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 clichés 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 Époque.
Industry Reviews
"A novel kind of glow emanated from late 19th-century depictions. New gas and electric lighting not only brightened cityscapes and interiors alike, but, after centuries of muddy, tenebrist drama, now clearly illuminated the entire realm of representation. What the enlightenment had promised largely metaphorically--a world without shadows and darkness--new technologies of lighting had, by the year 1900, actually realized. In her newest book, Illuminated Paris, Hollis Clayson draws our attention to the manifold consequences of an industrially illuminated world, putting pressure on modern representation. Stunningly argued, beautifully written, and sumptuously illustrated, Illuminated Paris introduces us to the full array of lovers and haters of bright light in the period, and the art they created: from avant-garde paintings by the likes of Caillebotte and Munch, photographs by Marville, caricatures by Cham and Robida, intaglio prints by Cassatt and Degas, to American paintings of nocturnal Paris. After reading this study, you will never not call Paris the 'City of Light, ' and you will finally fully understand the trope."--Andr? Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania
"Far from taking the easy route of aligning nineteenth-century lighting with the romantic view of the City of Light, Clayson examines selected examples of visual culture to trace the complex engagement of visual arts with artificial illumination. In this work, she lays bare the shifting and sometimes controversial representations of the Illuminated Paris in the later nineteenth century. This book is therefore relevant beyond art history and should interest readers eager to enrich their knowledge of the industrialization of light and attitudes towards the adoption of a new lighting technique . . . . Moreover, the discussion of urban artificial lighting that the author proposes here is a serious challenge to the popular history of modern art, where scholars emphasize the romance of artists with plein air and the nuances of daylight. . . . this persuasive and beautifully written examination of the entanglement of artificial lighting and visual culture is a complete success in counterbalancing art history's obsession with daytime plein air, and instead, denaturalizing its light."--Benjamin Bothereau "Technology and Culture"
"Illuminated Paris is a beautiful book whose fine colour plates make even paintings of the darkest scenes legible, and its intellectual heft is punctuated by a lightness of spirit that makes it a pleasure to read" -- "Journal for the Association of Art History"
"Clayson is one of the best-known scholars working on the French nineteenth century; a new book from her is bound to be an event. The University of Chicago Press, Clayson's longtime publishers, have made Illuminated Paris: Essays on Art and Lighting in the Belle ?poque an especially beautiful book."-- "Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide"
"Coining the term illumination discourse, Clayson contextualizes art and visual culture produced in late 19th-century Paris in relation to the forms of illumination such as gaslight and electric light used in the French capital during this period. . . . [an] erudite work."
"-- "Library Journal"
"Like Clayson's groundbreaking Painted Love: Prostitution in French art of the Impressionist era (1991), Illuminated Paris peels away the layers of conventionally accepted opinion, offering a finely argued corrective to the romantic, brightly illuminated image of nocturnal Paris during the belle ?poque."-- "Times Literary Supplement"
