Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture

Front Cover
Gabriel P. Weisberg
Rutgers University Press, 2001 - Art - 296 pages
Located on the fringes of Paris, Montmartre attracted artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Steinlen, and Jules Chéret. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the artists in the quarter began to create works blurring the boundaries between fine art and popular illustration, the artist and the audience, as well as class and gender distinctions. The creative expression that ensued was an exuberant mix of high and low-a breeding ground for what is today termed popular culture. The carefully interlocked essays in Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture demonstrate how and why this quarter was at the forefront of such innovation. The contributors bring an unprecedented range of approaches to the topic, from political and religious history to art historical investigations and literary analysis of texts. This project is the first of its kind to examine fully Montmartre's many contributions to the creation of a mass culture that reigned supreme in the twentieth century.
 

Contents

An Impact on Mass Culture
1
Republican Order and Republican Tolerance in FindeSiècle
15
1
18
4
25
8
33
Women of the Fringe
37
3
41
Anarchys Subversive Allure
120
Portrait of the Artist as a Louis XIII Chair
180
Absurdist Humor in Bohemia
205
Shadow Plays
223
Enervating Signs
247
Selected Bibliography
273
Notes on Contributors
281
Index
287
Copyright

Pictorial Acrobatics
145

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About the author (2001)

Gabriel P. Weisberg is a professor of art history at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of several books on nineteenth-century French art; most recently he coedited Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian with Jane R. Becker (Rutgers University Press).

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