• Home
• Study
• Study Information
• Modules
• Module Information

Paris to the World: Modelling the Modern City

Module description

Why is the Paris of the 19^th Century called the ‘capital of modernity’ and what did this mean for the development of the ‘modern’ city? We will first look at how Parisian urbanism developed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, considering particularly the interaction during the late 19^th century between art made of the city by the Impressionists and the changes in the urban landscape.  We will proceed to look at ways in which aspects of the French Capital have been imitated in the Americas, first in French Colonies like Quebec, and, much later, in cities such as Buenos Aires.

Module aims - intentions of the module

Because of the longue durée and totality of the urbanising processes begun by Baron Haussmann in the nineteenth century and Napoleon I’s earlier centralisation of the French state, Paris has long been understood as not just the centre of France but as the ‘capital of modernity’. This course aims to unpack the mythology of Paris by first looking at the ways in which the city developed from Louis XIV to Napoleon III and discuss what effectively made it ‘modern’.  We will look at the city as a cultural centre, providing fodder, in its constant changes, to scores of artists in the late 18^th century and throughout the 19^th century.  We will then examine to what extent colonial French cities and other cities in the Americas looked to Paris to inform their urban structures and art scene. This course aims to explore the post-colonial model of centre and periphery through the idea of cities of empire as sites of imperial practice, as well as familiarising you with the process of urban development on a broad scale in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a basic knowledge of the key recent debates and issues in the scholarship of art history and visual culture of 18th and 19th century Paris and its global emulators.
• 2. Demonstrate an understanding of the specific types of material culture of the early modern and modern periods in Paris and its global emulators
• 3. Demonstrate an understanding of the ways that social practices inform contemporary production and experience of space and the ways in which that space is represented in Paris and its global emulators
• 4. Demonstrate familiarity with the history of various forms of cultural expression: literature, art and architecture, and urban design

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Recognise and understand relevant art-historical terminology and concepts
• 6. Research independently and interpret information based on a range of primary and secondary sources
• 7. Communicate ideas effectively in both oral and written forms
• 8. With initial guidance, find his/her way around the relevant subject areas of the University Library and access and use learning resources specified by the course tutor

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 9. Assimilate, select and organise material in order to produce a written or oral argument
• 10. Undertake structured learning activities with guidance from course tutor and with the help of written guidelines
• 11. Explain and discuss personal conclusions with other members of the group

Syllabus plan

The syllabus is structured thematically around the following subjects.

1. The urban development and visual culture of urbanism of/in Paris from 1650-1890
2. The urban development and visual culture of French colonial cities in the New World, 1650-1803
3. The urban developments inspired by those of Haussmann’s Paris in Latin America, 1855-1900.

We will look at case studies in seminar while the lectures will cover broader historical themes.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

For the re-assessment, there will be group oral presentation, instead there will be a 1500 word essay.

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Further reading:

• Armstrong,  Carol. Odd man out: readings of the work and reputation of Edgar Degas. Los Angeles, Calif. : Getty Research Institute, c2003
• Armstrong, Carol.  Manet Manette. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
• Branner, Robert. Saint Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture.  London: A.   Zwemmer, 1965.  See especially “Ch. 1 Paris, the King and the Arts” and “Ch. 4 The Sainte Chapelle and Evolution of the Courtly Style” in, pp. 1-11, 56-61.
• Brettell, Richard.  Pissarro and Pontoise.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
• C. Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863). In The painter of modern life and other essays, New York, N.Y. : Da Capo Press, 1986, 1964.
• Callen, Anthea The work of art: Plein air painting and artistic identity in 19th-century France. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2015.
• Clayson, Hollis. Painted love : prostitution in French art of the impressionist era.  New Haven : Yale University Press, c1991.
• Crary, Jonathan .Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century Cambridge, Mass.: MIT/Zone, 1992.
• DeJean, Joan E.  How Paris became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
• Dombrowski, André. “History, Memory, and Instantaneity in Edgar Degas’s Place de la Concorde,” The Art Bulletin 93, no. 2 (June 2011): 195- 219. ?
• Eisenman, Stephen. "The Intransigeant Artist or How the Impressionists Got Their Name," from Francis Frascina ed., Art in Modern Culture: an anthology of critical texts.  London : Phaidon Press, 1992.  Pp. 189-198.
• Herbert, Robert . "Industry and the changing Landscape from Daubigny to Monet" from John Merriman, ed. French Cities in the 19th Century.  New York : Holmes & Meier, 1981. pp. 139-164.
• Homer, William Innes. Seurat and the Science of Painting. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964.
• Hutton, John,  "Utopianism and the Retreat from the Grande Jatte," in Neo- Impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground, pp. 114-128.
• Hutton, John.  ‘Camille Pissarro’s Turpitudes sociales and Late 19th-Century Anarchist Anti-Feminism,’ History Workshop Journal 24 (1987): 32-61.
• Jones, Colin. Paris: Biography of a City, London, Penguin Books, 2004,
• Kendall, Richard. "The World of the Little Dancer, In Degas and The Little Dancer. New Haven: Yale University Press ; Omaha, Neb. : In association with Joslyn Art Museum, c1998.
• Kennel, Sarah, et al. Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 2013.
• Kirkland, Stephane. Paris Reborn: Napoléon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to build a Modern City. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013.
• Krell, Alan. Manet and the Painters of Contemporary Life. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.?
• Lees, Andrew, ed. . The City, A World History.  Oxford: OUP, 2015.   See especially: Hohenberg and Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1994, “Human Consequences of the Industrial Revolution,” chapter 8, pp. 248-289.
• Mainardi, Patricia.  Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987.
• Manet and the Execution of Maximilian: Painting, Politics, and Censorship, ed. Juliet Wilson-Bareau. London: National Gallery Publications, 1992. ?
• Nochlin, Linda, "Body Politics: Seurat's Poseuses," Art in America, March 1994.
• Nord, Philip.  Impressionists and Politics: Art and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century London: Routledge, 2000.
• Pinkney, David H.  Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.
• Ranum, Orest. Paris in the Age of Absolutism. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, c2002. See especially Chs.1, 5, 10
• Restif de la Bretonne, My Revolution: Promenades in Paris, 1789-1794.  Edited by Alex Karmel. New York : McGraw-Hill, [1970].
• Rosen, C. and H. Zerner. “The Ideology of the Licked Surface.” In Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Viking, 1984). Pp. 205-32.
• Rubin, James. Impressionism. London: Phaidon, 1999.
• Shikes, Roger.  ‘Pissarro’s Political Philosophy and his Art,’ in Christopher Lloyd, Studies on Camille Pissarro. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, 35-55.
• Sidlauskas, Susan. "Resisting Narrative: The Problem of Edgar Degas's Interior", The Art Bulletin, v. 75 (Dec. '93) p. 671-96?
• Smith, Paul. ‘‘Parbleu’: Pissarro and the: Painting and the Politics ?of Time (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 53-90. ?
• Political Colour of an Original Vision,’ Art History 15, no. 2 (Jun. 1992): 223-47.
• The City Reader, edited by Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout.  London: Routledge, 2016.
• The New Painting: Impressionism, 1874-1886 (exhibition catalogue). Washington D.C., Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and National Gallery of Art, no. 110, 1986.
• Thomson, Richard. “Ruins, Rhetoric, and Revolution: Paul Signac’s Le Démolisseur and Anarchism in the 1890s,” Art History 36, no. 2 (April 2013): 366-391.
• Veley, Philippe. From Lutetia to Paris: The Island and the Two Banks, Paris: CNMHS, 1993
• Ward, Martha.  Pissarro, Neo-Impressionism, and the Spaces of the Avant-Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.  Especially chapters 3 and 5.
• Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy, Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
• Wright, Alastair. “Mourning, Painting, and the Commune: Maximilien Luce’s A Paris Street in 1871,” Oxford Art Journal 32, no. 2 (June 2009): 223- 242. ?
• Wright, Gwendolyn. The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1991.
• Young, Marnin. Realism in the Age of Impressionism

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7520

Key words search

Paris, urbanism, colonial cities