Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century

Scenes of Parisian Modernity

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Scenes of Parisian Modernity Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century

H. Hazel Hahn

SCENES OF PARISIAN MODERNITY

Copyright © H. Hazel Hahn, 2009. The following are reprinted by permission of the publishers. An earlier version of Ch. 3 was published in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 9:2 June 2005 An earlier version of Ch. 5 was published as “Puff Marries Advertising: Commercialization of Culture in Jean-Jacques Grandville’s Un Autre Monde (1844)” in Minsoo Kang and Amy Woodson-Boulton eds. Visions of the Industrial Age: Image and Imagery in Nineteenth-Century European Culture. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2008. Copyright©2008 An extract of Ch. 6 was published as “Du flâneur au consommateur: spectacle et consommation sur les Grands Boulevards, 1840–1914,” Romantisme n.134 (2006), Armand Colin (France). An extract of Ch. 6 was published as “Boulevard Culture and Advertising as Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century Paris” in Alexander Cowan and Jill Steward eds. The City and the Senses: European Urban Culture Since 1500. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. Copyright©2007 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61583–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To my parents Key H. Hahn and Jeong-ae Hahn

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CON T E N T S

Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

1

Section I

1815–1848

One

Consumption as Urban Pleasure: The Rise of Modern Consumer Culture Two Paris, the Capital of Amusement, Fashion, and Modernity Three Fashion Discourses in Fashion Magazines and Delphine de Girardin’s Lettres Parisiennes Four Charlatanism or Modern Merchandising?: The Mentalités of Publicity and the Commercialization of Culture Five Puff Marries Advertising: Mechanization and Absurd Consumerism in J.-J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde

Section II

15 45 63 81 107

1848–1914

Introduction Six Boulevard Culture, Consumption, and Spectacle Seven Furnishing the Street: Urban Rationalization and Its Limits Eight Consumer Technologies and Celebrity Culture Nine The Modernity of Poster Art Ten Le Courrier Français, Géraudel Cough Drops, and Advertising as Art

125 127

205

Conclusion

219

Notes

221

Selected Bibliography

267

Index

277

143 161 183

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I L LU ST R AT ION S

1.1

1.2

1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 4.1 5.1 5.2

Engelmann/ J. Billaud. Vue intérieure de la rotonde et de la Galerie Colbert conduisant de la rue Vivienne à la rue Neuve des Petits Champs. c.1835. (Musée Carnavalet © Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) Lithograph. LE JEU DE PARIS EN MINIATURE dans lequel sont representés des enseignes, décors, maisons, boutiques et divers établissements des principaux marchands de Paris, leurs rues et leurs numéros. (BNF Estampe) Advertisement. Vourloud & Cie Perfumery, in John Grand-Carteret, L’Histoire, la vie, les moeurs, et la curiosité par l’image, le pamphlet et le document 1450–1900, v.5, 1830–1900 J.-J. Grandville, frontispiece, Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1842) J.-J. Grandville, “Museum Dantanorama,” Le Charivari, Feb. 28, 1836 Boudet, “Les cartes de visite,” Le Charivari, Jan. 15, 1836 H. Valentin, La Maison Aubert, L’Illustration, reprinted in Edmond Texier, Tableau de Paris Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 20, 1845 plate n.74 Chemin de la fortune (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) Magasins de la Chaussée-d’Antin (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) Concert in the Tuileries, L’Illustration Summer Circus, L’Illustration Ranelagh, L’Illustration Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 25, 1852 Bourdet, “L’affichomanie,” Le Charivari, Sept. 14, 1836 J.-J. Grandville, frontispiece, Un Autre Monde J.-J. Grandville, “The Steam-Powered Concert,” Un Autre Monde

16

18 19 23 24 25 26 30 32 40 48 49 60 68 96 111 114

x

Illustrations

5.3

J.-J. Grandville, “Le mariage du Puff et la Réclame,” Un Autre Monde 5.4 J.-J. Grandville, Un Autre Monde 5.5 J.-J. Grandville, epilogue, Un Autre Monde 6.1 “Boulevard des Italiens,” Le Monde illustré, June 5 1858 (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) 6.2 Le Luxe à Paris: magasin de Monsieur Auguste Klein, de Vienne (boulevard des Capucines) (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) 6.3 “ASPECT DE L’ANGLE DU BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE ET DE LA RUE RICHELIEU LE JOUR DE L’APPARATION D’UN NUMÉRO DU Journal illustré.” Le Journal illustré, March 14–20, 1864 (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris) 6.4 “A Summer Evening on the Paris Boulevards,” The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1869 6.5 Albert Robida, “Révolution dans le costume,” La Caricature, Jan. 21, 1888, 1 (BNF) 8.1 Petit Messager des modes, Nov. 1, 1887 plate n. 2401 8.2 Journal des demoiselles et petit courrier des dames réunis, 1868 plate n.3837 8.3 Toulouse-Lautrec, Artisan Moderne, 1896, printed in The Arts 2 (1921) 8.4 Albert Robida, “AU BONHEUR DES DAMES, coupe du roman de M. Emile Zola,” La Caricature, 1883 8.5 Albert Robida, “AVANTURES ET MÉSAVANTURES DE SÉRAPHISKA sur terre, sur mer et dans les ventres des bêtes féroces,” La Caricature, May 15, 1880 (BNF) 9.1 Jules Chéret, Aux Buttes Chaumont. Jouets, Objets pour Etrennes 9.2 Gazette de la famille, 1874, fashion plate 9.3 Gaston Noury, Pour Les Pauvres, printed in Les Maitres de l’affiche, 1896 9.4 La Vie parisienne, Dec. 14, 1878 9.5 Jules Chéret, Aux Buttes Chaumont. Jouets, Objets pour Etrennes, 1889, printed in Les Maitres de l’affiche, 1896 10.1 Adolphe Willette, Le Courrier français, Feb. 7 1886 (BNF)

117 118 120 129 130

133 135 137 163 168 170 174 176 187 194 195 196 197 211

AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S

That it took a very long time to complete this book means that I have accumulated scores of people and institutions to thank. First I would like to express gratitude to Susanna Barrows, my dissertation advisor, for her guidance and friendship. Martin Jay and Randy Starn, who were also on my dissertation committee, have also generously supported me over the years. A paper that I wrote in Martin Jay’s research seminar which later evolved into chapter 9 on posters, is the first part of the book to be written. The late Jonathan Knudsen, my mentor at Wellesley College, inspired me as a f ledgling historian, and in Paris Alain Corbin strongly encouraged my project. Research in Paris was supported by a Chateaubriand Fellowship administered by the government of France and Edna V. Moffett Fellowship from Wellesley College. At U.C. Berkeley and in Paris I learned a great deal from fellow graduate students and friends in French history and other fields, some of who were in the French History Dissertation Group at Berkeley. I would like to thank, in reverse alphabetical order, Joe Zizek, Millie Zinck, Lars Trägårdh, Leslie Sprout, Greg Shaya, Lytle Shaw, Mary Salzman, Dan Rosenberg, Jessica Riskin, John Randolph, Melissa Ptacek, Katharine Norris, Greg Moynahan, Morag Martin, Andre Lambelet, James Kwak, Susan Grayzel, Nancy Edwards, and Beth Dudrow. I am grateful to Martina Barash, Réjane Bargiel, Evgenii Bershtein, Alex Cowan, Simon Dell, Raymond Jonas, Minsoo Kang, Paula Lee, Ségolène Le Men, Jillian Taylor Lerner, Matt Matsuda, Paul Sager, Vanessa Schwartz, Jill Stewart, Jennifer Terni, Sophie White, Amy Woodson-Boulton, and the anonymous readers for their valuable comments and suggestions. My current and former colleagues at Seattle University created a congenial and stimulating environment for me to grow as a scholar and teacher. The following people especially helped me sharpen my ideas in this book: Licia Carlson, Theresa Earenfight, Naomi Hume, Bill Kangas, Naomi Kasumi, Maria Leon, Paul Milan, Jacquelyn Miller, Andy Schulz, Tom Taylor, Charles Tung, and Carolyn Weber. Thanks are also due to John Horner, Jelena and Bogdan Pavlovic, Sanford Shieh, Christian Sidor, Yuki Takagaki, David Tessereau, and Marie-Hélène Trouvelot, as well as my research assistants Blake Hodgin, Athena Kennedy, Nu-Anh Tran, and Julia Voss. My editor Chris Chappell and editorial assistant Samantha Hasey have made working with Palgrave Macmillan a smooth and efficient process.

xii

Acknowledgments

Much of the book was researched and written years after the dissertation was finished, and I am grateful to the staff at the following libraries, archives and museums: the Bibliothèque Nationale de la France, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, Archives de la Police, Archives de la Seine, Archives Nationales, Bibliothèque Forney, Musée Carnavalet, Musée de la Publicité, Musée d’Orsay, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Photothèque de l’Association Paris-Musées, British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, New York Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and San Francisco Public Library, as well as the libraries at U.C. Berkeley, University of Washington, Seattle University, Harvard University, and the Sorbonne. Lisa von Clemm in London and Wellesley, and Jessica Riskin, Chris Kutz and Tram LeNguyen in the Bay Area, repeatedly welcomed me into their homes during research trips. I owe much to Stefanie von Clemm for her amazing friendship over the years. My family has sustained me with love and support. Without my parents’ unwavering support this book could never have been written. My late grandmother Kim Eun-Sook (Seong-nyu), whom I last saw in 1979 before my family and I left Seoul for New York, taught herself to read and enacted onewoman dramas of stories she read in books for crowds gathered at her house. In subsequent years I wished that I could have asked her about those stories and about her life. It is such a love of stories that, I hope, is ref lected in this book.

A BBR E V I AT ION S

AN

Archives Nationales

APP

Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Paris

AP

Archives de Paris/ Archives du Département de la Seine

BNF

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

BHVP

Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris

AA

Anciennes Actualités files at the BHVP

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Introduction

In 1881 camels carrying advertising kiosks appeared on the Grands Boulevards (figure 6.1) of Paris from the Madeleine to the Bastille, attracting a crowd of 250.1 The prefect of police responded by not only prohibiting the practice, reasoning that “the number of camels existing in Paris is increasing daily,” but also banned the sale and reproduction of camels throughout France. Denis Tapin in the newspaper Le Clairon protested against the demise of camel advertising, “one of the most interesting inventions of our time,” arguing that camels don’t deserve this treatment because they didn’t hinder traffic, never crushed anyone, and were free of disease, unlike horses and dogs. The extremely severe response of the prefect, Tapin claimed, had to do with a recent disastrous French military campaign in Algeria; the camel, as a symbol of Africa, caused embarrassment for the authorities.2 This curious incident sheds light on the dynamic between boulevard culture and the politics of street advertising at the fin de siècle. Dating from the seventeenth century when a rampart was demolished, the Grands Boulevards— also known simply as the boulevards, the Boulevards or the boulevard—were a renowned series of streets that formed a semicircle on the Right Bank. Here “the Grands Boulevards” and “the Boulevards” are used interchangeably. As the most crowded, visited and observed set of streets in Paris, these Boulevards were a stage on which ordinary people and celebrities alike partook in the sensation of being at the center of the world, and at the fin de siècle they overf lowed with advertisements and publicity stunts as street spectacle. These were subject to authorization by the police, which was juggling a large number of requests for such projects, the need to regulate traffic and control crowds, and the concern for aesthetics. Entrepreneurs were keen to use themes from current events, and any press coverage that turned an advertisement into a current event was welcome, although in this case it created unwanted publicity that attracted the attention of the police prefect. Boulevard culture, which celebrated continuously changing, pleasing scenes, resonated with the French advertising strategy of provoking curiosity, being entertaining, and generating more publicity through press coverage. The fascination with current events and the great acceleration of the speed with which news was reported and consumed were brilliantly captured in Honoré Daumier’s caricature “Current events (Actualités)” from the 1860s. A man, having just bought a newspaper, complains to the seller: “How’s this, I buy your newspaper and don’t find any of today’s news in it!” The seller replies: “Sir,

2

Introduction

today’s news was in yesterday’s paper!”3 Daumier imagined that the accelerated circulation of news and the fierceness of competition for reporting caused today’s news to have been anticipated and printed in yesterday’s paper. Today’s news is already old, having been churned out through the furious rhythm of reporting, which caused news to be made up. The caricature pokes fun at the unreliable nature of news full of canards (fake news) and puff (hype, also puff in French), and also underlines the sheer demand for news as well as its rapid circulation. This book seeks to integrate the history of Paris with the history of consumption, the press, publicity, advertising, and spectacle. It traces the evolution of the urban core districts of consumption such as the Grands Boulevards. It explores elements of consumer culture such as print media, publishing, retail techniques, tourism, city marketing, fashion, illustrated posters, and Montmartre culture. It emphasizes the significance of the collective imaginary about consumption which circulated associations with values, ideologies, fashionable themes and lifestyles, spread not only through commercial images and texts but also through an array of cultural sources. Emile Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise (1883) was about a department store set in the 1860s. Scenes of Parisian Modernity is about the ladies’ paradise writ large, about Paris as it underwent intense commercialization. Scholars have argued that following the onset of industrial development and rapid economic change during the 1830s and 40s, from the mid-century a dramatic economic and commercial expansion transformed the French bourgeois into a consuming class, sharing identities based on commodities and a structure of taste, what Pierre Bourdieu terms “distinction.”4 Bourgeois taste meant power, as consumer demand and standards strongly inf luenced production, initially artisan manufacturing.5 Paris—with London as its rival—became the center of consumption in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Paris attained a universal reputation as a center of culture, elegance, monumental beauty, fashion, and entertainment, during and after the transformative urban planning under the prefect of Paris, Georges Eugène (later Baron) Haussmann.6 The city excelled at innovations in consumption much more than in production, industry, or finance.7 The advent of a consumer society from the 1860s was marked by a new style of consumption, turning Paris into a fullblown mass consumer society by 1890.8 Historians have studied the dynamic of taste and power, the relationship of consumption to production, the tension between art and industry, consumption and its critique, the spectacle and the crowd, and the reinvention of the consumer as an aesthetic consuming artist and citizen.9 Far less is known about the consumer culture of the first half of the nineteenth century, or the dynamic between the earlier and the later periods. Walter Benjamin’s conception of the arcades as a dreamscape of French bourgeois desires that was part of the “reactivation of mythic forces,” and his view of the city as containing layers of traces, have inspired analyses of the early elements of modern consumption such as lithography, photography, gas lighting, fashion, the railroad, and Industrial Expositions.10 However these facets have rarely been analyzed together in broader cultural and social contexts, especially in light of French cultural agendas about the significance of art, literature, and taste as

Introduction

3

French attributes. Benjamin’s thesis that the July Monarchy (1830–1848) saw the genesis of cultural and commercial modernity has left tantalizing glimpses into a fascinating set of sources, some of which are examined here. A rich array of works by other scholars on specialized topics such as architecture, urban planning, shops, furniture, publishing, posters, and fashion accessories contain some analyses of commercial texts and images, but in fragments. Advertisements from this period, for example, still tend to be seen as simple descriptions of products and their effectiveness. Moreover, the inf luence of the commercial, business side of things on the content of publications is not well known. The core focus here is the relationship of consumption and publicity to culture, a dynamic at the center of the tension between art and industry and between culture and commerce, a dynamic that significantly marked urban commercial modernity. I argue that a modern consumer culture arose in France earlier than widely thought, indeed during the July Monarchy. Print media and publishing were significantly commercialized starting in this period, circulating a great deal of commercial rhetoric and publicity. Modern consumer culture here is defined as a culture in which a shared, collective imaginary about consumption as well as consumer products spread through the press, advertisements, illustrated books and other cultural and commercial sources, creating new meanings of consumption and new consumer identities inf luenced by shared urban sociability around sites of consumption. For the first time it became possible to consume both goods and representations of consumption, and the process of the multiplication of such representations, along with the growing fascination with the new, constituted the modernity of this culture.11 These findings also mean that deep links between culture and consumption were established from early on with attendant tensions and anxieties. I also suggest that fashion magazines, retailers and some cultural sources from the 1820s, and especially from the 1830s, promoted shopping as a form of urban leisure and sociability, associating consumption with the pleasure of shopping and self-display as much as with the nation, family, and class that scholars have emphasized for this period.12 Many of the cultural transformations associated with the commercial modernity of the late nineteenth century—spectacle, modern retail practices, the association of shopping with leisure, and technologies of promotion intertwined with culture—emerged earlier, as gradual processes. These findings suggest that cultural change does not necessarily follow economic change, and call for an integrated view of how culture and economy related rather than represented distinct entities. This methodological principle is in line with historical approaches that have been revising the idea that consumer culture emerged as a late consequence of industrialization.13 Studies on material cultures, and on patterns of consumption by different classes inf luencing capitalism in the eighteenth century and earlier, have contributed to the view that the development of consumer society is a phenomenon taking place over a long period over time and in diverse locations that require multifaceted approaches.14 I stress the need to investigate commercial imperatives and motives much more fully as integral aspects of fields such as publishing, urban change, and urban representation, in the process tracing the evolution of the modern consumer. I analyze

4

Introduction

popular forms of literature and the press that bridged culture and commerce, as well as commercial sources. Mary Gluck has charted two different concepts of aesthetic modernity applied to the study of the nineteenth century. Aesthetic modernity has been variously associated with an aesthetic autonomy grounded in philosophical rationalism that counters the social and political modernity, or conceptualized as a retreat from the concrete world into the inner realms of the psyche and art as thematized by Carl Schorske regarding fin-de-siècle Vienna.15 An alternative sense of modernity, tentatively formulated by Baudelaire as modernité at mid-century and articulated later by Georg Simmel, Henri Bergson, and Walter Benjamin, was associated with “the elusive and dynamic experiences of urban life and consumer culture.”16 Seen from these new angles, as Gluck states, modernists, far from being the outcasts of modernity, were central in giving voice to the everyday experiences of urban life.17 It is this sense of modernity that concerns us here, integrating the urban sense of modernity with the aesthetic. I further emphasize the commercial dimensions of this modernity in its multiple manifestations. Many critics and writers of the July Monarchy actively participated in the rise of the modern consumer culture, especially the commercialization of the publishing industry and the literary marketplace. For the 1870–1910 period Ruth Iskin, situating Impressionism in the visual culture of consumption, has shown that commercial imagery and Impressionist art both partook in the representation of consumer culture.18 Consumption was associated with a complex and contradictory set of values and impulses, and it inf luenced the formation of a range of identities for consumers. I underline the agency of the consumer, as well as the disciplinary and conformist aspects of consumer culture. Individual fantasies were marked by cultural characters, shaped through frameworks such as class, gender, race, sexuality, and so on.19 While both men and women were cast as consumers, there was a distinct feminization of consumption, notably in women’s fashion and related fields, which occurred simultaneous to the increasing emphasis on bourgeois women’s economic dependency. I affirm that advertising was a new powerful form of communication and representation that shaped a commodity culture and visual culture with significant elements of social control and psychological discipline, that advertising is what Jonathan Crary calls a “technology of attention.”20 I also point to the increasing intimacy between the mind of the consumer, the merchandise and advertising which encouraged the consumer to imagine oneself possessing and using goods. A significant part of nineteenth-century consumer culture was increasing emphasis on the appearance of women, and this was one of the reasons why women’s images were predominantly featured on posters. However, I also underline the potential of empowerment through consumption. The formation of consumer culture during the July Monarchy was a largely interactive process. Public opinion, demand and sentiment, formed through ref lection, absorption and adaptation, and expressed through the mediation of critics, writers, artists and journalists, as well as retailers, were significant in the formation of fashion trends and consumer identities. A long tradition of self-promotion by artists, musicians, and others, and its critique, were important elements of consumer culture.21 Whereas Benjamin saw capitalism as having

Introduction

5

brought an “enchantment” over Europe in the nineteenth century that could only be dispelled through the study and application of materialist history,22 recent scholarship has increasingly underlined consumer autonomy, casting consumers rather than commodities as the sources of the meanings of consumption.23 Advertising carried diverse messages which were received in different ways.24 Creators of consumer culture often juggled different outlooks and pressures. The establishment of mass consumer culture also enabled broader sectors of the society to access goods. The expansion of material culture allowed ever-enlarging sectors of the population to access its advantages, and as Daniel Miller has argued, an increasing orientation toward goods—an orientation that has existed for a long time—does not inevitably preclude the development of positive egalitarian social relations.25

La Publicité versus la Réclame Here a clarification of the concepts of advertising and publicity is necessary. The scholarship on the history of advertising has separated and differentiated advertising from news rather than fully exploring their relationship, and focused on its visual power as the modern aspect. Since the mid-nineteenth century, coinciding with the onset of mass manufacturing, scholars have argued, advertising formed a commodity culture with a new system of signification, comprising a visual culture of commodities that went beyond drawing attention to products and aimed at representing the cultural environment through images.26 I argue that French advertising and news should be considered together, emphasize the dynamic between the visual and textual, and argue that French advertising and publicity were much more complex than are widely thought. French advertising developed in an idiosyncratic pattern that requires a re-examination of the notion of commercial modernization. In French the words “publicité” and “réclame” both signify “advertising” and “publicity” simultaneously. Of the two, “réclame” was much more common throughout the nineteenth century, and “publicité” only became commonly associated with commercial advertising in the second half of the century. “Publicité” and “réclame” also referred to two distinct types of advertising. A singular characteristic of French advertising was that much of it was hidden—or disguised—in the press and therefore was very different from the AngloAmerican equivalents. Until the end of the nineteenth century French newspapers remained four to eight pages in length. While the French press carried much smaller number of advertisements than the English press, and the volume of advertising overall was much greater in London than in Paris, French newspapers and many periodicals carried numerous covert advertisements, called “réclames,” on all pages.27 Here I use “ad” and “advertisement” interchangeably, the former simply as an abbreviated term for the latter. Advertising was understood by contemporaries not only as overt advertising but also as “editorial advertising,” articles or illustrations created for the purpose of advertising, or articles that included advertising, and therefore appeared as forms of publicity.28

6

Introduction

Such advertising was called “puff ” in English—a term which also simply meant advertising—whereas the English word “puff ” was used in French to mean hype and fake news. Puffs existed in the Anglo-American press through the early twentieth century, but in much smaller quantity.29 This is one of the reasons why French advertising is thought to have developed late compared to the AngloAmerican variety. Since so often little gap existed between news and advertising in France, defining advertising only as overt advertising would miss a very significant dimension of French advertising and consumer culture. Published in French newspapers, journals and magazines were not just classified ads and other advertisements but also surreptitious ones in the forms of articles, reviews, columns, illustrations, short notices or faits divers, including on the front page. This phenomenon makes both French advertising and the French press much more complex than they appear. I seek to revise the view that French advertising in the nineteenth century, especially in the first half, was much more information-oriented than in the twentieth century. I would like to complicate the view that advertising largely represented and described products in the first half of the nineteenth century, whereas in the second half of the century, especially from the 1880s when a mass consumer society was formed, representing the modern world and culture became the primary focus.30 The blending of news and advertising was one of the defining traits of the French press, despite continued controversy. From the outset of the emergence of the modern press, when large-circulation newspapers became viable enterprises by the early 1830s, such forms of publicity were a significant part. Anyone seeking fame hoped for a modicum of space in the newspaper, and often ended by purchasing lines. Some ran systematic campaigns for decades. Far from occasional or arbitrary, such a passion for publicity lay at the core of the French system until the First World War, and shaped the idiosyncratic development of French press. It is impossible to fully understand French journalism, the commercialization of culture, or consumer culture without understanding publicity, advertising, and the mentalités that went with them. The press did not uniformly blend news and advertising. However, fashion magazines thrived on it, as did the worldly newspaper Le Figaro. Editorial ads also appeared in papers as varied as Le Siècle famous for its serial novels, the political La Nation, and Les Débats, as well as Le Charivari—the political newspaper famous for Daumier’s caricatures—, and the news magazine L’Illustration. 31 Although not all in the French press practiced such publicity, it was a widespread and perfectly legal feature of the French press. Henry Sampson, an English advertising expert, noted in 1874 that while “the réclame, or editorial puff,” had been popular earlier in England and was “coming into fashion again,” réclames were “now regarded as so essentially French.”32 Charles Dickens explained to English readers in 1882 that “in most of [French] papers there are every day réclames which are, in fact, advertisements of a more insidious kind than announcements framed after the manner and style of openly-acknowledged advertisements.”33 In 1902 the critic Georges d’Avenel defined “non-classified” advertising as “sometimes an ‘écho,’ a brief note, or an entire article in the body, even at the head of a paper, where the

Introduction

7

paper emits a favorable appreciation on a book, a discovery, a spectacle.”34A 1914 French advertising manual still referred to “editorial advertisement” as a disguised form of advertisement “placed next to or in the text of the newspaper.”35 That there was little distinction between advertising and publicity means that there is a large gray area in the sources, as it is not always possible to determine if an article was purchased or not. For example, heralding the age of electric lighting which began in 1880, an article in L’Illustration publicized “luminous electric jewels” invented by Trouvé: “The new ballet Ferandole, a huge hit at the Opéra, includes a staging effect that has so much aroused public curiosity, and we find it interesting to provide an explanation.” An accompanying illustration depicted a dancer wearing the shiny jewels.36 This article may have been a purchased editorial advertisement, but it could also just be an article. In either case, the article publicized the ballet as well as the electric jewels. This characteristic of the French press points to the much larger role the press played in publicity than is widely thought, as well as the highly commercialized nature of the press. It is necessary to examine the nature of this publicity, the content of disguised advertisements. If we take modern advertising to be overt advertising, then editorial advertising comprised an un-modern strand, since recommendations had been listed free of charge in the eighteenth century. However, editorial advertising was distinctly modern in the sense that it produced narratives of indirect persuasion, mobilizing subject matters that had nothing inherently to do with the properties of the given products. From early on French advertising engaged with the broader cultural environment—to the extent that it pretended to be news—, and many examples were “product placements,” the equivalent of including brand-name commodities in a movie. There was also a strong belief that advertising should be enjoyable, and editorial ads were favored for their entertainment value. Whereas modern advertising is widely associated with targeting the visualizing capacity of the psyche through images that depict lifestyles and fantasies,37 I argue that French textual and visual advertisements beginning in the 1830s, both overt and covert forms, constructed imagined scenes and elicited emotional responses, and that earlier practices of textual advertising were significant sources of later intensive formation of visual culture. Lack of transparency was not necessarily a problem, since traditionally transparency was often not the primary value in cultural manners. The dandy’s civility, for example, was based on courtly notions of civility emphasizing opacity.38 However editorial advertising was seen as a sign of increasing commercialism in the press especially in the July Monarchy, and also went against the idea of news as rational communication.

Representing Scenes of Consumption The rise of urban commercial modernity in the period from 1820 to 1848 is the main focus of the first section, especially the first three chapters that underline the evolution of sites of urban consumption, inventions of new retail and marketing techniques, and the commercialization of the press and publishing. These

8

Introduction

chapters collectively argue that an urban sphere of consumption for both men and women expanded and were also intensively publicized. The production of layers of representations of consumption formed a collective imaginary that underlined shopping as a refined activity of urban leisure, and also contributed to the formation of a new imaginary about Paris as a modern city. The literary and artistic milieu, including the journalist and publisher Charles Philipon, the respected salonnière and writer Delphine de Girardin, the Bohemian-seeming artist J.-J. Grandville, and the illustrator and caricaturist Paul Gavarni, far from shunning the nascent consumer culture, played vital roles in its emergence. Illustrated periodicals, illustrated panorama literature, and caricatures linked culture and commerce, with significant implications. They published numerous new representations of Parisian modernity. At the same time, they also critiqued the new consumer culture. The conception, production, and marketing of illustrated books saw a great deal of innovation, which is to say that it was actually in the domain of culture that much commercial modernization occurred. Conceptions of high and popular cultures are also modified here, since many of these participants produced works of both genres. High-cultural creations like novels were disseminated through the popular media of the press, becoming “popular” in the process, and also set fashion trends. Paintings and sculptures were reproduced and sold with much publicity and through sophisticated retail methods that mobilized values and lifestyles, further complicating definitions of high and popular arts. The first chapter explores the evolution of the urban core districts of shopping, tourism, and entertainment in Paris, the emergence of the circulation of scenes of consumption, and the rise of new consumer identities based on urban sociability and shared popular cultural knowledge. It examines, as a key component in these processes, the commercialization of print media and the publishing industry, in particular the production, marketing, and publicity methods of La Maison Aubert. Also examined are the publicity and retail methods for perfumeries, cashmere shawls, specialty shops and magasins de nouveautés, and the cultural meanings associated with these establishments and consumer items. This chapter argues that powerful links were forged among the fields of publishing, journalism, retail, and advertising. This process, in turn, had an impact on the evolution of consumer agency. An appendix surveys the laws and regulations of the press and billposting in this period that affected political and commercial material. New representations of consumption went hand in hand with a parallel phenomenon, that of the changing representations of Paris. Chapter 2 argues that by around 1840 Paris came to be widely cast as the capital of amusement and fashion with multiple centers of pleasure, and became the capital of modernity to a significant extent. The interlinks among different fields traced in the first chapter are further examined with the focus on an unofficial proto-city-marketing campaign for Paris in which the government and private interests participated. This chapter further underlines the significance of the collective imaginary as a key element in the formation of modern consumer culture. The enhancement of the reputation of Paris was enabled by a dramatic expansion in publishing, the press, commerce, and tourism, and coincided with the golden age of illustrated

Introduction

9

books, when the most fascinating topic for Parisians was Paris. This chapter also traces different conceptions of urban modernity expressed regarding the Grands Boulevards. A new visual sensibility emerged there, emphasizing the enjoyment of continuously changing urban scenes, including commercial allure. This sensibility was associated with intellectual stimulation, and preceded Baudelaire’s formulation of the conception of modernité. Notions of the urban picturesque, invoking charming, colorful and amusing views, inf luenced this sensibility. The penchant for the panorama, associated with a harmonious urban order, was also inf lected in representations of the Boulevards. Heinrich Heine’s ref lections on the Boulevards also reveal aspects absent in celebratory descriptions, such as class tension as seen through a contrast between the flâneur and the crowd. Also underlined here is the active participation of women in the public sphere—spaces that are open to sectors of the public. Women were both highly visible and enjoyed self-display as part of vibrant urban culture, and their controlled representation was crucial in the new imaginary about Paris. L’Illustration, the first French illustrated news magazine, launched in 1843, encapsulated many of the new trends and invented new ones, through its fascination with Paris. It was the first publication that systematically publicized the new Paris and recast many old sites as destinations to visit. 39 It spread textual and visual scenes of modernity including sites of amusement and retail in which women were ubiquitously present. Fashion magazines, the subject of Chapter 3, played a unique role in the representation of women’s expanding sphere of consumption. By promoting specific shops and areas for shopping, they were the first to delineate a realm of women’s urban excursion from the 1820s. Although initially a variant of literary magazines, many fashion magazines were highly commercialized and functioned as important media of publicity. Fashion magazines represented shopping as a respectable and enjoyable social activity, a form of urban leisure, as well as a feminine duty for the refined woman with taste. New items, “nouveautés,” were the focus of fashion columns. Such narratives were reinforced by other magazines and tourist accounts. This chapter also examines the popular newspaper column “A Letter from Paris (Le Courrier de Paris)” by Delphine de Girardin, née Gay, who was a keen observer not only of all kinds of cultural trends but also of fashion trends of the 1830s and 40s, all of which she treated with brilliant wit. Her discussion of fashion, retail, and women, written under a male pseudonym, had both critical and promotional dimensions, and her attitude toward fashion was much more intellectual and ambivalent than that of fashion magazines. As a member of the high society intent on preserving its distinctions, yet ironically the most inf luential flâneur in tune with modern trends on the street level, she traced theories of fashion full of contradictions. Chapter 4 explores both the practices and perceptions of advertising and publicity by examining texts and images mostly from the July Monarchy by Balzac, Daumier, Grandville and others, as well as the weekly Le Tintamarre. Balzac greeted the advent of advertising and the commercialization of journalism with both fascination and ambivalence. He tried to envisage its future course through

10

Introduction

novels like César Birotteau, Lost Illusions, and Wild Ass’s Skin. The prevalence of editorial advertising caused much internal turmoil in the world of the press and literature. From the beginning contemporaries were not only acutely aware of the presence of advertisements as new yet unstable cultural forms, but leveled a large amount of satire and critique at it. The vocabulary of advertising and publicity strongly resonated in the critique of culture, society, and politics, as seen through Daumier’s Robert Macaire caricature series. Le Tintamarre was the paper that carried the most number of regular advertisements during the July Monarchy. At the same time, its major aim was the criticism and exposure of all types of hidden advertising. It showcased the formation of advertising as a fertile subject of parody and a new rhetoric of self-promotion with a specific language. Contrary to what is usually assumed, a vibrant critique of modern advertising was born simultaneous to its emergence. This chapter situates the mentalités of advertising and publicity in the social, political, and economic f luctuations of the July Monarchy. Chapter 5 interprets J.-J. Grandville’s enigmatic masterpiece Un Autre Monde (Another World) (1844) as a compendium of contemporary and futuristic techniques of advertising and publicity rendered in absurd forms. The book reveals much self-ref lection on the new conditions of the creative process and the literary market. The book’s narrative structure is interpreted here as commentary on the layers of creative processes involved in the creation, production and marketing of a book. Misunderstood by contemporaries, the book was composed of Grandville’s philosophical and complex caricatures “illustrated” by Taxile Delord’s text. This chapter emphasizes the singular and unique characteristics of Grandville’s imagination, and at the same time situates the book in the contemporary world of publishing and the press in which he was an active and inf luential contributor.

Boulevard Culture, Street Furnishings, and Poster Mania The second half of Scenes of Parisian Modernity emphasizes important continuity in commercial trends from the earlier period, but nonetheless also underlines tremendous change and expansion of consumer culture that took place in the 1848–1914 period and especially from 1880 to 1914. The annexation of the suburbs in 1860, and the reorganization of Paris from 12 arrondissements to 20, had significant consequences. In exploring the dynamic among urban culture, consumption, and publicity, this section examines aspects of commercial modernity such as boulevard culture, the organization of “street furnishings (mobiliers urbains)” as a part of urban modernization, retail technologies, poster art as an art of modernity, the iconography of illustrated posters, the rise of celebrity culture, and the politics of culture and advertising around a Montmartre art journal. These chapters collectively underline the significance of the circulating imaginary of consumption as does the first section. Yet they also highlight the simultaneous diffusion and complication of the links formed among publishing, the press, retail, and advertising, as each sector expanded enormously and numerous specializations developed.

Introduction

11

Chapter 6 continues the exploration of the modernity of the Grands Boulevards begun in the first section, as well as the dynamic between boulevard culture and new techniques of retail and publicity. The experience of vibrant urban life and the fascination with surface sensations were epitomized on the Grands Boulevards, the center of news, amusements, tourism, and spectacle. These sensibilities corresponded to the visual mode of the modern consumer, as the city streets became increasingly cacophonous and full of strong stimuli. Working class men and women like sandwichmen, sandwichwomen, and hawkers known for their sales pitches, were rendered as picturesque types. A large amount and assortment of street advertising and publicity stunts, which would appear intriguing, bizarre, and even stunning to today’s readers, proliferated as part of the turning of Paris into a great show and a city of modernity. While the Boulevards were world-renowned, even becoming a legendary spot, writers like Henry James and Kaf ka commented on their artifice, publicity and superficiality. The 1900–1914 period saw a great deal of modernization in consumer technologies, streamlining on the one hand and creating “excess” on the other. In this period a new urban sensibility of sensory inundation in the streets emerged, precluding the making of coherent and meaningful pictures. The English critic Henry Sampson commented that Parisian advertising was a “very unique” system and that in Paris “ugly, gaunt, straggling hoardings like those of London are quite unknown”, that billposting firms display posters in wooden and canvas frames.40 The organized system of billposting along with “street furnishings” such as kiosks, (figure I.1) Morris Columns and urinals used as advertising media made the French system quite unique. Chapter 7 traces the development of the infrastructure and institutions of advertising, including the agencies for production, distribution and posting of bills and other printed material, in relation to the city authorities during the 1848–1914 period. Much of the regularization of billposting occurred during the Second Empire and was part of the urban transformation under Haussmann that aimed at aesthetic, circulatory, and bureaucratic rationalization. I argue that such projects were only partially successful regarding advertising practices, due to competing visions of modernity, urban dynamic, and sheer commercial demand for using public spaces. This chapter also charts the debates about these phenomena among the city authorities, architects, the public, and the press. After the turn of the century an intense reaction set in, due to sheer saturation. An appendix surveys the rules and regulations of the press, billposting, and advertising in the 1848–1914 period including a discussion of court cases and an overnight political campaign by the Prince Jérôme Bonaparte. Chapter 8 explores practices of publicity, advertising, and retail, such as faitdivers publicity, the use of layers of spectatorship, multimedia campaigns, and the significance of monumental architecture. This chapter also analyzes literary representations of publicity and advertising. By the 1880s advertising was cast as a powerful, at times predominant form of modern visual and textual communication that inspired anxious, at times nightmarish visions of the future. Both critics and promoters of advertising used metaphors of seduction, imposition, and violence in assessing the role of the poster. In addition, the expansion of

12

Introduction

celebrity culture is analyzed here through an episode involving the actress Sarah Bernhardt. The public perception of her life as a series of fantastic adventures meant that Bernhardt, compared to P.T. Barnum, seemed capable of pulling off gigantic publicity stunts. One of the truly new and transformative phenomena that helped cast Paris as a city of modernity was the advent of the colorful illustrated poster that formed a unique visual iconography of countless images of women, a subject of Chapter 9. Jules Chéret’s illustrated posters in particular inspired a celebration of the poster as a new art of modernity and also generated fascination with a new way of seeing. Chéret’s admirers ranged from artistic and literary celebrities to the avantgarde to middle-class critics to government officials. This chapter examines the rich and complex debates on poster art as an art of modernity, as well as its relation to other decorative arts movements such as Art Nouveau and the social art movement. It also assesses the commercial role of the poster, a topic largely bypassed by contemporary critics, artists, and writers, and argues that Chéret’s posters were highly effective as means of advertising because their modernity was in tune with the new visual mode of the consumer. This chapter also analyzes the depiction of new consumer subjectivity and new imaginary of consumption associated with a wide spectrum of images of women. A significant portion of artistic illustrated posters featured images of women as independent and modern in the midst of a wide variety of indoor and outdoor activities, while another significant portion commodified women. The posters show that in the course of the nineteenth century advertising increasingly became a relational discourse that emphasized the visual. Chapter 10 examines the avant-garde Montmartre journal Le Courrier français, which was the most popular fin-de-siècle art journal. Run by Jules Rocques, a successful advertising agent who made Géraudel Cough Drops a household name, the journal was financially sponsored by the pharmacist Arthur Géraudel, and the artists and writers of the journal publicized Géraudel Cough Drops through eye-catching and innovative images and texts, regularly transgressing the boundary between art and publicity. Le Courrier français also collaborated with Chéret. The journal was fascinated with the phenomenon of advertising, and at the same time expressed ambivalence toward it. The journal published numerous artistic representations of la réclame as a woman or a goddess, underlining the perceived power of advertising and seeking to expose its true nature. This chapter examines complex ties among art, advertising, and the marketing of Chéret’s posters.

S E C T ION

1815–1848

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CH A P T E R

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Consumption as Urban Pleasure: The Rise of Modern Consumer Culture

Introduction An image of an arcade, the Galerie Colbert, (figure 1.1) from circa 1835 shows an elegant rotunda with a glass roof, fine ironworks, marble panels, and architecturally refined shops. The shops feature windows displaying chandeliers, decorative items, and hats rendered in great detail. Several fashionably dressed couples are walking by. A woman glances at a shop window. Another woman is inside the shop, looking at hats. With one arm raised, she seems captivated by the pretty hats. She can be seen clearly from the outside and becomes part of the shop window display. That she is shown alone conveys the message that a woman can visit shops alone and indulge in the pleasure of looking at and buying items of the latest fashion for herself. Depicted along with consumer products here are a shopper and a potential shopper looking at her. The viewer of this image, in turn, is looking at an inviting scene of consumption. The viewer gains knowledge about arcades and consumer behavior, a piece of knowledge shared with legions of imagined consumers. Illustrations of scenes of consumption like this, incorporating layers of spectatorship, emerged in the 1830s, and associated arcades and other sites with the idea of shopping as urban pleasure. From the 1820s the proliferation of shops, cafés, restaurants, and other venues of increasing size and elegance multiplied spaces of visual allure.1 The inception of the omnibus in 1828 made it much easier to visit different areas of the city, enabling the middle class to access shops beyond their neighborhoods. With the construction of railroads in the 1840s the number of visitors increased dramatically. The redefinition of urban space privileged vision and consumption, and was accompanied by an expanding circulation of visual and textual representations of consumption as a necessary yet leisurely urban activity for the middle and upper classes. This chapter explores the rise of a new urban sphere of consumption and its representations, as well as the commercialization of print media and the publishing industry during the July Monarchy. A new collective imaginary about consumption and consumer products spread through the press, advertisements, illustrated

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Scenes of Parisian Modernity

Figure 1.1 Engelmann/ J. Billaud. Vue intérieure de la rotonde et de la Galerie Colbert conduisant de la rue Vivienne à la rue Neuve des Petits Champs. c.1835. (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris).

books, and other commercial and cultural sources. Also new consumer identities emerged, informed by shared urban sociability. After brief ly tracing the history of advertising in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this chapter examines the retail and publicity techniques of perfumers, cashmere shawl manufacturers, the publisher and print shop La Maison Aubert, specialty shops, and magasins de nouveautés. From the late 1820s advertisements were for the first time disseminated through the press in significant numbers, and numerous new forms and subjects of commercial material appeared during the 1830s and 40s, including depictions of consumers and scenes of consumption. Advertising was far from an isolated phenomenon but part of a culture of publicity and news-making in which new items of all kinds were constantly in demand and consumed. “Nouveauté” was a key term that can be translated into “new item,” “new thing,” “novelty,” “new model,” or “new publication” and was widely used in cultural discourse and fashion. This chapter underlines the commercial imperative in the formation of powerful links among publishing, retail, urban development, fashion, and advertising.

The Evolution of Early Advertising and Publicity In the eighteenth century commercial advertising in France was limited, as competition and direct publicity of goods were frowned upon. 2 This was inf luenced

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17

by the guild system controlling retail, sumptuary laws, and debates on luxury.3 Nonetheless the number of ads, all textual and some of them verbose, increased steadily in the second half of the century in advertising sheets called Affiches which allowed free insertions until the 1790s, and in some newspapers and women’s magazines.4 Also preauthorized posters, some with images, were handled by royal billposters.5 The principle of the free market was introduced during the French Revolution, leading to commercial expansion.6 Until the 1820s, in both France and England much of the marketing of goods was done directly through interaction with customers, using shop interiors, shop fronts, trade cards, handbills, letterheads, and brochures, but English advertising was overall more developed.7 In the first half of the nineteenth century “publicité” increasingly took on the modern meaning of “the act or the art of producing a psychological effect on the public.”8 The idea of advertising (réclame) as a means of exerting inf luence for commercial purpose was firmly established during the 1830s but prohibited or avoided by many sectors.9 Shop signs became elaborate in the eighteenth century. In Le Tableau de Paris (1781) Louis-Sébastien Mercier recalled “colossal” signs like “monstrous heads.”10 Artists like Watteau—for an art dealer— and Chardin painted signs, in spite of the perceived incompatibility between sign painting and academic art.11 During the Restoration painted shop signs f lourished.12 A lithograph print (figure 1.2) for a lottery, The Game of Paris in Miniature in which is represented signs, decoration, houses, boutiques and diverse establishments of the principal merchants of Paris, their streets and their numbers, included ninety miniaturized versions of shop signs.13 This print indicates that a recognizable commercial cityscape existed in this period. The uniformity of the signs’ styles shows that shop signs and façades were inf luenced by fashion trends. Lithography, invented around 1796, revolutionized print production. It became a viable form of printing in France by around 1820.14 Elaborate lithographed images for advertisements, used by perfumers and others between 1820 and 1840, were far from simple descriptions of products but were full of cultural codes such as symbolic images and literary allusions. Until the mid-1830s perfumers associated their products foremost with symbols of prestige, authority, and elegance, such as the king, Napoleon, and goddesses. An image for French Bouquet-Charles X Cologne depicts a large classical vase with a bouquet of f lowers, portraits of the royal family, cherubs holding a garland of f lowers, soldiers, a lion, and goddesses of justice, symbolizing glory, patriotism, justice, royalty, elegance, and taste.15 Phrases like “privileged supplier of several foreign courts”16 or “patented by the king” were popular. Public opinion was another popular theme. An advertisement for Double Royal Cologne of the Queen of Flowers from the late 1820s announces that the qualities of the cologne being sufficiently known, the enterprise is “dispensing with all descriptions,” that it “leaves to the public the care of judging and doing justice to all the pompous names and titles employed by charlatanism and which should mean nothing to the eyes of enlightened consumers.” Unusual images were used to hook the curiosity of the consumer. A striking image from circa 1835 shows a mouth with shiny teeth, set in a triangle with the word “USE.”17 The triangle refers to the trinity, God, so “USE” is God’s

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Scenes of Parisian Modernity

Figure 1.2 Lithograph. LE JEU DE PARIS EN MINIATURE dans lequel sont representés des enseignes, décors, maisons, boutiques et divers établissements des principaux marchands de Paris, leurs rues et leurs numéros. (BNF Estampe).

command. The image uses the popular classical framework, but instead of the usual eye there is a mouth, referring to the dental use of the product. There is absolutely no description of the product. According to Roland Barthes all images are polysemous and imply a “ ‘f loating chain’ of signifieds” that can entail “the terror of uncertain signs.” The viewer can only make the desired associations between the signifier and the signified with some textual aid, such as a caption or a brand name.18 From the 1830s advertisers often preferred intriguing images that gave the viewer room for interpretation. Current events instigated the production of consumer goods in Paris. In Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (1721) a Persian visitor to Paris remarks on the excessive curiosity of Parisians, who not only surround him at every chance but purchase his portraits in multiples: “so greatly did people fear that they had not had a good enough look at me.”19 Items like fans were produced in England and France to record events of all kinds.20 Political events were depicted on fans during the French Revolution, which transformed every corner of life and material culture.21 The association of events with commerce is showcased by the first arrival of a giraffe in France in 1827, which caused a sensation and a production of numerous goods including lithographs, songs, plates, washbasins, clothes, and pastries.22 Current events, cultural currents, and celebrities were popular themes in the July Monarchy. Some labels for Saint-Simonian Candy from the 1830s construct visual narratives around a Saint-Simonian woman that are difficult to decipher without knowledge of Saint-Simonian ideas.23 Orientalism spread

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19

Figure 1.3 Advertisement. Vourloud & Cie Perfumery, in John Grand-Carteret, L’Histoire, la vie, les moeurs, et la curiosité par l’image, le pamphlet et le document 1450–1900, v.5, 1830–1900.

images of arabesques and desert scenes.24 An advertisement (figure 1.3) for the Vourloud & Cie perfumery includes several trendy themes: Turkish and Chinese merchants, fashionably dressed women, goddesses, and a scene of trade evoking the exotic and promoting national commerce. All these are associated with the phrase “MODERN PERFUMERY.” As advertising rapidly spread beyond perfumeries and publishers, new themes emerged and would become dominant by

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Scenes of Parisian Modernity

the 1840s: images of consumers and scenes of consumption, a core theme of the rest of this chapter. In one image for a dental product a woman is grimacing and another is offering an elixir.25 This quick survey shows that advertisements communicated values and made abstract allusions more than describing the products’ properties. By the 1830s, reformers were arguing for advertising as rational communication; there was already a long tradition of advertising as persuasion that engaged the broader cultural environment.

The Modernization of Publishing Whereas perfume remained a relative luxury item until the 1850s, prints, magazines, newspapers, and books were some of the first consumer products of advanced mechanization, and the publishing and marketing for them in the 1830s and 40s were a significant part of the emerging consumer culture. The publishing industry was one of the top industrial sectors in Paris.26 A period of phenomenal expansion of publishing began in Paris around 1830, due to improvements in technologies of paper production and reprographics, transportation, urbanization and rising literacy.27 Despite strict censorship, countless periodicals and prints were published, and salons and galleries were turned into sites of entertainment.28 Only about 20 percent of Parisians were illiterate in the early 1830s, compared to 50 percent in the rest of France.29 An American observed in 1837 that in periodical reading “Parisians leave” even Londoners “far, very far behind.”30 George Sand recalled that “the great consumption of new books during the 1835–1845 period” caused “fast, that is to say forced, production.”31 Amédée Pommier wrote around 1832 that the print shops and stalls found on the boulevards, arcades, and quais, where a millionaire and a street urchin alike enjoyed a large variety of objects, were “people’s galleries.”32 In 1834 Le Magasin pittoresque publicized a new caricature series by circulating a prospectus in which caricature prints were associated with window-shopping and flânerie. Noting that the role of caricature is providing “the critical history of the current times,” the prospectus recommended displaying caricature prints in shop windows of all sorts “in order to attract the curious,” a “refinement of the flâneurie . . . so essential to the retail . . . in London,” where the art of retail reached “a degree of perfection.”33 The taste for the new, along with fascination with Paris and the everyday, led to the new genre of what Walter Benjamin called “panoramic literature” or panorama essays, multiauthored vignettes on contemporary Paris unique to the 1830s, 40s, and 50s and marketed as a new kind of literature.34 The first such collection, the 15-volume Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (1831–1834), written by 101 writers including Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Balzac, Eugène Sue, and George Sand, was announced as offering a “survey of modern Paris” inspired by Mercier’s Tableau de Paris. It was announced as “a new book, if ever there was one; new by content, new by its form, new by the procedure of composition that forms a kind of an encyclopedia of contemporary ideas.”35 The new formula created a great buzz even before the title was decided on, as proudly recalled in its preface; a

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21

publicity campaign was launched at the inception of the series. In 1833 the same group of writers offered an illustrated series, Les Cent-et-une nouvelles nouvelles des cent-et-un, ornée de cent-et-une vignettes dessinées et gravées par cent-et-un artistes (A Hundred-and-One New Stories of the Hundred-and-One, Decorated with a Hundred-and-One Vignettes Drawn and Engraved by a Hundred-and-One Artists). The repetition of “new” and “a Hundred-and-One” had a rhetorical effect of what today would be called branding.36 Illustrated books—the golden age of which was from 1830 to 50—and popular illustrated periodicals were some of the first items to be conceived, produced, and marketed in systematically modernized ways. As Jillian Taylor Lerner shows, the production and marketing of illustrated books highlighted consumer lifestyles.37 Books, periodicals, bookstores, and the print shop La Maison Aubert were the most advertised items in the press and periodicals through the mid-1840s, meaning that much initial commercial modernization occurred in culture. The first issue of Le Tintamarre in 1843 ran ads for Hetzel Publishing, the Cumer bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli, magazines, and La Maison Aubert, among others.38 Books, albums, and prints were also popular New Year’s gifts, even for the working class. In an image by Gavarni a man appreciatively looks at a print his small son gave him for his birthday. 39 Illustrated books were the first to be advertised extensively through illustrated, lithographed posters from the 1830s.40 Bookshops had the privilege of displaying posters for books without having to obtain prior authorization, and these posters could be printed on white paper, otherwise reserved for official announcements.41 Created by celebrated artists such as Gavarni, Grandville, Gustave Doré, Tony Johannot, Henri Monnier and Cham, black-and-white images became indispensable by 1840.42 Not only did the images transform the posters by rendering them artistic,43 many posters had the effect of circulating vignettes from books, in a period when a striking vignette or a frontispiece helped sell a new book. Book posters, regarded more as cultural announcements than as advertising, paved the way for further interpenetration of culture and advertising. The definitions of news and advertising were also f luctuating in this period in England and the U.S. as well, so that what historically was news could become advertising, and vice versa.44 French artists refused to create commercial posters, and book posters remained the only lithographed posters until the 1860s.45 A popular motif for book posters was a wall full of posters. Grandville’s poster for Petites misères de la vie humaine (Petty Troubles of Human Life) (1843) depicts a miserable-looking man being pestered by small creatures and looking out to the viewer as if appealing for help.46 The poster announces: “You can subscribe here.” By turning an image about the story into that of the characters from the book appealing to the viewer to subscribe, the image engages the viewer into an unfolding narrative. Another popular motif for posters and book frontispieces was a billposter putting up a poster announcing the book.47 The frontispiece of Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (Scenes of the Private and Public Life of Animals) (1842) by Grandville depicts a monkey smoking a pipe, wearing a hat —recalling a long artistic lineage of depicting a monkey as an artist—and putting finishing touches on a poster announcing the book, in front

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of wide-eyed spectators heralding the onset of the visual age.48 In the frontispiece (figure 1.4) of volume two, a billposter, Pyrame the dog, holds up a poster announcing the book, looking around to find a good spot to post. The caption, “And billposting was entrusted to Pyrame, Bertrand’s ex-employee, who promises a production of new glue stronger than his former master’s,” heightens the sense of a current event. Among a wall full of posters is one announcing the same book, providing auto-publicity. Both of these images constitute scenes of spectacle by depicting the moment of the announcement of the book as a nouveauté—just off the press. The portrait of Grandville as a monkey-artist was one of a variety of Grandville’s self-portraits in circulation. A caricature by Grandville (figure 1.5) published in Le Charivari in 1836 includes his self-portrait as a statue. An article published in L’Illustration in 1843, publicizing Grandville as a caricaturist of great talent, was illustrated with a large self-portrait of Grandville with long hair and in an artist’s shirt and a beret with a peacock feather.49 Grandville as the bohemian artist also appeared in the frontispiece (figure 5.1) of his Un Autre monde (1844). In an image by Grandville in Les Cent proverbes (A Hundred Proverbs) (1845) Grandville is signing his name on a wall, on which is a reversed signature of his copyist Auguste Desperet.50 Also on the wall is a sketch of a devil, identified as his rival Old Nick, the coauthor of the book. Grandville not only embedded jokes in images, by the 1840s he was cultivating a recognizable image, partaking in the creation of the consumer culture that was linking sectors of the press, publishing and retail culturally and economically, and spreading celebrity for the cultural milieu. By the mid-1840s publicity campaigns for new publications became extensive. One of the most famous of panoramic literature was Le Diable à Paris (The Devil in Paris), illustrated by Gavarni and Grandville and delivered by Hetzel between 1843 and 1845.51 L’Illustration announced in 1844 that Le Diable à Paris was written by “all the literary celebrities of our era: George Sand, Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Nodier, Eugène Sue, writers of all the specialties.” A footnote provided information on how to subscribe to the series.52 In another long article, accompanied by an image from the series, the book was lavishly praised: “The spiritual and charming Diable à Paris, the most charming and the most spiritual of devils . . . the most gracious, the most amusing, the most elegant, the most ingenious, the most brilliant, the most fertile, the most clever devil.” The promotional purpose of this piece is evident from a reference to “the immense and universal success” of the first volume, which “is snatched up from all directions.”53 In the July Monarchy caricature was foremost associated with La Maison Aubert. This successful publisher mobilized an array of innovative publicity techniques for its publications, artists and writers, while also brilliantly promoting its print shop as a site of urban leisure and sociability. Charles Philipon, a journalist, writer, lithographer, and caricaturist, opened a caricature shop in the VéroDodat arcade in November 1829, with his half sister Marie-Françoise-Madeleine Aubert and his brother-in-law Gabriel Aubert. Having weathered the economic crisis of the early 1930s, in 1835 he opened a second print shop in the Galerie Colbert near the Palais Royal and also established a lithographic printing press, which by 1840 was publishing 20 percent of all prints including the majority

Consumption as Urban Pleasure

Figure 1.4

23

J.-J. Grandville, frontispiece, Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1842).

of the popular physiologies series.54 In 1841 he moved the shop to La Place de la Bourse, at the center of modern commerce, near the Boulevard Montmartre, the Palais Royal, the arcades, the Louvre, numerous theaters, and other entertainment sites, as well as the majority of Parisian tailors and perfumeries.55

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Figure 1.5 J.-J. Grandville, “Museum Dantanorama,” Le Charivari, Feb. 28, 1836.

