 Read notes that “The mode is treated in the Exposition des Arts Decoratif [sic] with all the seriousness which befits any display of creative genius. France looks upon her great dressmakers, as artists in the true sense of the word. The largest section of the Grand Palais, where are shown industries de lux[e] of foreign countries and France, is given over to a display of the mode.” Helen Appleton Read, “The Exposition in Paris: Part II,” 162. Art historian Tag Gronberg has thoroughly studied the symbiotic relationship

238  Notes to pages 109–11 between the glamour of Paris and the exposition’s display of publicité. Her work develops that which was initiated by nineteenth century-philosopher Georg Simmel, one of the earliest sociologists, who drew attention to the firm links among the metropolis, urban space, fashion, modernity, and the newly emerging society that had developed as a result of the industrial revolution. See Gronberg’s Designs on Modernity and Simmel’s 1904 essay “Fashion.” 3 “Préface. Évolution des arts décoratifs et industriels au début du XXe siècle,” Encyclopédie, vol. I, “la femme moderne … est une artiste en scène” (42); see also vol. IX, Groupe de la Parure [Costume and Fashion Design], 22. 4 On these points, see Paulicelli’s stimulating article “Fashion and Futurism.” 5 Most recently, in 1924 in Vienna. 6 “Le théâtre s’est rattaché étroitement à l’art décoratif; la prédominance des éléments visuels en a fait vraiment un ‘spectacle’.” “Théâtre et cinématographie,” Encyclopédie, vol. I, 72. In the same volume see “ Enseignement”: “Les arts du théâtre, de la rue & des jardins … devaient logiquement constituer un nouveau Groupe. Les recherches passionnées de la mise en scène, les progrès de l’architecture scénique, la science moderne de l’éclairage exigeaient une Classe du théâtre; les problèmes urgents de l’urbanisme & le développement sans précédent de la publicité, une Class de la rue” (92). See also “Arts du Théâtre,” Encyclopédie, vol. X: “Un nombre restreint d’initiés suit les expériences passionnantes qui se poursuivent dans certains milieux théâtraux” (14). 7 “Il est indispensable que dans cette Exposition se montrent avec un éclat incomparable le visage et l’âme de la France. Or comment cette apparition se ferait-elle complète, si le théâtre ne tenait pas là le rang éminent qui est dû à sa puissance et à sa majesté?” (Toudouze 101). 8 See Robert Davis on the performative encounters, spectacular entertainments, and theatrical strategies of various types in the USA in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 9 The British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, A Diary of Royal Visits and Other Notable Events in 1924, www.studygroup.org.uk. Accessed 11 September 2014. On more local events which incorporated theatre, see Marion O’Connor, “Theatre of the Empire: ‘Shakespeare’s England’ at Earl’s Court, 1912,” in Jean E. Howard and Marion O’Connor, eds., Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), 68–98. 10 See his World of Fairs, particularly chapter 3, “Coloniale Moderne.” That attitudes had not changed by 1925 may be seen by the comments of “Tis,” who, writing in the London Apollo: A Journal of the Arts, remarked that

Notes to pages 112–13 239 “One of the most interesting features of the Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris promises to be a ‘village Français’.” Apollo 1.1 (1925): 187. 11 Archival sources list the members present at the first committee meeting as Franck (chair), de Thomas, Moussinac, Aubry, Beaumont, Bertin, Boll, Dufrène, Hallaure (secretary), Layus, Meyer, Gustave Perret, Rateau, Remilleux, Ronsin, P. Sardou, Seche, Seguin, Tronchet, Valdo-Barbey, Weisbecker, Rouché, Alfassa, and Rambosson. Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds Léon Moussinac, 4-COL 10/39 (5). At a subsequent meeting, a smaller, working sub-committee was established. 12 Tronchet (1867–1959) was, however, innovative in his use of new materials. He was one of the first in France to use reinforced concrete for his neoclassical Théâtre Ducourneau (1908) built in Agen, in southwest France. 13 On Moussinac and his connections to the Communist Party, as well as his travels to the USSR, see Caute, especially 75 and 369. 14 “Et ce désir est aussi fort parce que jamais peut être depuis longtemps la confusion des idées ne fut plus grande dans ce domaine plastique. L’art théâtral essaie, comme les autres arts, de se libérer de certains préjugés, de nombreuses routines, de quelques conventions fausses, et d’une évidente confusion littéraire, pour s’adapter le mieux possible aux besoins nouveaux du temps présent, à l’Esprit de l’époque.” Moussinac 1–2. 15 “Il serait prétentieux, certes, de dire que nous sommes à la veille d’un changement profond dans l’art dramatique, mais l’on peut constater avec joie une évolution profonde dans le goût du public, à un moment particulièrement propice au développement d’un Théâtre nouveau.” “Avant l’Exposition des arts décoratifs” 33. 16 As the author of the essay on “Arts du Théâtre” points out, the innovations were not well known in France, and the exposition was regarded as an excellent and efficacious means of disseminating knowledge about the importance of these changes. Classe 25. Arts du théâtre, 14. 17 “D’un façon générale, une exposition de théâtre doit prendre un caractère d’avant-garde, car ce sont les auteurs qui souffrent du poids des traditions mortes et s’y soumettent sans réaction. Ce sont les metteurs en scène qui peuvent les entrainer et leur faire deviner l’avenir du théâtre, son vrai destin moderne.” Moussinac 9. 18 “[U]ne exposition de décors ne devra plus être celle de dessins ou maquettes représentant de la peinture, mais simplement de projets d’espaces conditionnés par la présence vivante et mobile de l’acteur … pour être complète, [elle] doit présenter d’une part, les espaces destinés au mouvement, et de l’autre le mouvement qu’a inspiré et conditionné ces espaces: l’un sans l’autre reste fragmentaire. Nous aurions, de la sorte, deux expositions en une: d’un côté les salles destinées à l’architecture, aux

240  Notes to pages 114–16 installations techniques, aux décors, maquettes et costumes; de l’autre les grandes salles agencées pour la composition changeante de l’espace à trois dimensions et à l’échelle du corps humain.” 19 “C’est une révolution d’idées plus profonde encore que celle du métier, et qui mettra un jour au rang le plus noble cette peinture théâtrale, où l’artiste compose une œuvre non pas seulement avec les couleurs d’une palette, mais avec les tons mouvants des étoffes, et qu’il modèle à son gré avec la véritable lumière.” 20 André Dezarrois is typical in ascribing the causes of the changes in theatre to advances in science and technology. Of course, it is also important to note the profound influence of theatre practitioners and theorists such as Richard Wagner (the idea of the totality of the production, Gesamtkunstwerk); Adolphe Appia (atmospheric use of light; elimination of anything extra­ neous or contradictory to the action; the central presence of the actors); Georg Fuchs (the idea of re-theatricalizing the theatre); Max Reinhardt (medieval-inspired mass productions); and Edward Gordon Craig (theatre as movement; theatre liberated from literature; the director as author and interpreter of the play; the Über-Marionette). “Avant l’ouverture de l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. Un magnifique effort,” La Revue de l’art. ancien et moderne 48 (1925): 209–20. 21 Giula Veronesi remarks that, with Picasso and Cocteau taking an active part in the creation of the ballet Parade, which premiered on 18 May 1927 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Ballets Russes became, in effect, “un spec­ tacle français.” Style 1925. Triomphe et chute des “Arts-Déco” (Lausanne: Editions Anthony Krafft; Paris: Bibliotheque des Arts, 1968), p. 215. 22 “Ce dont l’exposition qui s’ouvre démontrera l’urgente nécessité, ce n’est pas de remplacer un système décoratif périmé par un autre système, comme un tableau par un tableau, mais bien de réviser les programmes fondamentaux. À cette société moderne conditionnée par le machinisme, cause première de la transformation du régime économique et social, et par les découvertes scientifiques, il faut une architecture nouvelle, – exprimant des réalités nouvelles, – et des solutions logiques, c’est-à-dire affranchies des canons traditionnels.” Such a narrative of the influences and changes in the theatre has, by now, become standard in theatre histories and requires no elaboration here. 23 Jeff Wallace’s comments about the stage could easily be transferred to the shop-window: “This newly interactive space could also be more fully dialectical, not only bringing the stage closer to the real everyday world, but also vice versa, revealing the performative and ritualistic aspects of the real and the everyday” (254–5).

Notes to pages 116–18 241 24 “On est revenu, somme toute, en Russie, à la tradition du grand théâtre populaire: théâtre grec, théâtre chinois, théâtre de Shakespeare, théâtre espagnol, comédie italienne, où aucune parole, pas un geste de l’acteur en sauraient être perdue.” 25 “Nous sommes rentrés dans la vérité, en abandonnant la répétition des styles passés, en nous inspirant seulement du désir d’apporter à notre temps des aspirations dignes de lui, et correspondant à ses besoins et à ses goûts, en renouant avec le moyen âge, cette période unique entre toutes. Il ne s’agit point là de redites, mais de méthode.” 26 “Pourtant, la conception du décor réaliste était viciée dans son principe; elle méconnaissait ‘L’irrémédiable antagonisme de l’exact & du vrai’ … Dans ces conditions, prétendre à l’exactitude, c’est souligner par comparaison les invraisemblances inévitables … L’œuvre d’art, dit Schopenhauer, n’exerce son influence que par la fantaisie … Tout montrer, tout préciser, c’est empêcher la fantaisie d’éclater.” 27 “La physique théâtrale est basée sur la connaissance du lieu dramatique. Il faut créer ce lieu. Il s’agit de retrouver sur la scène, libérée des accidents pictureux et optiques et de toute littérature, le sens profond de la plastique théâtrale (notion des plans, de la circulation entre les plans, organisation de l’espace scénique) ... Principe et doctrine, schéma d’une architecture dramatique future qui sera le lieu pur du drame et son expression en soi – comme la cathédrale du Moyen-Age a été un lieu et une expression.” 28 “Résumons: le lieu dramatique étant régénéré, le drame sera fonction de ce lieu et du mouvement dramatique qu’il permit. Ainsi la technique ayant rendu toute leur intensité aux forces dramatiques, les ayant libérés des servitudes littéraires ou picturales, le théâtre reconquiert son autonomie et redevient vraiment théâtral. Nous n’en sommes pas encore là. La désaffection du théâtre actuel, particulièrement en France, provient précisément de ce qu’on ne trouve pas sur la scène l’équivalent d’une substance et d’un émotion que procurent d’autres spectacles: music hall, sports, cinéma. Le théâtre littéraire est fossile. Le vrai moderne a broyé toutes ses fausses richesses dans son dynamisme mécanique. Ce qui n’exprime pas un mouvement ou sa correspondance est condamné à mort ... Le théâtre attend donc des auteurs dramatiques.” 29 Not everyone agreed with the choice of Perret as architect. André Antoine castigated the organizers for choosing an architect “indisputably inferior to his task” (incontestablement resté inférieur à sa tâche) whose work was “pseudo-inventive” (pseudo-trouvaille) and did not present the amenities or comforts of already existing Parisian theatres. Antoine, “Le théâtre à l’Exposition des arts décoratifs,” Journal [in pencil dated 3/9/25], Recueil

242  Notes to pages 119–21 factice d’extraits de presse et programme sur le théâtre de l’Exposition des arts décoratifs, 1925, Théâtre des arts décoratifs, 2 vols. 8-RT-12781. Vol. 2, 351. Bibliothèque nationale de France (Richelieu – Arts du spectacle), 8-RT-12781. 30 “Le Théâtre moderne, on le sait, a été le premier à participer à l’évolution des Arts appliqués que les progrès de l’industrie ont complètement transformés. Décors, machinerie, éclairage, tout doit être nouveau dans un nouveau théâtre, conformément à ces principes généraux d’esthétique utilitaire.” 31 “un laboratoire dramatique, un atelier d’essais conçu d’une manière économique en permettant les utilisations les plus variées.” 32 Robert Brussel claimed that there was no other such theatre in the world, and that it was created out of both logic and necessity. He presents a full list of the countries and groups invited to perform on its stages (though this list does not reflect what actually happened). Robert Brussel, “Le Théâtre,” Les Annales politiques et litteraires 2182 (19 April 1925): 425–6. For an implicit critique of the whole project see Georges Le Fèvre, “Le future théâtre de l’Exposition des arts décoratifs,” La vie du théâtre, L’Intransigeant (9 October 1924): n.p. in Recueil, 8-RT-12781, 5. This scrapbook offers a wealth of detail about responses to the building of The Theatre and to its subsequent uses. For the first full-length monograph on the work of Perret, see Paul Jamot, A.G. Perret et l’architecture du béton armé (Paris, Brussels: Librairie Nationale d’Art et d’Histoire, 1927). Perret’s Theatre failed to get any published attention until 1964, when a special issue was dedicated to it; see Saddy. 33 “En effet, dans ce théâtre tout procède d’un esprit 1925, c’est-à-dire d’un esprit révolutionnaire.” 34 A debate ensued about the origins of Perret’s tripartite stage and whether he was truly an innovator or plagiarist. See articles by Rambosson, especially “Querelle sur la mise en scène. À qui revient l’idée de la scène tripartite?” Comoedia (24 July 1925). Recueil, 8-RT-12781, 74–5. 35 One of Perret’s great achievements was in the area of acoustics. As a result of his success, he was subsequently invited to design the auditorium for L’Ecole Normale de Musique. See Saddy. 36 Rambosson writes of “innovations sensationnelles,” including “une galerie surplombant la salle et la scène et de laquelle le chef électricien dirige la manœuvre, comme un officier de marine au banc de quart.” As an important technological achievement, the lighting of the Theatre received considerable expressions of interest, including the publication of two photographs of the projectors in the multi-volume Encyclopédie.

Notes to pages 122–8 243 37 “Il ne s’agit pas là d’un principe de décoration cubiste, mais des formes simples, non torturées comme dans les théâtres italiens qui pendant si longtemps ont exercé leur influence en France.” 38 “Cette façon de concevoir le théâtre, renoue d’ailleurs de très anciennes traditions, depuis la représentations de Mystères en passant par le théâtre de Shakespeare.” 39 “Imaginez cependant ce que pourrait être sur le plateau de cette même scène à trois compartiments, dans cette salle aux lignes si sobres et pures, si discrètes et si belles, où tout est fait, harmonisé, voulu pour laisser au spectacle lui-même, au verbe lui-même et à la musique toute son importance et toute sa valeur, imaginez ce que pourrait être la représentation d’une tragédie de Sophocle ou de Racine, d’une œuvre de Shakespeare, d’une farce de Molière, ou d’une féerie de Banville, d’une comédie de Musset ou d’un poème dramatique de Claudel!” 40 For the enthralled reactions, see the first of two scrapbooks, Recueil, 8-RT12781, especially p. 4. 41 The French-subsidized theatres, their architects, directors, and playwrights, were targeted by the committee members as being particularly retrograde for displaying “banalité” on their stages. Only the Opéra, under the direction of Jacques Rouché, escaped their attacks. 42 “Pour que cette conception si intelligente trouve une réalisation pratique, il est nécessaire de choisir un répertoire d’œuvres intéressantes, mise ainsi en valeur par ces nouveaux procédés techniques. Point n’était besoin de dénicher aux auteurs inconnus pour essayer d’utiliser cette construction originale. Il suffisait de rajeunir les chefs-d’œuvres de notre répertoire français et étranger en l’adaptant à une curiosité plus éclairée. Le but pouvait être double: reconstituer le passé d’après des données scientifiques exactes et fondées sur des documents graphiques, et en même temps le rendre vivant et actuel.” 43 See André Antoine, untitled article, vol. 2, 349, 8-RT-12781. 44 See Moussinac, 10. By contrast and understandably, the author of the theatre arts section of the ten-volume encyclopedia was less publically critical, instead laconically referring to the French productions staged at the official Theatre as “d’intéressants spectacles”; these included performances by Le Théâtre de l’OEuvre (La traversée de Paris à la nage), La Petite Scène, Le Théâtre ‘Le Chariot’ (La Mandragore of Machiavelli), Théâtre Athéna, Théâtre des Funambules, Théâtre ésotérique, Théâtre du Coq d’Or. See “Section Française,” Encyclopédie, vol. X, 29–35, especially 33. 45 Also on this point, see Blanchart.

