It has been 100 years since the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition opened its gates to the 19 million visitors who flocked to see it in 1915.
The PPIE, a city-within-a-city encompassing 76 blocks and 635 acres of what is now the Marina district, celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal and San Francisco's rising from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire. It was a feast of innovation and host to the largest and possibly the most ambitious, truly international arts exhibition ever assembled, consisting of 11,000 paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures.
A fraction of what was once displayed there, over 200 works by established American and European artists some of whose names are more familiar than others, is currently on view at the de Young in "Jewel City: Art from San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition." The sprawling show attempts the seemingly impossible feat of suggesting if not exactly replicating the viewing experience at the fair's three main venues: the Bernard Maybeck-designed Palace of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Annex, and the French Pavilion, which would later inspire the construction of the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
It took four years of planning to produce the fair, and nearly as much time went into researching and organizing this show. Although it's nowhere close to the scope of the original event, the sheer volume of artworks in the exhibition makes it overwhelming in its own right and difficult to absorb in a single outing. It may sound like a churlish complaint in light of the wealth and variety on offer, but one yearns for a fresh perspective on the work a century after the fact, and a deeper understanding of the set of criteria used to select it. For instance, there was apparently little or no politically-themed art. (The huge door-stopper of a catalogue provides back stories and greater historical background.)
The entry to the show is suitably spectacular. As if crowning an archway, a splendid half-moon-shaped mural by Arthur F. Mathews, a founder of the American Arts & Crafts movement, sets the stage. In his "Victory of Culture over Force (Victorious Spirit)" (1914), a goddess-like central figure, a shining beacon of enlightenment that fends off violence and tyranny, seems to descend from the heavens in a pumpkin-colored glow. The image became an emblem of the fair, which started while WWI was underway. The stunning mural is flanked by two bronzes: Adolph Alexander Weinman's "Descending Night" and "Rising Day." The original plaster casts, which have since disappeared, were mounted on columns that stood 100 feet high.
In front, like a sentry barring passage, is "Star Maiden" (1914), aka "the Pan-Pacific Girl," a standing bronze sculpture of a lithe young woman by Alexander Stirling Calder, father of Alexander Calder. The official poster, "Thirteenth Labor of Hercules" by Bay Area artist Perham Wilhelm Nahl, also on view, shows the muscle-bound Greek god parting land masses to make way for the canal. Too bad he wasn't available - it would have saved a lot of dynamite and dust.
Amongst the paintings, drawings and other renderings of the PPIE in the first gallery is a genuine rarity: "Palace of Fine Arts," a photograph believed to be the first picture taken by Ansel Adams, who was 13 years old at the time. For his birthday, Ansel's father had given him a season's pass and a year off from school so that he could attend the fair; little did he know it was where his son would find his true calling.
Wander into an area designated American Modernism and find Arthur B. Carles' "Torso" (1914), a painting of a wanton, voluptuous white alabaster nude regarded at the time as radical, experimental, and extreme, to put it tactfully, and the terrific watercolors "Black and White 1 & 2" (1911), a pair of lively cafe street scenes by David Milne that bear the influence of ukiyo-e Japanese prints of the 1800s and French Nabi purveyors Bonnard and Vuillard.
There's an abundant grab-bag of "International Art" that includes an enigmatic work by Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka, a trio of lithographs by Edvard Munch that include an uncharacteristically mild-mannered self- portrait, and a partially naked "Madonna" lost in a trance amidst swirling, vertigo-inducing lines. "Symposion (The Problem)" (1894), by Aksesli Gallen-Kallela, depicts a late-night gathering of inebriated composers - in case you're wondering, that's Jean Sibelius on the right - but his "Self-Portrait with Cheetah" (1910), a politically incorrect expressionist work where the Finnish artist, traveling in British East Africa (Kenya), poses as the great hunter with a kill at his feet, is a real oddity.
A vast section called "Salon Style" perhaps comes the closest to approximating the spectacular viewing experience at the Palace of Fine Arts with its maze of 120 galleries, curved walls and paintings stacked on top of one another as they are at the Louvre. A blowup of a black & white photograph of the PFA's interior at the front end of the gallery, along with several circular velvet settees of the period, helps conveys the feel of that installation. Winslow Homer's moody seascapes "The Artist's Studio in an Afternoon Fog" (1894) and "Saco Bay" (1896) are here, as well as representatives of American Impressionism such as Guy Rose's "The Backwater" (1910) and Frederick Carl Frieseke's "The Garden Chair" (ca. 1912), a spring frisson of purples and iris-blue flowers in a setting reminiscent of Claude Monet's famed garden in the hamlet of Giverny, where an American ex-pat community coalesced.
Each person will have their favorite moments in a show as expansive as this one. Mine, found in the French Art gallery, is James Tissot's "A Political Woman" (1883-85), a portrait of a grand entrance. All eyes are on the glamorous society woman in elbow-length gloves, demurely clasping a pink ostrich-feather fan and wearing a matching gown decked out in ribbons, ruffles and a bustle. As she sweeps into the elegant ballroom beyond, light glinting off a crystal chandelier in the distance, one can almost hear the murmuring and tumbling laughter of well-heeled guests, and the rustle of expensive skirts. This work is one of a series of 15 portraits of the most beautiful women in Paris painted by Tissot, a gifted artist who captured both the outer beauty and inner lives of women, and whose paintings are radiant with life. A show of his work is being organized by FAMSF, but we'll have to wait until 2019 to see it.