Philipon was the primary partner of La Maison Aubert, but he preferred to appear bohemian and artistic, diminishing what he was publishing as “merchandise (de la marchandise).”56 In publicity material only the name Aubert appeared. Philipon had Aubert run the more mundane aspects of the business, seeking to hide his own talent, what Nadar described as a “marvelous ability of popularization” and “prodigious lucidity in business.”57 Philipon had wide associations. He worked closely with Balzac although he was a republican and Balzac a monarchist.58 La Maison Aubert found success through a wide-ranging repertoire including magazine plates, fashion plates, celebrity portraits, landscapes, costumes, drawing courses, and copies of paintings.59 The very ambivalence of figures like Philipon who straddled art and commerce had an impact on the creation of nuanced, and at times problematic, practices that created new spaces between art and commerce. Philipon invented new ways to market his political papers famous for their caricatures: La Caricature, launched in 1830, and Le Charivari, launched in 1832 as the first illustrated daily newspaper.60 The first issue of Le Charivari (1832) included an image of a clown on stage, accompanied by a drum—a symbol of publicity—exhorting the crowd to “Follow, follow the crowd” and subscribe.61 This was an evocative image of clowns making pitches at fairs, transformed into a modern publicity image. The paper published self-promotional images. One image from an 1833 issue, “The arrival of Le Charivari in the countryside,” depicts a whole family happily reading the paper together, implying that Le Charivari is

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Figure 1.6

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Boudet, “Les cartes de visite,” Le Charivari, Jan. 15, 1836.

suitable for the entire family and helps create happiness and bonding.62 This is a modern scene of consumption associating values and identities. In a caricature (figure 1.6) titled “Les cartes de visite (calling cards)” by Boudet published in Le Charivari in 1836, a bourgeois couple collect announcements of La Maison Aubert’s publications.63 The husband is holding a gigantic card, framed like a painting, on which is simply the signature “Aubert.” He also holds two landscapes framed with what look like doilies. He looks at his wife, wondering where he is to put all these. This image comments on the changing hierarchy of goods, in which Aubert’s signature and book announcements are taking on new significance, while also mocking bourgeois taste. One 1838 image of a man and a woman riding horses in a forest, which appears as an artistic illustration, has the simple caption “HUMANN’S CLOTHES.”64 This editorial ad associates an elegant lifestyle with a tailor. In spite of Philipon’s wish to appear as an artist rather than a businessman, such innovations were becoming a crucial part of La Maison Aubert’s identity as a publisher that invented modern publicity techniques. Many publicity images and texts for La Maison Aubert emphasized the urban motif. One image depicts a picturesquely dressed man beating a drum with “Le Charivari” written on it in front of the Aubert print shop.65 Around him, stacks of coins with legs dance. The shop’s window is full of caricature prints, including one of a pear, from Philipon’s famous campaign of political caricature against Louis Philippe carried out from 1830 to 1832. This is a

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transitional image that combines a picturesque figure from a fable with that of a modern shop window featuring very current caricatures. A columnist for Le Charivari exhorted in 1836 that readers—“big and small children, exotic and native flâneurs”–rush to the shop of Aubert which was publishing “thousands of albums, millions of pages, and billions of subjects,” where the reader was “sure to find something from items of all different prices, for all the tastes, and all the ages.” A complete set of La Caricature was also available. Due to a retroactive application of the “September Laws” prohibiting political caricature that forced La Caricature to cease publication, Aubert was awaiting a court order in order to resume the sale. Whereas the collection had been selling for 300 francs before the minister’s intervention, the columnist declared, its value would soon triple.66 This column vividly depicts the shop as a destination for flâneurs and all classes, and turns Aubert’s legal trouble into a reason for investing in a set of La Caricature. A later image (figure 1.7) from circa 1845, depicting a crowd looking into Aubert’s shop windows full of prints lit up by extra-large and bright lamps, is distinctly modern in its representation of consumption as an urban spectacle. The images in the windows are no longer visible, because the crowd is so dense. The shop was also publicized as a site of elegant sociability in Les Modes parisiennes, a fashion magazine published by La Maison Aubert. The magazine’s “Fashionable Shops and Workshops” column in 1845 declared that the Aubert print shop was “the rendezvous of all the fine Parisian society,” emphasizing urban and social contexts for women readers.67

Figure 1.7 de Paris

H. Valentin, La Maison Aubert, L’Illustration, reprinted in Edmond Texier, Tableau

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Les Modes parisiennes’ subscribers received La Maison Aubert’s special publications like a sewing album and a Women’s Encyclopedia.68 One ad for La Maison Aubert in La Presse noted that the publisher’s albums would be great “in the countryside for amusing guests during bad weather” and also that the publisher “is the only one that specializes in albums for the countryside.”69 La Maison Aubert’s publications promoted one another. Paris comique (1844) publicized Musée Philipon: album de tout le monde (1842–43): “Musée Philipon is better known than we are . . . Musée Philipon is a masterpiece of spirit, gaiety, malice, and originality.” 70 This kind of tongue-in-cheek rhetoric acknowledged the sophistication of the readers who would recognize the signature characteristics of Aubert’s books. La Maison Aubert thus had as a target audience for specif ic groups that added up to broad sectors of society—men and women, Paris and the provinces, and all classes—by invoking lifestyles and values including urban sociability, shopping as an urban excursion, the shop as a spectacle, and current events. The novelist William Thackeray wrote in 1840 that just like in London, in Paris “in any lodging, magnif icent or humble,” the walls were profusely decorated with caricatures and prints by Grandville, Monnier, Raffet, Charlet et al. He noted that readers who gazed at Aubert’s “famous caricature shop-window” would be well aware of the excellent quality of the prints. Thackeray saw the French lower classes, who on holidays visited the Louvre, as showing an appreciation of art unknown in London.71 A description for La Maison Aubert in L’Album-revue parisienne (1844) emphasized its significant contribution to Parisian and national economies, culture, public taste, and journalism: this new art [lithography], which has . . . universally popularized the taste in and knowledge of drawing, considerably increases the commercial movement of France . . . Paris is the center of its original productions, which radiate . . . to all points of the globe. . . . Aubert has contributed to the prodigious development of this industrial branch, through the lowering of prices, the combination of lithography and journalism, and above all through the creation of its entertaining evening albums.72 This text stresses the global cultural and economic impact of La Maison Aubert which was producing no less than 4.2 million pages a year,73 and also highlights the centrality of Paris. Narratives about Paris as an industrial center were an important element of commercial modernization. In a comic essay about portraits in Le Musée pour rire (1839–1840) published by La Maison Aubert, Maurice Alhoy comments on the circulation and consumption of images. Of the thirty thousand portraits made in Paris in a year, Alhoy writes, many don’t resemble the subjects at all. A couple visit a store at the Palais Royal to look at the wife’s portrait. The painter doesn’t remember meeting the wife, and when asked how much he would sell the portrait for, answers, “The same price as if it had been done for madame,” and the couple decide not to buy the portrait.74 This essay suggests that a large quantity of portraits may

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be circulating in Paris through mistaken identities and unreliable commercial practices. The idea of the circulation of portraits is taken further by the caricature illustrating the essay. A man, holding an image from the physiologies series, which is in fact his portrait, is glancing half at the image and half sideways, his facial expression articulating the caption: “This face is not unknown to me.” The man happened to pick up a print, and it has his portrait on it. He had no idea that his portrait would appear on a print, indicating that his portrait ended up being published through means he was unaware, through mistaken identities or miscommunication. He may have rejected the portrait that didn’t resemble him, and even now he’s not sure if the portrait is his. The caricature, with two portraits of the same man, redoubles the idea of the reproduction and circulation of images, the layering of spectatorship, and the idea that commercial transaction is becoming increasingly complex, so that one can’t keep track of one’s own portrait. The caricature also publicizes the physiologies series. The idea that anybody’s portrait could end up in circulation by appearing in print and being consumed points to the emergence of a consumer identity based on shared popular cultural references, such as the physiologies series that took ordinary people as subjects. This image implies that people were becoming both consumers and subjects of consumption in a period of incessant demand for the new and the contemporary. This illustrated story is also a powerful reminder of the possibility of consumer agency. It could be interpreted as saying that the acceleration of the circulation deprives consumers of having a say in the process. However, it also seems to suggest that albeit with confusion and misappropriation, indeed these very human characteristics inherent in the circulation of images and texts, show that the circulation is not a mechanical process but one with room for human agency. At each step of the circulation process the consumer—the woman in the story, and the man in the image, both of who try to figure out what is going on—might critique, adapt or reject the process.

The Cashmere Shawl and the Cultural Imaginary Growing interconnections among print media, publishing, and retail enabled the vogue for an expanding field of consumer goods. Parisian obsession with current events and the new began during the July Monarchy. Fanny Trollope observed in 1835: “It is delightful to us [the English] to get hold of a new book or a new song—a new preacher or a new fiddler: it is delightful to us, but to the Parisians it is indispensable. To meet in society and have nothing new for the causette, would be worse than remaining at home.” 75 The fascination with the new and the current meant that some items were in vogue for a short duration, such as the popularity of turbans in 1837.76 However, some fashionable items or trends such as the Indian cashmere shawl, and polka dancing—popular since 1840—, instigated widespread consumption by the 1840s. Originating from Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the Indian cashmere shawl had been all the rage in Paris from around 1800

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among the royalty and aristocrats alike. The Empress Joséphine owned a large collection,77 and Ingres, Gérard, and Gros painted portraits with cashmere, which became the ultimate exotic symbol of feminine elegance and fortune.78 According to A. Durand in Paris chez soi (1855) the “cashmere fever,” which had begun under the Consulate, “reached colossal size under the July Monarchy,” and “finally assumed Sphinx-like dimensions since the February Revolution of 1848.” 79 This fashion, which spread from the upper class to wider sectors of the society during the 1830s, was powerfully inf luenced by print media and large-scale publishing. A large number of fashion plates, articles, caricatures, and stories publicized the exotic image and beauty of the cashmere shawl partly through satirizing and debating the fascination with it. Joseph Méry declared in Les Parures (Finery) (1840), illustrated by Gavarni—a fashion illustrator and a caricaturist for Le Charivari—, that the word “shawl” (le châle, originally le shall) makes young women feel “ineffable emotions that no other name could produce.” He recounted that ever since the actor Lekain put on an Indian shawl he had just received from India that morning, provoking amazement with its beauty, the desire for luxurious shawl in Paris was such that “if all the domestic stories about Indian shawls were written, we would have the complete history of women, in a very interesting set of thousand volumes.”80 It is notable that the supposed new spark of fame for the cashmere shawl happened at a theater, an urban site of entertainment that offered nouveautés. According to Méry in 1831 a shop window captivated women with “all the enchanting imagination . . . materialized in dazzling wool fabrics with arabesques of dreams and visions produced by the sunlight of the equator.”81 Balzac in La Cousine Bette (1846), set in the July Monarchy, wrote: “Ever since she had arrived in Paris, Cousin Bette had been eaten up with admiration for cashmere shawls and had become obsessed with the idea of having the yellow cashmere shawl” given to her sister, a baroness, by her husband in 1808.82 As Susan Hiner states, a cashmere shawl occupies a central place in the novel, standing for fashionability, imperial luxury, and marital bliss.83 I add that Bette’s “admiration for cashmere shawls” was likely sparked by the collective imaginary formed through shop window displays and other cultural and commercial sources, in addition to watching upper-class women. One (figure 1.8) of the large number of fashion plates depicting cashmere shawls, published in the fashion magazine Le Moniteur de la mode in 1845, shows a woman in a bridal dress about to sign a document in front of a lawyer.84 She is listening to a woman wearing a cashmere shawl. Such an image formed a narrative. Parisian women longed for dazzling effects that evoked the exotic, yet also sought decorative and luxurious-looking items that were widely advertised.85 Such a desire resonated with the perceptions of the cashmere shawl, which had begun to be manufactured in Paris and inspired a host of cheaper imitations. The fashion for the shawl bore the tension between the desire for the exotic and authentic, and imitation through Parisian and provincial manufacturing.86 Fashion magazines publicized both Indian and French varieties. The Petit Courrier des dames declared in 1832 that “Of all the perfections that can distinguish our French industry,” French cashmere shawls stood out as being superior

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Figure 1.8 Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 20, 1845 plate n.74.

to Indian cashmeres.87 Alida de Savignac likewise wrote regarding the Industrial Exposition of 1839 in the Journal des demoiselles that a Parisian shawl manufacturer “surpassed all of the most marvelous that India and Persia have to offer.”88 A cashmere shawl was an essential item for a marriage casket from the 1820s through the 50s, along with dresses, fabric, family jewels, and so on.89 A “shopping firm” sending marriage caskets to the province and abroad advertised that it stocked “diamonds, fabric, lace, cashmeres, a thousand objects of fantasy that comprise a marriage casket” as well as furniture and bronze.90

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The fashion columnist for the Revue parisienne wrote in 1843 that during a promenade between the Palais Royal to the Rue Vivienne she couldn’t “resist the temptation to go into” the shop Rosset which “India seems to have chosen as a bazaar.”91 After encouraging the reader to visit the shop, the columnist goes on: “This interesting visit leads us to brief ly recount the history of the French cashmere. . . . The French shawl industry has been so perfected, it allows for very modest prices while maintaining the fabric’s richness and solidity.” She concludes that all fiancées of “modest background” receive French cashmere shawls in their marriage caskets.92 This column implies, in its second half, that the shop in fact sells French cashmere. A guide to the 1844 Industrial Exposition noted that next to Indian cashmere shawls were French shawls printed at “20 francs a dozen” and “graceful scarves for 3 francs 50.”93 During the 1840s Parisian cashmere manufacturers engaged in combative publicity. Laurent Biétry systematically publicized in a variety of media including L’Illustration, mobilizing much editorial advertising. In 1846 he criticized the advertising campaign by Cuthbert, owner of the shop Le Grand Colbert, for announcing the sale of cashmere shawls for prices that beat all the competition. In Le Charivari Biétry denounced Cuthbert as a fraud, because from the prices he promised the shawls couldn’t possibly be made of pure cashmere.94 In 1849 he published a brochure demanding that all cashmere shawls carry labels, criticizing the competition for mixing in cheaper material.95 At the same time, increasing banality also took away the luster, which would lead to the eventual end of the cashmere fashion during the 1860s. A network of shops, advertising, the press, literature, and the theater formed a collective imaginary about cashmere. Consumers actively participated in this formation, made interactive partly through the large amount of critical ref lection on the trend. By the early 1840s a wide variety of advertisements were in circulation, inside homes, in commercial spaces and in the ambient urban environment. Brand-name advertising for companies like Maille, which had been advertising since the eighteenth century, became a common practice. Commercial posters and mural advertisements multiplied despite the regime’s fear of gathering in the street. Around 1840 big posters “with altogether suggestive promises” “literally covered walls.”96 From the amount of duty collected,97 one can guess that in 1846 about six million posters were displayed in France. In the early 1840s Jean Alexis Rouchon created the first large illustrated posters in color, using a technique similar to wallpapermaking. Rouchon’s posters advertised magasins de nouveautés, shops, concerts, the Hippodrome, balloon ascensions, entertainments, restaurants, consumer products, and La République, a revolutionary paper established in 1848.98 Mobile advertising f lourished in Paris from the 1830s, when sandwichmen— christened by Charles Dickens—and “elegant-models” of tailor shops appeared on fashionable promenades.99 By 1842 the annual promenade at Longchamps, where the Parisian elite displayed themselves in fine carriages, became much less exclusive and more commercial. In 1842 there were 4,000 carriages, including numerous advertising vehicles shaped like “pots, hats, mustard jars, ink bottles, wax cans [or] nursing bottles,” although mobile advertising was hindered by an 1834 law on the surveillance of newspaper vendors and criers.100 Advertising carriages were suppressed in 1847 as a traffic hazard.101

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Figure 1.9 Paris).

Scenes of Parisian Modernity

Chemin de la fortune (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de

Another new advertising medium was the theater curtain. The theater spectator was thought to be in a relaxed and suggestible state of mind.102 For working-class theaters, distraction and even social control were suggested as benefits of advertising, that mobile display of advertisements during intermission would distract spectators and prevent possible disorders, since the public would “find a vivid stimulation even if they can’t read.”103 From 1840 intermission curtains with advertisements were allowed in theaters, for advertising f lowers, jewelry, chocolate, and such. One (figure 1.9) with the theme “Wheel of Fortune” depicted dramatic scenes, with advertisements discretely inserted in.104

The Arcades and the Grands Boulevards By the 1820s the arcades, the Palais Royal, and the Grands Boulevards from the Madeleine to the Bastille—especially the elegant, western part and the colorful Boulevard du Temple on the east full of theaters—formed the Parisian urban core of consumption and entertainment. Twenty-five arcades in iron and glass were built between 1811 and 1839, the majority between 1820 and 1830.105 Many opened out onto the Grands Boulevards, were connected to theaters, panoramas, and other attractions, and were lit with gas lamps starting from the 1830s.106 The Passage des Panoramas (1800), dedicated to luxury trade and fashion,107 was “perhaps the most crowded thoroughfare in all of Paris” in the early 1830s.108 According to Amédée Kermel, who called the arcades “the summary of an

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entire city,” the Galerie Vivienne (1823), linked to the Boulevards and the most industrious areas of the city, was the most frequented. Kermel admired the aristocratic Galerie Colbert (1828) with elegant proportions, and portrayed the arcades near the Stock Exchange and the Chaussée-D’Antin, the areas of the new industrial and financial notables, as full of “kept women” and courtesans.109 The building of the arcades was a part of the transformation of the area between the Palais Royal and the Grands Boulevards during the 1790–1830 period.110 The eleven Grands Boulevards that formed a 2 ¾-mile long street are: Boulevard de la Madeleine, Boulevard des Capucines, Boulevard des Italiens, Boulevard Montmartre, Boulevard Poissonnière, Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, Boulevard Saint-Denis, Boulevard Saint-Martin, Boulevard du Temple, Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire and Boulevard Beaumarchais. The Boulevards, especially the Boulevard du Temple, had long attracted promenaders of all classes. According to Peter Hervé’s 1818 guidebook, by eight o’clock in the evening the Boulevard des Italiens on the west to the Boulevard St. Antoine on the east, “almost the whole extent, [was] frequently one moving mass.”111 The western portion of the open and airy Grands Boulevards and the indoor arcades formed a comprehensive, safe area for the pedestrian to circulate and meander, and the buildings on this section were ceaselessly rebuilt.112 Antoine Caillot in 1827 called the Grands Boulevards “the most beautiful, the most varied, [and] the longest promenade of Europe!” The worldly crowd gathered on the Boulevard des Italiens near today’s Place de l’Opéra. Victor Ducange in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (1832) described “a double row of dazzling beauties” at a café enhanced by “the splendour of gas lamps.”113 Besides the animated and varied crowd which continued to be the foremost attraction on the Boulevards, commercial allure was a vital aspect, with “an immense series of shops, decorated with as much luxury as taste.”114 The first omnibus line ran along the Grands Boulevards. The urban evolution of the area was propelled by the emergence of the broader consuming class. According to Kermel the arcades were perfect for those who walk, don’t like servants and want to save time, which is to say “the most numerous class of the society.”115 In the 1820s a new type of shop, the bazaar (or bazar), appeared. The Bazaar de l’Industrie, built in a new type of architecture, opened on the Boulevard Poissonnière in 1829. It featured glass-covered courtyards and freestanding stairways along three f loors of shops openly displaying merchandise, ranging from hardware and decorative items to furniture, of modest and fixed prices.116 Numerous bazaars housing up to hundreds of stalls were built through the 1840s, and the three principal ones were on the Boulevards Bonne-Nouvelle, Montmartre, and des Italiens.117 By the mid-1830s the Grands Boulevards became much more urban in character and equipped with sidewalks. In 1837 new gas lighting there caused a sensation. Delphine de Girardin wrote: “The boulevards are now lit with gas through the whole extent, from the Madeleine to the Bastille. It’s admirable!”118 Although it was not until the Second Empire, under Adolphe Alphand, director of the Municipal Service of the Promenades and Plantations, that street lighting would become widespread all across Paris, the gas lighting along the length of

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the Boulevards enhanced the festive atmosphere at night. Nearby elegant areas like the Rue de la Paix, Place du Palais Royal, Rue de Rivoli, Rue Vivienne and others were lit by gas by the 1830s.119 Although the period 1815–1848 has often been seen as relatively devoid of urban programs, a significant number of projects were accomplished then.120 The number of new streets built jumped from 37 between 1815 and 1830 to 112 between 1833 and 1848.121 The bourgeois apartment building comprising six f loors, with the ground f loor used for commerce, became common.122 While keeping the street under close surveillance, the regime of the July Monarchy encouraged commerce and retail, and undertook a significant program of urbanism and embellishment. Francis Hervé in How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 wrote that “Some of the modern parts of Paris are extremely handsome, and indeed all” which were built in the previous twenty-five years were. And “houses on the Rue de Richelieu appeared like “a succession of palaces.”123 The 1845–1847 period saw further dramatic changes. The English journal The Builder repeatedly reported in this period on the vast scale and quality of construction in Paris. The notice “The Embellishments of Paris,” it noted in 1845, “could be almost stereotyped, . . . as there seems . . . an energetic system at work, to make Paris the metropolis of modern architecture and art.”124 “In no city in the wide world,” The Builder declared, “have such striking improvements been effected within a short time as in Paris, and certainly in no other are such vast improvements projected.” In 1847 “whole quarters” were “rising above the ground . . . The gay capital of fashion, taste, and elegance seems to be rebuilding.”125 Such embellishment and construction would be overshadowed by the urban projects undertaken under the Second Empire.126 However, they also ref lected a dramatic expansion of commerce, retail, and urban enjoyments.

New Sites of Leisure: Industrial Expositions and Specialty Shops A new site of urban leisure was the Industrial Exposition. The first one was organized in 1798 during the French Revolution to showcase French industrial progress. During the July Monarchy the increasingly festive Expositions, accompanied by a variety of popular entertainment, held in 1834, 1837, 1839 and 1844, became major attractions.127 This phenomenon shows the collusion of the interests of the state, Parisian government, commercial establishments, and the publishing industry.128 The Expositions of 1837, 1839, and 1844 were publicized intensively via brochures, posters, and the press including fashion magazines and literature.129 The increasing importance of Industrial Expositions inspired someone going by the name of La Bouteiller to launch L’Exposition, journal de l’industrie et des arts utiles (The Exposition, Magazine of Industry and the Useful Arts) in 1839 in order to, for the first time in France, publicize through engravings industrial and decorative arts such as architecture, furniture, bronzes and articles de Paris—artisanal decorative items. In its 1839 prospectus the magazine declared

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that publicity would be “the safeguard of artisans as much as for artists, for the workers as much as for the writer, for inventors of machines as much for a captain winning a battle,” suggesting that the industrial arts deserve as much publicity as more prestigious fields. In 1844 the magazine reminisced on the enormous progress made between 1839 and 1844 in the exhibition and publicity of industrial and decorative arts. The art of engraving having being reserved for literature, in the late 1830s “illustration was in its infancy; even this word, since then adopted in our language and consecrated by popular success, even this word was unknown . . . [and] had another meaning.” Since then manufacturers stopped fearing the accusation of charlatanism, allowing the magazine to publicize their products, having realized that “publicity and charlatanism have nothing in common; that publicity is a thing as good, loyal, and profitable to the public as charlatanism is contemptible.”130 Many manufacturers underwent a sea change in their view of publicity, which gained a significant role by the early 1840s. In 1844 the magazine changed its name to the more trendy L’Exposition. Revue permanente des produits de l’industrie. Album des arts utiles. Archives des fabricants, manufacturiers et inventeurs (The Exposition. Permanent Review of Industrial Products. Albums of Useful Arts. Archives of Manufacturers and Inventors), emphasizing a wide scope and consumer products.131 In 1846 another illustrated magazine, L’Art industriel, was launched by the architect Léon Feuchère and published in Paris and London. The 1844 Exposition was a major turning point, coinciding with dramatic urban improvements and the expansion of retail, publishing, and advertising. Featured were not only machines but also textiles, gold and silver works, fine arts, lithography, pottery, furniture, and instruments.132 A guide to the Exposition not only praised national achievements in manufacturing but also the wide range of prices. It extolled the selection of textiles and observed that “[f ]abrics for all the fortunes can be found; all classes should be glad to obtain the most elegant clothes at the lowest prices.”133 An advertisement for a magasin de nouveautés published in L’Illustration underlined the “great inf lux of rich foreigners” who would “come to pay tribute to our national industry,” characterizing the Exposition as showcasing national industry and stimulating consumption.134 L’Illustration, launched in 1843, was a crucial new source of publicity for the Industrial Exposition. The magazine’s extensive series of articles, illustrated with material provided by exhibitors, marked the first wide circulation of large images of decorative products.135 The magazine also described the Exposition as an urban site of diversion and patriotic recognition of French industries. La Presse also extensively covered the Exposition.136 On the other hand, Delphine de Girardin wrote in her La Presse column about a visitor having a “nightmare” of being confronted with a mechanical jaw at the Exposition while trying to compose herself by looking at pretty fabric. She described a juxtaposition of countless items, where “each object seems to have the sole aim of worrying your mind and frightening your vision.”137 Her column indicates that women f locked to the Exposition which was intended to instruct, entertain, and guide consumers. A caricature album about the Exposition, written by Louis Huart and illustrated by Cham, Daumier, and Maurisset, also shows that the

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Exposition was a popular destination.138 The popularity of the industrial arts led to the opening in February 1848 of the Industrial Museum on the Boulevard Montmartre.139 After the establishment of the Second Republic (1848–1852), in May 1848 E. Philippe, a Parisian engineer, proposed the creation of a museum distinct from the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, to represent principal ateliers of the capital.140 By the early 1840s images of stores increasingly featured refined architecture, spacious interiors, splendid arrays of goods, elegant consumers, and central locations, in other words invoke lifestyles firmly set in the urban environment. One magasin de nouveauté advertised that the shop had “become the aim of fashionable promenades.” The public space of the street and the semi-private space of shops were linked in the delineation of the areas of urban excursion. Shops such as Susse, Duvelleroy, Durousseau, the furniture shop Monbro, and the stationery shop Marion exemplified specialty shops, most of which advertised extensively. The most popular was Susse in the Passage des Panoramas, initially one of the upscale art dealers founded in the 1820s. Marc Fournier observed in 1842 that “For ten years, the Parisian passes all his time in front of the Susse shop,” which attracted window shopping likened to a religious fervor. Susse’s gallery of paintings was a huge draw, and it also sold small statues and a large variety of decorative items.141 A successful publicity campaign by Susse from the mid-1830s shows the interlinks among art, retail, and publicity. It involved the caricaturist JeanPierre Dantan’s popular caricatural statues, with exaggerated facial features and tiny bodies. Artists, scholars, and politicians vied to commission sculptures of themselves. Susse produced a lithograph album of the statues in 1836. In Grandville’s caricature (figure 1.5) published in Le Charivari in 1836, a statue of Grandville himself with his initials on it is at the left front, and is the only f lattering one amidst Dantan’s hilarious statues.142 The caricature seems to parody megalomania. People can barely look properly at the statues whose sizes are not proportional to the space. The caption notes that the “Museum Dantanorama,” “Lithographed by Grandville, Ramelet and Lepeudry,” are available at Aubert’s shops in the Galerie Véro-Dodat and the Galerie Colbert. This caricature, which comments on a trendy phenomenon—names of entertainments ending with “orama” such as diorama, georama, and neorama were popular—was a part of layers of marketing and publicity involving art, caricature, and retail. A publicity and retail campaign like this reveals how a fashionable trend involved mutual publicity, in this case for Dantan, the luminaries who were the models of the sculptures including Grandville, the Susse shop, and Le Charivari. The image invites the viewer to visit the shop and participate in the merriment. It also reveals how publicity campaigns helped form consumer identities based on shared cultural and urban knowledge. In 1838 Le Puff, a vaudeville play, mocked an endless series of “small funny busts” displayed in shop windows that showed that “this is the century of monstrous geniuses,” indicating that the vogue for caricatural statues may have spread into shops and in turn been satirized in a play.143 Newspaper columns publicized specialty shops. In an 1836 “Letter from Paris” column Delphine de Girardin described Susse, Lesage, and Giroux as favored

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places to shop for New Year’s gifts, which made everyone “go out at this time of the year.”144 In January 1840 she wrote that “going to see the arcades” meant “studying the exhibits of small sculpture at Susse . . . dazzling crystals of Tyssot in the Passage de l’Opéra . . . all the splendor of the New Year, which make the arcades resemble the galleries of a palace of the Thousand and One Nights.”145 By this time gift-giving for the New Year was a firmly established commercial trend. According to Hyppolyte de Villemessant, the future cofounder of Le Figaro who farmed La Presse’ fashion column, Delphine de Girardin’s columns included editorial ads,146 so the above description may be one. Girardin complained in a column about the incessant solicitations she received seeking her “protection” for consumer products.147 Situated near other sites of diversion, by the 1840s Susse was vying to be a cultural institution, “a veritable museum [of ] art under all its forms.”148 A “fashionable and prestigious establishment,” it stocked paintings and drawings for sale and rent, small furniture, and other items “in prices ranging from the lowest to the highest.”149 In 1840 Susse placed weekly ads in Le Charivari for printing letterheads. It issued catalogues, offered portraits, and organized lotteries.150 It was also systematically written about in fashion magazines. Illustrated publications of the 1840s added to the collective redefinition of shopping underway since the 1830s. L’Album-revue de l’industrie parisienne (Album-Review of Parisian Industry) (1844–1845) publicized “the most remarkable establishments of the capital.”151 Attractive images of luxurious shop interiors, architectural façades and the fashionable urban environment showcased the modern shop as an arena of pleasure and sociability. Featured were magasins de nouveautés, La Maison Aubert, art galleries, specialty shops and other elegant shops, books and periodicals including L’Illustration, and manufacturers of carpets, chocolate, and pianos. These establishments were mostly of recent origins and emphasized innovation, fashion, and central locations. A shop on the Boulevard Poissonnière sold sculpture produced by a machine that enabled easy reproduction in various sizes, allowing the bourgeois to decorate with reproductions of famous sculpture. An illustration depicts a large exhibition salon where men and women are looking at sculpture. It is a typical 1840s image representing shopping as a leisurely and refined urban activity. The texts in L’Album-revue emphasized national economy and the dominance of Parisian industries in the world through history lessons about relevant industrial branches.152 The Guerlin perfumery stated that the “completely Parisian” perfume industry “made immense steps in the path of progress,” and that its export helped assure “the superiority of French perfumery in all foreign markets.”153 Fashion houses stated that the “tyrannical empire” of “this very Parisian industry” ruled the world with “Parisian laws of elegance and good taste.”154 The texts highlighted foreign sales through patriotic rhetoric, likely spurred by the 1844 Industrial Exposition, although until 1860 the primary market for Parisian manufacturers was Paris.155 L’Album-revue presented manufacturing and commerce as the “true force of the state” worthy of attention henceforth bestowed on culture.156 Such rhetoric revised the cultural hierarchy to the benefit of industry, commerce, and consumption. The 1826 Galignani’s New Paris Guide had listed art dealers under

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“Exhibitions and Amusements.”157 The transposition of culture onto retail and amusement could also be seen at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Réunis. Located in a “vast locale in a magnificent area,” it offered a “commercial exhibit and a permanent publicity in favor of all that’s new in literature, the arts, and the industry.”158 L’Album-revue represented consumption as reinforcing taste, status, and patriotism. It elicited fantasies of lofty lifestyles and underlined the Parisian, urban sphere of consumption.

From Boutiques to Shops to Magasins de Nouveautés The term “nouveautés” was first used in the early eighteenth century regarding fashion when merchants called “marchands de nouveutés” sold shawls and accessories, and it became widespread as meaning the latest item related to dressing by around 1800.159 These merchants were also the first to use the term magasin (shop), of Arabic origin, in the modern sense.160 A large range of readymade items of clothing, including cloaks, jackets, and caps, were available in the eighteenth century.161 The first magasins de nouveautés were opened in the 1780s.162 In 1812 the columnist “Cent-Yeux” of the Journal des dames et des modes declared that there are only shops now rather than boutiques, decorated in the classical style and with large glass panels.163 Instructions published in Miroir des modes parisiennes (1823) on the art of seducing shoppers included renting an entire building, hiring elegant clerks and young women, decorating the exterior with a brilliant display, and especially publicizing “essential announcement, fixed prices, extraordinary display of merchandise, selling below market price etc.”164 From the 1820s many shops used f lamboyant façades. Auguste Luchet wrote in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un in 1834 that “everywhere in Paris” “a curious battle of façades, displays and signs” went on for a decade. The inscription “Large Shop with Fixed Prices” and giant address numbers ran along façades. Expensive oil paintings functioned as shop signs. All added up to “unbelievable luxury which, for a decade, gave a fantastical appearance to the Rue St. Honoré, Rue St Denis, Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, and began the marvelous pomp of the Parisian boulevards.” All this followed fashion, requiring frequent changes. Many a shop owner in the 1820s, forced to liquidate or go bankrupt, “inundated” streets for eight days with handbills, advertising liquidation at the “Zodiaque, or the Solitaire, the Vêpres Siciliennes, or the Vampire,” previously trendy names. Afterward the shops were redecorated and given newly fashionable names from an opera, tragedy, or a “completely modern drama,” “all palpitating with actualité (current events).” Luchet noted that boutiques had almost disappeared in Paris. Exotic merchandise and impossibly low prices were widely publicized. One of the thousands of handbills that were “thrown incessantly at all corners of the street” appealed to ladies with detailed descriptions of fabrics and shawls from Arabia, Algeria, India, Tibet, and elsewhere. One shop promised to clothe a woman from head to foot for 90 centimes.165 The shop Delisle, established around 1830 at the Hôtel Choiseul off the Boulevard des Italiens, created a new trend by stocking reasonably priced

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silks and cashmeres and allowing customers to freely browse.166 Jean-Charles Sallandrouze de la Mornaix, the manufacturer of the Aubusson carpets, also established a shop at an aristocratic residence, at the Hôtel Montholon on the Boulevard Poissonnière. Whereas initially the public “trembled” at each step when the glass doors were opened, by the early 1830s carpet had “invaded the whole city.” Carpets were now popular New Year’s gifts like dresses and furniture had been earlier. Even the oldest establishments “with the most solid reputation” were forced to adopt such new retail techniques, in order to be trendy.167 Luchet’s observations show a rapid modernization of Parisian shops, competing publicity rhetoric, and the need to adapt to new trends. By the 1830s specialized areas for shopping consisted of the central area in the Right Bank and near the Saint-Lazare train station opened in 1837 (at a site 200 meters northwest of the current station) where wealthy visitors arrived from Versailles and Saint-Germain.168 Fanny Trollope observed in 1835 that “many extremely handsome” magasins de nouveautés were located in every part of Paris.169 The expansion of textile production between 1815 and 1834, and a new significance that fashion took on, gave a major impetus.170 Between 1810 and 1845 fifty principal magasins de nouveautés were established in Paris, stocked with fabric, ready-made items, and articles de Paris.171 Au Coin de Rue, near the Palais Royal, added a second building and a glass-covered courtyard in 1843. Ones on the Left Bank included the Deux Magots selling oriental goods and the Belle Jardinière specializing in menswear.172 César Daly observed in 1840 that “the need for luxury and magnificence has overrun all classes of society,” as decorators drew inspiration from “all past epochs and all the countries in the world” for domestic and commercial interiors and exteriors.173 Magasins de nouveautés aimed to attract “all” classes. The Petit Saint-Thomas, founded in the aristocratic Faubourg Saint-Germain in 1810, advertised in 1835 that it offered “fabrics for all the situations in life, the merinos of the small fortune and the cashmere of opulence; there, painted cloth for the grisette and the satin for the grand lady.”174 Slogans like “the biggest hat shop in the world” became common.175 At the occasion of the 1844 Industrial Exposition the Petit Saint-Thomas published the first, detailed catalogue.176 A circa 1844 image (figure 1.10) for Magasins de la Chaussée-d’Antin, “near the boulevard,” specializing in a “great variety of silks of all types,” shows high ceilings, spacious interior, elaborate chandeliers, classical columns, marble and stucco décor, and a freestanding staircase. The text emphasizes a “profusion of riches” attracting “an elegant crowd.”177 The shop was also publicized in the fashion column of Le Moniteur de la mode.178 A la Ville de Paris, founded in 1841 off the Boulevard Montmartre, was the largest magasin de nouveauté and the first to publicize extensively through illustrated advertisements and articles in L’Illustration, La Presse, La Mode, Le Charivari, and guidebooks through 1844.179 The shop claimed to offer “an immense outlet to the . . . great manufacturers of France” and a new combination of “extremely cheap price and always satisfying qualities.” “Enlarged and embellished several times,” the shop maintained French “commercial preponderance in Europe.”180 The shop was celebrated as befitting the capital of “splendor.” The shop sought

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Figure 1.10 Magasins de la Chaussée-d’Antin (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris).

to appeal to different classes and to families. One ad situated the shop’s role in the broader narrative of national social and industrial progress, expressing ambitious aims like the enhancement of social harmony by providing access to all classes— the “opulent, laborious and wealthy” families, “everyone.”181 A panorama essay in La Grande Ville. Nouveau Tableau de Paris comique, critique et philosophique (1842– 1843) affirmed that different classes of women—“the grisette, the petty bourgeoisie and often the countrywoman”—did not fear going into such shops.182 An advertisement from the 1840s for Aux Trois Quartiers, a store selling “hautes nouveautés,” blends old and new elements for emphasizing elegant urban settings and family-orientation.183 It depicts a classical architectural façade and what looks like a theater curtain popular in book prefaces. However, there are also new elements. The urban environment, represented through images of three specific, prestigious locales—the Madeleine, Champs-Elysées, and the Tuileries—suggest that the shops are a part of tasteful urban promenades, while an image of a family suggests a harmonious family life.184 The claims of magasins de nouveautés were met with much satire. Paris comique described A la Ville de Paris as a “monster shop,” “an immense hall that contains a supply of dresses, trousers and f lannel cardigans for all Parisians in case of a siege.”185 Cham’s caricatures commented on the large size and the hyperbolic claims of capitalist ventures, by depicting a huge, labyrinthine map to consult before entering the store, and a firm proposing to turn the Earth into a gigantic

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store.186 The Almanach prophétique for 1847 predicted that shops would become so large that an omnibus service would be established.187 Some expressed sheer dumbfoundedness. La Grande ville described a store that makes one think “you’re in a gallery at the Versailles.”188 Such satires were part of the consumer culture in which shops and retail techniques were represented through popular literature and art. Yet they were very distinct from simple promotion, since they also critiqued and thereby helped enable public reaction and demand to be important components of the nascent consumer culture, strengthening consumer agency. Appropriating the vocabulary of the museum, magasins de nouveautés invited the public to attend the inauguration of galleries. An illustrated ad published in the 1846 edition of Galignani’s New Paris Guide described the Magasins de la Ville de Paris as “a museum of trade and manufacturing” in its specialty, “as curious and interesting as the Museums of the Louvre, the Artillery, the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.”189 Rouchon’s posters for magasins de nouveautés were revolutionary in their gigantic sizes; one for La Belle Jardinière (1849) was 270 cm by 220 cm.190 This poster depicts a slice of an interior view of all six f loors and the glass-and-iron roof. These examples foreshadowed the Second Empire, during which department stores would evolve into “models of cultural formations.”191

Conclusion An image in Le Charivari published in 1844 depicts a women staring at a shop window full of shoes, while a man hesitates whether to offer her a pair of boots.192 The image suggests that the man is likely misunderstanding what the woman wants. She is beguiled by the display and probably does not want shoes that are not part of that spectacle. Claiming that women avidly read ads, F.C. de Damery, an entrepreneur, argued in 1847 that although “few women read political or judicial newspapers,” “six out of ten readers of the small press are women.” He claimed that since “women don’t have sharp minds” “they naïvely believe what they read,” and devour “in imagination all the pretty things that are displayed . . . just as they devour with their eyes, nailed in front of the shops on Rue Vivienne or glued to the brilliant windows of our arcades.”193 The view that advertising had an automatic pull on women resonated with the idea that women’s vivid imagination made them corruptible through novels,194 and the fear of advertising’s capacity to “provoke the ref lexes in order to be inscribed in memory,” as the critic Louis Lazare would state in 1853.195 Damery also highlighted the collective idea of shopping, widespread by the 1840s, as having to do with scenes of consumption. Women were seen as shoppers who get absorbed by window displays, unlike male flâneurs who seemed to enjoy such displays as part of a detached observation of street scenery. Modern consumer culture emerged in Paris earlier than widely acknowledged, by 1840, when representations of consumption multiplied, highlighting the urban context and associating products and sites of consumption with a range of values, fashionable themes and lifestyles. As a new urban core of consumption was firmly established and large shops multiplied, a new collective imaginary associated shopping with urban pleasure. The cultural hierarchy steadily

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changed since the early nineteenth century, and images representing scenes of consumption as scenes of modernity appeared in the 1830s. Although depictions of lifestyles were largely targeted at the middle class, La Maison Aubert and magasins de nouveautés alike aimed at “all classes.” The strategy of indirect persuasion, popular in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, would become even more important in the second half. Much commercial modernization occurred in and through print media and popular publications. Popular novels had a wide inf luence on fashion trends. In Flaubert’s Madame Bovary a new novel instigates “a craze for succulents.”196 Commentary on the phenomenon of the circulation and consumption of images, as seen by Alhoy’s essay on portraits, was a part of this new imaginary. Alhoy’s commentary, as well as the ambivalent attitudes of Philipon and, as we shall see, Delphine de Girardin and Grandville, who participated in the modernization of publishing, resonated with the public whose ref lections, adaptations and demands were an integral part of the nascent consumer culture. A main reason for the equivocal outlook was that public opinion and reputation mattered a great deal. Public opinion had its share of coercive and conformist aspects. However, the interactive process that was integral to the nascent consumer culture ensured that the education of the consumer occurred as the reading public rapidly grew. That consumers—dependent on class, gender and other social frameworks—strongly inf luenced the course of the evolution of consumer culture resonates with the view that the evolution of urban commercial modernity formed a symbiosis with industrial and economic development rather than resulted from it. New inventions in publicity were not confined to the newspaper or new forms such as the large colorful poster, but also emerged in illustrated periodicals and caricature papers as illustrations and articles with entertaining and ideological narratives. Until the mid-nineteenth century images in advertisements, due to the need to harness prestige, tended to emulate other cultural artifacts like illustrations, book frontispieces, and theater curtains. This would change as meanings of consumption would evolve again, eventually endowing more significance to commodities and giving rise to the representation of the consumer’s subjectivity by the late nineteenth century.

Appendix Laws and Regulations of the Press and Billposting, 1791–1852 In France for much of the nineteenth century the street was under close surveillance for fear of political subversion, and posters were subject to inspection before distribution until 1881, except during the Second Republic (1848– 1852). The logic of regulating political activity inf luenced the legislation on advertising as much as the claims of commerce and industry. In the wake of political or social crises, stricter rules were imposed regarding the distribution of printed material and all forms of billposting. Freedom to post bills, established during the French Revolution in 1791, was abolished in 1810 under

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Napoleon I. Until the passing of the landmark press law of 1881, a multitude of laws, decrees, and ordinances tightly controlled the printing and posting of bills.197 Posters with political content were formally prohibited from 1830 until 1881, except those printed during electoral periods. Other posters were subject to prior submission for visa at the Police Prefecture until 1881. Fiscal stamp duties were levied on posters from 1797, and on mural advertisements from 1852.198 From 1791 until 1881 white paper was reserved for use by public institutions, except when posted indoors. Billposting laws often invoked traffic congestion, safety and morality as rationales for control. Such rationales often disguised a fundamental reason, political threat ensuing from gatherings in the street. Posters, which had proliferated during the Revolutionary years, became uncommon during the Empire and the Restoration. In 1825, Charles Colnet remembered that posters used to be much more common, “carpeting monuments” and “providing delight to the most distinguished bourgeois.”199 Billposting nonetheless persisted, often ignoring the laws. The reactionary political regime of Charles X declared a new comprehensive law in 1829, to regulate the bills that “confusingly cover the walls of the capital,” in infraction of the Penal Code. The law viewed billposting as endangering “the safety of public passage, causing assemblies of the curious in narrow streets, difficulties of traffic circulation and possible accidents.” In addition, posters presented possible “affronts to public decency” or tranquility. 200 The regime of the July Monarchy outlawed political posters while encouraging commercial ones. In 1830 the French parliament established a distinction between the publicity of the press and the poster, reasoning that the liberty of political posters implicated the recognition of the right of assembly. They argued that the difference between the right to publish one’s ideas and the right to post was analogous to that between the right of speech and action. Subsequently, the December 10, 1830 law categorically prohibited any poster of political character and also established a fundamental distinction between political and nonpolitical posters. 201 It also prohibited criers from announcing anything other than the titles of newspapers, magazines, and trial judgments, thus aiming to suppress aural, as well as visual, subversion. 202 At the same time, the measure encouraged the rapid transmission of information concerning burgeoning “commerce, industry and agriculture.” 203 This mirrored the policies of the regime, nicknamed the “bourgeois monarchy,” to unfetter private entrepreneurship. 204 Intensification in police surveillance followed political and social unrest. After an insurrection by Lyon silk workers was brutally suppressed, an 1834 police ordinance required prior authorization for criers, singers, sellers, and distributors of writings, drawings, and emblems in public space. Anyone circulating with signs, lanterns, transparencies, or other methods of announcement for selling had to obtain exceptional permission. 205 The new regulation was met by riots on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. 206 Theater space was controlled as well. The authorities had long controlled theater space, but with ambivalence. In 1831 authorities reaffirmed theater space as public, limiting press circulation. 207

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Authorities also sought to control political caricatures, which f lourished between 1830 and 1835. Authorities considered images to have a more direct and immediate impact than written material, and the censorship of political caricatures returned in 1835 with the “September laws.” The laws also prohibited the sale of political pamphlets in the street and forbade the offering of any unauthorized printed paper to the public.208 Before 1881, the only periods when censorship of drawings was not enforced was 1830–1835 and 1848–1852.209 Gradually distinctions in types of public space were established for regulating billposting, for purposes of crowd control, traffic f low, and the protection of monuments.210 An 1841 police ordinance prohibited billposting five meters from street corners, squares, intersections, banks, and the Grands Boulevards of Paris. It also banned night billposting and the use of tall ladders.211 At the same time it privileged publicity for spectacles, balls, and concerts, reserving wall spaces to this end. The police issued multiple directives urging officers to remove unstamped posters. This suggests that many rules were in fact overlooked. The police lacked any standard method of removing unstamped posters, and the regulation of billposting was not systematic.212

CH A P T E R

T WO

Paris, the Capital of Amusement, Fashion, and Modernity

Introduction This chapter argues that by the 1840s Paris was cast as the unchallenged capital of amusement, elegance and fashion and that Paris became the capital of modernity to a significant extent. Paris had been the center of elegance and fashion since the era of Louis XIV, and through Restoration was frequently called the capital of taste and pleasure. However, new print media and the dramatic expansion of publishing from the 1830s enabled the rapid enhancement of the reputation of Paris for a much broader audience through countless publications devoted to Paris, visitors’ accounts, guidebooks, magazines, and other texts and images. The regime of the July Monarchy, along with publishers and entrepreneurs, collectively engaged in what can be construed as city marketing. This chapter builds on recent, nuanced interpretations of Paris of the July Monarchy as simultaneously including archaic and modern dimensions and undergoing some rapid changes in the 1840s, but focuses on the modern character much more.1 This chapter argues that the modernity of Paris, especially of the elegant areas frequented by tourists, became increasingly dominant in the French and foreign imaginary about Paris by the early 1840s. Based on underutilized sources such as the illustrated press, panorama essays, fashion magazines, women’s magazines, tourist accounts, and publicity material through which high and popular cultures intersected, this chapter emphasizes the significance of commercial motives, combined with government policies as well as French and foreign public opinion, in the generation and circulation of the imaginary about Paris as a modern city. Historians have associated cercles, as well as artistic, literary and scientific exhibitions, museums, and salons with sociability and class identity further divided through age cohorts in this period.2 However that sociability has rarely been associated with broader popular cultural and commercial trends. This chapter further highlights the establishment of a new consumer economy by the 1840s through urban change, commercialization, and representations of consumption.

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By the early 1840s the celebration of the Grands Boulevards, Champs-Elysées, parks and gardens, cafés and restaurants, as well as theaters, balls, the Louvre, and other museums and monuments, all contributed to the generalization of the reputation of pleasure. Some of the sites were described as “the most delightful” or the best place in the world. Paris was also seen as the capital of elegance and taste abundantly on display at the Tuileries Garden where finely dressed women socialized, on the Grands Boulevards with a concentration of cafés, shops and street spectacles, and on the Champs-Elysées, the site of some of the first modern, large-scale entertainment establishments. Paris also became a center of shopping rivaled only by London. To be sure, there was a gap between French and foreign, especially American, perceptions; Americans’ travel accounts from the period reveal a mixed reaction about tourist amenities in Paris. 3 Two different conceptions of urban modernity are explored here. The modernity of dynamic urban experience of f leeting impressions, associated with commercial allure and the idea of the urban picturesque, resulted in a unique visual culture associated with flâneurie. The second conception of modernity has to do with the urban planning emphasizing rational order and monumental vistas carried out under Baron Haussmann. Also analyzed is Heine’s contrasting between the flâneur and the crowd, through which he expressed class tensions. The notion of the flâneuse is revisited to show that during the July Monarchy women enjoyed expanded public sphere, in the realms of urban leisure, consumption, and display, and that the visibility of women was a crucial element in the dissemination of the representations of Paris. Yet the representation of women was also highly controlled and reveals that, while fashionability continued to be associated with aristocracy, it was the middle class that was widely represented. The launching of L’Illustration in 1843 was a watershed event. By publicizing numerous sites as destinations and providing a panoramic representation of modern Paris, the magazine was inf luential in the firm establishment of the new, glamorous image of Paris.

Paris as the Capital of Amusement Under the Restoration, although Paris was no longer the political center of the continent, it was the European capital of intellect, science, literature, medicine, and music.4 Paris was also famed for new embellishments and monuments, and for the cafés, restaurants, shops, museums, theaters, the Salon, balls, and spectacles .5 Under the Restoration there were 3,000 to 4,000 cafés, 3,000 restaurants, and 300 hotels.6 Mariana Starke, an English visitor, found Paris of the late 1810s “as much improved in wealth as in magnificence” with well-stocked shops, elegant hotels, cafés with every expensive decoration, and staging at the Opéra that was unmatched in Europe.7 Visitors were struck in the late 1820s by “light, airy, and spacious streets of modern Paris”8 including the newly extended Rue de Rivoli. By the 1820s the Parisian restaurant had offerings much like today’s restaurants, and until well into the second half of the nineteenth century restaurants were an almost exclusively Parisian institution.9 From the 1830s British

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visitors were joined by Europeans and Americans numbering several hundred thousand a year.10 The Palais Royal was famed as a singular site of pleasure, for gambling, courtesans, shops, restaurants, cafés, theaters, and street entertainment until 1836 when gambling rooms were shut down. From the era of the French Revolution when different social strata intermingled for the first time, it was the center of public life that connected business, information, consumption, leisure, and politics.11 During the Restoration, women of all classes visited the Palais Royal, as well as the cafés, restaurants, and spectacles along the Grands Boulevards.12 Until the mid-1830s the Palais Royal was celebrated by the French and foreigners alike as the epitome of pleasure for all classes, a city within a city, but also as vulgar and dangerous. An 1835 English guidebook declared that London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin, or Vienna could not compete with what could be found at the Palais Royal, “an epitome of the whole world,” but also called it “a little city of frivolity, luxury, and crime.”13 Fanny Trollope described the Palais Royal as an unmissable destination for visitors of every class, gender, and age, but also warned against its dangers.14 Gardens and parks were significantly embellished during the July Monarchy. Parisians of all classes had long enjoyed public gardens and grounds of castles and villas outside Paris,15 which had been sites of feminine fashion. A. Lemaistre observed in 1803 that at the Bois de Boulogne “the belles of Paris appear in all their éclat.”16 Lady Morgan wrote in 1817 that on Sundays the majority of the Parisian bourgeoisie was “spread out on the Boulevards, the Champs-Elysées, and the Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens,” which were open to anyone decently clothed.17 In the 1830s the Bois de Boulogne was a realm of high-class leisure.18 The most frequented and admired was the Tuileries Garden, which offered a view of the Champs-Elysées and displayed marble statues by the best French sculptors. Linked to the fashionable Faubourg St. Germain and Faubourg St. Honoré, by the early 1840s the garden was seen as a uniquely enchanting place.19 Jules Janin’s An American in Paris during the Summer (1843), purporting to have been written by an American—the preface notes that the original American manuscript was lost, requiring a retranslation from a French version—but is actually a translated version of Janin’s L’Eté à Paris, imagined an American traveler marveling at the Tuileries Garden as “the most delightful place in the world”: “never in all my travels, had I witnessed a more beautiful assemblage, under finer trees, surrounded by richer edifices, or in a more superb city.” He advised any stranger just arriving in Paris, instead of taking letters of introduction, to go into this garden, to find oneself “in the centre of the largest and richest salon in the world,” where the women “talk about fashions and plays . . . what is the newest material—what novel has made them weep—what play at the Gymnase they must witness this evening”.20 In Janin’s idealized vision not only is Paris the most superb city in the world, Parisian women are sophisticated, fashionable, and sociable among themselves and to strangers. What make Paris such a desirable destination are its beauty, cultural offerings, and cultured and attractive women discussing the latest. Janin’s text was also published in Les Modes parisiennes.21

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During the 1840s gardens and parks continued to constitute a crucial public space for women. Artists like Berthe Morisot and Manet in the 1860s–80s period would depict parks as stages of family life and women’s culture, crucial aspects of the modern urban public sphere.22 Precedents to such paintings emerged in illustrations during the 1840s. L’Illustration published an image (figure 2.1) of a concert at the Tuileries Garden in 1844,23 prefiguring the kind of representation of bourgeois leisure activities and enjoyment of a garden as seen in Manet’s 1862 painting Concert in the Tuileries, in which well-dressed men, women, and children enjoy a concert.24 Unlike Manet’s painting, the L’Illustration’s image does not treat the subjectivity of the people or depict individual fashion. In fact people are looking away from the viewer. The image is an instantaneous slice of the everyday, a photographic image conveying a sense of festivity and the enjoyment of the splendid site framed by the Tuileries Palace. The Champs-Elysées underwent a complete metamorphosis during the July Monarchy and by the mid-1840s became a site of mass entertainment. It had been a location of frequent public festivals under Napoleon, who turned Paris into a theater of festivals including illuminations of monuments and fireworks.25 Occupying Russian and English troops camped on the Champs-Elysées from March 1814 to January 1816. By the 1830s the Champs-Elysées became “the rendezvous of all the Parisian societies.”26 Fanny Trollope admired the Musard Concert begun in 1835 and costing only one franc, as the prettiest outdoor concert imaginable.27 In 1839 Delphine de Girardin described a crowded July festival on the Champs-Elysées, where a “double row of large glass chandeliers in three colors” made the night as bright as day.28

Figure 2.1

Concert in the Tuileries, L’Illustration.

