The first Salons of the new group were held in the newly opened Museum of Decorative Arts in the Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre.

He explained his reason in an essay written later, in 1928: "We consequently resolved to return Decorative Art, inconsiderately treated as a Cinderella or poor relation allowed to eat with the servants, to the important, almost preponderant place it occupied in the past, of all times and in all of the countries of the globe.

The report, which came out in 1926, stated that the U.S had clearly misunderstood the purpose of the exposition, and that at least some participation should have been arranged to honor the French-American wartime alliance.

The Pont Alexander III, which connected the two parts of the exposition, was turned into a modernist shopping mall by the architect Maurice Dufrêne.

The main entrance was at the Place de la Concorde, designed by architect Pierre Patout, with a statue of a woman in the center called "Welcome" by Louis Dejean.

In 1929 Mallet-Stevens led the creation of The French Union of Modern Artists which rebelled against the luxurious decorative styles shown at the exposition, and, along with Le Corbusier, demanded architecture without ornament, built with inexpensive and mass-produced materials.

Each pavilion was designed by a different architect, and they tried to outdo each other with colorful entrances, sculptural friezes, and murals of ceramics and metal.

For the first time at an international exposition, pieces of furniture were displayed not as individual items but in rooms similar to those in a home, where all the decor was coordinated.

The Hôtel du Collectionneur, for example, displayed the works of the furniture maker Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, in rooms complete with paintings and fireplaces in the same modern style.

The most unusual, most modest, and, in the end, probably the most influential French pavilion was that of the magazine L'Esprit Nouveau, directed by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier.

"Decorative art," Le Corbusier wrote, "as opposed to the machine phenomenon, is the final twitch of the old manual mode, and is a dying thing.

The complex included a terrace by the Seine, a tower, a cubic glass and iron exhibit hall by Peter Behrens, and a brightly decorated cafe.

Belgium had been left in ruins by the War, and the Belgian exhibit had a low budget; the pavilion was made of wood, plaster and other low-cost materials.

[13] The pavilion of Denmark, by Kay Fisker, was a striking block of red and white bricks, making a Danish cross.

The pavilion of Sweden was designed by Carl Bergsten, while the Swedish display in the Grand Palais featured a model of the new art deco city hall of Stockholm, by Ragnar Ostberg.

The pavilion of Italy by Armando Brasini was a large classical block built of concrete and covered with decoration in marble, ceramics and gilded bricks.

It was decorated on the outside with colorful flags, and in the inside with stained glass, murals and polychrome facade, with arabesques and oriental themes.

It had a flamboyant glass and iron tower with geometric facets, a deco versio of the picturesque churches of Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The roof over the stairway was not continuous, but was made up of planes of wood suspended at an angle, which were supposed to let in fresh air and keep rain out, but visitors were sometimes drenched.

The key element of the furnishings was the Workers’ Club which Rodchenko designed as an optimal model space for self-education and cultural leisure activities.

The furniture, glassware, metalwork, fabrics and objects displayed were made with rare and expensive materials such as ebony, ivory, mother of pearl, sharkskin, and exotic woods from around the world, but the forms they used were very distinct from Art Nouveau or the preceding historic styles.

They used geometric forms, straight lines, zigzag patterns, stylized garlands of flowers and baskets of fruit, to create something new and different.

A miniature village was created for children, and there were stages which presented plays, ballets, singers and cultural programs from the participating countries.

The lights could be controlled from a keyboard, and presented nine different patterns, including geometric shapes and circles, a shower of stars, the signs of the zodiac, and, most prominently, the name CITROËN.

It featured the American dancer Loie Fuller, with her dance students appearing to swim through gauze veils; the dancer Eva Le Galienne as Joan of Arc and the dancer Ida Rubenstein as the Golden Angel, in a costume by Léon Bakst; the singer Mistinguett in the costume of a diamond, surrounded by the troupe of the Casino de Paris dressed as gemstones; and short performances by the full companies of the Comédie-Française and the Paris Opera, the Folies Bergère and the Moulin Rouge.

At the same time, it displayed the growing difference between the traditional modern style, with its expensive materials, fine craftsmanship and lavish decoration, and the modernist movement that wanted to simplify art and architecture.

[citation needed] In 1926, shortly after the end of the Paris Decorative Arts exposition, The French Union of Modern Artists, a group which included Francis Jourdain, Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier, and Robert Mallet-Stevens among others, fiercely attacked the style, which they said was created only for the wealthy and its form was determined by their tastes.

[19] However, Le Corbusier was a brilliant publicist for modernist architecture; he stated that a house was simply "a machine to live in", and tirelessly promoted the idea that Art Deco was the past and modernism was the future.