31 August 2010

Demetre Chiparus, jazzy art deco sculptor

Demetre Chiparus (1886-1947) was born in Romania. Perhaps as a young man he didn’t see a future for himself in Romania so he took himself off to Italy in 1909 to learn with an Italian sculptor. Three years later he was off again, this time to Paris to attend the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts.

Chiparus, Thais, undated

While still only in his 20s, Chiparus started having his name noticed. Undoubtedly the viewers would have been attracted to the exquisite flesh tones, alongside the muted but rich metallics. I would love to have seen these early work in bronze and ivory, the sculptures that Chiparus exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1914, but my books don't have any on display.

The first works of Chiparus that I have seen with my own eyes were made in the 1920s. Like in all Art Deco art forms, the influences came from a number of sources, including Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes which opened in Paris just before WW1 started. A second influence arrived in France after Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb was explored in 1922 by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter - the art of ancient Egypt. Chiparus was never in Egypt and wasn’t bothered by historical accuracy, so he felt free to imagine what Queen Cleopatra and her Egyptian dancers might have looked like.

Chiparus, Friends Always, 1925

Canterbury Antiques noted that another great influence was the French theatre, opera and films (eg Thais, from the opera) where he saw women with long, slender, stylised shapes. His women were idealised of course, but idealised according to a 1920s model: slim, very athletic, dressed in oriental costumes, involved in running, dancing or dog handling. Did Chiparus use the photos of dancers, taken from fashion magazines of his time? Chiparus watchers seemed to think so. Apparently the faces on some sculptures closely resembled known Russian personalities eg Nijinsky and Ring Dancer c1928 may have been modelled on the Folies Bergere dancer Zoula de Boncza.

In short, Chiparus’ women were no shrinking violets with books in their hands; rather his sculptures were definitely bright, energetic and decorative. Whether you have ever heard of Chiparus before, or not, his works combined the elegance and luxury that still sum up the spirit of the Art Deco for us.

Preiss, Flame Dancer, c1925

Chryselephantine was the process Chiparus used, a process that involved an amalgam of bronze and ivory that was carved into a sculpture, then gilded. While the ivory on most figures in this process was normally tinted, the bronze was either patinated using acids, metallic oxides and applied heat, or cold-painted and lacquered.

This technique was apparently popular with many Art Deco sculptors with studios in Paris and Berlin in the 1920s, focusing on the same stylish young women with elongated limbs. Of the other artists using this technique, the only name that was familiar to me was the German sculptor Ferdinand Preiss (1882-1943) whose dates coincide closely with Chiparus’ dates.

Chiparus' work was fired by the Edmond Etling and Cie Foundry in Paris, under the directorship of Julien Dreyfus, and by the Les Neveux de J. Lehmann foundry. But both these foundaries were Jewish businesses that came to grief once the Nazis took over. Chiparus was not himself Jewish, but I haven’t seen any more of his works after that period. He died soon after the war in 1947 and was buried in Bagneux cemetery near Paris.

The most comprehensive collection of exquisite Chiparus sculpture is shown in Blog of an Art Admirer and History Lover and in JessicaNessica's Gallery.

Chiparus, Finale figural group, 1928

In case readers are interested in today's values, a 1999 Antique Road Show appraisal of a large Chiparus sculpture called Starfish was given as USA $100,000 to $150,000.  People were stunned and amazed! But then, at the Sotheby's Chiparus auction of April 2010, the highest priced object went for USA $936,000. The version of Les Girls sold at the 2010 auction was the only sculpture by Chiparus to feature five figures on a single base.

Chiparus experts offer a warning - 95% of so-called Chiparus works on sale these days are fakes.









27 August 2010

Joseph Pulitzer: newspapers, politics and personal crises

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power by James McGrath Morris (published by Harper in 2010) is a very interesting book, especially for those of us not familiar with C19th American history. The Pulitzer Prize is known by everyone who can read a book, but I doubt if people know where he was born, raised and educated, and what his career was in the USA.

Joseph Pulitzer was born and raised in a town just c200 ks southeast of Budapest. The Pulitzers were among several Jewish families living in the area, and had established a reputation as merchants and shop keepers. Joseph's father was a respected businessman who seemed to be doing well in a small town, but apparently he wanted his children to be properly educated in the big smoke. In 1853, therefore, the entire family moved to Budapest. Within a few years, the father died and the family was left without financial support.

James Morris didn’t seem to be surprised when young Joseph signed on to serve in the US Army during the height of the American Civil War, but I was. The losses on the Union side must have been so great that recruiters scoured Europe for fresh soldier-material. And they were successful; Pulitzer was shipped to the USA in 1864 where he served in an all German-speaking cavalry unit. He didn’t know a word of English but he did speak German, Hungarian and Czech perfectly.