244  Notes to pages 128–30 46 The Exposition (including its fêtes) also celebrated regionalism through the performances of various local choirs and ensembles. See Wierzbicka, who notes this tendency in architecture and observes that, in fact, a new image of France was being created, one that was focused on historical regions and their cultural traditions. On regionalism, rather than inter­ nationalism or modernism in interwar France, see Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: “for all of the official catalogue’s clamoring about the transformation of modes of production heralded by the universal presence of ­néo-machinisme, for all of its celebration of the new forests of cylinders, the network cables of canals, and the steady rhythm of engines, it was regionalism that dominated the French section at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” (58). 47 See the Fonds Léon Moussinac, 4-COL 10/39 (10) and 4-COL 10/39 (15), Bibliothèque nationale de France, for letters to Moussinac from Copeau and Léger voicing their extreme disappointment at the prohibitive costs for international participants, and for the way in which The Theatre was being used. Other concerned voices included that of Pierre Veber (Les Quatre Jeudis), who mourned the Administration’s lack of attention to the theatre and the primacy given to merchandise. Pierre Veber, “Arts décoratifs,” Molière. Recueil, vol. 2, 376, 8-RT-12781. In pencil is the date 23. 2. 24. Despite the claims of some scholars, the Soviets did not show any productions on the stage of Perret’s Theatre. See the weekly agenda of performances in La Semaine à Paris, as well as Charles Fraval’s interview with David Arkin, described as the commissar of the Russian theatre exhibition, in “Le Théâtre au pays des Soviets,” La Rampe 417 (28 June 1925): 15–16, Arkin makes it clear that the Soviet contribution was “static,” that is, confined to costumes, photographs, designs, and maquettes. 48 Nozière [Anatole France], “Le Théâtre à l’Exposition”: “Il convient de le dire et de le répéter: rien n’a été fait au Théâtre de l’Exposition. Aucun spectacle n’a été donné qui puisse attirer le public. On n’a senti ni méthode, ni enthousiasme. Il était bien inutile de construire une salle si l’on était décidé à ne rien tenter ... Il a pourtant besoin de reconquérir l’estime des autres pays. Depuis quelques années, il la perd ... Le Théâtre de l’Exposition avait une mission nationale à remplir. Nul ne semble s’en être aperçu. Rien n’a été fait! Pas le plus simple essai. Rien! Absolument rien!” No source but dated “22.7.1925.” In Recueil, vol. 1, 43, 8-RT-12781. A year before the Paris Expo, Gabriel Boissy drew France’s attention to the fact that Austria was hosting an international exhibition of new theatrical techniques in Vienna at that very moment, and that no one in France seemed to know or care. France’s theatrical artists were not being

Notes to pages 130–4 245 supported or encouraged to participate. Boissy suggested French sloth in responding to important changes that were occurring in the theatre. “Pour notre art théâtral. De l’Exposition de Vienne à l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs,” no source, Recueil, vol. 2, 377, 8-RT-12781. 49 Some refused to participate on principle. Jacques Copeau, for example, expressing regret, explained that he had always been hostile to theatrical expositions because the theatre should only be represented in action. Similar principled views were expressed by Gaston Baty. Copeau’s claim, however, was (as Moussinac pointed out) not entirely genuine. Earlier, he had promised to take part and had, in fact, participated in other expos. Letter from Copeau to Moussinac, 14 March 1925 (Paris), fonds Léon Moussinac, 4-COL 10/39 (10): “J’ai toujours été hostile aux Expositions Théâtrales, parce que je trouve que le théâtre ne saurait être exposé autrement qu’en action. Si je vous ai fait une promesse, c’était dans mon désir de répondre à votre aimable initiative.” 50 For example, the Soviet theatre exhibits were listed as being located on the ground floor (rez de chaussée), whereas they were eventually lodged on the first floor (premier étage). 51 These may be seen today in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. 52 “Il convient de noter ici, que l’Opéra … et la Comédie Française … ont refusé d’exposer à la Classe 25, décision qui a été d’un exemple déplorable et a poussé beaucoup d’artistes à s’abstenir.” 53 “les réalisations médiocres de M. Frey et celles d’un caractère exclusivement commercial de la Maison ‘Radiana’ on provoqué le retrait de l’ensemble réuni par Jean Cocteau.” Among the exceptions was the work of Louis Jouvet, Valdo-Barbey, de Luc-Albert-Moreau, d’Yves Alix and André Mare. 5  Trial by Space: Incarnating the Revolution 1 “L’art du théâtre n’est-il pas le grand art national de la Russie? Il comporte des effets violents qui frappent les masses, des simplifications hardies, des raccourcis, et parfois un mépris de toute vraisemblance, dans le désir unique qui est le sien, d’atteindre à l’absolu.” 2 Paul Blanchart: “rude, d’un modernisme violent et souvent agressif, mais d’une étonnante richesse d’idées.” 3 “Il semble que, comme dans tout le reste, l’art soviétique ait fait complètement table rase du passé. La scène telle que nous la concevions, la composition décorative, l’aménagement du plateau, tout a disparu. Le cubisme impose partout la préoccupation exclusive des volumes, la déformation

246  Notes to pages 136–7 des objets, une sorte d’obsession géométrique. Des plate-formes, des praticables, des toboggans, des disques se superposent. Les lignes s’opposent dans un tohu-bohu ahurissant et frénétique. C’est un rebus dont on n’a pas la clef et qu’il faut pourtant prendre au sérieux puisque cette vague commence à tout submerger.” Antoine contributed a regular series of articles concerning the theatre and theatre arts during the Exposition. These are gathered together in a scrapbook of articles by various hands, pasted together, and usually without title, date, or source. Most appear to have been published in Le Journal and L’Information, although we know that he also published in Comœdia and Le Monde illustré. See “Recueil factice d’extraits de presse et program sur le théâtre de l’Exposition des Arts décoratifs, 1925,” 2 vols. Bibliothèque nationale de France, 8-RT-12781. 4 Including the author of volume X of the Encyclopédie. 5 John E. Bowlt explains that the term “Constructivism,” invented in 1921, was adapted to “coincide with the ‘constructive’ vogue in many other fields of endeavour – Socialist construction, cultural reconstruction, formation of a new, streamlined (human) body.” Bowlt, “Long Live Constructivism!” in Lavrentiev 13. 6 Antoine: “Dans l’ensemble, nous n’existons plus. La vague russogermanique a tout recouvert. Que sortira-t-il de tout cela où le bon et le mauvais s’entremêlent? Nous ne le saurons pas, je crois, avant longtemps. Je reste persuadé que, dans cette confrontation, où la tradition de plusieurs siècles s’oppose à l’esprit d’un monde renouvelé, nous avions un rôle considérable à remplir. Au lieu de nous abandonner à tous les courants du dehors, il fallait essayer de relier chez nous le passé à l’avenir avec l’équilibre de notre race. Nous sommes en face d’une offensive puissante, pour avoir trop regardé depuis vingt ans par-dessus nos frontières. Nos mises en scène ne sont plus qu’une copie des autres mais sans leur vigueur et leur originalité? Rien, pourtant, dans notre production dramatique, n’appelle ces excès et ces outrances. Est-il besoin de décors énigmatiques sinon incohérents pour servir nos classiques et même nos dramaturges nouveaux? Le Phèdre de Tairoff nous avait montré le danger. Empruntons à nos rivaux des procédés pratiques de machinerie, améliorons nos salles, mais gardons intacte notre vision. Il n’y a pas qu’en politique et en sociologie que le bolchévisme est dangereux.” In Recueil, vol. 2, 350, 8-RT-12781. Tairov’s production of Phaedra, performed two years earlier in Paris, had caused much controversy with its Cubist setting. See the description by Boissy in Comoedia (12 March 1923): 1107, rpt. in Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky, Soviet Theater: A Documentary History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 178.

Notes to pages 140–5 247 7 The term is Svetlana Boym’s. See her The Future of Nostalgia. 8 Two great absences were Edward Gordon Craig – without whom, as Penrose properly noted, “no exhibition of this kind can pretend to be complete” (182) – and Harley Granville Barker, a vitally important representative of the “New Stagecraft.” On the revival of the pageant in the late 1920s and early 1930, see Hildy (114) and, more recently, Erika FischerLichte, “Policies of Spatial Appropriation.” Fischer-Lichte regards the pageant movement in England as a “profoundly anti-modernist” movement and “a response to the crises produced by the radical modernization of society.” She argues that it was intended to counter the disintegration of society brought about by industrialization and urbanization, by creating a collective local identity and sense of “festive brotherhood” (224–5). 9 One notable example was the “Grande Manifestation Régionaliste (Bresse et Limousin)” of dancers and singers of these two regions held on 31 May and on 1 June 1925 at the expo. The tone of aggression directed at foreign influences would sharpen in years to come. 10 The full range is as follows: Austria (12), Belgium (3), Britain (49), Czechoslovakia (11), France (69), Italy (16), Latvia (2), Spain (6), Sweden (8), the USSR (44), and Yugoslavia (15). Twelve exhibitors, those involved in the organizational committees for the expo, were not eligible for the awards competition. 11 The designers in the itemized list of the Catalogue (Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Section de L’ U.R.S.S.) are listed as follows: Natan Altman, Vladimir Baier, D.I. Chlepianov, V. Chestakov, Chevardiadze, Domratchev, Viktor Egorov, Boris Erdman, Alexandra Exter, Robert Falk, Vasily Fedorov, Fyodor Fedorovsky, Boris Ferdinandov, Elena Fradkina, Irakly Gamrekeli, Dmitry Kardovsky, G. Kolbe, Vasily Komardenkov, Boris Kustodiev, Evgeny Lanseré (Lanceray), A. Lentulov, Moisei Levin, Mikhail Libakov, Konstantin Medunetsky, Vadym Meller, Ignaty Nivinsky, Anatoly Petrytsky, Liubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Shchuko, Viktor Shestakov, Nisson Shifrin, Ilya Shlepianov, Vladimir and Georgy Stenberg, Varvara Stepanova, Nikolai Triaskin, Alexander Vesnin, Konstantin Vialov, Sofia Vishnevetskaia, and Georgy Yakulov. 12 The selection committee comprised Vladimir Morits, David Shterenberg, Alexander Rodchenko, David Arkin, Nikolai Punin, Yakov Tugendhold, Mikhail Kristi, Nikolai Bartram, Viktor Nikolsky, Sergei Gerasimov, Petr Neradovsky, Isaak Rabinovich, Georgy Yakulov, and Alexander Vesnin. 13 Notably, the experimental work of Les Kurbas, artistic director of the Berezil Theatre, whose achievements were made completely

248  Notes to pages 146–9 independently of the experiments carried out in Russia.1 The ukases and memoranda of the nineteenth century effectively destroyed the Ukrainian theatre. Its rebirth, post-1905, and especially during the civil war, world war, and two revolutions (1917), under Kurbas and others, took place in such chaos when areas were cut off from each other that it is not surprising that Russians knew little about what was happening in Kiev. For the same reasons, during this period, Kurbas had no access to the Russian theatres, and his theatre developed along lines independent of experiments in Russia. The absence of information about the “provincial” theatres and the Russian intelligentsia’s unwillingness to interest itself in Ukrainian theatre (there were even boycotts) are discussed by Bartoshevich, 124. A desire to uproot such general ignorance spurred the creation of the first “Ukrainian Year in Art” (1925–6) in major Soviet (i.e., Russian) cities. Ukrainian design formed a prominent part of a theatre arts exposition in Leningrad, where Kurbas was lauded as a Ukrainian “Meyerhold” (a term he would have despised), and his Berezil as an innovative, intensely focused theatre (123). 14 For a detailed biography and career of Vadym Meller, the father of Ukrainian Constructivism, see Tetiana Rudenko, “Vadym Meller – Missionary of Avant-garde Scenic Design,” in Mudrak and Rudenko 46– 67. Rudenko’s essay, as well as that of Mudrak’s in this catalogue, make the case for a Ukrainian hybridization of Western classical modernisms. 15 The official catalogue of the Soviet exhibits lists 305 items in the display of theatre arts; there were likely many more. Both the Soviet and the French official catalogues are littered with typographical and substantive errors, omissions, and discrepancies. For example, the Catalogue général lists twelve Soviet theatres as contributing to the exhibition, but there is a blank beside number 6 in the list; this may have been space intended for the Berezil Theatre, which was represented in the show. In one part, seventeen designers are mentioned as displaying their works, while in another, over twice that number is listed. The whole Soviet section was shown in New York in 1926 (see the next chapter of this book), where many more items were on display than are noted in the catalogues – as indicated by the images reproduced in The Little Review. 16 Exter was a leading figure of the avant-garde. Among those who studied at her Kiev Studio were Isaak Rabinovich, Nisson Shifrin, Alexander Tyshler, Kliment Redko, Solomon Nikritin, Simon Lissim, Yosif Chaikov, Vadym Meller, Anatoly Petrytsky, Pavel Tchelitchew, Sarah Shor, Issachar Ryback, Mark Epstein, Pavlo Kovzhun, Vasily Chekrygin, Isaak Rabichev, Abraham Mintchine, André Lanskoy, Nina and Olga Brodsky, Nina and Margarita Genke, Liubov and Grigory Kozintsev, Elena Fradkina, Sophia

Notes to pages 155–62 249 Vishnevetskaia, Nadzehda Khazina (Mandelstam), Sergei Yutkevich, and Boris Aronson. See Kovalenko, “Boris Aronson and Alexandra Exter.” 17 Kurbas’s production of Macbeth (1924), arguably the most radical production of Shakespeare in its time and perhaps of the whole first half of the twentieth century, is the focus of the author’s Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 18 The British were not the only conservatives. The French subsequently organized an Exposition des arts au théâtre from 23 November to 24 December 1925 in Paris at the Hotel Jean Charpentier. Instead of an exposition of contemporary theatre arts, this was pointedly a historically organized show which began with a sketch depicting actors from the sixteenth century. In the preface to its catalogue, Charles Oulmont nottoo-obliquely refers to the poverty and decadence of the current art. “Ils verront que nous ne sommes guère en progrès, malgré les apparences, et malgré les prétentions de certains, sur ce que faisaient nos aïeux. C’est une leçon de modestie et de sagesse précieuse.” “D’aujourd’hui … à hier,” Exposition des arts au théâtre, Catalogue (Paris, 1925), 21. 19 “La Russie est peut-être le seul pays où la décoration théâtrale ne vive pas sous l’emprise des théories de Gordon Craig et d’Adolphe Appia, qui ont influencé à peu près tous les metteurs en scène modernes. Certes le décor architecture seul est employé, mais, au lieu de volumes construits, les russes emploient presque toujours des éléments conçus en fonction de l’action et servant exclusivement aux évolutions des acteurs. Les constructions scéniques sont en général des praticables très légers: passerelles, escalier, échelles, etc … En somme le metteur en scène suggère plus qu’il ne représente et se soucie davantage de créer l’atmosphère à l’aide d’indications sommaires que par des décors logiquement établis.” 20 “la scène tournante de Wadime Meller sur laquelle est construit un vaste décor architecture qui présente successivement ses divers aspects au public, et, si nous en croyons l’auteur, qui est animé d’un mouvement de rotation incessant qui contribue au dynamisme de l’action. Citons encore les décors de Mme Exter, de Vessnine, d’Iacouloff pour le Théâtre Kamerny; ceux de Rabinowitch pour le Théâtre Artistique de Moscou qui a peu à peu abandonné le réalisme pour entrer dans le mouvement théâtrale moderne; ceux de Granowsky pour le Théâtre Juif, et de nombreux dessins de costumes, des photographie de scènes caractéristiques, etc., etc.” (Charnesol 330–1). 21 See Langner, “Appendix E” in Richards et al. One of the consequences of the Exposition was that, for the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

