Stella George Stern Perry ~ Little Bronze Playfellows (cover) 1915

Earlier this year I posted Edward Henry Berge’s sculptures that were exhibited in the Panama-Pacific Expostion of 1915. Stella George Stern Perry (1877-1956) wrote a charming story based on the bronze statues outside of the Palace of Fine Arts. The narrative gives an account of a young girl named Eleanor at the expostion. Apperaently, Eleanor was not enthusiastic about the modern art on display. She was bewildered by her Aunt Kate’s stopping before the paintings, “saying queer long words, like Divisionist, Futurista, Boccionist, Munich School”. Modern ideas about art are the result of an alienation of the heart that originates in the utilitarian expectations of adulthood.

Perry understood that much of modernism did not appeal to the intuition of human nature, rather, it was an intellectual artifice. Later in the story Eleanor is guided away from the modern exhibit by her cousin Waldemar to the sculpture garden. Waldemar gave this advice to young Eleanor,”First you must walk the whole length of the Colonnade, looking at all the little bronze figures, and keep saying to yourself, ‘Why is that so delightful?’ Then, at last, at the very end – you will find Piping Pan and he will take you to Fairyland, where they know all about Art.” Most people would not take this passage very serious with references to Piping Pan and Fairland but J.R.R. Tolkien understood that the notion of fairytales as literature for children is only a new idea. Through the narrative of a fairytale one can recover a state of the heart ussually lost in adulthood. Perry’s story begins with:

If you would find the magical strand
Of the sculpters’ garden in Fairyland,
If you would tread the beautiful way
Where children of dreams delight to play
To elfin pipes would harken and hear
Till the glad days dance down the singing year,
Would enter the garden that has no key,
No gate to unlock and to pay, no fee,
Would follow the path to the gladsome Art –
Then must you come with childlike heart.
For a childlike heart is the one demand
Of heaven, of Art and of Fairyland.
The Road to Fairyland

 

Louis Saint Gaudens ~ Piper Pan: Who knows all about art

Janet Scudder ~ Young Pan

Edward Berge ~ Sun-Dial Boy

Janet Scudder ~ Young Diana

Edith Woodman Burroughs ~ Youth