Description

Paris, “capital of modernity”?

Docents: Alexandre Kostka, Daniel Meyer

Until today, Paris holds a unique status as the “Capital of the Arts” - a reputation recently reaffirmed by the 2024 Olympic Games, which proudly used museums and urban landmarks deeply connected to the Fine Arts. But how and when did this status emerge? How was it shaped and refined through a complex interplay between politics and the artistic sphere? And how were other European countries gradually drawn into the gravitational pull of the Parisian art system?

The course begins by exploring the “Beaux-Arts System,” the academic framework for the arts established in the 17th century. This system came under scrutiny during the Revolution of 1848, paving the way for the challenges mounted by Courbet, Manet, and the Impressionists. This “strategy of subversion” (as Bourdieu describes it) ultimately succeeded, supported by the rise of other European avant-garde movements around 1900. The Berlin Secession, the Munich Secession, the Scandinavian countries, and eventually Russia invited Parisian artists, helping secure European-wide recognition for innovations originating in France.

However, this dynamic gradually turned into national competition on the eve of World War I, as Germany challenged France’s artistic supremacy and sought to establish alternative standards in the visual arts (Expressionism) as well as in architecture and design. World War I also witnessed artistic propaganda efforts in neutral countries such as Switzerland and Scandinavia  – a little-known venture that laid the groundwork for the post-Versailles art scene, which saw the emergence of Art Deco in France and Expressionism in Germany as “national styles.”

The second part of the seminar will take a different approach, looking at how the future of Paris was thought of in the past and is still being thought of today. By analysing these different approaches, the aim is not only to establish an archaeology of Parisian modernity, but also to establish how, more fundamentally, the future of a city as an architectural and human whole can be represented. Particular attention will be paid to the political status of Paris in a European and global context.

Compétences visées

Objectives and skills

-          Gain a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of European art during this pivotal moment of the development of modernism and of European ways of developing possible futures in a global context.

-          Learn to identify the links between arts, politics and the economic field.

-          Develop analytic skills for interpreting texts and visual arts.

-          Understand the logic of cultural transfer

Modalités d'organisation et de suivi

Assessment

Oral presentation and written exam

Disciplines

• Études anglophones

Syllabus

Provisional structure

 1/ The Beaux Arts system (16/09)

The political and institutional setting leading to a concentration of institutional and artistic capital in the 19^th century.

2/ Courbet and the “strategy of subversion”. (23/09)

3/ Manet, founder of artistic modernity? (30/09)

4/ Was there such a thing as an Impressionist Revolution? (07/10 MISHA Table Ronde)

5/ The European secessionist movement: from cooperation to competition (14/10)

6/ Art in World War I / War of the Arts: France and German and the artistic war in the neutral countries in the perspective of a battle of legitimacy to cultural hegemony. (21/10)

7/ Tendencies After World War I: Art Deco and the New International Artistic Order according to France; expressionism as herald to a “New Man” in Germany. (04/11)

8/ Utopian Projections of Paris 1 (tbd)

9/ Utopian Projections of Paris 2 (18/11)

10/ Utopian Projections of Paris 3 (25/11)

11/ The Grand Paris project 1 (2/12)

12/ The Grand Paris project 2 (9/12)

13/ Written Exam (16/12)

Informations complémentaires

Alexandre Kostka, akostka@unistra.fr

Daniel Meyer, daniel.meyer@unistra.fr

Bibliographie

Bibliographical indications

An English-language reader with source texts will be available at the beginning of the seminar.

Bonnefoit, Régine and Uwe M. Schneede, eds. 1914 - Avantgarden im Kampf Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 8. November 2013 bis 23. Februar 2014. Köln: Snoeck, 2013.

Dossin, Catherine, Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel and Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, eds. Circulations in the Global History of Art. Studies in Art Historiography. London New York: Routledge, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315572062.

Joyeux-Prunel, Béatrice. Nul n’est prophète en son pays ? L’internationalisation de la peinture des avant-gardes parisiennes, 1855 - 1914. Paris: Chaudun, 2009.

Enright, Theresa. The Making of Grand Paris. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2023.

Joyeux-Prunel, Béatrice. Les avant-gardes artistiques, 1918-1945: une histoire transnationale. Paris: Gallimard, 2017.

van Klink, Bart, Marta Soniewicka and Leon van den Broeke, eds. Utopian Thinking in Law, Politics, Architecture and Technology.  Hope in a Hopeless World. Cheltenham: Elgar 2022.

Kostka, Alexandre and Françoise Lucbert, eds. Distanz und Aneignung: relations artistiques entre la France et l’Allemagne 1870 - 1945 ; Kunstbeziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich 1870 - 1945. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004.

West, Shearer. The visual arts in Germany, 1890-1937: utopia and despair. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

Ong, Aihwa and Ananya Roy, eds. Worlding Cities: Asian experiments and the art of being global. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

MCC

Les épreuves indiquées respectent et appliquent le règlement de votre formation, disponible dans l'onglet Documents de la description de la formation.

Régime d'évaluation

CT (Contrôle terminal, mêlé de contrôle continu)

Coefficient

1.0

Évaluation initiale / Session principale - Épreuves