250  Notes to pages 163–5 purchased and displayed machine-made art. See John Cotton Dana, “Art in Industry. Products of Machines Now Shown in Museums,” The New York Times (15 April 1926): 26. 22 Subsequently, eight images from the USSR were reproduced in the Encyclopédie, twice the number of those from the British exhibits. These included Fyodor Fedorovsky’s design and mise en scène for Wagner’s Lohengrin (Bolshoi Theatre); Alexander Vesnin’s set design for Paul Claudel’s The Tidings Brought to Mary (directed by Alexander Tairov for his Kamerny Theatre); Vesnin’s design for Phaedra (directed by Tairov for the Kamerny); the Sternberg brothers’ (Georgy and Vladimir) design for Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (directed by Tairov); four images taken from Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatre – V. Dimitriev’s design for E. Verhaeren’s Les Aubes (directed by Meyerhold and V. Bebutov for the Meyerhold Theatre); two images of Liubov Popova’s designs for Crommelynck’s The Magnanimous Cuckold (directed by Meyerhold, Meyerhold Theatre); and Varvara Stepanova’s stage design for Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Death of Tarelkin (directed by Meyerhold for the Meyerhold Theatre). 23 Sheila Fitzpatrick has been instrumental in parsing and analysing these power struggles. See especially The Cultural Front and The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky, October 1917–1921 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). While the polemical discussions were heated, at the same time there was great pride in the fact that the world was paying attention to the Soviet contributions to the Exposition. See, e.g., “Nashi uspekhi na Parizhskoi vystavke,” Izvestiia, no. 259 (13 November 1925): 2. 24 Il est peut-être encore trop tôt pour apprécier à leur juste valeur les recherches audacieuses des réformateurs du théâtre russe. Mais, qu’on les accepte ou qu’on les repousse, on est bien obligé de reconnaitre qu’elles marquent une étape considérable dans l’évolution de l’art théâtral moderne.” “Harry,” writing in a tone of high dudgeon in the French theatre journal La Rampe, was one of the very few who insisted that the modernism of the Soviet theatre arts was, contrary to the claims of the Soviet organizers, a “gross exaggeration.” Indeed, he insisted, these innovations existed well before the creation of the Soviet state, and had been found throughout Europe as well as in Russia. Attacking the current situation of censorship as deplorable, he pointed out that, in the USSR, there was no longer the possibility of presenting alternative views to communism, because theatres were subject to rabkor, committees of completely ignorant workers. Theatre in the USSR was no longer an art but a servant of the

Notes to pages 166–8 251 Government and the Communist Party. “Le Theatre en Russie (U.R.S.S.).” La Rampe (Paris) (2 August 1925): 5. Few had such informed knowledge of the true status of the Soviet theatre. 6  Battling Traditional Space: Bringing Modernism from Paris to New York 1 Caesar Zwaska was the “office boy” for The Little Review when it was published out of Chicago and was edited by Margaret Anderson. See Baggett, 178, n. 23. 2 Heap’s letters to Florence Reynolds reveal her active level of engagement in organizing the New York exposition. Heap had hired her own photographers to take pictures in the Grand Palais. See letter of 25 July 1925 in Baggett, 106. Friedrich (later, Frederick) Kiesler, an architect, painter, stage designer, and sculptor born in Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), had studied in Vienna from 1909 to 1913 at the University of Technology and the Academy of Fine Arts. Some mystery, bluster, and obfuscation exists in Kiesler’s account of his early years, including his place of birth, training, and even his claim to have been responsible for the whole international theatre arts section at the Paris expo. Barbara Lesák has cleared up many of the facts in her Die Kulisse explodiert. Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte 1923–1925 (Vienna: Loeker Verlag, 1988). 3 There were 302 American designs, according to Held (42). Others have put the figure at closer to two hundred; e.g., see “Modern Stagecraft Exhibits.” The statistics and specific countries vary from one account to another. The Little Review lists thirty-nine American designers: Boris Aronson, Bradford Ashworth, Aline Bernstein, Claude Bragdon, Remo Bufano, Allan Crane, George Cronyn, Warren Dahler, Ernest De Weerth, Manuel Essman, Joseph Fossko, Norman Bel Gedes, Mordecai Gorelik, Carolyn Hancock, Ingeborg Hansell, Nathan Israel, Frederick Jones, Robert Edmond Jones, Jonel Jorgulesco, Louis Lozowick, R. Sibley Mack, Jo Mielziner, Joseph Mullen, Donald Mitchell Oenslager, Irving Pichel, Esther Peck, James Reynolds, Herman Rosse, H. Schultz, Lee Simonson, Raymond Sovey, Woodman Thompson, Cleon Throckmorton, R. Van Rosen, Sheldon K. Viele, Rollo Wayne, John Wenger, Anna Wille, and Russell Wright. See The Little Review (Winter 1926), which lists the Americans (101, 119–20). 4 Kiesler was responsible for the program catalogue, whose content was strongly dictated by advertisers. Although twice the size of The Little Review, it included only a limited number of illustrations. Almost two thirds of the catalogue was taken up with advertisements. The pages were printed in

252  Notes to pages 169–86 two directions on the same page as a way of distinguishing the exhibition listings from the advertising and the articles. 5 The contributors were Fernand Léger, S(amuil) Margoline, Hans Richter, (Vilmos) Huzar, Rolf de Maré, Herwarth Walden, A(lfred) R(ichard) Orage, Anton Giuglio Bragaglia, Remo Bufano, Alfred Döblin, M. Fontana, Luigi Russolo, Comte de Beaumont, Louis Lozowick, F(riedrich) Kiesler, Paul Stefan, Otto Kahn, S(ergei) Ignatoff, Adolf Loos, Cleon Throckmorton, A. Woroniecke, and Franz T. Czokor. 6 For example, the New York Herald (Paris) announced on 9 January 1926, “America to Get People’s Theatre. Kiesler, of Vienna, Will Sail Soon to Exhibit Novel Creation.” Press clipping, Lillian and Freidrich Kiesler Foundation Archive (Vienna), n.p. 7 Kenneth Macgowan, Robert Edmond Jones, and Eugene O’Neill had “hoped to be the first to show simon-pure constructivism to New York,” reported Macgowan. They arranged with one of Meyerhold’s co-workers, Marion Gering, to prepare a curtain-raiser, “A Tragedy of Seven Telephone Calls,” for The Last Night of Don Juan, but there were difficulties with the double-bill and the venture was called off. Gering prepared Kaiser’s Gas at the Goodman Memorial Theatre “as the first true example of constructivism in America” (22). 8 The 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, first introduced America to modern and avant-garde tendencies in art. 9 Kiesler was not the first to experiment with optophonics. Ukrainian-born Futurist painter Vladimir Baranoff Rossiné (1888–1944) created an optophonic piano around 1916 and gave concerts with this instrument at the Meyerhold and Boshoi theatres in 1924. The inspirational source of both Kiesler and Baranoff’s experiments was likely Alexander Scriabin, who had presented synesthetic effects, linking together sound, colour, and music. Scriabin also deeply influenced the great Soviet Ukrainian director Les Kurbas. See Makaryk, Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 22–3. 10 Throughout the 1940s, modernism continued to be condemned. The strident opposition to modernism and abstraction included visual art. Even as late as 1950, the Metropolitan Museum of Art “owned no Cubist, surrealist, abstract or Expressionist art.” Michael Gross, Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum (New York: Broadway Books, 2009), 225. The situation was even more pronounced in Canada: Paul Konody wrote in the Toronto Globe

Notes to pages 187–93 253 (2 September 1920) that “people on both sides of the Atlantic equated modernism – much of which had come out in Germany – with ‘the spirit of unrest’ that led to the Great War. Appalled by the technological horrors of the war, neither the public nor the artists themselves showed much appetite for modernist innovation.” Qtd. in Ross King, Defiant Spirits. The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven (Vancouver, Toronto, Berkeley: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2010), 334. 11 See “Theatre Creative is All-American,” The New York Times (20 September 1926): 2.1, and “Creative But Native,” The New York Times (21 September 1926): 28. Qtd. in Valgemae 1. 12 Gold saw examples of Constructivism on the Soviet Russian stage and was completely taken with its energy and movement. In his subsequent plays, Hoboken Blues: or The Black Rip Van Winkle. A Modern Negro Fantasia on an Old American Theme (1928), Gold deliberately attempted to mimic the Constructivist style, filling the stage with ladders and scaffolds. Most reviewers mocked the production. See Richard Tuerk, “Michael Gold’s Hoboken Blues: an experiment that failed. (Maskers and Tricksters),” Melus 20.4 (Winter 1995): 3–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/467886. Accessed 16 June 2016. 13 See Roberta Lynne Lasky, PhD thesis, “The New Playwrights Theatre, 1927–1929,” University of California, Davis, 1988. As Lasky notes, this was the first professional American company to label itself a left-wing theatre and to attempt to bring in the working class as its major audience. 14 Green had visited Germany in 1928 and was impressed by the Moscow State Jewish Theatre, then on tour. Valgemae 57. 15 On the life and career of Boris Aronson, see Rich and Aronson, The Theatre Art; Rich, Boris Aronson; and Kovalenko and Kazovsky, eds., Boris Aronson. 7  Transformative Space: Into the Future 1 “Il n’est pas exagéré de dire que le succès de cette manifestation a dépassé toutes les prévisions, les chiffres le prouve ... le triomphe de l’art moderne dans la classe moyenne: des personnes d’éducation artistique rudimentaire, mais douées de bon sens et sachant voir, qui avaient été choquées, à leur première visite, par des créations d’un ordre réellement nouveau, sont revenues, ont discuté, se sont enfin passionnées et ont admis les formules neuves au point de faire des adeptes, voilà ce que j’ai pu enregistrer maintes fois avec grand plaisir.” “Chronique Parisienne,” Le Figaro artistique [Supplément] 85 (22 October 1925): 31.

254  Notes to pages 193–205 2 “C’est là que le public comprendra, par des réalisations complètes, qu’a notre vie moderne correspond un art décoratif et industriel moderne, que cet art existe et n’est pas inférieur à nos arts du passé” (Magne 32). 3 The municipal authorities of Paris were extremely proud of the advancements in education that the expo revealed, as suggested by the beautiful folio volume detailing the way in which all of Paris was mobilized in organizing the fair and creating its new infrastructure: La Participation de la ville de Paris à l’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, René Weiss, Directeur à la Préfecture de la Seine, Directeur du Cabinet du Président du Conseil Municipal de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1925). The Minister of Commerce, M. Chaumet, insisted that Paris was not just a beautiful city but a city of workers: “Paris, Capitale des arts, la ville aux séductions innombrables, n’est pas seulement, comme l’imaginent volontiers les étrangers, la ville des plaisirs faciles. Elle est aussi la grande cité laborieuse.” He also took particular pride in the new pedagogical methods on display which reversed old approaches and made learning a pleasure: “L’art à l’école entoure un enfant de gaité & de beauté. [Applau­ dissements.] Le labeur de l’écolier devient un véritable plaisir” (110). Indeed, all of the exhibits of the City of Paris were mounted by the boys and girls of schools in the city. 4 “New Color Card for Spring,” The New York Times (15 October 1925): 38. The interior design of homes, furniture, and utensils followed some of the tendencies shown at the Exposition. Évelyn Possémé, Le Mobilier français: 1910–1930 Les Années 25 (Paris: Éditions Massin, 1999), 173. 5 See “O.N.,” “Magdeburs’ka teatral’na vystavka,” Nove mystetstvo (Kharkiv) (2 March, 1926): 6. Only Tairov’s Kamerny Theatre was sent to represent the USSR at the German exposition, much to the chagrin of Kurbas, who faulted Ukrainian state authorities for not taking enough interest in promoting their art abroad. Kurbas, “Pro zakordonne teatral’ne zhyttia,” 698–700. Les’ Kurbas: Filosofiia teatru, edited by Mykola Labins’kyi (Kyiv: Osnova, 2001). 6 The Machine Exposition was also held at the Steinway Building; it brought together photography, sculpture, visual art, architecture, and industrial design.

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258  Works Cited – “L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels de 1925,” 154–62. In Bacha. Bridle, Augustus. “Play and Actor Count Not the Stunty Scenery.” The Toronto Daily Star. 20 February 1926: 10. Brunhammer, Yvonne. 1925. Paris: Les Presses de la Connaissance, 1977. Brussel, Robert. “Le théâtre.” In Vient de paraitre. Revue des arts et des lettres (1925): 109–13. – “Le Théâtre.” Les Annales politiques et littéraires 2182 (19 April 1925): 425–6. Bulliet, C.J. “Pompous Prophets with Some Wisdom.” Undated press clipping. Lillian and Friedrick Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Campbell, Colin. “The Sociology of Consumption,” 95–124. In Acknowledging Consumption. Edited by D. Miller. London: Routledge, 1995. Carlson, Marvin. “The Theatre Ici,” 15–30. In Fischer-Lichte and Wihstutz. Carnot, François. “L’Exposition des arts décoratifs modernes de 1925.” Revue bleue. Revue politique et littéraire 20 (1923): 685–8. Carter, Huntly. The New Spirit in the Russian Theatre 1917–1928. New York, London, Paris: Brentano’s, 1929. Rpt. New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970. Catalogue général officiel: Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris: Ministère du Commerce et de L’Industrie des Postes et des Télégraphes, Imprimerie de Vaugirard, 1925. Caute, David. Communism and the French Intellectuals 1914–1960. London: Andre Deutsch, 1964. Chandler, Arthur. Virtual Visit to the 1925 Paris Exposition Des Arts Décoratifs. Text reproduced from World’s Fair magazine, Volume VIII, Number 3, copyright 1988, World’s Fair, Inc., expanded and revised version 18 May 2017 by Arthur Chandler. Web. “Changing Styles in Architecture. Debate Discloses Considerable Favor for the New and Drastic Methods. Little Originality Here.” The New York Times. 21 February 1926: RE2. Charnesol, [Georges]. “La Décoration théâtrale.” L’Amour de l’art 5 (May 1925): 193–4. – “Le Théâtre.” L’Amour de l’art 1 (January 1925): 328–31. – “Le Théâtre.” L’Amour de l’art 11 (November 1925): 447. Chaumet, [Charles]. “Discours.” La Participation de la ville de Paris à l’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. René Weiss, Directeur à la Préfecture de la Seine, Directeur du Cabinet du Président du Conseil Municipal de Paris. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1925. 110. Cheney, Sheldon. “Constructivism.” Theatre Arts Monthly 1 (1927): 857–64. – “The International Theatre Exhibition.” Theatre Arts Monthly 10 (1926): 203–6.

Works Cited 259 – “The Theatre in the Machine Age.” Theatre Arts Monthly 10 (1926): 504–11. Clair, Jean. “Red October, Black October,” 17–58. In Clair, ed. – ed. The 1920s: Age of the Metropolis. Montreal: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1991. Claris, Edmond. L’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, Paris, Avril–Octobre 1925. Extrait de La Nouvelle revue du 1er février 1925. 2007. Clouzot, Henri. “L’Art décoratif d’à présent.” Arts décoratifs 1925. Guide de l’Exposition. Paris, 1925. 214–31. Cohen, Jean-Louis. “Dans les coulisses de l’expo,” 9–36. In Starr et al. Condee, William F. “Architecture for the Twentieth Century: Imagining the Theatre in the 1920s,” 167–78. In Gewirtz and Kolb. “Constructivism Big Thing at Exposition – As One Theory of Stage Design It Dominates the Foreign Section.” The New-York Tribune, 26 February 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Cooke, Catherine. Russian Avant-garde. Theories of Art, Architecture and the City. London: Academy Editions, 1995. Contreau, Pierre. “Vue d’ensemble,” 9–48. Translated by E. Gardner. In Le Grand négoce. Craven, Thomas. “An American Theatre.” Theatre Arts Monthly 10.4. (1926): 533–44. Creange, Henry. “Quantity Production in Art Industries,” 24–39. In Richards et al. Crew, Spencer R., and James E. Sims. “Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue,” 159–75. In Karp and Lavine. Cummings, E.E. “The Theatre.” The Dial (April 1926): 343–5. – “The Theatre.” The Dial (May 1926): 432–5. David, Fernand. “L’Exposition de 1925,” 3. In Guide Album. Davis, Robert. “The Theatre Culture of United States International Expositions, 1876–1893,” 335–47. In Hollengreen et al. Della Coletta, Cristina. World’s Fairs Italian Style. The Great Exhibitions in Turin and Their Narratives, 1860–1915. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Deshairs, Léon. “L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. La Section Française: conclusion.” Art et décoration 48 (1925): 205–17. Dickerman, Leah. “The Propagandizing of Things,” 63–99. In Aleksandr Rodchenko. Edited by Magdalena Dabrowski, Leah Dickerman, and Peter Galassi. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998. Dolfsma, Wilfred. “Paradoxes of Modernist Consumption – Reading Fashions.” Review of Social Economy 62 (2004): 351–64.