After the war and without a penny to bless himself with, he decided to travel to St Louis Mo where he loved the German-speaking community. The local Westliche Post, published in German, offered jobs, accommodation and everything else a young man new to town could need. He even worked in a restaurant that was a favourite spot for the St Louis Philosophical Society. And he spent his free time in St Louis’ Mercantile Library, studying written English. The Westliche Post, in the meantime, agreed to publish some of his stories.

Two of the Post’s owners helped Pulitzer secure another job, this time with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Pulitzer's job was to record the railroad charter in the court houses of the 12 counties it would pass through. When he was done, the lawyers gave him an office and access to their library where Pulitzer studied law. In 1867 he gave up his citizenship within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and became an American citizen. In 1868, he was admitted to the bar, but his German-dominated English did not endear him to potential clients. Nor did his short temper. It wasn't until 1868, when the Westliche Post needed a reporter, that he was offered the job.

Pulitzer had a talent for reporting, and was prepared to work hard at it. He joined the Philosophical Society and he frequented a German bookstore where many intellectuals hung out. There were horrible anti-Semitic descriptions of Pulitzer in opposition newspapers, yet “Jewseph Pulitzer, the freak with a huge nose” shrugged them off. [As you can see from the photos, Pulitzer was actually a handsome enough man].

As the most significant step in the Americanisation of Joseph Pulitzer, he joined the Republican Party. In Dec 1869, Pulitzer attended the Republican meeting at the St Louis Turnhalle where party leaders needed a candidate to fill a vacancy in the state legislature. They settled on the under-age Pulitzer. He won! I don’t suppose he wanted to stay in the state legislature for more than one term, but he achieved his short term goal - to move up to managing editor at the Westliche Post.

In 1872 he was a delegate to the Cincinnati convention of the Republican Party but Pulitzer, disillusioned with the corruption he saw, switched to the Democratic party. In 1880 he was a delegate to the Democratic national convention. Morris suggested that Pulitzer was not hugely ambitious for himself, politically speaking, but he did enjoy promoting his favourite candidates and policies in his editorials.

Westliche Post, a German-language paper that operated in St. Louis from 1857 to 1938.

I am not certain why Pulitzer moved to New York, but one of his first moves was to buy up a failing New York paper called The New York World in 1883. Now his own experience as an impoverished immigrant came to the fore; his editorials supported causes that promoted immigrants’ services and soon circulation soared. He married, had a cluster of children and could have been living the Good Life. But he did not enjoy good health nor did he have wonderful relationships with his wife and surviving children. Even his only surviving sibling, who also emigrated to the USA, found him a demanding brother.

Two important events raised his new paper in circulation and popularity. Firstly Pulitzer shifted the newspaper's focus away from hard news and more towards human-interest stories, sensationalism and scandalous tales. Then in 1895 The New York World introduced the famous The Yellow Kid comic, the first newspaper comic printed with colour. So I am not remotely surprised that under Pulitzer's leadership, the circulation of the New York World grew from 15,000 to 600,000, making it the largest newspaper in the country.

This remarkable growth in circulation was despite the fact that Charles A Dana, editor of the rival New York Sun, attacked Pulitzer in print, using bitter anti-Semitic vitriol. And Theodore Roosevelt was equally unimpressed with Pulitzer. After the World exposed an illegal payment of $40 million by the USA to the French Panama Canal Company in 1909, Pulitzer was indicted for libelling Theodore Roosevelt and JP Morgan. Roosevelt failed, but the case could not have improved Pulitzer’s poor health.

Back in the 1890s, Pulitzer had offered Columbia University enough money to establish the world's first school of journalism. The university initially turned down the money, presumably because of Pulitzer's difficult nature. In 1902, Columbia's new president was more receptive to the plan for a school and prizes, but Pulitzer's death in 1911 intervened. Pulitzer left the university $2 million in his will, which led to the creation in 1912 of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 1917, six years after Pulitzer’s death, the first Pulitzer Prizes were given out.

Under the care of Pulitzer’s sons, The New York World continued as a newspaper until 1931.

A bust of Joseph Pulitzer in the centre of his old Hungarian town.

As a non-American, I can see how ironic it is that Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism remains one of the most prestigious in the western hemisphere. If the “Jewseph Pulitzer, the freak with a huge nose” is looking down from heaven today, he would be having a good laugh at the anti-Semitic Charles A Dana and his ilk.

But I cannot estimate the significance of Pulitzer's contribution to American journalism. So I will quote Adam Kirsch instead. "We are now witnessing the death of the whole style of newspaper publishing Pulitzer invented. The big city daily, the kind of newspaper that everyone read because everyone had to read it—from politicians and businessmen to laborers and homemakers—is a thing of the past. So are the profits that such papers used to bring in. Pulitzer’s paper made him the 19th-century equivalent of a billionaire."

