World Exhibition 1937

The Exposition In­ter­na­tionale des Arts et Tech­niques dans la Vie Moderne (In­ter­na­tional Ex­po­si­tion of Art and Tech­nol­ogy in Mod­ern Life) was held from 25 May to 25 No­vem­ber 1937 in Paris, France. Both the Palais de Chail­lot, hous­ing the Musée de l'Homme,^[1] and the Palais de Tokyo, which houses the Musée d'Art Mod­erne de la Ville de Paris, were cre­ated for this ex­hi­bi­tion that was of­fi­cially sanc­tioned by the Bureau In­ter­na­tional des Expositions.

Exhibitions

The Soviet pavilion and the German pavilion near the Eiffel Tower

At first the cen­ter­piece of the ex­po­si­tion was to be a 2,300-foot (700 m) tower (»Phare du Monde«) which was to have a spi­ral­ing road to a park­ing garage lo­cated at the top and a hotel and restau­rant lo­cated above that. The idea was aban­doned as it was far too ex­pen­sive.^[2]

Pavilions

Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux

The Pavil­lon des Temps Nou­veaux (Pavil­ion of New Times) was a tent pavil­ion de­signed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.^[3]

Canadian Pavilion

Fitting in the ar­chi­tec­tural master-plan of the mas­ter ar­chi­tect Jacques Gréber at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and in­spired by the shape of a grain elevator, the Cana­dian pavil­ion in­cluded Joseph-Émile Brunet's 28-foot sculp­ture of a buf­falo (1937). Paint­ings by Brunet, sculpted pan­els on the out­side of the struc­ture, and sev­eral the­matic stands in­side the Cana­dian pavil­ion de­picted as­pects of Cana­dian cul­ture.^[4]

Spanish Pavilion

The Span­ish pavil­ion was arranged by the Pres­i­dent of Spain Spanish Re­pub­li­can government and built by the Span­ish ar­chi­tect Josep Lluis Sert. It at­tracted extra at­ten­tion be­cause the ex­po­si­tion took place dur­ing the Spanish Civil War.^[5] The pavil­ion in­cluded Pablo Picasso's Guernica, the now-famous de­pic­tion of the hor­rors of war,^[6] as well as Alexander Calder's sculp­ture Mercury Fountain and Joan Miró's paint­ing Catalan peas­ant in revolt.^[7]

German Pavilion

Two of the other no­table pavil­ions were those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The or­ga­ni­za­tion of the world ex­hi­bi­tion had placed the Ger­man and the So­viet pavil­ions di­rectly across from each other.^[8] Hitler had de­sired to with­draw from par­tic­i­pa­tion, but his ar­chi­tect Albert Speer con­vinced him to par­tic­i­pate after all, show­ing Hitler his plans for the Ger­man pavil­ion. Speer later re­vealed in his au­to­bi­ogra­phies that he had had a clan­des­tine look at the plans for the So­viet pavil­ion, and had de­signed the Ger­man pavil­ion to rep­re­sent a bulwark against Communism.

The prepa­ra­tion and con­struc­tion of the ex­hibits were plagued by delay. On the open­ing day of the ex­hi­bi­tion, only the Ger­man and the So­viet pavil­ions had been com­pleted. This, as well as the fact that the two pavil­ions faced each other, turned the ex­hi­bi­tion into a com­pe­ti­tion be­tween the two great ide­o­log­i­cal ri­vals.

Speer's pavil­ion was cul­mi­nated by a tall tower crowned with the sym­bols of the Nazi state: an eagle and the swastika. The pavil­ion was con­ceived as a mon­u­ment to »Ger­man pride and achieve­ment«. It was to broad­cast to the world that a new and pow­er­ful Ger­many had a re­stored sense of na­tional pride. At night, the pavil­ion was il­lu­mi­nated by flood­lights. Josef Thorak's sculp­ture Comradeship stood out­side the pavil­ion, de­pict­ing two enor­mous nude males, clasp­ing hands and stand­ing de­fi­antly side by side, in a pose of mu­tual de­fense and »racial ca­ma­raderie«.^[8]

Map of the exhibition

Soviet Pavilion

The ar­chi­tect of the So­viet pavil­ion was Boris Iofan. Vera Mukhina de­signed the large fig­u­ra­tive sculp­ture on the pavil­ion. The grand build­ing was topped by Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, a large momentum-exerting statue, of a male worker and a fe­male peas­ant, their hands to­gether, thrust­ing a ham­mer and a sickle. The statue was meant to sym­bol­ize the union of work­ers and peas­ants.^[8]

