Aucune Usine Au Monde: Dreaming Work in the Exposition Universelle, Paris 1878 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The article examines a group of exhibitions that took place in the late seventies and early eighties and are useful for grasping what was at stake regarding the debates on the tensions between modernist and post-modernist architecture. Among the exhibitions that are examined are Europa-America: Architettura urbana, alternative suburbane, curated by Vittorio Gregotti for the Biennale di Venezia in 1976; La Presenza del passato, curated by Paolo Portoghesi for the Biennale di Venezia in 1980; the French version of La presenza del passato-Présence de l'histoire, l'après modernisme-held in the framework of the Festival d'Automne de Paris in 1981; Architectures en France: Modernité /post-modernité , curated by Chantal Béret and held at the Institut Français d'Architecture (18 November 1981-6 February 1982); La modernité , un projet inachevé : 40 architectures, curated by Paul Chemetov and Jean-Claude Garcias for the Festival d'Automne de Paris in 1982; La modernité ou l'esprit du temps, curated by Jean Nouvel, Patrice Goulet, and Francois Barré and held at the Centre Pompidou in 1982; and Nouveaux plaisirs d'architecture, curated by Jean Dethier for the Centre Pompidou in 1985, among other exhibitions. Analysing certain important texts published in the catalogues of the afore-mentioned exhibitions, the debates that accompanied the exhibitions and an ensemble of articles in French architectural magazines such as L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui and the Techniques & Architecture , the article aims to present the questions that were at the centre of the debates regarding the opposition or osmosis between the modernist and postmodernist ideals. Some figures, such as Jean Nouvel, were more in favour of the cross-fertilisation between modernity and postmodernity, while others, such as Paul Chemetov, believed that architects should rediscover modernity in order to enhance the civic dimension of architecture. Following Pierre Bourdieu's approach, the article argues that the tension between the ways in which each of these exhibitions treats the role of the image within architectural design and the role of architecture for the construction of a vision regarding progress is the expression of two divergent positions in social space.
Landmark Exhibitions Issue Les Immatériaux or How to Construct the History of Exhibitions
How does one construct the history of exhibitions -forgotten, unwritten, disparate, often lacking in documentation? In what ways might it be a new kind of history, displacing the traditional focus on objects and related critical histories, yet irreducible to the term 'museum studies'? In what ways have exhibitions, more than simple displays and configurations of objects, helped change ideas about art, intersecting at particular junctions with technical innovations, discursive shifts and larger kinds of philosophical investigations, thus forming part of these larger histories? What does it mean to ask such questions in the era of fast-moving celebrity curators, biennials and fairs, digital ways and means, which have taken shape over the last twenty years?
2014
With the 1925 Exposition des Arts decoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris (Paris Decorative Arts Exposition), the French intended to reclaim commercial and aesthetic leadership in the decorative arts, an industry which France had traditionally dominated. According to the exposition organizers, development of an original style to signal a clear break with the pastiches of the nineteenth century would be crucial to this enterprise. When the project was first proposed in 1909, French art critic Roger Marx predicted that "an exhibition of this kind would bring an end to the scorn to which the machine has been subjected, and end the longstanding antagonism between architects and engineers [in France]." A new aesthetic for the machine age would demonstrate a French decorative arts industry evolving in tandem with the modern technology of mass production. Indeed, the French were being outpaced by competing nations. The 1902 Exposition of Decorative and Modern Arts in Turin ha...
This article aims to analyze the reports written by Italian workers during their visits to the World Expositions of the Nineteenth century. The stories of the workers express at the same time the astonishment and the enthusiasm face to face with the latest "wonders" of progress. The relationship with technology and with the machines is one of the most recurrent topics in the accounts of workers. The new machines and new technologies are described with metaphors that range from the mysterious to the fantastic, as “fairies” or as “monstrous devices”. On the one hand, technology has a spectacular value in itself and it summarises the essential values - of the idea of progress. It is the pivotal subject of the message conveyed by the exhibitions, and the workers are very interested to this subject. In their writings, they express, in an naive and innocent way, their amazement at the phantasmagoric demiurgic strength of technology, especially when it appears as a direct expression of science. Electrical energy may be considered as an emblematic case in this regard, as it only becomes visible through technological applications. Through the spectacular play of lights arranged for the Exhibition, electricity comes to represent the triumph of science and takes on a metaphorical value. Indeed, it personifiees the deepest values and the most typical ideas of progress itself. On the other hand, the Exhibition is the place where workers’ professional profile is greatly undermined. The reactions, as we have seen, are numerous and varied, but rarely take the form of an uncritical acceptance or a radical opposition. By far the most common reaction is a cautious and critical approval, accepting the dominant message of positivity and strength of the technology and the inevitability of scientific and technical progress, but at the same time strongly suggesting the theme of the preservation and protection of workers’ prerogatives.
Chapter 4 of the book: Oleg Tarasov. Framing Russian Art. From Early Icons to Malevich. London: Reaktion Books, 2011, pp. 261 - 375.
Finally, the chapter of 4 of the book is devoted to the framing of pictures by the 19th century Russian Romantics, as well as to the problem of the frame in the culture of the Russian avant-garde of the 1910’s - 1920’s. The Romantic aesthetic was concerned not with the problem of imagination [as was Baroque aesthetics], nor of reason [like the aesthetics of Neoclassicism], but of emotional experience and the psychological perception of the object. Thus if the frames of the Baroque or Neoclassical periods deployed fantasy or reason in the service of their mental images, the frames of famous pictures by Vereshchagin or the Russian ‘Wanderers’ brought their consciousness to bear on a quite different objective – the naturalistic depiction of a moralistic maxim or of a historical episode. This was the background against which the Russian avant-garde declared the end of the age of easel painting, thereby ‘overcoming’ the frame-as-window and putting forward a fundamentally new aesthetic of images.
Convulsive Beauty: Trains and the Historic Avant-garde
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, 2015
The train, an invention and evocative symbol of the 19th century, somewhat ironically continued to fascinate avant-garde artists and writers of the 20th century, when faster and more exciting modes of transportation were in use. Locomotive imagery in Italian Futurism and French Surrealism, however, demonstrates a lasting fascination with speed, locomotive space, and their effect on perceptions of reality. Considering the work of more recent theorists like Paul Virilio, Michel Foucault, and various others who have contributed to the growing field of mobility studies, this paper aims to understand the persisting presence of the train as a symbol of an alternative reality in historic avant-garde work, particularly that of the Italian Futurists and the French Surrealists