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During the 1830s the Champs-Elysées and the Place de la Concorde together, initially “deserted,” were the subjects of the most important embellishment project carried out under the architect Jacques Hittorff. For the Place de la Concorde Hittorff designed fountains, candelabras, and dais from 1831, and placed the Luxor Obelisk in 1836, the event of the placement attracting a crowd of 200,000.29 Between 1838 and 1840, 1,200 lamps were installed on the Avenue.30 A wooded and dangerous area near the Round-Point was transformed into an elegant park, in which fountains, a Panorama (built 1838–1839 at the site of today’s Grand and Petit Palais), and restaurants were built.31 The park abounded in “games, entertainment, [and] pleasures of all kinds.”32 The Summer Circus (figure 2.2) (1841), a vast amphitheater in the classical style designed by Hittorff, was immensely successful thanks to entertainment including concerts by Berlioz.33 An image published in L’Illustration emphasizes the large size, the crowd, and the festive atmosphere. Also a georama, a neorama as well as the Café des Ambassadeurs and the Alcazar d’Eté, the first café-concerts, were built.34 The Mabille dance garden was modernized and decorated luxuriously in 1843, with 3,000 lamps f looding

Figure 2.2

Summer Circus, L’Illustration.

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a cascade of light onto the dance f loor.35 The dance hall Château des Fleurs, designed by Hector Horeau, opened in 1847 and attracted the elite.36 The first Hippodrome, in the form of a Roman circus, was built at the barrier of the Etoile—today’s Avenue Foche—in 1845. With a capacity of 15,000, it staged spectacles such as chariot races, bugle hunts followed by an orchestra of 100 musicians, carousels, tournaments, ostrich races, and balloon ascensions.37 The beau monde f locked to the Hippodrome. When it opened Les Modes parisiennes reported that “the Champs-Elysées have never seen so many carriages, never have any fête gathered so many elegantly dressed women,” casting the Hippodrome as a place for observing the latest fashion.38 A fashion plate of Le Moniteur de la mode depicted two women at the Hippodrome watching an antique race, in which a woman in a chariot is driving horses.39 Balzac remarked in 1846 that the ToutParis was favoring the Champs-Elysées over the Tuileries Garden.40 However by this time it was not the beau monde that rendered the Hippodrome fashionable, it was the other way around. Carriages participating in the seasonal parade of Longchamps increased from 400 in 1838 to 4,000 in 1842.41 The expansion of consumer culture signaled the decline of the exclusivity of the Tout-Paris. Another large-scale establishment on the Champs-Elysées, Horeau’s Winter Garden, opened in January 1848. An immense glass hall, it marked a major technical and commercial innovation. It was open to all classes, unlike the Regent’s Park Winter Garden in London, and on holidays received up to 8,000 people.42 Financed by a joint stock company, it was one of the first sites of mass entertainment.43 L’Illustration reported that on site were a nursery, a free reading room, a gallery, a bakery, an ice cream shop, and stores for gardening and furniture.44 Thus by the late 1840s, the Champs-Elysées was transformed into a center for large-scale entertainment. During and subsequent to the 1848 revolution a number of festivals and ceremonies were held there.45 Victor Hugo recalled a charity ball in 1849, where a dazzling “f lood of light” filled the f loor.46 There were countless entertainment establishments in Paris by the 1840s. Street fairs featuring charlatans, jugglers, and freak shows, which brought out the entire city, were finding increasing competition from attractions like the Hippodrome, the Winter Garden, the Tivoli Gardens, balls, café-concerts, street theaters, fairs, dance halls, dance gardens, and arenas.47 Such establishments were advertising through increasingly f lamboyant posters, including some designed by Rouchon, causing theater directors to protest repeatedly to the city administration that small theater posters were overwhelmed. In 1846 theater directors complained of competition from “spectacles of curiosity” such as the Hippodrome and the Theater Montpensier that were well established as “veritable theaters” and “spectacle concerts.”48 A panorama essay in La Grande Ville, written by Balzac, Dumas, and other famous writers and illustrated by Gavarni, Daumier, and others, described all the attractions on the Champs Elysées and imagined the first impression of visitors entering the city through the barrier of the Etoile: “a superb route . . . brilliant and varied carriages carrying gracious and well dressed women . . . and then the Champs-Elysées with all its magic, the Place de la Concorde with its obelisk, its pilasters, its fountains, its decorated lanterns. What a scene, and what idea this

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must give those who . . . enter through this barrier!.”49 This text bursts with pride for Paris as a city of magnificent sights and delights, which include the tasteful appearance of women. During the 1830s and 40s the most fascinating topic for Parisians was Paris, as ref lected in panoramic literature like La Grande Ville, which by the mid-1840s constructed a new representation of Paris, the Paris to be celebrated for its beauty, modernity, diversions and culture. La Grande Ville declared that Paris had become “the center of the arts, sciences, fashion, and— one could almost say—of civilization.”50

The Modernity of the Grands Boulevards The nineteenth-century city generated countless urban images, ideals, and dreams. As M. Christine Boyer has noted, much of these were visualized as pictures. Boyer, emphasizing the nineteenth-century desire to see the city as a panorama, “with its rational scientific models based on describable pasts and predictable futures,” argues that there was a gap between this vision and “the City of Spectacle, with its commercially contrived and theatricalized stage sets” of the early twentieth century.51 I add that in Paris the impulse to see and enjoy transient urban scenes dates much earlier, as seen in literary and journalistic descriptions of the Grands Boulevards. Here flâneurs enjoyed the visual pleasure of enjoying momentary scenes, yet also saw the Grands Boulevards as a panoramic whole. And much of the sources of the dynamic stimuli had to do with commercial allure. Two different strands of urban modernity which emerged in nineteenthcentury Paris merit attention here. First, modernity was about a rational, unified, and ordered space, epitomized by the urban planning implemented mostly under Baron Haussmann. This sense of modernity was associated with a vision of the panorama that emerged in the late eighteenth century. New perspectives created new ways of staging the city, in which architecture, urban décor, and vistas were the main attraction. These elegant visions with middle-class moral undertones turned the city into a set of framed images. This yearning for a harmonious and monumental city was expressed by César Daly in his Revue générale de l’architecture et des travaux publics. Daly suggested in 1843 that “vistas and aerial views articulated a unity and urban order” that escaped those walking along narrow labyrinthine streets, that “nothing is so beautiful as great horizons, immense landscapes, perspectives whose extent one’s eye cannot seize”.52 In Daly’s vision, a program of public works was to achieve a unified city ordered along a network of streets.53 However, modernity also had much to do with the fascination with urban spaces as providing a variety of momentary encounters causing pleasant visual and intellectual effects. This sense of modernity was associated with the flâneur and also with the Grands Boulevards, long viewed as an animated center of urban culture rather than an architectural site. When faced by a protest in 1832 against construction on the Boulevards, the préfecture de la Seine responded that the essences of the Boulevards were change and vitality. Unlike “an urban

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site” that required “protection against any alteration of its traditional aspect,” the Grands Boulevards, “the home of intense life,” were “in constant evolution and transformation.” The source of their “charm and renown” was the “continually renewed attraction emitted by restaurants, cafés, theaters, and shop windows.” This official noted that “from the architectural point of view,” the Boulevards lacked “any original or particular character.”54 On the Boulevard Montmartre in the 1830s a shop window displayed “six pairs of women’s legs suggestively appearing from beneath a curtain, to offer the luxury of their silk stockings and their jarretières.”55 A shop window providing theatrical entertainment was a quintessential amusement on the Boulevards. According to an essay on the flâneur in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un in 1832, signed “A Flâneur,” the Boulevard was his “homeland.” Typically a retired bourgeois man enjoying the “vast field for observation” in Paris, the flâneur’s essential characteristics were detachment and spontaneity. Of “kaleidoscopic” spirit, the mind of the flâneur was “undetermined,” “multiple.” He did not know where he was going to dine because “the slightest incident, a f loating piece of paper, a cute foot,” would decide his direction. This essay by a flâneur also drew in the reader as an observer following the flâneur in the streets, showing that the flâneur himself was an urban spectacle.56 By 1840 a new visual sensibility was articulated regarding the Grands Boulevards. Gaëtan Niépovié was one of the first to represent the Boulevards as a place where one sought out not only variety, but also visual and intellectual stimuli. In Etudes physiologiques sur les grandes métropoles de l’Europe occidentale (1840) he stressed a unique sensibility for visually refreshing ephemeral scenes and a wealth of stimuli which made the Grands Boulevards “without rival in Europe as an intellectual promenade.” There one felt “sensations and pleasures always new, always fresh. The sense of vision is also better treated there, since this long animated perspective is really admirable!” In addition to articulating the elusive and stimulating nature of the sensations, Niépovié also referred to a panoramalike conception of the Boulevards; the one thousand boutiques and cafés on the Grands Boulevards formed a “mirror of French industry.” The Boulevards were a destination for “some flâneur, pretending to want to buy but really only coming to look.”57 Niépovié did not identify himself as a flâneur; rather, a flâneur was someone who browses in shops, but nonetheless the modern sensibility he articulated would often be associated with the flâneur as an urban spectator. According to Janin the flâneur had the entire city as a theater including the Palais Royal, the “most immense boutique in the world.”58 Niépovié’s sensibility foreshadowed Baudelaire’s definition of modernité in “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863) as the transient.59 Whereas Peter Hervé in 1818 had written that “the English have no idea” of the Grands Boulevards,60 by the early 1840s the Grands Boulevards were the topmost destination. Francis Hervé in How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 invited the reader to promenade with him on the Boulevards where, along with some arcades and several other streets in Paris, “shops let for more money than in any part of London.”61 An 1844 panorama essay also promenaded the reader along the Boulevards, “the representation” of the city’s “movement, its circulation.”62

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Balzac’s essay published in Le Diable à Paris (1845) on the Boulevards emphasized commercial activity. At nine o’clock shops opened “their eyes showing a terrible interior disorder.” From two to five, the life on the Boulevards attained the peak, staging a “FREE grand representation. Its three thousand boutiques scintillate, and the grand poem of window displays sing stanzas of color from the Madeleine to the Porte Saint-Denis.”63 Colorful façades and shop windows are seen as forming a harmonious spectacle. The essay was accompanied by a set of panoramic images of the Boulevards. Cafés on the Grands Boulevards were “radiant” during the July Monarchy. Frascati had an Orientalist décor.64 When the Café Véron, “all in gold,” opened in 1830 at the corner of the Rue Vivienne, it was so popular that municipal guards had to control the crowd.65 Although Lady Morgan observed in 1830 that Parisian cafés were near-exclusive resorts of men except for the Café Tortoni,66 she also described them as sites of familial leisure. On the Grands Boulevards were “Hundreds and thousands . . . seated on chairs and benches, in front of the countless and always brilliantly lighted coffee-houses . . . Many were reading the journals, either to themselves or to their wives and friends.”67 Images from the July Monarchy show some middle-class women inside cafés.68 Working-class women frequented and felt comfortable in cafés, and women worked at cafés.69 During the 1840s the Grands Boulevards were increasingly described as the greatest promenade in the world. According to an American they were “the most magnificent and imposing promenade on the face of the earth . . . and the whole grand avenue is constantly filled by a dense f lood of population of never-ceasing restlessness and ever-moving turmoil.” 70 Foreigners were struck by the sumptuousness of shops there: “The lower story . . . consists of a plate-glass wall behind which the most varied riches are displayed . . . Most of them appear to be built entirely of gilt and mirrors.” 71 By the late 1840s shops, “right up to first-f loor level, were as resplendent as fantasy palaces” at night.72 The scenes of modernity on the Grands Boulevards were also experienced as “picturesque”—scenes that could be taken in and drawn in rapid literary or visual sketches—rather than fragmented or alienating. Affected by Romanticism, the idea of exploring certain urban aspects—especially medieval architecture, monuments, and ruins—were increasingly included in the picturesque repertoire.73 Cityscapes, prominently featured in Voyages pittoresques, captured the imagination of French artists and photographers.74 The “picturesque” also evolved as a popular literary term to signify colorful, curious, harmonious, and pleasing impressions. Parisian columnists frequently paired the “picturesque” with “curious” to describe street scenes, not only architecture or gardens but a whole encyclopedic set of urban pleasures, as in Paris pittoresque (1841), a sort of a guidebook. The pittoresque also designated a popular literary genre, invoking all these significations. By the mid-nineteenth century the idea of the picturesque was used in a wide range of descriptions of urban, as well as natural, scenes and often described momentary, curious, and charming scenes, as typified on the Grands Boulevards and further valorizing the street as a meaningful realm of representation. Whereas the sense of modernity as rational order excluded possibilities of chaos, the sense of modernity as ephemeral and stimulating urban scenery,

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which in turn overlapped with the picturesque, did not do so entirely, because of the very subject matter of the latter sensibility which included the crowd and the working class. The Boulevards were a stage for a variety of the “public” emerging in the modern city, including the public as urban spectators. The public included the working-class masses that were often rendered picturesque in panorama essays, physiologies, or L’Illustration. The tradition of observing in the street was rooted in the prerevolutionary literature on wandering in Paris, epitomized by Mercier’s Tableau de Paris and Rétif de la Bretonne’s Les Nuits de Paris (1788). The former, the first to express the sensibility of observing the masses while walking in the city, significantly inf luenced subsequent descriptions of Paris that aimed at exhaustive classification.75 At mid-century the ambulatory observer penetrating into different, unknown sectors of Paris at night was a popular theme.76 A source of fascination with observing the street was the tension between the known and the unknown. The voluminous literature on physiologies and types—what Jules Janin called a “complete character, a model man,” of which Paris seemed to be full of—, efforts at legible classification of the masses, expressed the sense that new types were springing up every day, that the task of charting different types was becoming an infinite one.77 The “infinite” variety of people on the Grands Boulevards could therefore be a source of anxiety about potential chaos. In this respect Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Man of the Crowd” (1840) provides an interesting example of the limits of f lâneurie. A man in a London coffee house, watching the street scene, gets fascinated by a man and sets out to obsessively follow him.78 Heine’s thoughts on the Parisian flâneur, written in a letter in December 1841, also show that the flâneur is not always safe. While the masses were often absent in the descriptions of the Boulevards, their representations also revealed class anxieties. Heine contrasts a flâneur looking at art in a shop window on the Boulevard to the crowd around him: Now when the New Year—that great day of presents—approaches, the shops surpass themselves in varied display. The sight of these marvellous attractions is for the flâneur of leisure a most agreeable pastime, and if his brain be not quite vacant, ideas will often rise when he sees behind the gleaming glass-panes the varied fullness of the splendid show, with all its wealth of luxury and art—casting at times his glance upon the crowd which press round him gazing at the wares. . . . The faces of this public are so ugly with seriousness and suffering, so impatient and threatening, that they form an uncanny contrast with the objects at which they stare. Then dread feeling steals over us that these men might all at once strike with clenched fists and smash all these gay and jingling toys for the elegant world, and the elegant world itself with them.79 Heine speaks the fearful feeling that comes over him. Heine, himself a flâneur, observes the flâneur and the crowd. He identifies with the flâneur at one point by switching to “us” in opposition to “these men,” the crowd, with a potential for a

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violent revolution. Then, after writing about the “people’s political discontent” and the “propaganda of communism,” he proposes to quit this sad theme and return to the more pleasing objects behind the vast plate-glass pane of the Rue Vivienne and the boulevards. How they gleam and glitter, laugh and allure! Vigorous life, expressed in gold, silver, bronze, gems, in all possible forms, especially in the forms of the Renaissance, whose imitations are at present all the fashion. Then he proposes “en vrais flâneurs (in true flâneur fashion)” to stop on the Boulevard Montmartre before an exhibited engraving, The Fishers of Leopold Robert. He praises at length Robert’s original painting of people’s misery as a masterpiece, and states that Robert killed himself right after finishing the painting.80 Heine, not constrained to the literary market conditions of French authors writing panorama essays or physiologies with their cheery, nonchalant tones meant to amuse, does not describe the crowd as a group of legible and picturesque types, and implies that the glass panel serves the double purpose of enticing the flâneur and keeping out the crowd. Heine’s narrative contains jarring contrasts, such as the engraving as a coveted commodity—reproduced from a painting in order to be sold as a New Year’s gift—on the one hand, and the story of the artist who died a tragic death, and the painting’s dark subject matter, on the other. By realistically portraying the crowd, Heine resists the narratives of enjoying the window displays on the Boulevards simply as a brilliant showcase of Paris. Despite his ambivalence, Heine implicitly affirms the usefulness of flâneurie, since he, himself a flâneur, admires both the painting and the window displays, and since both lead him to his ref lections. The flâneur as a leisured observer was an increasingly popular conception, although alternative notions existed. In Louis Huart’s Physiologie du flâneur, published in May 1841 by La Maison Aubert, the flâneur is a low-class idler. Heine’s frank rendering of the goings-on in Paris can also be seen in his letter about rumors that the Luxor Obelisk was not standing firmly on its pedestal, that it leans here and there, and one day “will tumble on the heads of the passers-by.” 81 This was the kind of observation absent from promotional material and guidebooks. Besides the Grands Boulevards, other notable areas of consumption were the arcades, the Palais Royal, Rue Vivienne, Rue de Rivoli, and nearby areas, all on the Right Bank. A German visitor exclaimed: “what a magnificent city Paris is, where the gods have their marketplace and offer their miraculous wares daily!”82 During the 1830s and 40s American men and women invariably mentioned Parisian shops in their travelogues more than about any other city. “Nothing,” one of them noted, “can possibly exceed the magnificence and taste with which the shop windows in this city are arranged . . . At the better shops the arrangement is changed every day.”83 On the Rue de Rivoli, “the longest and finest street in Paris,” an American woman wrote, “there is every amusement that can be conceived of.” She walked along the Boulevards for an hour accompanied by a man.84 Ralph Waldo Emerson, visiting Paris in 1833 and little taken with it, was struck

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above all by “the splendour of the shops—such endless profusion of costly goods of every sort.” All of Paris to him was “a perpetual puzzle to the eye” due to the use of mirrors: “Cafés all have a bewildering extent and the wealth of the shops are multiplied. Even on the dessert served at the dinner table they set mirrors into the fruit-stands to multiply whips cherries and sugar plums.”85 Shops aimed at a range of budgets. Ready-made clothes shops on the Grands Boulevards sold a complete outfit for a man or a woman for about 40 francs.86 Americans marveled at “25-Sous Shops” selling “everything that is either convenient or pretty” some of which would cost five times more in the United States.87 Some shops were open after eight in the evening.88 The only rival to Paris was London, known for its brilliant street life and shops with illuminated windows of immense length.89 By the mid-1840s monthly guidebooks, distributed at hotels, described attractions and listed cafés, restaurants, hotels, entertainments, and shops.90

L’Illustration and Publicizing Modern Paris Subtitled the “universal magazine,” L’Illustration, a weekly launched in 1843, represented the culmination of a trend in more ways than one. It was foremost a magazine of images and as such it demarked a new era of the visual news media. The Illustrated London News, the first illustrated news magazine, was launched in 1842, starting a European and then global trend.91 L’Illustration, like its English predecessor, would have a great impact on the formation of the visual news media,92 through the high technical quality of illustrations and writing as well as the topics covered. The founder Alexandre Paulin’s key collaborators were Adolphe Joanne, future founder of Guide Joanne, and Edouard Charton, creator of Le Magasin pittoresque.93 Some of the greatest writers of the period worked for L’Illustration, as did many of the best artists including Bertall, Cham, Daumier, Gavarni, Tony Johannot, and Marcelin.94 It covered Parisian current events including high-class social events, foreign and colonial news, art, decorative arts, literature, theater, music, and fashion. While aiming at the middle and upper classes, its emphasis was different from The Illustrated London News, central to which were accidents, other dramas, and news from the empire.95 L’Illustration shared with panorama essays a favorite topic: Paris. Until 1848, when its main subject matter shifted decisively to foreign news and colonial ventures, Paris was its subject of foremost fascination, especially contemporary, modern Paris. It declared: “What more fertile mine to exploit, a nicer theme to embroider than Paris! . . . all change, all is renewed, all is modified with the rapidity of a dream.”96 This article stressed both the extreme richness of the material and the speed with which everything changed. As a news magazine, the focus of L’Illustration was current events. While sharing with novelists, essayists, physiologists and caricaturists of the 1840s their commitment to depict everyday life,97 the main differences were that L’Illustration’s scope was much larger, and that it glamorized the everyday. Whereas modern amenities were a significant but not the dominant content of panorama essays, they were a major focus for L’Illustration, whose coverage of Paris was so extensive that 1,500 images from the magazine were

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republished in Edmond Texier’s Tableau de Paris in 1852 and 1853 with a new text. This shows that much cultural continuity existed between the 1840s and the early 1850s, in spite of political convulsions. L’Illustration functioned as a compendium and a mega-guidebook. Its run was larger than most dailies or weeklies. Each issue was seen during eight days by a large number of people, and then collected, and thereby was an unusually attractive, and costly, advertising medium.98 The quality of paper had improved significantly in the late 1830s, making L’Illustration highly collectible. L’Illustration was widely read by the moderate middle class.99 The format and content of the magazine’s illustrations reveal a significant agenda of the magazine; the images predominantly featured attractive sites. By disseminating images of Paris, a significant portion of which featured amusements and tourist attractions such as public balls, promenades, gardens, cafés, concerts, and other venues, L’Illustration publicized and celebrated Paris as a capital of amusement, fashion, and intellect, which added up to a celebration of modernity. Frequent in the magazine were sumptuously illustrated articles on sites of urban leisure. It showcased promenades, parks, and embellishments in the city, and emphasized leisure, culture, elegance, and prestigious institutions. Old cultural forms, such as museums, monuments, and theaters, were recast as refined and accessible sites for the broad public and tourists.100 Moreover, as a magazine, a more commercial form than literature, it published both overt and editorial advertisements, providing prestigious space to commercial interests. A major series of the magazine was devoted to promenades. In an exhaustive series of articles published in 1845 on the Grands Boulevards, where the flâneur walks “in zigzag,” L’Illustration highlighted commercial activity and history. On the Boulevard des Italiens was a curious museum of glass plants and animals in natural sizes, as well as the offices of fashion magazines. On the Boulevard Montmartre were “splendid cafés, . . . theaters, circles, reading rooms, art galleries,” as well as “superb displays” of goods and “an immense building” full of “coquet industries.” On the Boulevard Poissonnière, shops were more modest but still attractive. On the “brilliant” Boulevard Saint-Martin reigned “the fashion of the fixed price.” On the Boulevard Saint Denis were “beautiful houses, beautiful shops, brilliant displays.” The Boulevard du Temple still possessed “a thousand ways to attract and retain consumers.” On the working-class Boulevard Baumarchais were industrial ateliers, but the street was to undergo a “complete metamorphosis that would make it livelier, cleaner, wealthier, but which would deprive it of the poetry of the contrasts.” L’Illustration concluded this survey by declaring that “commerce also has its poetry” when it creates “a thousand sparks” of “perpetual fireworks.” Unlike in the provinces where “commerce is gloomy and sleepy,” in Paris “commerce is sparkling with life.”101 L’Illustration also featured promenades in articles on occasions like July Festivals, parades, concerts, balls, the opening of the Winter Garden, and the opening of the Georama.102 L’Illustration’s images of outdoor and indoor destinations were often full of people, whether they were bird’s eye views or scenes of an exterior or interior, whether they depicted promenades, concerts, balls, exhibitions, or institutions. A bird’s eye view of the Père-Lachaise cemetary shows a promenade packed with men, women, and children.103

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L’Illustration publicized numerous Parisian buildings and establishments and a great variety of events, constructing Paris as a visual spectacle as well as a journalistic compendium of contemporary events. Large illustrations invited the viewer to insert oneself into the scene, to visit the sites depicted. An illustration of a charity event at the Palais Royal is a typical image of an indoor event focusing on the general scene and the people milling about; it is a snapshot of a current event in a setting of splendid architecture and luxurious décor. This sense of immediacy and relevance was also emphasized by an article on the workings of the magazine itself, illustrated by an image of the magazine’s editors in the editing room, an image of the engravers’ atelier, and one of the magazine’s subscription offices full of a crowd of men and women reading the magazine and hurrying in to subscribe. On the windows of the subscription offices, in the last image, are illustrations from the magazine meant to entice passers-by.104 This image, publicizing the urban, central setting of the magazine headquarters, is similar to numerous advertisements of the period; it encourages the reader to emulate the people depicted in the image and visit the offices of L’Illustration, an urban attraction. The smooth surfaces of the illustrations of L’Illustration masked certain class anxiety about the societal tensions that would erupt in 1848. The images depicted the working classes as picturesque types, seen in the images for the article “The pleasures of the Champs-Elysées,” or as street vendors or participating in the carnival, and rarely as real people or the laboring class.105 One of the few images of the working class was in fact the image of the magazine’s atelier of engravers. Everyone is busy at work; the image conveys a sense of order. In all of the magazine’s images this sense of order is palpable. An illustration of the Chamber of Deputies showing a crowded tribune of journalists depicts a current event, yet lacks a sense of drama.106 The journalists’ faces lack expressions or individuality, and a sense of order and calm is conveyed. Later images of illustrated newspapers such as Le Petit Journal, focusing on crimes, scandals, and other sensational news, would express much greater sense of drama, through detailed depictions of acts and individual figures’ gestures and facial expressions. Unlike such papers focusing on the extreme moments of the everyday, L’Illustration, in turning the everyday into spectacles, affirmed the social order—through numerous portraits of notables among others— and only highlighted the bright aspects of life represented as sociable, elegant and modern. As such, its images showcased the modern surfaces of the city, yet its totalizing aesthetic betrayed a certain rigidness and artificiality masking wishful thinking on the part of the upper and middle classes for controlling the social order. Such thinking resonated with the political regime which encouraged commercial development, embellishment and tourism while suppressing political dissent and imposing strict censorship. L’Illustration, emphasizing urban leisure and consumption and de-emphasizing labor and production, recast the relationships of different classes to Paris. The images of L’Illustration served as alternative realities with a carefully defined public that also effectively fed the middle-class imaginary, yet it nonetheless also captured dynamic urban development.

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Embellishment, Amusements, Publicity L’Illustration publicized public works and urban planning projects such as projections of new streets and new buildings.107 Sites of featured urban modernity included the Deligny swimming pool for men with an Orientalist décor and a swimming school for women with a glass ceiling at the Hôtel Lambert.108 Although provincial cities were noted as rivaling Paris “with luxury, taste, and elegance,” they were, if featured, mostly seen as destinations for Parisians.109 L’Illustration focused a great deal more on images of consumption than production. Modern technology was described mostly in the context of publicizing new urban amenities. The new telegraph office in London, for example, was depicted as a place to visit.110 L’Illustration featured numerous exhibitions, museums, and galleries such as the Museum of Natural History and an exhibition of Chinese and Indian products.111 The Salon of 1844 was given wide coverage. Also featured were educational, political, or judicial institutions such as the Sorbonne and the Senate. At times the images conveyed a sense of exclusivity, as did, for example, those featuring luxurious “modern residences.”112 Some were images of elite sociability, such as the ball at the Hôtel Lambert hosted by the Princess Czartoriskis in 1844.113 The majority of articles however were devoted to sites frequented by the middle class, including the ball at the City Hall and the masked ball at the Opéra. Women, middle-class women in particular, were almost everywhere in the images of L’Illustration during the 1840s, not just at balls, concerts, parks, promenades, shops, and entertainment venues like the Winter Garden, the Georama, and dance gardens, but also at Salons, museums, galleries, exhibitions, the London Telegraph Office, lectures at the Sorbonne, or a meeting of the philotechnique society. The sheer number of the new and old destinations attest to the extent to which the public sphere for women enlarged at this time, although images of women as producers and workers were largely absent, except as picturesque types. Academic Salons were frequented by women to the extent that they were seen as sites of fashion display. A fashion column in L’Illustration reported that “it’s not only at the Opéra and at the Theater des Italiens that we can see elegant appearances; the Salon is finally open. . . . everywhere we see . . . all the charming processions of festivities and fashion.”114 This shows again that aristocrats were following the trends of fashionable destinations more than setting fashion trends. L’Illustration devoted much attention to dance gardens and dance halls in vogue, such as the Château-Rouge, Mabille, Grande-Chaumière, Enghien, and Ranelagh, represented as being accessible to all who could afford the relatively cheap entry fee. The Grande-Chaumière on the Boulevard Montparnasse was simultaneously a ball, concert, bar, café, restaurant, a promenade, and a miniature amusement park with steep slides called Russian Mountains.115 An image (figure 2.3) of the Ranelagh emphasized the animation and luxurious décor. Other magazines and papers also publicized Parisian amusements. In 1838 Le Charivari began an illustrated series on “the most popular public establishments.” The first one was Ranelagh which since 1826 enjoyed “uninterrupted prosperity

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Figure 2.3

Scenes of Parisian Modernity

Ranelagh, L’Illustration.

and vogue.”116 Images published in L’Illustration were sometimes reprinted elsewhere. The illustrations for Janin’s Un Hiver à Paris (1843), depicting attractions and street scenes like the Champs-Elysées, a masked ball at the Opéra, and a crowd leaving the Opéra, were modified engravings previously published in L’Illustration. Shops received their share of coverage in L’Illustration, through articles, editorial advertisements, and more overt ones placed under the headings “Review of Notabilities in Industry” or “Review of Principal Shops.” The shop A la Ville de Paris ran an illustrated advertisement in L’Illustration in almost every issue in 1843 and 1844. La Maison Aubert and a few others also advertised using large

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illustrations.117 Such advertisements shared with the images of L’Illustration the emphasis on leisure and sociability. The society column for L’Illustration mentioned various shops and items in vogue. The columnist noted in December 1843 that for gifts for the New Year, “The album and the keepsakes triumph.”118 The Illustrated London News noted that on New Year’s Day in Paris “[e]very new thing that taste or ingenuity can invent” was exchanged.119 Specialty shops organized exhibitions like “beautiful Salons of New Year’s Gifts” and an exhibition of Robert Houdin’s automata.120 An American observed that Giroux was “filled with fancy articles of every kind & description” including a room devoted to toys.121 A society columnist declared in January 1846 that on New Year’s Day “the biggest spectacle” is “Paris that gives the spectacle to itself.” In the streets, on the boulevards, at the entrances of all the arcades, in the windows of all the shops, what crazy vegetation of human heads! The crowd is bunched in thick layers . . . each of the thousand and one commercial and golden niches of our capital achieves . . . all the splendors . . . Paris . . . will offer you gold, precious stones, brilliant brocade, precious wood, resplendent metals, fabric stitched by invisible fairies, the most audacious devileries, the inexplicable chinoiseries . . . there is only Paris for giving to the whole world pretty New Year’s gifts; . . . Paris is so beautiful, ornate and magnificent at the moment . . . because the great city displays . . . the marvels that she’ll disperse tomorrow to the four corners of the world.122 Paris here is a splendidly adorned city that recalls Oriental fairytale palaces, a city celebrated for all the marvels of exceptional quality and creativity. The merchandise is seen as embodying the city’s refinement and as rendering it magnificent as a showcase. The merchandise also represents powerful economic prowess in the world that reinforces the status of Paris as the capital of fashion and elegance. The text also underlines sociability and spectacle, associated with splendid shops, people, and the ambience of the city on a special day. Shops and certain streets, the text implies, play a significant role in the enjoyment of urban sociability and embellishment. L’Illustration also published illustrated fashion columns mostly on women’s fashion. Fashion columns were f ixtures in many Parisian dailies as well, and Le Charivari also included color fashion plates several times a year throughout the 1840s. The popularity of fashion columns underlines the fact that fashion was by this time a phenomenon of both the elite and popular media. And it was French fashion that ruled the European media. The fashion column of The Illustrated London News was, throughout the nineteenth century, written by French women and was all about Parisian fashion trends. One columnist wrote that women in London follow Parisian trends but at least three months too late, so that in autumn evenings English women shine in French summer muslins and in the winter freeze in French autumn clothes.123 L’Illustration of the early 1840s was all about fashionable

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trends in Paris, and in its construction of Paris as a consumable modern city, it was a trendsetter.

Conclusion This chapter has explored urban change and representations of the modern aspects of July-Monarchy Paris, as well as the new ways through which old cultural institutions and amusements such as theaters, concerts, balls, and promenades were reimagined as fashionable places to visit and enjoy. The Builder’s observation that the “gay capital of fashion, taste, and elegance seems to be rebuilding” in the 1840s was a widespread one.124 The bourgeoisie continued to physically distance itself from the street and neighborhood sociability, becoming more private in a sense—a process that had started in the eighteenth century.125 At the same time new large-scale entertainment venues like the Winter Garden created new public spaces. The association of sociability and urban identities with consumption was one element of the broader celebration of sociability diffused through L’Illustration, fashion magazines, panorama essays, guidebooks, and publicity material. A new city seemed to emerge in this period, a city represented as much more opened-up and full of interesting destinations, a city imagined as safe from chaos and violent uprising. Women were given new opportunities for mobility in this new city. The expanding women’s public sphere in this period was not just consumerist but also social and urban spaces. Women enjoyed considerable agency even as women’s legal public sphere had contracted since the 1790s, and women would by 1850 be further excluded from politics and the marketplace of business and finance. Women were an essential part of the popular representations of the city, yet the representations, as L’Illustration’s images indicate, were very controlled. The celebration of Paris under the July Monarchy prefigured that of the Second Empire, when a massive city marketing would be underway. The myth that the modernity of the Second Empire constituted a radical break from the past was created in no small measure by Baron Haussmann himself.126 Much of what would comprise the modernity of the Second Empire, such as café culture, preceded the transformative urban changes and needs to be placed in the broader context of the evolution of both the urban fabric and the urban imaginary.127 An image of the Boulevard des Italiens, published in The Illustrated London News in 1855, depicts a building housing the fashion magazine Petit Courrier des dames and a café.128 In front of the building are fashionably dressed men, women, and a child. The image publicizes the café, the Petit Courrier des dames, the Boulevard des Italiens as an abode of the fashionable, and Paris as a center of fashion. By the 1850s this type of cultural coding and recognition would become commonplace.

CH A P T E R

T H R E E

Fashion Discourses in Fashion Magazines and Delphine de Girardin’s Lettres Parisiennes

Introduction This chapter discusses the feminization of consumption, the role of publicity, and conceptions of fashion in the 1830s and 40s, seen mainly through two sets of sources: fashion magazines the Petit Courrier des dames (1821–1865), Les Modes parisiennes (1843–1880), and Le Moniteur de la mode (1843–1919), and the collection of Delphine de Girardin’s “A Letter from Paris” newspaper columns, Lettres parisiennes (1836–1848). Fashion magazines, and fashion in general, of this period have received limited scholarly attention, and the relationship between fashion magazines and consumer culture remains relatively unexplored.1 This chapter emphasizes the commercial context of fashion magazines, highlighting the importance of publicity and advertising in the magazines. It argues that articles on shops, fashion houses and advertising, which initially formed a minor content of the magazines, became the dominant content by the mid-1840s. It also argues that while the high society—élégantes or mondaines—remained an important source of fashion trends, fabric manufacturers, fashion houses, shops, and dressmakers, aiming at the middle class, exerted a powerful inf luence on fashion. Fashion magazines were the first to redefine shopping as not only a necessary aspect of middle-class women’s lives—which had long been recognized—but as a newly leisurely one. In the eighteenth century and earlier, goods ranging from houses, furniture, and clothes to decorative items had been important components in the representation of family and class.2 Rapidly changing fashion trends were followed in the last decades of the Ancien Régime by aristocrats and a sector of the middle class.3 Editorial ads were first used in fashion magazines; Le Cabinet des modes practiced it as early as 1785, when all ads were listed free of charge.4 From 1797 the Journal des dames et des modes and other magazines published descriptions and engravings of fashion items.5 Visiting fashionable shops was featured in fashion columns from the 1820s as an essential urban activity for women. Fashion columns—much of which were paid advertisements—promoted shops, dressmakers, manufacturers and specific streets, and Paris as the fashion capital. Hippolyte de Villemessant launched his

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career by soliciting ads for La Sylphide, established in 1840, which charged 1,200 francs for twelve editorial ads.6 Fashion columns as editorial advertising caused little controversy, unlike literary reviews, which indicates that fashion news was not seen as serious news, and also that editorial advertising could be seen as a modern and worldly method of publicity presenting engaging stories. The Petit Courrier des dames ran fashion columns including editorial ads from the 1820s. English magazines such as Le Follet, The London and Paris Ladies’ Magazine of Fashion, and The World of Fashion stated affiliations with French fashion magazines. American fashion magazine Peterson’s Magazine published the plates of Les Modes parisiennes. Textual narratives of shopping were reinforced by colorful fashion plates. Representing perfectly and fashionably dressed women, the plates also functioned as an advertising medium. During the July Monarchy, French fashion magazines increasingly encouraged women to shop for pleasure. It was this, rather than domesticity, that the magazines promoted above all. At times the magazines associated consumption to domestic duty and virtue; the magazines linked the activity of consumption to the duty of devoting attention to one’s appearance by carefully updating one’s wardrobe, and associated beauty with virtue. However, the magazines—written by women for women, although mostly controlled by men—foremost celebrated the sheer enjoyment of shopping and delineated specific areas within Paris as the realm of women’s excursion. The magazines enhanced the reputation of Paris not only as the Mecca of fashion but also as an elegant city of luxury and taste exemplified by the appearances of women, reinforcing the message of other illustrated publications, guidebooks, and tourists’ accounts. Delphine de Girardin, one of the most admired and inf luential women writers of the period, under the name Vicomte de Launay for the first time made women’s fashion a significant subject matter in her unique and popular column “A Letter from Paris” in La Presse. Her epistolary column focused on new items in all cultural fields, including what can be seen in shops. While interest in everything new was not new, it is both the sheer acceleration of changes in new items and the varying meanings and inf luence of new items that characterized modernity. Girardin, possessing ambivalent identities like Philipon, was inf luential in linking culture and commerce and elevating fashion and retail to subjects worthy of critique. The advent of shopping as a middle-class amusement entailed a debate on whether shopping could involve flâneurie seen as a leisurely promenade. Girardin’s columns, which commented on fashion and a wide array of other topics from the perspective of a literary muse disguised under a male pseudonym, help explore the gendered constraints of flâneurie. Although a number of fashion magazines with color plates existed at the late eighteenth century, it was during the July Monarchy that fashion magazines devoted to women’s fashion multiplied. Fashion magazines were initially aimed primarily at society women, but from the 1830s were predominantly aimed at the middle class.7 Trendy areas of women’s consumption formed a relatively compact area on the Right Bank: the Grands Boulevards, Chaussée-d’Antin, Rue Vivienne, Rue Richelieu, Rue de la Paix, Rue Saint-Honoré, some of the arcades, the Palais

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Royal, and nearby streets. This corresponded to the rapid change of the physical environment of Paris and the fast-rising value of prime commercial and residential locations. Paris was a center of fashion-related industries, and the manufacturing of fabric and shawls, as well as cotton mills, were some of the most significant industries in Paris.8 Textile manufacturing was the premier French industry.9 Fashion was preoccupied with a strong visual component. Fashion magazines, which aimed at women aged eighteen to forty,10 along with other magazines for women and the young, made the most use of lithography for their plates.11 There were about thirty French fashion magazines by the late 1830s.12 Half a dozen of those launched between 1835 and 1840 would continue to be published until the end of the century.13 The number of subscribers for the most popular fashion magazines of the 1830s, such as the Journal des dames et des modes, the Petit Courrier des dames, and Le Follet, ranged from about 1,000 to 2,000 each.14 About half of the subscribers lived in the provinces, and there was a significant number of foreign subscribers.15 In the 1840s the readership expanded rapidly. In the late 1840s Le Moniteur de la mode was producing 700,000 plates a year.16 The readership for fashion magazines was small in comparison to major newspapers and periodicals, but the numbers and geographical distribution of subscribers show that by the 1840s fashion was becoming the domain of increasingly larger sectors of society. Fashions of the nineteenth century were essentially bourgeois, although aristocratic standards of taste continued to exert very strong inf luence.17 Fashion magazines followed the format created at the turn of the century by Pierre de La Mésangère, the director of the Journal des dames et des modes, which included articles on literature, art, inventions, industry and commerce, with a small portion devoted to fashion. Fashion magazines also included one or more color plates.18 The term “mode” designated not only fashion in clothing but also cultural trends. The literary magazine La Mode, created by Emile de Girardin in 1829, counted among its contributors such literary stars of the day as Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Sue, Balzac, and George Sand.19 Its fashion plates were designed by Gavarni.20 By the 1830s fashion magazines enlarged the section on fashion. The fashion column, placed on the first page, by the 1830s often took an epistolary form written by an aristocratic woman who observed scenes of high society.21 The Petit Courrier des dames, launched in 1821 by Donatine Brunet with her own capital, was one of the most popular fashion magazines until the 1840s.22 Les Modes parisiennes, published by La Maison Aubert, and Le Moniteur de la mode, published by the grand fashion house Popelin-Ducarre with the collaboration of Adolphe Goubaud, were both established in 1843. These were the most important new fashion magazines that started a new trend by including fashion plates with elaborate backgrounds.23 The former was aimed at the middle class, while the latter celebrated aristocratic style. Fashion magazines were more accessible to female writers than other periodicals. Women worked as writers, editors, artists, and occasionally owners.24 Most fashion columns were written by women. Fashion discourses were to a significant extent created by women in this period, which was unusual since taste professionals such as designers, decorators and authors in fields like interior decoration, collecting and etiquette were predominantly male.25

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Whereas in the late 1820s fashion columns were mostly about observing what aristocratic women were wearing in high-society settings, in the 1830s fashion columns began to increasingly publicize shops. While fashion magazines continued to publish fiction and articles on the theater, literature and history, new columns devoted to the publicity of shops multiplied. For the first time shops were seeking customers through a systematic use of the media. Fashion columnists deployed much ingenuity in encouraging women, including provincial women and foreigners, to visit all the trendy shops in Paris displaying supreme taste. French fashion magazines had numerous foreign editions, which were likely the best source of information on Parisian shops for foreign women. Fashion columns thereby delineated a new space of urban consumption for women in rapidly modernizing Paris, seen as the delightful fashion capital of the world. Rather than domesticity, it was elegant dressing, the enjoyment of fashion, and the pleasure of shopping, that the magazines stressed above all. Magazines showed strong favoritism for enterprises tied to them, which meant that some heavily promoted shops actually had nothing to do with women’s fashion. This was especially the case for Les Modes parisiennes, which systematically promoted La Maison Aubert’s publications and shop. Such a phenomenon illuminates the relationship between fashion and commerce as well as the dynamic of gender and power.

New Centers of Fashion In July-Monarchy France, fashion was initially largely about what high-society women were wearing, but the royal court was not a center of fashion. The court at the Tuileries was not known for brilliance or fashion, unlike what the Second Empire’s court would be. Following the 1830 revolution, the new king Louis Philippe, in his desire for “bourgeoisification,” reduced luxury at court. The Journal des dames et des modes complained that without luxury wealth and abundance cannot circulate in all the classes of the society, that the decline of commerce and beauty would be the result.26 Luxury nonetheless was present at court. James Colles, an American attending a ball at the Tuileries in 1842, was struck by the splendor of the clothes, including the queen’s dress, the whole front of which was covered by diamonds and sapphires.27 The centers of fashion, the stages where the beau monde displayed itself, soon sprang up elsewhere. The Tout-Paris at this time was an amorphous group of salons, societies, and circles without any clear limit. There was no one center but different groups of the elite that rivaled and crossed one another, notably the ancient nobility which distanced itself from the new monarchy, and the new elite of the Chaussée d’Antin representing banking, industry and the press.28 In the 1830s fashion columns observed what high-society women were wearing at balls, concerts, the Opéra, and public spaces such as Longchamps. The Musard Concert at the Champs-Elysées, the Petit Courrier des dames reported in 1833, attracted women from the elegant areas of the Tuileries, the Chaussée-d’Antin, Saint-Honoré, and others.29 The Boulevard des Italiens was likewise a stage of elegance. The carnival in January provided numerous occasions for display. The

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“Fashionables,” meaning the high society or “Haut ton,”30 attended twenty evening parties in one week.31 The femme à la mode was usually an aristocrat,32 but the term also took on the meaning of a woman devoted to fashion and not necessarily of illustrious origin but someone of means who had admirers.33 From the late 1820s fashion columns began to include more coverage of shops. The Petit Courrier des dames of 1828 included numerous editorial ads. Columns in 1832 on a fabric shop remarked on “the crowd of elegant women who already come to this nice establishment” and praised the shop for its “variety and richness that distinguish it in all the seasons and classify it as a shop of taste and Parisian fashion.”34 Increasingly, shops having nothing to do with women’s fashion such as the specialty shops Lesage, Susse and Giroux were publicized in fashion columns. The Petit Courrier des dames reported in 1834 that “this time, the period of New Year’s gifts was very favorable to commerce. Shops were in general full of customers, and, in the shops most in vogue, one had to line up to examine and buy objects one wanted. At Lesage there was a line of carriages indicating a great number of amateurs of pretty furniture.”35 The key term in fashion columns was nouveautés brought in for each season. What was new about the use of this term was its wider circulation in the publicity of the “season” anticipating the actual season. Delphine de Girardin observed in 1837 that women were following summer fashion in April.36 In the mid-1830s shops became increasingly luxurious, to the extent that, as the Petit Courrier des dames reported, shops which “we found magnificent four or five years ago only appear to us now as no more than adequate.”37 The most elegant shops were now found no longer at the Palais Royal but near the Stock Exchange, at the Passage des Panoramas, Rue Vivienne and Rue Richelieu.38 By 1840 the fashion column of the Petit Courrier des dames was all about shops. A new “Review of Shops” column, often five pages long, ran regularly. The magazine marveled that “the Boulevard des Italiens has been embellished with such superb buildings, such elegant shops, there is so much gold, mirror, sculpture, and frontispiece,” then praised at length the shops Thiébaut and Guichard, a “place of seduction and enchantment,” in which “salons dedicated to all types of fabric” were followed by “the prestigious night salons.”39 Such columns featured specific shops as being at the forefront of modern embellishment of the most magnetic of all Parisian locations and also as providing comfort and convenience for the consumer.

Fashion Plates The plates were mostly about women’s clothing, hairstyles, and accessories, with occasional depictions of men’s and children’s clothing. Fashion plates of early magazines such as Journal des dames et des modes and the Petit Courrier des dames depicted women often without any background, but the fashion plates of later magazines including Les Modes parisiennes and Le Moniteur de la mode (figure 1.8) were elaborate. By the mid-1830s most plates depicted two women, in domestic, ball (figure 3.1) or outdoor settings, engaged in upper or middleclass feminine activities, such as attending balls—including costume balls for

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Figure 3.1 Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 25, 1852.

children—receiving a visitor in the salon, playing the pianoforte, reading books or magazines, writing or reading letters, doing embroidery, sketching, painting, and promenading in gardens, parks or at country estates. Scenes of brides-to-be were also common, as were those of girls in dresses for the first communion. Rarer images included depictions of women at the Salon,40 at a train station41 or at a theater lodge, enjoying the spectacles of urban life.42 One plate published in Le Moniteur de la mode in 1846 shows two women at a ball looking at a man in a military costume.43 Images of fashion plates paralleled European portraits of leisured women depicted as reading or sitting at the piano. Christina Robertson’s

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portraits of Russian aristocrats done around 1840 show women reading, writing or playing the piano.44 Some artists, notably Ingres, depicted dress in great detail in portraits.45 Fashion plates were also derived from illustrations by costume artists. Fashion plates also inf luenced portraiture. A Russian portrait of the Shishmareva sisters by Karl Brullov (1839) remarkably resembles typical French fashion plates. The sisters are wearing riding costumes of the latest Parisian fashion and are descending a staircase of an estate, ready for horseback rides.46 Fashion plates encouraged the reader to emulate the women depicted and to imagine oneself appearing perfectly dressed and possessing and using the items depicted. They created intimacy between the mind of the consumer, the merchandise, and advertising. Plates depicting women looking at fashion plates or fashion magazines served as self-promotion and also underlined that fashion was a process that required continuous adaptation.47 Fashion plates also ref lected fashion magazines’ new emphasis on shops. The dresses, accessories, and hairstyles shown were the creations of specific dressmakers, designers and stylists, whose names and addresses were frequently listed on the plates. This was a new phenomenon. Fashion plates in earlier magazines had only occasionally listed such information, but during the 1830s this became systematic. Not only visible but also invisible items were publicized on the plates. An 1841 fashion plate listed the names and addresses not only of dress, accessory and shoe makers, a f lower seller and hairstylists, but also designers of corsets and undergarments, items that were invisible on the plate.48 The address of the office of the magazine was also indicated on each fashion plate, and for the three magazines concerned here, they were at the Boulevard des Italiens, Place de la Bourse, and the Boulevard Montmartre, the heart of the trendy area. Hence the plates functioned as practical, visual, and textual publicity for dressmakers, shops and the magazines themselves. Fashion plates thus sent two separate but related messages. The images represented perfectly dressed women engaging in activities considered as suitable and desirable in domestic or social settings, although it was very rare for the activity of shopping itself to be depicted on the plates. The list of designers and shops on the plates, on the other hand, suggested that women shop. It was the fashion columns that filled the gap, representing shopping as a leisurely and essential urban activity and implying that in order to achieve the fantasy of the perfect dressing in perfect surroundings, one must go shopping. In this period the perception of exactly who set fashion trends was increasingly in f lux. Manufacturers in provincial cities such as Lyon were creating new textiles that were consumed by increasingly broader sectors of society, but satisfaction with existing demands could perpetuate the production of similar styles and stall innovation.49

Les Modes parisiennes and Urban Consumption Les Modes parisiennes was launched in 1843 by La Maison Aubert. The link between this publisher and the fashion magazine, which has received little scholarly notice, redoubles the cultural and economical interconnection among retail,

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fashion, publishing, and advertising. Philipon was no stranger to fashion. La Maison Aubert published a large number of fashion plates, and Le Charivari, which included a short fashion column, occasionally included color fashion plates from the late 1830s which included names and addresses of shops and designers. The first-page fashion column of Les Modes parisiennes often guided the reader to walk along with the columnist to visit fashionable shops in Paris. The columnist, Loménie de V., described the first week of 1845 as a happy, full week of gift-buying, social visits and gift-giving. After visiting the shop of “Madame Lecler, of an established reputation,” she went to “Escalier de cristal, the only shop of renown that has survived the old reputation of the Palais Royal.” The columnist dwelled for a while praising this shop, moved on to describe how she went in search of toiletries and then to see “the silks and velvets of the SaintBarbe shop on 351 Rue Saint-Honoré . . . which possesses the richest and the prettiest new items.” She continues: “After leaving this shop we went most often to the Boulevard, to choose f lowers . . . and then, arriving at the corner of the Rue Laffitte, . . . at Lejeune’s boutique, supplied ourselves with gloves. Lejeune makes very nice ones, and this shop is fashionable.”50 Such a representation of a joyous yet diligent excursion through the most fashionable shops of Paris was to elicit the readers’ desire to follow the steps of the columnist and visit the shops in vogue. The magazine represented good taste as largely separated from luxury, or aristocratic, dressing. Its fashion column tended to be devoted to new trends devised by dressmakers, and what was seen in shops, rather than observation of aristocratic gatherings.51 By the 1840s fashion was being established as a creative trend with a variety based on an ephemeral norm. Each issue included one color plate depicting two women modeling outfits, who appeared upper-middle class by dress and setting, with occasional aristocratic dresses and settings. The plates set them in interior settings such as salons and balls, or in the outdoor as gardens, parks, the country estate, and occasionally in more urban settings. Men and children were depicted occasionally. One plate, published in 1849, during the Second Republic, is an image of a woman looking at clothes in a shop.52 Les Modes parisiennes, as did the Petit Courrier des dames increasingly, strongly suggested that everyone could achieve the art of fashionable dressing by frequenting specific shops. The magazine sought to guide and shape women’s taste, represent fashion and consumption as newly indispensable aspects of cultivated women’s lives, and represent the central commercial area in Paris as the realm of women’s excursions. Loménie de V. asserted that clothing for women was a “grand affair” requiring diligence, and for that reason women did not flâne at leisure. While both women and men went to the Grands Boulevards, men “ flâne with no other aim than that of flânerie, . . . you go read papers or light up a cigar, throwing distracted side glances,” whereas for a woman, “it’s all very different! You run at this morning hour to shop and to make purchases.53 Here the columnist got around the issue of women’s right to flâne by emphasizing time constraints. Likewise, Balzac wrote in 1845 that refined women promenading on the Grands Boulevards “walk fast without recognizing anyone.”54 However, Les Modes parisiennes’s representation of shopping as an obligation does not exclude the view of shopping as an activity of leisurely amusement that

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also increased women’s inf luence both at home and in retail and production. As Whitney Walton notes, consumption was “both a source and a characteristic of power,”55 although fashion also had a constraining inf luence. Emma Bovary in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, published originally from 1856 to 1857 and set during the 1830s and 40s, imagines walking along the Boulevards. She lives in Yonville and follows the latest Parisian fashion. With a map of Paris, she imagines “stopping at every corner” on the Boulevards. She reads women’s magazines: “Never missing a single detail, she devoured all the accounts of first nights, race meetings, and evening parties; she was fascinated by the debut of a singer, or the opening of a new shop. She knew about the latest fashions, the addresses of the good tailors, the right days for the Bois or the Opéra.”56 Bovary’s fantasy is about a “vicarious gratification of her own secret desires.”57 Following the kinds of walks that fashion magazines provided at the time, it would not only be about visiting the most fashionable shops, but would also be about looking at her fashionable best on the most observed stage. Her fantasy is about passive consumption, but could also be about remaking herself through imagined participation in boulevard culture, which inspired creativity and conformity simultaneously. A close look at Les Modes parisiennes reveals that shops must have paid to be mentioned in the magazine, given the frequency with which the same names cropped up systematically for periods of time while others were never mentioned. Although the shops Giroux and Susse were similar, only Giroux was mentioned, numerous times. At times an item was mentioned repeatedly in the same issue in different columns. Many such items had nothing to do with fashion. For example a nearly full-page article for Mélisse des Carmes tonic water, deemed good for dizziness, vapors, apoplexy, lethargy, weakness, and others, mentioned the name of the product seven times, the name of the inventor four times, and the shop’s address twice, which would seem excessive for an article.58 The shop publicized in Les Modes parisiennes as being the most à la mode was none other than La Maison Aubert, “the rendezvous of all the fine Parisian society.”59 The magazine insisted that such publicity was disinterested recommendations: “in order for a fashion magazine to present the aim of utility, it should necessarily indicate shops and ateliers that merit the most confidence.”60 One reason why hidden ads were widely used was that the form of recommendation seemed less vulgar than explicit advertising. When the Journal des dames et des modes began to run numerous overt ads in 1837, many upper-class readers ceased subscription, believing that the magazine should maintain an artistic and literary form of journalism.61 Les Modes parisiennes also offered giveaways like a sewing album created by artists of La Maison Aubert and a Women’s Encyclopedia which addressed practical subjects of the domestic arts, subjects rarely treated in fashion magazines.62 It was also the fashion magazine that was marketed the most like newspapers or books aimed at a popular readership.