Italian Pavilion

Italy was vying for at­ten­tion be­tween Nazi Ger­many and the So­viet Union who pre­sented them­selves as great (and op­pos­ing) forces to be reck­oned with. Italy was the benev­o­lent dic­ta­tor­ship: sunny, open and Mediter­ranean it was founded on dis­ci­pline, order and unity. Marcello Piacentini was given the job of de­sign­ing the pavil­ion ex­te­rior. He used a mod­ern re­in­forced con­crete frame com­bined with tra­di­tional el­e­ments such as colon­nades, ter­races, courts and gal­leries, the tower form, Clas­si­cal rhythms and the use of Mediter­ranean mar­ble and stucco. The pavil­ion was nes­tled under the Eif­fel tower look­ing out over the Seine to the main part of the Ex­po­si­tion site.

Giuseppe Pagano was re­spon­si­ble for the over­all co-ordination of the ex­hibits and was the first im­pact on en­ter­ing the build­ing, its large court­yard gar­den and its hall of ho­n­our. The main entry was through the Court of Ho­n­our that show­cased life size ex­am­ples of Italy's most im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the his­tory of tech­nol­ogy. Arturo Martini's Vic­tory of the Air presided over the space, her dark bronze form stand­ing out against a seem­ingly in­fi­nite back­drop of blue-grey Venet­ian mo­saic tiles. From there vis­i­tors could visit the Colo­nial Ex­hibits by Mario Sironi and the Gallery of Tourism be­fore en­joy­ing a plate of real spaghetti on the restau­rant ter­race. The court­yard gar­den was de­signed a respite from the ex­hibits with a sym­phony of green grass and green-glazed tiles set against red flow­ers and bur­gundy por­phyry.

The Hall of Ho­n­our was the pavilion's most dra­matic and evoca­tive space. It also 'repurposed' an ex­ist­ing art­work: Mario Sironi's Cor­po­ra­tive Italy (Fas­cist Work) mo­saic from the 1936 Tri­en­nale that had now been com­pleted with nu­mer­ous fig­ures en­gaged in dif­fer­ent types of work and the fig­ure of the im­pe­r­ial Roman eagle fly­ing in from the right hand side. The 8m x 12 m work tow­ered over the two-storey height space that oc­cu­pied the top of the pavilion's tower, mak­ing it the cen­tre piece of the pavilion's dec­o­ra­tive and pro­pa­ganda pro­gram. The en­throned fig­ure of Italy rep­re­sented Cor­po­ratism – the suc­cess­ful eco­nomic pol­icy that merged the best of Cap­i­tal­ism and the best of Com­mu­nism – and that had, up until then proved a suc­cess. The room was a cel­e­bra­tion of all those as­pects of Fas­cist so­ci­ety that Pagano whole­heart­edly be­lieved in: so­cial har­mony, gov­ern­ment input to gen­er­ate in­dus­trial in­no­va­tion and sup­port for artists, pro­fes­sion­als and crafts­men as well as work­ers. Here Pagano had the joy of work­ing along­side five dif­fer­ent artists and plac­ing Italy's newest in­dus­trial ma­te­r­ial such as linoleum and Ter­molux (shat­ter­proof plate glass) next to a sump­tu­ous chan­de­lier from Mu­rano and amber mar­ble.^[9]

British Pavilion

Britain had not been ex­pect­ing such a com­pet­i­tive ex­po­si­tion, and its planned bud­get was only a small frac­tion of Germany's.^[10] Frank Pick, the chair­man of the Coun­cil for Art and In­dus­try, ap­pointed Oliver Hill as ar­chi­tect but told him to avoid mod­ernism and to focus on tra­di­tional crafts.^[11] The main ar­chi­tec­tural el­e­ment of Hill's pavil­ion was a large white box, dec­o­rated ex­ter­nally with a painted frieze by John Skeaping and in­ter­nally with giant pho­to­graphic fig­ures which in­cluded Neville Chamberlain fish­ing. Its con­tents were crafts ob­jects arranged ac­cord­ing to Eng­lish words which had be­come loanwords in French, such as »sport« and »week­end«, and in­cluded some items by renowned pot­ter William Worrall. There was con­sid­er­able British crit­i­cism that the re­sult was un­rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Britain and com­pared poorly to the other pavilions' pro­jec­tions of na­tional strength.^[10]

