Period Band C
The Modern Metropolis: Representing the City in France and Britain, c 1840-1920
Tutor: Sam Shaw
Description
This module explores the intersections between art, modernity and metropolitan life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focusing predominantly, but not exclusively, on the cities of Paris and London. Looking at a wide range of visual material (paintings, prints, photography, drawings), we will consider the relationship between the rapid modernisation of these cities in this period and visual representations of urban space. We will not only examine how images captured the experience of urban modernity, but also ask how art and visual culture contributed to the modern experience of these city spaces.
We will look carefully at the connections between the organisation and re-organisation of urban space in this period and the visual representation of the modern metropolis. London and Paris have normally been considered separately in the art-historical literature on modernity and modernisation. This module, however, takes a more comparative approach and asks what can be gained by thinking about them together.
