VIVE LA FRANCE! LONG LIVE FRANCE!

This morning we had an early morning visit to the library by the French Ambassador to the United States Pierre Vimont, the French Foreign Trade Minister Anne-Marie Idrac, the Consul General of France at Miami Gaël de Maisonneuve, and others here in Miami to attend an important economic conference. In preparation for their visit, I had pulled a representative sampling of French materials in the library collection.

As Ms. Idrac had served as the President of RATP and SNCF (the public transportation departments for Paris and France) and others in attendance were involved in high speed train projects, I had pulled some materials related to railway service in France. These included a mid-nineteenth century French portfolio of color chromolithographic plates illustrating the interior decoration and design plans for the emperor’s royal train car, a small booklet about the railway line between Paris and Orléans published in 1908, a spiral-bound book with an aluminum-foil cover about the use of new alloys and materials in building modern trains, and an American children’s book with a beautiful color page spread of a speeding streamlined train from the 1930s.

There was also a sampling of various French world’s fair materials on the table, including several postcards from the Exposition international de l’Est de la France and portfolios from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925: Paris, France).

The architectural connection between the styles of the pavilions built for that latter fair and the Art Deco hotels here in Miami Beach did not go unnoticed. There were also a few rare Art Deco illustrated books and bindings for the visitors to peruse.

As always, some of our incredible propaganda materials were also laid out for their consideration. The visitors had the chance to look over a rare children’s book designed to teach young French children the alphabet even as they learned about their fathers’ participation in the Great War, 1914-1918.

We also had some propaganda pieces from the Second World War, some lampooning the German occupiers; others promoting allegiance to the collaborationist Vichy government.

One could not help but feel the cruel irony of reading such laudable sentiments as “One for all, and all for one” and “Long live France” in a propagandistic alphabet book produced by the Vichy regime. That same alphabet book also carried such insidious messages for children on other pages encouraging them to “punish the traitors”!

Of course, no tour of our French materials would have been complete without a review of some of the stunning pochoir portfolios in our collection. The pochoir (or “stencil work”) technique was popularized by French publishers in the “roaring twenties” and was used in deluxe edition illustrated books and in oversized portfolios promoting patterns for haute couture fashion, textiles, wallpaper, and designs to be applied to porcelains. The pochoir process required the creation of individual stencils for each color image in an illustration and the painstaking hand-application of brilliant gouache paints one after another. While the pochoir technique produced brilliant color images unmatched by any other contemporary industrial printing process, because it was so labor-intensive and expensive it quickly fell from fashion following the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

GIFT OF RICHARD P. SCHICK

AFTER HOURS VISIT BY FIU HISTORICAL METHODS CLASS

Last evening, Dr. Aurora G. Morcillo brought the graduate students in her Historical Methods class to our rare books and special collections library for a presentation by Mellon grant coordinator Jon Mogul and yours truly. The aim was to expose the students to some of the nonliterary primary source materials in our library and to help them learn how to “read” and make sense of the visual imagery and physicality of the artifacts. It is hoped that after their visit the students might began thinking about utilizing such materials not merely as illustrations, but as evidence as compelling and potentially revealing as anything offered in some of the more traditional literary sources. The library table in our main reading room was laid out in advance of their arrival with an array of diverse materials covering five areas of strength from our collection: World’s Fair catalogs and ephemera; a wide variety of items documenting various colonial projects of the late nineteenth and twentieth century; all manner of propaganda produced in the Soviet Union; Spanish Civil War leaflets and vintage postcards; and a variety of rare books, calendars, and portfolios illustrated by American Socialist and Communist artists in the 1930s.

Starting with the VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) methodology, the students were asked to look at and describe exactly what they saw in the artifacts until the group collectively exhausted the imagery of the items. In order to interpret and make sense of the objects, the students were next asked to think about these same designed objects in the historical, social, and cultural context of the times in which they were made. They were encouraged to think about who produced the work and for what intent? Who was the intended audience? Was there a subtext or subliminal message buried in the text or image that the historical audience might have immediately or subconsciously recognized? How was the message meant to be distributed? Was there some relationship between the design of the object (photograph, photomontage, linocut, illustration, and caricature), its form (exhibition catalog, postcard, leaflet, and handbill) and the ideology its creators espoused?

I have included one item from each of the five categories mentioned above so that my readers might also have a chance to try their hand at parsing and interpreting the items for themselves. Feel free to comment with your own impressions and interpretations of these historical artifacts.

ALL THE WORLD’S A FAIR!

This past Monday, Dr. Lara Kriegel and eleven FIU students enrolled in her senior seminar: World’s Fairs, Exhibitions, and History, came up to our rare books and special collections library to meet the librarians and learn how to access the collection via our web catalog and how to schedule research appointments. Following the brief orientation, the students were treated to a presentation of original international exhibition materials aimed at giving them a chronological overview of the world’s fairs while simultaneously introducing them to themes that might serve to inspire their final research paper topics.