Le Moniteur de la mode and Aristocratic Style As its subtitle “Journal du grand monde” indicates, Le Moniteur de la mode celebrated aristocratic, “elegant” life, as it declared in the first issue.63 Its fashion

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plates (figures 1.8 and 3.1), all created by Jules David, tended to feature luxurious clothes and accessories against grandiose, aristocratic backdrops. One rare image depicted a Frenchwoman and a black maid in an African headdress holding a small child.64 Widely distributed in Europe, it was one of the few fashion magazines advertised in L’Illustration.65 Eight foreign editions were published in the second half of the nineteenth century including a bilingual French-English edition and a Franco-American edition published from 1851.66 Contributors to the magazine included Jules Janin and Henry Murger. Despite its aristocratic cachet, the magazine, no less than any other fashion magazine, promoted shops and dressmakers, as well as Paris as the fashion capital, through its fashion plates, fashion columns and other articles. The publisher of the magazine was the Popelin-Ducarre fashion house, run by Madame Popelin-Ducarre, who occasionally wrote the fashion column for the magazine. Popelin-Ducarre was where the English designer Charles Frederick Worth, who would become the first haute couturier, did his initial training.67 A major aim of Le Moniteur de la mode was publicity for the merchandise of the fashion house. The plates of Le Moniteur de la mode, all of which were created by Jules David, mostly featured clothes from Popelin-Ducarre, and every issue of the magazine mentioned the fashion house several times. According to one column on a beautiful day the Champs-Elysées resembles a panorama: “The prettiest and freshest clothes rival in elegance, and the woman of the world seems happy to show how much grace and taste Madame Popelin-Ducarre’s fineries demonstrate.”68 Another column read: “For royal receptions, embassy balls, and all the princely festivals, there is no elegant woman who does not trust Popelin-Ducarre for creating her clothes.”69 While the magazine’s fashion column was largely reserved for new trends in fashion, a variety of columns titled “Review of Shops,” “Review of New Items,” “Promenades,” “New Year’s Gifts,” and “Recommended Shops” systematically publicized shops. The range of shops featured did not differ significantly from that for Les Modes parisiennes, which indicates that the readerships aimed at for both magazines were in fact similar. The columnist Vicomtesse de Renneville strongly encouraged women to visit shops. Besides the Tuileries or the ChampsElysées, the columnist wrote, true pleasure of promenade could be had by visiting the grand shops of the capital, that “when you see pretty creations, all in such nice taste and elegance, your mind is gracefully distracted. It is impossible to enter into the salons of Madame Popelin-Ducarre without feeling true joy.” 70 Vicomtesse de Renneville encouraged provincial and foreign women to visit Paris, by writing a series of epistolary columns about her sixteen-year-old cousin Caroline visiting from Limousin. After excursions to grandes modistes and shops which continuously marvel her, the innocent provincial girl is transformed into a “true Parisienne” with impeccable taste.71 At the Opéra, after initially being “dumbfounded” by the bright lights and a profusion of rich clothes, she is able to tell whose toilettes are in good taste.72 Fashion plates seemed to illustrate the story of Caroline’s transformation. One episode used the story of an unnamed marquise with a splendid bearing and romantic sentiments in order to promote shops. The marquise, whose face showed dreamy melancholy, indicating that she

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was suffering from love, was wearing a dress from Popelin-Ducarre and shoes from Duffossée, and on her table were objects from the shop Marion.73 While it is difficult to say if any part of these episodes was true, it appears that some aristocrats did not mind rendering aristocratic cachet for commercial purposes. At the same time they were never depicted in images as shopping in this period. There was a distinct gap between what was visually representable as opposed to textually representable, and it was through fashion columns that aristocracy and commerce were associated. In December the columnist wrote of “unheard-of luxury that Paris deploys” for the New-Year’s gift-shopping season, and of the frenetic pace of the series of parties, balls and receptions for the New Year.74 She wrote about a lace that cost 250 francs per meter and a dress that cost 10,000 francs.75 However, besides luxury shops, increasingly magasins de nouveautés received more coverage in the magazine. Paris was undergoing a “grand commercial revolution” in which specialties no longer existed and shops that “possess everything” were multiplying.76 The columnist wrote that the shop Magasins de la Chaussée-d’Antin was visited by “all the elegant women in Paris” and that there fabrics with “completely aristocratic style” were affordably priced.77 The shop Persan was promoted as being “as much a shop of choice for a noble and elegant woman as for the simple bourgeois woman.” 78 Soon there were so many varieties of shops that the columnist declared that “fashion is so multiple.”79 Such descriptions ref lected the shops’ strategy to attract all classes as well as the rapidly transforming standards of retail and fashion so that fashion no longer had clearly delimited sources but had myriad manifestations.

Paris as the Fashion Capital French fashion magazines represented Paris as the fashion capital, and Parisian women as arbiters of taste. One might imagine that the magazines aimed at the middle class would emphasize domesticity much more than the one aimed at the upper class. That was not the case. Rather than the ideas of making the home beautiful and comfortable or aimed at fulfilling duties of the housewife, it was shopping as a pleasurable activity, and dress as an expression of one’s taste, that dominated the magazines. Specific commercial interests, be it La Maison Aubert or the Popelin-Ducarre fashion house, provided the focus of the magazines’ promotional efforts. A sense of national pride helped promote French textiles. Le Bon Ton claimed in 1839 that French textile printing both for home decoration and for clothing, “imitated from India, and for which we are certain that we have no other competitor apart from our ‘primitive masters,’ has increased to the most vast proportions.”80 By the 1840s Paris was widely represented as the capital of a fashion empire.81 English fashion magazines and consumers agreed. The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons noted that Paris was “the earthly paradise of pretty women.”82 English fashion columns were full of French terms: “Robe redingote of dark poussière gros de naples; the corsage is quite high behind, and moderately

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open in front. Demi-large sleeve. A row of bouillonnée of a new form is laid en tablier on the skirt, and disposed en pelerine on the corsage.”83 The Illustrated London News’ French fashion columnist wrote about the album shown to customers at Gazelin in Paris, displaying “silks in all shades, colours, and diversity of patterns,” “a hundred dresses to choose from for a ball . . . another hundred for dinner parties and theatres . . . ,” for a promenade, for visits, for meetings at the royal court, negligées, day dresses, for young girls, and so on. Such occasions represented “all the multifarious distinctions into which the Parisian belle subdivides the one dowdy word ‘dress’ of the sober-minded and badlydressed Englishwoman.”84 English magazines, publishing only a few ads, did not promote shops the same way the French magazines did. They mostly derived, or copied, their fashion plates from French magazines and did not indicate the source of clothes featured, nor did they feature articles about specific shops.85

Lettres parisiennes (1836–1848) Delphine de Girardin in her column “A Letter from Paris,” in a fragmented style, treated an array of what she considered à la mode—daily events, new trends, politics, theater, literature, spectacles and fashion. The Paris of her columns was a series of phenomena.86 Well known for her literary talents and beauty, at her salon from 1834 to 1839 gathered the principal French romantic authors.87 Lettres parisiennes—the collection of her columns—is her best known work, yet it has hardly been studied in depth. Sometimes her topic was literally the trends seen in the street. She observed in 1837 that “these days in the streets there are more monkeys than there are pedestrians.” She complained that it was unpleasant to see a monkey that “you don’t know at all” on her balcony and while walking in the street have a monkey leap onto her shoulder.88 Her husband Emile de Girardin was no stranger to fashion of all sorts, as can be seen in the titles of his magazines La Mode and La Vogue, the latter launched in 1831. He made his fortune by establishing and selling magazines and other periodicals. Delphine de Girardin’s twentieth-century editors consider her to have invented the newspaper column.89 Emile de Girardin had asked Balzac for a “Letter about Paris,” a column about current trends, that appeared in 1830 and 31. This style of column was first used in the English magazines Tatler and The Spectator from around 1710, and for La Presse he turned to his wife, for which she was paid 6,000 francs a year.90 Certainly, Girardin’s column was the first French newspaper column to aim at a panoramic coverage of many different aspects of culture and fashion. It became an immediate success, and numerous imitations appeared during the 1830s and 40s in other papers including Le Siècle, L’Echo de Paris, Le Temps, Le Constitutionnel and La Quotidienne, and the magazines La Sylphide, Les Guêpes, and L’Illustration.91 However her column remained unique in its intellectual treatment of fashion. Ostensibly Girardin did not have any agenda, other than to observe and analyze. She emphasized that her column was completely different from the rest of La Presse in its absence of cause and in its mocking tone, and sought to carve out her own journalistic space. She was also

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one of the first, Lenard Berlanstein notes, “to develop the concept of ‘celebrity’ in France” as someone who came to fame and who did not possess status endowed through an inherited noble title.92 However in fashion there were no celebrities, as fashion was not yet considered a form of art. Her pseudonym Vicomte de Launay was transparent, and the authorship was publicly acknowledged by 1843 when the first collection of the letters was published under Girardin’s own name, as well as the vicomte’s.93 The switching of gender gave interesting twists to her column. She was ironically the best-known flâneur, at a time when flâneurie was above all a man’s activity. The male disguise enabled her to be independent from La Presse,94 and was further complicated by the epistolary genre and the theme of everyday life, usually associated with women.95 Indeed, it was the very combination of the “feminine” themes, combined with the flâneur’s view of the street, that enabled Girardin to express a unique modernist view, creatively articulating f leeting everyday scenes in the street. She was thus one of the first to link journalism, urban culture, and consumption. Her first column brilliantly conveyed her approach: “Nothing really extraordinary happened this week: a revolution in Portugal, an appearance of a republic in Spain, a nomination of ministers in Paris, a considerable decline at the Stock Exchange, a new ballet at the Opéra, and two white satin coats at the Tuileries.” Girardin then announced that of all these events the only really remarkable event was the white satin coats, as they were premature—“wearing satin before winter is not natural”—whereas everything else had been foreseen or announced in advance and therefore not truly new.96 Thus from the very first paragraph she mixed politics, culture and fashion, while provocatively announcing that the only truly new thing is something that was completely unforeseen no matter how trivial, thus foregrounding a concept of the new. That ephemeral fashion trends were treated in the same tone as other, more “serious” subjects, is very suggestive, as it seems to imply that politics, a male domain and a serious field, can be just as irrational and frivolous as women’s fashion, but also that fashion is a subject that merits attention as any other. Thus she turned on the head what would have been the normal interpretation, that no one had foreseen white satin coats as they were negligible phenomena, unlike politics or drama. Then she continued her first column by observing: spectacles and promenades, these are what the capital is busy with at the moment. Thank God, the races are finished; the last one was not very good: always the same women, always the same horses; and then always the same and annoying incident, this horse forced to run all alone; and it condemns you to stupidly watch this fighter without adversary, this winner without rival.97 Amusements and promenades were prominent subjects of her columns, and the comment about the women, seen through a male disguise, shows that watching fashionable women was an important part of the spectacles and promenades. Moreover, the complaint about the same women, the same horses, and the same ending underlines that change and variety were essential in spectacles.

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Girardin began her second column by declaring that “the big events of the week [were] house moves” that turned Paris into a “shop of walking furniture”: “you can’t cross a street without meeting a desk and a chest-of-drawers or else an upside-down settee . . . to the right, a piano advances with its stool—rods and pedals dismantled; to the left, a pedestal looms up, seeming to ask why its marble hasn’t followed it.”98 She was reporting on the house moves of upper-class households. The juxtaposition of the descriptions of furniture in the street from a flâneur’s perspective, and the sense of insider’s knowledge of the high society, gave her column a delightful jolt. Girardin’s style was not to everyone’s liking. An article in The Dublin University Magazine in 1843 harshly criticized her columns, that her pseudonym “led her into the mistake of being neither Vicomte de Launay” nor herself, the former being “f lippant and effeminate” “when exclaiming, in the same breath, at the breaking out of a revolution in Portugal, and the appearance of two white satin bonnets in the Tuileries.” Calling her writing “mechanical,” lacking feeling, superficial, self-absorbed, conceited, and only occasionally amusing, the article also criticized the combination of serious analysis and “trivial trash”: in a letter written to examine the various talents of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, when we become interested in the analysis . . . we are startled from it by exclamations—“We will tell you in a moment that currant-coloured dresses, spotted with black bouquets, are worn and pretty,” and, “you shall soon hear that Mlle. Boudran makes admirable black velvet turbans;” and elsewhere, describing a pocket-handkerchief, she says, “those with ‘entredeux,’ please in all the various hours of life, in grief or joy, they are so very pretty, that a woman on the point of weeping, is comforted by looking at them.”99 The author of the article failed to appreciate Girardin’s wit, her sense of the absurd, and the willfully fragmented treatment of politics, literature and fashion—the modernist sensibility enjoying the everyday phenomena and unforeseen encounters. In France the literary and artistic elite were very interested in fashion. Balzac wrote for La Mode and also for the Journal des dames et des modes, which published numerous extracts of his novels through 1837.100 Gavarni designed fashion plates and created a series of “fantasies” about clothes. Grandville’s Les Fleurs animées (1847) is a compilation of fifty-two engravings of f lowers rendered as women in costumes, and can therefore be seen as a set of fantastic or absurdist fashion plates. Observation of fashion trends was part of French fascination with social mores. The gender dynamic of “A Letter from Paris” bore some similarity to that of the column in Les Modes parisiennes, in that both columns were written by women for publications run by powerful male entrepreneurs. However, there were marked differences also. The audience for Girardin’s column comprised both men and women, and the outlook of Girardin’s column, much more intellectual than fashion columns, was very different. Girardin traced a theory of fashion full of contradictions. She strongly identified with the elegant Tout-Paris

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of aristocrats. She considered fashion arbiters to be aristocratic women and style to be an individual creation, but at the same time observed dressmakers and textile manufacturers to be collectively creating new trends. She mocked and disdained the excesses of fashion, and in her largely ironic stance toward fashion, her column was an implicit critique and antidote to many fashion columns, yet she considered being “pretty” to be the foremost duty of women, thereby associating beauty and virtue.101 Girardin celebrated women as spectacles, objects of scrutiny and admiration. She wrote about “a quantity of pretty women frightening for the repose of the capital,”102 and wrote that “The Boulevards are in bloom; it’s the season of pretty women, pretty dresses; each costume is a bouquet; rose muslins, white jaconets, blue scarves, lilac taffetas please the eyes.”103 As she was writing in a male guise, she often sounded gallant in praising pretty women, and thus seemed to play with androgyny.104 Her comments however often included observations of the bizarre and surreal. Reporting about quantities of brilliant diamonds seen at a ball, she wrote that “diamonds and hair have become fashionable again.” With biting sarcasm she quoted people as saying about a duchess “Have you seen? She has at least two million francs worth on her head.” She also wrote that women were “wearing as many diamonds as they own and even more than they own,” and that women were also wearing hair “in profusion, showing off all their hair and even that of others.”105 She further analyzed fashion and frequently made fun of the excesses and absurdities of fashion, and set out fashion laws in alternating nonchalant and earnest tones. She ridiculed dresses with eight layers, and set out a fashion law that while “fashion is an absolute queen, it is not an absolute thing,” that “such fashion suits a certain age and certain position, which is singularly ridiculous to another age and another position.”106 While she was conformist in emphasizing the importance of both following fashion trends and striking the proper tone for the station and age of women, she also urged women to ref lect upon fashion, to analyze and individualize, and not confuse taste with the blind following of trends. She emphasized individual discernment and creation, and also declared that truly elegant women did not follow fashion. However, she also delighted in the latest pretty new things, and singled out singular items in fashion—such as a coat adorned with eighty meters of lace—for social significance as a powerful and dramatic expression of will. She argued that one could tell everything about a woman’s character, taste, and habits by looking at her clothing, in an argument based on a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of Lavater’s law of physiognomy.107 Girardin’s analytical and whimsical take on fashion was far from pure satire. Others mocked fashion much more relentlessly. A panorama essay in La Grande Ville satirized the sheer number of clothing a woman has to go through each day: “toilette of rising, toilette of the morning, toilette of the day, toilette of the evening, toilette of concert or ball . . . And there’s more! . . . It’s necessary to have a fashionable apartment, fashionable furniture, a fashionable livery, fashionable carriage, horses, harness! . . . And fashion changes every instant.”108 Mocking the preoccupation with fashion was nothing new. L’Empire de la mode, an almanac for women published in 1817, mocked the folly of fashion and the “uselessness of

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finery” and encouraged simplicity, all the while dwelling on each item of women’s finery.109 Girardin’s column reveals the fluctuation in perceptions of fashion trendsetters of this period. While fashion magazines increasingly paid attention to shops, Girardin continued to celebrate high-society activities, a world familiar to her, although she also often described what was seen in shops. She wrote that all the fabrics of the season had checked patterns typical of mattresses, suggesting that manufacturers conspired to create extreme fashion trends, which inevitably went away quickly and created a demand for something new.110 Here the trendsetters are seen as manufacturers and dressmakers rather than aristocratic women. Other times she gave more emphasis to elegant women’s will. She depicted two competing schools, “the loud school” and “the mysterious school” among upper-class women, and that the latter hid an appropriately mysterious seamstress.111 In this case the seamstress seems not only subordinate to the collective creative will of upper-class women, but she is anonymous. In an extreme stretch of the view of fashion as determined by upperclass women, Girardin exposed fashion trends as nothing more than the result of the caprice of several aristocrats who needed to hide physical defects, and whose styles were unbecoming to more attractive women.112 When seeing fashion as a response to the demands of bourgeois women, she was often disparaging. She warned of “sugared bourgeois women” of “bourgeois education” and common nature, who flaunted wealth but had no taste. These women, according to her, were bound to destroy “everything” in France if left to flourish.113 Girardin also complicated the sense of fashion as about being up to date, by suggesting that fashion was ritualized following a set of timeframes: the week, the season, the year, and the generation. Girardin’s columns are remarkable for showing how fast fashion trends were changing. In 1836 she wrote that “last week’s fashion was wearing one’s old dresses and faded hats. This has passed as the others.”114 This example illustrates fashion as an expression of individually varied adaptation of temporary collective trend, a strikingly modern sensibility that is also striking in that in this example the fashion is not wearing new dresses but rather just being creative in a new way using the old. While weekly change was the most fundamental time frame for the column, other time frames were given also. Girardin depicted changes according to the season, year, as well as generational change and change according to political regimes. Passing the summer in the country became a new fashion, setting the tone for a generation, and dancing lessons were not at all à la mode for the new generation.115 She then declared that fashion was not fickle, because the vogue for Liszt had lasted since his boyhood.116 The shorter spans of time frames can be connected to some of the other ways that economic and commercial development shaped modern conceptions of time: time-clocks for labor, the standardization of time that followed the establishment of the railroad networks, as well as business cycles for producers and retails. The imperative to be up to date, the workings of a compelling rationalization of personal behavior, was part of the broader process of rationalization, yet Girardin suggested that fashion trends following the time frame had room for individual and collective will, as well as creativity using the resources of fashion.

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Girardin was a keen observer of new urban trends, including specialty shops and the shops at the arcades. The shopping rush and social rituals of the New Year turned circulation “impossible.” She mused in 1840 that the “agitation of Paris during the first eight days of the year singularly strikes foreigners.”117 Her observation of popular shops as sites of urban pleasure and arbiters of French taste are similar to the celebration of shops by others. At the same time, she was very protective of the idea of fashion as emanating from the elite circle, an idea that for the most part did not correspond to reality. As the annual seasonal parade at Longchamps became rapidly middle-class and commercial, in 1842, Girardin, keen to preserve the exclusivity of the Tout Paris, noted that it was fashionable “not to go there.”118 However it was not easy to maintain this exclusivity when the Tout Paris was f locking to sites of mass entertainment such as the Hippodrome.119

Conclusion Commercial interests strongly inf luenced fashion magazines from the 1830s, as a significant element of urban commercial modernity. Fashion discourses of the July Monarchy were largely created for women and by women. Both fashion magazines and Delphine de Girardin’s column emphasized the sheer enjoyment of dressing, and encouraged women to keep up to date with the latest trends. Fashion magazines’ narratives representing consumption were full of textual editorial ads that preceded and complemented visual representations of consumption that emerged in the mid-1830s. By the 1840s the textual representations of shopping became very extensive, corresponding to other forms of advertising and publicity for retail. Fashion discourses were spurred by women’s desire to appear attractive, participate in urban pleasures, and exercise their inf luence in the fields of manufacture, retail, and journalism. While fashion magazines suggested that women could achieve fashionability by frequenting certain shops, Girardin’s view of fashion was much more complex and ambivalent. She stressed the importance of individual interpretation and ref lection upon fashion, and satirized its absurdities and excesses. Yet in her own words, women’s clothing and hair were “futilities that are so important.”120 She strongly identified with the elegant Tout-Paris and saw fashion as emanating from aristocratic taste, but also acknowledged the increasing inf luence of fashion merchants and manufacturers. At the same time most fashion magazines, with the exception of Le Moniteur de la mode, were identifying less and less with aristocratic taste. Both discourses included an element of the absurd, fashion columns because of their frequent inclusion of editorial ads that were repetitive and incongruous, and Girardin’s writing, for her eye for the bizarre and strange. Fashion magazines’ formulae varied little for the rest of the nineteenth century, through regime changes. The techniques of merchandising through fashion magazines that evolved from the 1810s through the 1830s continued to be used. This highlights both the early modernization and commercialization of the magazines. Both discourses underlined an expanding sphere of urban feminine consumption in Paris and stressed Paris as the world capital of fashion. An increasing

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emphasis on consumption as an activity of cultivated women, which encouraged women to visualize scenes of shopping through the vicarious experience of reading about shopping, hinted at an emerging female consumer’s subjectivity. Narratives of shopping and self-transformation were meant to elicit emotional responses, prefiguring later visual persuasion through posters. Fashion magazines sought to turn consumption into a form of art and were at pains to emphasize duty and taste filtered of connotations of frivolity or irrationality. Girardin, on the other hand, emphasized the very frivolity and irrationality of fashion, seen simultaneously as mere distraction and an enjoyable source of intellectual analysis. Girardin took fashion very seriously as an important measure of beauty and taste, as well as class and national power. She was highly inf luential in publicizing fashion as a significant sector not only of commerce but as a subject matter for critique, and expressed ambivalence regarding the dynamic between individual will and aristocratic taste on the one hand, and the increasing bourgeois impact on fashion and the democratization of taste on the other. In this regard the inf luence of her allegiance to Romanticism on her view of fashion should be examined. Unlike fashion magazines that associated flâneurie only with shopping, she showed that women’s flâneurie could be far more independent and thought-provoking. Her writing also opened new spaces for innovative connections between art and commerce as well as journalism and fashion. Like Philipon, she was ambivalent about her own power in this regard. Fashion magazine’s association of fashion and virtue partly countered the concern for feminine virtue that would be at the heart of the idea of the “virtuous marketplace” at mid-century, an abstract notion of the market as a place of commerce and investment viewed as functioning properly only if associated with women’s morality, rather than their “propensity to disorder and sexual license.”121 The unique role that Girardin played would become harder to reprise, as the spheres of production and consumption would be increasingly separated during the Second Empire. Yet Girardin’s columns also attested to the potential of women’s freedom and critical capacity in consumer society.

CH A P T E R

FOU R

Charlatanism or Modern Merchandising?: The Mentalités of Publicity and the Commercialization of Culture

The newspapers became larger; the ad was born, remaining modest for a while; but it was the infancy of Gargantua . . . The consequences of the ad were fast and infinite. —Sainte-Beuve, “De la littérature industrielle”

Introduction A paradox lay in the culture of advertising in July-Monarchy France. Given the actual state of French advertising, there appears to be a disproportionately large amount of criticism against it. This was because the criticism of publicity and advertising was used to comment on the broader phenomenon of commercialism in culture, as well as social and political critique. This chapter examines a largely untouched subject: publicity and advertising as ideas and a set of practices as seen through texts and images by Balzac, Honoré Daumier, Emile de Girardin, Charles Philipon, J.-J. Grandville, and others, as well as the weekly Le Tintamarre. Critics leveled a large amount of satire and critique at the nascent phenomenon of advertising in the 1830s and 40s. Advertising and publicity were viewed as being at the crux of the commercialization of literary culture, which in turn seemed to be part of broader transformative changes in society. The vocabulary of advertising and publicity resonated in the critique not only of the press and publishing, but also society and politics. These subjects recurred persistently in French literary and journalistic debates, expressing the anxiety and tension regarding authenticity during a period of class mobility and the rise of the new elite. The association between advertising and charlatanism took on new meanings used to criticize the new elite. Le Tintamarre was the paper that carried the most number of regular ads during the July Monarchy. It promoted regular advertising as a new form of rational communication. At the same time, its major aim was the criticism and exposure

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of all types of hidden advertising. The paper, as well as its precedent, Le Tam-Tam, showcased the formation of advertising as a fertile subject of debate and parody, and a new rhetoric of self-promotion with a specific language. Le Tintamarre’s practices and critique reveal deep ambivalence about the new phenomena of advertising and publicity, situated in the broader context of social and cultural change. This chapter reframes the examination of the market culture during the July Monarchy. Whereas historians have examined the impact of industrialization on market culture by usually beginning with artisans being turned into laborers in a new industrial society, the market culture examined here is primarily the vagaries of the literary and journalistic marketplace.1 This market culture was shaped by writers, publishers, journalists, investors, and consumers. This chapter also treats literary, popular perceptions of a new set of thriving characters in the wake of the rapid expansion of the broader marketplace defined as a place of production, monetary exchange, and investment.

The New Press and Perceptions of Advertising and Publicity The expansion of advertising was caused in this period by the rise of banking, modern commerce, and an expansion in middle-class wealth, when many sectors of the French economy were becoming increasingly capitalist. 2 As an oligarchy of industrialists, notables and the press was established, advertising agencies styled themselves as the mediators of circulation and speculation of information and capital, and the Havas Agency, consolidated in 1835 into an agency of information, was already functioning as an office for state propaganda. 3 In 1840 Balzac remarked that although “the public may believe that there are several newspapers, there is in reality only one.”4 He meant that all the newspapers of Paris let Havas provide them with foreign news, which was filtered by the government. Until the 1830s there was no standard equivalent for the English term “advertising.” Since the Restoration “l’affiche” mainly designated both the paper poster and mural advertisement. In the 1830s the term publicité, meaning publicity, gained currency. With connotations of transparency, moral duty and the Enlightenment, the idea of publicity had come to glory during the Revolution. A typical use of the term publicité is found in an 1830 advertisement, for soap packaged with historical accounts of the great events of France and sold abroad: “Stories of our great events accompany [the soap] and produce prodigious publicity.” 5 Here “publicité” refers to publicizing the nation’s history, rather than the product; commerce is helping to glorify the nation. The common term for advertising or publicity throughout the nineteenth century would not be publicité but réclame, originally a term for a type of advertisement, then used to mean editorial advertising, and also, often with a pejorative connotation, standing for both advertising and publicity. On July 1, 1836 Emile de Girardin and Armand Dutacq launched La Presse and Le Siècle respectively, newspapers based on identical principles: a financial

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basis in advertising and a halved subscription rate. They were also the first to publish serial novels. According to Girardin industrial progress led to competition and lower prices that required “paid ads (annonces payées),” “the powerful motor of publicity (publicité).”6 Ads had been profitable for the press since the late 1820s,7 and moreover Auguste Commerson’s weekly Le Tam-Tam, founded a year earlier than La Presse in 1835, was entirely based on advertising revenue and was distributed free of charge, so Girardin or Dutacq were not exactly inventing the management of the modern press. The notion that Girardin invented the modern press, even paid press advertising, spread because of his great publicity campaign for La Presse. Girardin’s inspiration was the English press. Although the advertising revenue of La Presse would grow rapidly between 1837 and 1845, from 93,557 to 261,074 francs, outpacing the change in the number of subscribers from 10,000 in 1836 to 22,409 in 1845, this was only a fraction of the numbers for English equivalents.8 According to Girardin, the annual advertising revenue for The Times was 750,000 francs in 1836.9 While an issue of The Times was running 1,500 ads in 1845, French newspapers were running about fifty at best.10 Girardin and Dutacq’s inf luential innovation had to do with the combination of new methods that allowed them to attract a large readership: halved subscription rate, reduced political content, the coverage of many subjects including gossip columns, and above all, serial novels written by the likes of Eugène Sue and Balzac which reached people who might never have bought a book, and enabled such authors to become national celebrities.11 Neither La Presse nor Le Siècle, nor Le Consitutionnel, which also ran serial novels, developed a mass audience, the subscription rate and even reading rooms being far out of reach for the lower classes.12 La Presse offered subscribers a choice of supplements, including a “special magazine on commerce and industry” announced as “an entirely new thing,” thus aiming at the bourgeoisie, the aristocrats and the new economic and political elite.13 Other papers invented giveaways.14 Just as editors of the eighteenth century and even earlier had known that women read magazines and newspapers,15 from the outset of the establishment of the modern press women were the major target audience of ads in newspapers and other periodicals. La Presse’s fashion column was one of five Parisian newspapers’ columns farmed by Hippolyte de Villemessant who would cofound Le Figaro in 1854. These columns were full of editorial ads for clothes, hats, gloves, perfume shops, and others.16 Many papers and magazines included fashion columns. Parisians read periodicals in reading rooms, cafés, and gardens, besides at home. Women mostly went to cafés accompanied by men, and women also frequented reading rooms, stocked with books and newspapers. The launching of La Presse was also publicized in the fashion magazine Journal des dames et des modes through full-page ads. In the four-page La Presse, advertisements were initially placed on the fourth page. Typical subjects of advertisements from 1836 through 1840 included books, periodicals, a variety of shops, cosmetics, furniture, mineral water, chocolate, drugs, tailors, insurance, and real estate agencies. From around 1840 also frequent subjects were almanacs including one with 500,000 addresses, magasins de nouveautés, galleries, and railroad companies. From around 1844 ads for spas

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appeared, and magasins de nouveautés ran regular illustrated ads. In December the number of ads increased for New Year’s gifts, mostly books and albums. The standard system of press advertising came to consist of annonces (classified ads) on the fourth page, réclames on the third page, faits divers (short news) on the second page, and chronique (review of current trends), écho (short news), financial news, or reviews of books, plays, and art on the first page.17 Press advertising tended to be expensive. During the 1840s Le Siècle charged one franc per line for ads appearing ten times or more, three francs per line for special notices, and five francs per line for editorial ads.18 Initially two conceptions of advertising coexisted. The first was based on traditional recommendation founded on personal or corporate trust, while the second was a fundamentally modern practice based on the idea of self-promotion, advertising as modern merchandising. While regular ads were based on the second model, the first model f lourished as editorial ads, which became increasingly modern itself through the uses of indirect messages and the invocation of values, ideologies and lifestyles in order to persuade. Some experts promoted the ideal of publicité as transparent, rational communication that directly transmits a message pared down to the minimum. In 1845 Emile de Girardin suggested that ads should be concise, clear, and avoid “outrageousness,” that an ad should essentially indicate “on this street, at this address, this thing is being sold at this price.”19 Girardin’s model of advertising as rational information was contradicted by La Presse’s fashion column full of editorial ads. Books, like other consumer goods, were publicized through reviews and articles in addition to regular ads. A note describing a book sent to newspaper and magazine editors along with the book came to be called, appropriately, a “please-insert (le prière d’insérer).”20 Editorial advertisements appealed to readers by underlining fashion trends, lifestyles, and values. A two-page article promoting the mineral water establishment of Uriage, published in 1843 in the Revue parisienne directed by Villemessant, noted that “the fashion of the mineral waters has so much invaded today’s society,” and that “all the women and girls who know a little about the world are beginning to talk about the waters.” The second half of the article was devoted to “the establishment of Uriage,” with details on the owner and his family, the water’s effects, the beauty of the locale, and the facilities. The establishment welcomed both the rich and the poor, the latter often aided through charity by the rich. The article concluded: “It is no surprise that such an establishment becomes more prosperous each year; it is like with a good doctor: selling health to the rich, he is blessed by men; giving health to the poor, he merits God’s blessing.”21 This ad appealed to women by referring to their worldly knowledge. The term réclame became widespread, at first not in the field of commerce, but in culture. Observers were much more concerned with the infiltration of advertising in publishing and the “mixed” media like the newspaper than with “pure” media like the poster or the brochure. Critics were haunted by the idea that both the elite and mass presses were full of réclames. The press, purporting to be an organ of transparency, was selling its opinions. The commercialization of publishing was a prominent issue at this time not only because of the use of editorial ads but also because books, periodicals, and other publications were

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the most advertised items in the press and periodicals through the early 1840s. Novelists, increasingly subject to the rules of the dramatically expanding and commercializing literary market, were often impelled to write extolling reviews of their own books. In 1839 Delphine de Girardin wrote that the journalist is the “king” who was f lattered by all who write, speak, sing, dance, cry, love or hate, “all who live!”22 The same year Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, in an inf luential essay published in the Revue des deux mondes, harshly criticized press advertising, in particular réclame which he defined as a note, paid for by a publisher and inserted toward the end of an article, offering a “f lattering judgment that prepares and prejudices the judgment of the article.” He argued that réclame, as well as advertising in general, turned both the press and literature into “industrial literature.”23 The essay captured the animosity between a vibrant urban commercial culture, of which the modern press, the popular theater, and the sensationalist novel were components, and the establishment, bourgeois culture that was becoming increasingly moralistic.24 He blamed the revolution of 1830 as causing anarchy and the commercialization of culture. 25 Réclame, for Sainte-Beuve, was far from a minor phenomenon but a “Gargantua,” part of a destructive process and also the symbol of the broader ills threatening respectable bourgeois culture. As his criticism targeted Emile de Girardin who was seen as commercializing the press, many successful authors rushed to defend him. Balzac, who had been well paid to publish a novel in La Presse, was a strong defender.26 During the July Monarchy réclame quickly became a metaphor for expressing cultural anxiety about identity, authenticity, and reputation in an age of rapid industrialization and restructuring of social orders. Why was réclame so apt for expressing such anxieties? First of all, the new principle of the commercial press seemed to herald a new industrial society. Secondly, the abstract quality of advertising, as representation par excellence, heightened the anxiety about the f low of capital, the expansion of the marketplace, and the destabilization of traditional social hierarchies. Réclame connoted disguise, and a person adept at using advertising and publicity was thought to be adept at recreating identities. It is no accident that Robert Macaire, the famous villain created by the caricaturist Daumier upon the ideas of Philipon, stood for the continuous changing of identities. Macaire could assume multiple identities at ease and was also deft at using advertising and publicity, modern methods of manipulation. Since the eighteenth century advertising was associated with “charlatanism,” but in this period the “charlatan” became a key term used for denigrating and exposing not only suspect quack healers but also the powerful, who obtained fame through publicity in the absence of genuine talent. Critics across the political spectrum used the vocabulary of advertising and publicity as metaphors for a broader set of issues: the commercialism in culture and the larger, cataclysmic transformations this wrought. This vocabulary, used to satirize everything from the nouveaux riches to bluestockings, formed a key component of popular culture in the July Monarchy and throughout the rest of the century, when both the invention and promotion of the self would become central aspects in modern identityformation. Unlike what is widely assumed about advertising—that a critique and

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analysis of it followed some time after its emergence—actually a complex and sophisticated critique of advertising was born simultaneous to its onset.

Balzac and Advertising Here an excursion into advertising practices via Balzac’s novels from the 1830s would help clarify the ideas around réclame, publicité, and charlatanism. Keenly interested in retail methods and the new literary market, Balzac was the first novelist to extensively treat the theme of advertising, drawing on his own experience of creating advertisements for the Piver perfumery. While Balzac saw poster campaigns as a new, modern method, he saw editorial advertising as an irrational method that should disappear, replaced by a rational system of paid ads that would herald an age of modern commercial promotion. As we shall see, however, editorial advertising wouldn’t disappear. In César Birotteau –originally published as Histoire de la grandeur et de la décadence de César Birotteau (1837)—set in the Restoration, Balzac presents a modernizer of commerce, the first perfume manufacturer to use advertising on a substantial scale. Birotteau deployed “the luxury of posters, ads (annonces) and the means of publication which are perhaps unjustly called charlatanism.” The phrase “Approved of by the Institute!” is used for the first time in placards, producing “a quite magical effect,” giving Birotteau’s products Sultana Double Paste and Carminative Water more of a scientific air. Naming something “Sultana” was a brilliant idea at the height of Orientalism. Placards are sent to all over France and abroad. Birotteau’s magnificently decorated shop is situated near the Place Vendôme, at the center of Parisian commerce. Birotteau’s successor, Anselm Popinot, then takes more steps toward modern advertising. After brainstorming about the best name for a new hair oil and deciding on Cephalic Oil, he launches a campaign to suppress a rival manufacturer who preceded Birotteau in using press advertising. Another goal is to address consumers rather than dealers. “Two thousand placards” were “pasted up in the most conspicuous places of Paris,” and framed texts are placed on the doors of “all the hairdressers of Paris, the wig makers, the perfumers.” A brochure for Cephalic Oil ref lects contemporary perfumers’ advertising method of associating products foremost with symbols of prestige and authority, such as the king and the antiquity. An engraving depicts the ancients and symbols of chemistry. Another engraving, depicting the king Louis XVIII, bolsters the supposedly scientific claims for the products approved by the Academy of Science, while the phrase “GOLD MEDAL AT THE EXPOSITION OF 1824” underlines the increasingly significant role of Industrial Expositions.27 The press is also crucial in the success of Popinot’s campaign. Balzac imagines how an ambitious advertising agent might have worked at the time. Popinot entrusts Andoche Finot, a f ledgling journalist, to work as a commission-based agent. Finot is promised “five hundred francs for each first-rate paper” and 300 for each second-rate paper: “if the Cephalic Oil was noticed three times a month, Finot saw three thousand francs for himself.” Motivated by the prospect, “[l]ike a lion he sprang upon his friends and acquaintances.”

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He assailed the bottom of all concluding columns in the papers, and had articles inserted by leaving money with the editors . . . Money, dinners, platitudes, all aided his restless activity. . . . [H]e made the Cephalic Oil triumph over the Regnauld Paste, the Brazillian Mixture, over all these inventions which were the first to comprehend the newspaper’s inf luence and the blow of a piston produced upon the public by an often-repeated article. Such a method was not new. The extraordinary success of this campaign, as Balzac describes it, was due to the fact that it was intensive and large-scale, at a time when the readership of newspapers had expanded. In “this time of innocence,” journalists “did not know their own strength,” as yet unaware of the power of the press. Finot’s campaign makes the house A. Popinot triumph “in public opinion,” and the “house A. Popinot and Company was displaying itself on walls and all parts of buildings.” Finot’s campaign goes beyond anything imagined by Birotteau himself, who could not appreciate “the power of the new agents whose efficiency and wide extension embraced the commercial world.” Notably, all this coincides with the birth of “paid advertisements, an immense revolution!”28 Here Balzac envisions that the rational new form of advertising would revolutionize advertising and the press. However Balzac also inserted an ad for “Serkis du Sérail, favorite power of the Sultans,” manufactured by Dissey and Piver, into the middle of a chapter of César Birotteau, setting the first example of including an ad in a novel.29 Balzac was thus both a critic and an innovator of publicity and advertising. The theme of advertising as a modern commercial practice recurs in Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) set in the early 1820s and published in three parts between 1837 and 1843. It treats the venality of the press and the commercialization of publishing, following the career of the unscrupulous Finot, who has come to acquire a large share in a newspaper after succeeding through the petite presse (small press). If in César Birotteau journalism was in its innocent age, in Lost Illusions Balzac is scathing in his criticism of the corrupt, powerful inf luence of journalism on literature and drama, in which all principles are subsumed to profit. While journalistic tasks are strictly regulated by the financial calculus, a journalist also wields an enormous, irrational power for creating or ruining a reputation. This deadly combination forms one of the disillusionments of the protagonist, Lucien de Rubempré. When newspaper space was extremely scarce, cultural products such as a play or a book vied with industrial products for any lines in the newspaper. The publisher Dauriat, “the monarch of the Galeries de Bois” at the Palais Royal, the center of information, entertainment, and consumption, complains that a book by an established author costs him “three thousand francs in review articles.” Two articles in the Journal des débats cost a thousand francs. Dauriat is a “speculator in literature” by his own description: he calculates that “[i]t costs as much effort to get a new name accepted—as to promote the success of already famous works.” According to Balzac before paid ads on the fourth page were invented in the mid1820s, publishing was severely dependent on press publicity. Bribery and presents were lavished in search of a réclame, which may be inserted in “Faits Paris.” In

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Lost Illusions Etienne Lousteau, who has sold out after struggling as a playwright and is working for Finot, describes the degrading life of an editor of such articles. His livelihood derives from the resale of booty-like books sent by publishers for review and payments from perfumers and actresses. The “wiliest actresses pay to be criticized, for silence is what they fear most of all . . . Polemics, my dear fellow, build a pedestal for celebrities.” Whereas in César Birotteau Finot has articles inserted into papers through favors and bribes in order to have Cephalic Oil triumph over Brazilian Mixture, Lousteau in Lost Illusions simply accepts money from rivaling perfumers with no partiality as to who beats who. In César Birotteau and Lost Illusions Balzac described two distinctive strands of French advertising. The first is the modern retail methods such as an attractive shop window, clever names referring to fashionable themes, and an organized poster campaign. The second is entrepreneurs having articles about their products inserted in newspapers. Balzac imagined that the advent of paid ads on the fourth page (“annonces”) would be a revolution that would sweep away the primitive and arbitrary system of editorial advertising (“articles” or “réclames”), although he betrayed some ambivalence regarding paid ads, which he described as “accessible to all those who can pay for it,” making “the fourth page of the newspaper as lucrative for the Exchequer as it is for speculators.”30 In reality the transformation of advertising would not happen this way. Hidden ads would continue to f lourish and become systematic, becoming rational in the sense of being accessible to all who pay rather than be subject to favoritism. In fact Balzac foreshadowed this process when, in his novels, he described the evolution of editorial advertising into an anonymous transaction open to all willing to pay. Lucien also gets acquainted with advertising when he is left with little choice but to follow a career in journalism himself, having been rejected entry into high society, and unwilling to join the Cénacle, the ascetic and pure group of young men who would write great works that last. He enjoys quick success for his talent. Franco Moretti has argued that the principles of roulette, based on anonymity, versus the duel, a one-on-one struggle, operate in Lost Illusions. Roulette, one of the most popular games in the numerous gambling houses of Paris, stands for the increasing anonymity of urban relations, comprised of a countless number of mediating relations.31 Moretti’s distinction can also be applied to Lucien’s journalistic practice of two different models of interaction: anonymous financial transaction and direct personal attack. Lucien lives on “well-remunerated publishing prospectuses and bonuses given for certain articles needed for advertising hazardous speculations.”32 On the other hand Lucien’s attacks in the form of book reviews are enough to stop the sale of a very good book. Here again, editorial advertising seems to be becoming a lucrative system of mediated transaction. The use of réclames continued to be a concern of Balzac. He wrote in 1842 that the ubiquity of puff, which had replaced the word canard since several years before, means that in the newspaper “a Fait-Paris can often become the recommendation of a bargain, a book, an enterprise,” that one can make the whole press sing one’s praises. He noted that during election times “the Entre-filet and the Fait-Paris become terrible” and that “a cloud of electoral canards” cover all of France. He protested that réclame has killed the critique in newspapers.33 Like

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Sainte-Beuve Balzac viewed hidden advertising as a destructive and powerful force, but he also showed much fascination with modern retail, publicity, and advertising.

Charlatanism, Dissolution, Gambling The term “charlatan” was a key word of the period, and was often associated with réclame as a pejorative term. Originally a charlatan meant a vagabond street performer like a tumbler, juggler, or mountebank who abounded in Parisian streets.34 It also designated a hawker who, after a sales pitch, sold drugs or pulled teeth in public places and at fairs, and also referred to a suspect figure selling miraculous cures.35 A decree on secret remedies in 1810 declared that all secret medicine was suspect, and that it was necessary to “prevent charlatanism from imposing a tribute on public credulity.”36 Dubious commercial enterprises continued to be discredited as charlatanism, as depicted in Daumier’s caricature “Les Charlatans,” about a real case of fake medicine that resulted in deaths. Three medicine bottles represent Death, dancing on a pile of money.37 Balzac wrote around 1844 in “Ce qui disparait de Paris (What Paris is Losing)” that charlatans, “the heros of the public square, today exercise their trade in the fourth page of newspapers for a hundred thousand francs a year,” that “The charlatan, braving laughter . . . face to face with the public, had plenty of courage, whereas the charlatan hidden on the mezzanine is worse than his drug.”38 The view that the credulous public is prone to victimization is comparable to the paternal attitude of the authorities toward the public regarding the popularity of gambling and lotteries.39 In the July Monarchy the term “charlatan” acquired a new meaning, someone adept at the manipulation of identities, someone who exploits the credulity of others to get rich or to impose oneself. Stendhal wrote in Lucien Leuwen (1836) that “charlatanism next to merit is like the zero to the right of a number and increases its value tenfold,” stressing the association of charlatanism with enrichment.40 The trick of a charlatan was creating something out of nothing. In this period across the political spectrum, f luctuations in the social structure were perceived as threatening. Advertising and publicity terms like s’afficher or puff were frequently used to expose what was seen as the new, insidious, and powerful forms of charlatanism. New notables such as politicians, financiers, and industrialists were the most popular targets. The word puff, meaning announcement and boasting, fit in a system with a series of words like toc, chic, and krach, all referring to “a world of ‘emptiness,’ of ‘wind’ and ‘void,’ or of ‘fakes’ and lies,” all of them “formally monosyllabic and expressive onomatopoeias with negative connotations.”41 In Lost Illusions Balzac describes the famed Galleries des Bois of the Palais Royal as a site of traditional street charlatans “of every kind.” Then Balzac describes the publisher Dauriat as “the prince of charlatans.” As he is also a “speculator in literature,” he is a charlatan in the modern sense, one who commercializes literature. Dauriat’s great publishing project was simply called “La Nouveauté,” which points

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to the vagueness of the project, the confidence of the entrepreneur, and the commercial nature of the publishing project. It also pokes fun at the widespread obsession with the new. Charlatanism breached the code of sophistication by being vulgar and pushing the wrong assets. Madame de Bargeton advises Lucien: “I trust in your talent. You will make your way without charlatanism.”42 She is referring to Lucien’s aristocratic name, which is his mother’s. Lucien, instead of heeding this advice, tries to match his name by outfitting himself properly at a fine tailor’s shop. By the July Monarchy, the territory of charlatanism had expanded. In Balzac’s The Firm of Nucingen (La Maison Nucingen) (1838), set in 1836 and planned to complement César Birotteau, financial speculation of high banking is linked to newspaper advertising. Finot, the promoter of Birotteau’s products, is now “the self-made man,” the “high priest of commerce.” Couture, who lives “by speculation” and “swims over the vast sea of interests in Paris,” muses that “charlatanism” had become a blanket term referring to modern merchandising methods: “the word charlatanism has come to be a damaging expression, a middle term, as it were, between right and wrong; for where, I ask you, does charlatanism begin? where does it end? what is charlatanism?” He compares old and modern methods of retail and argues that there is no “difference between attracting custom and forcing your goods upon the consumer.”43 The definition of charlatanism has become murky, just as Paris has turned into one unfathomable sea of speculation, where the likes of Finot can climb to the top.44 “Charlatanism” is used to invert the high and low. High banking is degraded to the level of street sales pitch. Les Français peints par eux-mêmes described the speculator as “the man par excellence of the present period, the dominant character of the present generation, the model-physiognomy of the century of money.”45 In The Wild Ass’s Skin (Le Peau de chagrin) (1831), set in the nascent July Monarchy, Balzac attributes even more power to the press than he would in Lost Illusions. A journalist declares that journalism is “the religion of modern society,” political power having been transferred to the newspaper offices, just as economic power had been transferred to the Chaussée-d’Aintin. Both shifts of power signal a tendency of abstraction, from the old money of landed aristocracy to the nouveaux riches of the financial world and the world of ideologies and information. One character theorizes that the society “has spread power over a number of pressure-groups,” into “the power of industry, the power of thought, the power of money, the power of speech.”46 The novel underlines the association among gambling, speculation, and appearances. The novel starts with the desperate Raphael de Valentin entering a gambling house at the Palais Royal. Raphael goes from one form of gambling to another, ultimately staking his own life. A man of extremes, he always plays for all or nothing, which results in his self-destruction. What differentiates Raphael from those thriving on the system, the charlatans, is that he cares about the loss of his identity in an increasingly abstract society. “I WAS IN DEBT!” he realizes in horror. “To be in debt means that one no longer belongs to oneself.”47 Charlatanism at the time was frequently associated with gambling, and some pronounced Paris as the capital of charlatanism. Amédée Pommier

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wrote in “Charlatans, jongleurs, phénomènes vivants, etc.,” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (1831): “O Paris! Capital of charlatanism! City of cheating par excellence! Nothing but lotteries! Roulettes! Games of dexterity and chance! Portable tripots (clandestine gambling houses)!”48 The obsession with charlatans in France finds a remarkable parallel in the American obsession with the confidence man and peddlers during the Antebellum period. Jackson Lears has argued that “In a world of shifting identities, fraudulent representations, and frequent changes of status, the encounter between the peddler and his prospective customer was both exciting and disturbing.” American suspicion of the confidence man was bolstered by the Victorian doctrine of “inf luence,” and f loating urban youth were seen as utterly vulnerable to “the wiles of con artists, gamblers, and seducers.”49 Unlike the New York stories in which the middle-class observer uses his or her interpretive power to prevail over the threat of chaos, the earlier Parisian obsession with charlatans was more threatening, since charlatans could be the most powerful in the land.

La Caricature and Robert Macaire The anxiety over social f luctuations—the mobility of capital and identities—was also expressed in La Caricature (1830–1835), a satirical paper founded by Philipon and devoted to political criticism of the July Monarchy, and censorship in particular.50 It was in La Caricature that the famous pear joke series against Louis Philippe started, and Philipon and his colleagues like Grandville were repeatedly fined and jailed. In 1831 Philipon declared that La Caricature will continue to be the faithful mirror of our time of mockeries, of political deceptions, of monkey acts, and of religious, monarchical or patriotic parades, of our time when the grocer goes to the court ball . . . or a simple citizen makes twenty million francs.”51 The paper is to be a faithful mirror of society, making identities transparent. The vocabulary of disguise transforms the serious—politics –into the trivial, namely street entertainment. Indeed, carnival was one of the original sources of caricature. Finally, Philipon evokes the blurring of class boundaries, the destabilization of society, when he refers to the grocer going to the court ball or a simple citizen making twenty million francs.52 In La Caricature Grandville represented politics as street amusements like carnivals or marionette theaters, turning eminent figures into clowns. In a carnival scene Liberty is sick, and is supported by “The Future” in disguise as a charlatan.53 La Silhouette, Philipon’s earlier journal, is disguised as being dead. The costumes in fact describe the “true” state of the carnival participants. The role of caricature is to mirror what is already distorted. Grandville’s carnival image was described as “a live translation of contemporary history.”54 The immensely popular Robert Macaire series, created by Daumier with captions by Philipon and texts by Maurice Alhoy and Louis Huart, also emblematized the shifting of identities and the dissolution of the coherent self. Originally

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Macaire was a minor character in the play L’Auberge des Adrets first performed in 1823. In the 1830s Macaire became a “symbol of universal knavery,” an emblem of the ruling oligarchy.55 In 1835, in the last performance of L’Auberge des Adrets, after the reinstitution of censorship, Macaire appeared as Louis Philippe.56 Philipon commissioned 101 lithographs from Daumier for Le Charivari from 1836 to 1838. A second series was published from 1840 to 1841.57 Balzac called his Baron de Nucingen, the banker, “ce vieux Robert Macaire de Nucingen.”58 Whereas the physiologies were based on the idea that the exaggeration of physical features necessarily reveals the true character of a person, the shifting identities of Robert Macaire point to the absence of a genuine identity or principle. Robert Macaire then is a charlatan par excellence, who lives by taking on different roles. He could win “the Cross of the Legion of Honour for publishing works that he doesn’t understand,” like the publicist in The Wild Ass’s Skin who is simultaneously “a chemist, a historian, a novelist, and publicist.”59 Macaire’s identities include journalist, banker, philanthropist, owner of a detective bureau, matrimonial agent, manufacturer, architect, and playwright, as well as a host of suspect merchants like a “patented Oculist.”60 An introduction for a Macaire series (1842) noted that Macaire could only appear in this period, that “he is the incarnation of our positive, egoist, avaricious, lying, bragging period . . . he belongs perfectly here— essentially bluffer (blaguese).”61 The theme of the Machiavellian journalist was crucial to the Macaire series from the beginning. The debut of Daumier’s series coincided with the launching of Girardin’s La Presse. Philipon specified that “Since the censorship . . . prohibits us from stigmatizing the Robert MACAIRE politicians, it forces us to concentrate on the Robert MACAIRE industrialists,” on the themes of industry, finances, and commerce.62 Five out of the first seven images criticized Girardin’s ventures, from the emission of stocks for La Presse to legal charges against Girardin concerning a speculative mining project. In an image depicting the latter, Robert Macaire/Girardin is a charlatan, boasting about his stocks to a crowd, accompanied by a drum with “annonces” written on it.63 Girardin was a target for Philipon and Daumier because his La Presse was openly monarchist.64 Another image, “Robert Macaire the Bookseller,” parodies commercialism in the book trade. A sandwichman advertising the “Joint Stock Company of spelling books” stands in front of a grim crowd.65 The text notes that Macaire’s project does not require literacy, mocking the targeting of new emerging literary markets such as that for young children. A national primary-education law was passed in 1833, and in 1835 Hachette received a government contract to sell half a million copies of Alphabet des écoles (Alphabet for Schools).66 The constant motif beneath Robert Macaire’s many roles is money. In The Philosophy of Money Georg Simmel discusses the unsubstantial nature of money, which can stand for an infinite number of objects “which are entirely the products of representations,” with an infinite variety of values. Simmel notes that “value changes from place to place, from person to person, and even from one hour to the next.”67 As the indebted but lucid Raphael imagines in The Wild Ass’s Skin, “a bill of exchange may be metamorphosed into an old man with a family to feed” or “a tableau vivant by Greuze, a paralytic with a swarm of children, or a

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soldier’s widow.” When a mysterious talisman creates the sum of money Raphael had wished for, his friends ask for a whole range of things money could beget, from a pearl necklace to an income of a 100,000 francs.68 This disorienting list is one of an infinite number of possible ways in which the sum of money could be converted into materials, experiences, and emotions. Simmel remarks that with modernization comes a “historical process of differentiation.” “Culture produces a widening circle of interests,” and “the periphery within which the objects of interest are located becomes farther and farther removed from the centre, the Ego.” Increasingly distant objects take on importance, as larger quantities of objects become accessible. Distance can also become the very cause of desire for the pleasure of overcoming an obstacle.69 Many advertisements aim to mediate this distance, to create a tension between distance and accessibility. Puff, Advertising (La Réclame), Classified Ad (L’Annonce), and Joke (La Blague) were the main characters in the vaudeville play Le Puff (1838) by Pierre-Frédéric-Adolphe Carmouche, Varin, and Louis Huart. Puff, dressed as “a very rich charlatan” has two daughters, Joke and Advertising. Advertising sings: “In Paris I proclaim/ All the new successes. . . . Caressing and f lattering,/ All at a good price . . . All is without fault. At the top of my pages, I vaunt bad books and plays . . . Then in columns ( feuilletons),/ Finding everything good,/ I sustain the columns of/ More than one newspaper.” Then Advertising announces a competition for marrying off Puff ’s two daughters, each with “a dowry of four hundred million thirty-two francs and fifty centimes.” The husbands would receive “three hundred seventy-five thousand lines of ads per year and publications.” 70 This parody characterizes advertising as a versatile, new, seductive presence making its way in the world. The list of prizes for the bridegrooms parodies the new literary form of advertising and the practice of giveaways. In the play Puff is “the grand entrepreneur of macairisms” followed in “his faithful quarter of the Stock Exchange.” This characterizes the new marketplace of the Stock Exchange as being associated with puff and charlatanism. The Ingenious, an inventor of new machines like mechanical umbrellas and acoustic telegraph as well as cosmetics and drugs, presents his penultimate invention, a walking advertising wall. The play ends with The Truth coming back and triumphing over Puff and his group. This parody encapsulates the associations among puff, charlatanism, advertising, and deception. Advertising is mocked not only as shameless self-promotion serving everything from the Stock Exchange to books to mechanical inventions, but also as a new kind of rhetoric. The play mocks vaudeville itself as well. Characters embodying theaters and plays clamor for the services of Puff and his group, underlining the anxiety about the rapid emergence of consumer culture in which cultural products were subject to the new rules of the marketplace. The concern with social mobility and the invention of new identities can also be seen in the parody of bluestockings which emerged in the 1830s and 1840s when women were active in intellectual and political arenas.71 When bourgeois women were seen as independent and having literary ambition, it was often in unf lattering light. In the 1840s Le Charivari published Daumier’s

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series of caricature about bluestockings—a label most closely associated with bourgeois women writers— as an unattractive, unpleasant, and vain lot out of touch with reality and craving publicity. In one caricature one bluestocking says to another, “Don’t fail to send to the newspaper office two copies of your work ‘Soap Bubbles,’ and I will froth it up in my column,” suggesting that bluestockings can only get publicity when they mutually publicize one another’s work.72 In an image published in Le Charivari two bluestockings are furious at the latest caricature of them in Le Charivari. One of them is holding and looking at the paper. This image depicts Le Charivari itself as part of a process of news and reaction, meant to make the reader anticipate the next installment. It also provides negative publicity, an exposure meant to provoke anxiety about being in the public eye.

