Paris Exposition and Gender

A Look at the Palais de la Femme at the 1900 Exposition Universelle

Exterior of the Palais de la Femme, (collection of Deborah L. Silvermann)

Poster by the Belgian artist Henri Privat Livemont.

An original of this poster with text included can be valued for as much as $8K.

Concurrently with the 1889 Paris Exposition, there was also the staging of a women's congress to articulate the priorities of this burgeoning movement. As a result of these galvanizing feminist activities that were developing in France and indeed around the world in the late 1890's, international organizers of the world's fairs felt it necessary to combat this "femme nouvelle " as they believed that this particular type of woman was a threat to the economic stability of global expansion. (Debora L. Silvermann, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989)

To that end, the Palais de la Femme, situated at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, was created to enforce the view that a woman's role as consumer and decorator of the home must be asserted and presented as a feminine virture. As such the Palais de la Femme displayed hygiene and toiletry objects, as well as day care services for children, as well as commissioned female artists.

The design of the Palais de la Femme is complicated by the fact that it was spearheaded by a female member of Paris's bourgeoise elite, Madame Pegard, whom Silvermann refers to as a "familial feminist". According to Pegard, women in her camp would "will work together for a common goal, the primacy of our arts, and ...the grandeur and wealth of our patrie."

Ground Plan Analysis for the Exposition Universelle, Paris 1900.

Structures Built for the Exposition

The 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle forever changed the layout of the city in that there were several structures that were built and remained long after the fair end. Those structures include the Pont Alexandre, the bridge the connected the Esplanade des Invalides to the Beaux-Arts pavilions.

In addition the Petit Palais, where Paris’s Museum of Fine Arts is currently housed and the Grand Palais, a building that is most noted for its art shows but has also been used by couture designers like Chanel as a fashion venue.

It is also during the Expo that the Paris Metro’s first subway line was inaugurated. Under the leadership of an engineer named Fulgence Bienvenüe, the Paris Route 1 connected the outer neighborhood of Vincennes to the interior of Paris proper. This was a significant shift after the radical social upheavals that occurred as a result of Baron Haussmann’s refiguring of Paris. Stops on Route 1 included stops along Champs Elysee and the Bastille prison.

The Exposition's expanse and attractions

The fair ground was located in the 7th arrondissement, a traditionally aristocratic neighborhood and home to the city's most social privileged residents. The 7th arrondissement had also been home to previous Paris fairs but this time it covered between 543-570 acres. It's expanse being comparable to the size of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Fair.

Modes of transportation to move the 50 million attendees from one section of the fair to another, included the three-tiered moving walkway captured by Thomas Edison on film. The walkway covered the area from Champs de Mars where the Eiffel Tower is located to the Esplanade de Invalides, which houses France's military history.

In 1889, the U.S. pavilion was positioned near the Eiffel Tower on Avenue de Suffren. However In 1900, the U.S. caused an international uproar by insisting on being situated more prominently. As a result, they were afforded a more visible location along the Seine River on the Quai des Nations causing Turkey and Austria to relinquish some of their designated space. There was also a Coloniale Exposition area that included Congo, Senegal, China, Japan, Portugal, Algeria, Russian, and Siberia among others.

Screenshots of the above map overlaid in the Harvard World Map application along with an alternate map of the ground plan can be viewed in an earlier post from 10/24.

Photos of the Champs de Mars, Esplanade des Invalides, the Pont du Alexandre III, and the Grand Palais

Updated: Architectural similarities between the Esplanade des Invalides and the U.S. pavilion

This building is known as Les Invalides, a complex of buildings in Paris, that relate to the military history of France. Note the domed similarities between this building and the U.S. pavilion as referenced in earlier blog entries. Both buildings also depict a triumphal figurehead atop the dome as well, the US pavilion includes an eagle and Invalides includes a war hero, respectively.

Souvenirs from the 1900 Paris Exposition

Below is a hand-mirror souvenir from the Paris Universelle Expo. It is valued at $425. Lot details can be found here: http://www.parishotelboutique.com/store/product2865.html

Also included here is a souvenir of the popular moving sidewalk at the Paris 1900 Exposition. The sidewalk was a three-tiered transit system that covered the area from the Champs de Mars to Invalides. The souvenir is on LiveAuctioneers.com and estimated at $3K-$5K. Check out the lot details here:

http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/10120313

Another view of "race" - Photo of Dahomey Village at the Paris Exposition Universelle

Additional images showcasing the role of technology at the Paris Exposition 1900

Great telescope Paris, 187 feet

Palace of Mines and Metals at Paris Exposition Universelle

Machinery Hall at the Paris Exposition Universelle

Paris Ground Plan

This is another ground plan of the expo published by L. Baschet (Paris)

Below is a screenshot of the Paris 1900 Ground Plan superimposed over a current Paris city map. This map is saved in the Harvard Worldmap program under dellhamiltonparismap.

