Paris: Impressions of Life 1880 – 1925

Between 1880 and 1925, Paris was reinventing itself as a modern city. The process had commenced somewhat earlier, when under Napoleon III (1848-1870) and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the heart of old Paris was ripped out. Between 1852 and 1870 wide avenues, squares, new railway stations, and new parks were developed to transform Paris into a mecca for tourism and one that was studded with emblems of modernism. The poor, who previously inhabited these areas, were forced out to the fringes of the city.

This exhibition, Paris: Impressions of Life 1880 – 1925, examines aspects of Parisian life drawn from the extensive but relatively little-known collection of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris, supplemented with a number of strategic loans, mainly from the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Belle Époque (1871–1914) is mainly remembered as a time when Paris seized dominance in the European cultural sphere with painters from the impressionists to the cubists bursting onto the scene—from Claude Monet to Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso—all exhibiting in Paris. Auguste Rodin dominated the sculpture scene, while literature saw the emergence of such giants as Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, and Guillaume Apollinaire. None of this is represented in the exhibition.

What this exhibition is about is the social history of Paris over this forty-five year period. The development of consumer culture and its reflection in street life and around the city’s most popular tourist attractions, especially the newly constructed Eiffel Tower, the star attraction of the Universal Exposition of 1889. Over this time, the population of Paris was in a state of rapid growth with c. 1,851,792 people in the city in 1872 and almost three million people in 1921. Subsequently, the population declined.

Parisian prosperity that is so apparent in this exhibition was enjoyed only by the upper classes and by the visiting tourists, the majority of the population lived in poverty. It is estimated that in 1882, twenty-seven percent of Parisians belonged to the upper or middle class, while seventy-three percent were poor or indigent. This dark side of the Parisian social landscape is largely omitted from this exhibition and we only occasionally catch a glimpse of it in the edges of the documentary photographs.

The exhibition provides a rare insight into the glitter of the French capital with the historic street signs and marketing banners, the allure of the new department stores, leisurely life along the banks of the Seine, the burgeoning theatre and cabaret scene, and the spectacular international expositions. Between 1855 and 1900, Paris hosted five Universal Expositions that brought tens of millions of people to the city and championed it as a centre for technology, trade, and tourism.

The exhibition is beautifully arranged in a display designed by Anita Gigi Design with Cody Buchanan. The viewer is taken down a number of thematic avenues—Paris as a market town, its public gardens, the Seine, universal expos and the Eiffel Tower, bohemian Montmartre, and the Champs-Élysées. There is also a small section devoted to the Musée Carnavalet itself, emphasising that it is the oldest municipal museum in Paris.

In all, there are about 170 objects on display from giant gilded snails (shown near a restaurant menu serving snails); some ninetieth century shop signs; everyday ephemera; numerous genre paintings by artists including Jean Béraud, Paul-Louis Delance, and Eugène-Louis Gillot; a few more recognisable artworks by Maurice Utrillo and Paul Signac; and lithographic posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries. There are also numerous photographs and some early moving footage. As most of what is on display is unfamiliar to viewers in Australia, much time is spent in reading captions and exploring the minutia of the objects on display.

Possibly the most attractive section is devoted to the Universal Expositions. Historically the most memorable of these was the Universal Exposition of 1889 that commemorated the centenary of the beginning of the French Revolution. It unveiled the Eiffel Tower, 300 meters tall when it opened (subsequently another twenty-four meters added with the broadcast antennas) and it was presented as the gateway to the Exposition. The Eiffel Tower remained the world’s tallest structure until 1930. A little bit like with the Sydney Harbour Bridge that was denounced by many in Sydney’s artistic elite for ruining a great harbour and subsequently became an emblem for the city, the Eiffel Tower was denounced at its inauguration by some of the major French writers and artists, including Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod, and Charles Garnier, as a modernist blot on the Parisian skyline. Now, it is difficult to imagine Paris without it. Other popular attractions at this expo included a musical fountain lit with coloured electric lights that change with the music, and the antics of Buffalo Bill and sharpshooter Annie Oakley as part of their Wild West Show.

The Parisian expos were truly mind-blowing in their scale and technological, economic, and cultural significance. The Exposition of 1900 reputedly brought to Paris almost fifty million visitors, while the one in 1867 attracted amongst its visitors Tsar Alexander II of Russia, Otto von Bismarck, Kaiser William I of Prussia, King Ludwig II of Bavaria and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the first foreign trip ever made by an Ottoman ruler. The exhibition in Bendigo sets out to convey something of the excitement, megalomania, and ambition of these ventures.

Parisian department stores pioneered a new way of selling consumer goods to the wealthy classes and included Le Bon Marché, La Samaritaine, Printemps, and Galeries Lafayette. This in turn attracted the creation of luxury goods and high fashion from exclusive perfumes, luxury watches, and haute couture garments, with Coco Chanel opening her first shop in Paris in 1910. It was a new social and economic order in Paris that was challenged by the Apaches (a criminal subculture), anarchists, the intelligentsia, and the toiling masses who were locked out of this dream of economic prosperity.

Paris: Impressions of Life 1880 – 1925 is an ambitious exhibition that explores some aspects of the social fabric of the Parisian modernist dream. Beautifully designed, it engages the senses with the dazzling visual display of the glories of Paris together with piped music that changes in keeping with the different themes of the exhibition. You emerge from the show having experienced a vision that you know was not quite real, but which was charming, elegant, and seductive.

This article was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 67

EXHIBITION
Paris: Impressions of Life 1880 – 1925
16 March – 14 July 2024
Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria