The City of Domes [32]
been miscalculated. At night, under the lighting, they show up better. Judged by themselves, apart from their surroundings, they are full of inspiration and poetry. Only a man of genuine feeling and with a fine color-sense could have done them. But in all this splendor of architecture they are lost."
On examining them in detail we found that they covered an extraordinarily wide range of fancy, graceful and dramatic, even while, save in one panel, they showed an indifference to story-telling. One group celebrated "The Birth of European Art," with the altar and the sacred flame, tended by a female guardian and three helpers, and with a messenger reaching from his chariot to seize the torch of inspiration and to bear it in triumph through the world, the future intimated by the crystal held in the hands of the woman at the left. Another, "The Birth of Oriental Art," told the ancient legend of a Chinese warrior who, seated on the back of a dragon, gave battle to an eagle, the symbol relating to man's seeking inspiration from the air. "Ideals in Art" brought forward more or less familiar types: the Madonna and the Child, Joan of Arc, Youth and Beauty, in the figure of a girl, Vanity in the Peacock, with more shadowy intimations in two mystical figures in the background, the tender of the sacred flame and the bearer of the palm for the dead, and the laurel-bearer ready to crown victory. "The Inspiration in All Art" revealed the figures of Music, Architecture, Painting, Poetry and Sculpture. Four other panels glorified the four golds of California, gold, wheat, poppies and oranges, a happy idea, providing opportunities for the splendid use of color.
"It's a pity those murals couldn't have been tried out up there and then taken down and done over," said the architect. "But sometime they will find the place where they belong, perhaps in one of our San Francisco public buildings. They're too good not to have the right kind of display."
"The Priestess of Culture," by Herbert Adams, one of the best-known of American sculptors, eight times repeated, we felt, had its rightful place up there and blended into the general architectural scheme. But some of the other pieces of statuary might have been left out with advantage.
Through the columns we caught many beautiful vistas. And those groups of columns themselves made pictures. "What is most surprising about this palace is the way it grows on you. The more familiar you are with it the more you feel the charm. Maybeck advises his friends to come here by moonlight when they can get just the effect he intended. In all the Exposition there's no other spot quite so romantic. It might have been built for lovers."
XI
At the Palace of Horticulture
At the Palace of Horticulture the architect said: "Here is the Mosque of Ahmed the First, taken from Constantinople and adapted to horticulture and to the Exposition. It has a distinct character of its own. It even has temperament. So many buildings that are well proportioned give the impression of being stodgy and dull. They are like the people that make goodness seem uninteresting. But here is use that expresses itself in beauty and adorns itself with appropriate decoration."
When I mentioned that some people found this building too ornate, the architect replied:
"There's an intimate and appropriate relation between the ornament and the architecture. Personally I shouldn't care to see just this kind of building in the heart of the city, where you'd have it before your eyes every day. But for the Exposition it's just right. And how fitting it is that the splendid dome should be the chief feature of a building that is really an indoor garden and that the most prominent note of the coloring should be green, nature's favorite and most joyous color. Some joker," he went on, "says that this Exposition is domicidal. He expresses a feeling a good many people have here, that there are too many domes. But I don't agree. The domes make a charming pictorial effect, and they harmonize with the general spirit of the architecture.
On examining them in detail we found that they covered an extraordinarily wide range of fancy, graceful and dramatic, even while, save in one panel, they showed an indifference to story-telling. One group celebrated "The Birth of European Art," with the altar and the sacred flame, tended by a female guardian and three helpers, and with a messenger reaching from his chariot to seize the torch of inspiration and to bear it in triumph through the world, the future intimated by the crystal held in the hands of the woman at the left. Another, "The Birth of Oriental Art," told the ancient legend of a Chinese warrior who, seated on the back of a dragon, gave battle to an eagle, the symbol relating to man's seeking inspiration from the air. "Ideals in Art" brought forward more or less familiar types: the Madonna and the Child, Joan of Arc, Youth and Beauty, in the figure of a girl, Vanity in the Peacock, with more shadowy intimations in two mystical figures in the background, the tender of the sacred flame and the bearer of the palm for the dead, and the laurel-bearer ready to crown victory. "The Inspiration in All Art" revealed the figures of Music, Architecture, Painting, Poetry and Sculpture. Four other panels glorified the four golds of California, gold, wheat, poppies and oranges, a happy idea, providing opportunities for the splendid use of color.
"It's a pity those murals couldn't have been tried out up there and then taken down and done over," said the architect. "But sometime they will find the place where they belong, perhaps in one of our San Francisco public buildings. They're too good not to have the right kind of display."
"The Priestess of Culture," by Herbert Adams, one of the best-known of American sculptors, eight times repeated, we felt, had its rightful place up there and blended into the general architectural scheme. But some of the other pieces of statuary might have been left out with advantage.
Through the columns we caught many beautiful vistas. And those groups of columns themselves made pictures. "What is most surprising about this palace is the way it grows on you. The more familiar you are with it the more you feel the charm. Maybeck advises his friends to come here by moonlight when they can get just the effect he intended. In all the Exposition there's no other spot quite so romantic. It might have been built for lovers."
XI
At the Palace of Horticulture
At the Palace of Horticulture the architect said: "Here is the Mosque of Ahmed the First, taken from Constantinople and adapted to horticulture and to the Exposition. It has a distinct character of its own. It even has temperament. So many buildings that are well proportioned give the impression of being stodgy and dull. They are like the people that make goodness seem uninteresting. But here is use that expresses itself in beauty and adorns itself with appropriate decoration."
When I mentioned that some people found this building too ornate, the architect replied:
"There's an intimate and appropriate relation between the ornament and the architecture. Personally I shouldn't care to see just this kind of building in the heart of the city, where you'd have it before your eyes every day. But for the Exposition it's just right. And how fitting it is that the splendid dome should be the chief feature of a building that is really an indoor garden and that the most prominent note of the coloring should be green, nature's favorite and most joyous color. Some joker," he went on, "says that this Exposition is domicidal. He expresses a feeling a good many people have here, that there are too many domes. But I don't agree. The domes make a charming pictorial effect, and they harmonize with the general spirit of the architecture.