Le Tintamarre: Critique of Advertising, Satire of Hypesters A small-format, nonpolitical weekly consisting mainly of humor, Le Tintamarre was founded in 1843 by the appropriately named August Commerson.73 In the July Monarchy Le Tintamarre, which would run until 1910, was the paper that carried the most number of regular ads. Moreover, it was the first paper to take up advertising as its main subject matter, devoting numerous articles and satires on the subject, creating the new phenomenon of extensive parodies of advertisements. The paper aimed at the heart of a cultural anxiety and exploited it cleverly. Le Tintamarre also shows how advertising opened up a whole new range of issues, such as the propriety of discussing private matters and the relationship between news and advertising. Le Tintamarre was financed by advertisements and was read in 2,000 cafés, reading rooms, and “all the public establishments of Paris and the suburbs,” to which it was distributed free of charge.74 The prototype for Le Tintamarre was Commerson’s weekly Le Tam-Tam (1835–1842), the first paper to be distributed free of charge. Le Tam-Tam, a paper of “literature, arts, sciences, and industry,” also claimed to be a “Serial of permanent ads (Feuilleton d’annonces permanentes),” as its revenues were completely based on advertisements. “Tam-tam” referred to drumbeat. Half of its pages were devoted to “a commercial indicator.” The subjects of ads in the first issue included books, fashion magazines, La Maison Aubert, schools, language courses, and carpet stores.75 Le Tintamarre was engaged in the battle between the daily press and the small press. As its advertising prices were 30 to 60 percent less than those of the daily press, about half of the eight-page paper was devoted to ads, including on the first page. In the nineteenth century Le Tintamarre was regarded as a successful innovator in press advertising. Eugène Dubief in Le Journalisme (1892) referred to it as an early successful example of the press utilizing advertising. According to Dubief, after attracting a readership with its “amusing ref lections and wild commentaries,” the magazine “carefully maintained the operation of its advertising, prospered and enlarged its format.” 76 The key to Le Tintamarre’s success lay, I shall argue, both in its advertisements and in its acerbic humor, which took

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up the timely subject of advertising. Le Tintamarre’s subtitle was “Critique of advertising (réclame), satire of hypesters (puffistes).” Le Tintamarre sought to make clear that it encouraged and solicited honest, tasteful advertising and condemned dishonest, exaggerated advertising, sarcastically and angrily exposing all kinds of hidden, deceptive or excessive advertising. It also ran self-parodies. A nearly full-page parody from Le Tintamarre from 1845 announced the construction of a railroad from Paris to the moon, with “branches to Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and Vaugirard,” with capitalization of “two billion 52 francs,” divided into 40 trillion shares worth 50 francs each.77 It is a spoof of the numerous real advertisements in Le Tintamarre. Only when looked at closely does it become clear that it is a joke. The typographical arrangement of this ad-poster (annonce-affiche), from the heading in large letters down to the small print and the abbreviations, and the well-established advertising codes used for announcing lucrative shareholder ventures, are identical to those of real advertisements. This encapsulates several facets of the relationship between the press and advertising. By the paper’s own definition “le tintamarre” meant “blaring noise with confusion and disorder,” or brouhaha, and the paper’s major aim was to “derail réclame, uncover charlatanism, track down puff, through their treacherous concealment or philanthropic mask.” 78 What did this claim signify? Le Tintamarre began publication in 1843, the same year L’Illustration did, in the midst of a dramatic expansion of publishing, commerce, and advertising, and also in the midst of a boom in railroad speculation. The first major French newspaper advertising agency, the Compagnie Générale d’Annonces (CGA)—soon changed to Société Générale des Annonces (SGA)—was founded in 1845 at the height of railroad speculation and played the role of whipping up speculation.79 SGA announced in 1845 in L’Illustration that since 1830 advertising grew into “one of the great businesses of the time.”80 Emile de Girardin was a close associate of SGA.81 As such Le Tintamarre was full of inside jokes about the daily press and the world of advertising. To “derail réclame” meant to expose editorial advertising and venal practices of the press in general that were taking great profit in the railroad boom. By airing amusing and biting commentaries on the press and advertising, Le Tintamarre sought to distinguish itself from others that did not ref lect on their own conditions of existence. Le Tintamarre relied on the fear of mystification, of not getting a joke, as a key element of its appeal. The “railroad” joke, which states (line 16), “Réclame: We beg the Patagonian papers to go right ahead and insert it,” and prints a eulogy for the project of building a railroad to the moon, is exposing the practice of réclame. The departure station, “the Rue du Croissant” (line 15), associates the headquarters of the Parisian press with the realm of puff. The announcement “La Flute commerciale (Commercial Flotilla),” another joke, demands close scrutiny.82 Small signs, such as the “non” inserted in the tenth line, yielding the sentence “Limited shareholder partnership formed by an act not deposed at any notary,” or the “FRACS”–morning coats—in place of “FRANCS” (line 13), makes this humorous and absurd. Such jokes indicate a certain crisis in journalism. Not only was Le Tintamarre f inancially dependent on advertisements—the bigger and the more the better—they were threatening to dominate it. The text of a spoof

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was a mirror image of an advertisement, taking its model and distorting it. By appropriating its form, with its huge titles and exaggerated claims, might a paper re-appropriate its space and authority. The new commercial space in newspapers, a component of a new marketplace, caused a confrontation between news and advertising, and between literary prose and advertising prose. 83 A caricature (figure 4.1) by Bourdet entitled “Poster Mania” published in Le Charivari in 1836 illustrates an anxiety stemming from competing rhetoric.84 An entrepreneur is offering insurance against “insurances, giveaways, tontines, lotteries, shares, and subscriptions.” The insurance itself is in the form of a dividend. The entrepreneur is certain that this “colossal operation” will succeed thanks to his gigantic poster. The image signals a trend toward abstraction and mystification: the values of concepts are measured by their material size. It suggests that advertising rhetoric deliberately mystifies rather than clarifies, and that the means of publicity becomes the standard by which claims are judged. The ironic message of the image is that the meaning of the financial transactions, which should be made clearer by the large type of the poster, becomes further confused; windows interrupt a coherent reading of the poster. Le Tintamarre’s parody continued into the Second Republic. In September 1850 SGA inundated the daily press with ad-posters for lotteries and ventures for Californian gold mines. 85 Since France was absorbing 44 percent of the gold, adventurous quests in California were being widely publicized.86 Le

Figure 4.1

Bourdet, “L’affichomanie,” Le Charivari, Sept. 14, 1836.

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Tintamarre regularly spoofed the ads. In the series “the Society of the Puffists,,” “the supporters of the Californian firms and of the Nord rail line,” the four newspapers and “ornaments and bluffers” of SGA are “raising the alarm about the death” of the small press.87 Ironically Le Tintamarre itself was full of goldrush ads, so much so that its length increased from eight to sixteen pages for three months. For Le Tintamarre to satirize gold-rush ads was to undermine the authority of ads in its own pages, and to disclaim responsibility of what it printed. In an editorial, it encouraged the public to “challenge the colossal réclames” of gold-rush speculations.88 One effect of Le Tintamarre’s jokes was to reveal the uncertain nature of the rapid circulation, exchange, and formation of capital at a time when hundreds of speculative ventures were being offered. What indeed could be the difference between a Le Tintamarre joke and a real advertisement? Both appear as arrangements of typography, presentations of codes, claims, and promises. The bourgeois reader would be buying comic relief at the price of the realization that neither journalism nor capital was stable in meaning, direction, or significance. Satires in Le Tintamarre did little to clarify the competing rhetoric of speculation, although it implicitly alerted readers that many of the ads were just too good to be true. Richard Terdiman, in an analysis of the press in the early nineteenth century, has argued that intellectuals, carriers of a “counter discourse,” tried to subvert the dominant, bourgeois discourse, in this case the commercial press. Daumier’s caricatures were an example of such resistance, using irony and humor as weapons against censorship. Terdiman argues that often the intellectuals trying to resist the commercialization of culture were re-appropriated by the dominant discourse, succumbing to a powerful logic of capitalism.89 I interpret the role of intellectuals as less in binary terms and as more varied, more in alignment with Mary Gluck’s interpretation that the “popular bohemia” participated in the creation of the street-level, everyday modernity while also parodying bourgeois practices.90 We have seen that intellectuals such as Delphine de Girardin, Balzac, Philipon, and Grandville actively participated in the process, all with ambivalence. I also see the intellectuals and their audiences as actively interacting by exchanging opinions, which means that their identities as creators and consumers of culture were not so clear cut, and that they shared collective identities. Nonetheless, the coercive and conformist dimensions of capitalism’s effects that Terdiman underlines was a powerful aspect of the nascent consumer culture as well. As commercial journalism was establishing itself as the prevailing genre of the press, most writers were involved in the process, whether they liked it or not. Being an independent director of a journal often meant writing most of the ads as well. Balzac, Philipon, and later Stéphane Mallarmé and Guillaume Apollinaire, are some examples of writers and artists who launched their own journals, and, in spite of their ambivalence, wrote their own ads.91 In this respect Le Tintamarre’s practices were not quite acts of political resistance. Rather, the paper employed irony as an effective approach against its more powerful rivals like the daily press and the SGA.

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Le Tintamarre linked charlatanism with publicity. It printed a song in 1846, entitled “Clown on Stage,” a Macairian parody that satirized new notables and writers adept at publicity: I was your toy . . . I dine at Rothschild’s . . . If you want to succeed you have to be a banker,/ Juggler, and charlatan, and know how [to] wake up the gossip columns;/ You must know, through the Débats, through La Presse/ . . . Billpost, billpost, and cover all of Paris/ With . . . advertisements of strong colors . . . I know my period; I change ideas everyday and cast off . . . I only speak to eyes and never to the mind . . . I cheep with Aubert . . . I write, a new Dumas, while dining, one volume . . . a few demi-gods of the Bottin Almanach./ I believe these are the heroes of the parade.92 Le Tintamarre’s claim to “uncover charlatanism” aimed its fire not only at modern industrial, journalistic, commercial and political powers, but also at the literary establishment represented by Alexandre Dumas. Its parody is akin to that of La Caricature or the Robert Macaire series: a banker is a clown, who “changes ideas everyday” and promotes himself loudly. In the song Aubert has joined the group of the dominant. Le Tintamarre also presented itself as a charlatan who boasted of what it didn’t offer. It announced its continuing “non-collaboration” with “Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas, and Eugène Sue.” In a parody of the press offering giveaways, it announced that it would distribute “neither depilatory paste nor Didier mustard.”93 It announced the formation of “The Philanthropic and National Society for the Extinction of Subscription in France for the Physical and Intellectual Betterment of the Class of Subscribers.”94 The director Commerson appeared as his alter-ego, Joseph Citrouillard (Pumpkin), a charlatanistic comic. How effective was such parody? Mikhail Bakhtin argued that, in parody, discourse “becomes an arena of battle between two voices.” The author, speaking in another’s discourse, “introduces into that discourse a semantic intention that is directly opposed to the original one.” What ensues is a paradox; the parody, while asserting that the text is not really what it purports to be, also insists that it communicates some truth about its model.95 Parody as the main source of editorial identity served to confuse and evade its own identity. In the satire “The French Society of Puff,” likely a reference to La Société des gens de lettres, Victor Hugo and Balzac were depicted as adept at publicity.96 By parodying the press and publishing, Le Tintamarre undermined its own authority, but at the same time created a unique identity for itself. The term “tintamarresque” circulated in the Second Empire, denoting the spirit of joke. The Goncourt brothers used the term with a positive connotation—mocking, mischievous.97 Le Tintamarre also courted industry and solicited ads so successfully so that it was the principal paper known for advertising until Le Petit Journal and the daily Le Figaro appeared. Le Tintamarre was exceptionally successful at attracting advertisers, at a time when a dearth of ads was the major cause of the press’ dependency on the monopoly of the SGA.98 The first issue included ads for

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books, bookstores, magazines, a carpet store, the magasin de nouveauté A La Ville de Paris, fashion houses, pharmacies, dentists, and consumer items.99 Le Tintimarre aggressively solicited manufacturers with its unprecedented format, where “ads are placed in the margins of the texts,” rather than just on the last page.100 Le Tintamarre collaborated with L’Avant-Scène and Le Journal des théâtres, targeting the “public of the theaters, races, and the concerts, as well as the artists of Paris, the provinces, and abroad,” thus aiming at a wide middle-class readership plus the milieu of the theater.101 According to Georges Roque the problem for nascent advertising was “to inscribe new products in the cosmos, assigning them a place in a still stable world.”102 When advertisements were literally inserted into the papers and into the world, readers found themselves looking at disparate categories of things with different values within the same page. Not only did commercial articles next to newspaper articles form a “ juxtaposition of the irreconcilable,”103 there was also strange juxtapositions within advertising sections. Charlatans vied with modern shops and with literature. On the same page were ads for curing embarrassing diseases and the latest fashionable magazine. The existing cultural hierarchy mobilized all kinds of subtle maneuvers on the pages in order to be distinctive. Le Tintamarre increasingly favored new and larger commercial establishments, whereas in Le Tam-Tam ads for shops were placed together under the modest rubric “Articles divers.” Later Le Tintamarre used special frames to separate magasins de nouveatés, department stores, and other shops as “recommended” for readers to visit “with complete trust.”104 The fact that the high and low were found on the same page was a particularly sensitive problem for writers and artists. In an increasingly open market of competing talents, advertising was regarded as a necessary pest. At a music contest in 1847, Madame Servier described the dilemma confronting artists: the burden of the odious réclame, the need to use it, and the leveling of values. Réclame, this sore of the nineteenth century . . . has become . . . necessary to whoever wants to break through . . . However humiliating it may be for you to see the announcement and praise of a book, in which you have poured your soul and your dreams of glory, between a drug and a ridiculous cosmetic; however hard it may be for you to pay (as this costs, and very expensively) . . . for this ad . . . which sometimes you are even forced to write yourself, you have to tolerate this grotesque and ignoble neighborhood, you must pay, you must yourself f latter; for without it your book is stillborn.105 According to Servier advertising was created through historical circumstances. Now “there is no more man of genius, but there are infinitely more men of spirit,” necessitating self-promotion.106 The same year Flaubert in Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues (Dictionary of Platitudes), a compendium of clichés and fashionable misconceptions, defined “publicité” as a “source of fortune,” pointing to both the new power of publicity and perceived naïveté about its effects.107 Advertising agencies devised new ways for inserting ads into articles. In a circular sent to newspaper editors, Dollingen, whose agency provided publicité in

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all the provincial newspapers, proposed to send “two new literary columns” each month on condition that the editors insert in their papers “an article including réclames about Parisian industries” which he would also provide.108 Dollingen would become an inf luential figure in the Second Empire. The Goncourt Brothers criticized Dollingen as one of the figures commercializing literature.109

Advertising as Entertainment, Advertising as Embarrassment The attitude of Le Tam-Tam and Le Tintamarre toward advertising was one of ambivalence. While irony and cynicism formed the main staple of their wit, as in the claim that “the literature of ads” was much better than articles written by “[s]erial writers, publicists, hacks of all caliber,” the tone in their defense of ads was often sincere.110 In 1836, jumping into the advertising controversy provoked by La Presse and Le Siècle, Le Tam-Tam criticized the “puritans” and “moralists attacking the mercantilism of the press.”111 According to Le Tam-Tam regular ads such as the classified ad was a fundamentally modern artifice that mirrored contemporary mores, allowing an open discussion of hitherto private subjects. Like photography and physiognomy, advertising provided “one of the best summaries of the physiognomy of the times” that “translates the movements of the week, the weekly action of the muscles of the social body, the life of the city.” The classified ad was one of “the diverse instruments of propagation that are now at the service of the crowd,” placing “at the disposition of everyone his needs, his pleasures, hygienic counsel that his prudery would prevent him from daring to ask anyone about, the explanation of a curiosity, new procedures.”112 In its praise of Les Petites Affiches, comprised of classified ads, Le Tam-Tam claimed that where many magazines “printed with the greatest typographic luxury, satined, illustrated, perfumed,” failed to “paint the mores of the times,” Les Petites Affiches succeeded in presenting “physiognomical observations” and “truthful sketches.” A typical example was “A young lady, strong as can be, living in a small town in the suburbs, ardently desires to find a recommendable boarder.” The ad added that “there is a magnificent garden with three acacias and a honeysuckle. Write postage paid.” Le Tam-Tam declared that Les Petites Affiches offered “the precision and the convenience for approaching delicate subjects.”113 This commentary underscored the utility of advertising as providing a new marketplace for exchanges of delicate nature, and also referred to ads as sources of curiosity and distraction. Ads that induced curiosity for some were embarrassing for others. The prevalence of “immoral” ads on the fourth page made some experts believe that press advertising was useless for products aimed at women because the father of a family would not permit his daughters to read the fourth page of the paper.114 Yet there were widespread belief and anxiety that women and young people did read ads. A satire in La Grande Ville (1844) criticized a sudden transformation of the newspaper into a forum for embarrassing issues. A young man reads the newspaper— that is to say ads—to his aunt, who is scandalized by descriptions of embarrassing bodily problems, and a young girl mortifies her mother by reading embarrassing

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ads about secret illnesses, digestive problems and discreet ways of dealing with pregnancies. The mother exclaims that the newspaper seems to have become “amphitheaters of hospitals.” The morale of the story is that “We would not permit a young person to look at the walls, if she could read such things there,” but that “they are placed in the papers that go into salons, workshops, and homes of families.”115 There was a sense of crisis over the potentially embarrassing publicity of medical knowledge seen as morally corrupting the young. Another satire in La Grande Ville pointed out that ads for marriage agencies were everywhere, along with ads for discreet services.116 Such satires highlighted public anxiety about ads in the new press that caught the older generations by surprise; what used to be secret and arranged discreetly was being spoken about in plain view on the fourth page, in between ads for dental products or furniture. A satire by Maurice Alhoy from 1839 targeted the “leper of industrial speculation.” After soliciting subscription through “a circular manufactured with steam” from all French fathers on the conduct of their sons, all the fathers receive the same report describing the sons as “the best student in school.”117 This satire attacked speculative ventures that may be creating threatening social repercussions. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs are seen as reaching large sectors of society through mechanization, all the while making an anonymous speculative proposition seem like an individual, “humanitarian” recommendation. Ads invited browsing, similar to flânerie. The ephemeral trivia in ads was a source of diversion. According to Auguste Villemot, writing around 1864, ads were meant to attract “the eye of a stroller, or a reader, through a word that fixes his attention and makes him dream.”118 Ads could induce a sense of mystery and a thirst to find out what lay behind their clipped lines, to send the money required to satisfy one’s voyeuristic curiosity. Elie Frébault declared in 1878 that in Paris, “the city of amusing and successful sales pitch par excellence,” there was a special group of readers who were hooked on the classified ads, “through need or curiosity.”119 He recounted an experiment that Charles Monselet and two friends carried out in order to test “to what point gullibility could go,” by inserting “the most eccentric, the most absurd, the craziest ads imaginable.” All three ads were “a success beyond all hopes.” The most popular was: “THE HAND IN THE HAIR! Send 1 franc 50 cent. postage. Theory of a new sensation. Love, and purity!” The next was “RETURN FROM THE OTHER WORLD. Precise news. No more mysteries. Everything clarified.” Even “I PROMISE NOTHING. I COMMIT TO NOTHING. But send 1 fr. 50. pstg. Maybe you’ll be surprised. Who knows?” was a success.120 Rather than confirming popular credulity, the experiment suggests that advertising had long become a form of communication for the curious. Tonguein-cheek puff was fashionable in the press to beguile and amuse readers. Puff was thus a part of the culture of joke, but also included blatantly false news. In 1857 the Goncourt brothers noticed “an enormous puff ” in Le Journal des contemporains: the artist Gavarni, “inventor of the direction of balloons, supposedly made a round trip by balloon to Algiers in one day.” When the Goncourts told Gavarni about the article, Gavarni laughed and imagined a trial with “a joker who could have told the judges: ‘Bread costs a lot to the poor. Well, we should feed them

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with canard (fake news)!’ ”121 The balloon, emblematic of puff, is here combined with a joker and canard, thus creating a trio of modern types: a machine, a person, and a newspaper article. The trio emblematize the reign of the boulevard press that cashes in on exaggeration and fake news. The balloon as a metaphor often denoted a superficial and unstable universe.122 Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story about a canard and a balloon called “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfall” where “a balloon manufactured entirely of newspapers” resembles “a huge fool’s cap,” repeatedly alluding to emptiness. The name Pfall itself sounds somewhat like “puff.” In the 1850s “puff and advertising” continued to be a significant issue.123 In the 1850s Le Tintamarre’s satirical eye turned toward commercial campaigns. The theme of charlatanism and the abuse of editorial advertising continued to be the main stock of parody. In an article entitled “Advertising-Man” the producer of cashmere Laurent Biétry was caricatured as a “charlatan” whose fame was manufactured through press advertising: “L’Illustration speaks about me every day, in fait-Paris, in fait divers, in ads, at the rate of five francs, three francs, one franc, 50 centimes per line!” Le Tintamarre’s charge that Biétry, a “shawl-man” and “brand-man,” swapped his identity with a commodity is comparable to Balzac’s description of a publicist: “he’s not a man but a name, a well-publicized label.”124 Eight years later the Biétry campaign was still on. In an 1863 issue in Le Boulevard, a portrait of Biétry and a list of his achievements were printed under the heading “The Industrial Pantheon.” The title was an appropriation of Nadar’s “Pantheon” of all the luminaries of the arts, a gesture toward revising the cultural hierarchy. Biétry was praised for having created “the famous brand the papers have been talking about so much for the last fifteen years.”(!)125 Such praise did not fit the irreverent spirit of the paper and clearly stuck out as editorial advertising. The cultivation of artificial renown continued to be common in the field of literature as well. Le Tintamarre’s formula of parody at the expense of the more powerful was getting old. In 1852 it criticized the ubiquity of posters and advertising in general: Today everything is invaded by the poster, this omni-colored call to Parisian credulity, this disguised slogan, this scandalous and cheeky method of calling public attention. Carnivals, fêtes, walls, sidewalks—advertising has polluted everything.126 In commerce claims and counterclaims were rampant, making it harder and harder to discern “truth” in advertising. Moreover, Le Tintamarre itself had begun to accept editorial advertising in 1852, listing avis divers and réclame as advertising options, although it continued to protest against réclames. By 1854 Faits divers and nouvelles diverses were also options. Le Tintamarre’s rates were the same as papers like Le Figaro, which in 1854 was charging 50 centimes per line of annonces and 1.5 francs per line of réclames. Le Tintamarre’s rates in 1855 were higher: 50 centimes and 2.5 francs respectively.127 Le Tintamarre as also publicized through editorial ads. In 1854 Le Figaro “recommended” Le Tintamarre, citing the 100,000 readers of “this small paper in which . . . Commerson . . . dispenses

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more gaiety, verve, and wit than would be needed to nourish ten dailies.”128 A satirical volume published in 1857 listing all “abuses” such as the stock market, crinoline, and hygiene, implied that the biggest modern offenders were chatty book prefaces, which had become sales pitches. In an example of tintamarresque humor, it suggested that its own preface was no exception: “We too . . . we want to stand at the threshold of our stall, and cry to the public: Enter! Enter! . . . A grand presentation of stereoscope and the black room!”129

Paris, the Queen of Puff and Réclame In 1867 the critics Edmond Texier and A. Kaempfen imagined that P.T. Barnum, the American “genius of puff and réclame,” admired the sophisticated publicity techniques of Parisians for everything, not just commerce and industry, that although Barnum was the individual best known for publicity, Paris is the queen of “puff and réclame” as seen in posters and “the fourth page of your papers, and sometimes, the first.”130 This contrasts with the American press, which from the mid-century took care to maintain that their ads were clearly distinguishable from news.131 The vocabulary of advertising and publicity not only endured but abounded in the criticism of the mores of the Second Empire: just as “philosophical cults” “f latter themselves in the sparse splendor of a réclame . . . of a Revue,” “the bluestocking fabricates her own success, mad for seeing her name printed in a magazine, whether in a column about fashion or about luxury coach building.”132 The overarching theme of such critique was the idea of the authentic self and the value of legitimate social communication. According to such views, publicity created false appearances. In Arnould Frémy’s La Réclame (1857), a play criticizing réclame, an editor defends his magazine as a literary enterprise, not “an industrial bulletin.” He is continuously solicited by artists who want to be written about.133 The happy ending of the piece announces the decision of the editor to do away with réclames. Six years later, in Jules Nast’s play La Réclame a character declares that effectively nothing is possible without réclame, because “first of all one has to know how to be spoken about”; In order to succeed one must manipulate the network of representation to forge a reputation.134 In the 1860s advertising was associated with theatrical self-display, a symptom of widespread social ills. In the sensationally successful Les Odeurs de Paris (The Odors of Paris) Louis Veuillot criticized the corruption of everything from the government to the arts of the Second Empire. Using advertising as an emblem of the times, Veuillot argued that in politics or literature, substance and quality were replaced by rhetoric and confusion. He deplored the leveling of values perpetuated when “literary réclame [is] placed in between oil, ink, and cosmetics,” equating “the literary with the charlatans.” The source of conservative Veuillot’s hostility was his distaste for mass culture, mass politics, and the nouveaux riches. He saw the “universalization of reading” as leading to the lowering of literary standards. Advertising was integral to democracy and popular taste, and the traditional “street sales pitch” “passed into the political language” used by

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charlatans. The penchant for self-display was another symptom of democratization grown out of proportion to taste. While nude women, scenes of cohabitation and adultery at the theaters threatened “the family and the social order,” “ ‘réclames,’ grotesque and cheeky charlataneries” were part of the theater of modern life.135 Self-display was inherent to a culture that lost Rousseauian sincerity and transparency and was embracing cultural democratization. The idea that Paris is a covert capital of publicity was the most pronounced toward the end of the Second Empire, when advertising became a metaphor of social climbing and the lack of sincerity, as society intensively depended on forms of rituals and rhetoric. While political repression and censorship curtailed the expression of genuine opinions, and the Havas Agency was a state organ of propaganda, the state was famous for its fête impériale mobilizing parades, pageants, inaugurations, and celebrations that were publicized through Le Moniteur universel.136 The court of the Second Empire was famed for its beautiful women who set the fashion tone but also attracted criticism for immorality—due to the large presence of courtesans—and excessive fashion like the crinoline.137

Conclusion Under the July Monarchy advertising consolidated into a significant new form of communication of increasing power. While the initial dependence of literature on the press contributed to the teeming of ads disguised as reviews and recommendations, literary fame also became indispensable to the press, at a time when serial novels like Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris were phenomenally popular. The passion for publicity was fraught with the tension between the desire for fame and the lack of taste that desire seemed to reveal. Le Tintamarre’s strategy of promoting overt advertising while exposing and eliminating the covert variety was overall successful for itself in attracting ads and readers, but its self-parodies also created a confusion. Its tactics formed a significant strand in the culture of popular journalism. The dual nature of advertising, surreptitious, yet omnipresent, resonated in the boulevardier language developed through the press and the literature of physiognomy. Boulevardier culture was both fascinated by and hostile to the idea of posing. Advertising emerged as much as an entertainment and an alternative space for private issues as a menace and a competing set of rhetoric that threatened to do away with meaning. The success of Le Tintamarre suggests that the exposure of hidden ads had a ready and far from naïve audience. The critique of advertising treated advertising as a powerful and manipulative force, and called for vigilant ref lection on the part of the public, while more sanguine observers, as well as advertising’s promoters, stated the benefits of advertising. Both camps, through the process of debating, helped integrate consumer agency into the newly emerging marketplace. While caricatures on types sought to make sense of social relations, the obsession with the charlatan expressed a fear of the dissolution of coherent social relations through rapid social changes. Advertising practices, often seen as spreading reputation based on little

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substance, seemed to embody the new abstract organizations of society, including the expansion of the marketplace where abstract monetary transactions took place. Jokes on advertising reinforced the negative connotations of advertising as puffery and exhibition yet also commented on the centrality of these phenomena in modern life. The vocabulary of advertising would later be used to satirize electoral campaigns, café-concerts and, in the early twentieth century, cubist painting.138 Such critique would be joined by criticism based on advertising’s direct emotional and visual appeal. To criticize advertising meant criticizing the hollowness of modernity.

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CH A P T E R

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Puff Marries Advertising: Mechanization and Absurd Consumerism in J.-J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde

Introduction In J.-J. Grandville’s masterpiece Un Autre Monde (1844) Puff fashions himself as a “neo-god.” He creates two other “neo-gods,” Crack (Krackq) and Chatterbox (Hahblle), and the three depart for separate adventures in the realms of the sky, earth, and sea, parodying contemporary Parisian society.1 Un Autre Monde was a revolutionary book, in which images were illustrated by texts. It was an extremely ambitious book: in the epilogue Grandville proclaimed that he created a whole world, no small task. And what a world of complex, strange and fantastic imagination! It is little wonder that when Un Autre Monde was rediscovered in the 1930s by the Surrealists, they foremost admired the singular and uncanny character of its images. Others, inspired by Walter Benjamin, have used Grandville’s images from the book to explore and illustrate theories of modernity and varied aspects of modernization.2 Yet Un Autre Monde as a whole, both image and text, has received little sustained analysis, and the interpretations of Grandville’s work have largely focused on art. 3 Grandville was, along with Daumier, the most popular and prolific artist working with La Maison Aubert, and was in the thick of the world of the publishing of illustrated books, lithograph prints, and caricature papers. This chapter situates Grandville’s work in rapidly changing contemporary conditions and methods of book production and marketing, by exploring the phenomenon of advertising and the commercialization of publishing and culture as significant themes in the book, and also by discussing the book’s narrative structure. The book contains a quasiencyclopedic anatomy of contemporary rhetorics and techniques of advertising and publicity. From the 1830s the interpenetration of news and advertising, as well as increasingly rapid circulation of new forms of advertisements, were met with much debate as we have seen. Grandville in Un Autre Monde expressed the sense of the absurd emanating from advertisements and publicity techniques in radically jarring and futuristic ways that combined contemporary forms with

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anticipated ones. This chapter demonstrates the astuteness of Grandville’s observation of contemporary mores, and also reveals the complexity and sophistication of the contemporary practices of advertising and publicity, which provided a fertile ground for Grandville’s imagination. This chapter seeks to enhance the understanding of both the uniqueness of Un Autre Monde and its embeddedness in contemporary culture. The final section of this chapter compares Grandville’s images that implicitly referred to contemporary advertising techniques, to advertisements from the 1890s and 1900s, incorporating Walter Benjamin’s analysis of Grandville’s work. No previous work by Grandville prepared readers for Un Autre Monde, which generated much controversy, partly because it was so difficult to tell precisely to what genre it belongs. Grandville was a respected artist and a main contributor to Charles Philipon’s inf luential papers of political satire, La Caricature and Le Charivari. His reputation had been firmly established by Les Métamorphoses du jour (Present-Day Metamorphoses) (1829), an album of lithographs satirizing Parisian mores by depicting animals dressed as humans. His work that preceded Un Autre Monde, Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux (1842–1844), was a great success. Grandville’s posthumous Les Fleurs animées (1847), fifty two plates of “personified f lowers” in f loral high fashion, would also be an instant commercial and critical success. In addition to multiple French editions, American, Belgian, and German editions would be published in the next two decades.4 However, when Un Autre Monde was serialized in 1843 and 1844 in thirty-six installments, it was a critical failure, which awed, baff led, and even angered its audiences. 5 Théophile Gautier wrote in 1847 in an obituary for Grandville that his images “lack clarity and present to the eye nothing but rebuses that are difficult to guess.”6 Baudelaire later echoed Gautier’s view, criticizing Grandville’s allegorical method as a dualist combination of literary spirit and artistic craft in which “everything is allegory, allusion, hieroglyphics, rebuses.” 7 Joseph Méry, in a tribute published in 1849, spoke of Un Autre Monde and Les Fleurs animées as the result of “an exploration that was extreme, singular, almost mystical” that cost “an incredible effort.” 8 He did not elaborate further on Un Autre Monde but preferred to speak of Grandville’s more acclaimed works. In an 1853 article on Grandville’s art, Charles Blanc typically chose to bypass Un Autre Monde, in favor of his “romantic” works.9 Champf leury, in the first monograph on caricature, Histoire de la caricature moderne (1865), didn’t even mention Un Autre Monde.10 It appears then that to most of Grandville’s contemporaries, Un Autre Monde seemed like an incomprehensible puzzle. At the end of the book Grandville in fact included a rebus addressed to the reader. What kind of enigma then is Un Autre Monde? Grandville’s complex and fabulous images are about multiple transformations, inversions, and voyages. While Un Autre Monde is foremost a work of caricature along the style of Le Charivari, it also belongs in the literary genre of fantastic voyages that satirize contemporary society, such as Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.11 Grandville illustrated Voyages de Gulliver dans des contrées lointaines in 1838. Un Autre Monde covers a vast subject matter, and it is partly a reworking of classical mythology and part science

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fiction. The impossibility of simplifying Grandville’s project is evident in the subtitle of the work: Transformations, Visions, Incarnations, Ascensions, Locomotions, Explorations, Peregrinations, Excursions, Stations, Cosmogonies, Fantasmagories, Reveries, Frolics, Practical Jokes, Whims, Metamorphoses, Zoomorphoses, Lithomorphoses, Metempsycoses, Apotheoses and Other Things. The list of themes, including a host of nineteenth-century neologisms and ending with “Other Things,” suggests that the list is very long, perhaps endless. This apparently chaotic ambition, verging on nonsense, evidently bewildered contemporary readers. Grandville was deeply interested in Baroque allegory, analogy, and correspondence as well as emblems, and the subtitle seems to suggest that the work is about an apparently structure-less series of images based on the principle of permanent mutation.12 The list of themes in the subtitle belies the fact that the book has a very distinct narrative structure and is far from just a series of complex images. The narrative has a mise-en-abyme, or story-within-a-story, format.13 I argue that the stories of Un Autre Monde are layered in four frames, in a series of mises-en-abymes. Each frame constitutes a story which is both a process of creation and also a journey of experimentation, adventure, and education. Along with satire and voyage, creation is a main theme of the work, which contains scenes of creation and metamorphoses. The “other world” is seen through the eyes of Puff and his friends. Their adventure is framed successively in the adventures of Pencil and Pen, Grandville the artist, and the reader. The format allowed for references not only to contemporary culture, but to the book itself as an artifact of diverse creative processes, to the author himself, and finally to the reader, who must be drawn in to experience the book. The narratives address the manifold process of the commercialization of culture during the July Monarchy, when advertising was coming into its own with attendant controversy, and the world of publishing and journalism was rapidly changing and expanding. The roles of advertising, publicity, and journalism form an important theme in Un Autre Monde, which even determines the course of the narrative. The narrative structure and the narratives also address the layers of process that went into the conception, creation, publication, marketing, and consumption of a book, which was becoming conceptualized as a package and streamlined, especially by a modern publisher like La Maison Aubert. When situated in this original context that underlines the dynamic between art and commerce, Un Autre Monde turns out to be a key document of the period that literally embodies the processes of the creation, marketing, and consumption of a book. The extra-long subtitle was a parody of contemporary lengthy book titles suggesting panoramic coverages that also had an effect of self-promotion. As one of the most popular and prolific illustrators around, Grandville was very familiar with the production and marketing of books as consumer goods. His illustrations appeared in two such projects conceived around the same time as Un Autre Monde. Paris comique, revue amusante des caractères, moeurs, modes, folies,

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ridicules, excentricités, niaiseries, bêtises, sottises, voleries et infamies parisiennes (1844), published by La Maison Aubert, used intriguing words like “follies, ridicules, eccentricities, stupidities, silliness, foolishness, thieveries, and infamies,” suggesting an absurd kind of panoramic coverage. And Le Diable à Paris- Paris et les parisiens- Moeurs et coutumes, caractères et portraits des habitants de Paris, tableau complet de leur vie privée, publique, politique, artistique, littéraire, industrielle, etc., was serialized from 1843 by Hetzel. As such, the subtitle of Un Autre Monde appears as a joke, an absurd form of the increasingly long subtitles with “etc.” The outer two frames of the book’s narrative structure introduce the reader to the other world and also present the artist Grandville. The first image of the book, the cover image, depicts “another world.” It is seen from the point of view of the reader who, from a vertiginous vantage point rarely depicted in a book cover, confronts this other world, which is no doubt eccentric, since the image includes tennis rackets with arms and legs. The image beckons the reader to embark on a voyage into this world. The reader then is the first protagonist of the story. This frame constitutes the boundaries of the book itself and signifies the journey of the reader who opens, reads, and closes the book. The next image, the frontispiece (figure 5.1), depicts “caricature”—a self-portrait of Grandville, accompanied by his favorite muse “imagination” and carrying extra-large pen and pencil, linking the battered old world to the “another world” that holds fresh possibilities. Thus introducing the second protagonist and the second frame of the book, the image refers to the artist as the creator of the book and suggests that the adventure of the artist, guided by his imagination, is about to start. The prologue and the epilogue (figure 5.5) frame the next story, about the journey of Pencil that comments on the conditions of artistic creation and is therefore the story of the creation of the book itself. Pencil and Pen discuss the idea of images being illustrated by texts. Pencil, wanting freedom, embarks on a journey, leaving Pen behind. The book would be an experiment shaped by the adventures of Pencil that explore the narrative possibilities of images. The text was mainly written by Taxile Delord, the new editor in chief of Le Charivari, working from Grandville’s notes and interpreting his images.14 Delord kept anonymity during the publication, and his name appeared only with the final delivery, on the image of the epilogue. Grandville’s images are both seeped in contemporary culture and incontestably unique. Delord’s text, witty but far from a masterpiece, doesn’t do justice to Grandville’s images, which partly explains why scholars have neglected the text.15 However, the very prosaic nature of the text also has the effect of more concretely linking the images to other contemporary formulae. The relationship between the text and image is further complicated by the fact that Grandville’s images are highly allegorical and therefore already text-driven. While I will distinguish between the visual and textual narratives as much as possible, the two will occasionally merge, as it is impossible to tell to what extent Delord’s text was based on Grandville’s notes. At the time of publication there were rumors that Taxile Delord didn’t exist, adding to the confusion in the reception of the book.16 The Surrealist painter and poet Max Ernst, in his preface to the 1963 edition of Un Autre Monde, claimed that Grandville

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Figure 5.1 J.-J. Grandville, frontispiece, Un Autre Monde.

wrote the text, under the pseudonym of Taxile Delord, an erroneous claim that has been repeated by others.17 Puff, the main protagonist of the book, is introduced in the first chapter. He recreates himself and creates Crack and Chatterbox, who embark on journeys to observe and experience the world. What follows is a series of stories about various parts of the universe that treats topics like politics, art, music, feminism, entertainment, and industrialization. These stories constitute what in many ways is a mirror image of Paris. Other stories are about more esoteric subjects like the beginning of the universe, the kingdom of marionnettes or a revolution in the vegetal kingdom.

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Un Autre Monde is thus composed of a series of worlds that are successively entered, travelled, and, at the end, left. Such a structure, encompassing multiple viewpoints, self-conscious references to the book as an artifact, and beckoning to the reader to make sense of the book, makes Un Autre Monde a strikingly unique project.

Puff and His Friends The first words of the book proper are: “My name is Puff. That says enough.” It is clear that to contemporaries “puff ” is a familiar term. Puff was an inventor but too many people wanted to know his secret, and he was in fact killed by advertising (réclame) which gave away his secret. Now he transforms himself into a “neo-god,” society’s projection of new ideals. A little bit later Puff is reintroduced: “Puff, as you no doubt guessed, was a journalist.”18 Who then is Puff, this inventor-journalist-neo-god? He is a kind of a charlatan. He is a composite image of several popular types that had been extensively featured in satires. During the July Monarchy enormous developments in illustration led to a massive profusion of caricatures, propelled by a new bourgeois taste for them. The image of Puff can be traced to Daumier’s Robert Macaire series, published between 1836 and 1838. This association is underlined by Puff ’s reference to Macaire as his uncle.19 Macaire assumed multiple identities at ease and was also deft at using advertising and publicity, seen as new methods of manipulation. Like Daumier, Grandville worked closely with Philipon and was the most prominently featured artist of La Caricature, contributing brilliant political and social commentary until the journal ceased publication in 1835. The association between Macaire and charlatanism was also drawn in the vaudeville play Le Puff (1838). One of its authors, Louis Huart, and Grandville worked on several books together. In the play Puff, “the grand entrepreneur of macairisms,” is dressed as “a very rich charlatan” and sports a pince-nez, which is how Dr. Puff is portrayed by Grandville.20 Puff in Un Autre Monde is a former journalist who pulls off schemes in order to feed himself, underlining the association between journalism, publicity, and charlatanism. While he is “a mere inventor,” his inventions include fake newspaper articles (canards). He is a harmless version of Macaire, someone used to recreating identities. Dr. Puff ’s creation of Crack and Chatterbox, both referring to forms of utterance like puff and s’afficher, signifies the multiplication of the same. “Puff ” also has another connotation, that of smoke, and possibly hashish. Dr. Puff disappeared surrounded by a smoke before re-appearing as a neo-god. And the image of the creation of the three neo-gods shows smoke, with a monster-like face framing the image, perhaps suggesting that these protagonists, and the “other world” itself, are a pigment of imagination aided by hashish.21 In Gustave Courbet’s Self-Portrait (Man with a Pipe) from circa 1848 to 1849 the pipe underlined the depiction of the artist as a bohemian. Courbet publicized his self-portrait and practiced other publicity tactics such as one-person shows, similar to photographers.22 Grandville’s depiction of smoke was likely both an inside joke and a way to assert his identity as a bohemian, eccentric artist as published in L’Illustration in 1843.23

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The Steam-Powered Concert The first adventure of Puff is the invention of “The Steam-Powered Concert.” (figure 5.2) Along with contemporary musical fashion, industrialization, and railroads, a major theme of this episode is the hype surrounding these phenomena. Puff is adept at a modern publicity campaign, which not only publicizes Puff ’s invention but consists of a series of tributes to the inventor himself. Puff ’s illustrated posters cover “all the intersections.” True to his calling, Puff declares himself “Dr. Puff ” and reviews his own invention in a magazine, Le Galoubet littéraire et musical as “the first human-mechanical concert of the incomparable Dr. Puff ”: “Thanks to this admirable invention, colds, extinctions of voices or bronchitis no longer exist. The voices . . . are safe from any accident.”24 Grandville and Delord satirize ads for pseudo-medical products as well as the practice of authors reviewing their own books or publishers sending “please-inserts” to the press.25 We have seen that Balzac used the term “puff ” to mean editorial advertising.26 Dr. Puff ’s program for “The Steam-Powered Concert” shows some of the tropes of advertising in absurdist ways. It starts with “The Rail-Notes,” proceeds to “The Explosion,” “The Cars Burst by Themselves” and to “The Locomotive.”27 The train and Puff are associated through the puff of the smoke from the train. The idea of “The Steam-Powered Concert” alludes to the vogue of Berlioz and Liszt, for high-powered performances and tremendous virtuosity in music.28 In this period spectacles of virtuosity were widely publicized.29 The image also refers to the publicity for railroads through posters, newspaper articles, advertisements, and guidebooks. Grandville comments on the exaggerated claims of publicity. Dr. Puff ’s own review of the event describes the concert as “The first human-mechanical concert” with a motto: “In this century of progress, the machine is a perfected man.”30 By replacing human agency with the mechanical, Grandville breaks away from contemporary satires on publicity or railroads and takes a leap into a futuristic vision, which is also based on traditional fascination with automata. A “vaporian” harp is played by an extremely young virtuoso, a mechanical infant. The review continues: “His orchestra can defy those of all the conservatories of the universe.” The review celebrates the feat of producing high notes in rapid succession, then announces—in a parody of the widespread practice of giveaways as publicity— that the day’s giveaway to the subscribers are portraits of several musicians, facsimiles of their writings, and diverse original pieces of their composition. Then a dark note slips into the review; an “unfortunate accident” marked the end of the concert, when an ophicléide, overcharged with harmony, exploded into fireworks of sharp notes, leaving “a cloud of musical smoke and f lames of melody” in the atmosphere.31 This wonderfully surreal image invokes the ideas of a train accident, pollution, and the fragility of new inventions. The review ends with yet more praise of Dr. Puff, this time of his modesty: Dr. Puff “has lavished on all his assistants the care of his art with a disinterest above all praise.”32 This strange review satirizes the comic absurdity of contemporary journalism with exaggerated, hyperbolic language, the sprinkling of ads into news, and announcements of giveaways. Reviewing the play “Le puff, ou mensonge et vérité” (Hype, or Lies

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Figure 5.2 J.-J. Grandville, “The Steam-Powered Concert,” Un Autre Monde.

and Truth) (1848) by Eugène Scribe, Gautier described the fashionable term puff as “an announcement entangled with boasting,” not only a form of advertising but a form of culture.33 Another likely source for this image was Industrial Expositions. The Exposition of 1844, the same year as the publication of Un Autre Monde, was a popular site

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of diversion. Louis Huart’s Les Prodiges de l’industrie! revue philosophique, critique, comique et fantastique de l’exposition de 1844, published by La Maison Aubert, caricatured things like un-openable locks. Another caricature album that would be published in 1849 by La Maison Aubert, on the occasion of an Industrial Exposition, further shows that surreal images of mechanization were popular, and also shows an unmistakable inf luence of Un Autre Monde. In Cham’s album a transparent dress is made of perfected thin glass and a pistol-umbrella kills by accident. In Grandville-esque images a “perfected baby bottle” feeds a baby and takes him on a walk, and a mechanical mouth with teeth, inside a frame on the wall, bites a man’s nose, recalling Grandville’s image in Un Autre Monde.34 In a vaudeville Un Deluge d’inventions, revue de l’exposition de l’industrie staged in 1849, a mechanical woman is invented as a new mannequin. 35 Puff further demonstrates the laws of fashion and success by immediately deciding to replace his musicians with something new. He knows that, despite all the publicity, the vogue of “The Steam-Powered Concert” can’t last, that as he is “too neo-god not to know that nothing gets old faster than success.” He decides to open a shop for “Disguises by Night and by Hour at the Contradance.” He distributes a prospectus entitled “Physionogmical Disguises.”36 Ever in search of a new project, Puff then almost sets about to create artificial vegetables but opts instead to write a book. All these activities suggest that Puff is indeed a charlatan, ever in need of new ideas and inventions that would bring quick profit through means of publicity.

Satire of Paris and the Marriage of Puff and Advertising In other episodes of Un Autre Monde, distant voyages into topsy-turvy lands lead to a confrontation with an other that is a mirror image of the self. The voyage of Crack and Chatterbox is a series of satires of contemporary Paris. They start out by distancing themselves from Paris and thus changing their perspectives. Hahblle, f lying in a balloon, watches scenes in the streets of Paris from high in the air. In “Young China,” people amuse themselves by watching “French shadow plays” (ombres françaises), a reference to the Chinese shadow plays (ombres chinoises) popular in France. The Elysian Fields, where ancient Greeks amuse themselves, is a mirror image of the Champs-Elysées. Such images of inversions also refer to the inverted method of the creation of Un Autre Monde, in which literally another world is created through images aided by texts. These episodes also showcase a variety of commercial and publicity trends, and satirizes the commercialization of mores. One image represents a program for a spectacle at the Cirque-Olympique. Noticeable in an image of the Elysian Fields is a public urinal, a modern monument that also serves as an advertising medium, just as on the Champs-Elysées. In another absurdist satire, a “matrimonial bazar” called “The Altar for Nuptials” is publicized through a calling card announcing “a complete assortment of wives: widows, roses, etc.” A handout for the business declares: “We only receive women free of defects.” The firm, keeping a collection of “Women of all ages, countries, and professions at the disposal

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of all who wish to end the bother of bachelorhood,” guarantees its “products.”37 Grandville, in caricaturing social mores that seem to objectify women, seems to target matrimonial agencies. The De Foy agency, one such agency founded in the 1820s, advertised widely.38 In the image “April Fool’s Fish” fish are fishing for men, dangling baits like jewelry and other objects. One bait is a “gold medal to the first 10,000 subscribers,” alluding to the competing offers of giveaways to magazine subscribers. 39 In a caricature of the promenade at Longchamps, luxury clothes and accessories stroll by themselves without their usual raison-d’être: “Dresses, hair ornaments, scarves, diamonds, all that sums up the beauty, luxury or reputation of a person are here; only the person is absent.”40 In caricatures from 1829 and 1830 Philipon had depicted the “fashionables” on Longchamps as marionettes and mannequins rather than real people.41 Grandville’s image is also about inanimate objects becoming animate, and as in “The Steam-Powered Concert” it drastically revises the relationship between identities and commodities to suggest that the qualities of the person are irrelevant to the formation of a reputation. This image about jarring dehumanization implies that commodities themselves are endowed with their own significance.42 Delord’s text comments that the customer is only a means of advertising commodities: “Tailors, hatters, boot makers, and dressmakers have found the means to suppress man, who served as a live shop sign. Advertising simplified and improved itself.”43 In a key episode of Un Autre Monde Puff marries Lady Réclame (figure 5.3), daughter of Annonce (Classified Ad) and sister of Canard (Fake News). They meet when Annonce solicits Puff with a handout advertising her daughter.44 Michele Hannoosh states that the reason Puff says he is killed by Réclame is because advertising rendered the secrets of the inventor banal, generating replicas.45 Hannoosh thereby emphasizes the destructive effect of advertising that causes reproduction. I add that the marriage of Puff and Réclame addresses contemporary associations of “réclame” with “charlatan” and “puff,” redoubling their pejorative connotations and their perceived inf luence. The marriage recalls the vaudeville play Le Puff, in which Réclame, the daughter of the charlatan Puff and sister of Joke (Blague), aims to marry and propagate.46 In Un Autre Monde the marriage is narrated in a form of a brochure, “The Origins of Advertising.” It outlines the creation myth of advertising, which matches and rivals the creation myth of Dr. Puff and his friends. “Newspaper will beget Classified Ad, Classified Ad will beget Canard and Réclame; Réclame will beget Brochure; Brochure will beget . . .”47 Georges Roque in Ceci n’est pas un Magritte states that in the nineteenth century advertisements created prestige for commodities by using images of ancient mythology, whereas in the twentieth century advertising “auto-legitimates through the production of its own mythology.”48 Grandville anticipated advertising’s production of its own mythology, when he depicted the creation myth of advertising. Réclame’s wedding dress is made up of newspaper articles. Delord comments that the witnesses are a current-events column and the society column, two contemporary inventions into which ads are inserted.49 The depiction of a urinal displaying an advertisement for the advertising agency “Universal Publicity”

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Figure 5.3

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J.-J. Grandville, “Le mariage du Puff et la Réclame,” Un Autre Monde.

accurately ref lects a contemporary practice. The older female on the righthand side also emblematizes publicity. The drum and the trumpet stand for loud advertising, complementing clandestine, new advertising like Réclame, a seemingly chaste maiden. Wedding gifts include classified ad spaces, a clientele, 100,000 addresses, and consumer products. The groom brings futuristic inventions including an aerial locomotive.50 Such a grouping fits right in with contemporary perceptions of advertising as a tool for promoting cosmetics, quack medicine, and new inventions. Lady Réclame’s dowry includes “the exclusive right to praise, recommend and celebrate” not just consumer products but the novels of a certain M.* * *51 Grandville and Delord also offer examples of editorial ads that confound political and commercial interests. Chatterbox finds himself in a mysterious capital

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Figure 5.4

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J.-J. Grandville, Un Autre Monde.

in which “fire was not fire.”52 A battle between feminists and their opponents is raging. One party promotes the adoption of a law allowing women to wear men’s clothes and manners, and the opposition opposes it. The anti-feminist magazine reports that the “opposition just obtained a triumph. Its consequences would threaten the entire social state.” The article ends with an editorial ad: “We take this opportunity to announce to our readers that Scottish knickers still look very nice, and that the cosmetics called A la Burgrave is the only one patented for preventing the loss of hair and teeth.” The pro-feminist opposition paper argues exactly the opposite, including the argument of the ad: “We eagerly seize this opportunity to warn our subscribers that Scottish knickers still look very bad, and that the cosmetics called A la Burgrave is the only one patented for accelerating the loss of hair and teeth.”53 Such a satire of political and commercial editorials highlights the unintentionally comic and strange nature of editorial ads. The theme of the commercialization of culture continues to motivate the story. In the apocalyptic last chapter, which marks the end of the other world and thus the end of the story of the three neo-gods, the neo-gods air their grievances about cultural decadence and the mechanizing and merchandising of minds, that “Men

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are nothing more than automata” and that “literature comes off a bolt like silk or cotton.”54 Grandville’s image (figure 5.4) depicts the mechanical production of a serial novel, with a chef slicing up the novel in a “literary factory.”55 The fear of mechanization is expressed also through an image of a machine spurting out a flood of newspapers and brochures, and an image of self-delivering New-Year’s gifts or automata. After the neo-gods put their misery to an end by hugging themselves to death, the widow Réclame “takes the occasion to announce” the latest advertisement. Puff marries Réclame, then dies, reenacting the story of his former life.

