Part 7 (2/2)

”Yes, and they thought of them and some ambitious plans were discussed

But the expense was found to be prohibitive”

At that uard, in his yellow unifor lady at his side They stood so close to us that we could not help hearing their talk

”What are those wouard looked at the urns, sur,” he said

”What are they crying about?”

The guard looked a little e over the sadness of art,” he said Then he added soetically, ”Anyway, that's what the lecturer told us to say”

The lady appealed to us for inforentleman says is true,” remarked the authority at ures should express so of the sadness of life as reflected in art”

”Oh,” said the lady, as if she only half understood

Then she and the guard drifted away

”Those people have unconsciously given us a bit of art criticism, haven't they? One of the most pictorial notes in this coures But it's also eccentric and it puzzles the average looker-on who is always searching afterto the literary habit of the day, the result of universal reading Perhaps the effect would have been, less bewildering if those urns were filled with flowers as Maybeck intended they should be Then the wo over the flowers The little doors were put into the urns so that the e of the flowers could reach up to the the sacrifices”

The coloring of the columns had been a subject of soenerally adreen coluive the sense of support And that iasus frieze of Zimm's, near the top, had been found to bear a certain rese, the colors Guerin had worked with deliberate purpose

The green under the frieze was really a good iested the weather-beaten effect associated with age

”There are columns that, in my opinion, have more beauty than those Maybeck used But that's a matter of taste In themselves those columns are fine and they blend into impressive ure, only a great artist could have conceived in just that way Ralph Stackpole, the sculptor of the figure, worked it out in perfect harht to get close and see how roughly it has been ive an effect of delicacy across the lagoon And those trees along the edge of the lagoon, how gracefully they are planted, in the true Greek spirit The lines in front of the rotunda are all good, as they run down to the water's edge And how richly McLaren has planted the lagoon He has given just the luxuriance that Maybeck wanted”

The Western Wall

We turned to get the effect of the western wall looking out on this nificence ”Faville has done some of his finest work there All over the Exposition he has expressed hireat courts we don't hear it very much When he tackled the Western Wall he had one of the hardest of his proble and impressive, without the aid of towers or courts It was a brilliant idea to break the monotony with those two splendid Roht” on the columns in front of the Dome of Plenty and repeated on the Do on the subject of character and art ”Only a sculptor with a very fine nature could have done that fellow up there In that design Stackpole shows the qualities that he shows in the kneeling girl at the altar in the rotunda across the lagoon and in his figure of the coroup of artisans and artists that we shall see on the doorway of the Varied Industries They include fineness and cleanness of feeling, reverence and tenderness This particular figure is one of three figures on the grounds that stand for virtually the same subject, Rodin's ”Thinker,” in the courtyard of the French Building, and Chester Beach's ”Thinker,” in the niches to the west and east of the tower in the Court of the Ages They are all different in character Stackpole's gives the feeling of gentle conteht be a poet or a philosopher or an inventor; but a reat achieve with his whole heart and soul in order to get ahead of other men However, it would be an achieveood type to be held up to us for our admiration, better than the conventional ideal of success embodied in the Adventurous Bowman, for exalance had been orked out Earl cuure of the Youth had a really youthful quality; but there was soure in a semi-circle ”After all,” the architect remarked, ”in this country art owes some concession to habit of ard to nudity On the contrary, all our conventions are against it But our artists, through their special professional training, learn to despise nore them or frankly show their contempt for them”

That elaborate Sienna fountain ell adapted to the Doh it was by no n built up tier on tier ”It's the natural expression of a single idea that leads to beauty, isn't it? The instant there's a betrayal of effort, the charins to fade”

There was no criticism to be made, however, of the Italian fountain in the Dome of Philosophy, the simplest of all the fountains, and one of theover the circular bowl from all sides ”It ly, ”which is the best any fountain can do Is there anything in art that can co water? This fountain coures, above the doorith books in their ar of the sculptors represented here, Albert Weinert We'll see et to the Court of Abundance”

At sight of the curious groups in the niches I expressed a certain disappointment It seemed to me that, in the midst of so much real beauty, they were out of key But the architect had another point of view ”They are worth while because they're different,” he said ”They ought not to be considered ical interest They are related to those interesting studies that Albert Durer used to make, and they are full of symbolism When Charles Harley ure in 'The Triu was associated with pagan rites The Celtic cross and the standard with the bull on top used to be carried through the field in harvest time

The bull celebrates the ani the crops The wain represents the old harvest wagon That head down there typifies the seed of the earth, symbol of the life that co food to ure, unfortunately, is too small for the niche, 'Abundance' The horn of plenty on either side indicates her character She's reaching out her hands to suggest her prodigality The head of the eagle on the prow of the shi+p where she is sitting, gives the idea an A our natural prosperity and our reason for keeping ahead in the ures represent a reactionary kind of sculpture Nowadays the sculptors, like the painters, are trying to get away from literal interpretations They don't want to appeal to the mind so much as to the emotions”