Studio: international art (90.1925)

PARIS INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION

more will be learned from the bad than
the good, particularly so far as architecture
is concerned. 0000
Some anarchic spirits are going about
saying that the styles of the past are dead,
" and a good job too." But such trium-
phal shouts are puerile, for the styles of
old time are not dead. Notre Dame de
Paris, the Chateaux of the Loire, Versailles,
the palaces of the Place de la Concorde,
the masterly French furniture of the
Renaissance, or of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, are still alive and will
continue to live. What is dead, and
deservedly so, is the fashion of copying
which held sway all through the nineteenth
century after the First Empire. I am
firmly convinced that the French public
has had enough of these imitations of
established styles, and I am very glad of
it. But let the architects, decorators and
craftsmen who are full of the modern
spirit beware lest they tire this public
(whose goodwill is evident) by too-eccen-
tric fantasies and a novelty that is merely
freakish! They are in danger of losing

FRESCO BY H. MARRET
(Intern. Exhibn. of Modern
Decorative and Industrial
Arts, Paris)

not only the sympathy and support of
their new clientele, but also those of the
manufacturers whom they have convinced
(not without difficulty, be it said in pass-
ing) of the excellence of their ideas. 0

LE VILLAGE DES JOUETS
ARCHITECTS, PELLETIER FRERES
(Intern. Exhibn. of Modern De-
corative and Industrial Arts, Paris)

21