Paris 1900 – Le Petit Palais, Paris
As exhibitions go, Paris 1900 is a very well put together one. It couldn’t be more relevant to its hosting institute (le Petit Palais was built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle which is the early focus of the exhibition), sensibly divided into clear themes from art nouveau to women’s fashion to Parisian nightlife, and from fine art to the Paris of stage and screen, and provides the visitor with wide range of interesting objects, including paintings, sculptures, applied arts, film clips, posters, menus, souvenirs, clothing, and a sex chair. Yes, a sex chair. For the future Edward VII. No, I didn’t previously know that existed either. Film clips of Loie Fuller or the Universal Exhibition screened along corridors lead the visitor from one section of the exhibition to the next.
I enjoyed the variety of materials presented, which built up a clear picture of each theme, and, by the end, a clear picture of the world of the Belle Époque, in which industrial, technical and social upheavals were making their marks while the city was inventing itself as an artistic and cultural capital. Critics seem to disagree on whether the world presented was completely bourgeois, or whether sufficient attention was paid to other socio-economic classes. I tend to agree with the latter I think: while there are certainly a great number of beautiful objets de luxe present, the exhibition designers always find a space, albeit small, for the poor, the consumers of mass production, the morphine addicts and those in the cheap seats.
Critics do agree that the exhibition is part of a push by the Petit Palais to widen their audience and increase their tourist traffic, which has included international press trips by their director Christophe Leribault. And why not? Their location is excellent, their superb (and free) permanent collection deserves as many visitors as it can comfortably accommodate, and if all their exhibitions are to be as thorough, informative and interesting, then good luck to them. They may want to consider translating their object labels into English as well as their main texts, as a lot of interesting information will be lost to one of their main target audiences.
It is an easy exhibition, then, but a good one. It is the Paris of the imagination, and the Paris which the first-time tourist wants to see, but at the same time the exhibition designers have attempted to fully explore their chosen themes and to educate: what they meant for international relations, what they meant for gender politics, what influence the world had on Paris in 1900, and what influence Paris had on the world. It is a counterpoint to the commemorations of WWI which see the years 1914-18 as the start of the truly modern, and I definitely found it to be worth a couple of hours of my time and a short detour from the Champs Élysées.
