{cities} – Page 27 – { feuilleton }

The Columbus Monument

You can always rely on expositions and world’s fairs for architectural extravagance. This monster globe was an unrealised proposition for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and would have required potential visitors to be conveyed “by lift to the Equator, and thence by spiral railway to the North Pole.” What Columbus’s ship is doing perched at the top of the world is anyone’s guess. I’ve not been able to discover who was responsible for this; Erik Larson’s book about the fair (and the career of serial killer HH Holmes), The Devil in the White City, doesn’t mention the monument in its index.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition Universelle publications
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City

The art of Peter Randall-Page

Seed (2007).

It was my intention to post something about Peter Randall-Page’s sculptures earlier this year but never got round to it, so the opening of an exhibition of his work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this month provides the perfect opportunity. The park’s website has details of the works on view while the artist’s own site has a detailed catalogue of his career. I hadn’t realised until I looked at his list of works that he was responsible for my favourite of Manchester’s small collection of public fountains, the St Ann’s Fountain in St Ann’s Square.

Update: A photo gallery of the works on display.

Rocks in my Bed (2005).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Arnaldo Pomodoro
• Sculptural collage: Eduardo Paolozzi
• The art of Igor Mitoraj

Exposition Universelle publications

More Exposition Universelle fetishism. The Internet Archive has a small collection of documents from the Paris exposition, not all of them of interest but these two are worth a look for their pictures at least. Exposition universelle, 1900; 32 vues photographiques (above) features various views of the exposition exhibits although they’re made somewhat redundant by the Brooklyn Museum’s Flickr set of tinted photos.

Of more interest is Les principaux palais de l’Exposition universelle de Paris with its details of the extravagant architectural confections on display. And for a look at a visitors’ guide there’s Paris Exposition, 1900: guide pratique du visiteur de Paris et de l’exposition from Hachette & Cie, still going strong today and now the UK’s largest publisher.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exposition cornucopia
• Return to the Exposition Universelle
• The Palais Lumineux
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• Exposition Universelle, 1900
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City

Passage des Panoramas

I thought I might have exhausted this line of pursuit until I decided to search for the Passage des Panoramas, one of the first of the Parisian arcades which so entranced Walter Benjamin. This particular arcade dates from 1799 and was named after the painted panoramas which used to be one of the attractions on an upper floor. The appropriately panoramic view comes from a page of 360º panoramas of some of the more attractive passages couverts of Paris and, as with previous examples here, these are best viewed using the full screen option. On my last trip to Paris I intended to visit some of the arcades but apart from one small place on the Champs-Élysées the ones I tracked down were all closed. Consequently, these photos are the next best thing to being there.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Passages 2
• Passages

Bruges panoramas

Do you detect a theme here? The 360º Cities site which I linked to yesterday won’t be news to some since its panorama views are now incorporated into Google Earth. I hadn’t fully investigated it before, however, so I wasted some time today wandering the streets of Bruges almost as you would in a computer game thanks to the way the different panoramas are linked. Clicking the arrows or the thumbnail views means you’re immediately transported to the next location. (Needless to say this works best using the full screen option on a large monitor.) The photographs in this instance are by Robin de Baere.

Bruges is another of those waterlogged places with cobbled streets which so beguile me, hence the choice of a Belgian town over more obvious European locations. The light skies in the night shots—a result of long exposures—lend the empty streets some of the same mysterious atmosphere captured by René Magritte in his Empire of Light series. Magritte was Belgian, of course, so it’s rather fitting, as was Paul Delvaux, another painter of noctural mystery.

Empire of Light by René Magritte (1953–54).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Bruges-la-Morte
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux