Julian, Philippe, & Diana Vreeland, "La Belle Époque"
Julian, Philippe, & Diana Vreeland, "La Belle Époque"
Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1982 | ISBN: 0870993291 | English | PDF | 48 pages | 7.37 Mb
Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1982 | ISBN: 0870993291 | English | PDF | 48 pages | 7.37 Mb
La Belle Epoque emerged in the last half of the nineteenth century from the dream and the reality of the grandiose plans of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann for the transformation of Paris. Philippe Jullian, in his essay, defines the dates of the period as 1900 to 1914, but I feel very strongly that its spirit began to develop much earlier, and it is its spirit that we are in search of.
Paris was the center of the action. No city had ever been so well arranged to receive the world and, indeed, it did. Czars, emperors, kings, maharajahs, and princes; the gratin and the nouveaux riches; heiresses and Middle European bankers; anarchists and apaches — all the world rubbed shoulders and filed in and out of this splendid and glorious city.
“The City of Light” — the dappled shadows of chestnut trees on the broad boulevards and seemingly endless avenuessplendid horses, shining and glamorous, with their owners sitting in exquisite carriages displaying audacious faces and pretty parasols — outdoor cafes and lovely restaurants surrounded by forests in the Bois de Boulogne — “the Bois” where children were taken for tea dressed in lace and velvet and where famous demi-mondaines, pretty cocottes, grandes dames, and the rich men who maintained them flocked in the evening amid the splendor of perfumed furs, long gloves, and huge hats. Remember that this was the time when women first dined in restaurants and, as they were in public, they always wore hats.
So much was happening.
Painters were finding a way of painting shadows and movement, light, color, and vitality—Impressionism, les Fauves, Cubism…
Julian, Philippe, & Diana Vreeland, "La Belle Époque"
