Description
A lecture presented by Sophie Doudet, lecturer in French literature at the Institut d'Études Politiques in Aix-en-Provence
From revolutionary celebrations to national holidays, from celebrations of life's major milestones to popular or aristocratic entertainment, from opera to café concerts, from balls to country outings, painting reflects the festivities and celebrations of 19th-century men and women. What does the pictorial representation of celebrations tell us about the major political, social, and aesthetic changes of the century? How does it reveal the tensions that ran through it between order and disorder, liberating orgies and codified social rituals, tradition and modernity?
