Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition 9781501720772

Citation preview

PARIS 1937

Artifacts from the Musee de !'Homme stored temporarily in the closed galleries of the Musee des Monum ents Fran ~a is during renovations of the Palais de Chaillot, I 9 35. Photo from the collection of the Musee de !'H omme, Paris.

PAR IS

1937

WORLDS ON EXHIBITIO N

JAMES D. HERBERT

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright© 1998 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 148 50. First published 1998 by Cornell University Press. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Herbert, James D., I959Paris 1937: worlds on exhibition I by James D. Herbert. p.

em.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8014-3494-7 (cloth: alk. paper) r. Art, Modern-2oth century-Exhibitions-History.

century.

2. Art-Exhibitions-History-2oth

3· Ethnological museums and collections-France-History.

History-2oth century.

4· Exhibitions-France-

5· Surrealism-France-Exhibitions-History-2oth century.

internationale (1937: Paris, France).

6. Exposition

7· Art and society-France-History-2oth century.

r8os 1937 BIH37 907' ·444' 36I-DC2I

97-35973

Design: Christine Taylor Composition: Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services Printed in the United States of America. Cornell University Press strives to utilize environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low- VOC inks and acid-free papers that are also either recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Cloth printing IO

9

8

7

6

4

2

Not only do all the museums oft he world together today represent a colossal accumulation of riches but, more important, the combined visitors of these museums ofthe world represent without a doubt the greatest spectacle of a humanity liberated from material concerns and devoted to contemplation. We need recognize that the galleries and the objects of art are nothing but a container, the contents of which are constituted by the visitors: it is the contents that distinguish the museum from a private collection .... The paintings are nothing but dead surfaces, while in the crowd occur those interplays, those flashes, those streams of light described in technical terms by the authorized critics. On Sundays at five o'clock at the exit from the Louvre, it is interesting to admire the flood of visitors visibly animated by the desire to be like the celestial apparitions which still ravish their eyes. The museum is a colossal mirror in which man finally contemplates himself in all his aspects, finds himselfto be literally admirable, and gives in to the ecstasy expressed in all the art magazines. -Georges Bataille, "Musee," Documents, 1930

CONTENTS

zx

List of Illustrations Preface

xiii

INTRODUCTION

Global Speculations

3

PART ONE: THE TROCADE RO CHAPTER ONE

The View of the Esplanade

CHAPTER TWO

Gods in the Machine

I3

4I

ENTR'ACTE: POINT OF EXCHANGE

Art Appreciation

7I

PART TWO: IN THE GALLERIES OF ART CHAPTER THREE

The French Masterpiece

CHAPTER FOUR

Short Circuit

83

I23

EPILOGUE

Jupiter Makes Wise Those He Would Lose Notes

I73

Index

203

I63

ILLUSTRATIONS

Artifacts from the Musee de l'Homme stored temporarily in the closed galleries of the Musee des Monuments Fran~ais during renovations of the Palais de Chaillot, I93 5.

11

FRONTISPIECE.

2

FIG.

I2

r. Central Temple, French Indochina Section, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937· FIG. 2. Palais de Chaillot, viewed during the Exposition Internationale des

Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937· FIG. 3· Grounds of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques I 5 dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937, viewed from the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot. I5 FIG. 4· Plan of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans Ia Vie Moderne Paris I937· 17 FIG. 5. Artisan working in the French colonial section, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937· 6. Cover, Exposition internationale arts et techniques Paris I9 37: Guide o(ficiel, 1937. 21 FIG. 7· Cover, Vendre, no. I62 (May I937). 2 3 FIG. 8. Diagram of an itinerary through the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans Ia Vie Moderne Paris I937· Femme de France, I August 1937. 24 FIG. 9· Postcard, Eiffel Tower, viewed from the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot during the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris 1937. 32 FIG. 10. Postcard, Monument de la Paix, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937·

20

FIG.

ILLUSTRATIONS

34

FIG.

35

FIG.

37

FIG.

38

FIG.

40

FIG.

I 5. Interior, medieval galleries, Musee des Monuments Franc;:ais, I938.

5I

FIG.

I6. Interior, African galleries, Musee de l'Homme, I938.

52

FIG.

54

FIG.

55

FIG.

58

FIG.

59

FIG.

6I

FIG.

63

FIG.

82

FIG.

24. Entrance foyer, Chefs-d'ceuvre de 1' Art Franc;:ais.

86

FIG.

25. Hall4, Chefs-d'ceuvre de 1' Art Franc;:ais.

89

FIG.

26. Floor plan, Chefs-d'ceuvre de 1' Art Franc;:ais.

94

FIG.

27. Antoine Watteau, Gersaint's Shop sign, I72I.

96

FIG.

28. Jean-Baptiste Chardin, Woman Sealing a Letter, I733·

I02

FIG.

29. Floor plan, Maitres de 1' Art Independant, I937·

I22

FIG.

I25

FIG.

