Paris Métro 1931

Every decade in the first half of the 20th. century one or other of Europe’s colonial powers would mount an exhibition to celebrate and legitimise their imperial dominions and plunder.  The principle audience was a domestic one but it also offered an opportunity to remind rival powers of France’s global reach.  Years of planning and a purpose built exhibition building was essential to do justice to the scale of the colonial project and L’Exposition Coloniale opened in May 1931. A subsidiary aim of the exhibition was to portray the French colonial presence as enlightened and benign as if colonial subjects were almost equal partners in a global French nation.  We may look back and see a shaming exercise in imperial condescension and national self-aggrandisement but that’s not how the French public would have seen it.  For them it was a powerful reminder of France’s high standing as an international player.  Reinforcing patriotic values at a time when a gathering economic crisis was threatening the stability of a nation rapidly fracturing into political extremes of Right and Left.  Outdoor exhibits were displayed in the Bois de Vincennes and a more scholarly presentation of indigenous arts and crafts was housed in the newly constructed Palais de la Porte Dorée, about which we posted in February 2015.

The public relations staff at the Paris Métro got swept along in the general fervour and marked the occasion with a lavish presentation book proclaiming the wonders and achievements of Parisian public transport, expensively packaged within a metallic finish board cover.  Inside were tipped-in reproductions of specially commissioned paintings of Métro-related subjects and tables of statistics demonstrating the superiority of the Métro over its international rivals. The endpapers were graced with air-brushed Art Deco-styled imagery of the Métro in action that added to the air of luxury the publishers were striving for.  It was not something to be casually handed out to the general public but almost certainly reserved for honoured guests, foreign diplomats and senior officials as a corporate souvenir gift.

 

City Buses on Postcards

The development of motor vehicles happened in the era of the vintage picture postcard. Horse-drawn omnibuses gave way to petrol powered vehicles and major cities rapidly built up extensive networks of routes. Each of these portraits from Europe and North America seem to reflect the national characteristics of their homelands. Parisian buses came furnished with a fussy Gallic scalloped fringe to the protective roof canopy as well as some fashionably fancy coachwork. At the other extreme is the utilitarian no-frills Detroit bus where the passengers are exposed to the elements via the unglazed windows. The sole grace note being the provision of highly polished brass light fittings. The Berlin bus has the feel and solidity of well-made furniture while the London bus is conceived as a mobile display of public information. Appropriately for a city famous for criminality, the Chicago bus is built like a military vehicle – it’s easy to imagine armed guards on every other seat. In comparison the Manhattan bus appears slender and restrained.