The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition / A Pictorial Survey of the Art of the Panama-Pacific international exposition

by Stella G. S. Perry

The Rising Sun
Fountain, Court of the Universe

"The Rising" and "The Setting Sun," by Adolph A. Weinman, stand high against the heavens on tall shafts that rise from fountain bowls. They are inspired with a sort of rapturous imagery and they so inspire the beholder. "The Rising Sun," a youth with outstretched wings, a figure suggestive of gladness, hope and the dawn of high adventure, is a fitting symbol of the sunrise. He seems "a-tiptoe for a flight" on the summit of his column; his profile against the sky is superb. On the opposite column "The Setting Sun," a young woman with pensive face, shaded by her hair and drooping wings, sinks to rest. These figures stand on translucent shafts that are pillars of light in the evening. They bear garlanded capitals and rise from double fountain bowls bound together by rising and falling jets and sheets of water. The column bases are finished with beautiful friezes, one symbolic of the Sun of Truth, the other of the Peace of Night. Winged mermen support the upper basin; sea-creatures gambol in the lower.

Column of Progress
In the Forecourt of the Stars

One of the most serious and thoughtful works of the Exposition sculpture is the Column of Progress which faces the bay at the end of the Forecourt of Stars. This column represents with direct imagery the upward progress of man. The shaft itself is sculptured with conventionalized waves in a gradually ascending spiral, upon which a repeated vessel, the Ship of Life, sails upward, indicating the slow upward rise of our life. The lower panels, significant of man's endeavors, are described on the following page. The crowning group, "The Adventurous Bowman," noble in intent and in sculptural power, is from the hand of Hermon A. MacNeil. At the highest point of man's achievement, stands this Adventurous Bowman, the super-hero, the leader, the man with insight into the future, who shoots his arrow into the Sun of Truth. Behind him the next man supports and is protected, by him. Beside him kneels the woman with his reward in her hands. The frieze beneath the group shows the Burden-Bearers on whose shoulders the hero stands - an arresting thought; reminder of the true values in modern life.

Frieze
Base, Column of Progress

The four panels at the base of the Column of Progress sympathetically express its exalted idealism. They are by Isadore Konti, in richly wrought high relief. The play of color values, the planes of light and shade, are handled with mastery. These four panels indicate that the thought, the dream, the aspiration, the dutiful devotion underlying all the labors of the common day are the source of their progress. One panel shows the higher toils of the mind, as in the arts and statesmanship. In the center of this stands the inventor or leader of thought with the eagle of aspiration above him. Another shows the motives of love and pain and prayer and the central power of labor as movers of the world. Still another, which is shown here, expresses the humbler toils of mankind; even they, it says, progress upward through the thinker who pauses in their midst to dream. The other panel here pictured represents the triumph of man's endeavors, and the successes that spur to greater achievements.

Primitive Ages
Altar Tower, Court of Ages

The Tower of Ages, in the Court of Ages, represents Evolution. The lower group, here illustrated, presents "The Early Ages." This shows the development of man from his physical beginnings among the creatures of the ooze up through the cave man and the Stone Age to the growth of the family ideal out of which sprang a higher civilization. The second group shows "The Middle Ages." Its three figures are the Monk, the Armored Bowman, and, at the apex, the Crusader, the highest expression of idealism, of that period. "The Present Age" crowns the whole, upon an altar sits the Woman Enthroned and Enshrined. Her children, the future, are at her feet. Their finger-tips touch a symbol, the Cosmos. One bears a book, the other the wheel of a machine. Figures of Mutation flank the central composition. The sculpture on the Tower of Ages is by Chester A. Beach, whose emancipated and vigorous manner is exactly suited to the presentment of these strong ideas.

Primitive Man
Arcade Finial, Court of Ages

In accord with the basic idea of the beginning, change and upward growth of the human race and its emotional life that are emphasized in this eastern court, rough, plastic figures of "Primitive Man" and "Primitive Woman" surmount the elaborate arcade. They harmonize with the conception and treatment of the, group on the Tower of Ages. They are the work of Albert Weinert, the sculptor who made the much-admired "Miner" in the portal niches of the Palace of Mines and Metallurgy, and "Philosophy" on Administration Avenue. He presents these parents of civilization at the transition stage when they are still savage but have become physically upright and begun to develop the elementary glimmering of intellectual and emotional consciousness. They stand as finials on the continued columns that pierce the arcade wall and emphasize the arches. Dividing the spaces above them, on a higher level, are repeated finials of a pert chanticleer, emblem of the east, the dawn and immortality.