23 August 2010

The Great Silence, 1918-20

I came across the book called The Great Silence, written by Juliet Nicholson and reviewed in An Edwardian State of Mind. Nicolson’s title invoked the introduction of the two-minute silence on the very first anniversary of Armistice Day, a constant reminder in British Empire countries of the appalling sacrifices made by the war dead.

The years 1918 to 1920 were chosen by the author since this was the time between a] the last of the Great War battles in November 1918 and b] the internment of the unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey in November 1920. She avoided the historians’ techniques of analysing military and political narratives, and concentrated instead on the suffering of individual families.

My own grandfather was a soldier in WW1 who, although he returned to his family, had a bullet lodged in his kidney; he was in and out of hospital for the rest of his life. I know about family records, oral histories, photos, letters, diaries and financial crises!


Nicolson began with the armistice celebrations on 11th of November 1918. On one hand there was a huge national party, full of music, hugging men in uniform and eating whatever food could be placed on the trestle tables. On the other hand, the day was the start of a national agony for millions of ordinary citizens in Britain and the British Empire (and, I suppose, in the other countries who lost so many young men).

As Feminist Review noted, hostilities would fester for a lifetime for those who would never see their husbands, sons or fathers again. Even for those soldiers who returned home alive, the armistice offered little consolation to those who were marked by war forever, with their missing legs and their scared faces.

Some people tried very hard to avoid the ex-soldiers who clearly displayed the misery of war. We know, for example, some soldiers were so severely mutilated that passengers got out of their train seats and moved to other carriages. But it was everywhere - those physically damaged by the fighting could not be locked away in asylums or prisons. 

Some evidence in the book was very practical. I was particularly inspired by a heroic New Zealand plastic surgeon, Dr Harold Gillies, a man who had worked in France during the war with the Red Cross. With a team of artists and sculptors back in Britain, he developed many techniques of plastic surgery on 5,000+ soldiers with facial injuries. Gillies slowly and carefully rebuilt the human wrecks he met in his Queen Mary’s hospital, and gave them new lives.

Why were facial injuries so common and so awful? Apparently the government’s compensation scheme for lost limbs did not extend to anything above the neck; they didn’t acknowledge the paralysing emotional affects of facial disfigurement. Nor did they take account of men who had lost the ability to speak, swallow, see or even breathe normally through their facial injuries.

But in the end, it was not the practical responses that made the book special. It was the fact that Nicolson captured a grief that most ordinary citizens were unable to articulate in those early post-war years. The silence in the title, therefore, may refer not only to the official two minutes when people stood at attention and hung their heads in memory.

There was one major criticism that appeared in some of the reviews. Miranda Seymour noted that the author is the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West, an aristocrat brought up in one of the grandest houses in England. This by itself is a good thing, but if many of Nicolson’s sources derived from her rather exclusive aristocratic world, the men from ordinary homes might have been covered with less energy than they deserved.

Limbless soldiers at London’s Roehampton Hospital
Photo published in NY Times, 15th July 2010

Perhaps in the end, nothing could make up for the wasted young lives, lost or maimed. As The Idle Historian so rightly noted: While the end of the war was framed by politicians as a great victory and final vindication of the just cause, ordinary families across the Empire were still filled with shock, disbelief and anger at the years of hardship and the slaughter in the trenches. And in the end, the War To End All Wars ... wasn't.

19 August 2010

Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia - colour, light and art

Sidi Bou Said sits on the Mediterranean Sea, in northern Tunisia. Originally a place of pilgrimage for visitors to the tomb of C13th Sufi holy man Abou Said ibn Khalef, Tunisia's white & vivid blue town is still very attractive for travellers.

In fact when Lost T-Shirts wrote about the Top 10 things to do in Tunisia, #2 position was given to this town. "Sidi Bou Said, a picturesque blue-and-white-painted artist's town on a cliff overlooking the bay of Tunis. Follow the cobblestone street upward into town and get great views of the blue sea and marina. There are many small streets to wander around, and great places to sit and have a mint tea among a clowder of cats. You can reach Sidi Bou Said with a long metro/train ride from Tunis".

Macke, Cafe des Nattes, 1912, watercolour

Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc were the main figures in the new Expressionist art group called Der Blaue Reiter, formed in 1911. Vigorous forms and colours were the external expressions of their creative spirit, so I was very interested in their influence on other, younger men who joined this Munich-centred organisation. Did they enjoy vigorous forms and colours as well?

August Macke (1887-1914) had lived most of his creative life in Bonn, with the exception of a few months spent in Switzerland and various trips to Paris, Italy and Holland. Macke and his friend Paul Klee considered themselves as part of Der Blaue Reiter, exhibiting and publishing together with their more mature colleagues.