The Use of Episodes and the Closure of Frames An important feature of the narrative structure of Un Autre Monde is its use of episodes, a clever strategy that enables the author to continue on indefinitely in a serial fashion. The observations of the three protagonists could go on indefinitely, so long as they don’t run out of the universe to explore, anticipating the widespread use of such a structure. Umberto Eco in De Superman au surhomme has analyzed the narrative structure of the modern serial employing such strategies.56 The adventures of the three protagonists in Un Autre Monde come to a closure when they die. This closure had been foreseen from the beginning, as each of the four stories forming the frames demands to be ended some time. The structure, however, allows the end to arrive at an appropriate time. Now that the story of the three protagonists is over, the book makes a transition to the next frame. In the epilogue, Pencil has returned from its journey and is proud of having “invented a world.” Pen reports that pens of Paris have been criticizing Pencil’s efforts, for being “obscure, monotonic [and] hieroglyphic,” that the creator is “only satirical while trying to be philosophical” and that he “respects nothing.” However, Pocketknife cajoles the other two into declaring together that “Un Autre Monde is a masterpiece,” and that “[p]roclaiming our merit ourselves is the best form of an epilogue we could choose.”57 This parodies the use of prefaces and epilogues for promotional purposes. Thus the story of the creation of the book is completed in a self-praise and a sales pitch. This selfreferentiality, of the book as an artifact in the process of being created, comments on the artistic, social, and economic forces at work and the need to include a sales pitch of the book in the book’s preface. In the next image, the reader is addressed directly through a rebus depicting an Egyptian obelisk with inscriptions—a popular form of rebus at the time—and a man banging his head against it.58 The puzzle is also a tribute to the reader, who faces a caricature of one. The answer to the riddle is a tip from the artist: “Ah, believe me, dear reader, do not behave like this [imbecile who is breaking his head in order to solve me.]”59 The rebus is the entire book, which the reader must interpret. The rebus also stands for the process of creating the book, in which images and texts are juxtaposed so that images become texts, rather than the other way around. The next image (figure 5.5), for the epilogue, refers to the role of the artist Grandville. An altar dedicated to “sketch” is unveiled, made up of large letters JGJ. This is something of a visual puzzle made up of letters, since one has to

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Figure 5.5

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J.-J. Grandville, epilogue, Un Autre Monde.

figure out that JGJ stands for Grandville’s initials JJG. This image marks a transition from the story of Pencil and Pen to that of the artist Grandville. This monument reaffirms the role of the artist, accompanied by the shadowed name of the writer, “T. Delord.” That this puzzle, in which letters form an image, is easier than the Egyptian rebus, in which images become text, also refers to the challenge that the book presents to the reader. The final image depicts another monument, “UN AUTRE MONDE,” made of images and words. The monument seems to form a boundary between the sea and the sky as well as an exit from the other world. A sunset signifies the end of something. Now the perspective of the reader is removed out of the other world. Close the book—the journey is over.

Advertising as Foreseen by Grandville Walter Benjamin suggested that “The enthronement of the commodity and the glitter of distraction around it was the secret theme of Grandville’s art.”60 Michele

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Hannoosh states that Benjamin saw Grandville’s art as expressing the “fragmentation, commodification, and dehumanization of experience in capitalist culture, and demystifies it, ‘reveals its nature.’ ”61 I see Grandville’s images as expressing more ambivalence than Benjamin did, since I see much more room for human agency in consumer culture than Benjamin did, that consumers ascribed a variety of meanings to commodities, which were one of many facets of consumer culture. However, nonetheless I view many of Grandville’s images as envisioning future advertisements that expressed the new significance of commodities. As we have seen, Un Autre Monde depicted the distraction created by various forms of advertising. The very raison d’être of advertising was distraction. Moreover editorial ads confused issues and changed the subject in newspaper articles, as we saw in the examples about the Scottish knickers and the battle around feminism. Grandville recognized the sense of advertising having to go out of itself, into journalism, philosophy, literature or travelogue, in order to become respectable and dissimulate into other genres. Perceiving a “close link that unites advertising to the cosmic,” Benjamin suggests that Grandville’s works are “sibylline books of ‘publicité.’ Everything that he presents in the embryonic form of a joke, a satire, finds, with advertising, its veritable blooming.”62 Indeed, Grandville’s “cosmic and comic” images would become overt and literal in advertisements for the magasins de nouveautés of the mid-nineteenth century, which made claims of cosmic proportions: “Les Magasins du Louvre, the biggest department store in the Universe.”63 Le Tintamarre grasped the comic nature of the preposterous claims of department stores. It parodied La Chaussée d’Antin’s announcement that it carried eleven million meters of fabric: “this store alone could dress up a kind of a tent above all the railroads in France, which would be very pleasant in summer, during the heat.”64 Adopting the definition of fetishization as the attribution to a product of a quality not inherent in it, we can ask: to what extent did advertisements attribute arbitrary qualities to products during the July Monarchy, and how do Grandville’s images compare to contemporary and future advertisements? George Rocque’s concept of inserting advertising into the world is useful here.65 In a world in which the concept of advertising itself was relatively new, how did advertisements associate products’ qualities with any other qualities? In this period commodities were not aggrandized. In advertisements of the July Monarchy, products do not replace human agency as in Grandville’s images. Gigantic or free-f loating, autonomous commodities appeared in advertisements in the 1890s. An advertisement from circa 1895 for MAB ball bearings illustrates a literal rendering of Grandville’s satire. Personified planets surround the globe. Unlike the images from the first half of the century, a product is set not only outside a shop or above Paris but is what makes the earth turn. The organic and inorganic are reversed and juxtaposed. Georg Simmel’s analysis of the “historical process of differentiation” is applicable to the development of advertising.66 As commodities acquire increasingly important status, advertisements place increasing distance between the subject and the object, the commodity. A typical example is an advertisement for Van Houten Chocolate from c.1900,67 in which a bottle of chocolate is carried by an eagle in the wilderness. Another image depicts the same motif, except the image

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of the eagle and the bottle are framed. This image, further distancing the viewer from the object by adding another frame, turns the commodity into an artistic subject, and in turn into an object of interior decoration. Besides conquering the natural environment, commodities conquer the domestic environment. In turn-of-the century advertisements commodities become unnaturally bigger, larger than life, as the size of human figures become smaller in comparison. In numerous images, rather than being handled by human beings, commodities surround or even submerge them. An image for “Savon Dentifrice du Docteur Pierre” shows a little girl holding up two enormous tubes of toothpaste, and the image is in turn framed like a fine art.68 In posters goods permeate the environment including the sky and are represented as forming structures and transportation vehicles. In a poster for pasta products children are handing out or selling very large boxes of pasta. In a poster for Lindt Chocolate people in a variety of national costumes are happily buying ultra-large boxes and tablets of chocolate. The image depicts chocolate as an international product that works as a conduit of social and international bonding. In a poster for Biscuits Franco-Américaine three boys are riding a biscuit box attached to a large balloon above the choppy waters of the Atlantic; the biscuit box is a transportation vehicle. Images of an Eagle and the Statue of Liberty on the box echo the Statue of Liberty visible in the background. Posters depicted commodities as valuable in themselves and associated them with positive values, and images that blended realism with fantasy were meant to attract the attention of the viewer by causing a jarring sensation.

Conclusion Grandville’s contemporaries were troubled by the complexity of his images, such as apparently arbitrary associations and futuristic visions, as well as the interchanging of the organic and the inorganic and the human and the mechanical. These are precisely the qualities that have fascinated his admirers of the twentieth century and beyond. While the dimensions of self-referentiality of Un Autre Monde were misunderstood or simply unnoticed by contemporaries and future critics, they make the book all the more compelling. Grandville commented on the process of the creation of the book itself, from conception to marketing, and sought to engage the reader to puzzle out the images. The containment of an eccentric imagined world—and the limitless scope of the work—inside the modest story of Pencil and Pen points to the power of the imagination. Another source of the unease produced by the book was the way it went beyond satire into philosophical musings, laying bare contemporary mores through defamiliarization, whereas satires were supposed to exaggerate reality but remain recognizable. The “other world” is a book created by images aided by texts, which turns out to be truly unique and strange. Grandville’s satire of the comic, cosmic and absurd in advertising practices foresaw what was to be realized later, and expressed the fear of the replacement of human agency by mechanization of production and consumption. Grandville’s own extraordinary ability to imagine and create, however, is a powerful reminder of that human agency.

S E C T ION

1848–1914

II

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Introduction The consumer culture of the second half of the nineteenth century saw many elements of continuity from the earlier period, yet was also marked by gradual changes that added up to a transformative one. With the dramatic expansion of the French economy and retail from the mid century, what had previously been considered as luxuries gradually became objects of wider consumption. For instance small perfume boutiques were transformed into factories, and the advent of synthetic perfumes from the 1850s turned perfumery into an enterprise aimed at the broader public. By mid century advertising rhetoric based on class differences, brand-name advertising, the psychology of repetition and the targeting of specific groups, and multi-media publicity campaigns mobilizing overt and covert advertisements, all became common practices. Typical advertisements of the 1840s through the ‘60s in La Presse were for manufacturers, shops, publishers, and consumer items including books, chocolate, cosmetics, lotteries, real estate companies, goldsmiths, lingerie shops, lace, carpet shops, hotels, casinos, spas, and photography. Advertisements in L’Illustration in the second half of the century included numerous hygiene products with an emphasis on luxury items—such as toilet waters, perfumes, and bathrooms—and sophisticated taste associated with elegant spas and renowned mineral waters.1 The mass-circulation press emerged, in particular Le Petit Journal with circulation figures reaching 83,000 in 1863 and 260,000 in 1865.2 This period saw much complication of the earlier links formed among publishing, the press, retail and advertising, as each sector expanded enormously and numerous specializations developed. The vanguard role that the publishing industry and magasins de nouveautés played in marketing during the July Monarchy was overtaken in the later period by other establishments like department stores. Built from the 1850s on Haussmann’s new boulevards or evolved from magasins de nouveautés, they used a large variety and an unprecedented volume of advertising, such as full-page newspaper ads with bold displays and lettering for announcing new exhibitions or sales, a practice widely used in the American press only near the end of the century.3 They emphasized large volumes of transaction and continuously changing display. One 1867 full-page ad by Au Coin de Rue announced the sale of eightmillion-francs worth of white sheets aimed at hotel maîtres.4 From the 1850s department stores and other venues handed out a large variety of giveaways,5 and from the 1870s distributed chromolithographic cards “by the millions” as well as celebrity photographs, games, fans, and a thousand other curios.6 In the 1880s each department store sent half a million to one million voluminous catalogues with attached samples.7

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Whereas until around 1880 items like chocolate and biscuits were luxury items, by the 1890s they became mass consumer products, and by the turn of the century Chocolat Ménier was advertised on “all the farmhouses along the railroad line between Rouen and le Havre.” 8 The growth of disposable income was an important factor. Parisian workers’ personal income increased about 65 percent in the two generations after 1850.9 The magnitude of the economic growth can also be seen in the exponential increase in the number of visitors to the Universal Expositions held in Paris: 5.2 million in 1855, 15 million in 1867, 13 million in 1878, 32 million in 1889, and 51 million in 1900.10 The second half of the Scenes of Parisian Modernity highlights the continued significance of the imaginary in modern consumer culture, as the meanings associated with consumption and consumer products spread through commercial and cultural sources. The dynamic between boulevard culture and advertising as spectacle is examined as part of urban modernity that highlighted the visual. The overf lowing street spectacles employing new technologies such as neon signs, electricity, and cinematography in the period from 1880 to 1914 show the emergence of new sensibilities. Also examined is the regularization and embellishment for a harmonious urban order undertaken during the Second Empire. The organization of the display of street advertising is examined as part of this modernization, stressing the wide impact of the projects of rationalization on the one hand, and their limits as seen by the evolutionary character of urban culture on the other. Another new aspect of the fin-de-siècle mass consumer culture was the subjectivity of the consumer, as seen in the massive proliferation of images of women in posters. The debate about poster art, in particular the modernity of Chéret’s art, is situated in the debate about decorative arts and the commercial role of the poster. Whereas in the July Monarchy the debates over advertising were preoccupied with charlatanism and the commercialization of culture, later emotional and psychological manipulation, as well as overwhelming visual stimuli in the street, became major issues. Another new element of consumer culture was celebrity culture, as seen through an episode involving Sarah Bernhardt, whose life was perceived as being so fantastic that she was capable of anything.

CH A P T E R

SI X

Boulevard Culture, Consumption, and Spectacle

Introduction In La Vie des boulevards: Madeleine-Bastille (1896) the journalist Georges Montorgueil wrote that “the movement of advertising and journalism toward the Boulevard was inevitable.” He then asked rhetorically: “Isn’t it after all the purpose of journalism to be at the center of activity?”1 We have seen that the Grands Boulevards had long been known for commercial allure and café culture and that a unique modern visual sensibility was expressed regarding them in the 1840s. While the Grands Boulevards became much more commercial and resplendent during the Second Empire, the only structural changes made under the Second Empire were couple of piercings, one on the western side that linked the Boulevards to the Place de l’Opéra, and one on the eastern side that led to the creation of the Place du Château d’Eau.2 A major result of the latter was the disappearance in 1862 of the larger part of the Boulevard du Temple famous for theaters staging melodramas.3 Haussmannian transformation made the Grands Boulevards more visible and recast its fame by opening up the city. The Boulevards were seen as an “essentially modern street” of unique animation, rather than “artistic beauty” that characterized streets like the “High Street of Oxford, Princes Street, Edinburgh, or the Corso of Rome.”4 In examining the changing modernity of the Grands Boulevards from 1852 to 1914 and especially the 1880–1914 period, this chapter underlines consumption, publicity and advertising techniques, fashionability, and spectacle and also revisits the question of social control and human freedom within consumer society.5 The Grands Boulevards remained the geographical center of news, trends, entertainment, fashion, and advertising in Paris, a stage and a celebrated route of modernity throughout the nineteenth century.6 A guidebook specified in 1888 that the northern half of the Old Boulevards, “known as ‘great Boulevards,’ commonly known par excellence as ‘The Boulevards’ extend in a semicircle from the Bastille to the Madeleine, a distance of 2 3/4 M.” 7 Newspaper headquarters and large advertising brokers were located in the area, and this concentration of news and information reached its peak at the fin de siècle. A significant part of boulevard journalism was about creating

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events which were in turn reported. Newspapers like Le Petit Journal and Le Figaro organized publicity stunts such as races and parades that passed beneath their buildings located on the Boulevards. Newspapers not only reported on minute details on the Boulevards but were read along the Boulevards. Not only were the Boulevards the prime site of desirable potential consumers, but also much of what was being advertised was available just around the corner. The proximity of newspaper buildings, to cafés where newspapers were read, to shops and other establishments that were publicized in the papers, underlines the centrality of information and consumption on the Grands Boulevards. In the 1880s, two decades after the new network of boulevards was built to disperse traffic, the Grands Boulevards presented a scene of perpetual gridlock caused by pedestrians, vehicles, street merchants, hawkers, café furniture, street furnishings and mobile advertising. During the 1880–1914 period, these Boulevards were the site of the most intensive experimentations of theatrical publicity stunts which provided much visual and aural stimuli. The strategy of attracting attention by invoking curiosity, which resonated with boulevard culture, incited much eccentric and theatrical behavior, as entrepreneurs and retailers mobilized the modern mode of experiencing dynamic urban life. The period from 1900 to 1914 saw a great deal of modernization in consumer technologies, streamlining on the one hand and creating “excess” on the other. The extravagant décors of the 1900 Universal Exposition that celebrated electricity, and the festive atmosphere of the Exposition, continued to be seen and felt along the spectacularly lit-up Grands Boulevards until the First World War. Spectacular forms of consumption underline how boulevard culture contributed in the expansion of the reputation of Paris as a unique city of pleasure with both positive and negative connotations, a city not only of new Haussmannian boulevards and luxurious quartiers but with the Grands Boulevards as the heart and center.

The Grands Boulevards, 1852–1880 Edmond Texier wrote in 1852 that on the Grands Boulevards was an “unheard-of mixture of all the human races represented by all the imaginable samples.”8 While Haussmann’s new boulevards were built to disperse concentrations of traffic and organize a more rational circulation, the Grands Boulevards continued to be celebrated for the variety of humanity that was part of the continuously changing scenes. The western portion of the Boulevards became more luxurious, the Boulevards des Capucines and de la Madeleine undergoing a “complete metamorphosis” by 1855.9 Every available commercial space was turned into “a restaurant, a buffet, a café, a divan, a bar or a brasserie” that expanded onto the sidewalk contributing further to its density.10 Louis Lazare, an advocate of Haussmannian urban planning, explained in 1857 that the Boulevards were beloved because they were not “of cold beauty, prim and regular, not one with two parallel sides and two perfectly symmetrical lines, majestically monotonous.”11 Each of

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its “eleven diamonds” was of distinctive and unique beauty that formed “an interesting, gracious ensemble that never tires.”12 During the Second Empire women not only promenaded on the Boulevards, some identified this activity as flâneurie. Julie de Marguerittes in 1855 described the Boulevards as having been “created, arranged, and are kept up, for the f lâneur.” She urged the reader to “turn f lâneur” along with her “and saunter through them, from one end to the other.” Her definition of flânerie emphasized the enjoyment of shifting surfaces, a “skimming from life, as it passes by, the cream, and never going deep enough to get at the dregs.”13 During her flânerie she recognizes a number of male and female types of different classes. The Grands Boulevards emblematized fashionability in everything, as conveyed in an image (figure 6.1) from Le Monde illustré (1858) depicting the Boulevard des Italiens as a quintessential stage of modern urban spectacle. Buildings are depicted at an angle, showcasing perspectives and luxurious façades. The thoroughfare is greatly animated, full of traffic and well-dressed people. People on the top deck of an omnibus watch others, and there are also observers on terraces. A number of kiosks and urinals displaying posters dot the street, underlining the centrality of the Boulevard for information. A group of men and women to the right are looking into the window of the “Bookshop of Le Monde illustré.” Such self-promotion very common in illustrations and advertisements and added a layer of representation of consumption.

Figure 6.1 “Boulevard des Italiens,” Le Monde illustré, June 5, 1858 (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris).

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Façades and shop windows on the Boulevards were widely represented in images. An illustration (figure 6.2) from the late 1860s, with the caption “LUXURY IN PARIS.—SHOPS OF MR. AUGUSTE KLEIN, of Vienna,” depicts well-dressed women, men, and children socializing and looking into a shop window with large glass panes on the Boulevard des Capucines.14 This image publicizes the shop and by extension the Grands Boulevards. It emphasizes the sumptuous exterior of the shop, its central location and the shop as an element of urban excursion. The image conveys the idea that the people happened upon the shop during a promenade. According to Emile La Bédollière in 1868 the central and western portion of the Boulevards from the Porte St-Denis to the Madeleine was dominated by commerce, and only the Boulevard Poissonnière remained “authentic,” “genuine.”15 One derived a uniquely pleasing visual, aesthetic, and intellectual sensation on the Grands Boulevards. Alfred Delvau wrote in 1867 that “you’re sure to have your eyes distracted and your spirit pleased by an infinite variety of spectacle. It’s a kaleidoscope where objects and people, diversely, but always picturesquely colored, change each step and each instant.”16 From two o’clock the wide sidewalks were “literally packed with men and women promenading,” and the animation was great in the late afternoon when newspapers came out.17 At six workingclass women descended.18 This spectacle of real life was so appealing for being comfortably observed from cafés. The Illustrated London News praised Parisian

Figure 6.2 Le Luxe à Paris: magasin de Monsieur Auguste Klein, de Vienne (boulevard des Capucines) (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris).

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cafés for their openness to all classes, in spite of the exquisite décor that surpassed even the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles.19 In this period the idea of the Grands Boulevards as the center of the world began to take hold. Le Boulevard declared in 1861 that the Boulevards were “the grand artery of the globe.” 20 Delvau suggested that suppressing this “most famous among the most celebrated” “artery” would be like “decapitating Paris, making a desert out of Paris,” because the Boulevards were “the world’s soul,” and “Paris without the Boulevards would make for a universe in mourning.” 21 This almost hysterical homage, mixing organic and cosmological metaphors, seems to reveal a deep yearning for a sense of continuity amidst the urban changes wrought under Haussmann; it denotes the fear of the Boulevards suddenly disappearing. The Boulevards provided the collective sense of being the heart and soul of Paris, as they provided a sense of continuity that blended tradition with modernity. The sense of modernity having to do with f leeting, amusing scenes, continued to exert powerful attraction alongside the modernity of the rational urban planning and bourgeois elegance that the Second Empire Paris is now associated with. It is the Paris of both conceptions of modernity—as captured by the Impressionists—that was renowned in the world. During the Third Republic the Boulevards continued to be singled out from Haussmannian boulevards which had no “relation to the pulsing life of the city.”22 The Café de la Paix was described as “the exact center of the world” for all its brilliant, cosmopolitan scenery. 23 Guy de Maupassant wrote in 1880: “One volume sufficed Chateaubriand to recount the itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem; but how much time and volume would be required to manage to describe a voyage from the Madeleine to the Bastille?” 24 The sense of the modernity of the Boulevards underwent change. Celebrated during the 1840s for ephemeral scenes and multiple stimuli, yet also represented as a panorama, during the Second Empire the stimuli became more intense, although the use of terms like “set” and “kaleidoscopic” reveal the continued possibility of seeing a cohesive whole. During the Third Republic the Grands Boulevards were increasingly seen more as cacophonic, shimmering, entertaining yet also disorderly and excessive. Much of what was perceived as excessive were commercial elements, including extravagant publicity campaigns.

Information, Publicity Stunts, Screens, and Magic Lanterns The Grands Boulevards had long been a magnet for publicity. An 1849 project proposed to set up gas candelabras on the Boulevards that would serve as advertising media,25 and street furnishings like Morris Columns, newspaper kiosks, urinals, and toilets, all serving as advertising media, were built there from the 1850s. Photography studios lined up in the area, and by the late 1850s photographers were appropriating the trappings of the eccentric artist.26 A caricature, Le Spectacle dans la rue (Spectacle in the Street) (1861) protesting against the “rage of brochures” on the Boulevards, argued that the brochures had become

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a “spectacle” as much as the theater and photography,27 competing with things like bizarrely shaped dandies’ carriages.28 Photographs of female celebrities were widely displayed in shop windows along the Grands Boulevards.29 Buildings along the Boulevards were used for publicity with maximum effect. Ornate newspaper buildings, covered with banners, billboards, and screens, were lit at night. Le Temps, Matinées espagnoles, L’Evénement, Gil Blas, Le Voltaire, L’Eclair, Le Journal, and Le Gaulois were all located in the area.30 The building of Le Petit Journal and Le Journal illustré, founded in 1864 at 21 Boulevard Montmartre, featured the Frascati gallery, named after the famed gamehouse that used to be there. Inside was a bazaar, an aquarium, and art exhibitions. 31 A front page of Le Journal illustré from 1864 (figure 6.3) depicts the newspaper building. Once success was assured, for want of more space newspapers often relocated to streets nearby. After Le Petit Journal and Le Journal illustré moved to the Rue Lafayette in 1866, 32 Le Figaro then occupied the 21 Boulevard Montmartre building until 1878. Le Petit Journal, which focused on politics, crime, and scandals and known for its sensationalist full-color front page, inaugurated mass circulation, which reached a million in 1886.33 Each evening the arrival of the newspaper was an event, with hundreds of criers, men and women, rushing out of the Rue du Croissaint, the headquarters of journalism off the Grands Boulevards. The launching of the paper’s serial novels was accompanied by a phenomenal scale of advertising that “f looded” France with posters placed on walls and carried by sandwichmen or velocipedes.34 Gigantic blue and yellow murals shouted the name and slogan of the paper. Decorated carriages pulled by five horses were accompanied by people in costumes distributing the paper day and night on the Boulevards.35 An 1887 full-page illustration showcases the paper’s elegant and centrally located headquarters.36 The caption announces the expansion of the headquarters the way illustrated articles publicized department stores’ expansions. The worldly Le Figaro, turned into a political daily in 1867,37 also engaged in intensive advertising campaigns and took advantage of its location on the Grands Boulevards.38 In 1878 Le Figaro started a trend by inaugurating its popular telegraph room, full of objects from the four corners of the world, which was as much a space for publicity as for information.39 An image of the crowded newsroom of the paper, depicting the moment of the announcement of the national lottery winner, also served to publicize the paper.40 Le Petit Parisien established a museum of celebrities on the Boulevard Montmartre.41 Illuminated screens on façades f lashed the latest news. On the façade of La France’s building (1884), “decorated with the summit of genius,” was a large issue of the paper.42 Parades passed on the Boulevards at Lent and the Carnival or on occasions of visits by foreign dignitaries. Newspapers organized publicity stunts like bicycle races and gave away countless freebies.43 The popular wax museum Musée Grévin opened in 1882 on the Boulevard Montmartre and was a locus of current events which later included cinematography sessions.44 Sensational news caused the Boulevard to become instantly crowded with people watching lit-up screens and besieging newspaper kiosks.45 Competing publicity stunts, vehicles, and screens were colorful by day and incandescent by night.46 The Grands Boulevards were the most coveted

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Figure 6.3 “ASPECT DE L’ANGLE DU BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE ET DE LA RUE RICHELIEU LE JOUR DE L’APPARATION D’UN NUMÉRO DU Journal illustré.” Le Journal illustré, March 14–20, 1864 (Musée Carnavalet ©Photothèque des musées de la ville de Paris).

route for advertising vehicles which proliferated from the 1870s. Old England, a tailor shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, circulated a strange, huge red vehicle that attracted much satire.47 Postilions in livery on horses, carriages with three-meter-high turning pyramids,48 a “magnificent carriage” with

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2.2-meter-high turning kiosks,49 carriages with engraved advertisements on their windows, five-meter-long carriages displaying products,50 Amazons guiding triumphal chariots,51 and “superb vehicles carrying people of all nations” advertising the Tabarin Ball or the Moulin Rouge52 were all a part of the sights on the Grands Boulevards. Advertising experts did not consider such methods as particularly effective. The police authorized only a fraction of entrepreneurs’ demands, yet since ten to twenty of each model were allowed to circulate, the number quickly multiplied in an already congested street, until advertising vehicles were completely suppressed in 1900. In 1875 Villiers de l’Isle-Adam wrote a celebrated short story on the use of the sky as a gigantic canvas for “celestial advertising” formed by stars. Soon his vision seemed to become reality. Mechanical moving boards were replaced by neon signs in the 1880s.53 A cosmetics shop on the Boulevard St-Denis was famous for its ten windows with changing transparencies, successively displaying portraits of a popular dramatic heroine in different roles.54 In 1881 an experimental arc with lights high up in the air f looded the Boulevard des Italiens with light.55

Spectacle, Publicity, Vulgarity The renown of the Grands Boulevards as a center of pleasure also entailed negative connotations, notably superficiality, materialism, disorientation, and sensation-seeking. An 1869 illustration (figure 6.4) from L’Univers illustré titled “Les Cafés du Boulevard Montmartre,” also published in The Illustrated London News, illustrates the intense atmosphere on the Grands Boulevards, but also inserts a note of ambiguity. 56 A crowd of well-dressed revelers—men, women, and a child—densely packs the sidewalk in front of a café. The image conveys a sense of festivity and intimacy, but the large size of the crowd hints at slight claustrophobia. Seated at a table to the left is a solitary female figure, clearly meant to be a courtesan. Her image suggests certain loneliness amidst all the animation; silence seems to surround her, although according to an American visitor on the Boulevards families and lorettes mingled “together in one careless throng.” 57 For Edmondo De Amicis, visiting Paris for the 1878 Exposition, Paris had sacrificed “depth for the surface.” In Paris everything was open and transparent: “The eye penetrates to the last recesses of the rich shops, to the distant counters of the long white and gilded cafés, . . . embracing an infinite variety of treasures . . . from which one only escapes to fall into a similar snare on the opposite side of the street.” In such a space that blended the interior and the exterior, the eye found “no space upon which to rest.” On the Boulevards the “horses pass in troops, and the crowd in torrents. It is a rivalry of magnificence and stateliness which borders on madness.”58 This perception of the Boulevards as a source of overpowering stimuli is notably at odds with Haussmann’s plans, what Paul Rabinow calls “regularization.”59 Although Haussmann’s projects were designed to redistribute and disperse traffic, and maximize the circulation of capital,

Boulevard Culture, Consumption, and Spectacle

Figure 6.4 1869.

135

“A Summer Evening on the Paris Boulevards,” The Illustrated London News, July 10,

goods, and people for an economy based on the stock market and commerce,60 the Grands Boulevards remained the thoroughfare with by far the heaviest traffic. Along the Madeleine-Bastille line omnibuses passed more than 10,000 times in a twenty-four-hour period in 1880.61 Whereas under the July Monarchy leisure and ref lection were emphasized, the fin de siècle saw a relentless lure of the visual and general commotion. Transient moments no longer formed a panorama or unity but remained disjointed fragments. The tight link between consumption and sensation on the Boulevards was not lost on Henry James. He noted that the Boulevards were “a long chain of cafés” filled with sensation-seekers in this “best lighted capital in the world.” His impression was not entirely favorable: in the summer evening “the inordinate amount of gas in all the thoroughfares” heated and thickened the atmosphere, making it very hot.62 In his novel The Tragic Muse (1890) James described the Boulevards as the “night-aspect of Paris which represents it as a huge market for sensations,” with “a profusion of light and a pervasion of sound.” James underlined the Boulevards’ theatrical ambiance, animated with stimuli that were “tokens of a great traffic of pleasure.” The architecture appeared like a stage set: “the Madeleine rose theatrical, a high artful décor before the foot lights of the Rue Royale.”63 The “publicity and vulgarity” of a café on the Grands Boulevards inspires strong aversion for Nick Dormer in The Tragic Muse: “Each time I come to Paris I at the end of three days take the Boulevard, with its conventional grimace, into greater aversion. I hate even to cross it—I go half a mile round to avoid it.”64 James implied that the onslaught of sensations numbed the capacity

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for ref lection. James underlined this theme also in The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Isabel Archer, a young, intelligent American visitor, is advised against going on the Boulevards.65

The Sandwichman, the Sandwichwoman, and the Female Billposter No other street type provoked so much ambiguous sentiment and anxiety as the sandwichman. The sandwichman, wearing frames with two or four sides covered with posters, had been mostly absent in France until the 1870s.66 The sandwichman invoked pity as being a “horrible and pitiful” spectacle.67 Many sandwichmen slept in cafés that sheltered more than a hundred.68 The sandwichman reminded people too much of the economic reality that reduced a man to such a condition. Such an effect was contrary to the pleasant sentiment that advertising was supposed to induce. A juxtaposition of man and object, he was “the walking sign, the living advertisement.”69 Some wore illuminated frames or hats until they were banned in 1887.70 At circuses and fairs, freaks and bizarre human figures were termed monster-man, dog-man, and so on, names much like the sandwichman (l’homme-affiche or l’homme-sandwich). Albert Robida’s 1888 caricature (f igure 6.5) titled “Revolution in Clothing,” published on the cover of his magazine La Caricature, is a satire of the phenomena of sandwichmen, sandwichwomen, and social more on the Boulevards.71 The Boulevards are full of costumed men, women, children, a dog, and mannequins publicizing commercial establishments and products. A woman with a rabbit on her hat has the phrase “Come! To the Brasserie Wise Rabbit” written on her blouse. A man wearing a hat with the words “Niams-Niams Soap. Négrifuge” and with a half of his face painted black is an example of a popular and problematic theme. A man wearing a hat in the shape of a woman’s leg in a stocking advertises a boot. Robida frequently treated the theme of street advertising in La Caricature, in which he combined a tongue-in-cheek sensibility with astute observations of boulevard culture.72 In 1888 sandwichmen were banned on the Grands Boulevards, Rue Royale, Champs-Elysées, and Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne and ordered not to wear disguises, after a caravan of twenty vehicles with “advertisements of gigantic dimensions, escorted by a small army of sandwichmen” paralyzed traff ic for several days. The size of advertising vehicles and number of attached horses were also regulated.73 However f lamboyant publicity stunts descended on the Boulevards again soon thereafter. In 1886 an “ingenious businessman” organized an “altogether singular advertising.” It was announced in the major papers in advance: “Here is a very new invention, very pretty and, what is even better, profoundly humanitarian: the femmes-réclames.” 74 The presence of the sandwichwoman itself was the stuff of sensational news. They appeared in “the most delightful costumes and walked gravely two by two, in the middle of a nice crowd.” 75 Likewise, the advent of the first female billposter was loudly trumpeted.76 Women were very much visible

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Figure 6.5

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Albert Robida, “Révolution dans le costume,” La Caricature, Jan. 21, 1888 (BNF).

as a work force in the street; they worked as sweepers, f lower sellers, peddlers, kiosk tenders and did a thousand other jobs. The poet Mallarmé paid tribute to female sellers in Les Types de Paris (1889).77 On Mardi Gras and at Lent the street was “delivered to the eccentricities of the women of brasseries.” 78

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Scenes of Parisian Modernity The Hawker and the Billposter

One of the favorite topics of fin-de-siècle faits-divers and chroniques were hawkers (camelots) on the Boulevards. Hawkers sold articles de Paris, often creating a fashion for an item and even f looding the Boulevards with one item.79 They were famed for their clever sales pitches.80 Newspaper columnists described them as “essentially Parisian, indigenous to the faubourgs” and that “chased by the police, their obsessing pittoresque fills terraces.”81 The fact that they were not authorized enhanced their romantic mystique. The representation of the hawker as a type is rooted in the traditional iconography of petits-métiers (petty works) which emphasized visual characteristics, or “cries of Paris” which classified their sounds.82 The hawker was classified along with the sweeping woman, the door opener, the cigarette-butt gatherer, the café scavenger, or the commissioner who staked out a street corner and offered a hand to whoever needed help, carrying messages or letters. The types, represented as picturesque ornaments of the street, were associated with nostalgia. The preface of Ferdinand Bloch’s Types du boulevard (Boulevard Types) (1880) praised Bloch’s ability to still capture interesting types despite the “invasion” of “the progress” causing the disappearance of “what was once the fantasy, the picturesque” on the Grands Boulevards, seen as the last vestiges of intimate and charming scenes.83 This view was also expressed by Elie Frébault, who in 1878 described picturesque scenes on the Grands Boulevards as being full of local color. Noting that “the embellishment of Paris struck a terrible blow to street artists who, little by little, disappear from public space,” he argued that “in vain today’s [Parisian] tourist wanders the globe searching for the picturesque.” While “the last vestiges of local color have been erased by the conquests of the modern spirit,” local color remained in Paris, on the Grands Boulevards, where “the human comedy” still unfurled.84 Such flâneur’s sensibility of capturing urban scenes in rapid sketches also imbued Les Types de Paris, (1889) written by Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, Paul Bourget, J.-K. Huysmans, Mallarmé, Antonin Proust, Félicien Champsaur, Octave Mirbeau, and Jean Richepin and illustrated by Jean-François Raffaëlli. Badauderies parisiennes (1896), referring to ramblings and illustrated by Félix Vallotton and François Courboin, also captured street scenes. Pushing inventions like “a knife with 18 blades” or “an unbreakable pencil,” hawkers solicited café-goers.85 A journalist recounted sitting for an hour at the Café de la Paix in 1895, when a storm of vendors of the paper Paris-Sport passed by galloping like horses. He was also solicited successively by a dog seller, a girl offering f lowers, a mother with children trying to sell pencils, a child offering a newspaper, sketchers, and an army-uniform seller. A “cloud of hawkers” rushed in from all directions.86 The Boulevards were the place not only to see, but also to hear. When a new thing appeared on the Boulevard, after twenty-four hours all shouted in unison. A song that ended with “a series of ‘Ah!’ as if he was about to faint” was sung for a week by a hundred hawkers.87 Sensational news was incorporated into sales pitches. Hawkers thus embodied the atmosphere of the Boulevard, characterized by movement, speed, and fashion. Among the hawkers

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were newspaper vendors, who shouted news, until an 1889 law prohibited it. Only the title, price, indication of editorial opinion, or names of writers could be announced.88 Some viewed the hawker as an embodiment of crowd psychology and modern “puffism.” Paul Pottier argued in 1899 that in “the century of puffism” “everything is falsified, butter, wine, and sentiments,” creating an “artificial soul” that led to badauderie (aimless wandering in the street). A crowd lacking any conviction was susceptible to political or commercial rhetoric.89 The suspicion of the working classes resonated on the Boulevards in other ways. For three weeks before New Year’s Day, artisans selling toys and other articles de Paris set up stalls on the Boulevards from the Madeleine to the Bastille. A tradition dating from 1860, the stalls became controversial regarding congestion, disruption of regular commerce, and the inf lux of the faubourgs’ working class.90 Like the camelot, the billposter (afficheur) was a very visible street figure. Traditionally the figure of the billposter signified announcement. One alphabet manual used “afficheur” not for A but for X: his gesture constituted a visual code.91 Easily recognizable by his white blouse, at the fin de siècle the billposter was indispensable for massive electoral campaigns that caused “the walls of Paris to positively disappear.”92 Vehicles with mechanical ladders and fourmeter-long brushes were used.93 After street battles by billposters at the height of Boulangism in 1889, various laws were passed to limit billposting. The representations of the hawkers show a dynamic of the street picturesque, perceived freedom and social control. When seen as disruptive or embodying the mass psychology, hawkers were re-cast as potentially threatening the delicate balance between commerce—including the balance between established commerce and hawkers—, theatrics, and order.

“A Passionate and Wild Competition” The years between 1895 and 1914, the time of nascent cinematography, saw a great deal of modernization in consumer technologies. Cinematographic screens, moving signs, live mannequins, and parades of eccentrically or f lamboyantly costumed people were mobilized. Illuminated advertisements on celluloid resembled magic lantern shows.94 In the 1890s illuminated transparencies “prevented traffic on the Boulevards.”95 Turning advertising curtains and devices projecting phrases in the air competed with electric signs.96 A thousand candles were used for mobile advertising columns.97 The Paz & Silva Agency, established in the 1880s, installed “the biggest illuminated motifs” on the Boulevards and the Place de l’Opéra.98 After the 1900 Universal Exposition the Boulevards were lit up even more. An “enormous screen of thirty square meters” was installed on the Boulevard des Italiens showing news, advertising, and films.99 The proliferation of spectacular advertising in the street, as well as the vast output of illustrated posters, led foreign experts to contrast French advertising, emphasizing entertainment and the appearance of the media that blended into the décor of the street, with the Anglo-American variety, emphasizing the

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strategy of “obsession” through sheer volume and repetition. Octave Uzanne likewise remarked in 1904 that whereas in England and the United States one could immediately sense “the hallucination” of the odious and omnipresent advertising, a study in French advertising was “sure to be tremendously picturesque and amusing, as advertising has taken on all forms and dissimulates itself under the most ingenious disguises.” The French specialized in “fantastic and amusing advertising,” for which Paris “had its unforgettable and original types.” For example four dandies in overcoats shouted slowly in unison, “This evening, at ‘Démentes-Bergères’ at eight o’clock, a grand performance.” Ten men, promenading on the Grands Boulevards “attracted attention through their rather forced elegance.” At the terrace of each café, they took off their hats and bowed deeply, showing ten shaven heads on which were collectively written an advertising slogan for a liqueur.100 A 1902 caricature depicted the Boulevards as overrun by advertising including people all advertising something.101 Men and women in costumes created “a vision of carnival.”102 On the Boulevards men with half-blond and half-black hair advertised wigs.103 Young women wearing “immaculate shirts” advertised a wash-house, and men in black costume carried pocket lanterns.104 Four young women paraded arm in arm on the Boulevards announcing attractions as they were besieged, followed and photographed.105 An American article noted in 1905 that French advertising specialized in “all kinds of eccentricities,” such as “mobile billboards pulled by horses, cinematographic shows or magic lantern projections on boulevards and squares, processions of people in eccentric costumes . . . speaking slowly and walking in a row.” It seemed that the “French have their own ideas of what they call advertising.” He concluded that “whatever is really artistic, intelligent and clear” is assured a public ear in France.106 Exoticism was popular: “Blacks, Chinese, Eskimos and Hottentots” were mobilized.107An Italian magazine reported in 1911 that in Paris “people of all countries and all colors” distributed myriad objects. A vogue for live mannequins swept Paris. Live children or adults were displayed behind the glass and awaited customers at shop fronts. Although seen by some as “grotesque and excessive,” such tactics enhanced the reputation of Paris as the modern city par excellence, where advertising was a f lamboyant part of urban décor and extravagant culture.108 Foreigners reported that “a passionate and wild competition” in advertising, a “battle of elegance, originality and newness” was taking place in Paris.109 Some French experts, regarding theatrical advertising as full of “excess and superf luity,” in vain encouraged the efficient and powerful strategies of American advertising, to increase “profound, serious, tenacious” advertising.110 Negative connotations continued to resonate. In Kaf ka’s short story “Description of a Struggle” (1904–1905) one character asks another if he hails from “Paris, from that tempestuous Paris—ah, from that luxuriant hailstorm?” He asks: “Are there people in Paris who consist only of sumptuous dresses.” Another describes a scene on the Boulevard: “Eight elegant Siberian wolf hounds come prancing out [of a carriage] and jump barking across the boulevard. And it’s said that they are young Parisian dandies in disguise.”111 Kaf ka’s jarring descriptions, which bear a similarity to actual advertising practices, underline

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the reputation of Paris as a city of modernity, a city of surfaces, consumption and fashion. The city’s excessive artificiality and vanity turned it into a realm of the surreal. The Beautiful Lady (1905) by Booth Tarkington also comments on negative publicity on the Boulevards. It starts with a scene on the Boulevards, in which a man is kneeling down on a sidewalk, showing his shaven head, on which is written an advertisement.112 Passers-by laugh at him. While thus kneeling with his head bowed, he notices the shoes of a woman who is addressing kind words to him, but can’t turn his head up to look at her properly. This scene represents being a living advertisement as a humiliating experience, especially on the Boulevards. In search of refreshing artistic inspiration, some turned away from the Grands Boulevards. The photographer Eugène Atget went away from the idea that life on the Grands Boulevards stood for modernity, and chose to photograph streets, spaces and themes away from the Grands Boulevards; his Paris pittoresque series depicted the working class but without types and other preexisting structure and classification, and also focused on historic working-class neighborhoods and the central market.113 By the turn of the century visitors, especially Americans, were for the most part experiencing the Grands Boulevards as a legendary spot and partaking in a myth.114 Typical chapter headings of Americans’ travelogues were “Scenes in the Gay Capital” or “Paris the Enchantress.”115 In this mythical Paris, tourists found what they wanted to see. “Wandering along its gay boulevards . . . one feels that he is in an enchanted land, where high and low, rich and poor share alike in the universal beauty and happiness.”116 In another travelogue, the subtitle of a chapter on Paris is: “Paris, an Earthly Paradise, The Boulevards, Light-hearted Parisians.”117 London seemed to lack the equivalent of the Grands Boulevards because “London has no showrooms for . . . display.”118 In the 1910s tourists started to zip through in automobiles. In Charles F. Howell’s Around the Clock in Europe. A Travel Sequence (1912), which aimed to present a kaleidoscopic view of European cities, each of the twelve cities is allotted a one-hour slot. Characteristically, Paris occupies the last slot, the one to be seen the latest at night, between midnight and one a.m. It is the ultimate city of pleasure and night life. After the period of “poster mania” and the multiplication of “obsessive” strategies, in the 1910s sheer saturation led to a reaction. In the evening the Boulevards blazed with “an intense illumination . . . repetitive, hopping, vibrating . . . catching the gaze, blinding pupils, wringing the optic nerves . . . tyrannizing attention, breaking through indifference.”119 Faced with such sensory assault, what Georg Simmel calls a “blasé attitude” did not seem effective. Mounting public pressure led to the radical reduction of various street advertising media, including handbill distribution, which was completely banned in 1911.120 All the illuminated advertising was shut down during World War I and all the agencies specializing in illuminated advertising closed.121 After the war illuminated advertising would again become popular through the 1920s.122 Albert Quantin’s En Plain Vol; vision d’avenir (In Full Flight; Vision of the Future) (1913) imagined that in Paris of the year 2001 the results of Haussmannian urbanism would have been dismantled and all the boulevards, symbol of luxury and waste, abandoned,

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replaced by a socialist urban planning allowing varied architecture and efficient public transportation.123 Such a reaction was part of a range of political spectrum represented in the reaction against the expansion of capitalism, a uniform aesthetic and artifice.

Conclusion The Grands Boulevards had long been a renowned promenade with commercial allure when spectacular advertising descended on it. Boulevard culture continued to evolve beyond the urban transformation wrought during the Second Empire, reinforcing the tendency in French advertising to prefer intriguing forms. The years between 1880 and 1914 marked the golden age of mobile advertising, when everyday life was intensely theatricalized. Whereas itinerant merchants and hawkers were displaced and workers forced to move out of the city during the Second Empire, from the 1880s hawkers and other modern street types reclaimed the Boulevards. The reputation of Paris as the capital of pleasure, fashion, and modernity was greatly enhanced by the fin de siècle, yet also attracted criticism for publicity, superficiality, artificiality, and hedonism. The understudied 1900–1914 period is markedly distinctive in the modernization of consumer technologies and shows much more connection to the 1920s than widely perceived. The Grands Boulevards were an extremely contested realm, as their practical and symbolic functions were manifold, and a complex set of conventions determined what was permissible. The boundaries of “the Boulevard” changed continually, as consisting from the Rue Royale to the Rue Drouot, or from the Rue de Richelieu to the Madeleine.124 The Boulevards were the heart of Paris, a traditional promenade, the center of entertainment, news, and shops, the street with the heaviest traffic, and a stage for modern experimentation and display. Although the Boulevards were also the favored site of political manifestations, and rich with historical memory of revolutionary conf lict and violence, overall they remained a fundamentally controllable and manageable urban space. Where the stakes were so high, an “immoral” poster, too-shabby sandwichmen or “scandalous” lemonade sellers quickly became controversial.125 The limits of the permissible were continuously tested, contested, and renegotiated. Yet compared to the thoroughfares of metropolises such as Berlin—which provided more awe-striking and also at times overwhelming sense of modernity, and London—which was grander but lacking the café culture of Paris—the Grands Boulevards remained a delimited stage.126 The multi-dimensionality of the street built for diverse purposes distinguishes it from a place like the modern mall, a much more controlled and artificial environment. It is the multi-dimensionality of the street that enables the organic evolution of urban culture.

CH A P T E R

SE V E N

Furnishing the Street: Urban Rationalization and Its Limits

Introduction Parisian cityscape changed dramatically during the Second Empire and the Third Republic, not only through large-scale urban planning but also through a surge in commercial posters—including large illustrated lithographed posters from the 1870s—signs, murals, and street furnishings in the street. The French advertising industry was established through myriad practices and establishments that preceded the urban transformation under Baron Haussmann but whose effects were at their height from the 1880s, after the passing of the landmark 1881 press law. This chapter explores urban and economic modernization seen through the development of billposting agencies, as well as the city’s policies regarding the display of advertising in public spaces, largely through archival material from the city of Paris. In shaping policies on advertising, city authorities confronted issues of urban aesthetics, circulation, morality, commercial demand, city finances, and the class dynamic corresponding to different neighborhoods. From the 1840s street advertising was heavily mediated by billposting agencies, which divided up much of the available spaces through public and private contracts. Spaces for billposting included many giant, temporary walls erected for construction from the 1850s. The intensive mediation by billposting agencies had much to do with concerns regarding aesthetics, morality, and circulation. “Reserved,” organized billposting was preferred to the chaotic, free-for-all advertising. This way the city had more of a control over what was displayed in the public space. The display of advertisements was a part of the organization of urban space, regulation of traffic and aesthetic rationalization orchestrated by Haussmann, which included the extensive building of a sewage system and the reorganization of the catacombs.1 However, the Grands Boulevards remained a magnet for advertising and publicity. An 1849 project proposed to set up gas candelabras on the Boulevards that would serve as advertising media,2 and the thoroughfare was crowded from the 1860s with a variety of advertising media. At the same time, traditional itinerant hawkers and entertainers were increasingly replaced by modern commerce. Issues such as the aesthetics, regulation, and rationalization

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of street spaces, debated among the city authorities, architects, the public and the press, underline two rivaling senses of modernity: the Second Empire’s vision of modernity as rationalization, on the one hand, and the sense of modernity as vibrant, shimmering surface sensations. After the turn of the century an intense reaction set in against the saturation of public spaces through advertising and furnishings, leading to a set of regulations aimed at a drastic reduction of advertising. Appendix 1 surveys the rules and regulations of the press, billposting and advertising in the 1848–1914 period, including discussions of court cases and a political publicity campaign by the Prince Jérôme Bonaparte in 1883 which tested both the new 1881 press law and the agencies’ capacity for orchestrating intensive publicity campaigns. Appendix 2 analyzes the economics of advertising.

Billposting Agencies and the Concession Mechanism As posters, brochures, and catalogues increasingly gained the upper hand over newspaper advertising from the mid-century, billposting firms grew formidable in size. They specialized not only in posting and painting murals but in research, copywriting, the gathering of addresses, and the printing and distribution of brochures and other advertising material. Targeting specific groups according to gender, class and profession became commonplace through press ads, catalogues and billposting in specific areas. Agencies possessed censuses breaking down the population by rent and profession. This enabled their clients to select the exact streets on which they wanted to display their posters or the addresses to which they wanted to send their advertisements through the mail, signaling the emergence of “niche advertising” already at mid-century. By 1851 “an infinite number” of entertainment posters with “extravagant” content competed for attention, attesting to the presence of the large number of entertainment venues, although the colorful, large illustrated poster didn’t become commonplace until the 1870s.3 At mid-century billposting as a modern profession was barely known; by the turn of the century it would grow into a powerful industry. At mid-century billposting firms were concentrated in an area near the Stock Exchange. The firms cultivated specializations. In 1841 the Waché firm, for instance, was handling billposting for theaters and most of the public administration, and owned 225 frames for displaying posters.4 Agencies undertook nationwide billposting. One agency boasted in 1847 that its mural advertisements are “conserved for one year in 400 of the most visible places in Paris” and in other large cities.5 An advertiser could select spots from a list of all the places the agency could post. The activities of such agencies show that by the 1840s the fundamental infrastructure of advertising and the concession mechanism were already in place. While the 1881 billposting law marked a watershed, there was a great deal of continuity from the 1840s through World War I in the development of the infrastructure of advertising, just as SGA, which along with Havas Agency would dominate advertising and news well into the twentieth century, was established in the 1840s. Since an 1850 law authorized “expropriation for cause of insalubrity,” construction

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walls multiplied, and walls of buildings marked for demolition were also used for billposting.6 Under the Second Empire, as political posters were still mostly prohibited, commercial posters were the main staple of trade. There was some mobility within the world of advertising throughout the century. However, later several large companies merged and formed one powerful agency. The history of Emile Rénier and his two sons, Léon and Maurice Rénier, who would dominate the world of French advertising, reveals the way newspaper advertising, street advertising and later news, came to be interlocked. It also shows how a billposting firm expanded, increasing its specialties and seeking out contracts from both public and private institutions. In 1858 Emile Rénier and an associate established an agency which promised billposting “in all the communes of France and Algeria within five days.” 7 It barely lasted a year. Its bankruptcy file, the first of its kind, described billposting as a relatively new enterprise.8 Emile Rénier quickly rebounded, establishing the biggest billposting agency of Paris around 1863. Located in front of the Bank of France, the agency specialized in “billposting within five days in three thousand places.”9 In addition to commercial advertising, the diffusion of information on speculation was a main source of trade. In 1875 the Rénier and Company agency could billpost in all the communes of France, Switzerland, and Belgium, and in 1879 it could print and send out 51,000 posters to 10,000 places in France within 48 hours.10 It contracted with major department stores.11 Often the agency directly lobbied the city authorities, using the rhetoric of organization and the embellishment of advertising. Emile Rénier’s 1872 project for building decorative panels aimed to harmonize advertising with the Paris of “magnificent gardens” “and such cleverly arranged perspectives,” to change advertising from being “a hodgepodge of bad taste,” in order to give it “a character of utility and great luxury.”12 Rénier’s proposal echoed the ideologies of modernization in the sense of urban embellishment, rationalization, and regularization. The proposal was addressed to the “Prefect of the Seine, Police Prefect, Deputies of the Department of the Seine, members of the Municipal Council, Chief Engineer of Bridges and Roads, Director of Public Works of the City of Paris, architect and director of the services of Halls and Markets, etc.” This long list shows the large number of bureaus involved in handling such proposals. Both Rénier’s agency and another agency won contracts with the city.13 Rénier’s strategy found resonance in the politics of Parisian streets. The urban projects under Haussmann auspiciously included reorganizing or eradicating unharmonious elements. Itinerant merchants increasingly led a precarious existence, surviving only with special authorization or as part of an extension of more stable commerce, and fairs were marginalized. Clowns and organ players were banned from performing in the street in 1863.14 The animated assortment of an extraordinary array of street performers and types quickly disappeared.15 Such phenomena continued into the Third Republic. In 1880 Rénier established L’Administration d’Affichage et de Publicité, whose specialties included posting in street cars and omnibuses and the publication of the Guide Rénier.16 The agency also handled advertising “on curtains and foyers of almost all the principal theaters of Paris.”17 At the same time the

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two Rénier sons Maurice and Léon Rénier administered the billposting agency Fabre-Guette et Cie, which went bankrupt in 1883. After the death of Emile Rénier, his company was also declared bankrupt in 1886 and was acquired by Maurice Rénier in 1901.18 In 1899 Léon Rénier established a newspaper advertising brokerage agency, and soon enlarged his field of action to “all important matters of advertising,” including participating in the organization of the 1900 Universal Exposition.19 In 1899 he also contracted to handle advertising in Métro stations, thus conceived from the beginning to display advertisements.20 In 1903 Rénier became the co-director of the SGA, which controlled newspapers of the entire spectrum of political tendencies. In 1906 he was named a knight of the national Order of the Legion of Honor for contributing to French commerce through thirty-one years of practice.21 In 1914 the society merged with Havas Agency, forming one immensely powerful trust.22 By 1903, then, the Rénier trust not only dominated newspaper advertising and information, but controlled a sizable portion of billposting on walls and street furnishings and in various transportation systems, as well as the distribution of printed material and financial advertising. The levels of mediation had grown to such an extent that Rénier’s monopoly on advertising in Métro stations involved subletting advertising spaces to other agencies.23 The story of the Rénier family indicates the dramatic but gradual expansion of advertising and the capitalistic economy, and the development of a powerful trust that interacted with the city and government authorities. Other billposting agencies specialized in different branches, such as “cercles, principal cafés, and other grand establishments,”24 or administration, theaters—including frames in foyers, decorated with photographs of actors and actresses25 —balls, concerts, railroads, hotels, omnibuses, public urinals, and public toilets.26 Agencies owned censuses breaking down the population by rent and profession, which enabled their clients to select the exact streets on which they wanted to display their posters, indicating that “niche advertising” emerged at mid-century. Many billposting agencies also handled the distribution of advertisements sent through the mail. By the 1860s agencies possessed impressive inventories of addresses, for example “a collection of 2.2 million addresses including 400,000 in Paris, complete with figures of rent.”27 Emile Mermet estimated in 1878 that 100,000,000 printed items, not counting newspapers and other periodicals, were distributed each year in Paris and the suburbs.28 This translates into about fifty pieces of mail for every adult and child in the Paris region.29 A problem in contracting with billposting agencies was the lack of any guarantee as to whether billposting would be properly done in remote areas. An 1895 manual for political posting noted that there was even less guarantee for proper billposting when it came to posters hostile to the present regime.30 In 1880 a new billposting and distribution agency, the Société Anonyme d’Entreprise d’Affichage et de Distribution d’Imprimés, was established through the merger of three big agencies.31 The agency’s “complete census of all the electors of Paris and principal cities of the province” listing professions allowed for effective commercial and political campaigns. Each day 400,000 brochures could be sent out, and postmen visited each neighborhood twice a day. The existence

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of such agencies shows that the mechanism and institutions of billposting and distribution was had been firmly established and expanded in time for the landmark July 1881 press law. The 1881 press law allowed for billposting everywhere excepting buildings designated with the still-visible phrase “DEFENSE D’AFFICHER. LOI DU 29 JUILLET 1881.” The law drastically simplified billposting by dropping the requirement that billposters obtain official authorization and show their posters at the prefecture of police. The only formal requirement left was the stamp duty.32 During the 1880–1914 period, the era of the illustrated poster, there were four major billposting agencies: the Société Anonyme d’Entreprise d’Affichage et de Distribution d’Imprimés (still referred to as Bonnard-Bidault), Dufayel, Riché and Company, and the Société Universelle d’Affichage.33 Dufayel, founded in 1887 by Georges Dufayel and also a department store, controlled a significant sector of billposting and distribution.34 It owned more than 1,000 reserved frames in Paris35 and held concession rights for public construction walls, public walls and other spaces.36 The poet Apollinaire carried out a long campaign of criticism and satire against Georges Dufayel in his journal Tabarin, depicting the Dufayel establishment as the ultimate model of capitalist exploitation and Dufayel as having been spared from being charged with financial embezzlement thanks to the complicity of René Waldeck-Rousseau.37 By 1914 “the quasi-totality of available [city] surfaces” was transformed into reserved spaces by agencies. Private walls also could be a source of “very appreciable” income for property owners.38 One large construction wall generated up to 100,000 francs of advertising revenue per year by 1906, and the surface for posters cost “almost as much as the land.”39

The Advent of Street furnishings In the administration of billposting for theaters, one issue came up repeatedly from the 1830s, that f lamboyant, large posters for spectacles of a more popular variety overwhelmed theater posters.40 The wish to control “extravagant” posters paralleled the perceived threat posed by popular spectacles to established theaters and also to public tranquility, the latter signifying the fear of the potential subversive nature of popular spectacles. An 1844 police instruction stated that orchestras for public balls, “through the use of loud instruments, cause overexcitement and disorder.”41 An 1850 decree fixed the hierarchy of theaters and entertainments, dividing them into seven categories.42 The maximum size of theater posters was 120 cm 2 while posters for other spectacles could be 250 cm 2 . The same issues came up repeatedly in the 1850s. In 1856 numerous complaints from theater directors led to the institution of “severe surveillance” of posters.43 “Charlatanism” was an issue. Some officials trying to rationalize theater posters suggested in 1863 that the size of theater posters be reduced and “the phrases of charlatans such as: success, major success, stunning success, unprecedented success, long-running success, success of the century, etc.” not be allowed.44 This ref lected the effort to streamline advertising down to its communicative function. However the ideal of rational advertising could not compete with competing messages delivered in creative and loud forms.

