Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso (1874).
A few eye-fooling paintings for All Fools Day.
The Palais Lumineux
A final visit to the Exposition Universelle of 1900 with this photograph of the Palais Lumineux, a piece of period Chinoiserie built in the Champ de Mars close to the Eiffel Tower. I forget where I found this tinted view but Wikipedia has what appears to be the same photograph coloured so as to resemble a night scene.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City
• Winsor McCay’s Hippodrome souvenirs
Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
Globe terrestre.
More exposition mania. The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 would have been more grand/fabulous/excessive (delete as appropriate) if architect Louis Bonnier had been given free reign. The building above was intended to stand before the Palais du Trocadéro and house a huge globe which visitors could peruse from surrounding galleries. Bonnier also designed a series of kiosks (below) for different exhibitors which look more like over-sized Art Nouveau ornaments than pieces of architecture.
Three of these pictures are scanned from a book; the only site I found with examples of Bonnier’s work was this one which unfortunately spoils the pictures with enormous watermarks.
Exposition kiosks.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The Palais du Trocadéro
Exposition Universelle, 1900
La porte monumentale.
Was the Paris Exposition of 1900 the most gloriously excessive of them all? Judging by these photos it certainly looks it. I should have linked to these earlier when I had a post about the Palais du Trocadéro which was one of the buildings raised for the occasion. The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 exposition (and was famously intended to be a temporary structure) but became the centrepiece of the 1900 fair. Wikipedia has a large plan of the entire layout and two of the halls, the Grand and Petit Palais, are still in existence and used as exhibition spaces.
Not The Yellow Brick Road
Not The Yellow Brick Road
| Lord Horror (and one of my covers) at The Huffington Post.