260  Works Cited “Doumergue Opens World’s Art Show. Twenty-one Nations Combine with France in a Fair that is of Magnificent Proportions. Our Absence is Regretted.” The New York Times. 29 April 1925: 4. Drésa, Jacques. “Le Théâtre,” 481–98. In Les Arts décoratifs modernes. Edited by Gaston Quénioux. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925. Duke, Vernon [Vladimir Dukelsky]. “April in Paris.” Lyrics by Edgar (“Yip”) Harburg. 1932. [Song] – Passport to Paris. Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1955. Duksina, Irina. “Directors as Designers, Designers as Directors,” 31–51. In Bowlt, 2014. “Échos et nouvelles. Aux Arts Décoratifs. Inaugurations successives.” Le Bulletin de l’art ancien et moderne. Supplément de la revue de l’art 718 (May 1925): 181. Eco, Umberto. “A Theory of Expositions,” 291–307. 1967. Travels in Hyper Reality. Essays. Translated by William Weaver. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Efros [Efross], Abram. “Le Théâtre et le peintre pendant la Révolution,” 67–79. In L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S. “Eiffel Tower Now a Sky sign, Lighted for Arts Exhibition.” The New York Times. 30 August 1925: 7. Ekström, Anders. “International Exhibitions and the Struggle for Cultural Hegemony.” Uppsala Newsletter: History of Science 12 (1989): 6–7. Encyclopédie des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes au XXème siècle en douze volumes. Paris: Office Central d’Éditions et de Librairie. 1925. Facsimile rpt. New York and London Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977. – Vol. X. Stage Design, Photography and Film. “Exhibition of Stagecraft. Remarkable Display of Theatre Art Opens Today in New York – Most complete Collection of Advanced Models and Designs Every Assembled.” The Globe (Toronto). 27 February 1926: 18. “Expects New Trend in Decorative Arts. Member of Hoover Commission Thinks Paris Exposition Will Influence American Designs.” The New York Times. 16 August 1925: 26, col. 1. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs, Paris, 1925. Album souvenir. Paris: Etablissements Papeghin, 1925. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Section de l’ U.R.S.S. Académie des sciences de l’art. Catalogue des œuvres d’art décoratif et d’industrie artistique exposées dans le pavillon de l’U.R.S.S. au Grand Palais et dans les Galeries de l’Esplanade des Invalides. Paris, 1925. “Exposition Reveals New Theatre Ideas. Show Representing Sixteen Countries Has a Wide Range of Subjects.” The New York Times. 25 February 1926: 16.

Works Cited 261 Eyre, Lincoln. “Germany Depicts Theatre Revolution. Exhibition Showing Cross Section of Stage’s History Opens in Magdeburg. Purely Germanic in Scope.” The New York Times. 14 May 1927: 25. Farnum, Royal B. “Education.” Appendix F, 94–103. In Richards et al. Fénéon, Félix. “Que pensez-vous du … pavillon de Russie … Konstantin Stépanovitch Melnikoff.” Bulletin de la vie artistique 11 (1 June 1925): 231–3. Findling, John E. “Introduction,” xv–xix. In Findling, ed. – ed. Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851–1988. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990. Findling, John E., and Kimberly D. Pelle, eds. Encyclopedia of World’s Fairs and Expositions. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. – “Preface,” 5–6. In Findling and Pelle. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. “Policies of Spatial Appropriation,” 219–38. Translated by Michael Breslin and Saskya Iris Jain. In Fischer-Lichte and Wihstutz, eds. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, and Benjamin Wihstutz, eds. Performance and the Politics of Space. Theatre and Topology. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Forster-Hahn, Françoise. “The Politics of Display or the Display of Politics?” Art Bulletin 77 (1995): 174–9. “France puts one over on Broadway: The Eiffel Tower.” The New York Times. 2 August 1925: RP A5. Franck, Alphonse. “Vive la classe (25). Un à-propos en vers de M. Alphonse Franck [in pencil: Soir, 11 7 24].” In Receuil, vol. 2: 347. Fraval, Charles. “Le Théâtre de l’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs.” La Rampe (31 May 1925): 11. “French Minister Quits Scene of Red Protest. Cries of ‘Long Live Morocco’ Greet Him and Krassin at Soviet Building in Art Exposition.” The New York Times. 5 June 1925: 2. Fülöp-Miller, René. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. 1926. Rpt. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965. Gabriel, Gilbert W. “The Theatre Goes on Exhibition – and Has Just a Splendid Burial.” New York. 10 March 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Gelmar, Walter. “Die Deutsche Theater-Ausstellung Magdeburg 1927.” Das Theater 10 (15 March 1927): 15–18. “Genèse d’un exposition.” In Catalogue général officiel.

262  Works Cited Geppert, Alexander C.T. “True Copies: Time and Space Travels at British Imperial Exhibitions, 1880–1930,” 223–48. In Berghoff et al. Gersell, Georgiann. “Art Deco Architecture in Indianapolis: Origin and Meaning,” 9–20. In Grimes and Gesell. Gewirtz, Arthur, and James J. Kolb, eds. Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices. The Theatre of the 1920s Celebrates American Diversity. Westport: Praeger, 2003. The Gilder. 11 March 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Golan, Romy. Modernity and Nostalgia. Art and Politics in France between the Wars. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. – “Modes of Escape. The Representation of Paris in the Twenties,” 336–75. In Clair. “Goodbye Poor Actors? International Theatre Exposition Opens February 27 – Famous Artist Exhibitor Thinks Actors Useless – Another Prefers Flowers.” Brooklyn Eagle. 20 February 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Gough, Maria. “Model Spectacle,” 253–7. In Museum Tinguely. Le Grand négoce. Organe du Commerce du luxe français. L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs 1925. Numéro spécial. Préface d’Yvanhoë Rambosson. Avantpropos d’ Isy de Botton. Texte de Pierre Contreau. Paris: Vaugirard, 1926. Greenhalgh, Paul. Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988. – Fair World: A History of World’s Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai 1851–2010. Winterbourne, UK: Papadakis Distributors, 2011. Greenley, Howard. “The Great World Theatre.” Theatre Arts Monthly 10.8 (August 1926): 559–60. Grimes, Mary K. “The Place of Art Deco in Twentieth Century Design,” 4–8. In Grimes and Gersell. Grimes, Mary K., and Georgiann Gersell. The Impact of Art Deco: 1925–1940. April 20 through May 23, 1976. Exhibition and catalogue by Mary K. Grimes and Georgiann Gersell. The Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1976. Gronberg, Tag. “Cascades of Light: The 1925 Paris Exhibition as ville lumière.” Apollo. The International Magazine of the Arts (July 1995): 12–16. – Designs on Modernity: Exhibiting the City in 1920s Paris. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. – “Performing Modernism,” 113–48. In Modernism: Designing a New World. Edited by Christopher Wilk. London: V&A, 2006.

Works Cited 263 Guide Album de l’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris: L’édition moderne, 1925. Gurian, Elaine Heumann. “Noodling Around with Exhibition Opportunities,” 176–90. In Karp and Lavine. H[eap], J[ane]. “Machine-Age Exposition.” The Little Review (Spring 1925): 22–4. Held, R.L. Endless Innovations. Frederick Kiesler’s Theory and Scenic Design. 1977. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982. Rev. PhD thesis, Bowling Green State University. Hildy, Franklin J. Shakespeare at the Maddermarket. Nugent Monck and the Norwich Players. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986. Hillier, Bevis. “Art Deco Revisited,” 7–17. In Hillier and Escritt. Hillier, Bevis, and Stephen Escritt. Art Deco Style. London: Phaidon, 1997. Hollengreen, Laura, Celia Pearce, Rebecca Rouse, and Bobby Schweizer, eds. Meet Me at the Fair: A World’s Fair Reader. Halifax: ETC Press, 2014. e-book. Horowitz, Joseph. Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Hutchinson, Ben. Modernism and Style. Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. “Improving Wembley.” The Globe (Toronto). 2 March 1925. Microfilm. Innes, Christopher. “Modernism in Drama,” 130–56. In Levenson. International Theatre Exposition, New York, 1926. Organized by Friedrich Kiesler [and] Jane Heap. Under the auspices of the Theatre Guild Province-town Playhouse, Greenwich Village Theatre [and] Neighborhood Playhouse. 27 Feb. – 15 March, Steinway Building. “International Theater Show Far Exceeds Original Plans – From a Modest Little Exhibition the Event Has Grown Into the Most Extensive Showing of Modern Stagecraft Ever Held.” The New-York Tribune. Undated press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Jackson, Anna. Expo: International Expositions 1851–2010. London: V&A, 2010. Jackson, Kevin. Constellation of Genius. 1922: Modernism Year One. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. Jakle, John A. City Lights: Illuminating the American Night. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Janneau, Guillaume. L’Art décoratif moderne. Formes nouvelles et programmes nouveaux. Series: Enquêtes du Bulletin de la vie artistique. Paris: Bernheim Jeune, 1925.

264  Works Cited – “Introduction à L’Exposition des arts décoratifs. Considérations sur L’Esprit Moderne.” Art et décoration (Paris) 47 (April 1925): 129–76. – “L’Exposition.” Le Bulletin de la vie artistique 9 (1 May 1925): 185–8. Jones, Mark. “Preface,” 7. In Anna Jackson. Kachurin, Pamela. Making Modernism Soviet: The Russian Avant-Garde in the Early Soviet Era, 1918–1928. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2013. Kahn, Otto. “The American Stage: Reflections of an Amateur.” The Little Review (Winter 1926): 79–81. Kalliney, Peter J. Modernism in a Global Context. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Kamenev, L[ev]. B. “S.S.R. i Parizhskaia vystavka 1925g,” 5. In S.S.R. i Parizhskaia vystavka 1925g. Kameneva [Kameneff], O[lga] D[avidovna]. “L’Exposition de Paris doit aider à faire connaître l’U.R.S.S,” 9–14. L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S. Kaplan, Wendy. “‘The Filter of American Taste’: Design in the USA in the 1920s,” 334–43. In Benton et al. Karp, Ivan, and Steven D. Lavine, eds. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. – “Introduction: Museums and Multiculturalism,” 1–9. In Karp and Lavine. Kazovsky, Hillel (Gregory). “New York: From Bronx to Broadway,” 54–65. In Kovalenko and Kazovsky. – “Boris Aronson: ‘To organize the chaos of the modern age’. Kiev-MoscowBerlin-New York,” 31–41. In Kovalenko and Kazovsky. Kemenov, S.P. “Parizhskaia mezhdunarodnaia dekorativnaia vystavka.” Bakinskii rabochii (Baku) 154. 1476 (12 July 1925): 1. Kennedy, Dennis. Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance. 1993. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. Khazanova, V[igdariia] E[fraimovna]. Iz istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury 1917–1925 gg. Dokumenty i materialy. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSR, Institut istorii iskusstv, 1963. Kiesler, Frederick (Friedrich). Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display. New York: Brentano’s, 1930. – “Debacle of the Modern Theatre,” 14–24. International Theatre Exposition New York 1926. Organized by Friedrich Kiesler and Jane Heap. Friedrich J. Kiesler Papers. MoMA Queens. Box 35, b. “Kielser Waves Old Theatre Out And New One In. – Fourth Dimension Playhouse Created by Inventor of ‘Space-Stage,’ Arrives in Cubes and

Works Cited 265 Rhomboids – Shakespeare Tossed Out – Belasco, Cohan and Carroll, Ignorant of Their Demise, To Carry On for a While.” The World (New York). 16 May 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. King, Charles W. “Fashion adoption: A Rebuttal to the ‘Trickle-down’ Theory” 108–25. In Toward Scientific Marketing. Edited by S.A. Greyser. Chicago: American Marketing Association. 1963. – “Innovator in the Fashion Adoption Process,” 324–39. In Reflections on Progress in Marketing. Edited by L. George Smith. Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1964. King, Charles W., and Lawrence J. Ring. “The Dynamics of Style and Taste Adoption and Diffusion: Contributions from Fashion Theory.” Advances in Consumer Research 7 (1980): 13–16. Kleberg, Lars. Theatre as Action: Soviet Russian Avant-Garde Aesthetics. London: Macmillan, 1993. Knight, Donald R., and Alan D. Sabey. The Lion Roars at Wembley: The British Empire Exhibition 60th Anniversary 1924–1925. London: Barnard & Westwood Ltd., 1984. Kogan [Cogan], P.S. “O Parizhe i parizhskoi vystavke.” Iskusstvo trudiashchikh­ sia (Ekaterynoslav) 14 (January 1925): 5–6. – “Préface,” 5–7. L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S. – “Préface,” 11–14. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels mod­ ernes. Section de l’ U.R.S.S. Académie des sciences de l’art. Catalogue des œuvres d’art décoratif et d’industrie artistique exposées dans le pavillon de l’U.R.S.S. au Grand Palais et dans les Galeries de l’Esplanade des Invalides. Paris, 1925. Kolesnikov, Mikhail. “The Russian Avant-Garde and the Theatre of the Artist,” 85–95. In Baer. Kovalenko, Georgii (Georgi, Georgy). “Boris Aronson and Alexandra Exter,” 10–17. In Kovalenko and Kazovsky. – “The Constructivist Stage,” 145–55. In Baer. Kovalenko, Georgii, and Hillel Kazovsky, eds. Boris Aronson. Der Yidish Teater. Le Théâtre Yiddish. The Yiddish Theatre. Paris-Tel Aviv: Galerie Le Minotaure, 2013. Krusanov, Andrei. Russkii avangard. 2 vols. Vol. 2. Futuristicheskaia revoliutsiia 1917–1921. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozreniie, 2003. Ksandrov, V.N. [No title] 15. In S.S.S.R. i Parizhskaia vystavka 1925g. Kurbas, Les. “Do postanovky Makbeta v 4 maisterni M.O.B.” Bil’shovyk (Kyiv) 73.971 (1 April 1924): 6. – “Shliakhy i zavdannia Berezolia,” 623–30. In Les’ Kurbas: Filosofiia teatru. Edited by Mykola Labins’kyi. Kyiv: Osnova, 2001.

