National Cash Register, and Ford; Desky applied surrealism to the
Communications exhibit and Russell Wright did likewise for Food. Of all
these, however, the most memorable was the brainchild of a one-time
scenic designer, Norman Bel Geddes. His theatrical extravaganza for
General Motors, called Futurama, was housed in architect Alfred Kahn’s
seven-acre-square streamline monument, and was the most ambitious and
visionary multimedia educational entertainment built for any fair.
The Fair was also the most crassly merchandised event the world
had ever known. Among the thousands of souvenirs were toys and games,
ranging from kazoos to paint sets, all emblazoned or molded in the shape
of the Trylon and Perisphere. Despite the predominance of cheaply
manufactured trifles, the fair committee insisted in their press releases that
the quality of these articles was guaranteed by the “artistic prominence and
skill of their designers.”
The efforts of the World’s Fair’s planners should not be dismissed
as merely a vain effort to predict the future. Despite its failures, the
1939 / 1940 New York World’s Fair was not an empty metaphor, but rather a
colorful, though temporary, beacon of hope. The Trylon and Perisphere
symbolized the real world of tomorrow for a nation about to enter a storm
of conflict and gave its visitors the stuff of memories that neither war nor
time could erase.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1