paintings over the entrances leading into the Palaces of Education and
Liberal Arts on either hand, and into the Court of the Seasons. Of these
three lunettes two add little to the beauty of the court except for the
vivid touch of color which they give it. One, over the door of the
Palace of Education, is entitled "Fruits and Flowers," by Childe Hassam.
It is a triumph of straight line applied to the female form. Over the
door of the Palace of Liberal Arts is "The Pursuit of Pleasure,"
ascribed to Charles Holloway. The figures are gracefully drawn, the
coloring flowery. There is better quality in Arthur F. Mathews' "Triumph
of Culture," over the entrance to the Court of Seasons. In color and
force this comes nearer to the splendid standard set by Frank Brangwyn
than anything else in the Exposition's mural decoration. Perhaps that is
too faint praise, for this is a real picture. In it a victorious golden
spirit, crowding aside brute force, allows the Humanities,
representatives of Culture, to triumph as the guardians of Youth. The
figures are human, there is strength and ease in them, and the color is
a deep-toned song.
X.
The Fountains
A characteristic and fitting feature of the Exposition--Fountain of
Energy--The Mermaids--Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's "El Dorado" and
Mrs. Burroughs' "Youth"--Rising and Setting Sun--Piccirilli's
"Seasons"--Aitken's masterpiece, the Fountain of Earth--"Beauty and
the Beast."
The fountain, the spring, the well, is a characteristic note in the life
and art of all lands in the Sun. The Arabians, the Moors, the Spaniards,
the Italians and the Greeks loved fountains. It is less so in the North,
in the regions of much rain, where water flows naturally everywhere. But
nothing is so welcome in a thirsty land as a fountain. Hence there is
appropriateness in the many fountains of this Exposition, which reflects
in its plan the walled cities of the Orient of the Mediterranean, where
fountains play in the courts of palaces, in public squares and niches in
the walls; and pools lie by the mosques, and in the gardens.
Here are many kinds of fountains, from huge masses of sculpture spouting
forth many powerful streams in the sun to terraced basins where water
murmurs in quiet alcoves, and simple jets tinkling in summery courts. Of
those fountains that have especially been dignified and adorned by
sculpture there are fourteen, some single, some in pairs, with one
quartet in the Court of Seasons. Their sequence from the chief gate of
the Exposition follows in a way the symbolic significance of all the
sculpture.
The Fountain of Energy, by A. Stirling Calder, in the center of the
South Gardens before the Tower of Jewels, as a figure of aquatic
triumph, celebrates the completion of the Panama Canal. (See p. 47.)
Resting on a pedestal in the center of the pool, and supported by a
circle of figures representing the dance of the oceans, is the Earth,
surmounted by a figure of Energy, the force that dug the canal. Fame and
Victory blow their bugles from his shoulders. When all the jets are
playing, Energy, horsed, rides through the waters on either hand.
The band around the Earth, decorated with sea horses and fanciful
aquatic figures, represents the seaway now completed around the globe.
On one side a bull-man, a rather weak-chinned minotaur, stands for the
strength of Western civilization; on the other, a cat-woman represents
the civilization of the Eastern hemisphere. Surrounding the central
figure in the pool are the four Oceans,--the Atlantic with corraled
tresses and sea horses in her hand, riding a helmeted fish; the Northern
Ocean as a Triton mounted on a rearing walrus; the Southern Ocean as a
negro backing a sea elephant and playing with an octopus; and the
Pacific as a female on a creature that might be a sea lion, but is not.
Dolphins backed by nymphs of the sea serve a double purpose as
decoration and as spouts for the waters.
The central figure of this fountain has been severely criticized, and
with reason. The design is a beautiful one, but unfortunately not well
adapted to reproduction on so large a scale. Symbolism is here carried
to an extreme that spoils the simplicity which alone makes a really
great work imposing. Calder had a fine idea of a figure of joyous
triumph to stand as the opening symbol of the festival side of the
Exposition. He deserves credit for the real beauty of his design. It is
a pity that a thing so charming as a model should not have worked out
well in heroic proportions.
As a fountain, though, it is splendid. The pool and its spouting figures
are glorious. The play of the waters when all the jets are spouting is
not only magnificent but unique. This veil of water shooting out and
falling in a half sphere about the globe has not been seen before. There
is a real expression of energy in the force of the leaping streams.
Mermaid Fountains, by Arthur Putnam.--At the far end of each of the
lovely pools in the South Gardens is an ornamental fountain of ample
basins topped by a graceful mermaid, behind whose back a fish spouts up
a single jet of water. These are formal fountains, but exceedingly
harmonious. Without trying to be pretentious, they achieve an effect of
simple beauty. (p. 99.)
"El Dorado" and "Youth."--Within the colonnaded wings of the Tower of
Jewels are two fountains which carry' out the symbolism of the days of
the Spanish explorers in their themes, the Aztec myth of El Dorado, and
the fabled Fountain of Youth, sought by Ponce de Leon. In their way,
these are the loveliest fountains on the Exposition grounds, though they
differ so from all the rest that comparison is not easy. The naive
conception of the Fountain of Youth and the realistic strength of that
of El Dorado lead visitors back to them again and again. They are hidden
fountains, as their prototypes were hidden. Each terminates one of the
two open colonnades with a central niche composition flanked on either
hand by a sculptured frieze. Each is the work of a woman sculptor, and
both, though very different, are far from the conventional or the
commonplace.
The Fountain of El Dorado, by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, tells the
story of an Aztec myth of a god whose brilliance is so dazzling that the
sun is his veil, and who lives in a darkened temple lest his light
destroy humanity. (p. 54.) At the center of the recessed wall are doors
of the deity's shaded abode, a guardian on either side. In the friezes
naked humanity moves ever onward, striving to reach the home of the god.
The figures, in full relief, are splendid in their grace and vigor. Here
are men and women whom nothing can hold back; here are those who must be
pushed along, some who linger for love, others for worldly goods; but
all, the strong and the faint, the eager and the tardy, move forward
irresistibly to their destiny.
In Wait's "The Stories of El Dorado," the following account is given of
this aboriginal myth of an expected Indian Messiah, El Hombre Dorado,
the Gilded Man, as the Spaniards interpreted the native words,--which
played a fateful part in the history of the primitive races of Spanish
America:
"No words incorporated into the English language have been fraught with
such stupendous consequences as El Dorado. When the padres attempted to
tell the story of the Christ, the natives exclaimed 'El Dorado'--the
golden. The ignorant sailors and adventurers seized upon the literal
meaning, instead of the spiritual one. The time, being that of Don
Quixote and of the Inquisition, accounts for the childish credulity on
one side and the unparalleled ferocity on the other. The search for El
Dorado, whether it was believed to be a fabulous country of gold, or an
inaccessible mountain, or a lake, or a city, or a priest who anointed
himself with a fragrant oil and sprinkled his body with fine gold dust,
must always remain one of the blackest pages in the history of the white
race. The great heart of humanity will ever ache with sympathy for the
melancholy and pitiful end of the natives, who at the time of the
conquest of Mexico were confidently expecting the return of the mild and
gentle Quetzalcoatl,--the Mexican variant of this universal myth. * * *
The Golden Hearted came from an island in the East, and to this he
returned, in the legend. In all variants, he gave a distinct promise of
return. This accounts for the awe inspired by Europeans in the minds of
the natives, causing them everywhere to fall easy victims of the
unscrupulous adventurers swarming into their country. Fate never played
a more cruel prank than to have one race of men speak and act constantly
from the standpoint of tradition, while the other thought solely of
material gain."
Interesting, too, is Mrs. Edith Woodman Burroughs' conception of the
Fountain of Youth. (p. 53.) The beautiful central figure is a girl child
standing without self-consciousness by blooming primroses. Modeled
faintly on the pedestal are the parents, from whose upturned faces and
uplifted hands the primroses seem to spring. In the friezes, wistful old
people are borne onward to Destiny in boats manned by joyous chubby
children, unconscious of their priceless gift of youth to which their
elders look back with so much longing.
Fountains in the Court of the Universe.--Passing through the Tower of
Jewels into the great court where themes become universal under the
circle of stars above the surrounding colonnade, we come to the
Fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, by A. A. Weinmann, one at
either focus of the elliptical sunken garden. In the East, the Sun, in
the strength of the morning, his wings spread for flight, is springing
upward from the top of the tall column rising out of the fountain. Walk
toward him from the west and you get the effect of his rising. (p. 69.)
At his feet a garland of children is woven in the form of a ring at the
top of the column. At the base of the shaft, just above the basin, is a
cylindrical frieze in low relief, symbolizing Day Triumphant. Weinmann
interprets this as the Spirit of Time, hour-glass in hand, followed by
the Spirit of Light with flaming torch, while Energy trumpets the
approaching day. Interwoven with these figures is an allegory of Truth
with mirror and sword, escaping from the sinister power of Darkness,
Falsehood shrinking from its image in the mirror of Truth, and Vice
struggling in the coils of a serpent. It is not easy to read either
series, or to disentangle one from the other.
In the West the Setting Sun is just alighting, with folding wings. The
luminary, which in the morning was male, to represent the essentially
masculine spirit, the upwardness and onwardness of opening day, has now
become female in its quality of brooding evening. In fact, this same
figure, which the sculptor shows in the Palace of Fine Arts, is there
called by him "Descending Night."
The frieze at the base of the shaft of the Setting Sun is as difficult
to interpret as the other. On it are shown the Gentle Powers of Night.
Dusk folds in her cloak Love, Labor and Peace. Next are Illusions borne
on the wings of Sleep, then the Evening Mists, followed by the Star
Dance, and lastly, Luna, the goddess of the Silver Crescent. Luna may be
recognized, for the Silver Crescent is in her hand; and, with the
sequence I have just given, you may recognize the others.
The figures supporting the basins and the creatures in the pools of each
fountain are merely decorative. The play of water in these fountains is
joyous and delightful. The purpose of a fountain is well and adequately
fulfilled.
There now remain the seven fountains of the lesser courts, connected
more or less intimately in theme with their immediate surroundings.
In the Court of Seasons.--Four are in the Court of Seasons, where
Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, by Furio Piccirilli, have each its
own alcove in the wall and its own play of water. These are pleasant
fountains, simple and quiet. There is some feeling of lonely mountain
cliffs in the plain walls behind them, hung with streamers of the
maidenhair vine.
In the first alcove stands Spring with her flowers; on one side the man,
in whom love awakens, on the other fresh young Flora, bringing the first
offerings of the year. Next comes the alcove of Summer, the time of
fruition. The mother brings her babe to its father, the laborer bears
the first fruits of the harvest. (p. 94.)
Autumn follows, the time of harvest. The central figure of the fountain
group is Providence. The fruits of the year are brought in, and the
vintage is in progress. Last of all comes Winter, the melancholy time
when the trees are bare and the bark splits with the frost. The central
figure is naked Nature resting in the period of conception. On one side
is bowed an old man, after preparing the ground for the seed; on the
other is a strong man sowing. This is perhaps the best of the four
fountain groups it expresses admirably the bleakness and sadness of the
season. There is a wintry chill about it, the gloom of a dark December
day. Of the others, Spring is most likable, with its conception of the
seasonal impulse to love; and Autumn, for the strength of its figures
and the beauty of their modeling.
In the forecourt, appropriately placed between the Palaces of
Agriculture and Food Products, stands the Fountain of Ceres. (p. 79.) It
is an odd fountain, with the water gushing from the mouths of satyrs set
barely above the level of the ground, as though for the watering of
small animals. Ceres stands above, with a wreath of cereals and a
scepter of corn. The frieze pictures the dance of joyous nature.
Fountain of Earth.--In Mullgardt's Court of Ages is the Fountain of
Earth, by Robert Aitken, the most magnificently virile of all the
Exposition fountains, conceived of a powerful imagination and executed
in strength and beauty. (p. 70, 73.)
The sculpture of the fountain must be described in three parts. Aitken's
own interpretation is condensed in the following account. On the wall of
the parapet at the foot of the pool, sixty feet from the central
structure, is a colossal figure symbolizing Helios, in his arms the
great globe of the setting sun after it has thrown off the nebulous mass
that subsequently became the earth. The whole expresses primitive man's
idea of the splashing of the sun into the water as it sets.
On the side of the central structure toward the figure of Helios, and
leading up to the Earth, are two groups, each of five crouching figures,
and divided by a conventional plane. At the outer extremity, Destiny, in
the shape of two enormous hands and arms, gives life with one and takes
it with the other. The five figures on the left side represent the Dawn
of Life, those on the right, the Fullness and End of Existence. The
first group begins with a woman asleep, just from the hand of Destiny;
while the succeeding figures symbolize the Awakening, the Joy of Being,
finally, the Kiss of Life, with the human pair offering their children,
representing the beginnings of fecundity.
On the east side, a figure of Greed looks back on the earth, the mass in
his hands suggesting the futility of worldly possessions. Next is a
group of Faith, wherein a patriarch holds forth to the woman the hope of
immortality, with a scarab, ancient symbol of renewed life. Then comes a
man of Sorrow, as the woman with him falls into her last Slumber. These
are about to be drawn into oblivion by the relentless hand of Destiny.
The gap between these groups and the main structure of the fountain
typifies the unknown time between the beginning of things and the dawn
of history.
Each of the four panels in pierced relief surrounding the globe of the
Earth tells a single story, with the exception of the first, which tells
three. Traveling to the left around the globe, we begin with the figure
of Vanity, mirror in hand, in the center of the first panel, as the
symbol of worldly motive. Here, too, are primitive man and woman,
bearing their burdens, symbolized by their progeny, into the unknown
future, ready to meet whatever be the call of earth. The woman suggests
the overwhelming instincts of motherhood.
Passing into the next panel, we see their children, now grown, finding
themselves, with Natural Selection. The man in the center, splendid in
physical and intellectual perfection, attracts the women on either hand,
while two other men, deserted for this finer type, display anger and
despair. One tries to hold the woman by force, the other, unable to
comprehend, turns hopelessly away.
The succeeding panel symbolizes the Survival of the Fittest. Here
physical strength begins to play its part, and the war spirit awakens,
with woman as its cause. The chiefs struggle for supremacy, while their
women try in vain to separate them.
The last panel portrays the Lesson of Life. The elders offer to
hotheaded youth the benefit of their experience. The beautiful woman in
the center draws to her side the splendid warrior, whose mother on his
left gives her affectionate advice. On the right of the panel, a father
restrains a wayward and jealous youth who has been rejected by the
female.
Passing again into the first panel we find a representation of Lust,--a
man struggling to embrace a woman, who shrinks from his caresses. Thus
the circle is complete; these last two figures, though in the first
panel, are separated from those first described by decorations on the
upper and lower borders.
Framing the panels, while also indicating the separation in time of
their stories, stand archaic figures of Hermes, such as the ancients
employed to mark distances on the roads. Their outstretched hands hold
up the beginnings of life in the form of rude primeval beasts, from
whose mouths issue the jets of the fountain.
At night this fountain glows deep red, from lamps concealed within the
panels, while clouds of rosy steam rising around the globe create an
illusion of a world in the making.
The Fountain of Beauty and the Beast was originally intended for the
Court of Palms, which was conceived as the Court of Occidental Fairy
Tales, just as the Court of Flowers was to have been that of Oriental
Fairy Tales. Mrs. Whitney's fountain of the Arabian Nights, a creation
of whimsical beauty, was to have stood in the latter court. It was
modeled, but was never enlarged; and its place was taken by Beauty and
the Beast, the work of Edgar Walter. (p. 100.)
This is another harmonious fountain, rightly conceived, so that its
sculpture does not overbalance its use in the play of water, and
admirably in tune with the flowery grace of the court. Beauty, pouring
water from a Greek amphora, sits lightly upon the ugly Beast. Why she
wears a smart Paris hat no one has discovered. Four cheery pipers,
lively as crickets in the sun, support the upper bowl. Around the lower
basin is a frieze in low relief, figuring Hanuman, the King of Monkeys,
leading a bear with one hand and prodding a lion with the other. All
this is part of the original fairy-tale significance of the court.
The fountains are of the glories of the Exposition. There is always
charm in the movement of the waters, rest in their music. The appeal is
elemental, and therefore, universal. Artificial jets can never equal the
play of water in Nature, but when adorned with harmonious sculpture, as
here, they become that significant and satisfying imitation which is
Art.