266  Works Cited Langner, Lawrence. Appendix E. “Class 25. Arts of the Theatre,” 89–93. In Richards et al. Latham, Sean, and Gayle Rogers. Modernism: Evolution of an Idea. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1993. Laver, James. “Foreword,” 5–7. In The Art of the Theatre: Contemporary Stage and Costume Design. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1938. Lavrentiev, Alexander N., ed. Aleksandr Rodchenko. Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings. Translated and annotated by Jamey Gambrell. Introduction (“Long Live Constructivism!”) by John E. Bowlt. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2005. Lazareff, Pierre. “Avant l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs. La relève dramatique” [in pencil: Le Soir 31 March 1925]. Press clipping. In Recueil, vol. 1: 33–4. – “Le Théâtre de l’Exposition. Ce qui dit M. Gaston Baty.” In Receuil,  vol. 1: 11. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. 1974. Translated by Donald NicholsonSmith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. – “Reflections on the Politics of Space,” 167–84. In State, Space, World. Selected Essays. 1970. Edited and translated by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Le Fèvre, Georges. “Architecture,” 3–12. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925. – “Les pavillons étrangers,” 13–17. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1925. Legrand-Chabrier [André Legrand]. “Les fêtes,” 136–8. Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes 1925. Edité par L’Art vivant. Léon, Paul. “Ce que sera l’Exposition. Son caractère et sa portée.” Les Annales politiques et littéraires 2182 (19 April 1925): 413–15. Leprun, Sylviane. “Le travail de la ville, illusions et performances,” 38–44. In Bacha. Lesieutre, Alain. The Spirit and Splendour of Art Deco. New York and London: Paddington Press Ltd., 1974. Levenson, Michael. “Introduction,” 1–8. In Levenson. – ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. 1999. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Works Cited 267 Lifar, Serge. “Reflections on the theme of theatre design by way of introduction,” 13–25. In Schouvaloff. Lissim, Simon. “Avant-propos.” In An Exhibition of the Decorative Arts in the French Theatre. New York: Museum of French Art. French Institute in the United States. New York: 1936. The Little Review. Winter 1926. Edited by Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson. New York, 1926. Lodder, Christina. Russian Constructivism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. – “Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich: A Creative Dialogue,” 243–6. In Museum Tinguely. Loscertales, Vicente González. “Foreword,” 1–3. In Findling and Pelle. Luckhurst, Kenneth W. The Story of Exhibitions. London and New York: The Studio Publications, 1951. Lukas, Scott A. “How the Theme Park Got Its Power: The World’s Fair as Cultural Form,” 395–407. In Hollengreen et al. Lunacharskii, Anatolii [Lunatcharsky, Anatole; also Lounatcharsky; commonly Lunacharsky, Anatoly]. “Développement d’art dans L’U.R.S.S.,” 15–21. In L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S. – In S.S.S.R. i Parizhskaia vystavka 1925g, 4. Macgowan, Kenneth. “Stagecraft Shows Its Newest Heresies. International Theatrical Exposition to Display Models of Constructivist and Cubist Scenery from Europe.” The New York Times. 14 February 1926: 9, 22. Magne, H[enri]-M[arcel]. “Ce que sera l’Exposition de 1925.” In Vue d’ensemble sur l’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris, Avril–Octobre 1925. Conférence faite le 18 Janvier 1925 au Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. Maine, Basil. “Foreword,” v–vii. In Maddermarket Mondays. Press articles dealing with the famous Norwich Players. Edited by Charles Rigby. Norwich: Roberts & Co., 1933. Malte, Rolf. Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917–1991. Translated by Cynthia Klohr. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Mansbach, Steven A. Visions of Totality: Laszlo Mohly-Nagy, Theo van Doesburg, and El Lissitzky. 1978. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980. Marke, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism:‘Little’ Magazines and Literary History. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Marlin, Georges. “M. Alphonse Franck nous dit ce que sera la classe du théâtre aux arts décoratifs.” [in pencil: Soir 28 4 25]. Press cutting. In Receuil, vol. 2: 378–9.

268  Works Cited Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. Alfred H. Barr Jr. Mission for the Modern. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989. Masey, Jack, and Conway Lloyd Morgan. Cold War Confrontations: US Exhibi­ tions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Műller, 2008. McAuley, Gaye. Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. McBride, Henry. “Art in the Theater Revealed in International Show Here. Exhibit of Models at the Steinway Building Full of Surprises Even for the Confirmed Broadwayite.” Undated press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. McCready, Susan. Staging France between the World Wars. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. Miller, Arthur I. Einstein, Picasso. Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc. New York: Basic Books, 2001 Miller, Christopher M., Shelby H. McIntyre, and Murali K. Mantrala. “Toward Formalizing Fashion Theory.” Journal of Marketing Research 30.2 (May 1993): 142–57. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. “Modern Stagecraft Exhibits Opens Saturday.” Sun (New York). 26 February 1926. Press clipping. Frederick J. Kiesler Collection I. Lillian and Friedrich Kiesler Foundation Archive. Vienna. Morrin, Peter P. “Introduction.” In Roman. Mourey, Gabriel. “L’Esprit de l’Exposition.” L’Amour de l’art 1 (February 1925): 292–311. Moussinac, Léon. “Rapport du Théâtre exposition 1925 soumis à Paul Léon, rapporteur général.” Bibliothèque nationale. Fonds Léon Moussinac 4o-COL 10/39 (28). Unpublished manuscript. Mudrak, Myroslava M. “From the Easel to the Stage Set: The Avant-garde Painter and the Theatre,” 16–43. In Mudrak and Rudenko. Mudrak, Myroslava M., and Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt. “Environments of Propaganda: Russian and Soviet Expositions and Pavilions in the West,” 63–101. In Roman and Marquardt. Mudrak, Myroslava M., and Tetiana Rudenko, eds. Staging the Ukrainian Avant-garde of the 1910s and 1920s. New York: The Ukrainian Museum, 2015. Museum Tinguely, ed. Tatlin. New Art for a New World. International Symposium. Basel: Museum Tinguely, 2012. Nikolskii, Viktor (Nicolsky, Victor; commonly Nikolsky, Victor). “La Russie – pays d’art décoratif,” 22–6. In L’Art décoratif et industriel de L’U.R.S.S.

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Works Cited 271 Rodchenko, Alexander (Aleksandr). Aleksandr Rodchenko. Experiments for the Future. Edited by Alexander Lavrentiev. – “Letters to and from Paris (1925). Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova.” Translated by Galina Varese, with Mike Weaver and Galina Tihanov. History of Photography 24.4 (Winter 2000): 317–32. Roman, Gail Harrison. When All the World Was a Stage. The J.B. Speed Art Museum (Louisville, Kentucky) September 12 – October 22, 1989. Introduction by Peter P. Morrin. – “When All the World Was a Stage: Russian Constructivist Theatre Design.” In Roman, When All the World. Roman, Gail Harrison, and Virginia Hagelstein Marquardt, eds. Avant-Garde Frontier: Russia Meets the West, 1910–1930. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. – “Introduction,” 1–11. In Roman and Marquardt. Russian Exposition of the Soviet Union. New York. February 1928. New York: [Exhibition Committee], 1928. Rydell, Robert W. All the World’s a Fair. Visions of Empire at American Inter­ national Expositions, 1876–1916. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984. – “Introduction,” 2–8. In Rydell, All the World’s a Fair. – “Foreword,” vii–viii. In Boisseau and Markwyn. – World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Rydell, Robert W., John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle. Fair America: World’s Fairs in the United States. Washington and New York: Smithsonian Books, 2000. – “Introduction,” 1–13. In Rydell, Findling, and Pelle. [Saddy, Pierre]. “Le Théâtre de L’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs 1925.” Melpomène 15 (February–March 1964). Unpaginated. Sarfatti, Margheriya G. “Art moderne et tradition en Italie,” 5–12. In L’Italie à l’Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes. Paris, 1925. Catalogue illustré. Edité par les soins du Commissariat Général de l’Italie. Scarlett, Frank, and Marjorie Townley. Arts Décoratifs 1925. A Personal Recollection of the Paris Exhibition. London: Academy Editions; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1975. Schädler, Linda. “Synthesis of the Arts. Tatlin’s Staging of Zangezi – a Total Work of Art?” 271–4. In Museum Tinguely. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century. 1983. Translated by Angela Davies. Berkeley and London: The University of California Press, 1988.

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276  Works Cited Zheltova, Elena L. “The Electrification of Soviet Russia: The Myth and Mystification of the Bolshevik Electrification Program, 1910–1928.” Trans­lated by Christine A. White. American Journal of Semiotics 12.1–4 (Summer 1995): 147–76. Zoshchenko, Mikhail. “Poverty” [1925], 141–3. Edited by Hugh McLean. Translated by Maria Gordon and Hugh McLean. New York: Pantheon Books, 1963.

Index

An italic f following a page reference indicates a figure. In subheadings the short title “New York Expo” refers to the International Theatre Exposition (New York, 1926); the short title “Paris Expo” refers to the Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925). abstraction and abstract space: and Constructivism, 160–1, 236n60; and progress, 147; in theatre ­design, 147–8, 158, 185, 197. See also space actorless theatre, 182 actors’ bodies: in Constructivist designs, 177, 181; as dynamic and expressive, 41, 116, 146; ­three-dimensionality of, 41, 115 advertising: for Citroën, 30, 31f, 41; for department stores, 195; for French luxury goods, 73, 75f, 212n5; for New York Expo (Exter’s Sandwich Man), plate 8; in New York Expo publications, 170, 173, 186, 251–2n4; at Paris Expo, 30, 73, 75f; in Soviet catalogue, 92; for world’s fairs, 15 Aelita, Queen of Mars (film), 149, 152f Aeschylus, 149 agitational propaganda, 50, 88, 99

agitational theatre, 149 Albright, Daniel, 20 Alexandre III bridge: boutiques on, 34, 36f, 42f, 43; lighting for, 38, 39f, 42f; location, 34; official opening, 87, 88f; view of Grand Palais from, 76f All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition (Moscow, 1923), 99, 103 Alma bridge (Paris), 34 Altman, Nathan, 180 Anderson, John, 170 Anderson, Margaret, 58 Anderson, Maxwell: Outside Looking In, 181 Ansky, S.: The Dybbuk, 173 Antoine, André: articles by, 246n3; on French theatre arts exhibits, 131, 153; on model Theatre, 128, 241–2n29; on Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 133, 134–5, 136, 137–9, 176 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 159

278 Index Appia, Adolphe, 41, 108, 157, 177, 240n20 applied arts. See decorative and applied arts April in Paris (Duke and Harburg), 58 Archipenko, Alexander, 91 Architectural League of America, 162 Architectural League of New York, 58, 102, 195 Argentina, 71, 77 Aristophanes, 149; Lysistrata, 95, 156, 157f, 158, 160, 164f, 173 Arkin (Arkine), David, 95, 97, 244n47 Arndt, Paul, 174 Aronson, Boris: and Exter, 159, 248– 9n16; Ukrainian background, 91, 192, 206; in US, 206, 208; designs: for mass festivals, 45; for shop widows, 206, 208; for Company (Sondheim), 209f; for Pacific Overtures (Prince and Sondheim), 208 Aronson, Lisa, 206 Arp, Hans, 60 Artaud, Antonin, 8, 190, 197–8 Art Deco: term, 28, 211n3; vs Art Moderne, 211n3; associated with luxury, elegance, and consumption, 6, 131, 195–6; associated with Paris Expo, 216n12, 235n54; Cubist motifs, 226n47; vs modernism, 6, 196, 226n47 Art Moderne, 196, 211n3 Arts and Crafts Movement, 66, 95 Arts of the Street (Paris Expo ­category), 17, 41, 108 Art Theatre of Moscow. See Moscow Art Theatre Arwas, Victor, 219n10

Association française d’exposition et d’échanges artistiques, 113 Astruc, Gabriel, 78, 225n45 Atkinson, J. Brooks, 180–1, 183, 189 Aucouturier, Michel, 146 Auric, Georges, 60 Australia, 71, 144, 224n39; Intercolonial Exhibit (Sydney, 1870), 110 Austria: representation at Paris Expo, 11, 57, 70, 167; theatre arts at Paris Expo, 142, 144, 163, 167; theatre arts in New York Expo, 167; theatre arts in other exhibitions, 197, 199. See also Vienna Bablet, Denis, 60 backdrops. See under stage designs “Back to Ostrovsky!” (slogan), 223n34 Baker, Josephine, 3, 58 Bakst, Leon, 77, 115 Ballets Russes: painted backdrops, 115, 136; premiere of Parade, 240n21; in prewar Paris, 51, 87, 225n44 Barr, Alfred H., Jr, 205 Barrès, Maurice, 69 Barrymore, John and Ethel, 170 Bashkoff, Tracy, 217n23 Basshe, Em Jo, 189 Baty, Gaston, 123, 129, 197, 245n49 Bebutov, V., 250n22 Belasco, David, 41 Belgium: Exposition d’art russe ancien et moderne (Brussels, 1928), 197; representation at New York Expo, 167; representation in Paris Expo, 11, 70, 144 Bell, John, 204 Benjamin, Walter, 216n13

Index 279 Bennett, Tony, 16, 136 Benois, Alexandre, 52, 115, 196 Berezil Theatre. See Kurbas, Les, and the Berezil Artistic Association Berger, Peter L., 213n16 Berghoff, Hartmut, 73 Berlin: First Russian Art Exhibition (1922), 206 Bernstein, Aline, 167, 170, 192 Bizet, George: Carmen, 173 Blanchart, Paul, 133, 134 Blau, Bella, 170 Der Blaue Reiter Exhibition (1911, Munich), 217n23 Blazwick, Iwona, 147 Blum, André, 124, 125 Boissy, Gabriel, 125, 138, 158, 245n48 Bolivia, 71 Bolshevik Party. See under USSR Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow), 47, 94, 145, 250n22 Bonfils, Robert, 29f Borras, Jaume, 125, 126 Bossom, Alfred C., 58 Bourdelle, Antoine, 57 Bourdieu, Pierre, 227n4 Bouvard, Roger, 71f Bowlt, John E., 145, 246n5 Boym, Svetlana, 144 Bradshaw, H.C., 100, 102 Brancusi, Constantin, 61 Braque, Georges, 159 Brazil, 71 Breton, André, 60, 61, 62 Brinton, Christian, 170 Britain: conservatism and insularity, 153, 220–1n20, 221n21; pageant tradition, 140, 247n8; relationship with France, 13, 67; representation

at New York Expo, 167; tourism, 73 – at Paris Expo: participation, 11, 70; pavilion location and opening, 38, 39f, 56, 102, 236n57; reports on, 32, 100, 135, 142, 151, 181, 224n40; space for exhibits, 144, 224n40, 234n48 – exhibitions: British Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924–5), 63–5, 110, 140, 199, 220–1n20, 221n21, 224n39; Great Exhibition (London, 1851), 11, 12, 13, 63, 66; Royal Society of Arts exhibitions, 12 Brodsky, Nina and Olga, 248–9n16 Brook, Peter, 205 Brunhammer, Yvonne, 215–16n11 Brussel, Robert, 113, 121, 125, 242n32 Bulgaria, 71 Bulliet, Clarence Joseph, 170 Bureau International des Expositions, 11, 15 Burliuk, David, 91 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (film), 189 Cage, John, 204 Calderón (Pedro Calderón de la Barca), 146, 149 Cambridge Festival Theatre, 142 Camoin, Félix, 125, 129 Campbell, Colin, 81 Canada: absence from Paris Expo, 71, 144, 224n39; representation at Wembley Exhibition, 224n39; responses to Constructivism and modernist art, 176, 252–3n10; Theatre Art: Contemporary Stage and Costume Designs (Ottawa, 1938), 197

280 Index Canadian National Exhibition (Toronto), 64, 220–1n20, 224n39 Carlson, Marvin, 6 Carnot, François, 69, 70, 221n24 Cartel des Gauches, 63, 71 Carter, Huntly, 62, 137 Cassandre (pseud. Adolphe JeanMarie Mouron), 216n12 Caute, David, 228n8 Chaikov, Yosif, 248–9n16 Chambers, Charles, 174 Charnesol, Georges, 128, 129, 134, 157–8, 159 Chavance, René, 196 Cheban, Alexander, 150 Chekrygin, Vasily, 248–9n16 Cheney, Sheldon, 61–2, 177–80, 182, 201, 210 Chéreau, Pierre, 78 Chesterton, G.K.: The Man Who Was Thursday, 51, 164f China: Chinese theatre, 116, 186; influenced by Paris Expo, 30, 211n3; representation at New York Expo, 167; representation at Paris Expo, 11, 70 Citroën, 30, 31, 41, 73 Claris, Edmond, 13, 30 Clark, Barrett W., 170 classical theatre traditions. See early or classical theatre Claudel, Paul: The Tidings Brought to Mary, 155, 250n22 Clouzot, Henri, 32, 82 Cocteau, Jean, 60, 131, 166, 240n21 Cogniat, Raymond, 196 Collector’s Pavilion, 82, 102 Colonial Exposition (Exposition coloniale internationale, Paris, 1931), 198

colonies and colonial exhibits, 18, 38, 110–11, 198, 234–5n51 Columbia, 11 Comédie-Française, 77, 127, 131 Communist Party. See under USSR Constructivism and Constructivist design: concept and terminology, 147–8, 236n60, 246n5; essential abstraction of, 160–1, 236n60; identified with the US, 178–9; in Melnikov’s Soviet pavilion, 104; moving platforms and thrust stages, 51, 147, 201; vs pictorialist (coloriste) approach, 136; in Soviet architecture course, 148–9; in Soviet theatre designs at New York Expo, 27, 174, 176–8, 180–1; in spectrum of “isms,” 151; in Tatlin’s Tower, 48–50, 51, 178, 236n60; US responses to, 27, 181–4, 201, 208, 252n7, 253n12. See also stage designs Contreau, Pierre, 19 Cooke, Catherine, 100, 104 Copeau, Jacques, 129, 142, 197, 244n47, 245n49 Copland, Aaron, 58 Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret): on 1925 as a turning point, 62–3; and Art Moderne, 211n3; on Expo architecture, 223n35; and Plumet, 84 – L’Esprit Nouveau (journal), 60, 61f – L’Ésprit Nouveau (pavilion). See Pavilion de l’Ésprit Nouveau – Plan voisin, 81 Cornell, Katharine, 170 costume designs: by Bakst for Fête du Thêatre et de la Parure, 115; for Cubist clowns, 77; by Exter for Ro­