Awards

• At the presentation, both Speer and Iofan, who also designed the Palace of Soviets that was planned to be constructed in Moscow, were awarded gold medals for their respective designs. Also, for his model of the Nuremberg party rally grounds, the jury granted Speer, to his and Hitler's surprise, a Grand Prix.^[12]
• Artist Johanne deRibert Kajanus, mother of composer Georg Kajanus and film-maker Eva Norvind, granddaughter of composer and conductor Robert Kajanus, and grandmother of actress Nailea Norvind, won a bronze medal for her life-size sculpture of Mother and Child at the exhibition.
• Polish modern architect Stanisław Brukalski won the bronze medal for

  his own house

  built in Warsaw in 1929 supposedly inspired by Gerrit Rietveld's Schröderhuis which he visited.^[13]
• Polish company, First Factory of Locomotives in Poland Ltd., won a gold medal for the Pm36-1 locomotive, another Polish company, Lilpop, Rau i Loewenstein, also won a gold medal for the tourist train (couchette, club carriage and bath/spa carriage).^[14]
• American architect Alden Dow won the »grand prize for residential architecture« for his John S. Whitman House, built in Midland, Michigan, USA.^[15]
• Soviet architect Andrey Kryachkov won the Grand Prix for designing his 100-flat building located in Novosibirsk.
• Serbian painter Ivan Tabaković won the Grand Prix for ceramics.
• German textile designer, weaver and former Bauhaus student Margaretha Reichardt (1907–1984) won an honorary diploma for her Gobelin tapestry.^[16]
• Commercial Artist Eva Harta, daughter of Austrian Portrait Painter Felix Albrecht Harta won a silver medal for applied peasant motifs on wooden box tops.-letter dated March, 9th 1938 from International Jury to Eva Harta. Verified by Larry Heller, son of the artist.

Festivals of the Exposition

• 23 May – The Centenary of the Arc de Triomphe
• 5–13 June – The International Floralies
• 26 June – Motorboat races on the Seine
• 29 June – Dance Festival
• July – Midsummer Night's Dream (In the gardens of Bagatelle)
• 3 July – Horse Racing
• 4–11 July – Rebirth of the City
• 21 July – Colonial Festival
• 27 July – World Championship Boxing Matches
• 30 July – 10 August – The True Mystery of the Passion (before Notre Dame Cathedral)
• 12 September – Grape Harvest Festival
• 18 October – Naissance d'une cité – Birth of a City
• Forty Two International Sporting Championships
• Every Night: Visions of Fairyland on the Seine

Reproduction of the Soviet Pavilion

After the Paris ex­hi­bi­tion closed, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman was moved to the en­trance of the All-Russia Ex­hi­bi­tion Centre in Moscow, where it stood on a high plat­form. The sculp­ture was re­moved for restora­tion in 2003, in­tended to be com­pleted by 2005. How­ever, due to fi­nan­cial is­sues the restora­tion was de­layed. On 28 No­vem­ber 2009 the sculp­ture was com­pleted and re­turned to its place in front of the VDNKh. On 4 De­cem­ber 2009 the sculp­ture was re­vealed on the recre­ated pavil­ion struc­ture.^[17]

Gallery

• 

  The Nazi Ger­man pavilion

• 

  The So­viet pavilion

• 

  The Pol­ish pavilion

• 

  The Swiss pavilion

• 

  The Ro­man­ian pavilion

• 

  The So­viet pavil­ion re­pro­duced in Moscow

• 

  The Ital­ian Pavilion

• 

  Entrance to the Ital­ian Pavil­ion
  (Colour re­con­struc­tion)

Further reading

• World's Fairs on the Eve of War: Science, Technology, and Modernity, 1937–1942 by Robert H. Kargon and others, 2015, University of Pittsburgh Press
• Paris 1937 by E.P. Frank, with 100 stereoscopic photographs from Heinrich Hoffmann, 1937, Raumbild-Verlag Otto Schönstein^[18]
• Classical Violence: Thierry Maulnier, French Fascist Aesthetics and the 1937 Paris World's Fair. by Mark Antiff Modernism/Modernity 15, no. 1 January 2008
• Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France by Karen Fiss, Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 2009

References