“ART-MAD FRANCE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 12

“ART-MAD FRANCE”

THE LATEST FURNISHINGS Of the recent Exposition of Decoration Intereure held at Paris, a correspondent writes: “France, really art mad, has grown indiscreet. And she is at her worst at interior decoration. The new rooms are horrors—disasters. Everything is allowed to crowd together in the smallest possible space, with the result that every example of a room is a guest room or an opium den, or merely hotel accommodation. Monster Batik cushions, with gilt tassels, hung limply across boat-like velvet chairs, standing on tiny woollen rugs. There were purple silk wall pleatings and lamps, like 1830 crinolines. Red bath tubs, embossed leather book bindings, vases of electric-lighted glass fruit, hanging by twisted cords from trellis-work ceilings, beds of shining mahogany, hung about with leopard skins and rose brocade —and all ghastly!

“Why does France allow such dissonance among her arts? Can it be possible that she knows no better? Have the French people changed in their manner of looking at things? Can these hideosities be designed by the same people who, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, made such exquisite Louis XV. and Louis XVI. furnishings and bibelots?”