Index 281 meo and Juliet, plates 5–6; for music hall mannequin, 80f; by Vesnin for Phaedra, 139f, 158, 159f Craig, Edward Gordon: as an innovator, 108, 123, 157, 177, 240n20, 247n8; use of marionettes, 185 Craven, Thomas, 186 Creange, Henry, 163–4 Crew, Spencer R., 16 Crommelynck, Fernand: Magnani­ mous Cuckold, 160, 161f, 250n22 crowd control, 17, 214n19 Cubism: and Art Deco, 226n47; in Soviet theatre designs, 77, 134, 161, 247n6; in spectrum of “isms,” 60, 98, 144, 151, 176 Cummings, E.E., 167, 189, 191 Cunard, Nancy, 166 Cunningham, Merce, 204 Czechoslovakia: Municipal Theatre, 125; representation at New York Expo, 167; representation at Paris Expo, 11, 57, 70, 144 Dadaism and Dadaists, 166–7, 176 Dana, John Cotton, 216n14 dance: at the Grand Palais, 77, 78f; at model Theatre, 127, 129f; by Nijinska, 159, plate 7 David, Fernand, 69, 118, 222n27 Davis, Robert, 16 Debussy, Claude, 51 decorative and applied arts: in earlier expositions, 12, 223n33; minor status of, 64, 66; at Paris Expo, 67, 193–4; Soviet folk art, 97, 100f Delaunay, Robert, 60, 84, 107 Della Coletta, Cristina, 15 Denmark, 11, 70 Dermée, Paul, 60

Deutsche Theater-Ausstellung (Magdeburg, 1927), 198–9, 255n7 Dezarrois, André, 240n20 Diaghilev, Sergei (Serge), 52, 87, 115 Dickerman, Leah, 104 Dimitriev, V., 250n22 Doesburg, Theo Van, 166 Dolfsma, Wilfred, 84, 87, 186, 227n4, 229n17 Dos Passos, John, 189 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 87 Doumergue, Gaston, 55, 63, 236–7n61 Drésa, Jacques, 114 Dufrêne, Maurice, 42f, 43 Duhamel, Georges, 107 Duke, Vernon (born Vladimir Dukelsky), 166, 203; April in Paris, 28, 58 Dullin, Charles, 88, 197 early or classical theatre: links with avant-garde, 146–7; modern approaches to, 52, 116, 119, 121–2, 154, 155–9; in Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 149–51. See also individual authors Ecuador, 71 education (at world’s fairs), 8, 13–14 Efros (Efross), Abram, 52, 53, 95, 98 Eiffel Tower (Paris): built for 1889 Exposition, 17, 28; compared to Tatlin’s Tower, 99, 145; electric lighting on, 28, 31f, 39, 40, 41, 73 Einstein, Albert, 59, 115 Eisenstein, Sergei, 91 electricity and electric lighting: for advertising, 40, 41, 43; for Bolshevik mass festivals, 46; design by Exter, plate 4; for displays

282 Index and exhibits, 81; for the Eiffel Tower, 28, 30, 31f, 41, 73; for the Grand Palais, 77; Lenin’s electrification campaign, 43–4; for a Liberty Bell replica, 41, 221n23; in model ­Theatre, 121, 123f; for the Paris Expo site, 23, 36, 37–41, 42f, plate 1; in Soviet cities, 23; for theatres, 41, 77, 114, 215n2, 217n20 Elgar, Edward, 110 Eliot, T.S., 166 Elizabethan theatre: Maddermarket productions, 140–2; scenic nakedness, 186; thrust stage, 119, 141, 154 Emerson, John, 170 England. See Britain English Players, 126, 156f Epstein, Mark, 159, 248–9n16 Erdman, Boris, 156 Erté (Romain de Tirtoff), 196 Escritt, Stephen, 234n48 L’Esprit Nouveau (journal), 60, 61f L’Esprit Nouveau (pavilion). See Pavilion de l’Ésprit Nouveau Estonia, 71 Evreinov, Nikolai, 45, 51 exhibitionary complex, 16, 136 Exhibition of Soviet Art (London, 1929), 197 Exhibition of the Decorative Arts in the French Theatre (New York, 1936), 196, 197 Experimental Heroic Theatre, 156 Exposition coloniale internationale (Colonial Exposition, Paris, 1931), 198 Exposition d’art russe ancien et moderne (Brussels, 1928), 197

Exposition des arts au théâtre (Paris, 1925), 196, 249n18 expositions (expos). See world’s fairs and expositions Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1855), 12, 110 Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1889), 28 Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1900): colonial exhibits at, 111; compared to Paris Expo (1925), 216nn15–16; Eiffel Tower illuminated for, 215n4; films at, 109; Grand Palais built for, 34, 74, 87 Expressionism, 60, 151, 176, 180, 189, 197 Exter, Alexandra: circle, studio, and influence of, 91, 159, 180, 196, 206, 248–9n16; works at Paris Expo, 26, 149, 158; Sandwich Man (marionette), plate 8; theatre designs: for Aelita, Queen of Mars (film), 149, 152f; for lighting, plate 4; for Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 138f, 158, 160, plates 5–6 Eyre, Lincoln, 199 Faragoh, Francis Edwards, 189 Farnum, Royal B., 148–9 fashion and couture: fashion theory, 9–11; in French theatre arts exhibits and performances, 77–81, 80f, 130–1, 132f; influenced by Paris Expo, 195; model of fashion diffusion, 10–11, 27, 201–2; theatre linked with, 77–8, 109 Federal Theatre Project, 204 Fedorovsky, Fyodor, 155; design for Lohengrin (Wagner), 250n22

Index 283 Ferdinandov, Boris, 156 Fête de Provinces Françaises (1925), 225–6n46 Fête du Thêatre et de la Parure (La Nuit du Grand-Palais, 16 June 1925), 77–82, 110, 115, 125, 131. See also pageants and pageant theatre film: French/Art Deco influence on, 131, 195–6; German Expressionism in, 189; in modernist theatre productions, 191; at the New York Expo, 173; at Paris Expo, 108, 109; for promoting expositions, 213n15; Aelita, Queen of Mars, 138f, 149, 152f; The Cabinet of Dr. Cali­ gari, 189 Findling, John, 91, 224n39 Finland, 11, 70 First Russian Art Exhibition (Berlin, 1922), 206 First World War: and experience of modernism, 19, 203, 252–3n10; France’s recovery from, 24, 63, 66; and new modernist spirit, 3, 60; Paris Expo postponed for, 69 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 247n8 Fitzgerald, Eleanor, 170 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 58 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 87 Fleming, Sandford, 59 Flora, Paul, 107 Fokine, Michel, 52 folk (peasant) or regional arts and crafts: in French exhibits and performances, 143, 244n46; as response to modernism, 138–9, 143; in Soviet exhibits, 97, 98, 99 Fontanella, Megan M., 217n23

Fontanne, Lynn, 170 Forster-Hahn, Françoise, 88 Foucault, Michel, 7 fountains and water displays, 34, 37, 38, 39f, 40f, plate 1 fourth wall (concept), 111, 116, 199 Fradkina, Elena, 248–9n16 France: Cartel des Gauches, 63, 71; Cartel of directors, 197; centre for elegance and luxury goods, 82, 109, 195–6; Communist Party in, 63, 112, 236n58; economic agenda for Paris Expo, 63, 64, 73, 92; relationship with Britain, 13, 67; relationship with Germany, 63, 67, 71–2, 114, 229n18; relationship with Russia/USSR, 63, 72, 87–8, 95, 228n8; representation at New York Expo, 167. See also French pavilions and exhibits France, Anatole (“Nozière”), 130 Franck, Alphonse, 130, 131 Fraval, Charles, 118, 244n47 French department stores, 82 French pavilions and exhibits (at Paris Expo): colonial pavilions, 38, 234–5n51; luxury and elegance featured in, 6, 82, 195–6; modernist panneaux removed from, 84; opening of, 56; theatre arts exhibits, 130–3, 137, 143, 144; Collector’s Pavilion, 82, 102; Galeries Lafayette pavilion, 103f; Pavilion of the City of Paris, 71f; Pavilion of Tourism, 73 Freud, Sigmund, 59, 115 frontier theory, 213n14 Fuchs, Georg, 116, 117, 240n20 Fuerst, Walter-René, 133

284 Index Fuller, Loïe, 77, 127 Fülöp-Miller, René, 51 Futurism: and optophonics, 252n9; in Soviet theatre design, 151, 162, 174, 177; in spectrum of “isms,” 60, 176; futurist artists and ­writers: Khlebnikov, 50; Prampolini, 163; Vladimir Baranoff Rossiné, 252n9 Galeries Lafayette pavilion, 103f Gamrekeli, Irakly, 146 Gauguin, Paul, 95 Geddes, Norman Bel, 77, 204 Gémier, Firmin, 125 Genke, Nina and Margarita, 248–9n16 Georgia, 145 Gering, Marion, 252n7 Germany: absence from Paris Expo, 70, 71, 135, 144, 198, 212n6; Expressionist art and theatre, 180, 189, 197; Moscow State Jewish Theatre in, 253n14; relationship with France, 63, 67, 71–2, 114; representation at New York Expo, 167; exhibitions: Deutsche Theater-Ausstellung (Magdeburg, 1927), 198–9, 255n7; First Russian Art Exhibition (Berlin, 1922), 206 Gilmore, Frank, 170 Gleizes, Albert, 107, 233n45 Globe Theatre (London), 120 Golan, Romy, 143, 227n5, 244n46 Gold, Michael, 189; Hoboken Blues, 253n12; Strike!, 190 Goncharova, Natalia, 52, 115 Gordon, Leon: White Cargo, 156f Gorelik, Mordecai, 190, 204 Gozzi, Carlo, 149

Grand Palais, 33; photograph, 76f; construction for 1900 Exposition, 34, 74, 87; electric lighting, 77; Expo inauguration in, 55, 220n17; Letrosne staircase, 76, 78f, 125, 126f, 135f, 220n17; Paris Expo site anchored by, 3, 33, 34, 36f, 73, 74, plate 2; renovations for, 76; Salle des Fêtes, 76; Soviet exhibition space in, 99; theatrical use of, 125, 220n17 Granet, André, 25, 118, 120f, 122 Granovsky, Alexei, 51, 158, 180 Granville Barker, Harley, 247n8 Gray, Terence, 142 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (London, 1851), 11, 12, 13, 63 Great War. See First World War Greece, 11, 70 Green, Paul: The Man on the House (Shroud My Body Down), 191; Supper for the Dead, 191; Tread the Green Grass, 191 Greenhalgh, Paul, 12, 18, 213n14 Greenley, Howard, 183 Greenwich Village Theatre (New York), 167 Greet, Ben, 126 Grimes, Mary K., 211n3 Gronberg, Tag, 81, 226n47, 237–8n2 Guatemala, 71 Guggenheim, Peggy, 173 Guilleré, René, 32, 66–7 Gurian, Elaine Heumann, 16 Haran, Barnaby, 224–5n41 Harburg, Edgar “Yip,” 58 Haroun, Nell, 78f Heap, Jane: editorship of The Little Review, 26, 166, 170, 184–5,

Index 285 187, 202; later career, 204–5; on machines, 62; at Paris Expo, 58, 166–7; role in New York Expo, 26, 169f, 170, 173, 176f, 187, 251n2 Held, R.L., 185 Hemingway, Ernest, 58, 166 Hentea, Marius, 220n16 Herriot, Édouard, 63, 72 Herrmann, Max, 6 heterotopian space, 7 Hildy, Franklin J., 141 Hillier, Bevis, 234n48 Holmes, Frank Graham, 163 Hood, Raymond, 102 Hoover, Herbert, 58, 162, 219n10 Hungary, 167 Hunziker, Gerold and Werner, 133 Hutchinson, Ben, 20 Ibsen, Henrik, 174; John Gabriel Bork­ man, 181; The Master Builder, 181 industry and industrial arts: and Constructivism, 236n60; industrial exhibitions, 13–14; Paris Expo focus on, 5, 33, 68, 83–4, 96–7, 194 Innes, Christopher, 21 Intercolonial Exhibit (Sydney, Australia, 1870), 110 International Congress for the Determination and Defence of the Modern Spirit (proposed for 1922), 60–1 Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (Vienna, 1924), 167, 245n48 International Exhibition of Modern Art (Armory Show, New York, 1913), 182, 252n8 International Film Arts Guild, 173

internationalism: vs nationalism or regionalism, 144–5, 244n46; and Soviet revolutionary aims, 98–9 International Theatre Exposition (New York, 1926), 26–7, 167–92; displays at, 179f, 184f; advertisement and poster for, 172f, plate 8; attendance, 186–7; catalogue and Little Review issue on, 168–9, 170, 171f, 186, 188f, 251–2n4; committees for, 170; compared to Paris Expo, 202; critical reception of, 167–8, 174, 176–89; film screenings, 173; influence and impact of, 187, 189–92; nations represented in, 167; range of exhibits in, 173; related activities, 170; Soviet designs in, 4, 174, 176–80, 176f, 187, 188f; US designs in, 167, 188f, 251n3. See also United States of America Italianate stage designs, 117, 118, 121, 136 Italy: decorative arts exhibitions, 66, 223n33; pavilion and exhibits, 38, 102, 116, 135, 144, 163, 212–13n11; representation at New York Expo, 167; representation at Paris Expo, 11, 70; and the USSR, 85, 228n12; Venetian show, 225–6n46 Izba Reading Room, 99 Jackson, Anna, 14, 15, 34 Jackson, Frederick, 213n14 Jacques-Dalcroze, Émile, 124 Janneau, Guillaume, 56, 115, 122, 223n35 Japan, 11, 56, 70, 167 Jardins de la Manufacture de Sèvres, 57f

286 Index Jazz Moderne, 196 Jones, Mark, 18 Jones, Robert Edmond, 167, 192, 252n7 “La Journée des pauvres” (The Day of the Poor), 3 Jouvet, Louis, 197 Joyce, James, 166 Kahn, Otto, 170, 189, 193, 199, 200, 203 Kaiser, Georg: Gas, 189, 190f, 252n7 Kalliney, Peter J., 20–1 Kamenev, Lev, 86, 229n14 Kameneva [Kameneff], Olga, 86, 89, 223n34, 228n10 Kamerny Theatre. See Tairov, Alexander, and the Kamerny Theatre Kaplan, Wendy, 219n10 Kemenov, S.P., 107 Kennedy, Dennis, 142, 158, 218n31 Kern, Stephen, 60 Kerzhentsev, Platon, 53 Khlebnikov, Velimir: Zangezi, 50 Kiesler, Friedrich (Frederick): photographs, 168–9f, 176f; early career, 251n2; modernist ideas and projects, 178–9, 182, 183–5, 204–5, 252n9; modular display supports, 169f, 173–4; role in New York Expo, 26, 166, 167, 169, 169f, 180, 251–2n4; window displays, 205; work at Paris Expo, 163 Kiev (Kyiv): Aronson’s background in, 91, 192, 206; avant-garde arts and artists in, 91, 203; Exter’s circle and studio in, 159, 206, 248–9n16; Kiev City Theatre, 206; Lifar’s background in, 114;

