exhibition Archives - Shanghailander

Art Deco, the French-China Connection

Thanks to a recent business trip, I finally had the chance to view the ” Art Deco, the French-China Connection” exhibition in Hong Kong. Opened in early March, it will last until end of June and is worth seeing for Old Shanghai fans visiting Hong Kong.

The exhibition is the result of a very unique cooperation. It’s origin is the major Art Deco exhibition in Paris that took place in 2014 (see post “1925, when art deco dazzled the World” for more details), with a number of major pieces having been brought from Paris. Had this new exhibition been only a short version of the Paris one, it would already have been really interesting, but there much more to see.

famous “meuble a fards” from Ruhlmann, brought from Paris

One of the major and little known Art Deco link between France and China, is the mausoleum statue of Sun Yat Sen in Nanjing. If the purple mountain based mausoleum and the statue are extremely famous in China, few people know that the statue was created by French sculpture Paul Landowski in Boulogne near Paris, before being shipped to China. Landowski was also the creator of another World famous piece, the Christ statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro. (See post: From Boulogne to Nanjing for more details).

French sculptor Paul Landowski, with his Sun Yat Sen statue.

With a France-China Connection theme, Shanghai art deco was also called in, with the help of major Shanghai based collector including Deke Ehr, Patrick Cranley and Tina Kanagaratnam. The original Paris Art Deco exhibition had shown a few photos of Shanghai Art Deco architecture by Leonard & Vesseyre company. Here, the Shanghai part is much larger with great examples of Shanghai Art Deco furniture, as well as fashion and famous art deco advertising posters. Side by side with the ones from Paris, they highlight the similarities between style and fashion in both cities during the same period.

Shanghai Art Deco furniture, with the backdrop of the Shanghai Bund

Many more of those advertising posters from Hong Kong were on display, but the most important contribution to the exhibition is the whole room full of 1920’s and 30’s compact boxes or “necessaires” as they are called in French. These small boxes for ladies to carry make-up became really trendy in this period, and the collection on display is simply amazing thanks to the Liang Yi Museum.

A few of the Art Deco “necessaires” on display

Although the neighborhood of Kowloon Tong is quite far from the center of Hong Kong, the exhibition is definitely worth the trip for anybody interesting in Art Deco and Shanghai.

It is open until 30th June (10:00 to 19:00, closed on Monday), at CityU Exhibition Gallery, 18/F, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong

Ordinary Metropolis – Shanghai: a Model of Urbanism

Books published by scholars both in China and abroad have long shown that China’s modernity was created first in Shanghai, in the 1920’s ans 1930’s. The city rapidly caught on with the rest of the World after World War 1, thanks to numerous exchanges and people travelling between Shanghai, and Europe and the USA. Visible intake were the Art Deco building still visible in the city, dance halls, cars, advertising, department stores and all the other elements that are still found while researching today. They also brought fresh ideas, including in town planning for Shanghai, which is the center of a current exhibition at Shanghai Power Station of Art. It has 2 main parts, one about new Shanghai planning from the 1930’s and the other about 1930’s architecture and design, in particular Dayu Doon’s art deco house built in that area.

The first part of the exhibition is focused on town planning for the new Jiang Wan area: After taking back control of a large part of China, Chiang Kai Shek quickly unified the parts of Shanghai that were around the International Settlement and the French Concession. Creating the Shanghai municipality also made clear that the center of Shanghai was the concessions, so the republican government went on creating a new city center for Shanghai, in what is now Jiangwan area, in today’s Yangpu district. Inspired by Washington DC, the new Civic Center included the new town hall of Shanghai, a museum, a national library and a major hospital. The exhibition shows rarely seen maps and efforts of planning this new district that was only partly built from 1927 until the Japanese invasion in 1937. It also details how land was supposed to be allocated to various functions, the very concept of zoning that is still applied in Shanghai today.