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Issues of taste and monumental aesthetics also came to the fore. By the late 1850s “vast sections of walls, even chimneys” were painted with advertisements.45 Many mural advertisements looked like giant shop signs, listing the inventory of shops. Others depicted symbols. Gigantic murals, such as A l’Oeil’s mysterious pupil, Le Bon-Diable’s green devil, L’Hérisse’s head with a halo of caps, and Le Piano Quatuor’s man with “hideous long fingers and pointed nails stretching over the strings of four violins” formed part of the urban picturesque.46 As the embellishment of Paris progressed, such commercial images came under fire, partly because the building of numerous new thoroughfares creating new perspectives made the signs much more visible. Critics focused on the issues of taste and monumental aesthetics. One consequence of the drastic increase in elegant retail spaces and newly opened-up vistas was a campaign to rid of advertisements deemed inappropriate for the newly embellished surroundings. Charles Garnier, the architect of the Opéra, criticized commercial murals as “the baroque, the bizarre, bad taste and impudence,” spoiling the effects of alignment and perspective, and threatening “the love of the good and the sentiment of the beautiful.”47Likewise Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc, architect and theorist at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, wrote of his eyes being “violently drawn by an enormous golden plaque, ‘TEETH AT FIVE FRANCS.’ ” He then saw a gargantuan wardrobe: “twenty-meter tall frock coats” and “gigantic slippers” that were “more visible than monuments.”48 The unexpected contrast of monuments and images of enlarged commodities gave some observers a jarring sensation that might be termed “proto-Surrealist.” In addition, although advertising carriages had been suppressed since 1847, countless delivery vehicles displayed shop signs and images. The writer Victor Fournel was more of a sanguine observer. As a connoisseur of the picturesque, disappearing Paris, he considered advertisements as standing for certain continuity in visual sensibility. His Paris, as he characterized in Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris (What We See in the Streets of Paris) (1858), was “hardly more than an immense wall of posters scattered from the chimneys down to sidewalks with clusters of squares of paper of all colors and formats, not to mention simple inscriptions.”49 He particularly marveled at the ingenuity of simple posters. A typical example is: “STOP THERE!/ DO NOT GO ANY FURTHER WITHOUT TAKING MY ADDRESS./ YOUR INTEREST REQUIRES YOU TO DO SO./ Extra-superfine hats. 10 francs.”50 However, public pressure grew for suppressing “charlatanistic” and “obscene” advertisements invading “embellished façades.”51 In an 1844 caricature depicting a urinal—A Rambuteau Column built on the Grands Boulevards on which theater posters were displayed52 — a man asks another what the new structure is. The other replies that it’s a “new monument, a reading room befitting the needs of the century.”53 The joke is about the low status of advertising which finds home on a urinal, as well as on the charlatanistic nature of advertisements. The critic Louis Lazare wouldn’t have found such jokes so amusing. He attributed much power to posters, describing them as “deceitful, immoral, the more dangerous for being repeated everywhere.”54 In 1860 an entrepreneur noted that as embellishment spread throughout Paris, “the most elegant and most frequented

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quarters” were “completely deprived of information about spectacles.” Another problem was that it was “impossible for women to consult posters on the urinals of the Boulevards.”55 The public also clamored for better display of theater posters and consumer items,56 while advertising experts recommended “attractive, permanent, universal, honest and appropriate” advertising.57 Another issue was the beauty of the Grands Boulevards. Critics called to give any constructions there an elegant and tasteful appearance.58 The demand for an organized and attractive system of billposting led to the building of a variety of street furnishings. In 1857 the first illuminated kiosk appeared, with painted advertisements. A competition was held in 1863 for designs of kiosks (figure 6.1), columns, urinals and toilets, modeled on earlier furnishings as well as columns built in Berlin in 1855.59 The furnishings were paid for by entrepreneurs for whom advertising rights on the furnishings were the main means of revenue. At the 1863 competition, amidst various proposals for building iron and glass kiosks and columns lit at night, Haussmann decided upon the model submitted by the Morris Company, which was already in charge of printing theater posters in Paris.60 The majority of the 150 columns, known as Morris Columns, made of a wood cylinder, cast-metal stand and a metallic cornice on top, were built on the grand axis of the Grands Boulevards and the Boulevard Sébastopol.61 It was no accident that theater posters were to receive systematic protection; advertising for culture was deemed worthy of special attention. Even today Morris Columns in France are reserved for posters for films, plays and other spectacles, unlike the ones in San Francisco built in the 1990s. Theater bills were changed nearly every day.62 Kiosk holders were mostly widows.63 Kiosks and candelabras, built around gardens and both inside and outside twenty-four squares designed mostly by the architect Gabriel Davioud, marked nature with urban civility.64 Urban furnishings, including benches, along with trees and metallic railing that surrounded green spaces, were elements of an urban system that decorated and literally furnished the now more interiorized public spaces, to which in the 1870s were added Wallace Fountains—small fountains in cast iron. In an effort to save sidewalk space, furnishings with a variety of shapes and functions were built. Davioud, who designed, along with the architect Jules Bourdais, the Moorish-style Trocadéro Palace in 1878 for the Universal Exposition, was among those who designed furnishings that combined functions, such as a candelabra-urinal and a lighting-post-holder. Even benches were experimented with in order to combine functions even before 1861 when Alphand decided to double the number of benches; a bench-poster-holder was built in 1857. In 1892 a bench-illuminated map was built.65 In 1885 Bourdais, along with Sébillot, an engineer, proposed for the 1889 Paris Exposition a 360-meter tall Sun Tower that would light the entire city of Paris, provide a panoramic view, and house rooms for air therapy.66 This project, rejected in favor of Gustave Eiffel’s project for the Eiffel Tower, could be conceived as a gigantic furnishing with combined functions. With the rapid expansion of advertising from the 1880s, the amount of revenue for the municipality generated from the use of street furnishings rose sharply.

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Whereas in 1882 947 street furnishings brought in 83,167 francs, in 1889 one concessioner alone paid 91,100 francs of commission for 380 items.67 In 1897 the annual commission Morris paid to the City almost six-folded to 80,000 francs.68 More than a million francs of commission was paid for all the kiosks by the late 1890s.69 In 1911 Maurice Rénier paid 400,000 francs of commission to the city for kiosks and urinals.70 These figures attest to the extent of the rapid rise of a mass consumer society from the 1880s through 1914. The systematic planning of street furnishings, through their uniformity, was to further homogenize and regulate urban aesthetics. The model of regularization is only partly applicable, however. Street furnishings were very present in the older and more populated Right-Bank areas, less in the Left Bank, and the least in the outer areas annexed in 1860. The Grands Boulevards from the Madeleine to the Bastille commanded the highest prices and were also the streets that were the most crowded with furnishings. An 1880 map indicating locations for 350 kiosks shows a heavy concentration on the Right Bank, along the Grands Boulevards, as well as along the Boulevard Sébastopol, near the Palais Royal, the Opéra, and the train stations.71 The continued vogue of the Grands Boulevards was ref lected in economic reality. An 1887 survey shows that real estate values on the Right Bank were much higher than on the Left. Prices along the Grands Boulevards from the Madeleine to the Bastille and in the Opéra area remained the highest. The annual rent for street spaces along the Grands Boulevards between 1885 and 1887 averaged 50 francs per square meter. Other streets in the first to the fourth arrondissements averaged 20 to 45 francs. Other Right-Bank arrondissements averaged 20 to 30 francs, while prices in the Left Bank arrondissements such as the fifth and the sixth ranged mostly between 3 and 20 francs, and in the thirteenth to the twentieth arrondissements between 2 and 8 francs. In 1911, 478 kiosks for f lowers, newspapers and other objects were still concentrated in the older parts of Paris, and few existed in the outer arrondissements.72 Right Bank locations commanded higher rents than Left Bank ones.73 Prices for temporary displays and terraces in 1884 likewise show that the Boulevards near the Opéra commanded the highest prices—75 francs per square meter for an unspecified time period. The Place de la Bourse and the Boulevard Montmartre cost 70 francs. The Boulevards Madeleine, Bonne-Nouvelle, and Poissonnière, Place de l’Opéra and Rue du Quatre-Septembre cost 50 francs. The rest of the thoroughfares and popular streets of the Right Bank averaged 35 to 45 francs, while the most expensive parts of the Left Bank, such as the Place Saint-Michel, Boulevard Saint-Michel, and Boulevard Saint-Germain, cost 20 francs. Most streets in the outer (13th to the 20th) arrondissements averaged 4 francs or less.74 Given the importance of news in Paris, kiosks quickly became an essential element in the street. Mermet noted in 1878 that kiosk spaces were probably the most expensive of all forms of advertising, with each square on a kiosk costing four francs a month, for a minimum of 200 posters.75 Products advertised on kiosks, according to the advertising expert Henri Gaisser, were aimed at consumers “on the boulevards, wide streets, in front of grand hotels, theaters, restaurants, department stores, supply shops, stations, Métro stations, churches . . . in short all the places where the interesting clientele is found.” 76 Kiosks and reserved

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advertising spaces made the geographical targeting for specific groups of consumers possible. Jules Chéret, who was the artistic director of the printing firm Chaix and also director of the wax museum Musée Grévin, once selected 525 spaces, none of which was in the outer lying arrondissements.77 Georges d’Avenel recommended working-class neighborhoods for advertising “a novel of dramatic episodes or a work of tragedy,” “a worldly neighborhood for an establishment of pleasure [and] serious neighborhoods for a work of science.” 78 From the 1870s brand names became common sights on kiosks.79 The range of products increased through the 1890s and included liqueurs, biscuits, sewing machines, bicycles, soap, lamp oil, and other amenities and luxury items that appealed to the middle and the upper classes, and the lower middle class and working classes in some cases. Railroad travel was also widely advertised. An illustration from 1892 includes a poster for “Paris,” an art gallery; Boyer cosmetics; a fashion shop; the Côte d’Azur; and a spectacle at the Moulin de la Galette.80 Melisse Water, Boyer, Colonial Chocolate, Dufayel, and Byrrh were ubiquitous from the 1890s.81 In 1914 L’Administration d’Affichage listed the following as brands that used kiosks widely: Byrrh, Picon, Chartreuse, Bénedictine, Dubonnet, Ménier, Suchard, Guérin-Boutron, Colonial Chocolate, Ricqlès, Vichy, Contrexéville, Vittel, Maggi, Liébig, Le Figaro, Singer, Pigier, the publisher Hachette, Etoile Candle and Fix Jewelry.82 Lion Noir, Mort aux Rats, Bonbons Kréma, Petits Beurre de l’Alsacienne, Byrrh, Cinzano, Picon, and Raphaël Quinquina were also brands that were frequently seen on urinals and toilets.83

The City Administration and Advertising Requests From the 1880s the city administration was inundated with concession requests for spaces for advertising. If allowed, all the trees, the spaces in between trees, street lighting, and all the benches and the very sidewalks would have been covered with advertisements, a prospect not welcomed by the city architects or the public. The city administration was not a monolithic entity with a systematic policy for encouraging or discouraging street advertising. There was much continuity in the structure of the administration from the Second Empire, as Adolphe Alphand, the principal collaborator of Haussmann’s urban projects, also became his veritable successor as the Inspector General of the Direction of Public Works of Paris. Alphand grouped under his immediate authority all the administrative and technical services of public works in Paris and the Department of the Seine.84 After his death in 1892 a radical decentralization occurred. While concerns for aesthetics and traffic came first, the police, the Chamber of Commerce, municipal authorities, and the Seine Prefecture often pursued contradictory policies, attempting to juggle urban aesthetics and circulation—both of which were of paramount importance for Parisians and tourists—, commercial demands, and financial benefit. The authorities encouraged “artistic” branches of advertising, especially the colorful illustrated poster.85 Concerns about foreign competition stirred a movement for more domestic advertising. While such trends fit into

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the broader aim of the state to discipline and direct consumers into the new Republican marketplace and in the process control advertising, at the level of city administration there was not much systematic ideology or plan other than regularizing advertising for organized display and balancing competing priorities. What was foremost at stake was preserving the beauty of the city renowned as one of the world’s foremost travel destinations, and protecting, especially, wealthy areas and established commerce from unwanted traffic. The city administration’s interactions with entrepreneurs ref lected both the expanding power of commerce and the embourgeoisification of the city, but also reveals continued ambivalence about the place of advertising in both processes. As Rénier did earlier, advertising agencies solicited the city authorities to transform unseemly walls of posters into walls full of ornate frames displaying posters that blended well into the embellished surroundings. For instance, communal walls bordering on streets were to display only painted advertisements, plates in sheet metal or canvas, or posters in wooden frames.86 Such emphasis on the aesthetics and organization of advertising in the public space was seen as uniquely French. An American commented in 1905 that in France “nicely made wooden frames” in specially rented places or “iron and glass kiosks in good taste” helped the poster gain respect and be removed easily.87 Starting in the mid-1870s, advertising vehicles and sandwichmen were allowed to circulate again in Paris. Their appearances became increasingly fantastic and outlandish. In the 1870s the police still controlled the rights to inspect and authorize all vehicles for advertising. After the July 1881 press law abolished the 1847 and 1851 laws prohibiting advertising vehicles, no law was applicable for suppressing such vehicles. However, traffic congestion and safety regulations still applied. Before 1881 it usually took months from the time an entrepreneur requested permission to use a vehicle to its actual authorization. After minute background research on the petitioner, the inspection of models and the nature of the advertisements, and an analysis of the possibility of hindering traffic, the proposals were usually rejected. After several attempts and successive modifications, some projects were approved on trial bases, and advertising vehicles soon proliferated to the extent that in 1900 they were completely suppressed.88 Initial petitions for circulating advertising carriages spurred a debate in the late 1870s. One of the first projects proposed carriages in different styles such as “Moorish, Egyptian, Gothic or Renaissance.”89 Proponents argued that innumerable delivery carriages for department stores carrying “gigantic posters” were circulating in Paris at all hours.90 One entrepreneur argued that it was unfair to prevent small businesses and theaters from circulating advertising, while big commercial firms used hundreds of delivery carriages.91 Internal debates at the Police focused on issues of traffic, order and aesthetics. Those opposing mobile advertising argued that advertising was invading “the most frequented routes, the Boulevards and the promenades,” displaying “the sad spectacle of disorder and congestion” to foreigners. Mobile advertising would “necessarily accumulate at certain specific points in wealthy areas, precisely those places requiring space the most.” While the proponents argued that cities like Berlin and London advertising vehicles were extremely common, the opponents countered that the “hardly

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sociable” Berliners attracted few foreigners and that the cityscape of London, with “sad and somber people and climate” was suited above all to business.92 The opponents argued that Paris was unique as “the capital of taste, arts, letters, intellectual movement” and “the city of luxury” attracting 300,000 to 400,000 f loating population a year.93 Such debates reveal what was at stake: the tension between the interests of large companies and small ones; issues of class including the idea that wealthy areas require more space and need to be protected; and the self-perception of the uniqueness of Paris as the capital of many things and a major tourist destination. The 1878 Universal Exposition occasioned more original forms of mobile advertising. Traditional parades became commercialized. At the 1878 parade of Lent advertising vehicles mixed with classical processions of decorated carriages, and the boeuf gras included, according to Elie Frébault, “the horrible debauche of outlandish advertisements.”94 Provincial cities also had their share of mobile advertising. A postcard from circa 1900 shows about twenty large advertising carts parked at a square in Reims. In 1888, after an incident in which a caravan of twenty carriages, covered with advertisements of “gigantic dimensions, escorted by a small army of sandwichmen,” paralyzed traffic for several days, the Police intervened.95 A series of police ordinances issued in the 1880s limited the use of mobile or lit advertisements. The large quantity of advertisements in Paris however seemed to pale compared to those in London and New York, seen as cities saturated with advertising. In London the street had a “fantasist appearance” due to advertisements on street lamps, which were prohibited in Paris.96

The Expansion of Advertising and Reaction The idea that advertising impaired aesthetic and moral faculties, which emerged under the Second Empire, resonated in the campaign against advertising decades later. The effort to preserve monuments was galvanized by the invasion of advertisements. The Comité des Monuments Français (French Monument Committee) and the Société des Amis des Monuments Parisiens (Friends of Parisian Monuments) were both founded in the 1880s.97 From the late 1890s the criticism of gigantic mural advertisements became severe.98 Gaston Bonnefont in 1902 criticized “Immoral réclame” for exploiting “the love of pleasure and the passion for gambling.”99 Images of violence in posters for theaters and musichalls were thought to be detrimental to the education of the working classes. Innumerable scenes of “cruelty, rape and murder” on posters, argued François Maury in 1910, ref lected the preferred themes of popular literature.100 Léon Jules stigmatized “unhealthy advertisements” for “hypnotizing” women into making costly and frequent purchases.101 Department stores were criticized for exerting a “demoralizing action” through “their seduction of the woman.”102 The view that advertising was effective for the less resilient portion of the public was echoed by the experts in the field, although they were thinking about the working classes more than women: “Intensive advertising through posters and ads addresses the unthinking masses,” they argued, “appealing to the memory

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more than to the faculty of judgment.” On the other hand, advertising through catalogues and the press were thought to appeal to judgment, to rationality and therefore be more effective.103 However, rather than immorality or aesthetics, issues of traffic congestion and general saturation led to a mounting public pressure against advertising. In 1891 the paper La Paix complained that the Grands Boulevards were filled with candelabras, chairs, signs, kiosks in various shapes, hawkers and “fish-scalers throwing their shells around.”104 The congestion on the Boulevards and the impossibility of walking there were favorite subjects of columnists, and city officials reported that the Boulevards were overcrowded with street furnishings among other things. In 1892 the Association of Parisians of Paris for the Protection of Sidewalks was established, aiming to liberate sidewalks from such overcrowding.105 By 1900 the public opinion was calling for a radical solution for alleviating such congestion. In 1900 advertising vehicles were completely suppressed. Although from the 1890s taxes on advertising increased, it wasn’t until the 1910s that a prohibitive tax was used to actually suppress advertisements.106 Sometimes the law on taxation, passed for financial motivation, had unintended consequences. The 1890 taxation on commercial murals inadvertently reduced their number drastically. In 1892 only 320,000 francs were collected instead of the projected millions.107 In 1908 the maximum poster stamp duty was raised to 20 centimes, in anticipation of a supplementary revenue of 700,000 francs.108 A city administration report feared that the “reputation for elegance and good maintenance of the city of Paris would surely disappear if all the concession proposals were allowed.”109 Proposals included one for covering 42,000 benches with advertisements.110 In 1911 there was a total of 3,465 street furnishings in Paris; the Boulevard des Capucines alone had 39.111 Les Amis de Paris (Friends of Paris), established in 1911, identified the ugly poster as enemy number one. Composed of writers, artists, architects, lawyers, politicians, and other members of the social elite, the organization with a conservative outlook lobbied to restrict billposting and street advertising, suppress street furnishings, limit the development of the Métro, and prevent any “Americanization” of Paris, such as the construction of high-rises. The program of Les Amis de Paris was to render “Paris more beautiful—materially and morally,”112 or turn it into a museum, depending on one’s perspective. It sanctioned the programs of Senator René Bérenger for eradicating pornography and alcoholism. Bérenger compared advertising to prostitution: “La publicité, says its name, she also, is a fille publique! (prostitute)”113 The middle-class press joined in the campaign against advertising. Issues included the distinction between the private and public, and the notion of liberty in the street. Critics positioned advertising on the side of disorder, as excessive and unhygienic. Advertisements along railroads and in the countryside were singled out as the most urgent problem. The Society for the Protection of the Landscape and Aesthetics of France was founded in 1901. By 1910 reports concurred that train travel offered no view of the landscape. The movement against advertising was a Europe-wide phenomenon. The international press widely reported on the formation of Les Amis de Paris, which in turn held up foreign precedents for its initiatives.114 Its proposal to prohibit posting on monuments,

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natural sites and sites of artistic character was enacted into law in 1910.115 A 1912 tax on billboards aimed to completely suppress such billposting in the countryside.116 Handbills were completely banned in 1911.117

Conclusion The intensive urban projects of the Second Empire were accompanied by the commercial demand that feverishly competed for advertising spaces, leading to the reorganization of advertising that might fit into embellished surroundings. While the principles and infrastructure of advertising show much continuity since the July Monarchy well into the Third Republic, the phenomenal increase in the volume of advertising highlights the onset of the mass consumer society by the 1880s. Parisian city authorities were often opportunistic concerning advertising, negotiating among issues of aesthetics, circulation, order, commercial demand, the protection of wealthy areas, financial benefit, and morality. The authorities and the public favored “protected” advertising that might approach ornamentation especially in the elegant neighborhoods, and privileged theater posters. Gigantic construction walls proliferating in Paris also proved to be highly profitable advertising media. With the end of the prohibition on political posters and the advent of mobile advertising, the earlier authoritarian regimes’ concerns with political surveillance gave way to problems of preventing commerce from submerging streets, especially in popular areas, leading to the reaction against saturation by advertising. The Second-Empire vision of modernity overlapped with and was subverted by the development of a commercial modernity highlighting shimmering surfaces and intense stimuli. The development of billposting agencies and the construction of street furnishings show a process of modernization in the sense of capitalistic expansion as well as the bureaucratic and aesthetic rationalization of street advertising. However the Right Bank was much more in demand commercially, with the Grands Boulevards as the center of advertising, showing that the reorganization and redistribution of traffic under the Second Empire were in reality limited. The organized system of billposting along with “street furnishings” such as kiosks and Morris Columns used as advertising media made the French system quite unique. Yet the attempts to organize and regularize advertising had limited success, as advertising was concentrated in the most popular parts of Paris. The commercial and cultural dynamic trumped the ideology of the control and rationalization of public space. The liberalization of the law of press and billposting in 1881 was a major turning point much more for political than for commercial publicity, although the simplification of the law also paved way for the phenomenal expansion of commercial posters. At this time the infrastructure of printing and distribution was enlarged to accommodate new demands of the expanding market. The rapid growth of advertising revenue for the city from the 1880s attests to both the expansion of mass consumer society and the advent of mass politics. As storms of intensive political campaigns during crises demonstrate, developments in the

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strategies of publicity marked both politics and commerce. Louis-Napoleon’s 1848 campaign used varied media like giveaways, posters, and newspaper articles, as did commercial campaigns. Later omnibuses, carriages, advertising vehicles, and sandwichmen were as much a part of political campaigns as commercial ones, as showcased by the intensive nationwide campaign of General Georges Boulanger, which marked the birth of mass politics.118

Appendix 1 Rules and Regulations of the Press, Billposting and Advertising, 1848–1914 The 1848 revolution initiated a period of the first mass exposure to a modern political process, by instituting the freedom of the press, assembly and association, and universal manhood suffrage. For four months “All the walls were covered with revolutionary posters. . . . There was scarcely a palace or a church on which these notices could not be seen. . . . The number of public criers increased every day; thousands and thousands of Parisians, who had nothing else to do, became news vendors.”119 The period of tremendous political mobilization would not endure. After the uprising of “June Days” during and after which estimated several thousand workers were killed, the ensuing political repression contributed to the landslide victory of Louis-Napoleon in the Presidential election of 1848.120 Louis-Napoleon’s election campaign using newspaper articles, posters, badges, pictures, and Napoleonic keepsakes emphasized the fact that he was the nephew of the first Emperor. This campaign, which instantly turned LouisNapoleon into a national figure, marked one of the first cases of nationwide image-building. In the battle over political control the démocs-socs, the radical organized opposition to the regime, had also launched an intensive, mass political campaign using an array of print media.121 The regime countered, rigorously restricting the radical press and eventually demolishing the extreme left.122 A part of the curtailing of political action was the control of all forms of political speech; seditious cries could result not only in indictments but also the sieges of entire villages.123 Censorship was extended to the theater. A law of 1850 required the announcement of work destined to theaters, spectacles, concerts, or café-concerts to receive prior approval of the Ministry of Interior. The rationale was that “the prior publicity of a work that is suppressed at the moment of representation could cause disorder.”124 Traffic problems added to restrictions. In 1849 the police stalled a project for establishing gas candelabras exhibiting advertisements, citing a possible traffic hazard. The explosive growth of the population and the fear of barricades provided important motives to the regime’s will to assure efficient traffic, overriding the demands of commerce. Following the coup d’état of December 1851 and the bloody quelling of resistance, Louis-Napoleon established the Second Empire, exercising severe political repression and rule by decree.125 Initially posters of all variety were subject to stringent regulation. A decree of August 25, 1852 required prior

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permission from municipal authorities to exhibit posters in public space. In 1853 an even more strict police ordinance required prior authorization by the Prefect of Police for all posters destined for walls or fences along public streets, except for posters for theaters, balls, and authorized concerts. It aimed to suppress posters “containing announcements that offend proprieties and public morality.”126 These measures were part and parcel of the broader regulation of public sphere, including thousands of cafés that were shut down.127 The appearance of images in theater posters around 1851 made posters more potentially subversive in the eyes of the regime. They became the target of an important new regulation of 1852.128 The Minister of Interior required a copy of each theater poster to be presented for visa at the Direction of Fine Arts (Commission d’examen des ouvrages dramatiques) before submission at the police.129 Any exposure of nonauthorized images in view of sale, even if the images were not displayed in public, was punishable.130 Soon photographs were added to the list. Laws of surveillance and taxation continually redefined the limits of publicity. Merchants countered such laws with evasive strategies that might be described as oppositional practices. The August 25, 1852 tax measure over advertising murals could be very expensive if they were frequently changed, or if one image was painted in many places.131 Entrepreneurs consequently began to favor long-lasting murals of large, even vast, dimensions, since the law did not limit the size (beyond one square meter) or the duration of exhibition. Merchants attempted to get around the stamp duty by replacing paper with invented materials such as “canvas laminated in zinc, varnished, and solidified in a thousand ways.”132 The discourse around the 1852 fiscal law reveals various aspects of commercial competition and friction. Louis-Désiré Véron, who proposed the law, had private commercial interests. Véron was a deputy, a doctor, and the owner of the newspaper Le Constitutionnel. Critics of the fiscal law argued that Véron proposed the billposting duty in order to curb the competition against advertising in his own newspaper.133 Under his direction many editorial advertisements appeared in Le Constitutionnel, especially on pseudo-pharmaceutical products.134 He recognized the power of publicity and “the art of getting the press interested in the success of a theatricocommercial enterprise.”135 Véron had also directed the Opéra from 1831 to 1835 and was one of the first to link the “worlds of politics, the press, the high society, and the Boulevard.”136 He also linked these with commerce and publicity. The proliferation of new publicity practices caused public authorities and entrepreneurs to wrestle over the idea of public space. A case of an infringement of billposting duty in 1857 involved a mechanical display called “the museum of animated posters.” The authorities considered this as taxable billposting and levied a 2,200-franc fine to the owner. In the appeal, the defense argued that the display was “a kind of a spectacle, not billposting,” and that a shop interior was private.137 Such a conf lict was resolved in 1860, when the administration of Stamp and Registration defined public space as all localities accessible to an assembly of citizens or even one class of citizens.138 Subsequently tabacs, schools, train stations, hotels, cafés, restaurants, theaters, spectacles, shops, and public transportation vehicles were reclassified as public spaces and therefore liable for taxation.139

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In the 1860s, during the “liberal” phase of the Empire, the regime pursued the politics of prosperity, encouraging enterprises and private speculation,140 while continuing an unprecedented campaign to attract visitors to Paris.141 A new leniency in the regulation of billposting coincided with the rise of massive publicity campaigns of department stores and the mass press.142 Yet an 1868 court case, in which an advertising agent sued the owner of a suppressed newspaper for breach of contract, reveals the low cultural status of newspaper advertising. The defendant’s lawyer pointed out that “never before a demand of this kind had been produced.” He argued that the February 17, 1852 decree “inaugurated for the press a state control without analogy or precedent . . . placing the press outside the common law, and arming the administration with an exceptional, discretionary and dictatorial power against the press” and as such the judicial system could not interpret the decree.143 The case reveals, besides the severe persecution of the press by the regime, the virtual absence of any standard procedure regarding press advertising in legal terms. During the Paris Commune of 1871, political posters proliferated much more than in earlier times of revolutionary upheaval.144 During the 1877 political crisis, several tribunals tried to apply the 1830 law in vain.145 For the general election the Monarchist President MacMahon’s cabinet orchestrated the printing and display of millions of images favorable to the “moral order,” while ruthlessly suppressing those of the opposition. Posters depicting MacMahon on horseback were everywhere. The ironic result was a strong affirmation of Republicanism in France.146 During a preliminary discussion of the 1881 press law, the deputy Lisbonne noted that “it has been many years since the prohibitive clauses of the 1830 law fell in disuse.”147 The capacity of the system to print, distribute, and post massive numbers of posters was revealed by an episode which also tested the freedom of expression provided by the 1881 press law. On January 18, 1883 Le Petit Parisien reported in outrage that the Prince Jérôme Bonaparte had posted all over Paris an antiRepublican, Bonapartist manifesto, signed “Napoleon.” 100,000 posters were printed on pre-stamped paper in order to avoid premature exposure. At one in the morning about sixteen billposters of Léon Rénier’s agency put 4,000 posters up everywhere. 96,000 posters were dispatched to the provinces. Brochures were also printed, to be distributed at theaters and on the street. Bonaparte was arrested, and the printing firm and Rénier’s agency were put under close surveillance for a few days. The incident provoked debates about “State security” measures and the freedom to express political opinions.148 Four days later Le Petit Parisien reported again in outrage that the authorities were attempting to limit the liberty of the press, and protested that citizens should not be punished for crimes committed by princes.149 In the end the judge, considering that the manifesto “did not incite toward the overthrowing of the order of things,” let Bonaparte go. A few weeks later the distribution of the manifesto resumed, undisturbed.150 This event prompted Le Petit Parisien to marvel at the short lifespan of a poster, “a matter of few hours, too often of few seconds.” “Unless a poster is ceaselessly renewed,” “retracing its trail is extremely difficult.”151 Posters were forming a major aspect of urban ephemeral scenery.

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Appendix 2 The Economics of Advertising Although the fin de siècle marked the golden age of illustrated posters, the change in the amount of stamp duty on commercial posters, shown in the following table, indicates that the increase in the volume of posters was steady throughout the century; the biggest jump in the number and/or size of posters occurred in the decade between 1866 and 1876.152 Year

Duty collected

1846 1856 1866 1876 1886 1896

654,340 francs 754,920 1 million 2.1 million 2.6 3.3

Posters up to 120 cm 2 were taxed five centimes, and those up to 250 cm 2 were taxed ten centimes. The figures translate into about 6.5 million posters of 120 cm 2 size in 1846, 10 million in 1866, and 21 million in 1876. The revenue from political posters starting in the late 1870s would increase the numbers for the late-nineteenth century. The expansion of literacy contributed to such a trend.153 For the mid-century, it is difficult to determine in detail the costs and prices for manufacturing posters or billposting. For the last quarter of the century directories and encyclopedias indicated the prices.154 Advertising for the most part was considered quite costly. The Grande Encyclopédie noted in the 1890s that advertising “costs relatively large sums of money.”155 By 1900 10 million francs a year were being spent on posters in Paris, and 100,000,000 overall for advertising.156

A. Newspaper Advertising Full-page ads were exclusively used by department stores and the mass press until the pharmacist Arthur Géraudel and his advertising agent, Jules Roques, launched a massive campaign using full-page ads for Géraudel’s Coughdrops. The cost of newspaper advertising was more or less uniform for the dailies except for the most popular ones. Agencies charged the following prices in 1878: for an annonce, 1.50 to 2 francs per line; for a réclame, 4.50 to 6 francs; and for a fait divers, 7.50 to 10 francs per line.157 The most expensive newspaper was Le Petit Journal, charging 6 francs per line for annonces, 15 for réclames and 25 for faits divers. Le Figaro charged 4 francs per line per annonce and 12 francs per line per avis divers.158 A full-page ad cost several hundred francs. Monthly or yearly contracts were the norm. Advertising was fairly costly, when one considers that most newspaper subscriptions cost about twelve francs a year at the time and that many newspapers were available for reading at cafés, hotels, and cercles. Le Boulevardier (f.1879), for example, was distributed to “1,200 cafés, premier hotels, principal

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beauty salons, and at all the circles.”159 Already in the 1840s Le Tintamarre had been distributed free of charge to 2,000 cafés.160 The cost of editorial advertising varied according to the renown of the author, and was determined case by case in private.161 Editorial advertising was also common in guidebooks, almanacs or theater programs. In 1895 advertising in the Guide Conty cost about 500–600 francs per page.162

B. Printing and Billposting Between the 1870s and the 90s the production cost of poster printing went down significantly, as much as 70 percent, due to technological advances, increase in volume, and competition. Prices for billposting also went down, although not as dramatically, from the 1870s through the 1910s. A poster signed by a “master of the poster,” such as “Chéret, Grasset, Raffet, Mucha, Grün, Steinlen, Guillaume or Lanteuil,” cost more.163 Although the prices fetched for posters by popular artists were driven by collectors and the black market, colorful posters cost at least ten times more to produce. With the emergence of the poster artist, big firms began to choose artists their clients would favor. However, merchants and industrialists preferred to deal directly with the artists and printers, employing the service of billposting firms only for posting and maintenance.164 Although three times as expensive as simple posting, reserved posting was very popular due to its permanence and relatively elegant appearance.

CH A P T E R

EIGH T

Consumer Technologies and Celebrity Culture

Introduction A poster by Rouchon announces the “Palais de Cristal (Crystal Palace),” (c.1853) with an image of Joseph Paxton’s iron-and-glass palace in London built for the Great Exhibition of 1851.1 A Union Jack f lies at the top. The poster in fact advertises a shop called Le Palais de Cristal, made clear by the line “CLOTHES FOR MEN.” Here a famous building is used to advertise a shop. Another poster by Rouchon, for the shop Au Paradis des Dames from 1856, features bourgeois women in front of red curtains as if they’re on stage, accompanied by a male clerk showing merchandise. The presence of other women behind the curtains heightens the sense of anticipation. The poster announces “Known for selling at very good prices,” “PERMANENT EXHIBITION,” and “FREE ENTRY.”2 Rouchon’s posters, Vallet de Viriville wrote in the Revue de Paris in 1853, “are carpeting the walls of Paris,” leading “each day to new and interesting tries and experiments.”3 This comment, made in passing in an article devoted to artistic printing techniques, attests to the widespread visibility of Rouchon’s colorful posters and also the aesthetic appreciation for the posters despite their commercial function. The rapid expansion of retail and marketing also created unease. In Louis Huart’s satire from 1861 the director of a magasin de nouveautés requests the correction of an error in an advertisement, from 875 to 876 cashmere shawls, in order to get a free advertisement. On a day of a big sale he employs thirty men and fifty women to act like customers and get in line, enter the store, and then go out and get in line again. The women had been given nice clothes in order to pass for “real bourgeois women.”4 Shops were often criticized for creating such false appearances. This chapter treats the expansion of Parisian consumer culture in the 1852–1914 period by analyzing publicity and retail techniques, as well as the public reception of these techniques which in turn shaped government policies. The use of faits divers for publicity, and multimedia campaigns, became systematic, as did the strategy of layering representations of consumption. New scenes of consumption included monumental architecture and larger-than-life images of consumers.

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Commercial images powerfully linked the self to the meaning of consumption by 1880, in the process strengthening the association of urban pleasure and consumption. By this time writers and artists cast advertising as a powerful form of communication projected to become even more so in the future. The most successful publicity stunts involved generating widespread media attention, ideally a sensation. In this regard the stardom of Sarah Bernhardt, who consciously staged her life as a spectacle, exemplified the expanding celebrity culture formed through intensive media coverage. This chapter analyzes an episode in Bernhardt’s life which showcased a web of sensational publicity.

Monumental Architecture and New Scenes of Modernity Under the Second Empire the taste for luxury spread to domestic and commercial buildings alike. The construction of countless luxurious habitations, shops, cafés, and restaurants propelled elaborate interior decoration. Shops increasingly resembled elegant living rooms. 5 A trade magazine represented Paris as the capital of modern retail: “Elegance and refinement have slipped into the industrial classes . . . The good taste inspired by comfort and competitive spirit aid a miraculous modification that makes Paris the capital of capitals.”6 However such phenomena were also criticized as luxury replacing style, and the manipulation of taste by styles haphazardly created through mass production. Edmond Texier wrote in 1862: “Today all salons [show] the same fabrics, the same carpets strewn with parrots, the same bronzes produced in a cast of thousands.” 7 Luxurious decoration seemed like replicas rather than something genuinely special. The criticism of luxury also came from opponents of Haussmann’s urban planning. Jacques Fabien in Paris en songe (Paris in Dreams) (1863) envisioned a utopia meant to be the opposite of the Paris of Haussmann, a pre-industrial city devoid of luxury and artifice which is also a feminist utopia.8 Monumental architecture, an emblematic component of Haussmannian modernity, was an indispensable feature of department stores. An illustration with the caption “Enlargement of the Shops of the Coin de Rue” from the 1850s showcases an intersection of the interior of the shop, four f loors full of female customers and male clerks rendered in great detail. Buildings were depicted as subjugating the surrounding space. Images of such architecture were to elicit an almost sublime sensation of being in a total environment. During the early Third Republic monumentality was decisively dissociated from imperial grandeur and more appropriated for commercial purposes.9 Department stores were frequently featured in L’Illustration. At the occasion of the 1878 Universal Exposition La Belle Jarnidière ran an eight-page illustrated article.10 The Bon Marché department store’s new building, designed by Gustave Eiffel after the exhibition halls of Universal Expositions, was the largest commercial building in the world when it was completed in 1887.11 The artist Edgar Degas proposed to the publisher of Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames (The Ladies’ Paradise) (1883) that the book be published with samples of fashion items attached to its pages,12 which

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Figure 8.1

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Petit Messager des modes, Nov. 1, 1887 plate n. 2401.

shows that department stores were sites of cultural formations inf luencing literature. The title of the novel is similar to the name of the shop Au Paradis des Dames. Store catalogues inf luenced fashion plates. A fashion plate (figure 8.1) featuring children published in the Petit Messager des modes in 1887 stylistically resembles images in catalogues, except for the detailed background.13

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Numerous entertainment sites and manufacturers such as the new Hippodrome, cafés, and a roller-skating rink, were also featured in L’Illustration as well as Le Monde illustré.14 Illustrations for these articles constituted an iconography distinct from that of posters. Rather than striking images of women in a few bold colors, this iconography emphasized commercial modernity by showcasing luxurious architecture, spaciousness, and animation. Akin to photographs and in many cases made from photographs, they show stylistic continuity from the images published in L’Illustration under the July Monarchy. Posters incorporated layered spectatorship. A poster for Old England Tailors from circa 1890 to 1900 depicts the shop on the animated Boulevard des Capucines. To the left is an image of a man as large as the building, in a tennis outfit, holding a tennis racket and standing on a beach. The image of a man is a print, another layer of representation. It suggests the idea of images in circulation, and that this image should be immediately recognizable. The two images are used to appeal to a new consumer identity, one that emphasizes the self and was associated with a lifestyle involving urban consumption and sports.

Fait-Divers Publicity and Multimedia Campaigns Fascination with minute details of everyday life in Paris turned faits divers and actualités into a staple of the popular press. Faits divers were short, episodic news, while actualités were current events of all variety.15 Whereas faits divers in Le Petit Journal focused on accidents, crimes, and other sensational events and incredulous stories, those in Le Figaro focused on high-society activities. Many of the faits divers published in Le Figaro were editorial ads. Writers of such faits divers endeavored to be witty, narrating stories of the rich and famous, and also sought to elicit a desire to imitate them. Such sensibility was apt for the boulevardier press, the most famous of which was Le Figaro. The underlining assumption was that consumers would want to emulate the lifestyle of the rich, which is what Thorstein Veblen would argue in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1908).16 Editorial ads were not always purchased but were publicity garnered as favors. The photographer Nadar’s balloon adventures, for example, were publicized through articles written by his friends.17 Hippolyte de Villemessant enacted a specimen of the art of fait-divers publicity in the 1860s. He related in Le Figaro the history of the Duke of Hamilton and the sheep’s wool left on the brambles. Then came a lengthy description of the homes of the Highland shepherds and their spinning wives in which the English word “homespun” was used. Then the article advised men to rush to a certain shop in Paris where homespun was sold, and be measured for suits. A few days later Villemessant was seen on the Grands Boulevards in a homespun suit of the latest cut and pattern.18 Here the celebrity to emulate was the fait divers’ writer, who cast himself as a fashionable consumer and the kind of walking advertisement (figure 6.5) on the Boulevard that Robida would caricature. Many faits divers publicized shops on central streets. One announced that “among permitted pleasures” for “serious women” was taking their husbands to the Colonial Company’s chocolate shops on the Boulevard des Italiens or the

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Rue de Rivoli.19 Another one, published in 1868, described the dangers of the sea and the country to the skin, that “brunettes tan, and blonds fear the red stains that so much mar a pretty face,” and recommended a product at a shop on the Boulevard Saint-Denis.20 Publicity campaigns used several different media simultaneously. Newspapers and magazines “reported” on advertising curtains and advertising done during intermissions at a theater.21 Such layering of publicity may have caused the sensation of being inside a room full of mirrors multiplying illusions. From the 1870s advertising curtains became very common at prestigious theaters and vaudevilles alike.22 Editorial ads for literature also created artificial buzz by reporting on what in reality were advertising campaigns. A typical mid-century French editorial ad is: “For a month the big and the small papers have been speaking, in a tone of tribute and encouragement, about Mr. Prosper Jourdan’s book, Rosine et Rosette . . . ,” as “reported” in Le Boulevard in 1862.23 Le Constitutionnel, Le National, Le Siècle, and Le Courrier français also published literary eloges.24 Intriguing posters were used. Le Petit Journal’s star columnist Timothée Trimm (Léo Lespès) wrote in 1868 on the “perplexity” caused by an “enigmatic” poster he saw in the street, with the words “MONSIEUR LECOQ! .. MONSIEUR LECOQ! ! .. MONSIEUR LECOQ! ! ! .. MONSIEUR LECOQ! ! !” According to him this new method of repeating titles came from America.25 He thought that street walls formed “a kind of a museum for the passers-by” and called the poster “a man-eater that fascinates the distracted eyes, and attracts the least complacent attentions,” potent with negative feminine connotations. Posters provided him with new subject matters for writing. A poster for the book Les Condamnées de Saint-Lazare (The Prisoners of Saint-Lazare) inspired him to write about the women’s prison.26 Current events were used to create mysterious advertising. After the visit of the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1869, the word “Zanzibar” became all the rage in Paris. Riding the trend, posters simply stating “Taste it, Taste it, Taste Zanzibar” “f looded” Paris. The originator of this campaign turned out to be a coffee shop. 27 In another case of the use of current events, an ad in Le Petit Journal announced “Le Mystère du Pont-Neuf ”: “The walls of Paris are since yesterday covered with posters for a new sensational novel that is about to appear and is called The Mystery of Pont-Neuf.” However the ad was in fact for the shop Magasins de la Rue de Pont Neuf. 28 Another ad for the shop, which announced that “THE SHOP IS NOT AT THE CORNER OF THE RIVERBANK” was so well known that a revue “The shop is not at the corner of the Riverbank” was staged at a theater. 29 An editorial ad from La Vie parisienne from circa 1870 narrates a scene inside a train bound for Italy: The travelers for the Italy line get into the cars. —Wait a minute, oh darn it, I forgot to take my coffee. —We’re not in the era of stagecoaches anymore: the train doesn’t wait. —Is that so, my dear? Go into my compartment, and you won’t have any reason to miss the chicory coffee of the buffet.

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The piercing whistle blows. Now we are off! From his baggage we took a bottle of the Essence de café Trablit. He makes me a cup that I sip with as much delight as if Tortoni prepared it. In cream, in water, in milk, in grog, the Essence de café Trablit is exquisite. Recommended to lady travelers, in their interest. 1 fr. 60 a bottle. (6, Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau)30 This ad unfolds like a TV commercial, in which a product is only gradually introduced following an everyday conversation. The scene invokes the excitement of foreign travel. The timeliness of departure and the reference to the period of stagecoaches redouble the ideas of the modernity and glamour of fast train travel. Instant coffee fits well with the theme of speed. The sewing machine, which became a consumer item by the 1860s, was intensively marketed to a broad sector of women through a variety of media. Many of the articles on the sewing machine in fashion magazines were editorial ads. The Journal des dames et des demoiselles et Brodeuse illustrée réunis, a Belgian edition of the magazines published by Ad Goubaud and Sons, the publishers of Le Moniteur de la mode, promoted a particular brand of sewing machine, “The Silent” by Pollack-Schmidt and Company of Hamburg, in every issue in 1868 in articles titled “Work,” “Review of Shops” and others, as well as on numerous fashion plates of the same year. Declaring that “the sewing machine has finally completely entered the French mores” and describing the machine as “a small piece of furnishing with recognized practical utility,” the magazine recommended “The Silent,” a machine by Pollack-Schmidt, as “the best machine for all reasons to introduce into our numerous subscribers’ households.”31 The fashion plates of the magazine mentioned the “silent machines of Pollack Schmidt” on the Rue Richelieu in Paris, along with dress makers and shops. The magazine published articles with patterns for use with sewing machines and declared that “Wilcox and Gibbs, 82 Boulevard Sébastopol, has such well and nicely perfected sewing machines, they are no longer moved away, even from the most elegant salons.”32 High-class women at country estates in the summer were advised to work for the poor for charity: “with your cute feet, press the sewing machine’s pedal that will bring fruitful gains for your adopted children.”33 Such associations of the sewing machine with the upper-class lifestyle were far from realistic, since most women who did use the sewing machine were in fact seamstresses. These articles were clearly editorial ads promoting one brand of sewing machine repeatedly including on fashion plates. This type of marketing of the sewing machine shows that foreign companies adopted French methods of advertising in France. Some French women’s magazines were ideologically motivated to encourage women to use the sewing machine. During the 1870s the Journal des demoiselles, recommending sewing machines for domestic work, hoped that the use of the sewing machine would encourage self-sufficiency and diligence and protect women from the lure of cheap fashions and purchase on credit. 34 However, in considering magazines’ promotion of the sewing machine, the commercial drive needs to be taken into account, in addition to ideological views on women, domesticity, consumption, and fashion.

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The images featured on fashion plates increased in variety from the midcentury, although the core theme of depicting two women in different settings did not change. Plates also depicted undergarments, accessories, and hairstyles. A plate (figure 8.2) from the Journal des demoiselles et petit courrier des dames réunis of 1868 shows women in the same hairstyle with different hats and hair accessories.35 Bathing costumes were occasionally featured as well. During the Third Republic editorial ads proliferated unabated. Henry Sampson noted in 1874 that French “réclame mania” could be easily seen in “Le Gaulois, Le Figaro, or any of the Parisian lighter papers” that showed “to what an extent commerce has infected the Gallic press.”36 Emile Mermet expressed contradictory opinions on editorial advertising in his advertising manuals. In 1878 he asserted that ideal advertising was rational communication. An ad was to “announce only the sale of real objects of public utility, with fixed prices, without praise for the merchandise of the merchant; be repeated often; appear in newspapers whose advertising is verified by exact sale or subscription figures.”37 However in the 1883 manual Mermet recommended Le Figaro as the best place to advertise. Read by the wealthy, bankers, and capitalists, advertising in the paper was “excellent, regardless of where it is placed,” including in foreign news.38 By contrast, Mermet suggested, advertising in Le Petit Journal was to aim at gullible lower classes looking for bargains: magasins de nouveautés of third order in the faubourgs . . . marriages, treatment of secret illnesses, monthly-payable pianos . . . liquidation of a shop for reason of imaginary bankruptcy [or] different methods for getting rich, [in sum] all the ads that should surely strike the credulity of the working class readership [as] incredible bargains. 39 This expressed a cynical view of the gullibility and aspirations of the lower classes seen as looking even for good deals in marriage through newspaper ads. Faits divers ads and similar forms of publicity increased in volume in Le Figaro in the 1880–1914 period. Le Figaro’s “Variety of News” column that ran in the 1880s was full of ads. A typical item featured a visit by a foreign royalty, the clothes the ladies wore, and the shop selling the clothes. An article on a plant exhibition urged readers to visit a greenhouse.40 Stories with shock value were also used. Articles about “a theft of a hundred billion francs worth of jewelry” publicized both the jewelry maker and an anti-theft system.41 In 1895 a new daily illustrated column, launched when Le Figaro was expanded to eight pages, publicized items like furniture and clothes.42 The critic Edmond Théry observed in the 1880s that in the Parisian press réclames were taking “the most diverse forms” and that “special writers almost always introduce into them a spirit of intention and a keenness of observation that our best vaudevillists would certainly not disclaim.”43 While such publicity continued to be controversial, Le Figaro illustré celebrated it in a 1905 issue devoted to “advertising and art,” defining réclame as “a sophisticated form of publicité” and boasting that department stores’ “réclames overf low even the first pages.” The art of the réclame was “insinuating a commercial recommendation where it would seem impossible to slip it in, in a work of

Figure 8.2

Journal des demoiselles et petit courrier des dames réunis, 1868 plate n.3837.