Lunacharsky’s background in, 87; Yiddish Theatre of Ukraine, 145. See also Ukraine King, Charles W., 9, 165 King, Ross, 252–3n10 Kleberg, Lars, 52 Kogan, Petr Semenovich: on Paris, 103, 107; on Soviet contribution to Paris Expo, 95–7; and Soviet pavilion, 57, 102–3, 231n30; Stalinist criticism of, 231n30 Konody, Paul, 252–3n10 Korte, Barbara, 73 Kott, Jan, 155 Kovalenko, Georgy, 160 Kovzhun, Pavlo, 248–9n16 Kozintsev, Grigory, 91, 159, 248–9n16 Kozintsev, Liubov, 248–9n16 Krasin, Leonid, 236–7n61 Ksandrov, V.N., 88 Kurbas, Les, and the Berezil Artistic Association (Berezil Theatre, Kharkiv): on the classics, 155; independent experimental work, 51, 177, 247–8n13; representation at Paris Expo, 145, 228n9, 248n15; representation in New York Expo, 187; and Scriabin, 252n9; travel restrictions for, 228n9, 255n7; productions: Gas (Kaiser), 189, 190f, 252n7; Jimmie Higgins (Sinclair), 191f; Macbeth (Shakespeare), 191, 249n17; Secretary of the Labour Union, 57, 145, 147f, 158, 164f, 176f Laban, Rudolph, 127 Langner, Lawrence, 162–3, 170 Lanseré, Yevgeny (Eugene Lanceray), 149

Index 287 Lanskoy, André, 248–9n16 Lanvin, Jeanne, 130, 132f Lasky, Roberta Lynne, 253n13 Latham, Sean, 19, 20 Latour, Bruno, 140 Latvia, 11, 70, 144, 167 Laurens, Henri, 107 Laver, James, 197 Lawson, John Howard, 189–90; Loud Speaker, 190; Nirvana, 181 Lazareff, Pierre, 112 Leclanche-Boule, Claude, 232–3n43 Lefebvre, Henri: on revolution and new space, 4, 70; spatial concepts and terminology, 8, 34, 38, 41, 47, 70; on trial by space, 139–40 Le Fèvre, Georges, 225n43, 233n44, 234n48 Le Gallienne, Eva, 170 Léger, Fernand: and Exter, 159; modernist panneaux by, 84; and “Modern Spirit” congress, 60; on performances at model Theatre, 129, 244n47; at Soviet theatre exhibit, 107 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov): conservative views on art, 149, 217n26, 223n34; electrification campaign, 43–4; images of in Soviet exhibits, 105, 149; “Monumental Propaganda” plan, 44; visits to Paris, 87 Leningrad: theatre arts in, 94, 144–5, 247–8n13 Leningrad Academic Theatre of Drama, 145, 149 Leningrad Theatre of Young Spectators, 145 Léon, Paul, 222n25 Leprun, Sylviane, 16–17

Lesieutre, Alain, 226n47 Leśniakowska, Marta, 216–17n17 Letrosne, Charles, 76, 78f, 125, 126f Levenson, Michael, 19 Levin, Moisei: design for The Fall of Elena Ley, 160 Lewisohn, Irene, 170 Libakov, Mikhail: designs for Ham­ let, 149, 150f Lifar, Serge, 91, 114 lighting. See electricity and electric lighting Lipchitz, Jacques, 107 Lissim, Simon: and Exter, 159, 206, 248–9n16; on modern theatre arts, 196; in US, 206; works in Paris Expo, 133, 159; design for Hamlet, 206, 207f El Lissitzky (Lazar Markovich Lissitzky), 206, 236n60 Lithuania, 11, 70 The Little Review: Heap’s editorship of, 26, 166, 202; issue on New York Expo, 168–70, 171f, 188f, 202 “Living Newspapers,” 204 Livshits, Benedikt, 159 Lope de Vega, 149 Lozowick, Louis, 192 Luckmann, Thomas, 213n16 Lukas, Scott A., 15–16 Lumière, Auguste and Louis, 109 Lunacharsky, Anatoly: background and career, 87; and Jane Heap, 166; role in Soviet exhibits and pavilion, 86, 87, 93–5, 226–7n1; on Soviet civilization, 83, 93; views on art and theatre, 87, 97–8, 149, 223n34, 230n26 Lunt, Alfred, 170 Luxembourg, 11, 70

288 Index Macgowan, Helen, 170 Macgowan, Kenneth: on new stagecraft and Constructivist design, 176–7, 180, 204, 252n7; role in New York Expo, 167, 170 Machiavelli, Niccolò: Mandragora, 126 Machine Exposition (New York, 1927), 205, 255n8 machines: and actorless theatre, 182; and Constructivism, 178; links with art and creativity, 32–3, 67, 97, 162, 194, 200, 216n14, 249– 50n21; machine for agitation, 99; machine for living (Le Corbusier’s pavilion), 60, 99, 223n35; model Theatre as a machine-age expression, 178; and new modernist spirit, 62, 148; in Soviet revolutionary propaganda, 44, 48, 54, 97, 218n31; and Soviet stage design, 136, 148; stage ­machinery, 114–15 Maddermarket Theatre (Norwich, England), 26, 140–2; Hamlet, 143f; The Taming of the Shrew, 141f Magne, Henri-Marcel, 30, 67, 193 Maine, Basil, 142 Malevich, Kazimir, 91 Mallet-Stevens, Robert, 73 Malraux, André, 61 Maly Theatre (Moscow), 94, 145, 149 Man Ray, 58, 61, 166 Mantrala, Murali K., 9, 95 Mardzhanov, Konstantin (Kote Marjanishvili): production of Hamlet, 146f; work in Georgia, 145, 146f Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 60, 159 Marlin, George, 130 Masey, Jack, 18 Massis, Henri, 144

Matthews, Brander, 6 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 226–7n1 McAuley, Gay, 7 McCready, Susan, 197 McIntyre, Shelby H., 9, 95 Mechanical Theatre, 176 Mechanics Institutes, 12 Medgyès, Ladislas (Laszlo), 133, 196 Meiningen Ensemble, 114 Meller, Vadym: and Exter, 91, 159, 259n16; works at New York Expo, 180; works at Paris Expo, 26, 57; Mask (choreographic sketch), plate 7; designs: for Gas (Kaiser), 189, 190f; for Jimmie Higgins (Sinclair), 191f; for Secretary of the Labour Union (Berezil Theatre), 57, 145–6, 147f, 158, 164f, 176f Melnikov, Konstantin: design for “Makhorka” (tobacco) pavilion, 103; design for Soviet kiosks, 92; design for Soviet pavilion, 25, 99– 106, 118, 226–7n1, 234n49; Stalinist criticism of, 229n19, 235n52 Mérimée, Prosper: Carmen, 173 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): industrial art exhibition, 195; modern art held by, 216n14, 249–50n21, 252–3n10; representatives at Paris Expo, 162 Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (New York), 166, 205 Meyerhold, Vsevolod: and Lawson, 190; and new theatre aspirations, 51, 111, 123, 177; and Soviet concept of the machine, 218n31; and Theatre of the Revolution, 95, 145; work in New York Expo, 187; work in Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 164f; productions: Les

Index 289 Aubes (Verhaeren), 250n22; The Forest (Ostrovsky), 156; Magnani­ mous Cuckold (Crommelynck), 160, 161f, 250n22; La Mort de Tarielkine (Soukhovo-Kolybin), 250n22 Meyerhold Theatre, 145, 250n22, 252n9 Mielziner, Jo, 192 Milan, 66, 197 Miller, Arthur I., 59 Miller, Christopher M., 9, 95 Miller, Henry, 58 Mintchine, Abraham, 248–9n16 Mitchell, W.J.T, 92 model theatre. See Theatre (model Theatre) of Paris Expo modernism: term and definitions, 19–20, 214n21, 220n16, 227n4; anxiety or discomfort with, 69, 70, 81–2, 227n5; and Art Deco, 6, 196, 226n47; First World War linked with, 252–3n10; North American responses to, 181–2, 201–10, 252–3n10; Paris Expo focus on, 19–22, 30–3, 53–4, 193–6; theatrical modernism, 8, 19–22, 27, 189–92, 208–10; and traditional vs modern tensions, 81–2, 140–2; as two distinct styles, 20 modernist display supports, 169f, 173–4 modernist spirit (new spirit, new distinctive style), 3, 59–63 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 122, 127, 146, 149, 199 Monaco, 70 Monck, W. Nugent, 140–2 Morgan, Conway Lloyd, 18 Morrin, Peter, 167 Morris, William, 66, 95, 220–1n20

Moscow: mass festivals, 23, 47; representation in Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 94, 144–5 Moscow Art Musical Studio (Moscow Art Musical Theatre), 156, 173, 187 Moscow Art Theatre, 94, 98, 145, 149, 150; First Studio/Second Art Theatre, 95; Musical Studio, 95, 145; Second Studio, 145, 149, 150 Moscow Children’s Theatre, 145 Moscow State Jewish Theatre (GOSET), 145, 158, 253n14 Moss, Paul, 170 Mostra del Libro (Florence, 1923), 228n12 Mostra internazionale delle Arti Decorative (Milan, 1927), 196–7 Mourey, Gabriel, 122, 223n35 Moussinac, Léon: and the artistic revolution, 112; on the avant-garde, 113; on the Ballet Russes, 115; on French theatre arts, 117, 131, 133; on performances at model Theatre, 129 museums, 16–17 Nadezhda, Khazina (Mandelstam), 248–9n16 Neighborhood Playhouse (New York), 167 Netherlands, 11, 57, 70, 167 Neufchâteau, François de, 12 New Playwrights Theatre (New York), 189–90, 253n13 new spirit. See modernist spirit New York Exposition (1926). See International Theatre Exposition New York World’s Fair (1939), 204 Nijinska, Bronislava, 52, 123–4, 159, plate 7

290 Index Nijinsky, Vaslav, 52 Nikolsky, Viktor, 97 Nikritin, Solomon, 248–9n16 Nivinsky, Ignaty, 159 Norway, 71 nostalgia (passéisme), 25, 138–9, 140, 144, 146, 201 Notre-Dame du Raincy (Perret, 1928), 118 Nye, David E., 40 Oenslager, Donald, 192 old–new dynamic, 83, 89–90, 92–5, 122 Olympic Games, 13, 110, 212–13n11, 214n20, 222n28 O’Neill, Eugene, 181, 189, 252n7; De­ sire under the Elms, 177; The Great God Brown, 173 Opéra (Paris Opéra), 114, 131, 217n20, 243n41 optophonics, 185, 252n9 Optophon Theatre, 185 Orage, Alfred Richard, 202, 204 Ostrovsky, Alexander: The Forest, 156 Oulmont, Charles, 249n18 Ozenfant, Amédée, 60, 155 pageants and pageant theatre: in Britain, 110, 140, 247n8; Kerzhentsev influenced by, 53; at Paris Expo, 24, 78, 81, 82, 115, 225–6n46; in the US, 218n28; at world’s fairs, 110–11. See also Fête du Thêatre et de la Parure Palestine, 71 Palmier, Jean-Michel, 229n18 Panama-Pacific International Exposition (San Diego, 1916), 213n15

Paris: artistic and intellectual émigrés in, 58; identified with new modernist spirit, 61; Russian intelligensia in, 87; theatricalization of, 23, 37–41, 116; tourists and tourism in, 43, 73 Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925) – background and planning: construction, 69–70; countries participating in, 11, 70–1; delegates and representatives at, 55–6; exhibit categories and classes, 41; goals and proposals, 63, 64, 66–70, 73, 92; lack of permanent architectural marker, 70; opening, 55–8, 64, 76, 220n17, 236n57; postponement, 69; as a symbolic postwar turning point, 24; title of, 69; and world’s fair origins, 12–15 – catalogues and guides, 67, 70, 72–4, 75f, 248n15; poster (R. Bonfils), 29f; Catalogue général officiel, 67, 68f; Encyclopédie, 5, 72, 77, 78–80f, 109, 227n5, 250n22; Guide de l’Exposition, 67, 70, 118–19 – location, 33–43; map and plans, 35f, 42f, plate 2; photographs, 36–7f, 39–40f, 42f, 74f, plate 1; and central Paris, 8, 23, 33–4, 69–70, 73–4; fountains, 34, 37, 38; lighting, 23, 34, 36, 37–41; representational spaces (affective kernels), 8, 38; theatricalization of Paris, 23, 37–41, 116. See also specific build­ ings and pavilions – overall impact: final day (8 Nov. 1925), 3; influence, 3–6, 193–6; internationalism, 70–2; modern-

Index 291 ist focus, 19–22, 30–3, 193–6; as a renaissance, 3, 13, 24, 32, 194; traditional vs modern tensions, 81–2, 140–2; unique aspects of, 4; as a watershed, 215–16n11; as a world’s fair, 11 Pascaud, Jean, and La Maison Pascaud, 80f, 131 Paul, Francis, 193 Paul, Noel, 140 Paulham, Jean, 60 Pavilion de l’Ésprit Nouveau (Le Corbusier): photograph, 85f; compared to model Theatre, 118; compared to Soviet pavilion, 99, 104; critical reception, 84, 223n35, 233–4n47; location, 38; as a machine for living, 60, 99, 223n35 Pavilion of the City of Paris, 71f Pavilion of Tourism, 73 Pavlov, K.A., 229n19 Pei, I.M., 214n19 Penrose, A.P.D.: on British stage design, 142, 247n8; on Maddermarket designs, 142; on new approach to classics, 154, 155–7; on Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 153–5, 164–5 Perret, Auguste G.: expertise on acoustics, 242n35; designs: for model Theatre, 25, 118–22; for Notre-Dame du Raincy, 118; for Theatre of the Champs-Elysées, 227n5. See also Theatre (model Theatre) of Paris Expo Perret, Gustave, 25 Peru, 71 Petit Palais, 33–4 Petrograd, 23, 43, 45–6, 47 Petrograd Academic Theatre of Drama, 151f

Petrytsky, Anatoly, 159, 180, 259n16 Picabia, Francis, 107 Picasso, Pablo, 52, 107, 159, 180, 240n21 Piot, Michel-Joseph (Pierre Scize), 108 Piot, René, 77 Pirandello, Luigi, 123 Piscator, Erwin, 190 Pitoëff, Georges, 197 Planck, Max, 59 Plumet, Charles, 84 Poel, William, 140 Poiret, Paul, 78, 130 Poland, 11, 70, 124, 167, 197 Popova, Liubov: design for Mag­ nanimous Cuckold (Crommelynck), 160, 161f, 250n22; works at Paris Expo, 26 Porte d’Honneur (Paris), 36, 38, 74 Porter, Cole, 58 Portugal, 71 Post-Impressionism, 60 postmodernism, 227n4 Prampolini, Enrico, 163, 182, 184, 185, 204 Pratt, Mary Louise, 22 Prince, Harold: Pacific Overtures, 208 promenade theatres, 17 propaganda: agitational, 50, 88, 99; “Monumental,” 44; on trains and trams, 45, 46f; at world’s fairs, 13–14 Protazanov, Yakov, 152 Provincetown Players/Playhouse (New York), 167, 191 Punin, Nikolai, 48, 50 Rabichev, Isaak, 248–9n16 Rabinovich, Isaak: and Exter, 159, 206, 248–9n16; representation at

292 Index New York Expo, 173, 180; representation at Paris Expo, 26, 163, 173; Ukrainian background, 91; designs: for Lysistrata, 156, 157f, 158, 160, 164f, 173; for Soviet exhibit installations, 144, 235n55 Racine, Jean, 122, 149; Phaedra, 137, 139f, 158, 159f, 240n22, 247n6 Radlov, Sergei, 51, 160 Rambosson, Yvanhoë: on British pavilion, 234n48; on French decorative arts, 3, 32, 56, 66, 67, 69, 194; on invitation to Germany, 229n18; on invitation to USSR, 88; on lighting for model Theatre, 242n36; on realism, 116–17; on Soviet pavilion, 100, 102 Rasmussen, Anne, 13 Rasula, Jed, 59, 220n14 Read, Helen Appleton: on Expo site, 36–7; on mode, 237–8n2; on modern design and decorative art, 30, 56, 194; on US absence from Paris Expo, 219n10, 224n39 Redko, Klyment, 159, 248–9n16 regional arts and traditions. See folk (peasant) or regional arts and crafts Reinach, Joseph, 69 Reinhardt, Max, 125, 147, 177, 180, 240n20; The Miracle, 173 representational space, 8 revolution: analogy with theatre, 51, 52, 197–8; artistic and political, 6; and new space, 4, 70; vs restoration, 144; vs tradition, 140 Revue nègre, 3, 58 revues, 78–9, 82 Reynolds, Florence, 166, 251n2 Rice, Elmer, 189

