{"id":14187,"date":"2015-05-15T12:43:53","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T10:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/?p=14187&lang=en"},"modified":"2018-02-16T01:56:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T00:56:58","slug":"sammlung-richtercome-with-me-to-neverland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artblogcologne.com\/en\/sammlung-richtercome-with-me-to-neverland\/","title":{"rendered":"Come with me to Neverland"},"content":{"rendered":"

A walk across the Expo 1900, or rather a simulation using several illustrations from old books of the Richter Collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Exposition Universelle in 1900 is a dream. It is really, and I\u2019m not lying, it\u2019s truly just pure circumstance that I am now writing for this forum and for kaput magazine about my two favorite expos, just as Expo 2015 is opening in Milan. I had suppressed this, because I hate modern Expos. They bore me to death. Why that is so will be shown using countless documents from days long past.<\/p>\n

I thus turned to several books on the Expo 1900 published at the time, prints and accompanying material that made themselves at home in my expo-corner. Albert Robida will play a rather central role, and we can be pleased that I have admired and collected Robida for some time, because this allows me a brief excursion into the world of this almost forgotten artist.<\/p>\n

The Exposition Universelle from 1900, like Expo 2000, was a turn of the century expo. Indeed, Expo 2000 was even a change of the millennium expo, but nothing in comparison to what was on offer in Paris in 1900.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see if I\u2019m exaggerating. Off to the opening:<\/p>\n

\"Er\u00f6ffnung\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Eiffel Tower, the ultimate expo building, was already standing when a world exhibition was held for the fifth time. So it was necessary to give one\u2019s all to add something to the loveliest of all technophile buildings. And so, around the site and along the Seine, a genuine theme park of attractions was created, each one more spectacular than the next. Let us begin our tour with the \u201ctour du monde,\u201d a virtual exhibit of the world\u2019s cultures, the building looked like this:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside and on the grounds outside, alongside, there was an elaborately designed terrain where the European, still not a regular traveler, could marvel at foreign countries and practices. Today, this practice has justly come under heavy criticism, there are dissertations about the exoticism of the early twentieth century, and at many expos Africans, for example, were displayed like zoo animals.<\/p>\n

And yet, the attempt to bring the world together in one place was also the beginning of our understanding of other cultures. Think of the immense influence that Japanese art shown at early expos had on the development of European art or how African art thrilled the Dadaists and expressionists. Here a view of the Asian world at \u201cTour du Monde\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

At the time, a great deal was exotic, and exotic was popular. The world was exciting and new and an idyllic Swiss mountain village could become an attraction. In a kind of pre-Disneyland-scenery, a village was created as an accessible, enacted stage-set world in Paris, including a waterfall, mountains, and a lake.<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

The panorama clearly shows the constructedness of the ensemble, and it is precisely this theatricality of the architecture that charms me:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

A wider view shows how large the site alone was:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

I would like to know whether there were also artificial caves in the artificial mountains, or whether the staff would have small resting areas where they could picnic the sandwiches they brought with them. Ever since I found out that Disneyland\u2019s artificial Matterhorn contains a secret basketball court in the upper area, I have been obsessed with secret rooms in stage-set constructions.<\/p>\n

Let us move on in the world, it is, after all, a world exhibition.<\/p>\n

French colonialism led to a presentation of Cambodia, in 1900 a reconstruction of underground temples was on view. A construction that I still find impressive today, way down there, the little dwarfs, they are people!<\/p>\n

\"Kambodja<\/a><\/p>\n

I find that a rather impressive set. How was something like that built? Impressive enough for another detail photograph:<\/p>\n

\"Kambodja<\/a><\/p>\n

The \u201cpagoda of Vichnou\u201d is also impressive:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

Although all these colonially appropriated culture were not equally presented as \u201cart\u201d but rather as exotic attractions, the artists like Rodin and Eric Satie were so lastingly impressed that they deepened their research on the foreign cultures, praising their beauty, and appropriating parts of the foreign world, including them in their own works. Cultural globalization, that\u2019s where it started.<\/p>\n

To save the reputation of Expo 1900, we should mention that in a time when people of non-European cultures were often presented like zoo animals, at Expo 1900 Frances Benjamin Johnston showed her marvelous photographs of African-American students, taken at Booker Washington\u2019s Hampton Institute, an act of great emancipatory strength in the culture that was so thoroughly racist at the time.<\/p>\n

Booker Washington was amazingly cool, as was Frances Benjamin Johnston too: her self-portrait from 1896 with beer and cigarettes speaks volumes for those who can read the signs:<\/p>\n

\"Frances_Benjamin_Johnston,_full-length_portrait,_seated_in_front_of_fireplace,_1896\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not only was the exotic charm of foreign lands relatively new for the European population, electricity was also something worthy of presentation. In the \u201cPalais de l\u2019electricit\u00e9,\u201d photographed here together with the \u201cChateau d\u2019eau.\u201d I mean: \u201cChateau d\u2019eau,\u201d that already sounds wonderful!<\/p>\n

\"Le<\/a><\/p>\n

At night, these buildings were illuminated by countless electric light bulbs, an effect that was already used in early amusement parks like Luna Park on Coney Island. These nocturnal worlds must have been of such great beauty that for example Windsor McCay based several of his amazing drawings for Little Nemo on this architecture of light. For an impression of the Paris scene, see below:<\/p>\n

\"Palais<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the artistic works of art, the Porte Monumentale by architect Ren\u00e9 Binet, glowed at night like a mysterious crystal. The Parisians themselves hated the building, they found it too kitschy and exaggerated even back then. The ticket counters for the expo were located in the corridors, and every conceivable spot was filled with decorations and images of natural structures, like beehives, dinosaur bones, and flower petals. At the time, the style was called \u201cSalammb\u00f4 Style,\u201d borrowing from Gustave Flaubert\u2019s marvelous, feverish and ornamental book Salammb\u00f4, today I find both the book and the gate wonderful:<\/p>\n

\"La<\/a><\/p>\n

The visitor could truly sink into a world of light and magic at the Palais des Illusions, a hall of columns that is seemingly endless through the use of mirrors and lights, where various moods were evoked using colored electric light, music, and mechanically moving columns:<\/p>\n

\"Le<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a contemporary print that shows how impressive the illusion was:<\/p>\n

\"PALAIS<\/a><\/p>\n

Was? Is!<\/p>\n

Palais des Mirages was one of the few attractions to be saved, and is located today at Paris\u2019 Mus\u00e9e Grevin, I am not really sure whether it is really the Palais des Illusions (called in all the documents) and is now just called \u201cmirages\u201d instead of \u201cillusion,\u201d or whether there was also a Palais des Mirages, in any case, it is a truly beautiful piece of culture, comes from Expo 1900 and can be recommended to any visitor to Paris. I have already been three times.<\/p>\n

This is what it looks like:<\/p>\n