Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?: Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850-1900 / Edition 1

by Hollis Clayson, André Dombrowski

Overview

"Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?" The question that guides this volume stems from Walter Benjamin's studies of nineteenth-century Parisian culture as the apex of capitalist aesthetics. Thirteen scholars test Benjamin's ideas about the centrality of Paris, formulated in the 1930s, from a variety of methodological perspectives. Many investigate the underpinnings of the French capital's reputation and mythic force, which was based largely upon the city's capacity to put itself on display. Some of the authors reassess the famed centrality of Paris from the vantage point of our globalized twenty-first century by acknowledging its entanglements with South Africa, Turkey, Japan, and the United States. The volume equally studies a broader range of media than Benjamin did himself: from modernist painting and printmaking, photography, and illustration to urban planning. The essays conclude that Paris did in many ways function as the epicenter of modernity's international reach, especially in the years from 1850 to 1900, but did so only as a consequence of the idiosyncratic force of its mythic image. Above all, the essays affirm that the study of late nineteenth-century Paris still requires nimble and innovative approaches commensurate with its legend and global aura.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472460141
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/16/2016
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Hollis Clayson is Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History, Northwestern University, USA.

André Dombrowski is Associate Professor in History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Hollis Clayson and André Dombrowski

SECTION I: MODERNITY

Introduction by André Dombrowski

1 Architecture’s Capital? Revisiting Benjamin’s Paris

Charles Rice

2 How Haussmann’s Hegemony Haunted the Early Third Republic

Peter Soppelsa

3 The Guillotine Sublime

Marc Gotlieb

4 Victorine’s Secret: Baudelaire and the Ambiguity of Commodities

Paul Smith

5 A Laughter of the Look: Manet, Mallarmé, Polichinelle, and the Salon Jury in 1874

Margaret Werth

SECTION II: GEOGRAPHY

Introduction by Hollis Clayson

6 Revisiting the 1860s: Race and Place in Cape Town and Paris

Tamar Garb

7 Osman Hamdi Bey and Ottoman Aestheticism

Mary Roberts

8 Paris, Japan, and Modernity: A Vexed Ratio

Ting Chang

9 White City vs. La Ville lumière: Electrical Displays at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893)

Hélène Valance

SECTION III: CIRCULATION

Introduction by Hollis Clayson

10 Manet and the Multiple

Anne Higonnet

11 Gesture, Pose, Practice: Charles Nègre and the Image of Instantaneity

Jacob W. Lewis

12 Living on Manet’s Balcony, or the Right to Privacy

André Dombrowski

13 Mary Cassatt’s Lamp

Hollis Clayson

Afterword

Hollis Clayson and André Dombrowski

Further Reading

Index

Editorial Reviews

'The essays in this volume draw us to a terrain we love and think we know, but by asking, "Is Paris still capital of the nineteenth century", the authors work to destabilize our knowledge of the capital of modernism and modernity. They accomplish this by probing the familiar to uncover new depths (Manet, Benjamin, Haussmannization); by juxtaposing painting with printmaking, photography, electric lighting; and by seeing Paris anew in a global context. Highly recommended.' Nancy Locke, The Pennsylvania State University, USA and author of Manet and the Family Romance

From the Publisher