The evocation of the Art Deco period in France, through the 1925 Paris Exhibition, is widely justified by the confrontation between a moderate modernism and a more revolutionary front characterizing the Pavilion Doors and the formal vocabulary of the period decorators. The seven months during which the international exhibition was shown highlighted an underlying duality that came to characterize decorative arts until World War II.
The main purpose of the Paris Exhibition, as defined by its Organizing Committee in a report dated from 1915, excluded all and any reference to tradition. In the formal plan, this initiative should present itself exclusively through “Modern Art”, a kind of artistic “Renaissance” which, from the social point of view, would create a response “both to the more modest needs and to the luxury whims”.
Paradoxically, from the study of the works shown in the different French Pavilions –furniture, decorative art objects, painting and sculpture– results a diversified set of pieces where a very particular modernism and a dominant neoclassicism, more exuberant than simple, coexist.
The purpose of the current exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, curated by Chantal Bizot and Dany Sautot, is based on this ambiguity, gathering only works from the best artists and the most famous manufactures and ateliers, selected for the 1925 Exhibition, such as the important sculpture Le Printemps ou Hommage à Jean Goujon by Janniot, bought by Calouste Gulbenkian and which decorated the façade of Ruhlmann Pavilion (Hôtel du Collectioneur).
The exhibition includes furniture pieces from Ruhlmann, Leleu, Groult and Dunand, as well as silver and gold ware from Christofle, jewellery from Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Chaumet and Boucheron, ceramics from Jourdain and Braquemond, porcelains from Rapin, paintings from Le Corbusier, Léger and Laurencin, sculptures from Janniot and Joseph Bernard, glassware from Baccarat and Lalique, textiles from Dufrêne and Miklos, and also illustrated and hard-cover books (Schmied, Dunand and Legrain), from foreign public and private collections, mainly French, but also from national collections, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection.
In spite of Portugal not having been officially represented at the 1925 Exhibition, one of its artists, Canto da Maya –residing in Paris at the time– showed some of his works in French pavilions. He is represented in the exhibition with two sculptures, namely Eve or Femme au Serpent.
Between the tradition myth and the quest for progress, the setting of the exhibition allows for a stylistic reading of the works whilst trying to enhance similarities and differences.
The catalogue, reproducing all pieces, includes texts which are to be understood as reference. The exhibition provides a better knowledge of an artistic period of significance and which was largely accepted and generated much curiosity towards the public.