Below is the original of the Paris 1900 Ground Plan

Post-card source links

Wiki page on postcards

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcard

Gender-Bending in Postcards

http://www.glreview.com/article.php?articleid=845

Worcester Postal History

http://bob.trachimowicz.org/

October 7 and October 17 - Modern Life and Gender

This item is an interesting example of how postcards had gained popularity after they were first introduced at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. It is from A.J. Bradley who attended the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. At the turn of the century, postcards were gaining prominence and were not only used as travel souvenirs but also as political and social propaganda.

The years 1898 – 1918 became the “Golden Age” of postcards and describe a significant advance in modern life. This is due to the fact that historically, sealed letters were what were formally deployed to communicate intimate discourse between senders and receivers. In addition, postcard usage was initially resisted because the writer was concerned that it would allow servants to read the item’s contents. This anxiety was an early indicator garnered by the collapse between the public and the private spheres, colonialism, race and gender. Price was also a factor as the cost for mailing a postcard was the same as mailing a sealed letter (2 cents). It was not until 1898 when postal rates for postcards were lowered to a penny provided the the impetus for the start of the “Golden Age.”

Below is a deciphering of the written text. Periods have been inserted for clarity. A few words have been marked as illegible.

Was very glad to have a [illegible] from you in Mrs. [illegible] letter. For it is very pleasant to be remembered in that way when we are so far away. We are having beautiful weather now & I wish all my friends could be here to go with me to [illegible] Exposition. I am going to take a last look at it this afternoon as we leave for London tomorrow morning. Hoping that you are well and will have a pleasant summer. I am yours [illegible] A.J. Bradley, 7 Avenue de Trocadero, Paris, June 6, 1900.

While the description doesn’t make reference to any one particular aspect of the Paris Exposition, the writer does indicate that they plan to take a “last look” suggesting that it was the kind of experience that one needed to see more than once.

The warm tone of the letter indicates that the writer, A.J. Bradley, know the receiver of the letter well and was pleased to be thought in such a high regard as to be mentioned in previous social correspondence and interaction.

The Paris postal hand-stamp indicates that the carte postale was sent from Place du Trocadero, Paris 106, Juin 6, 8h 50s

Postcard is addressed to: Miss Mary Shirley, 7 Marelton Way, Worcester, MA. The Worcester postal hand-stamp indicates that it was received on June 7, 5:30 pm 1900

On the postcard side that includes the hand written details experience of the fair, there is also a postal hand-stamp indicating that the card passed through New York after Paris, and probably before it reached Massachusetts.

The image on the card is of the American Pavilion, which was situated on the Quai des Nations.

IMAGES ONLY - June 6, 1900 postcard from an attendee at the 1900 Paris Exposition sent through the mail

October 3 - The Role of Technology at the Paris Exposition

The moving sidewalk or the “trottoir roulant” as it was also called was popularized at the Paris Universelle Exposition; its practical aim was to transport visitors from the Esplanade des Invalides to the Champs de Mars. Though the moving sidewalk was experienced as being awkward to get on and off of, cinema studies scholar Anne Friedberg writes in her article, “Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," that the apparatus established a “mobilised visuality." An interaction that was very different than the existing experience of looking at a still photograph or a stereograph. She asserts that "mobilised visuality" was new because it actually changed the relation of sight to bodily movement. In an age of expansive industrialism, visitors also ironically became “products” on a conveyor belt, watching and being watched by international spectators. In the article, she includes the following quote from an American reviewer:

“Plentiful means of transportation about the grounds have been devised chiefly between the Champs des Invalides to the Champs de Mars, where on a stretch of a couple of miles, a circular double elevated structure has been provided, accommodating an electric railroad and a double moving sidewalk, one-half of which travels about twice as fast as the other.”

Here is also link to YouTube footage detailing activities at the Paris Universelle 1900. Paris is one of the first places where "moving images", which we take for granted in the 21st century, were first introduced. Friedberg indicates that the opening sequence of this film is the probably films first vertical camera pan. This film was commissioned by Thomas Edison and shot by James Henry White for a film entitled "Panorama of the Eiffel Tower" housed at the Library of Congress.

Note the views (timecode stamp at 1:30) taken from the inside of Paris's iconic Eiffel Tower, which was first unveiled at the 1889 Worlds Fair and how it provides the viewers with a tree-top view of the city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-4R72jTb74.

Source:

“Trottoir Roulant: The Cinema and New Mobilities of Spectatorship," published in Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital

(Stockholm Studies in Cinema) edited by John Fullerton and Jan Olsson, Indiana University Press, 2005

September 26 Assignment - Address how race impacted the Paris Universelle of 1900

Race played a crucial role at the Paris Universelle of 1900 under the direction of Thomas Calloway, an African American educator and activist, and noted African American sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois, who organized a pioneering exhibition called the Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique - the Exhibit of American Negroes. The exhibit included not only portraits of what Du Bois termed “typical Negro faces,” but also photographs of a thriving African American middle class as evidenced in the hundreds of professionally documented homes, businesses, churches, and school settings in Georgia. In the exhibition, Du Bois also included charts, graphs, and artifacts to further demonstrate the sociological advances of African Americans at the turn of the 19^th century, a period that was just thirty five years after the end of the Civil War.

In Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race and Visual Culture, Shawn Michelle Smith states that Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition heavily influenced Calloway and provided him with the framework for the project. At that time, Washington, was the foremost post-slavery black leader and founder of Tuskegee University in Alabama. In this influential speech, Washington pledges the cooperation of “his race” and indicates that the “agitation of questions of social equality is extremist folly.”(Louis R. Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 3, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974)

Smith writes that according to Calloway, in order for African Americans, particularly in the South to further leverage the excitement over their inclusion in the Atlanta Exposition as well the Tennessee Centennial of 1897, Calloway argued for a strategic approach to being included on the international stage. The two-pronged agenda was stated as the following: “African Americans need occasional opportunities to show in a distinctive way the evidences of their progress, and to prove their value to the body politic.” For Calloway, “the American Negro Exhibit could prove U.S. beneficence, and legitimize U.S. imperialism, by showing how much better off men and women of color were under the civilizing influence of the United States. “

Though the intent of the exhibition might be deemed “accommodationist” in its original aims, it went on to win the fair’s highest honor, a Grand Prix in advancing “la grande famillle humain” – (the great human family). The following year, this important series traveled to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Calloway and Du Bois’s efforts were a vast leap forward from the anger that occurred as a result of the barring of African Americans from any meaningful inclusion in the planning of the 1893 Chicago Columbia Exposition.

Photos Only - Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique, Paris 1900

Photos ONLY - Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois

Booker T. Washington

The only known photograph of W. E. B. Du Bois at the Paris Expo 1900.

Current Bibliography - An Evolving List

Blackmon, Douglas, A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, New York, Anchor Books, 2008

Dixon, Laurinda S., and Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, eds. Twenty-first-century Perspectives on Nineteenth-century Art: Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg. Lexington, 2008.

Levering Lewis, David, Willis, Deborah, A., A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress, Library of Congress, New York, Amistad, 2003

Sharpe, Christina. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-slavery Subjects, Durham, Duke University Press, 2010.

Smith, Shawn Michelle. Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture, Durham, Duke University Press, 2004.

Waterman, Richard, Jr., The Social Economy Exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900, Department of Education and Social Economy, 1900

Paris and Photography as the Promise of Possibility

"To think of photography without Paris at its origins is to think of the computer without keeping California in mind, or to think of the renaissance without conjuring Florence," quite an appropriate analogy in the context of the "moving film" footage of the 1900 Paris Exposition shown in class on 9/19. The article also discusses the "Hausmannization" of Paris as well as the polyphonic viewpoints that digital image-making can now provide.

The entire article (written by Ulrich Baier, Vice Provost for Globalization and Multicultural Affairs and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University) can be accessed below:

Paris and Photography as the Promise of Possibility

http://mus-mus.org/atparis/atparis_ub.htm

September 19 Assignment - Economics at the Paris Expo 1900

Discussion of the economic factors that drove the Paris Universelle Exposition of 1900.

The monograph, The Social Economy Exhibit at the Paris Exposition 1900, by Richard Waterman, Jr. (of the then U.S. Department of Education and Social Economy), provides a game plan for the specific economic opportunities that the 1900 expo would provide the U.S. towards its advancement of its various industries.

Waterman indicates that he wishes to further elaborate on the mission of the “social economy” group as set out by Alfred M. Picard:

“(the social economy group) represents the resultant and at the same time states the philosophy, of the great forces of production.” Waterman further delineates the categories that the U.S. pavilion will display as the following: 1) the country; 2) the people; 3) industrial institutions; 4) commercial institutions: 5) economic institutions: 6) social institutions: and 7) movements for improving social and industrial conditions.

With the victory over Spain in the Spanish-
American War of 1898 in which the United States gained control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, American imperial power had taken center stage. In combination with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. Commissioner General, Waterman’s plans towards the “social economy” exhibit, sought to position the U.S. as a leader of industry and technological advancement and asserted that the Paris expo would be the perfect place to take advantage of this global platform.