Art deco house — Dayu Doon art deco model house

The second part is focused on the art of architect Chinese modernism, in particular Dong Dayou / 董大酉 (Dayu Doon in English) who was one of the main promoter of Chinese modernism. He designed a model house for the area around the Civic Center, that can be compared with international modern style of the time, as well as foreign modernist architects of the time in Shanghai Laszlo Hudec (orginally from Hungary) and Leonard & Vesseyre (from France). Another art deco house on display by architect Poy Gum Lee looked really familiar to me, until I realised it is located opposite from my office (See post Poy Gum Lee’s lost building for more about it).

Magazines from the 1930's — Magazines from the 1930’s

Beyond the architect work, the exhibition also includes many examples of graphic art and magazines displaying modern style of the time, showing that Shanghai was the door through which modernity came to China in the 1930’s. This modern movement was not only brought by foreigners, but really embraced by Chinese artists and everywhere in Shanghai. After reading many books on the topic, this is the first time I see such an exhibition in China.

1925, when Art Deco dazzled the World

Last blog post was written about an exhibition of Paris 1930’s art in Shanghai, this blog post is about another exhibition about Art Deco that took place recently in Paris. It is actually long overdue, as the exhibition closed its doors in early March. My long stay in France, gave me the opportunity to see it in Palais de Chaillot (itself an Art Deco master piece) in Paris.

This was the last major exhibition in Paris about Art Deco since 1975, and the 50 years celebration of the “Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs” of 1925, from which the Art Deco expression comes. It was designed to commemorate the birth of Art Deco, as well as to show how French Art Deco expended to the World. The new style from the 1920’s, with it’s geometrical and very lean design was a revolution, breaking for the overcrowd of ornaments of the Art Nouveau style. Long before being called Art Deco, it had become the symbol of modernity, celebrating liberation from the madness of WWI. This period is called in French “Les années folles (the crazy years)”, showing the energy and creativity of the period. Being still at that time the World Center for fashion and design, Paris was the center for the creation of this new style before it took off and spread all over the world. Strangely enough, Art Deco style was not considered much valuable for a long time in France, as the country has many much older pieces available. With the years passing, it seems to be in fashion again.

The exhibition was an essential display to understand how this new style invaded all forms of art from architecture and interior design to textile, fragrance, automobile, ships design. In the boiling cultural mix of 1920’s Paris, many people got inspired from it. Ideas and fashion spread fast in the artistic community, with such famous figures as painter Tamara de Lempicka, dancer Josephine Baker, fashion designer Coco Chanel as well as Lalique (whose glass decorations were used for the Cathay Hotel, Peace Hotel today). The new style also greatly influenced the design of large cruse ships, symbol of modernity and travel way before today’s airliners (see post 2 months in rationnaire for details).

I brought back the exhibition catalog (available in French only… how French can that be), but it would be way to large to share here. Searching the internet, I found a nice video about the exhibit that will give the feeling for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsV5cg2Y19M

The exhibition did not stop at showing Art Deco in France. Although it really does not leave much space for Art Deco in America or in the British Empire (like Art Deco wonders like Napier, New Zealand or Mumbai) the exhibition showed the development of Art Deco in the French colonies. Besides great Art Deco in North Africa and Indochina, I was nicely surprised to find a pavillion dedicated to Shanghai. It mostly focused the work of French architect firm Leonard, Vesseyre and Kruz (more about them soon) forgetting others like Hudec but it was really nice to find a small piece of our city in the exhibition.

Paris Art Deco comes to Shanghai

Visiting Boulogne’s 1930’s museum 2 years ago was fascinating. Coming from Shanghai Art Deco, the origins of the art movement became so clear by comparing both cities art from the same period. The most amazing discovery was surely to find out that Sun Yat Sen’s mausoleum satute in Nanjing was created by French sculptor Paul Landowski, who also crafted world famous statue of Christ in Rio. (Click here to read the full story, with post “From Boulogne to Nanjing”)

Little did I imagine that the same exhibition would actually come to Shanghai only a year and half later. Thanks to long term Shanghailander Philippe Cinquini, part of the collection was brought to Shanghai including studies for the statue of the father of modern China. The exhibition is displayed in the Shanghai Art Museum (former China pavillon at Shanghai Expo 2010) and has been extended til end of May . For details, follow the link to Shanghai Art Museum exhibition page . (reservation in advance compulsory).