Ironwork
The Palais de la Porte Dorée is home to many ironwork decorations designed by renowned decorators, key figures in the artistic ironwork of the 1930s. Nowadays they can mainly be found in the circulation areas of the Palais.
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Lighting
At the Palais de la Porte Dorée, many lights representative of the Art Deco style were installed across the circulation areas. In the 1920s, research on light became a major preoccupation for architects and decorators (the architect of the Palais, Albert Laprade, worked on this question a lot, especially at the Garage Marbeuf), seeking to come up with rational, comfortable lighting that could create an ambiance at the same time. The publication Lux, dedicated to lighting, was launched in 1928, and in 1933 the Salon de la Lumière was created, under the auspices of the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution d’Électricité. The tastes of the time were for indirect lighting, which explains the fashion for mirrored vases (the light source is hidden), lamps with an upside-down cone (echoing a lotus flower, a fashionable motif since the new wave of Egyptomania following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922), or wall lights, which project soft light onto the ceiling or walls. The 1931 Colonial Exposition provided the opportunity to experiment with many types of artificial lighting to illuminate the monuments at night.
Eugène Printz
One of the great names of the Art Deco movement, Eugène Printz conceived of and designed all the furniture in the Asia Salon at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, a state room which, during the 1931 Colonial Exposition, served as the reception office of Maréchal Lyautey, the exposition’s general commissioner.
Jean Dunand
One of the great names of the Art Deco movement, Jean Dunand (1877-1942) was a multi-disciplinary artist : a decorator, sculptor, brassworker, cabinetmaker, mosaicist and painter, of Swiss origin, who introduced France to the lacquer technique, to which he himself was initiated by a Japanese master in 1912. He used this technique to create ten lacquer panels that would decorate the library at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in 1931.
Pierre-Henri Ducos de la Haille
The fresco that decorates the forum in the very centre of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, the former function room during the Colonial Exposition of 1931, was created on a surface area of over 600 m² by the painter Pierre-Henri Ducos de la Haille (1889-1972), a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and his seven assistants whose names can be read to the left of the entrance, along with those of his students.
Louis Bouquet
The fresco that decorates the Africa salon, located in the south-west angle of the Hall of Honour, was made by the Lyon-based painter Louis Bouquet (1885-1952), whose aim was to illustrate the cultural and intellectual contributions made by Africa.
Janniot’s bas-relief
Featuring a series of allegories, in the midst of abundant fauna and lush flora, this “stone tapestry” measuring 1,130 m 2 exalts colonial wealth. It was produced in under 2 years by Alfred Auguste Janniot, a sculptor specialised in monumental decors, and was intended as an illustration of the economic contributions made by the colonies to metropolitan France.
Louis Bouquet’s fresco
The fresco that decorates the Africa Salon, situated in the south-west corner of the Hall of Honour, and classified as a historic monument since 1987, was created by the Lyon-based painter Louis Bouquet (1885-1952). Its purpose was to depict the cultural and intellectual contributions made by Africa. On the right-hand panel, devoted to Black Africa, music and dance are portrayed, with Apollo holding his lyre, inspired by a majestic black muse, the two of them surrounded by dancers. The décor consists in lush vegetation, inhabited by wild beasts (a lion, a leopard hunting an antelope) and architecture representing the Great Mosque of Djenné, the biggest building made from raw earth in the world, located in Mali and dating from 1906. Interesting fact: the Mosque of Djenné was also reproduced in a miniature version to serve as a pavilion representing Mali at the Colonial Exposition. Opposite the entrance door, three panels illustrate the Arab sciences and arts, with each one represented by an allegorical character: on the right-hand panel, astronomy (man holding a celestial globe, looking to the sky), mathematics (man counting on his fingers), geometry (man with a compass), agronomics (man carrying a hoe), botany (woman picking plants), medicine and pharmacopoeia (man with a mortar and pestle), philosophy (two characters in the midst of a debate), poetry (woman holding a lyre), eloquence (a man proclaiming, his arm extended); the central panel features music and song, while the left-hand panel depicts writing and architecture. Lastly, to the left of the entrance, religion is embodied by Mohammed, the angel Gabriel (Jibril in Arabic) whispering into his ear the Revelation of the Koran, accompanied by the figure of Saint Michel bringing down the dragon, symbol of Evil. The angel Gabriel and Saint Michel are figures venerated by both Christianity and Islam, and are very much present in their respective iconographies: the painter thus wished to highlight the points of convergence between eastern and western cultures through music, the sciences and religion. Above the panels are a large number of architectural models (mosques, cities, palaces…) illustrating the wealth of urban cultures in Arab-Muslim civilisations. As concerns the treatment of the characters, dignified and impressive, their fixed, frontal and aloof positions are the most striking aspect. Their sobriety echoes a certain neutrality in their expressions and in the sculptural appearance of the bodies. The painter’s touch is defined and linear, with the paint applied in low-key flat tints (with no trace of brush strokes), and cross-hatched lines placed vertically, accentuating the impression of verticality of the walls of the large oval cylinder of this salon. Likewise, cross-hatching reinforces the geometrization of the objects and bodies depicted. The forms are elongated and the figures elegant and slender, which also accentuates the verticality of the architecture. The entire fresco is approached through a geometric framework in which the stylised arabesque is very much present. The colour range is limited to the colours of the earth, presented tone-on-tone, creating a general palette that is muted, accentuating the sculptural appearance of the silhouettes. A few touches of bright colour highlight materials or objects.