Author(s): Jean-Louis Cohen; Guillemette Morel Journel

Art

This broad survey of modernism--the most scintillating creative era in Paris--spans all domains: architecture, art, design, entertainment, fashion, film, literature, photography. The lives and works of artists in every creative discipline transformed Paris into a crucible of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. Profiles of eighty-eight influential artists, designers, photographers, architects, writers, and personalities--including Gabrielle Chanel, Eileen Gray, Jean Prouvé, Pablo Picasso, Tamara de Lempicka, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Brassai, Man Ray, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, Walter Benjamin, Josephine Baker, Jean Renoir, Gertrude Stein, and more--highlight the boundless creative energy and optimism that permeated the City of Light at this key historical juncture. Richly illustrated alphabetical entries with cross-references to related topics are complemented by six thematic essays on cinema, fashion, graphic design, habitation, painting, and urban planning. A portfolio of original contemporary photographs--from the historic center to the suburbs of Paris--reveals traces of modernism in dozens of buildings and their interiors that are rarely open to the public. This catalog--published to accompany an exhibition at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai in summer 2023--sketches a panorama of human invention across the vast creative landscape of Paris from 1914 to 1945.