Two of Macke's and Klee's art colleagues raved about North Africa - Wassily Kandinsky had been to Tunisia in 1904, and Henri Matisse had travelled to Algeria in 1906, and Morocco in 1912. The results of Kandinsky's and Matisse's North African experiences could be clearly seen in their art work back home in France! Klee and Macke wanted the same experience for themselves. So Paul Klee and August Macke arrived in Sidi Bou Said on Easter Monday in 1914.

Saudi Aramco World noted that in the span of only two weeks in 1914, Klee created nearly 50 watercolours and hundreds of sketches; Macke took many photographs, as well as making hundreds of sketches and watercolours. Macke, more than Klee, was fascinated by Tunisian dress and the Tunisian way of life, and produced a series of sketches that have both ethnographic and artistic value. The two young men made some preliminary studies of sites in Sidi Bou Said, with Macke focusing on a cafe with a white rectangular minaret looming over it.

Sidi Bou Said, lanes, today

Half of France and all of Germany had never seen colours like the artists saw in Sidi Bou Said in those bohemian days before WW1. When painting or sketching in the bright light of Sidi Bou Said, the grey and gloomy skies of their home towns must have seen like another world to the young artists. Mrs. Darrow’s Adventures in Tunisia blog and Some landscapes blog specifically examined the different impact of Sidi Bou Said’s colours on Macke’s and Klee’s art. I recommend the two articles to you.

Just 2 years later Soldier Macke was tragically killed in a WW1 battle, but his version of Sidi Bou Said still interests people decades after his death. Note one discrepancy. While the Macke work was filled with light and colour, there was no bright blue on the buildings. Apparently a French painter-musicologist called Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger didn't apply the blue-white theme all over the town until straight after WW1 ended.

Today shiploads of German, French and English tourists arrive, going past the souvenir sellers and photographing Macke's view of Cafe des Nattes. And when people walk inside the town, it was and still is a labyrinth of winding streets, filled with flower-filled courtyards; heavy, vivid blue doorways; verandas closed against the summer heat; and unexpected flights of steps.

Cafe des Nattes, today

Because I was most interested in Macke in this post, I have almost neglected Klee. So interested readers should read the 2 bloggers above who discussed the impact of Tunisia on Klee's paintings. Klee was passionate about city architecture and landscape paints, and took great delight in the lush gardens of Tunisia. In fact the palm became one of the central motifs in Klee's Tunisian paintings and drawings. Even more impressively, June Taboroff quoted extensively from Klee's diary, written during his stay in Sidi Bou Said.

Klee, The Tunisian Journey, 1914.



15 August 2010

Städel Museum and early 20th century paintings

Johann Friedrich Städel (1728-1816 ) was a Frankfurt banker, a trader and a great art patron. Not having any children of his own, he decided in 1793 to bequeath his growing collection to an art foundation in his own city i.e an art collection for the public to enjoy and an art school for talented young painters. It took a number of years to establish the Städel Museum and Art School, but by 1816, it was starting to assemble a very fine collection of art.

The initial selection of paintings and sculpture was certainly based on Städel’s personal taste. But today the collection has increased to 2800 paintings and 600 sculptures, built up by donations and bequests from the citizens of Frankfurt. These works have moved far beyond the taste of one man, and are said to document the entire development of European art and culture since the late 19th century.


Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Reclining woman in a white chemise, 1909

Germany may not have produced an avant-garde of their own in the 19th century, but local artists could see what was going on across the border. They read about it in leading German art magazines, or travelled to Paris on working holidays. And since Frankfurt was a sophisticated and liberal city, the Städel Museum collection could keep up to date in the art world. But it wasn't until after WW1 that  Städel showed a strong preference for German expressionist art. Even then, I wonder if the Städel's new collecting policy was totally popular amongst all German artists and gallery goers.

When the Städel Museum in Frankfurt decided to close its doors and to expand their existing building last year, every gallery in the world must have been keen to borrow all or part of the Städel collection for their own audiences. Luckily for Melbourne, the collection came here. The National Gallery of Victoria’s 2010 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition is currently showing a blockbuster show called European Masters: Städel Museum 19th-20th Century.

The museum holds a fine collection of German, Italian and Nether­land­ish painting from the 14th to 16th centuries, but Melbourne asked only for German and French works from the 19th century and early 20th century. The goal was to show the development of Western art as it moved towards modernism. Leaving Europe for the first time, this collection of some 100 works will be on display in Melbourne from June to October 2010.

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Red Tower in a Park, 1910

The exhibition has a bit of everything: neo-classicism, realism, impressionism, symbolism, nabism & expressionism are all covered in what must be a museum curator’s dilemma but a viewer’s great opportunity. Nonetheless I moved passed the French Realist and Impressionist artists rather quickly. That is not to say that Edgar Degas’ work on musicians and ballet dancers, the floaty Orchestra Musicians c1873, is not a delight to look at. It is! But I have seen French Impressionists many times before.

