In a few weeks that shop was a hive of industry, with sculptors, students of sculpture front the art schools, pointers, and a multitude of other white-clad workers bending all their energies toward the completion on time of their colossal task.A few of the sculptors and artisans Calder had brought from New York.But most of the workers he secured in San Francisco, chiefly from the foreign population, some of them able to speak little or no English.
The modeling of the replicas of well-known art works were, almost without exception, made in clay.Most of the original work was directly modelled in plaster-staff used so successfully throughout the Exposition.For the enlarging of single pieces and groups the pointing machine of Robert Paine was chosen by Calder.It was interesting to see it at work, under the guidance of careful and patient operators, tracing mechanically the outlines and reproducing them on a magnified scale.For the finishing of the friezes the skill of the artist was needed, and there Calder found able assistants in the two young sculptors, Roth and Lentelli, who worked devotedly themselves and directed groups of students.
In all the sculpture Calder strove to keep in mind the significance of the Exposition and the spirit of the people who were celebrating.With him styles of architecture and schools were a minor consideration, to be left to the academicians and the critics.He believed that sculpture, like all other art-forms, was chiefly valuable and interesting as human expression.
The Decorative FiguresLess successful on the whole than the blending of sculpture and architecture were the individual figures designed to be placed against the walls.Some of them were extremely well done.Others were obvious disappointments.The unsophisticated judgment, free from Continental bias, might have objected to the almost gratuitous use of nudity.For a popular exhibition, even the widely-traveled and broad-minded art lover might have been persuaded that a concession to prejudice could have been made without any great damage to art.
In the magnificent entrance to the grounds it was deemed fitting that the meaning of the Exposition should be symbolized by an elaborate fountain.So in the heart of the South Gardens there was placed the Fountain of Energy, the design of A.Stirling Calder, the athletic figure of a youth, mounted on a fiery horse, tearing across the globe, which served for pedestal, the symbolic figures of Valor and Fame accompanying on either side.The work, as a whole suggested the triumph of man in overcoming the difficulties in the way, of uniting the two oceans.It made one of the most striking of all the many fountains on the grounds, the dolphins in the great basin, some of them carrying female figures on their backs, contributing to an effect peculiarly French.
The Column of ProgressThe Column of Progress, suggested by Calder and planned in outline by Symmes Richardson, besides being beautiful symbol and remarkably successful in outline, was perhaps the most poetic and original of all the achievements of the sculptors here.It represented something new in being the first great column erected to express a purely imaginative and idealistic conception.Most columns of its kind had celebrated some great figure or historic feat, usually related to war.But this column stood for those sturdy virtues that were developed, not through the hazards and the excitements and the fevers of conquest, but through the persistent and homely tests of peace, through the cultivation of those qualities that laid the foundations of civilized living.Isidore Konti designed the frieze typifying the swarming generations, by Matthew Arnold called "the teeming millions of men," and to Hermon A.MacNeil fell the task of developing the circular frieze of toilers, sustaining the group at the top, three strong figures, the dominating male, ready to shoot his arrow straight alit to its mark, a male supporter, and the devoted woman, eager to follow in the path of advance.
The Aim of the SculptorsIt was evidently the aim of the sculptors to express in their work, in so far as they could, the character of the Exposition.And the breadth of the plans gave them, a wide scope.They must have welcomed the chance to exercise their art for the pleasure of the multitude, an art essentially popular in its appeal and certain to be more and more cultivated in our every-day life.Though this new city was to be for a year only, it would surely influence the interest and the taste in art of the multitudes destined to become familiar with it and to carry away more or less vivid impressions.
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Mural PaintingIt was felt by the builders of the Exposition that mural decorating must be a notable feature.
The Centennial Exposition of '76 had been mainly an expression of engineering.Sixteen years later architecture had dominated the Exposition in Chicago.The Exposition in San Francisco was to be essentially pictorial, combining, in its exterior building, architecture, sculpture and painting.
When Jules Guerin was selected to apply the color it was decided that he should choose the mural decorators, subject to the approval of the architectural board.The choice fell on men already distinguished.all of them belonging to New York, with two exceptions, Frank Brangwyn of London, and Arthur Mathews, of San Francisco.They were informed by Guerin that they could take their own subjects.He contented himself with saying that a subject with meaning and life in it was an asset.
In New York the painters had a conference with Guerin.He explained the conditions their work was to meet.Emphasis was laid on the importance of their painting with reference to the tone of the Travertine.They were instructed, moreover, to paint within certain colors, in harmony with the general color-scheme, a restriction that, in some cases, must have presented difficult problems.