X

II. Interior, Spanish Pavilion, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937·

I2. German Pavilion, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937· I3. A. Dubout, "At the Exposition: once again, these two are the ones fighting." Candide, IS July I937· I4· Hitler (with Speer and Breker) on the esplanade of the Palais de Chaillot, 23 June I940.

I7. Field photograph, Mission Scientifique Dakar-Djibouti, tempera mural, church of Saint Antonios, Gondar, Ethiopia.

I8. Tempera murals from the church of Saint Antonios, Gondar, Ethiopia, as installed in the Musee de l'Homme, I939· I9. Vi trine, African galleries, Musee de l'Homme, I942.

20. Field photograph, Mission Scientifique Dakar-Djibouti, published with the caption: "Used-up masks, abandoned under a rock."

2r. Field photograph, Mission Scientifique Dakar-Djibouti, captioned: " ... Marcel Griaule ... removing the north wall of the church [of Saint Antonios]."

22. Field photograph, Mission Scientifique Dakar-Djibouti, captioned: "Marcel Griaule, E. Lutten, and G. Raux execute copies of the paintings of Saint ... Antonios ... July I932." 23. Maquette of proposed arrangement of galleries and laboratories at the Musee de l'Homme, displayed in the museological section of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne Paris I937·

30. Photograph captioned "The ceiling and the brazier in the large hall," Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris I938.

3r. Denise Bellon, photograph of the main gallery, Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris I938.

ILLUSTRATIONS

126

FIG. 32. Josef Breitenbach, Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Paris I938.

128

PIG. 33· Photograph captioned "The corridor of mannequins," Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris 1938.

132

PIG. 34· Frontispiece, Exposition internationale du sum?alisme, 1938.

140

FIG. 35· Max Ernst, Zoomorphic Couple, 1933.

qr

FIG. 36. Rene Magritte, The Key of Dreams, 1930.

142

FIG. 37· Salvador Dali, The Invisible Man, 1929.

145

FIG. 38. Helene Vane! dancing The Unconsummated Act at the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris 1938.

147

FIG. 39· Mannequin by Andre Masson, photographed by Raoul Ubac, at the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris 1938.

149

FIG. 40. Salvador Dali, Rainy Taxi, photographed by Denise Bellon, at the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme, Paris 1938.

I

52

FIG. 4I. Cover, Exposition internationale du surrealisme, 1938.

r62

FIG. 42. Still from the film Orpheus, dir. Jean Cocteau, 1950.

r67

FIG. 43· Still from the film Orpheus, dir. Jean Cocteau, 1950.

r68

FIG. 44· Still from the film Orpheus, dir. Jean Cocteau, 1950.

171

FIG. 45· Still from the film Orpheus, dir. Jean Cocteau, 1950.

xi

PREFACE

This is a book about, in times of scarcity, an excess of things; more things than anyone could really hope to manage. Though narrowing its attentions to a particular place (Paris) and a remarkably thin slice of time (eight months from the early summer of 1937 until the first weeks of 1938), this book nonetheless embarks upon the study of a monumentally large world's fair as well as a museum's evocation of peoples not invited to that commercial gathering, a permanent installation of medieval sculptural casts and a fleeting retrospective of French artistic masterpieces, a municipal art gallery proudly proclaiming its aesthetic broadmindedness but also a private gallery's presentation of Surrealist works insistently beyond the city's cultural purview. Each of these exhibitions, moreover, played out (at least the fantasy of) an abundance of material accumulating in Paris: salable goods or ethnographic artifacts from around the world, countless bits of ornament from the French provinces molded in plaster, room after room of works of French art, Surrealist detritus. It is the reigning hypothesis of this book that such abundant accumulations inevitably promulgated their own shortages, engendered their own mismanagement. They did so not only owing to certain specific historical limitations and antagonisms that constrained the mounting of global displays in Paris of the late 193os-though such constraints will emerge as a major topic in the pages that follow. It is also the case, my argument will have it, that in grasping after an excess of things, one (now as then) always ends up laying one's hands on the excess, as a mere formal property, rather than on the thing as a material essence. Whether striving to comprehend the world through the dexterous maneuvers of market economics, or those of ethnologic practice, or those of historical study or of the enterprise of art, many a discipline ultimately finds that the real objects of its interest have, awkwardly, slipped through its fingers. Rather than bemoan these potential failures to grasp the world made up of things, however, this book will explore instead the enormous productivity of such acts of disciplinary mismanagement of their own resources. Fittingly for a book about abundance and shortfalls, I have enjoyed an excessively

