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.

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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

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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781119370468
Publisert
2025-11-20
Utgiver
John Wiley and Sons Ltd; Wiley-Blackwell
Høyde
244 mm
Bredde
170 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
550

Om bidragsyterne

Natalie Adamson is a Professor in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. She specializes in postwar French art, abstraction, and cultural politics. She is the co-editor of several studies on twentieth-century European art and material culture and the author of Painting, Politics and the Struggle for the École de Paris, 1944-1964 and In Focus: Around the Blues 1957, 1962-3, by Sam Francis.

Richard Taws is a Professor in the History of Art Department at University College London. His work focuses on the intersections of art, media, and politics in modern France. His publications include Time Machines: Telegraphic Images in Nineteenth-Century France and The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France. He has also co-edited volumes on art, technology, and media in early modern and modern Europe.