SECTION 1 - via - School of Visual Arts

We need to acknowledge that there had been other large trade fairs since the 1851
Exhibition in London; two international ones were held in Paris in 1889 and 1900. As will
become apparent, however, the 1912 Munich trade fair has more significance than we may
have previously considered. Local advertisements, not only in newspapers, but on street signs
as well, spread word of its presence; such notice could hardly have eluded visitors or for that
matter, the residents of Munich.
It is even more significant that the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) had arrived
in Munich in June of 1912; he was to spend two months there. 4 Duchamp had ample
opportunity to wander around Munich and the Gewerbeschau was a major attraction that
year.
Exhibitions as comprehensive in scope as the 1912 Munich Gewerbeschau provided huge
spaces for the display of products from an increasingly industrialized world.
The interior of Hall I (Fig. 9) was planned with a center aisle, with exhibition spaces to either
side, and a view of the hall (Fig. 10) leads us past these exhibition spaces and draws our
attention to the large circular image of Bavaria personified.
Hall II (Fig. 11) by Richard Riemerschmid at the 1912 Munich Gewerbeschau is shown here
as well, and it too contained displays similar to those found in Hall I. The exhibition
contained articles and machines made to appeal to the interest and demands of consumers
from a growing middle class.
A multitude of displays contained objects both from industry and home manufacture. These
objects were produced by skilled craftspeople and artists, and their exhibits existed almost sideby-side
5 within the 1912 Munich Gewerbeschau. Could Marcel Duchamp have seen the
1912 Munich Gewerbeschau?
To answer this question, one first needs to return to the mid-Nineteenth Century for the
prototype of this exhibition in Munich. The chromolithograph (Fig. 5) depicts products of
British manufacture within the Crystal Palace at the 1851 International Exhibition held in
London’s Hyde Park. In the left foreground of this image (Fig. 12) one sees visitors whose
presence is graced by portrait busts, both human and equine. Directly behind these displays is
a huge multifaceted lighthouse lamp. The products of industry (the new technology) and the
arts are enmeshed together in display as though they had forever been depicted this way.
Successors to this exhibition would continue such associations. Significantly, in this
exhibition, for the first time, the arts and manufactured goods of many nations were displayed
in one venue at what, by the end of the Nineteenth Century, would become routinely known
as a trade fair. Held primarily within Joseph Paxton’s modular cast-iron and glass structure,
this exhibition became the forerunner of international trade fairs where objects of all kinds
were exhibited; sometimes they occupied the same space, while at others they were in adjacent
but contiguous structures. This mid-Nineteenth Century commercial venture, designed to
attract both exhibitors as well as consumers from all countries, set the precedent for successive
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