The French influence could be seen even into the 20th century; German expressionism emerged in Dresden in 1905 through Die Brucke, whose founders included artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde, both of whom are represented in European Masters. These artists developed a style that was more abstracted, dark and reflective of the artist’s psychological state. They pursued a purity of form and colour, thus creating a truly German way of looking at the world.
*
Edvard Munch, Jealousy, 1913

For me, I think the great pleasure in the exhibition came with Der Blaue Reiter/The Blue Rider works. The group was founded in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Franz Marc and August Macke. If you had to find the connection WITHIN the Blaue Reiter artists, I suppose it would be their seeking a creative spirit concealed within matter, and their belief that forms and colours were the external expression of this creative spirit. Sadly the group came to an abrupt end when soldiers Marc and Macke were killed during the First World War. Despite their close contact with French art earlier in their lives, both men died fighting against the French.

The director of the Städel described the collection as “about Western art with a certain German role”. He is correct; the European Masters exhibition is strongest when it traces the development of German art, introd­ucing Australians to German symbolism and German modernism from Max Slevogt, Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch (ok not German), Lovis Corinth and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Even people who go to galleries often will rarely have seen a Max Beckmann painting.

Max Beckmann, Double Portrait, 1923

Raymond Gill gave information about one artist I'd not seen before. Hel­mut Kolle was apparently the lover of German art dealer and historian Wilhelm Uhde, who set up a gallery in Paris in 1905, championing the work of Picasso. The French government seized Uhde’s collection when WWI broke out and he was deported to Germany, although he resumed his influence on French art when he moved back to Paris after the war. The story of Kolle and Uhde is a good example of how culturally interconnected Germany and France were, despite their political and territorial differences. There was a long and special friendship between the two countries, particularly in the artistic and literary world.

The exhibition catalogue mentions the seizure of art works, once the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. The most outstanding examples of modern art in the Städel collection first disappeared into storage and then 77 paintings and 3 sculptures were confiscated. Some were displayed in the notorious Degenerate Art Exhibition that opened in Munich in 1937, but what was the ultimate fate of these 80 works – burnt? sold at auction? eventually returned to the Städel?






11 August 2010

Rosherville: Victorian Pleasure Gardens 1837- WW1

In the 18th century, pleasure gardens were very posh places, well documented in English literature and music. But I wondered whether pleasure gardens were still popular in the second half of the C19th, and if so, what did they look like.

Rosherville Gardens was one of the largest and most popular Victorian pleasure gardens. The gardens were built in a disused chalk pit near the River Thames, just north of London Road in Northfleet, adjoining Gravesend. Land in the area belonged to Jeremiah Rosher, after whom Rosherville was named.

George Jones, a London businessman, formed the Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens Co. The company leased the chalk pit in 1837 and laid out gardens with a terrace, a bear pit, an archery ground, a lake, maze, flower beds, statues, lookout tower and winding paths. They were intended to appeal to wealthy visitors with serious tastes, but the wealthy visitors never came in enough numbers. To save the gardens, Mr Jones was forced to lower the prices and import more low brow entertainments.

From 1842 the educational aspects were forgotten and the Rosherville Gardens, as they were now called, became an enormous success. Visitors flooded in from London on the steam boats, landing at the nearby Rosherville Pier.

Rosherville rose gardens

But the lowered standards were noticed. Cremorne Garden history snootily noted “There are other pleasure gardens in or about the London district, such as the gardens at North Woolwich, Highbury Barn and Rosherville, but they do not call for any special notice, as, except that their frequenters are drawn chiefly from a lower class, they differ in no material respect from Cremorne”. A lower class?

Baron Nathan, a dancing teacher from Kennington, was permanently installed as Master of Ceremonies in Rosherville's Gothic Hall in 1842. This same Gothic Hall was used as a restaurant, ballroom and theatre. And development continued apace. The hall was extended but was still too small for the crowds of people. An outdoor dancing platform was built outside the Gothic Hall in 1860. A Drawing Room Theatre was built adjoining the Gothic Hall but more space was needed - so the Bijou Theatre was built nearby in 1866.

Conrad Broadley of Gravesham Borough Council sent me a wonderful photo of the new entrance that was made in 1869; it went down from the London Road to the gardens and steps inside a cliff tunnel. This contemporary photograph of the entrance showed a large platform at the cliff top, complete with balustrading which formed the plinth for the classical statuary. A circular temple with domed roof and Ionic columns was shown midway down the flight of steps; lower down was the entrance giving access to the gardens at the base of the chalk cliffs. A large clocktower was built by the side of the gateway.

An open-air stage was built by the dancing platform in 1873-4. Famous performers played in the two theatres and on the open-air stage. Other entertainments at Rosherville included fireworks, tightrope walkers, balloon ascents and a gypsy fortune teller. John Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870) said the town was full of day trippers during the summer months, and swarms with them on Sundays. Gravesend had good  communication with London, by steamer and by railway.

