1900: Art at the Crossroads

1900: Art at the Crossroads was published to accompany a 2000 exhibit that traveled from the Royal Academy of Arts in London to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  Its purpose was to celebrate the centennial of the 1900 Exposition Universelle that had been held in Paris exactly 100 years before.  This "World's Fair" marked the end of one century and the beginning of the next with a display of international art by seemingly every artist, known and unknown, then active.  As such, it offered attendees an unparalleled opportunity to view side by side existing artistic styles, both those of the nineteenth century that were already falling out of fashion and those modern movements that would come to dominate the twentieth.

This was a fascinating idea for an exhibit.  Rarely are art lovers afforded the chance to compare so directly the old and the new as here.  Usually, movements in art are studied in a vacuum with little or no reference to other styles then prevalent unless these directly impact on the movement under consideration.  A sense of chronology is established in the art student's mind - he or she perceives one movement following the next in an orderly procession from antiquity right up to the present.  Just how deceptive that approach can prove is clearly shown by the present volume.  Revolutionary early pieces by Picasso are juxtaposed with paintings such as Lhermitte's Supper at Erasmus and Bouguereau's Regina Angelorum that even at the time must have seemed terribly anachronistic.  Similarly, the technique of Cézanne's Well in the Park of the Château Noir stands in almost violent contrast to that used by Thomas Moran in Cliff Dwellers even though the two works were painted only a year apart.

One striking omission at the Exposition was any display of graphic work, including photography.  No etchings or lithographs were shown despite the importance these media held for the artists themselves.  Instead, the Fair's organizers deliberately ignored these in favor of painting, sculpture and architectural design which they felt better represented "the higher forms of art."

The book contains only two essays but both are well written and informative.  The first, "Art in 1900: Twilight or Dawn?" by Robert Rosenblum, is primarily a study in aesthetics and gives the reader a brief overview of the various artistic styles on display.  The second essay, by Maryanne Stevens, deals with the politics surrounding the fair.  Ever since the first exposition had been held in France in 1855, there had been an unmistakable political agenda attached to these events.  The fairs were a means by which France sought to assert its primacy not only in the arts but in the political sphere as well.  The nation wished to be seen at once as both a civilizing influence and a world power.  This, of course, resulted in interminable arguments with the country's rivals when it came to the number of foreign works to be included and their placement within the exhibition halls.

While the the book focuses quite properly on the artwork shown at the Exposition, one feels it would not have been entirely remiss to have given passing mention to the Fair's other achievements.  As the Wikipedia article points out:

"The Exposition Universelle was where talking films and escalators were first publicized, and where Campbell's Soup was awarded a gold medal (an image of which still appears on many of the company's products). At the Exposition Rudolf Diesel exhibited his diesel engine, running on peanut oil. Brief films of excerpts from opera and ballet are apparently the first films exhibited publicly with projection of both image and recorded sound...  The centrepiece of the Palais de l'Optique was the 1.25-metre-diameter (49 in) "Great Exposition Refractor". This telescope was the largest refracting telescope at that time."

As in any art book, emphasis is placed on the works themselves.  The reproductions here, as in most Abrams publications, are excellent and are shown in large enough size that one is able to appreciate the detail.  The catalogue is broken down by subject into several subdivisions.  The designations given these sections at times appear extremely arbitrary.  For example, a number of images of mothers breast-feeding their children have been placed under the heading "Religion."  Again, one wonders why Luciano Freire's Country Perfume has been has been assigned a spot under "Social Scenes."  Then there are the odd works, such as Jamin's Brennus and his Loot (a "historical" tableau that vividly anticipates the lurid excesses of pulp art), that are simply lumped together under the name of the Exposition itself.  

In the end, the book serves as an exotic form of time capsule.  It enables the reader to return to the year 1900 and see for himself the tumult the art world was then experiencing as venerable traditions prepared to give way to the startling innovations of modernism.