TOPICS: PARIS CAPITAL OF MODERN ART in Fall 2024 (AH3091A)

The course starts with the World Fair of 1900—for which the Orsay station, today’s Musée d’Orsay, and the metropolitan were constructed—whose aim was to officially install Paris as the world’s leading cultural capital. It ends with the events of May 1968, which the artists largely contributed to, crowning decades of artistic effervescence in a city which stood as the symbol for artistic liberation and freedom of thought. Multiple study trips in Paris and relevant museum visits will be proposed.

We will learn about the major artistic movements born in Paris, initiated by cosmopolitan groups of artists and resulting from intense cross-cultural exchanges. From late Impressionism, through Surrealism (the most long-lived and influential avant-garde which spread worldwide) to post-World War II avant-gardes (Situationism), not forgetting the difficult period of the Nazi occupation. We will highlight what made the vitality of Paris but also look at the seamy side—poverty, racism, colonialism, discrimination, disease, alcoholism—, and analyze critically Paris as a cultural construction.