The Studio yearbook of decorative art (1913)

GERMAN ARCHITECTURE AND DE-
CORATION. By L. Deubner
OTHING is so instructive as comparison, the putting
side by side of things akin or opposite in character. The
process of comparison not only demonstrates the external
resemblances or differences ; it enables one to discover the
more intrinsic relationships of things, and reveals the
more deeply rooted causes which have contributed to development
or hindered progress.
A comparison of this sort is brought home to us by the fact
that no decision has yet been come to regarding the proposed Interna-
tional Exhibition of Modern Applied Art in Paris which was originally
planned for the year 1915, and to which I referred last year. In
Germany, however, we have just had the great Bavarian Industrial
Show (“ Gewerbeschau ”) at Munich ; this year brings us the Inter-
national Building Trades’ Exhibition at Leipzig, with comprehensive
sections for decorative and applied art ; for next year arrangements
are already being made for the first great exhibition of the Deutscher
Werkbund (an association of designers and craftsmen of which an
account was given in our 1910 issue) at Cologne and the Hessian
National Exhibition at Darmstadt, and preparations are also in full
swing for the International Exhibition of Book Production at Leipzig
in the same year ; while in 1915 we shall have at Stuttgart the first
exhibition of the Industrial Art of Wiirtemberg which will be on a
large scale. Thus it will be seen that in Germany an impetuous
spirit of rivalry between the great associations and individual States
is the order of the day.
To discuss at length the causes of this indecision on the part of
the quick-spirited Frenchmen and this buoyant, reckless enterprise on
the part of us plodding and more cautious Germans is not possible
within the scope of this article. An explanation, however, is afforded
by a comparison of the display of applied art organised by the more
progressive French artists at the last Autumn Salon in Paris with the
Bavarian Industrial Exhibition in Munich. In Paris two opposite
groups fought for the principles and tendencies which should govern
modern artistic production, and the works exhibited revealed all the
defects of the contest. What they demonstrated was not so much a
lack of artistic energy and formative power, as the want of an organisa-
tion which shall direct, guide, and discipline all the conflicting and
often aberrant forces. There is lacking a recognition of the economic
and social impulse which must initiate the growth of what we call the
new style ; there is a failure to perceive that the objective aimed at
by modern applied art is not the decorative adornment of industrial
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