19th century
A01=Hollis Clayson
anthology
art
artists representations
Author_Hollis Clayson
belle epoque
Category=AGA
Category=NHTV
Category=TBX
city of light
eiffel tower
electric lights
engineering
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_tech-engineering
essay collection
essays
french history
gas lighting
glamour
illustrated book
illustrations
modernization
new colors
Paris
parisian nightlife
posters
romantic view
safety
shifting visual scenes
social change
technology
toulouse-lautrec
Product details
- ISBN 9780226593869
- Dimensions: 216 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 08 May 2019
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The City of Light. For many, these four words instantly conjure late nineteenth-century Paris and the garish colors of Toulouse-Lautrec's iconic posters. More recently, the Eiffel Tower's nightly show of sparkling electric lights has come to exemplify our fantasies of Parisian nightlife. Though we reflect longingly on such scenes, in Illuminated Paris, Hollis Clayson shows that there's more to these clich s than meets the eye. In this richly illustrated book, she traces the dramatic evolution of lighting in Paris and how artists responded to the shifting visual and cultural scenes that resulted from these technologies. While older gas lighting produced a haze of orange, new electric lighting was hardly an improvement: the glare of experimental arc lights--themselves dangerous--left figures looking pale and ghoulish. As Clayson shows, artists' representations of these new colors and shapes reveal turn-of-the-century concerns about modernization as electric lighting came to represent the harsh glare of rapidly accelerating social change. At the same time, in part thanks to American artists visiting the city, these works of art also produced our enduring romantic view of Parisian glamour and its Belle poque.
Hollis Clayson is professor of art history and the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University.