Waterman forecasts the industrial possibilities that the 1900 expo provides by using examples of how John Daniel Runkle, then president of MIT, was so previously impressed by the technical skills that were presented by Russia at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. The impact of which is that Runkle replicates this model in Boston and charts the course for the technical instruction of woodworking, forging, casting, and metal work within the American educational system.

A compelling depiction of this technical training as it relates to an African American community that was just a few generations removed from slavery can be seen in the enclosed images that were part of the Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique spearheaded by Thomas Calloway, a former Tuskegee University employee, and noted sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois.

September 12 Assignment – Focus on the U.S. Pavilion at the Paris Universelle Exposition 1900

In Twenty-First Century Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Art: Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg, Diane P. Fischer asserts that the U.S. spent more money than any other visiting nation in order to “announce the new status of the United States, not only as a burgeoning power, but also as the next heir to the legacy of Western civilization.”

Notes from President McKinley’s papers indicate that a congressional budget provision from July 1, 1898 put the sum at $650,000 for the installation of “suitable exhibits by the several Executive Departments, particularly by the Department of Agriculture, the Fish Commission, and the Smithsonian Institution, in representation of the Government of the United States.”

According to Fischer, this was an opportunity, unlike previous expos, for the U.S. to position itself as a key player in the production of fine art. To that end, the work of painters Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, George Inness, James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Childe Hassam at the Decennial International Exhibition of Fine Art, helped to do just that and viewed as a success. However due to limited audience access, (the paintings were situated in a remote location on the second floor), the pressure on American architects to present a unique style was even greater.

In the background of these discussions, was also the fact that the pavilions space allocation had after much wrangling had finally been increased from 157,000 square feet to over 200,00 square feet. As a result, Ferdinand W. Peck (U.S. Commissioner General for the Paris Exposition) began the enormous task of selecting architects for the projects.

Colonial revival styles were submitted by three architectural firms: Holabird and Roche, Wilson and Marshall, and Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge. However, Peck, who had also served on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, rejected all three proposals. What is interesting though is that French officials began to lobby heavily for a skyscraper, which to date, had not existed in Europe. Along with the “skyscraper aesthetic”, it was posited that architect Louis Sullivan’s decorative style could highlight American iconoclasm. Instead, a neo-classical design resubmitted by Charles Coolidge of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge was selected for the pavilion’s structure.

Coolidge focused on a modified version of Richard Morris Hunt’s 1893 Administration Building in Chicago, a building that echoes the U.S. Capitol building and the White House. Coolidge describes the design as a “structure in the classical style, with pilasters similar to the White House, surmounted with a dome and cupola and supplemented in front with a high portico.”

While, the classical style originated in Greece, it is clear that the U.S. wanted to not only position itself according to its newly wrought ideals of triumph and democracy (note the statue of George Washington at the entrance of the pavilion in the image above) but to situate itself as artistically comparable to European architecture. However lofty these aims, critics panned the exterior of the buildilng as a failure. Critic Royal Cortissoz labeled it “ungraceful and too large for its plot.” Cortissoz’s point is accurate in that the building was shoved in between Turkey and Austria. Cortissoz goes on to say that “from top to bottom, the outside speaks of a tenth rate Power, and the inside recalls a cheap hotel.”

Despite this and other excoriating critiques, the pavilion’s use of a large dome and an functioning elevator, could still be read as indicators of the “skyscraper aesthetic” that ironically Peck had previously rejected in earlier discussions.

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32 Vue Photograhiques

Click on the link below to see the Quai des Nations, (the drawing inside to the left) shows that the U.S. pavilion was situated next to Turkey and Austria.
http://www.archive.org/stream/expositionphotogra00expo#page/n21/mode/2up

Images ONLY of the U.S. Pavilion Paris Exposition

Here are some images of the U.S. pavilion in 1900. (Top image: inside the pavilion.

Middle image: exterior view of the pavilion Bottom image: view of the railroad section.) Source: Brooklyn Museum Archives

Bon Marche Guide: Guide illustré du Bon Marche

Click on the link at the bottom to get a page by page look at the Bon Marche catalog for the Paris Exposition 1900.

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23361241M/Guide_illustré_du_Bon_Marché

Visitor Guide Paris Exposition, 1900 guide pratique du visiteur de Paris et de l'exposition.

This link allows you to review the visitor guide that was published by Hachette for the Paris Exposition 1900

http://www.archive.org/stream/parisexposition00pari#page/n3/mode/2up

Paris Exposition 1900 Ground Plan

Click on this link to see the ground plan http://lamotif.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/turquoise-paris-exposition-1900-04.jpg

Du Bois's Talented Tenth in Pictures

Article from theroot.com, The Talented Tenth in Pictures: Click on the link to see 14 of the 363 images that W.E.B. Du Bois presented at the Paris Exposition 1900. Notations by Renee Mussai, Autograph ABP, London

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/web-du-bois-paris-album