Along with a number of colleagues from the Artists International Association, Holland was involved in the design and installation of the Peace Pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937. Key members were there including Holland, Boswell, Pearl Binder, Misha Black to name a few. I wish I could remember the slightly scurrilous stories told to me by Boswell's widow and others of what went on outside the hard work of installing a pavilion! The following piece was written by Holland in late 1986 or early 1987, reflecting on the Expo, contrasting it with other major events and failing to disguise Holland's love of Paris as he remembered it. I do recall being driven by my mother through central Paris to get to and from the Gare du Lyons, and my father being mortified at the changes to road junctions, rights of way and one way streets in the period between 1937 and 1974!
There are photographs of Holland working on the Peace Pavilion which will accompany this article, when I can find them.
Paris Expo 1937
1987 will be the 50thanniversary of the Paris World Expo, probably the most elegant and ingenious exhibition since the Great Exhibition of 1851, and unlikely in the present world, ever to be matched and never exceeded for style and creativity. It fell between the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II, yet nearly all the belligerent powers participated; the Popular Front government in France fostered it. Paris was the cultural centre of the world and Paris, not France, was the presiding influence. Unlike the Festival of Britain in 1951, its manifestations were not widely scattered through the country; it was not the Festival of France. Regions such as Brittany, Auvergne, Provence installed their own pavilions displaying local cultures and offering regional dishes, but these did not appear to be linked organisationally. This was Paris playing host to the world, and in spite of tensions and feuds very near ignition point, the world came to the party.
Expo 37 introduced an entirely new attitude to the international exhibition. From 1851, when the schedule of such events was drawn up for the next century, the pattern and format had been much the same (though curiously the progenitor Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 had been exceptional and untypical). The British Empire Exhibition of 1924, better known as Wembley, was the near-perfect specimen. A large area of relatively undeveloped land but within easy reach of a capital or major provincial city was selected and cleared. A central concourse was laid down to lead to a dominating central structure or arena where major spectacles could be presented. Symmetrically arranged on either side of the concourse would be the great pavilions or palaces of Industry, the Arts, Agriculture, Science. Beyond these the guest participants would erect their characteristic pavilions in the forms of pagodas, chateaux, temples, as appropriate. Restaurants and cafés would cater for the visitors while lighter entertainment would be focused on a Fairway, where concessions of every type would be leased to the world’s showmen and souvenirs, mostly knick-knackery would be on sale. The visitor took away a total impression of imperial stability, unlimited natural resources and the wonders of modern science.
Why and how Paris Expo aimed at and achieved such a different character is probably complex, linked with the Popular Front in France and the increasing threat to the growth of European civilisation from Central and Eastern Europe. It is probable that France had been long scheduled to host a world scale exhibition in 1937 – the point is not critical. More interesting is how Paris broke the pompous Imperial formula.
The first and perhaps the most important difference was that the Expo was not conceived as an entity, sited peripherally and self-contained. Instead the City of Paris, already with generous open spaces, became the site, integrating existing features with newly projected structures.
The exhibition aligned itself on two axes, a main concourse from the Trocadero site (Chaillot?) down to the river and then ascending by the Champs de Mars to the Eiffel Tower, an incomparable ready-made vertical feature. The major nations built their pretentious pavilions on either side; halfway down, surmounting a perpendicular tower apparently of dark pottery, a Nazi eagle, wings outstretched, glowered at the Soviet Pavilion. This had a plinth of metallic grey on which a gigantic Soviet youth and maiden together thrust a hammer and a sickle toward the German fowl. Those as the most blatant examples of old fashioned jingoism were unique and as such probably stimulated more ribaldry than awe.
The other axis was the river itself, its long curves in contrast to the Challiot-Eiffel axis. Here less nationalistic pavilions sheltered between the trees, threw balconies over the riverside, and where there were erected a number of light towers of glass and masts which carried the Festival mood up to the eastern bounds of the city.
The exhibition literally was interwoven with the streets, the buildings and the river itself. What had largely gone was the imperial gesture – the pompous massive palace of this or that. Lightness, elegance and charm replaced the grand manner. I cannot begin to tell you what an exhilarating, breath-taking town Paris was in 1937, with interplay of art and design on every hand. It was, in fact, the swansong of the European culture of the inter-war years.