Rich, Frank, 206, 208 Richards, Charles R., 163, 195 Rigaud, André, 36, 38, 40, 217n19, 235n53 Rigby, Charles, 142 Ring, Lawrence J., 165 Robinson, Edward G., 170 Rodchenko, Alexander: and Constructivism, 236n60; on Soviet exhibits, 236n58; on Soviet pavilion opening, 236–7n61; on Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 106–7; designs: for Soviet catalogue covers, 90f, plate 3; for Soviet exhibit installations, 144; for Workers’ Club, 99, 104, 106 Rogers, Gayle, 19, 20 Roggen, Berthe, 127, 129f Rolland, Romain, 53 Rome, 66 Ronsay, Jeanne, 77, 78f, 126 Rossiné, Vladimir Baranoff, 252n9 Rouché, Jacques, 243n41 Rubenstein, Ida, 77 Ruskin, John, 66 Russia (pre-1917), 87–8 Russian Exposition of the Soviet Union (New York, 1928), 200–1 Rustaveli Theatre (Tbilisi), 146 Ryback, Isaachar, 159, 248–9n16 Rydell, Robert W., 5, 15, 111, 213n16 Sakharoff, Alexandre and Clotilde, 127 Sarfatti, Margheriya G., 212–13n11, 219n5 Satie, Erik: Parade, 240n21 Sayler, Oliver, 170 Scarlett, Frank: on Grand Palais, 76; on impact of Paris Expo, 194,

Index 293 215–16n11; on Paris Expo spaces, 38; on Soviet pavilion, 234n49; on Wembley, 220–1n20 Schädler, Linda, 50 Schiller, Friedrich, 149 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 40 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 117 Schouvaloff, Alexander, 78–9, 215n2 Schroeder-Gudehus, Brigitte, 13 Schwarte, Ludger, 7 scientism and racism, 153, 164 Sci-Fi Surrealism, 151 Scize, Pierre (born Michel-Joseph Piot), 108 Scott, Leroy: The Walking Delegate, 145 Scriabin, Alexander, 252n9 Seattle-Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (1909), 110 Secretary of the Labour Union (Berezil Theatre), 57, 145–6, 147f, 164f, 176f Seldes, Gilbert, 177, 181, 182, 200 Sembat, Marcel, 69 Seuphor, Michel, 60 Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra, 149, 151; Cymbeline, 142; Hamlet, 95, 138f, 142, 143f, 146f, 149, 150f, 181, 207f; Julius Caesar, 149; Macbeth, 191, 249n17; A Mid­ summer Night’s Dream, 142; Romeo and Juliet, 143f, 158, 160, plates 5–6; The Taming of the Shrew, 95, 141f; The Tempest, 70, 142 Shaw, Bernard: Androcles and the Lion, 181; Saint Joan, 250n22; You Never Can Tell, 126 Shchuko, Vladimir, 149, 151f Sheridan, Richard Brinsley: The School for Scandal, 142 Sheringham, George, 32

Sherry, Vincent, 19 Shifrin, Nisson, 91, 159, 160, 206, 248–9n16 Shkandrij, Myroslav, 91 shop window(s): electricity for, 41, 42f, 43; and “fourth wall,” 116; modernist designers for, 205, 206; Paris Expo as, 226n47; plate glass for, 41; Soviet pavilion as, 104, 106 Shor, Sarah, 248–9n16 Shterenberg, David, 232–3n43 Simmel, Georg, 9, 81, 237–8n2 Simonson, Lee, 167, 192 Sims, James E., 16 Sinclair, Upton: Jimmie Higgins, 190–1. Six and Labreuille (architects), 71f Smith, Herbert Llewellyn, 64, 82, 135–6, 151, 153, 224n40 Smyshliaev, Valentin, 150 Smyth, Owen Paul, 142 Socialist Realism, 205 Société d’encouragement à l’art et l’industrie, 69 Société des artistes décorateurs, 32, 66, 67 Société des relations culturelles entre l’URSS et l’Étranger, 85 Société pour le perfectionnement de l’éclairage, 215n2 Sondheim, Stephen: Company, 209f; Pacific Overtures, 208 Sophocles, 149; Oedipus, 156 Soviet Union. See USSR space: as “alive,” 34; as blank or abstract, 148; controlled by guidebooks of itineraries, 72–4; heterotopian space, 7; Lefebvre’s concepts and terminology for, 8, 34, 38, 41, 47, 70; and theatre, 6–8.

294 Index See also abstraction and abstract space Spain: Jaume Borras Theatre (Barcelona), 125, 126; representation in New York Expo, 167; representation at Paris Expo, 11, 70, 135, 144 Sproles, George B., 9–11, 27, 111, 124, 173, 201–2 stage designs: dynamic actor’s body in, 41, 116; modernist concepts of, 114–15; painted backdrops and “decor,” 41, 114, 115, 136, 148; rotation and moving platforms, 51, 114, 146, 147. See also Constructivism and Constructivist design; theatre Stalin, Josef, 229n14, 235n52 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 111, 125, 206 Stansell, Christine, 203 Starr, S. Frederick, 235n52, plate 2 Stein, Gertrude, 58, 166 Steinway Building (New York), 170, 173, 174, 175f Stepanova, Varvara: design for La Mort de Tarielkine (SoukhovoKolybin), 250n22 Sternberg, Georgy and Vladimir, 250n22 Stirling, W. Edward, 126 Stites, Richard, 52 The Storming of the Winter Palace (mass festival), 45–6 Stravinsky, Igor, 51, 58 Strindberg, August: Eric XIV, 95 Strutinskaia, Elena, 106 Sukhovo-Kolybin, Aleksandr: La Mort de Tarielkine, 250n22 Surrealism, 60, 151, 176 Sweden, 11, 56, 70, 144, 167

Switzerland, 11, 70, 144, 167 symbolic universe (concept), 15, 213n16 Symbolism, 60 Tairov, Alexander, and the Kamerny Theatre: as an innovator, 51, 123, 129, 163, 177; Aronson’s designs for, 206; representation in Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 145; tour in Germany, 189, 199, 255n7; tour in North America, 189; Yakulov’s designs for, 158; productions: Lysistrata (Aristophanes), 95, 156, 157f, 158, 160, 164f, 173; The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton), 51, 164f; Phaedra (Racine), 137, 139f, 158, 159f, 240n22, 247n6; Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare), 138f, 158, 160, plate 5–6; Saint Joan (Shaw), 240n22; The Tidings Brought to Mary (Claudel), 155, 250n22 Tatarinov, Vladimir, 150 Tatlin, Vladimir: and Aronson, 206; and Constructivism, 236n60; and Khlebnikov’s Zangezi, 50; and Lenin’s “Plan for Monumental Propaganda,” 44; Ukrainian background, 91 – Monument to the Third International (Tatlin’s Tower): compared to Eiffel Tower, 99, 145; compared to Futurama (Geddes), 204; compared to Meller’s Secretary of the Labour Union maquette, 147; model exhibited in Moscow, 49f; model exhibited at Paris Expo, 48, 50, 99, 145; plans and Construc-

Index 295 tivist principles, 48–50, 51, 178, 236n60 Taylor, Frederick, 54 Tchelitchew (Tchelitchev), Pavel, 159, 166, 248–9n16 Ternovets, Boris: on Paris Expo and Soviet pavilion, 57–8, 102, 234n50, 236–7n61; on Russification, 230n23; on Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 106–7 theatre: as agent of change, 111–12, 124; analogy with revolution, 51, 52, 197–8; backward and forward focus of, 113–14; vs museums and exhibitions, 16–17; new space created in, 50–1; re-theatricalization of, 116–17, 197, 240n20; and space, 6–8; stage as a total work of art, 50; vs theatre arts, 109. See also stage design Theatre Art: Contemporary Stage and Costume Designs (Ottawa, 1938), 197 theatre arts (Paris Expo): countries and theatres represented in, 113, 144; inclusion in Paris Expo, 4, 24–6, 108–14; technological advances, 114–15 theatre arts organizing committee (Paris Expo): plans for model Theatre, 109, 113, 117–18, 123–5, 124–5; plans for theatre arts displays, 20, 112–17 Theatre Creative (New York), 187–8, 202 Théâtre de l’Art “Le Chariot,” 126 Théâtre de l’Œuvre (Paris), 127, 206 Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris), 196

Théâtre Ducourneau (Agen, 1908), 239n12 Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, 142 Theatre Guild (New York), 162, 167 Théâtre Libre (Paris), 128 Theatre (model Theatre) of Paris Expo: illustrations, 120f, 122f; administrative control of, 125; critical reception, 121–3, 223n35, 241–2n29, 242n32; financial difficulties, 126, 128–9, 244n47; inauguration, 125, 127f; location (separation from theatre arts exhibits), 24, 118; as a machine-age expression, 178; as a maquette, 118; ­modernist goals for, 113, 117–18, 124–5; performances in, 25–6, 125–30, 143–4, 242n32, 244n47; tripartite stage, 25, 119, 121, 242n34; as a workshop, 119 Theatre of Revolution, 145 Theatre of the Exposition, 120f theatre of the streets, 58, 109 theatricalization: of Paris, 23, 37–41, 116; of space, 23; of the theatre, 116–17, 197, 240n20 “Theatricalize Life!” (slogan), 23, 44, 51, 116 theatrical modernism, 8, 19–22, 27, 189–92, 208–10 Throckmorton, Cleon, 167, 192 Tiahno, Borys, 147, 164 Tiller Girls (Casino de Paris), 77, 79f Toller, Ernst: Man and the Masses, 189 Tolstoy, Leo, 87 Toudouze, Georges-G., 110, 122 tourism, 73, 81 Townley, Marjorie: on Grand Palais, 76; on impact of Paris Expo, 194,

296 Index 215–16n11; on spaces of Paris Expo, 38; on Wembley, 220–1n20 tradition: vs modernism, 81–2, 140–2; vs novelty, 144; vs revolution, 140 Tronchet, Guillaume, 112, 130, 239n12 Trotskaia (Trotsky), Natalia, 230n26 Trotsky, Leon, 86, 87 Tugendhold, Yakov (Ia. A): on folk arts, 143–4; on Gauguin, 95; on Melnikov’s pavilion design, 99; on national minorities in USSR, 90, 98, 232n39; on Paris, 32; text for Soviet catalogue, 95, 96, 98, 232n39 Turgenev, Ivan, 87 Turin, 66, 223n33 Turkey, 11, 70 Tyshler, Alexander, 159, 248–9n16 Tzara, Tristan, 167 Ukraine: avant-garde art and artists, 91, 192, 203, 206; representation in New York Expo, 187; representation in Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 145; Soviet Ukrainian plates, 98, 100f; theatres in, 198, 247–8n13. See also Kiev (Kyiv) United States of America: absence from Paris Expo, 58, 102, 144, 219n10, 224n39; American émigrés in Paris, 58, 61–2; European emigré artists and architects in, 209; expositions in, 41, 110, 213n15, 221n23; Moscow Art Musical Studio tour in, 187; observers at Paris Expo, 58–9, 148, 162–3, 195; Paris Expo material exhibited in, 195; responses to Constructivism,

178–9, 181–4, 201; responses to modernism, 181–2, 189, 201–10; responses to Soviet pavilion, 102; responses to Soviet theatre design, 162–5, 174, 176, 204–5. See also International Theatre Exposition (New York, 1926) urban planning, 41 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics): avant-garde artists, 23, 47, 84, 86–7, 145, 146; cultural climate in, 83–98; electrification campaign, 43–4; emigration of artists and critics from, 205–6; international focus of, 84–6, 98; mass festivals and spectacles, 45–7; national minorities, 90–2, 97, 229–30n22; national terminology, 89–90; old–new dynamic, 83–4, 89–90, 92–5; Paris Expo as opportunity for, 51–4; participation in Paris Expo, 11, 14, 70, 87; relationship with France, 63, 72, 87–8, 95, 228n8; relationship with Germany, 85, 228n10; Soviet architecture course, 148; “Theatricalize Life!” (slogan), 23, 44, 51, 116; travel restrictions in, 228n9 – Bolshevik/Communist Party: terminology, 229n21; Communist Party in France, 63, 112, 236n58; conservative views on art and theatre, 52–3, 144, 149, 205, 217n26, 223n34; cultural network, 84–6; double-voicing (reassurance/ radicalism), 99, 106, 149; leaders’ tribune, 53; links with intelligentsia, 84, 87, 107, 229n16, 230n26. See also USSR

Index 297 – Soviet catalogues: cover designs, 90f, plate 3; advertising in, 92; old–new dynamic, 89–90, 92–5; Russian/Soviet synonymy, 90–2, 145; untranslated slogans, 98 – Soviet exhibits at Paris Expo: size and extent, 99; focus on art and industry, 96–7; Soviet Ukrainian porcelain plates, 98, 100f; space occupied by, 71, 99; as tools of propaganda and public diplomacy, 92 – Soviet kiosks, 92–3 – Soviet pavilion: illustrations, 101f, 105f; inauguration, 56, 100, 106, 236–7n61; location, 38, 102, plate 2; as “machine for agitation,” 99; Melnikov’s design for, 25, 99–106, 101f, 226–7n1, 234n49; prefabricated construction, 103; “shop window” display, 104, 106 – Soviet theatre arts exhibit, 144–61; photographs, 135f; size and extent, 82, 99, 106; critical reception of, 107, 134–6, 151–8, 162–5; designers for installation, 144; display at New York Expo, 4, 27, 167, 174, 176–80, 176f, 187, 188f; Moscow/Leningrad focus, 144–5; new spirit identified with, 62–3; success of, 106–7. See also specific theatres and designers Vaillant, Léandre, 67 Vakhtangov, Yevgeny, 51 Valgemae, Mardi, 189–90 Varenne, Gaston, 89, 134, 157 Variot, Jean: L’Aventurier, 125 Veber, Pierre, 244n47

Venice Biennale (1924), 228n12 Verhaeren, E.: Les Aubes, 250n22 Veronesi, Giula, 240n21 Verykivska, Iryna, 149 Vesnin, Alexander: on modernity, 53; works at Paris Expo, 53, 158; designs: for The Man Who Was Thurs­ day, 164f; for Phaedra (Racine), 139f, 158, 159f; for The Tidings Brought to Mary (Claudel), 250n22 Vetrov (Ivan Sergeevich KnizhnikVetrov), 91, 145, 165, 230n25 Vialov, Konstantin, 156 Vienna: Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (1924), 167, 245n48; Kiesler in, 251n2; Opera and Burgtheater, 124. See also Austria Die Vierte Wand (The Fourth Wall), 199 Vincent, André, 71f Vishnevetskaia, Sophia, 248–9n16 Vitrac, Roger, 60 Vladimirov, V., 46 von Geldern, James, 45, 46, 47, 84 Wagner, Richard, 240n20, 250n22 Wallace, Jeff, 21, 214n21, 240n23 Wanamaker, Sam, 120 Warnod, André, 123 Washington Square Players, 162 Wearne, Harry, 56 Wembley exhibition. See under Britain Whalen, Philip, 38 Wheeler, Monroe, 166 Wihstutz, Benjamin, 6 Wilde, Oscar: The Importance of Being Earnest, 126 Williams, Robert C., 91 Williams, William Carlos, 166

298 Index World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), 110 world’s fairs and expositions: terminology, 11, 211n4; architecture, 15–16, 17; attendance, 18; education and propaganda, 8, 13–14; impact and influence of, 4–5, 17; new technologies at, 18; pageants at, 110–11; proliferation of, 14–15; Soviet approach to, 86, 88–9; as symbolic worlds, 15–18; theatre arts at, 12–13, 196–210; as theatrical installations, 16–17. See also specific expositions and fairs Wyeth, N.C., 174

Yakulov, Georgy, 144, 158 Yamaguchi, Masao, 16 Yeats, W.B, 166 Yiddish Theatre of Ukraine (Kiev), 145 Yiddish theatres in New York, 208 Yugoslavia, 11, 71, 144, 167 Yutkevich, Sergei, 91, 159, 248–9n16 Zamacoïs, Miguel, 222–3n32 Zheltova, Elena, 217n22 Zinoviev, Grigory, 229n14 Zoshchenko, Mikhail, 43 Zwaska, Caesar, 166, 251n1