George Jones died in 1872 and the Gardens passed into the hands of professional managers. In 1873 admission was still only 6d, according to Routledge's Popular Guide to London. If things were going so swimmingly, what went wrong?

Clock tower

On a warm September evening in 1878, according to Caroline’s Miscellany and Victorian History, the Princess Alice paddle steamer was full of pleasure-trippers returning from Gravesend. As it approached North Woolwich Pier where many passengers were to disembark, a much larger collier came towards it. Two ships collided and the Princess Alice was almost cut in half. It sank within a few minutes and even those not trapped inside found themselves in a heavily polluted, raw-sewage-filled stretch of river, in the dark and wearing heavy clothes. Most of them could not swim and 600+ people tragically died.

This great loss of life in 1878 started the decline of the Rosherville Gardens. Note that it was possible that local pleasure gardens would in any case begin to go out of fashion, as soon as Londoners could afford train trips to seaside resorts.

Café Chantant

Even so, soon after the ship sank, Charles Dickens Jnr was still writing fondly about leisure time activities was Dickens' Dictionary of the Thames, first published in 1879.  Rosherville Gardens, he said, were popular and well-conducted gardens on the high road to the west of Gravesend, reached directly from the steamboat-pier. There was a constant succession of amusement throughout the day; dancing on the circular platform from 2 o'clock to 11 being a favourite feature. Besides the tea and shrimps so dear to the heart of the Gravesend excursionist, other refreshments of a more substantial and stimulating character could be obtained at very reasonable rates.

Harry Relph, who went on to make a sparkling career for himself as Little Tich the music hall comedian, made his very first stage appearance at the Rosherville Gardens at the age of 12. It was 1879. For the next 17 years he was the toast of the old Tivoli Theatre in the Strand. Then there was Drury Lane, his second home.

Dickens added that the extent of the grounds, which were tastefully laid out and produced abundance of flowers, was 20 acres. There was a conservatory c200’ long, bijou theatre, maze, museum, baronial hall, used for dancing and particularly refreshments. There was a very good fernery and a bear-pit, and some to miles of walks were additional inducements to the excursion public. The peculiar situation of Rosherville, being old chalk quarry, lent itself admirably to the landscape gardener's art, and the result was a remarkably pretty and diversified garden, in which it was quite feasible to pass that Happy Day which in the advertisements was always coupled with the name of Rosherville.

In 1900 Rosherville went bankrupt and soon much of the equipment was sold off. In 1903, having been bought by some local businessmen, parts of the gardens were re-opened. The maze and the dancing platform were removed, the Bijou theatre became a restaurant, the outdoor stage was refurbished and called the Café Chantant, a small menagerie started up and most modern of all, films were shown in the Gothic Hall. But nothing could stop Rosherville from losing money and so the pleasure gardens finally closed as soon as WW1 broke out. Eventually the land was sold to W T Henley’s Cable Works.

Gravesend beach

During the time that Rosherville was hugely popular, people also wanted to visit the beach, maximising the pleasure from their day out in Gravesend. Even after Rosherville was closed down, the beach remained a popular leisure site.

Interested readers should find The Place To Spend A Happy Day - a history of Rosherville Gardens, written by Lynda Smith and published by the Gravesend Historical Society. Also see Kent Today & Yesterday for terrific photos of Gravesend which he kindly shared with me.

Cliff top platform and entrance, built 1869, photographed c1900

08 August 2010

Menier Chocolate Paris 1872-4: modern architecture

The Menier Chocolate Co. was a chocolate-making business, founded in 1816 as a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Paris. This sounds strange, unless we know that chocolate was one of the many products produced and sold for medicinal purposes. Thinking out loud blog said one specialty was a chocolate-camphor throat lozenge for coughs. Apparently the company had its own cocoa plantations in Nicaragua and its own fleet to bring the cocoa to France. Sugar was produced locally from sugar beets.

The town is now in the eastern suburbs of Paris, only 21 ks from the centre. Yet the site became of interest to art historians only after new industrial architecture was developed on the River Marne. In 1872 Emile-Justin Menier, one of the long line of Menier Chocolate Co. directors, initiated a major building programme that created some of the most modern production facilities in the world.

Saulnier's main building, 1872-4

I am indebted to notes on the visual arts and popular culture for information about the power supply. In this period a channel was diverted from the local river, supplying the factory with water power; and a turbine mill was designed by the company architect.

The iron and brick chocolate factory at Noisiel really was one of the iconic buildings of the Industrial Revolution. Architect Jules Saulnier was given the task of constructing new buildings and improving the existing premises, to modernise and improve the chocolate-making process. In fact many historians cite the building as the first true skeleton structure. The old watermill building had a visible iron structure and distinctive industrial-looking ceramic tiles patterns, so we can safely say that both the design and the materials were impressive. The three dates carved above the entrance correspond to a] the year the old mill was built - 1157, b] the year the Menier factory was moved to Noisiel - 1825 and c] the year the Saulnier Mill replaced the old one - 1874.

