Full Description
A comprehensive exploration of the evolutions, innovations, and legacies of French art from the late eighteenth-century to the present
Charting the artistic eras from the transformative upheavals of the French Revolution to the dynamic global intersections of contemporary art in the 21st century, A Companion to French Art, 1789 to the Present provides an unparalleled analysis of French art. Edited by Richard Taws and Natalie Adamson, this authoritative volume offers new ways to consider the broad history of French art through critical attention to diverse objects, mediums, and practices that have shaped French art across centuries.
Shedding new light on how art has interacted with and challenged established narratives, this volume features 30 essays by leading and emerging scholars, offering insights into a wide range of topics, including revolutionary iconography, modernist movements, colonial legacies, and contemporary art's engagement with global issues. Going beyond traditional frameworks, these chapters present new methodologies and innovative interpretations that reflect the evolving questions and challenges in art history. Addressing essential themes while expanding the boundaries of how French art is understood today, A Companion to French Art, 1789 to the Present:
Offers comprehensive coverage of French art with a uniquely wide topical and temporal scope
Examines diverse media and materials including painting, sculpture, photography, film, ceramics, industrial design, and fashion
Engages with cutting-edge methodologies such as post-colonial critique and feminist theory
Draws on in-depth archival research and previously unexplored materials for fresh insights
Essential for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in French art history, A Companion to French Art, 1789 to the Present is also an invaluable resource for academics, museum professionals, and researchers worldwide.
Contents
List of Contributors
Author Bios
Introduction: Natalie Adamson and Richard Taws
PART 1: POST-REVOLUTIONARY VISIONS
1. Richard Taws
The Smiling Face of Terror: Étienne Béricourt's French Revolution
2. Jillian Lerner
After the Terror, Passing Scenes: Historical Experience in Robertson's Paris Phantasmagoria
3. Mechthild Fend
Portraits and Pathologies: Clinical Pictures in Early Nineteenth-Century France
4. Susan L. Siegfried
Costuming in History Painting
5. Iris Moon
Staging Fantasies of Regression in Sèvres Porcelain at the Time of Louis-Philippe
6. Kelly Presutti
The Album des Deux Frontières: Lithography at the Nation's Limit
PART 2: MATERIALISING MODERNITY
7. Veronica Peselmann
The Ground of Painting: Gustave Courbet's L'Atelier, 1855
8. Amy Ogata
Designing with Iron in Mid-Nineteenth Century France
9. Helene Birkeli
At the Crossroad of the Plantation: Camille Pissarro and Colonial Infrastructure
10. S. Hollis Clayson
Gloomy Renoir
11. Mary Hunter
Playing Doctor with Toulouse-Lautrec: Male Friendship, Medicine, and Identity
12. André Dombrowski
Monet's Series Reconsidered: Instantaneity in Standard Time
PART 3: MEDIA, PUBLICS, SUBJECTS
13. Neil McWilliam
In the Tradition: Grappling with the Past in the Long Nineteenth Century
14. Juliet Bellow
Rodin's Hanakos and Hanako's Rodins
15. Malcolm Turvey
The "Plastic" Arts and Cinematic Specificity: L'Inhumaine (1924)
16. Toby Norris
The Public Turn in French Art During the Great Depression
17. Susan Laxton
Surrealism's Revolution of the "Never Seen"
18. Jan Baetens
The Film Photo-Novel "made in France"
PART 4: CONTESTING THE NATION
19. Phoebe Scott
Ambiguously "French"? Vietnamese Artists in Paris
20. Kathleen Rawlings and Alastair Wright
'What the Black Man Contributes': Présence Africaine, l'art nègre, and Modernism in Post-War Paris
21. Sheila Crane
1953 / 1963: Bidonville Aesthetics and Genealogies of Modernity from Algiers
22. Noit Banai
Universality as a Radical Form: The Philips Pavilion at Expo 58
23. Ming Tiampo
The World in Question: Conjunctural Solidarities in Narrative Figuration
24. Maureen Murphy
The "École de Paris" in Dakar
PART 5: ARCHIVES OF THE PRESENT
25. Kim Timby
Building the "Museum without Walls": Photographic Art Reproduction, 1860-1960
26. Déborah Laks
Unlearning at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris
27. Rakhee Balaram
Seeing the Dark Continent in the City of Lights: Women's Transnational Networks in the 1970s in the Capital of the Arts
28. Sophie Cras
"Frenchy But Chic": Art and Fashion in 1980s Les Halles
29. Danièle Meaux
Photographic Investigations: Between Art, Journalism and the Human Sciences
30. Katarzyna Falecka
Unsunk Archives: The Resurfacing of Colonial Historical Records in Contemporary Art
Index