The library’s holdings of world’s fair materials is particularly rich with regard to the fairs ranging from the first major international exhibition—(the so-called “Crystal Palace” exhibition in London, 1851)—through the San Francisco and New York World’s Fairs in 1939-1940. Although we do have some materials from some of the later fairs, our collection is far less comprehensive for the post-World War Two period. Our rare books cataloguer, Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi, having recently delivered a paper dealing with Romania’s pavilions at various world’s fairs, addressed the students about the importance of the fairs in terms of national self-representation. It was also evident from the original materials laid out on the table how important certain fairs were in terms of promoting and disseminating new artistic and architectural styles.

Although we often think of the fairs in terms of education and entertainment, we also wanted to impress upon the students the idea that there was also a darker side to these expositions as the nations participating in the early exhibitions used the occasion to propagandize the audiences. In addition to the ubiquitous nationalistic “chest-beating” and games of one-upmanship played by rival countries, the West also used the fair to sell the attendees on the legitimacy of colonial and imperial projects. Many colonial expositions lauded the achievements of civilized nations and the “white man’s burden” of Christianizing and civilizing pagan “primitives” around the world. Many of these fairs shared the Orientalist tendencies of the age and “represented” colonial peoples as “others” in order to justify their economic imperialism under the guise of humanitarian campaigns. Other popular exhibits in these early fairs were those which glorified war by showcasing the latest military technological weaponry and warships. Even the entertainment provided in the Midways was far from politically-correct by today’s standards, perpetuating stereotypes with exhibitions of human oddities and zoos where “freaks” and “primitives” could be gawked at by “civilized” spectators.

World’s fairs organized during the worldwide depression were often courted by cities anxious to provide work for the idle and unemployed, to stimulate tourism, and to provide at least some temporary boost to the economic doldrums. The corporate presence and pavilions at these later fairs often rivaled those sponsored and built by many smaller nations and reflect their growing influence in modern society, economy, and life.

WOLFSONIAN LIBRARIAN NICOLAE HARSANYI DELIVERS TWO PAPERS

Wolfsonian rare books cataloguer Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi spent part of the winter break between Christmas and New Year’s Day presenting papers at two different panels organized by the Romanian Studies Association of America, of which he is a life member. On Dec. 29-30, 2009, Dr. Harsanyi participated in the Annual Convention of Modern Language Association (MLA) held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he delivered a paper entitled: “Romanian Pavilions at Word’s Fairs between the two World Wars.” This paper used sources available in the Wolfsonian library, where we have extensive primary source holdings of World’s Fair and international exposition materials.

Romania’s Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition

Source: Exposition internationale, Paris, 1937. Participations étrangères, Editions Alexis Sinjon, Paris, 1937, pl. 39.

The second paper presented was “Programmatic Discourse and Problematic Realities” and focused on the rhetoric and legacy of the Proclamation of Timisoara (Romania) issued in March 1990. The latter presentation required little in the way of reading from his presentation paper as Dr. Harsanyi was able to rely on his own personal memories as a founding member of the society which issued the Proclamation, on the political and societal urgencies that engendered this document, as well as on the textual structure of it.

Both panels were attended by approximately fifteen scholars hailing from various universities across the United States.

WOLFSONIAN FELLOW STUDIES 19TH CENTURY INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS

Since October 7th, the Wolfsonian-FIU has been hosting David Raizman, Professor of Art and Art History at Drexel University, as a research fellow. Professor Raizman has been looking through our extensive holdings of mid- to late nineteenth century World’s Fair materials for works related to his own area of interest and expertise: the representation and display of Renaissance and revival-style furniture in international expositions. Professor Raizman is particularly interested in some of the large and elaborately-carved and decorated pieces that were designed as much for public display as for private consumption, and which blurred the distinctions usually drawn between fine and decorative art objects, and gave luster to the notion of 'art applied to industry.'

The Wolfsonian library’s rich collection of original catalogs, guidebooks, official reports, and ephemeral items published by and for these international exhibitions is keeping him busy during the last two remaining weeks of his research visit. According to our scholar, “Every day brings new discoveries and greater familiarity with these events that attracted millions of visitors (and generated reams of printed paper!)" He adds that "It's interesting to read the jurors' reports along with the comments of critics and observers who wrote about the world's fairs - there's such a variety of viewpoints, praising the highest levels of skill, marveling at the technology which assisted the worker, while at the same time lamenting the absence of 'ordinary' furniture that the majority of visitors might actually buy and enjoy. Reconciling these often conflicting attitudes seemed to have occupied many observers at the time and contributes to our understanding of the history of design in the later 19th century."