PAN in an International Perspective

On March 15, 2022, the Driehaus Museum announced the purchase of a full suite of prints of Pan, the Art Nouveau periodical. Scholar Max Koss, who received his PhD from the University of Chicago, wrote his dissertation on the subject of Pan. He reflects here about why it is such an important publication and why the Driehaus Museum's purchase helps preserve its enduring legacy.

The arrival at the Driehaus Museum of a set of the Art Nouveau periodical Pan (1895-1900) and with it, the full suite of the prints it published in its pages, is an altogether fortuitous event. With this acquisition, the Driehaus Museum joins other prominent Chicago institutions with Pan holdings, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Special Collections Research Center at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, and the Newberry Library, making for a somewhat surprising concentration of this relatively rare object from Germany in this American city.  

What is more, the Driehaus Museum is the only one of these institutions that can present the whole set of prints in its full splendor, to be admired on its own, separate from the periodical in which the images first appeared. There is likely no building and interior space more suited to house Pan than the exquisite Nickerson Mansion, with its turn of the century details and its materials, surfaces, colors, and textures exuding the kind of luxury that many subscribers of Pan would have known from their own, privileged lives in grand apartments or mansions. The Driehaus Museum's purchase is thus a blessing not just because of the sheer visual pleasure the prints provide. It simultaneously reflects the international outlook of Pan, while also pointing to the reception history of Pan as a collectible item.

Pan  appeared at a time of increasing nationalist sentiment in Europe, in particular in Germany as well as France, continental Europe’s leading and competing industrial powers of the era. At the same time, ever advancing technological progress in transport and communication and empires stretching across the globe meant that Pan appeared during an era of globalization and border crossing cultural exchange. This in turn means that what may appear as a decidedly German periodical turns out to be more international than is commonly assumed, in particular in regards to its contents.

One of the goals the makers of Pan had set out to achieve (and in which they were wildly successful) was to rejuvenate and ameliorate German book production, whose quality they considered in decline. While past eras of German book production were an inspiration, the people behind Pan were thoroughly modern, attuned to international developments. Some of them, such as the chairman of the association that published Pan, Eberhard von Bodenhausen, an art historian and manager, even had international pedigree—his mother Fanny Butler was originally from Philadelphia. And since Pan had set out to improve not only bookmaking, but generally the quality of craft production, they made sure to present best practice examples from various countries in their pages.

For book production, including paper quality, typography, and the thorny question of how to best illustrate an illustrated arts periodical, Pan was first and foremost inspired by the English tradition, in particular the towering example of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, but also the periodicals that came out of the Arts & Crafts movement, such as the Hobby Horse, Yellow Book or The Savoy. At the same time, Pan, with its deep investment in all things related to print culture, also took note of the developments stateside. Chicago’s very own The Chap-Book (1894-1898), a literary magazine for which William H. Bradley designed Art Nouveau posters, recently exhibited at the Driehaus Museum, made an appearance in an article on American chapbooks. In another essay on the art of the poster, which was a defining artistic phenomenon of the 1890s, America is singled out as one of the leading places for the art of the outdoor image, even if the author reminds their readers that the style of American posters is mostly a result of an economic use of resources, stipulated by the commissioning capitalists. Bradley is singled out as the country’s foremost poster artist. 

One particular artist that played a significant, if overlooked role for Pan, and one which makes the connection between PAanand the Driehaus Museum even more formidable, is Louis Comfort Tiffany. There is no reproduction of a work of Tiffany in the pages of Pan, even though editorial correspondence shows that efforts to this effect had been undertaken. His name, his works, and, above all, his impressive combination of art with workshop production was hailed by the makers of Pan, for whom Tiffany set an example to emulate in Germany, something that Henry van de Velde, the Belgian designer, would indeed try his luck at in Berlin with the financial backing of Bodenhausen. Another important Pan impresario, Harry Graf Kessler, even visited Tiffany and his workshop in New York in late 1897, where he was confronted with Tiffany’s polite, but critical assessment of the glasses produced by the German artist Karl Köpping, one of which is reproduced as a print in Pan.

 

Pan’s international outlook was not limited to England or America. France played perhaps the most significant, if also most controversial role, given the country’s status as Germany’s arch-enemy. Another important group of artists represented in Pan were Scandinavian artists and writers, some of whom belonged to the bohemian circle in Berlin from which Pan first emerged.

I would like to end this post with a personal observation. As a German native—from Berlin even—and someone who obtained their PhD degree with a dissertation on Pan, I would be remiss if I did not mention that it was in Chicago, at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago, that I first came across PAN when I was doing research for a seminar on late medieval manuscripts. This curious fact led me to dig deeper and realize that while Pan had only a handful of American subscribers during its lifetime, in its afterlife, the memory of the periodical survives not least because of holdings in American libraries. These transfers of Pan across the Atlantic must have occurred throughout the twentieth century, and they go to show just what an attractive, collectible and art historically significant object PAN was and continues to be. I could therefore not be more thrilled about the Driehaus Museum's purchase of Pan.