Cathedral building: 1906-8

By the mid 1880s, production capacity at the Noisiel plant jumped to 125,000 tons annually. Mass production, in a clean and healthy working environment, became the industrial standard of the day and it was largely facilitated by the modern industrial architecture.

Because of the Menier company's rapid growth, the shortage of workers available from the small village forced the company to seek skilled workers from elsewhere. It must have worked, for at its peak, the company employed a workforce of over 2000 workers (see Architectural and Engineering Feats and Facts).
*
However the lack of housing in Noisiel was problematic, so Menier completed construction of 312 residences on 30 hectares of land near the factory in 1874. They eventually built a school for their employees' children and three decades later, a senior citizens' home for their retired workers. If it was the industrial revolution, it had a humane, benevolent face. In the 1870s, the Meniers also built the Noisiel town hall.

At the 1878 World's Fair in Paris, the company was awarded seven gold medals. They also won the Grand Prize for the excellence of their products and citations for their modern production methods and for looking after the well-being of their employees.

Cathedral: open, airy interior

Can we compare the Noisiel building with the Eiffel Tower for its impact on the public? After all, the dates are relatively close – the Eiffel Tower was designed and produced by Gustave Eiffel and his architect Stephen Sauvestre as the entrance arch for the 1889 World's Fair. Of course not. But had the vote been put to workers in the Menier chocolate factory, they may well have voted their buildings as having the greatest impact.

Following the death of Emile Justin Menier, in 1881, his sons Henri and Gaston assumed control of the business. Older son Henri became head of the company, but he left much of the company's management to Gaston who began the next era of Menier development and growth. The Menier plant added modern refrigeration systems. In 1881 a railroad line was built to the Noisiel factory, thus reducing costs for incoming and outgoing freight, and allowing for wider and faster distribution.

A new Menier factory building was positioned between the channel and the Marne River bank. This new, reinforced concrete structure was built in the 1906-1908 era and was known as la Cathédrale. The intention was to create a public showcase for the chocolate manufacturing process in the double height internal spaces. The project engineer was Armand Considere.

The company's water supply

The Menier chocolate factory is now headquarters of Nestlé France. In 1992, the factory was designated by the French government as an official historical monument and is today is used as a museum. The next honour will occur when the site is declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.




07 August 2010

World Heritage Sites: Australia's convict history

In an earlier post on Francis Greenway, convict architect in Sydney, I spent considerable time discussing the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney's Macquarie St. This was one of the first significant buildings of the convict era, part of "the British Empire's Gaol" for its unwanted, its criminal and its most impoverished citizens.

This very week, UNESCO's World Heritage committee met in Brasil and accepted eleven convict sites across Australia, including Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Port Arthur near Hobart, Norfolk Island penal settlement and Fremantle Prison in Perth. The Weekend Australian (7/8/2010) noted that these 11 sites provided a complete representation of all the significant elements of Australian convictism  in 1788-1868. They covered penal stations, gang labour, assignment, female factories and the Tasmanian probation system.

Port Arthur Penitentiary, Tasmania


Guard tower, Port Arthur
looking over the penitentiary below

The UNESCO World Heritage committee also insisted that there had to be a universal significance in Australia's convict history. This was easily done, in two ways. Firstly the range of citizens caught up in the convict services (white Britons, Australian aboriginals, West Indian blacks, Greeks, Malays, Chinamen etc) was much broader than expected. Secondly the committee examined the international debate on how criminals should be treated in the mid 19th century.

**

From 1842 until its closure in 1877, Port Arthur was a nasty prison and a military and industrial centre, encompassing mining, farming, timber cutting, boat building and many other trades. The two guard towers stood as part of the military infrastructure allowing the authorities to police the convict population. Plus they stored arms and ammunition.

Port Arthur now combines history and scenic beauty with innovative interpretation to tell the stories of the harsh discipline and determined industry of the settlements during the convict era. The boulevards of towering oaks and English elms, the charismatic ruins set amid expanses of lawns and convict-era gardens contrast the natural bushland setting on a stunning harbour and the harsh discipline of its past.

Situated on the Tasman Peninsula near Saltwater River, the Coal Mines Historic Site was Tasmania’s first operational mine. Developed both to limit the colony’s dependence upon costly imported coal from Sydney, as well as serving as a place of punishment for the worst class of convicts from Port Arthur, the mine was operational for over 40 years. Today, the Coal Mines offers visitors the chance to discover among the ruins and scenic vistas an integral part of the colony’s penal system, only 25-minutes drive from Port Arthur.






04 August 2010

Adolf Eichmann trial: 1960-2010

In my high school, students had to write and present one major history project each year. In 1961, mine was on the Eichmann trial. I may have forgotten some of the details, but I have never forgotten the emotional impact that this history had on my teenage mind.