XI.
The Palace of Machinery
A vast rectangular hall, saved by Ward's successful architecture from
being a huge barn--Modeled on the Roman Baths of Caracalla--Patigian's
finely decorative sculptures, symbolizing the mechanical forces and
labor--Beauty of the interior--A Cathedral of Dynamics.
A mighty hall is the Palace of Machinery. (See p. 105, 106.) Beachey
flew in it. The Olympic might rest in its center aisle with clear space
at both bow and stern, and room in the side aisles for two ocean
greyhounds as large as the Mauretania. Vastness is the note of the
architecture which Clarence Ward has employed to give body to this
enormous space. It is an architecture of straight lines in all the outer
structure, lending itself admirably to the expression of enormous
proportions. In general ground plans the palace is a simple rectangular
hall. Think, then, of the task the architect had before him to avoid
making the palace a huge barn. His work succeeded, as any great work
succeeds, because he used simple means.
First of all, a Roman model was well chosen for so vast a building. The
Greeks built no large roofed structures. Their great assemblages were
held in open-air theaters and stadia. The Greek masterpiece, the
incomparable Parthenon at Athens, was considerably smaller than Oregon's
timbered imitation at the Exposition. On the other hand, the solid Roman
style lends itself to bulk. The models followed in the Machinery Palace
were the Roman Baths, particularly the Baths of Caracalla. They have
been used once before as a model in this country, in the building of the
Pennsylvania Railway station in New York. There, too, travertine was
first successfully imitated by Paul Deniville. Looking at the Palace of
Machinery, indeed, it is not difficult to imagine it as the noble
metropolitan terminal of a great railway system. It would hold many long
passenger trains, and an army of travelers. The distinctive feature of
the perspective is the triple gable at the ends of the palace and over
the great main entrance. By thus breaking up the long roof lines, as
well as by lowering the flanks of the building to flat-roofed wings, a
barn like effect was avoided. In the triple gables, also, the three
central aisles which distinguish the interior show in the outer
structure. Under the gables the huge clerestory windows above the
entrances relieve the great expanse of the end walls. Similar windows
open up the walls above the flat-topped wings. In the main entrance, the
gables are deepened to form a huge triple vestibule where the row of
columns is repeated. The long side walls are relieved by pairs of
decorated columns flanking the minor entrances.
Thus, by entirely simple devices, the long lines and vast expanses of
wall are deprived of monotony. The architect has given majesty to the
palace, not merely a majesty of hugeness, but of just proportions and
dignified simplicity. In the general architectural scheme of the
Exposition it forms one end of the main group of palaces, at the other
end of which is set the Palace of Fine Arts. Machinery Hall, with its
severe massiveness and solidity, is a balance to the poetry and
spirituality of the Fine Arts.
The main entrance is on the west side, looking down the avenue between
the Palaces of Mines and Varied Industries. Perhaps it is better,
though, to take a first view of the sculptural decoration at the
entrance at either the north or the south end, where almost everything
is shown that appears in the more complicated main vestibule.
The three clerestory windows make three arches with four piers. In front
of each pier stands a great Sienna column crowned with one of four
symbolic figures, each, in the strength of the male, emblematic of
force. First on the left is "Electricity," grasping the thunderbolt, and
standing with one foot on the earth, signifying that electricity is not
only in the earth but around it. The man with the lever that starts an
engine represents "Steam Power." "Imagination," the power which
conceives the thing "Invention" bodies forth, stands with eyes closed;
its force comes from within. Wings on his head suggest the speed of
thought. At his feet is the Eagle of Inspiration. "Invention" bears in
his hand a winged figure,--Thought, about to rise in concrete form.
The eagle appears as a symbol of the United States, on the entablature
carried across the opening below the arch on two Corinthian columns in
each embrasure. The lower third of each of these shafts is decorated
with a cylindrical relief representing the genii of machinery, flanked
by human toilers and types of machines. The genii are blind, as the
forces developed by machines are blind. There are only two of these
cylindrical friezes, but they are repeated many times on the columns at
either end and at the main entrance, and on the pairs of columns that
flank the minor openings in the western wall.