xiii

PREFACE

xiv

generous supply of support from my friends and colleagues during its conception and production, while thereby accumulating a substantial intellectual debt to them all; brief acknowledgments such as this can only begin to discharge accounts. Tim Clark, Dan Herbert, David Joselit, Julia Lupton, Richard Meyer, Keith Moxey, Fred Orton, Richard Shiff, Lisa Tiersten, Anne Wagner, and Sarah Whiting all took the time and care to read all or parts of this manuscript; the argument has benefited enormously from their collective insights. Charles and Monique Whiting caught many a missed nuance in my translations from the French. Audiences that have listened attentively and responded with sagacity to excerpts of this text delivered in lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, at the University of Leeds, and at the Getty Research Institute have given me a firm hold on that frequently ephemeral entity, the scholarly community. I am most grateful to the Getty Grant Program, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, and the President's Research Fellowships in the Humanities program of the Office of the President of the University of California for providing fellowship support that freed up valuable time to write. Both the University of Southern California and the University of California, Irvine provided funds to defray research and publication costs. The staffs at the libraries of the Musee des Monuments Fran~ais, the Musee de !'Homme, and the Petit Palais kindly opened their archives to me. As the photographic credits reveal, I relied heavily on the Resource Collections of the Getty Research Institute as a source for many of the illustrations. Adam Boxer of Ubu Gallery in New York proved an indispensable font of information concerning photographs taken of the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme. Two journals have allowed republication of portions of this book that previously appeared in their pages: Chapter I, as "The View of the Trocadero: The Real Subject of the Exposition Internationale, Paris I937," Assemblage 26 (March I995): 94-n2; and Chapter 2, as "Gods in the Machine at the Palais de Chaillot," Museum Anthropology IS (June I994): I6-36. It has proved a true and rare pleasure to work on this project with the crew at Cornell University Press. Bernie Kendler's enthusiasm has been matched only by his dry wit; Terry McKiernan demonstrated a flexibility in scheduling that no author really has a right to expect; and Charles Purrenhage's deft hand exemplifies copyediting at its best, simultaneously exacting and respectful. Were I not so impressed with the remarkable speed of the whole process of editing and production at Cornell, I would regret that our felicitous working relationship had to come so swiftly to an end. Finally, my special thanks to Cecile Whiting, who not only heads the list of those with whom I have delighted in the exchange of ideas, but also has-more than anyone should be called upon to do-learned to manage many of my excesses. And to Nicole, of course, that special girl who has made our household something more than itself-and taught me a thing or two along the way about the pleasures that can be found in the impossibility of managing it all. ]AMES D. HERBERT Los Angeles

April I997

PARIS 1937

INTRODUCTION

FIG . r. Central Temple, French Indochina Section, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans Ia Vie Modern e Paris I937· Livre d'or officiel de !'exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans Ia vie moderne (Paris: [Imprimerie Nationalej, I9 37 ), 222 . Photo courtesy ofthe Getty Research Institute, Resource Collections.

GLOBAL SPECULATIONS

Here it all was, awaiting the gawkers: the fastest airplanes, the latest fashions, the temple of Angkor Wat! The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans Ia Vie Moderne Paris 1937, extending its principal axis from the crest of the Trocadero Hill on the Right Bank across the widened pont d'Iena to the traditional home of Parisian world's fairs beneath the Eiffel Tower in the Champ de Mars, promised a comprehensive and up-to-the-minute survey of human accomplishment. From the collection of pavilions each devoted to some specific French industry or trade to the palace heralding the most recent scientific discoveries, from the proud edifices erected by forty-two sovereign nations and empires to the string of exotic structures housing the natural and cultural resources of the French colonies, this exhibition of global proportions presented to residents and visitors in the French capital, those willing to part with the price of admission and some shoe leather, nothing less than the world. Well, not quite all the world. The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques laid a distinct emphasis upon all things commercial-even the architectural fantasy based on the temples of Angkor (fig. r) served as nothing so much as an enormous decorative centerpiece to a circle of boutiques offering the wares of French Indochina for sale to passersby. All that which fell beyond the sphere of contemporary commerce had to take up residence elsewhere. Atop the Trocadero Hill on the periphery of the fairgrounds, for instance, rose the Palais de Chaillot, a structure newly renovated with funds released for the fair's physical improvements, even though its contents were not part of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques. Two museums, reconceived and reinstalled for the occasion, occupied most of these new halls: the historically oriented Musee des Monuments Fran~ais, in which plaster casts of architectural ornament evoked a medieval society of probity that predated the emergence of the modern market in France; and the ethnologic Musee de !'Homme, which displayed artifacts gathered from among those peoples living at the corners of the planet seemingly not yet

3

INTRODUCTION

4

touched by the expansive forces of the global market. These two museums, extending the temporal and geographic horizons of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques, worked as if in concert with that larger exhibition to bring into view the full range of human experience in the world. Well, still not quite all. Neither the interested spheres of commercial affairs nor the ostensibly organic societies of medieval manor or primitive tribe, as contemporaries conceived them, could well play host to the purportedly autonomous and disinterested practices of aesthetic appreciation associated with the high arts of Europe. The three institutions situated upon or adjacent to the Trocadero, in other words, provided no adequate forum for the expression of the artistic realm of human activity, at which the nation of France in particular could claim such enduring and unrivaled accomplishment. To redress this deficiency, the cultural administrations of the French state and of the city of Paris each bestowed upon the capital during the run of the world's fair a massive art exhibition, the two competing with yet also complementing each other. The Chefsd'reuvre de !'Art Fran