After joining the SS in 1934, Adolf Eichmann rose quickly in responsibility. He made himself an expert on Jewish matters, including studying Hebrew and spending some time in Israel. After the March 1938 union of Germany and Austria, this German-born and Austrian-raised officer was put in charge of the SS unit that handled forced Jewish emigration from Austria.

In January 1939, the Nazis established a similar office for all German-occupied lands. The office was reorganised after WW2 broke out in September 1939 and Eichmann was the logical choice to head up the new team. Over the next few years, its work evolved from expelling Jews from Germany to transporting Jews to extermination camps in Poland.

Eichmann did not create the Final Solution, but he was the senior Nazi official concerned solely with the imprisonment of all Jewish people in Nazi Europe. He coordinated the deportation of Jews from Germany and its occupied territories. And when Nazi plans moved into genocide, Eichmann organised the transportation of Jews to extermination camps.

After the war, Eichmann and his men disguised themselves as simple German soldiers, to escape the Allies. Clearly Eichmann's relatively low rank hid the nature & importance of his work, so when he was captured by Allied soldiers, he easily escaped. How extraordinary! In Jan 1946, Eichmann was even discussed at the Nuremburg war crimes trials as the man who ran the Nazis' murderous scheme.

Eichmann understood that he had to get out of Dodge, and quickly. For the next four years Eichmann stayed somewhere in Germany, always out of the reach of the authorities. Then, somehow, he travelled safely to Argentina. History Today showed that he must have felt very safe in Buenos Aires because he bought a house, held down a job and lived a normal family life as Ricardo Klement. And as the 1950s rolled on, he was correct. Nazi hunting was of no interest to Western governments who now saw Russia as the enemy, not Nazi Germany.

Eichmann inside his trial booth, Jerusalem

But capturing Nazi war criminals had always been a major concern of Jewish organisations and Holocaust survivors. After its creation in 1948, the new State of Israel was determined to hunt down Nazi war criminals and bring them to justice. As part of these efforts and perhaps the top priority case altogether, Eichmann was tracked down in Argentina by Jewish secret servicemen.

The Israelis knew that taking Eichmann from Argentina might been seen as violating Argentina's sovereignty. West Germany and East Germany may have also had a case for demanding that the Eichmann trial be conducted in their courts. But after substantional advice on international law, his captors transported Eichmann to Israel in 1960 and tried him for war crimes in 1961.

In all democracies, however heinous the crimes of which they are charged, the accused are entitled to a proper trial. Thus the trial had to be fair and open, and the prosecution still had to prove Eichmann's guilt. Eichmann had the right to a barrister of his choice; he chose a German lawyer, Dr Robert Servatius, with experience defending accused war criminals. The State of Israel paid for part of the defence and the Knesset passed legislation enabling the German barrister to appear before an Israel court. Although the case was conducted in Hebrew, Eichmann gave all his evidence in German and had running translations of the witnesses’ evidence into German.

In any case, the Jewish state’s primary motive in conducting an open trial before the world’s scrutiny was never revenge. In 1960-1, memories of the Holocaust were still very fresh. Most Ashkenazi citizens in the country had lost their parents and siblings during the war and wanted to document the details of the atrocities, while there were still thousands of witnesses alive. Israelis saw the Eichmann trial as a way to educate the new generation of Israelis and the world about a vicious, anti-Semitic and totalitarian government.

Bruce Brager noted that far more documentary evidence was collected than needed to convict Eichmann, but Chief Prosecutor Gideon Hausner wanted to add human meaning to dry statistics when presenting his case. The way to make the history meaningful to every individual was through
the personal testimony of eye witnesses.

The Israelis collected a huge amount of evidence from the Germans’ own official archives and from post-war investigations in Europe. In fact the German records collected in Jerusalem for the Eichmann trial greatly outweighed that which had been available to the prosecution authorities at Nuremberg.

Eichmann’s defence was that he had been given a task to perform, because of the success he had found in earlier assignments, particularly the deportation of Jews from Austria. Ultimately Eichmann saw himself as just an ordinary bureaucrat, merely following orders from above. He was quiet and self-controlled throughout his trial in the bullet-proof glass booth.

After an excruciatingly long and detailed trial, Dr Servatius denied the validity of the Nazis and Nazi Collaboration Punishment Law, arguing that the destruction of the Jewish people had not depended on Eichmann. Nonetheless the prisoner was found guilty; later he was sentenced to death and, after an appeal, hanged.

I am very sorry that Israel, a nation with no capital punishment whatsoever, before or since Eichmann, executed a human being (even a Nazi leader). But my parents, aunts and uncles were in Australia during the war. Perhaps I would have felt differently had they been fodder to Eichmann’s extermination machinery.