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literature, fantasy, even politics.” A successful réclame engaged the reader to read “to the end without fatigue or effort.”44 La Vie parisienne, directed by the writer and illustrator Marcelin (pseudonym of Emile Planat) until 1887, ran full-page illustrated regular and editorial advertisements identical in style to the magazine’s other caricatures and illustrations, most of which featured women.45 In the 1880–1914 period advertising formed a vital source of income for many papers. The liquor manufacturer Mariani’s luxurious albums with wood engravings were distributed as supplements of major papers.46 In 1890 Le Figaro’s advertising income comprised a third of its revenues or nearly two million francs.47 In 1906 Le Petit Journal’s advertising income, about three million francs, accounted for 20 percent of its revenue.48 Advertising costs in French newspapers remained high. Les Archives de l’imprimerie reported in 1901 that entrepreneurs of late seemed somewhat uninterested in “journalistic” advertising, because they found the cost of articles “on the first page” of Le Figaro excessive. An article or fait-divers cost two to three thousand francs.49 The Herald reported in 1912 that in the French press “advertising under literary forms” cost up to 100 francs per line.50 French experts urged for reforms, to no avail. The press was also rocked by financial scandals, notably the Panama Canal and Russian loan scandals, in which the majority of the French press were implicated.51 The largest source of revenue for the mass-circulation newspapers—Le Petit Parisien, Le Petit journal, Le Journal, Le Matin—was financial advertisements.52

French Strategies French visual and textual advertising shared similar strategies. Foreigners noted that the poster and editorial advertising together formed the preferred advertising method in France. Neither the réclame, often in “elegant and classical style,” nor the poster had “any direct link with the announced object.”53 The modern illustrated poster fit into the tradition of French advertising emphasizing pleasing appearances and entertaining narratives rather than direct arguments. Gustave Fustier noted in 1884 that the illustrated poster, “under an enigmatic form,” was meant to “pique the curiosity.”54 This strategy is shown in a poster from circa 1895 for a medication for hair growth. A woman surveys a “scene” of bald men in a theater and declares “See that? Nothing but bald heads!” Her fullheaded male companion whispers, “That’s because they have not yet discovered La Pertuisine.” The stage curtain advertises La Pertuisine with a catchphrase, “AT ALL AGES the regrowth is certain!”55 While the spectacle to watch is the voluptuous woman, it is also the woman with the power of the gaze. The narrative of this image, explained with the dialogue between two characters, reveals a cinematic sensibility. A cinematic narrative also unfolds in Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster (figure 8.3) (1896) for Artisan Moderne. A workman barging into a room finds the lady of the house still in bed in her negligée with a serene expression, and the maid looks scandalized. Such an image with a visual narrative forced the viewer to spend some

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Figure 8.3

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Toulouse-Lautrec, Artisan Moderne, 1896, printed in The Arts 2 (1921).

time to understand what the image is about, and secondarily what was advertised, since the advertised shop has nothing inherently to do with the scene.56 At the turn of the century multimedia campaigns became more sophisticated and often depicted current events involving celebrities. Le Figaro, Le Journal, Le

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Matin, and Le Gaulois printed a fait divers about a celebrity seen at a theater, drinking absinthe in the company of a Brazilian prince. At the same time posters for the absinthe were distributed.57 Dissimulation, the use of enigmatic imagery, and the invocation of the insider’s perspective for a vicarious and voyeuristic experience, were all prevailing strategies. The fascination with poster art also took the form of literal imitation by some poster aficionados, who staged tableaux-vivants interpreting posters, which were then reported in a magazine titled L’Affiche vécue in 1897.58 In a short film by Georges Méliès, “The Hilarious Posters” also made in 1897, a wall full of posters comes alive. Through such interpretations of posters the products, the very objects of the posters, were distorted. This phenomenon underlines the absence of any meaningful association of the product to poster design in French posters, while at the same time illustrating the attraction of the poster art which turned posters into objects of emulation. An encyclopedia article noted that advertising is only effective when it retains the attention of a passer-by by “doing violence to him; it’s necessary that it should be, if not loud, at least reiterated.”59 From the late 1890s “obsession through repetition,” aiming to saturate the viewer’s visual and psychological memory, became the predominant publicity strategy. A typical large campaign of the late 1890s for launching a product, be it a new liqueur or a new serial novel, mobilized repeated articles and ads in newspapers, as well as a legion of posters on walls, street furnishings, sandwichmen or advertising vehicles. The idea was to inundate, to “obsess,” through a carefully orchestrated multimedia performance. A vast number of kiosks displayed a single image of a product, and daily-changing faits divers mentioned the same product at the same spot for a while. Posters of huge sizes were carried around on vehicles, often before their smaller versions covered the walls.60 For books, échos and literary columns were mobilized for daily exposure, and several hundred dedicated volumes were sold.61 Advertising agents took charge of inundating public spaces in order to “suggest, up to obsession, in order to create in the person a desire and even a need.”62 One exhibition was advertised in 1905 through 3,000 articles in addition to 100,000 posters.63 In reality overexposure led to an adverse effect. Marketing experts after the turn of the century lamented that too much emphasis was put on the artistic, rather than commercial, value of the poster. Theories of suggestion aimed to make advertising more scientif ic by applying psychological theories to advertising. Octave-Jacques Gérin and C. Espinadel in La Publicité suggestive (1911) argued that the “special artistic cachet” of French advertising was devoid of any technique. Suggestion, an external solicitation, could awaken dormant desires, “create new needs, or change that which exists.” It worked through aff irmation, repetition, the law of imitation, and the association of ideas and facts that, for example, recalled earlier, agreeable sensation or emotion which then was associated with the consumption of a product. Association also invoked an atmosphere, milieu, or lifestyle. 64 Such associations were actually already common in posters and fait-divers ads. What was new was the ideas of a systematic streamlining and

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the elimination of superf luous elements. Advertising was to be turned into a science that studies the most effective methods for the awakening of desires and the creation of new desires by targeting the senses and emotion while diminishing the ref lective capacity.

Anxious Visions The increasing number of advertisements permeating the environment inspired nightmarish visions. Zola, in a short story titled “A Victim of Advertising,” (1866) imagined an interest in advertising as a total embrace, a guide for life.65 The victim, Pierre Landry, represented the first generation of Parisians who grew up surrounded by the new literature of advertising. He accumulates the newest inventions. Catastrophes ensue. His house, built according to a new system, trembles in the wind. His clothes tear open in the street. He suffers physically. He swallows quantities of drugs and “an incalculable amount of chocolate” and dies when he consumes a drug meant to rejuvenate him. Zola’s “what if ” is a satire, of taking the message of advertising at face value. Zola’s main criticism is not only that advertising induces unnecessary consumption but that most of advertising was deception that promoted inferior goods, including contemporary literature and new inventions. The same year Le Petit Journal criticized posters that promised panacea and publicized “shops that sell health from two to five francs a bottle.”66 Zola’s story highlights a persisting view of advertising as promoting charlatanism and useless or badly made items, and also portrays the working class, exemplified by Landry who idles around Les Halles, as being vulnerable to advertising. For many foreigners like Edmondo de Amicis, navigating Paris was often a jarring experience: Advertising pursues you . . . [A] golden carriage passes, with servants in livery, offering hats at a discount. . . . [A] mural of Le Petit Journal, in gigantic characters . . . effects you as a shriek in the ear . . . [Your] table . . . offers you cosmetics and lotions . . . It’s an interminable graphic decoration, enormous and streaked with bright colors, illustrated with grotesque images . . . that besieges and oppresses you . . . On every corner a thousand mouths call you and thousand hands signal to you.67 Here is a perspective of someone whose mental model of a city does not include an overwhelming f lux of signs, whether seen as tantalizing glimpses and traces of things and beings, or oppressive superf luities. A number of stories appeared in the 1880s, as the mass market was being established, in which advertising and publicity were envisioned as predominant forces of future society. The association of news and advertising was a prominent theme. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s theme of celestial advertising reappeared in Félicien Champsaur’s Dinah Samuel (1881), a novel based on the life of Sarah Bernhardt. A failed boulevardier-journalist comes up with an ambitious

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scheme to turn stars in the sky into advertisements.68 Champsaur reiterated the perception of advertising as manipulation, in which the form belied a lack of substance. The theme was taken up again in Jules Verne’s short story La Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889 (One day of an American journalist in 2889) (1889), in which advertising inundates human senses with stimuli that reach hallucinatory levels.69 Albert Robida’s Le Vingtième siècle: la vie électrique (1883), which imagined a world full of advertising visualized in a number of illustrations, initially appears as an exception to the anxious prognoses. He did not depict advertising as overwhelming and threatening. The sky is full of advertising balloons distributing handbills, and the media dominate mass culture. Theater curtains display portraits of rich women seeking marriage, and a radio drama dispenses advertisements.70 Robida’s vision however turns into a futuristic nightmare at one point. A gigantic screen shows live news. The news reporter himself is the news, having been shot: “The BULLET was POISONED!!!/ in three hours/ our correspondent of Biskra/ will undergo/ the AMPUTATION of his right arm.” 71 Here Robida predicts the sensationalist exploitation of violence and self-promotion at all costs. In this blurring of news and publicity, violence occurs casually amidst a legion of manufactured excitements. Maupassant’s short story “Un Vieux (An Old Man)” (1882) begins with the description of a long editorial ad, inserted into “all the papers,” for a new thermal station with waters “renowned in the world for protecting against all the blood diseases,” and which seem to “prolong human life.” 72 Maupassant accurately describes the typical format of an editorial ad, as well as the method of having a number of papers insert the same article simultaneously. The story mocks the grandiose claims of contemporary ads with this example that claims to satisfy one of the deepest human yearnings, longevity. The integrity of the newspapers that published the ad is questioned when an old man shows up at the thermal station, determined to live long. In Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames (1883), set in the Second Empire and based on the research of the Bon Marché’s practices, the head of the store, Mouret, believes that “woman was powerless against advertising.” 73 When five o’clock strikes the crowd “completely lost itself; the sixty thousand francs paid to the newspapers, the ten thousand bills posted on the walls, the two hundred thousand catalogues distributed all over the world, after having emptied their purses, left in the women’s minds the shock of their intoxication.” 74 While Mouret is depicted as the modern hero of commerce, women are seen as highly vulnerable to emotional, visual, and spatial manipulation for consumption. At the time department stores were frequently criticized for using seductive and misleading advertising, as well as for tempting women through display.75 Zola’s representation is very different from the discourse of chic emphasizing taste, rationality, and collectivity.76 The public sees Mouret’s heavy investment in the store’s expansion as a “mania for extensions and advertisements.” 77 His advisor argues that the luxurious façade is “a mere advertisement (réclame).” 78 In the course of Mouret’s campaign to capture the full attention of Paris, the store benefits from “a catastrophe of which all Paris was talking,” the burning down of a rival store.

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Figure 8.4 Albert Robida, “AU BONHEUR DES DAMES, coupe du roman de M. Emile Zola,” La Caricature, 1883.

Public opinion was that it was “a splendid advertisement,” 79 suggesting that the public had a jaded view of advertising. Zola was seen as being adept at publicity himself. Robida’s caricatures depicted Zola as being successful at publicity for his novels and basking in the adulation he

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received. In the first issue of La Caricature (1880) Robida caricatured Naturalism as a phenomenon of publicity that permeated literature and theater.80 Another caricature, entitled “The Triumph of Naturalism,” shows an equestrian statue of Zola supposedly designed by Sarah Bernhardt, at the top of the Vendôme column.81 Another caricature (figure 8.4) interprets Au Bonheur des dames as a story about women overrunning the department store, being served by pampering men. The store is both a monster devouring women who can’t seem to control themselves, and a “factory of Parisian neuroses.”82 The women appear to be having a great time however. Zola’s novels were publicized through intensive campaigns, and he was an advocate of the illustrated poster. He also seems to have, on occasion, written his own publicity. Henri Mitterand, editor of Zola’s Pléiades edition of Les RougonMacquart, thinks that Zola wrote his own please-inserts for newspapers for at least two of his novels. The please-insert for L’Argent (Money) reads: Emile Zola’s new novel, L’Argent, is a very dramatic and vivid study of the world of the Paris stock exchange . . . And he has conveyed his idea in a gripping way, with the help of a great central drama, accompanied and completed by a whole series of individual dramas. This is one of the author’s major works.83 This announcement appeared in 1890 in Gil Blas, the paper in which it was to be serialized. If true, this illustrates the extent to which Zola participated in consumer culture as a producer as well as critic and celebrity.

Sarah Bernhardt and Celebrity Culture Sarah Bernhardt was a unique icon. The modern cult of celebrity based on intensive media narratives was born at the fin de siècle, although celebrities were fêted throughout the century; an illustrated album Actrices célèbres contemporaines (Famous Contemporary Actresses) written by Janin, Gautier et al. was published in 1843 and 44.84 The most famous in the nineteenth century was Bernhardt, the first star in the modern sense in that her every move was obsessively followed by the media. In May 1880 Robida published (figure 8.5) a caricature in La Caricature, titled “Adventures and misadventures of Séraphiska on land, sea, and the belly of ferocious beasts,” about Bernhardt’s decision to tour in the U.S., and her imagined travel to the U.S.85 The central image shows Bernhardt, famously thin, navigating through the sea. The image on the upper right corner shows that when she takes a train in disguise smoke comes out of the chimney in her shape, to the amazement of two train operators. This image refers both to Bernhardt’s thinness which in the popular imagination seemed to verge on the immaterial, and also the idea that the real Bernhardt is as elusive as smoke. When “Séraphiska” discovers “the sixth corner of the world,” North America, she names it Séraphique: “Strange thing, and which proves that Séraphiska was, from the beginning of the world, foreseen and announced by the providence,

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Figure 8.5 Albert Robida, “AVANTURES ET MÉSAVANTURES DE SÉRAPHISKA sur terre, sur mer et dans les ventres des bêtes féroces,” La Caricature, May 15, 1880 (BNF).

the jagged outline of the continent reproduces exactly the details of her profile.” The caricature comments on Bernhardt’s grandiose sense of the self, as well as the public’s perception of her life as a series of epic battles of fantastic proportions and the view of her as being capable of anything.

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The critic Jules Lemaître remarked in 1884 that “Sarah is not an individual, but a complex of individuals,” capturing the perception that, given the public confusion of her persona on stage with her person, there was no real Bernhardt.86 A strange story about the absence of tangible Bernhardt was “reported” by the newspaper Puck, that the Sarah on tour in New York was “a false Sarah, a simula-Sarah, a pretend Sarah,” who was an “artificial woman” revived from a skeleton found by Parisian medical students in 1845, and was brought to the U.S. sponsored by P.T. Barnum.87 Bernhardt’s emotional style of acting made the actress and the character seem as one.88 MaryLouise Roberts observes that the image of Bernhardt created through the mass media “took on an arbitrary life of its own—beyond the actress’s own power to control it.” 89 A real-life drama involving Bernhardt and Marie Colombier that transpired in 1883 led to a showdown between Bernhardt and the media, both grappling with the power of publicity. Marie Colombier, actress, author, courtesan, and a friend of Bernhardt, managed her extravagant American tour in 1880. In 1883 Colombier published Les Mémoires de Sarah Barnum, a disguised exposé of Bernhardt seen as obsessed with money and sex, but, as the title implies, above all with publicity (réclame), basking in publicity “such as no actress ever had before” and constantly seeking more of it. One chapter in the American edition was titled “Advertisements—Still Advertisements—Always Advertisements.” 90 The book, deemed vulgar and sensational, was mostly ignored by the press, until a scandal erupted.91 In December 1883, shortly after the publication of the book, Parisian papers reported a sensational news item: outraged by the defamatory book, Bernhardt stormed into Colombier’s apartment armed with a whip, whiplashed Colombier and wreaked havoc in her apartment. Le Figaro reported on its front page on December 19th that already for several days Colombier’s book had created news, because of a duel between Octave Mirabeau, who wrote a scathing criticism of the book, and Paul Bonetain, who wrote the preface to the book. Then “justly offended by the book,” Le Figaro reported, Bernhardt tried to have the book seized, and was told that she must go through legal proceedings. Her son Maurice Bernhardt then warned Colombier to leave his mother alone. Then Sarah Bernhardt stormed into Colombier’s apartment, “armed, not with a sword, nor a revolver, nor a mitrailleuse, but with a plain horsewhip,” and whipped Colombier.92 The New York Times largely duplicated Parisian reports on December 21st, that Bernhardt chased Colombier “jumping over chairs and tables and dashing into a thousand pieces mirrors, etageres, bibelots, and pictures, Sarah all the time whipping Marie, who was shrieking with pain and terror.” The article added, from Parisian reports of December 20th, that Bernhardt also carried a dagger in her left hand during her attack, and that, during the scuff le “one of Bernhardt’s friends tore Sarah’s picture from the wall and executed a dance upon it, . . . asserting that it had been desecrated by propinquity to Marie’s portrait after the fight.”93 Even as the press coverage of this incident turned Colombier’s book into an instant bestseller, some in the press castigated Bernhardt for the scandal or reacted with cynicism, not so much for this latest bout of sensational behavior, but what they saw as her relentless pursuit of publicity that culminated in the scandal. Charles Gérard of L’Opinion laughed at the idea of Bernhardt wishing to protect

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her “private life”: “I would like to know if it isn’t Madame Sarah Bernhardt, who has rendered her life outrageously public.”94 Lenard Berlanstein interprets the male journalists’ collective response as revealing a crisis of representing female celebrities, that “Bernhardt’s consummate success at drawing attention to her life had upset the delicate balance” that allowed the persistence of “the cultural contradiction” between the visibility and inf luence of the women, on the one hand, and a bad reputation, on the other.95 I underline another significant element of this episode, the perception of Bernhardt as being capable of orchestrating a gigantic publicity stunt, since Bernhardt’s life was seen as a perpetual spectacle which she staged through her sheer will and her adroit understanding of the media and the public. The coverage of the Bernhardt-Colombier affair soon seemed to take on a life of its own. From the beginning, the reports about the scandal varied in detail and were fragmentary, as to what Bernhardt did, who accompanied her, and what her and Colombier’s friends did during the scuff le, making it difficult to reconstruct the exact sequence of events. According to “An Extra Chapter: The Horse-Whipping that This Book Caused” included in the American edition of Colombier’s book, Bernhardt boasted to a journalist that she caused an “enormous” damage to Colombier’s apartment as she smashed “[p]ictures, vases, plates, statuary, bibelots of all kinds” and tore “the entire contents” of Colombier’s wardrobe to pieces.96 By mentioning the tearing of Colombier’s wardrobe, Bernhardt embellished the initial press accounts. Colombier did her part for confusing the matter by sending communication to Parisian papers couple of days after the initial reports, denying that Bernhardt struck her. She also denied that her book had anything to do with Bernhardt and that she had explained this to Bernhardt and her son, neither of who complained about the work.97 Amidst the brouhaha, some began to claim that the whole thing was a publicity stunt staged by Bernhardt in association with Colombier.98 Mermeix in Le Gaulois noted the irony that none other than Bernhardt, who justly claimed herself the victim of a defamation, created an enormous publicity for the book.99 Discrepancies were noted. Few days after the attack, according to a columnist for Eclat de rire, Bernhardt and Colombier were seen arm in arm at a theater, accompanied by Richepin, Jehan Soudan, Bonnetain and Mirabeau. The columnist claimed that according to a source Bernhardt, seeing that Colombier’s book was not selling well, wanted to do a bit of publicity for her friend, and subsequently invented all the scenes of violence.100 A columnist for Le Petit Lyonnais commented: “Finally, now eight days of noise around her name: Sarah should be satisfied.”101 The Daily Telegraph of London reported that “skeptical Parisians smiled when recognizing the day chosen by Sarah Bernhardt for this new scandal”: two days before the opening of a new play by Jean Richepin, starring Bernhardt.102 The anonymous author of Affaire Marie Colombier-Sarah Bernhardt: pièces à conviction (1884), published with a photograph of Colombier by Nadar and a collection of press clippings, wished to “reconstitute the truth” of the matter.103 Within three days of Bernhardt’s attack the entire stock of 10,000 copies of Colombier’s book was sold out, and orders were pouring in from the provinces and abroad.

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Ninety-thousand copies were to be printed for the U.S. The book went on to be the biggest bookstore success of the year in France.104 The author argued that the whole thing was a publicity stunt, that all that happened was that Maurice Bernhardt and two others went to Colombier’s apartment and threatened to whip Colombier, and that one of them broke a frame.105 Right after the attack Colombier’s face showed no marks and looked “remarkably well for a woman who had been whipped.”106 The author also insisted that the apartment sustained little damage contrary to Bernhardt’s account, that “the fury of Sarah and her associates spared the bibelots, furniture and expensive paintings,” including Manet’s portrait of Colombier. Asking why Bernhardt waited fifteen days before exploding her anger, the author stated that several days after the publication of the book Bernhardt was seen at a theater waving at Colombier, and that a couple of days before the attack, Maurice Bernhardt was invited to a reception by Colombier.107 Moreover Bernhardt’s attack on Colombier took place two days before the opening of a new play by Jean Richepin, “Nana-Sahib” starring Bernhardt. In the play several people were stabbed or shot to death. The Daily Telegraph had mentioned an Indian knife that Richepin brandished as he stormed into Colombier’s apartment, which can be associated with “Nana Sahib” set in India.108 Bernhardt staged, according to Affair Marie Colombier, a “gigantic publicity” for the “mediocre play” as well as Colombier’s book, generally deemed as gossipy and nothing new, since, as the columnist for La Cravache put it, “no woman had received more publicity in the last ten years than this remarkable artist.”109 The author of Affair Marie Colombier declared in conclusion: “A virtuoso of publicity! What a woman! What an artist!” and “Barnum ‘For Ever.’ ”110 Bernhardt was thus seen as possessing a great deal of willpower, audacity, and skill. If this interpretation were true, it would have meant that Bernhardt generated an enormous amount of international publicity without purchasing a single line, in a period when actresses were regularly accused of paying “copious sums” to the press “for artificial renown,” even bad press.111 How plausible was this interpretation? Le Figaro’s report on the affair was sympathetic to Bernhardt, calling the book “odious,” and Bernhardt’s anger as just. Moreover it noted that if it weren’t for Bernhardt’s attack, the paper would not have mentioned the book any longer.112 Given the negative content of the book it is unlikely that Bernhardt wished to help Colombier sell the book, but it seems highly likely that she charged into Colombier’s apartment with publicity for “Nana Sahib” in mind. Some journalists described the incident as a drama. A columnist for Punch commented: “Thus ended the new dramatic adaptation of The Ladies’ Battle, and in an hour afterwards Sarah was playing at the Porte St. Martin in the new Drama called ‘Nana Sahib.’ ”113 The sense of confusion between life and fiction was further elicited by a report by Maurice Ordonneau in Le Clairon, that Colombier appeared at Bernhardt’s dress rehearsal and attempted to open fire at her with a machine gun. While Richepin and another man struggled with Colombier, two intruders lunged at their throats, and the confused audience could not tell if the incident was or was not a part of the play.114 The search for the truth, or rather the effect of the real, was all the more tantalizing because from the beginning the truth was elusive, since Colombier’s book was about an actress named Sarah

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Barnum, a point Colombier emphasized. The public did not value transparency in celebrities as much as being dazzled and spellbound. Soudan wrote scathingly that a 6,000-line article The New York Herald published during the affair is the kind of “Barnum-style publicity” that built Bernhardt’s artistic reputation.115 However Susan Glenn observes that for the American public the association of Bernhardt with Barnum was usually meant as a compliment, since Barnum was not only America’s legendary showman, “he was also one of the nineteenth century’s most aggressive, ingenious, and wealthy self-made men.”116 Indeed, the American press sided with Bernhardt. The New York Times stated that Colombier “writes with mud and ordure.”117 Susan Glenn states: “Bernhardt presented herself as a high-strung, egotistical, and individualistic female rebel, ready to f lout convention at every turn. In doing so, Bernhardt helped usher in an important shift in women’s relationship to publicity.”118 In this light, many male journalists reacted in a conf licted manner. Their response to the scandal ranged from anger to cynicism to awe to amusement. The public could well imagine that Bernhardt was able to harness the media, even channeling negative publicity to her own ends. The perception of her life as a series of larger-than-life adventures and battles meant that Bernhardt seemed capable of orchestrating fantastic publicity stunts. That Bernhardt’s commodified identity circulated through the mass media meant that it was never clear where reality ended and fiction began. Even as the media coverage of her life eluded her control, she was far from a passive creation of the media.119 In 1884 Bernhardt published The Life of Marie Colombier: Sarah Barnum’s Answer, with a declaration that “there is not a word of truth in what I am about to write,” further playing a game of opacity.120 The same year Colombier, with coauthors, published La Vie de Marie Pigeonnier, par un de ses ***.121 It appears that neither Bernhardt nor Colombier was reticent about prolonging the publicity created by the scandal. Edmond Texier and A. Kaempfen had imagined in 1867 that Barnum would admire complex Parisian publicity techniques.122 The Bernhardt-Colombier affair, which took place more than a decade before Alphonse Mucha’s posters for Bernhardt consecrated her into the realm of visual icons, suggests that Bernhardt relished the sensation caused by her actions and the reputation of being a female Barnum. It also shows that the public, given the complex French culture of publicity, was sophisticated about the reach of publicity and skeptical about public explanations. A year later The New York Times listed her “epic combat” with Colombier as one of the things that made her life a “glass house,” along with her career as an aeronaut, author, sculptor, painter, as well as her marriage in England, in addition to “her constant difficulties with her creditors, her wild purchases and sales of theaters, and her remarkable creations.”123 Yet when looked closely, the glass house is not as transparent as it seems.

Conclusion Calling the nineteenth century “the century of advertising (réclame)” and the century that invented advertising, the writer Antoine Truquet declared in 1887

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that advertising promotes “everything,” “in the fields of ideas and facts, in the domains of the intellect, the arts and industry.” Advertising, having become so sophisticated, was “most probably contemplating its decline.”124 By the late nineteenth century advertising and publicity were widely regarded as quintessentially modern forces, alongside the mass press, the Universal Exposition, and the department store.125 French advertising was also seen, accurately, as being widespread in all domains. The Bernhardt-Colombier episode illustrates the degree to which, by the 1880s, rather than publicity as transparent communication, it was one as an orchestration of diverse media for the creation of a sensation that held sway. Whereas under the July Monarchy charlatanism and the commercialization of culture, and under the Second Empire the question of authenticity, were the main sources of anxiety associated with advertising and publicity, by the fin de siècle such issues became of less importance in popular culture. The charge of being a Barnum resonated with a culture of sensation and the effect of the real. The perception of Bernhardt as an “artificial woman” paralleled the reputation of the Grands Boulevards as being all surface and artifice, which is to say quintessentially modern. Writers cast advertising as a powerful force threatening sensory saturation, a dark side of modernity. In their visions there is little room for individual freedom. Experts’ new theories for applying psychological suggestion onto advertising in order to elicit automatic response were precisely the kinds feared by the critics who suspected advertising of permeating even the deep recesses of the mind.

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CH A P T E R

N I N E

The Modernity of Poster Art

Introduction From the mid-1870s Parisian streets saw a remarkable proliferation of large, colorful illustrated posters, advertising café-concerts, music halls, exhibitions, novels, shops, consumer goods, resorts, and others. From the mid-1890s the number of illustrated posters for myriad consumer goods increased vastly. This chapter examines the shifting, complex dynamics among art, technology, commerce, and ideologies that converged on the poster. The July 1881 law on the freedom of the press allowed for posting bills everywhere, once the poster was taxed, except for reserved areas, and ended the requirement that white paper be used only for official notices.1 Universal literacy also had a significant inf luence. By the 1880s posters were being collected,2 and the ensuing phenomenon of “poster mania,” reaching its peak between 1895 and 1900, propelled a side industry with journals, exhibitions, and black markets.3 The poster also transformed the way in which products were advertised, through the vast dissemination of images that decidedly targeted the consumer’s visualizing capacity. Poster mania overlapped with several other movements, notably the decorative arts movement, Art Nouveau, and the social art movement. The explosive diffusion of “minor arts” such as posters, prints, postcards, illustrations, albums, and photographs transformed people’s everyday visual sensibilities and galvanized debates over the hierarchy of fine and decorative arts. Poster art figured in the debate over modernity and modern art. Republicans held up the artistic poster as a distinctly French innovation that could unite art, commerce, and industry.4 Until the mid-1880s it was Jules Chéret who singlehandedly created the movement of the artistic poster. In 1869 Chéret introduced a system of threecolor lithographic printing and in few years made the system more economical. Prior to the development of this system, lithographic posters were either black and white or printed in three colors—black, red, and blue—on a white background.5 Although French illustrated poster is the branch of advertising that has been studied the most, its commercial aspect has been relatively neglected, and its

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social, cultural, and economic contexts have not been fully drawn. This chapter analyzes the debates among artists, writers, critics, and social reformers about poster art, in particular Chéret’s art, as an art of modernity. I argue that while many celebrated Chéret’s poster art mainly associated with sites of performance, they largely ignored the commercial purpose of the poster, but that nonetheless Chéret’s art was highly effective for advertising because it was in tune with the modern visual mode of the consumer. This chapter also examines the vast proliferation of feminine imagery as forming a new imaginary of consumption. An important portion of the featured feminine figures, such as the “chérettes” depicted in many of Chéret’s images, resonated with male fantasies. However, the range of images varied considerably and corresponded to women’s new identities. The images simultaneously marked the advent of the subjectivity of the female consumer depicted as engaging in a wide array of activities, and also the newly elevated status of commodities. Collectively they began a new phase of depictions of female consumers.

The Modernity of Chéret’s Art: Gaiety and New Ways of Seeing Chéret attained fame for his “formula of exterior decoration” which elicited great enthusiasm among critics and the public. With designs (figures 9.1, 9.5) of bright colors, simple expressive lines, dynamic compositions, bold lettering, and varied surface texture, he created a new aesthetic and a new form of commercial art. Indeed the commercial function of the poster freed it from the constraints of academic tradition; Chéret’s posters had a sense of spontaneity lacking in fine art.6 His first posters were made for the theater. In 1858 he sold a design for a poster for the operetta “Orphée aux Enfers” to its composer Jacques Offenbach. After continuing to study lithography in London, he returned to Paris in 1866 and opened a printing shop. He immediately received more commissions from Offenbach and other composers and theater directors.7 Publishers of magazines and books followed, and by 1875 the subjects for his posters ranged widely: from theaters, music halls, circuses, and skating rinks to newspapers and novels to stores and perfume, sewing machines, and lighting.8 Chéret’s art then was initially associated with culture and performance, and by the 1870s with commerce as well. This parallels with earlier trends from the 1830s and 40s, when publishers of magazines, books, and caricature were some of the first to use modern advertising methods. From 1881 Chéret’s print shop operated as a branch of the large Chaix firm which thereafter produced all his work, and he later became its artistic director. He designed over 1,000 posters by 1896, earning 600 to more than 1,000 francs for each one.9 By 1884 the annual printing by Chéret’s workshop reached nearly 200,000.10 In 1886 Ernest Maindron published Les Affiches illustrées, the first major publication of illustrated posters.11 These early posters were all in a limited number of colors: red, light blue, beige, black and white. Around 1890 Chéret’s style underwent change, and a lot more colors and shades became available. His

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most celebrated posters date from 1890 to 1905. Critics praised him for providing “the impetus that created the movement of the illustrated poster,” which became “a superb art.”12 He was the unchallenged master of poster art until the arrival of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—who only made a few posters—in 1891, and Alphonse Mucha in 1895. Chéret’s posters were ubiquitous, seen on “every hoarding, . . . the walls of every café, [and] the windows of every kiosque.”13 From 1896 Chéret designed only a few posters, and from 1901 pursued pastels and painting for the most part.14 Of the 1,070 posters listed in Lucy Broido’s catalogue raisonné, most of which date from between 1872 and 1896, about half are for entertainment venues of high and popular culture including music halls, café-concerts, the Hippodrome, circuses, operas, balls, festivals, skating rinks, and the Musée Grévin. About 10 percent are for bookstores, publications, newspapers, and magazines, and about 40 percent are for department stores, shops, and consumer goods and services like cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, beverages, and train travel.15 The novelist and critic J.-K. Huysmans was one of the first to assess Chéret’s work as modern art.16 In “Salon de 1879” he wrote that he would prefer to see Chéret’s posters in an exhibition hall rather than most paintings at the Salon.17 He also concluded “Le Salon de 1880” by counseling people “sickened . . . by this cheap and insulting display of prints and printings to cleanse their eyes by [looking] outdoors . . . where shine the astonishing fantasies of Chéret, these fantasies in colors.” He saw “a thousand times more talent in the smallest of these posters than in the majority of the paintings.”18 Chéret illustrated Huysmans’ Pierrot Sceptique: Pantomime (1881).19 Huysmans’ critique was taken up by avant-garde critics such as Roger Marx and Felix Fénéon who contrasted stuffy salon paintings with Neo-Impressionism and poster art.20 By the early 1890s Chéret was described as “Watteau of the street” associated with eighteenth-century French aristocratic taste. Later, in 1893 in La Plume, Huysmans singled out the quality of almost uncontrollable gaiety as a key attraction in Chéret’s art. He saw this gaiety in Chéret’s early posters from the 1870s and early 1880s for circuses, café-concerts and music halls. Huysmans saw this kind of nervous, “frenetic” joy of which “the excess can approach pain” in a poster for the Folies-Bergère (1881) depicting “a cascade of clowns in bizarre outfits.” A boy, “agitated by face-splitting laughter,” was “kicking with his feet in the void,” and man, “laughing his head off,” was “drumming, swooning with pleasure,” while a woman danced in the air “and a little girl, her legs spread out and arms in the air, shouted jubilant cries.” Huysmans thought the “torrential gaiety of this poster really burst out of its light frame” and that “Chéret had captured a whole series on laughter and very delicately observed the quality of the spirit and the law of gaiety of all these people.”21 These early posters indeed reveal Chéret’s talent as an astute observer and interpreter of many different kinds of delight and laughter, ranging from giggle, mocking laughter, and sheer delirium to outrageously explosive psychological and physical effects. The contrast of bold red and light blue, the expression of lively pace and physicality, as well as the depiction of music, noise and general brouhaha, all added up to a sense of overjoyousness bursting with life.

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Although Huysmans’ observation of the character of paroxysmal, uncontrollable physical reaction resonated with studies in hysteria by psychologists like Jean-Martin Charcot and Théodule Ribot, Huysmans linked the uncontrollable laughter to gaiety and not pathology. In this regard Chéret’s poster (figure 9.1) for the Buttes Chaumont store from circa 1879 is curious. Children, drawn in rapid strokes, appear to be somewhat frenetic or agitated, seemingly undergoing an uncontrollable physical effect.22 François Thiébault-Sisson, the inf luential art critic of Le Temps, also praised Chéret’s poster art in 1890. He emphasized the dynamic, “frenzied,” movements: All the types of the contemporary life parade and contort themselves . . . everywhere provoking, enigmatic, troubling, dressed up, bared, grimacing or smiling, nervous, curious, a stuntwoman, or maternal and charming, the queen of this fairy, the sovereign of this chimerical country, the lion tamer of these puppet epileptics, the Parisienne! . . . Chéret’s posters are distinctive, brilliant and gentle, harmonious and loud . . . an irresistible attraction for the eye.23 Thiébault-Sisson saw Chéret’s posters as capturing contemporary popular mores and the Parisian landscape of night life. This text is unusual in that he actually mentions the subject matters—magasin de nouveautés, balls, a Naturalist novel, a circus—of Chéret’s posters, embracing the commercial function of the poster, which many of his admirers were scarcely mentioning. For Thiébault-Sisson this is not a problem because he is clearly regarding Chéret as a poster designer, not a fine artist. Like Huysmans he emphasized the physical effect that Chéret’s strokes seemed to express, the contorting “puppet epileptics” of the working classes that didn’t seem to be in control of their own bodies. He also did not associate this trait with any overtly negative effects, and noted the recurring figure of the dancing, alluring Parisienne as central to Chéret’s imagination. Around 1890 Chéret’s style changed. With simple, striking compositions and vibrant colors, and printed with a refined technique, the new posters frequently depicted joyous, vibrant, dancing women known as chérettes in short ballerina’s dresses or gauzy dresses f loating in the air, conveying a message of festivity. Whereas many of Chéret’s earlier posters were full of characters including real performers, his later posters had simplified silhouettes and often depicted figures of fantasy interchangeable from one poster to another. His 1894 poster for the music hall Eldorado depicts the chérette in a sheer dress, dancing in the air and holding a tambourine. Of all the characters from the earlier posters, only the clown recurred in his later ones. Chéret’s earlier sense of gaiety is very different from the kind that he would later be largely known for, a much vaguer and broader sense of gaiety expressed through the chérette and her companions. Whereas the earlier sense of gaiety came from specific activities, such as riding a horse, jumping about in a pile or clowning around, in the images depicting the chérette the gaiety is a suggestion or an atmosphere usually referring to the festivity of an entertainment venue. In Chéret’s cover image for Georges Duval’s Paris qui rit (Laughing Paris) (1886), featuring a clown and elegant characters, the joy is muted and generic.24 However this formula proved to be wildly successful.

The Modernity of Poster Art

Figure 9.1

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Jules Chéret, Aux Buttes Chaumont. Jouets, Objets pour Etrennes.

While Huysmans did not qualify the gaiety in Chéret’s circus posters as French or Gallic, others did so from the 1880s. Critics from across the political spectrum sought to appropriate the meaning of Chéret’s art. Chéret’s art was associated with the symbolic revival of carnival in French popular

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culture seen as thriving in Montmartre through costume balls, café-concerts, and festivals. 25 About half of Chéret’s posters were on the entertainment industry, more than sixty for the Folies-Bergère alone. There was a concentration of such venues in Montmartre. Chéret closely associated himself with Montmartre entertainment establishments and the artistic community, notably with Jules Rocques, who was directing the avant-garde journal Le Courrier français and was campaigning for the revival of Gallic gaiety. The journal was advertised through Chéret’s posters and also published and gave away his posters. The right-wing nationalist movement L’Action française also sought to paint Chéret’s art as reviving the French national tradition of pleasure. 26 Some on the left also tied Chéret’s art to a nationalist cause. The decorative arts reformer and architect Frantz Jourdain associated Chéret’s art with Watteau’s art and considered Chéret’s art as renewing the national aesthetic because it was free of foreign elements such as the Greco-Roman tradition or Japonisme. 27 The unique role of the artistic poster was recognized by the state. The 1889 Universal Exposition propelled an expansion of the poster production and gave Chéret a great standing and control as a member of an organizing committee. He was given a de facto monopoly for poster publicity for the Exposition.28 The first retrospective of illustrated posters ran from May to November, most of the posters taken from the collection of Ernest Maindron, secretary of the Academy of Science.29 In 1890 Chéret was awarded the Legion of Honor for having “created a new branch of art . . . for applying art to industrial and commercial printing.”30 His recommenders were artists and critics hailing from a wide range of orientations including Symbolists like Huysmans and Félicien Rops. 31 Republicans, recognizing the industrial and economic impact of the artistic poster, saw Chéret as creating a new branch of French industry superior to Anglo-American equivalents.32 Republicans sought to use commercial print culture and the symbolism of the Eiffel Tower to create a community in which new technologies would foster new psychological, social, and economic bonds. 33 While the official discourse did not mention the commercial role of the poster, it is telling that in addition to Chéret being praised for rendering the commercial and industrial form of the poster truly artistic, his posters predominantly publicized the 1889 Exposition. The authorities implicitly recognized the commercial value of Chéret’s posters, the impact of industrial art in the expanding marketplace of the nation and beyond. Poster art’s supporters saw it as “the art of the street,” modern because of its newness and originality but also because of its decoration of streets with “a thousand radiant visions of grace and joy.”34 The Symbolist journal La Plume dedicated an issue to poster art in November 1893, asking the opinions of celebrities in literature, art, and theater. Zola, some of whose books were advertised through Chéret’s posters, wrote that “the poster, so vibrant, so original, has become the charm and gaiety of our streets.”35 The “new art,” declared Jean Richepin, enhanced aesthetic sensibility and moral “inspiration” of the public.36 Poster art was also modern because, according to Anatole France in La Plume, it was “not academic” but “alive.”37 The posters “in electric ink,” declared

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Camille Lemonnier, in La Plume, were “living and tumultuous frescoes.”38 This view of poster art affirmed the street as a meaningful source of artistic inspiration. The aim of modern art was to be the spontaneous interpretation of f leeting moments. A Parisian was, Maurice du Seigneur had declared in Paris, voici Paris! (1889), “better placed than anyone else to obtain instantaneous views” of “moving life.” Modern art’s task was “the colorful and synthetic translation of movement.”39 Such views imply that rapid movements, translated into bold brush strokes, tended toward abstract and fragmented, “synthetic” impressions. The “real” didn’t necessarily mean coherent, photographic images but the opposite, the visual forms seen by the Impressionists. Félicien Champsaur in La Plume praised Chéret as “the master of our modernity” who created “the forms of today.”40 The rapidly changing visual stimuli provided by posters were viewed as simultaneously intense and f leeting. Poster art, as ephemeral art designed to catch a glance and to “distract” but then to disappear from view the next instant, generated a fascination with a new way of seeing.41 Raoul Sertat wrote in La Plume that “What Chéret gave us, it is art that distracts us, stirs and moves us during a flânerie.”42 Critics made analogies to other kinds of modern spectatorship. Poster art, according to Jules Claretie in La Plume, provided “the education of everyone through the retina . . . instead of a bare wall, the wall attracts, as a kind of a chromolithographic Salon.”43 The reference to the retina and other physical descriptions suggest that visual impressions were being interpreted as physiological sensations much more than before.44 The poster, wrote André Mellerio in L’Estampe et l’affiche in 1897, ref lected and satisfied “the need to feel vivid sensations and intense emotions, rapidly blunted to be revived again.”45 To these admirers the poster seemed to provide the right amount of visual stimulation. However, in this regard an observation by Jules Bois, published in Le Courrier français in 1890, is very suggestive: Chéret was “the master of blazing modernities” with a “superficial” vision “fitting to the posters,” which at the same time was “luminous, brilliant, even blinding.”46 This suggests that the sense of rapid movement was received as abstract impressions, intense stimuli that might overwhelm the capacity of the sensory register. Such descriptions aptly characterize the visual mode of the modernity of this period, transitioning from a series of pleasant momentary impressions and chance encounters toward a series of powerful stimuli. Yvanhoé Rambosson, on the other hand, did not think that Chéret’s art ref lected “the modern soul,” since it did not ref lect contemporary “pessimism, our doubts, our fundamental sadness.”47 Indeed, the chérette’s uniform joy and festivity had something to do with fantasy and escapism. Poster art was to document contemporary life with imagination but, as the critic Marius Vachon put it, “without actuality.”48 By the early 1890s the chérette was seen by Chéret’s admirers, including avant-garde writers and artists, as being simultaneously a real and ideal, a sophisticated Parisienne and an ethereal fairy, and as incarnating the fin-de-siècle woman or spirit.49 According to Félicien Champsaur in La Plume “Chéret created the forms of today, neurotic and tired-looking, scantily clad, beautiful and nimble girls . . . the women of the fin de siècle, whose bodies are saturated with

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Parisianism.”50 Others described the chérette as nervous, hysterical, “maybe monstrous” woman who “cures neurosis by agitating,” “a creature made for visual and mental seduction, with the auxiliary of a thousand means of art, clothing and stylishness.”51 Such descriptions drew in part from the stock literary and artistic perceptions of the fin-de-siècle Parisienne, the alluring, chic, fashionable, and playful woman of an ambiguous class who could also be nervous, hysterical, and a femme-fatale. The image of the Parisienne, thought to be the world’s most feminine, and devoted to her appearance, was a widely exported commodity. The Symbolist poet Gustave Kahn argued that the Parisienne became the emblem of the fin de siècle.52 Images of the Parisienne figured in works of fine art, notably by James Tissot and Jean Béraud, the latter also a fashion illustrator.53 The majority of Béraud’s around 500 paintings featured slices of life in the fashionable areas of Paris, notably scenes depicting Parisiennes. 54 In paintings like Devant la maison Paquin, Paris (1873) and La Devanture du couturier Doucet Béraud depicted pretty and fashionable young women of various classes in front of luxurious shop fronts. Male critics projected the fantasies of the Parisienne onto the chérette, but were also inventing new ways of describing it inspired by Chéret’s art. Out of such fantasies emerged images of women thriving in the “neurasthenic” urban environment. It was in poster images, due to their commercial character, that this merging of reality and fantasy eroded the distinction between “respectable woman” and “the woman of the street,” an erosion not quite allowed in fine art. Such fantasies endeared Chéret and other poster artists to the public, whereas the public had earlier been scandalized by the work of artists like Manet and Degas treating the same subjects.55 As with the official rhetoric, notably absent in the assessments by the critics, writers and artists was any direct mention of the commercial role of the poster, although Bois acknowledged that Chéret’s art was suited to the poster. It is also notable that Toulouse-Lautrec became famous for his “Moulin Rouge” poster of 1891, and Alphonse Mucha became an instant celebrity for his “Gismonda” poster for Sarah Bernhardt in 1895. These are posters publicizing performance venues. The literati, the artists and the critics, whether bourgeois or avant-garde, had a stake in celebrating poster art associated with performance, and were less interested in posters depicting shops and consumer goods. When they referred to the poster’s function of advertising, they did in vague ways, and often those who praised poster art denigrated the commercial function. Huysmans called the poster artist “the journalist . . . of the street.”56 The collector, aesthete and critic Octave Uzanne wrote in 1897 that the poster ref lected, with great sensitivity, the “opinions and ideas of the day,” yet referred to the “cynicism” of the poster’s “sales pitch.”57 Vachon, seeing the poster as journalistic documentation, also assumed that advertising’s role was transparent communication depicting “truth and character,” but he was skeptical about art serving to misinform or elicit unnecessary desire for consumption.58 However, the characteristics of poster art, such as the ubiquitous chérette, the visual modernity, the everyday subject matter, the embellishment of the street,

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and its ephemeral nature, were precisely the characteristics that made it highly effective as new commercial art. Posters by Chéret and others formed a new iconography of scenes and sites of consumption, which inf luenced artists such as the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists who in turn inf luenced poster artists.59 The “superficial” vision, expressed through poster art, resonated with the modern visual sensibility epitomized by the visual culture of the Grands Boulevards. Chéret was the president and artistic director of the Musée Grévin from 1891 and therefore played a central role in the rise of the visual mass culture that turned sensational news items into spectacles.60 Chérettes were new emblems of consumption which, as striking visual stimuli in the street, were very well suited for targeting the modern consumer. The emphasis on pleasing and intriguing forms, and the invocation of values and lifestyles for indirect or subliminal persuasion, connected the posters to earlier forms of French visual and textual advertisements, and also to spectacular street advertisements. The English advertising expert Clarence Moran would write in 1905 that “French poster artists especially depict a beautiful form or landscape . . . Every device is employed by some happy turn of phrase, or appropriate picture, to illustrate the idea. The impression on the mind is secured by attracting, interesting, and pleasing the passer-by.”61 French posters were distinct in their emphasis on aesthetic presentation. The art of Chéret encapsulated the characteristics of modern French advertising. Chéret’s posters, with their f lat style, composition, colors, subject matter of popular culture and a sense of liberation from Salon politics, inf luenced many avant-garde artists. Georges Seurat’s painting Circus (1891) was clearly inf luenced by the compositions, forms, and motifs of Chéret’s circus posters as well as by posters featuring the chérette. Circus depicted a chérette-like woman standing on a galloping horse. Seurat was fascinated by Chéret’s art and wanted to capture its special quality.62 Seurat’s Circus can also be interpreted as depicting a sense of artificial gaiety and problematizing the chérette. Circus does not convey the expression of overwhelming gaiety in Chéret’s circus posters. Although the image is initially pleasing due to the attractive and simply rendered figures, the atmosphere of joy is muted. While the ringmaster, the clown somersaulting in the air, and other performers are smiling, only some in the audience are. The colors used—shades of yellow, orange, brown, blue, and purple—are warm but not harmonious; the juxtaposition of complementary colors creates a sense of unease. Moreover the use of pastel hues and the technique of pointillism give the scene a dream-like, phantom-like and abstract quality, lacking the dynamism, energy, and physicality in the imagery of Chéret’s circus posters. The woman on the horse looks as though she is f loating in the air, like the chérette, rather than standing on the horse. Her right leg is in the air, and her left foot is standing on the side of the horse rater than the back; the horse appears to be galloping toward the right, while she is leaning to the left, reinforcing the lack of a sense of gravity and physicality. Although the woman is clearly meant to be the center of attraction, with the ringmaster and others looking at and presenting her, there isn’t much that is special about her. In Chéret’s work the chérettes’ colorful—although predominantly yellow—costumes make them stand out against the background. In

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Circus, in contrast, the woman’s dress and tights are in the uniform yellow hue found all over the scene. By inserting an image of the chérette into a circus image Seurat may have taken the generic gaiety of the chérette associated with advertising entertainment venues one step further, into an abstract sense of joy rather than actually felt joy. Seurat seems to have acknowledged the effective allure of the chérette as commercial imagery and commented on the generic sense of gaiety expressed through it, by depicting it as a circus performer, whose raison d’être is to make people feel joy.

Images of Women: Discerning Consumers, Flâneuses, and Vulnerable Women The iconography of posters consisted predominantly of young women. The chérettes were only one set of a wide range of figurations of feminine forms, which comprised truly new aspects of the fin-de-siècle mass consumer culture. Numerous posters by Chéret depicted young women that were much more concrete than chérettes. His posters for skating depicted young women in winter clothes ice-skating (1893, 1896). In a poster (1896) for Géraudel’s Coughdrops a young woman in a red suit is enjoying snow and holding a bottle of the cough drops. Chéret also designed numerous posters for iconic performers like Loïe Fuller (1897) and Yvette Guilbert.63 Stars endorsed products and were featured in posters, linking the theater, performance, and celebrity with retail. Chéret designed posters for the rice powder La Diaphane, featuring Sarah Bernhardt.64 There was not much critical assessment of the feminine images other than for the chérettes and for Art-Nouveau images, so it is necessarily to work directly with the visual material in order to analyze. Posters spread images of women in a wide range, from fantasy and myth to embellished reality. From the mid-1890s posters depicted women engaging in a variety activities: attending the theater, dance or other entertainments, playing, presenting and handling consumer goods, performing, shopping, drinking, socializing, doing housework, traveling, using cosmetics, working, and reading, among others. Many were codified with class distinctions. It is difficult to reduce the iconography of the posters into simple categories. The large variety speaks to the complexity of the phenomenon ref lecting diverse and conf licting trends in commerce, art, and views of women. The images were to an extent fantasies and clichés upholding “feminine ideals” like beauty, youth, charm, and motherhood as the majority of advertising images perennially are. However, the images of women also formed a new iconography of modern women. Why did posters overwhelmingly feature images of women? Women were seen as primary shoppers of household goods, an idea based on reality that had been widespread at least since the eighteenth century and strengthened in the nineteenth century. From the 1880s alongside images of motherhood, domesticity and aristocratic leisure were images underlining women’s independence and self-possession. Images of women as discerning and elegant consumers illustrate that middle-class women were seen as consuming artists whose taste and aesthetics were the target of the expanding market.65 Posters often depicted independent

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and self-assured women engaging in flâneurie through crowded streets.66 In posters women were often depicted alone in public settings including sites of high and popular cultures like exhibitions, galleries, concerts and cinematography sessions. Georges Meunier’s Trianon Concert (1895) depicts two women enjoying themselves at an outdoor concert and emphasizes the women’s style and selfpossession. Posters for tourism also predominantly featured women, including solo travelers. In Jules-Alexandre Grün’s poster (1899) for railroad travel between Paris and London a young French woman holding a guidebook asks an English guard for directions. The poster suggests that railroad (and boat) travel to London is a perfectly safe and enjoyable undertaking for solo women travelers.67 Women were also featured with children, but often without men. In Georges Meunier’s poster for “excursions in Normandy and Bretagne,” an elegant woman with two daughters talks to a local man and a boy explaining the area.68 Many posters for outdoor activities like skating or roller-skating likewise featured women alone. Women, including goddesses and fairies, also formed the predominant iconography for posters for bicycles. In a xenophobic poster by Pal (1898) a scantily-clad fairy is holding up a bicycle in the air, and below is a mass of people of different ethnicities, including a stereotypically rendered Chinese man and a Native American, looking up in envy or greed.69 Some posters fairly realistically featured bicycling women seen as independent and sportive. Misti’s poster for Cycles Gladiator (1895) shows a woman in a bicycling outfit accompanied by a man and having a hearty laughter as a man chases them.70 Bicycling, simultaneously promoted as liberating and criticized as diminishing fertility, was a popular activity for women. Jean Béraud’s painting Le Chalet du cycle au bois de Boulogne (c.1900) depicts sporty women in bicycling outfits.71 The poster images, often expressing women’s personalities, are very different from the images of women in fashion plates that showed strong continuity from the 1830s and 40s. In a plate (figure 9.2) published in the Gazette de la famille in 1874 two women are looking at paintings at an art gallery. Some posters emphasized both a pleasing appearance and the cultivation of the mind. Thomas H.’s poster for L’Eclair (1900) depicts an elegant woman reading the newspaper. The “f lash” or “spark” suggested by the title is visually rendered as a lightening in the background that serves to frame and highlight the woman’s face. This highlighting presents the woman as a source of lucidity, someone forming her own opinions. Here the feminine imagery not only has a decorative effect but also underlines the subjectivity of the woman. Images of women used as symbols also connoted independence. A poster image (figure 9.3) by Gaston Noury from 1896, for a grand festival in order to aid the poor in France and Russia, shows two women symbolizing Russia and France—and the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894—riding a sled. The women, controlling the sled, also appear as young and independent contemporary women enjoying an outdoor activity. Consumption as an individual, even narcissistic, experience for the self was a common theme during the 1890s. Although the notion of shopping as an enjoyable experience had been propagated by fashion magazines since the 1830s, fashion plates rarely depicted women in shops, and images of women

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Figure 9.2

Scenes of Parisian Modernity

Gazette de la famille, 1874, fashion plate.

handling goods were even rarer. In contrast, illustrated posters of the 1890s represented women handling and consuming goods not only as responsible shoppers but also for sheer pleasure. Posters depicted department stores as family-oriented, and frequently featured children, in order to undercut the criticism that department stores and shopping in general corrupted women and in turn the society.72 Another paramount reason for the frequent depiction of children was the expansion of the market aimed at children. An advertisement (figure 9.4) for the Petit Saint Thomas published in La Vie parisienne in 1878 includes a scene of children playing with “swimming puppets” at an estate, as well as other elaborately detailed images of toys.73 Chéret’s (figure 9.5) poster (1889) for the Buttes Chaumont store, advertising toys as New Year’s gifts, features a group of children and a woman. Department stores sent out catalogues devoted to toys.

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Figure 9.3

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Gaston Noury, Pour Les Pauvres, printed in Les Maitres de l’affiche, 1896.

Women were also commodif ied as objects of desire and as presenters of commodities, which was associated with the idea of the female f igure as aesthetic. Women’s f lowing hair and dresses conformed easily to aesthetic stylization and decorative formulae. Manet commented on the status of

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Figure 9.4

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La Vie parisienne, Dec. 14, 1878.

women as f igures of decoration in Autumn (1881) with a f lat background of f lowers and vegetation that looks almost like wallpaper. Feminine appearance was emphasized in images for cosmetics and perfume. In an image for Gellé Frères’s toothpaste (1909) a woman looks at the viewer, presenting an album showing women’s faces of different ethnicities accompanied by the text “WHITE Teeth.” 74 This image, fetishizing white teeth through by

Figure 9.5 Jules Chéret, Aux Buttes Chaumont. Jouets, Objets pour Etrennes, 1889, printed in Les Maitres de l’affiche, 1896.

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underlining the activity of collecting, contains layers of representation of beauty associated with the toothpaste. The image suggests that a universal standard of beauty requires white teeth. The ubiquitous presence of women in posters also had to do with the fact that French posters were less about the transformative power of products, as American posters were,75 than about visual pleasure deriving from pleasing f igures and scenes. Some of the exceptions were posters for plays and novels with scenes of class conf lict and violence. The countless f igurations of women also simply ref lected the f in-de-siècle obsession with the female form. Claude Quiguer has argued that the stylized and eroticized female form in Art Nouveau or “the Modern Style” stood for primitive vitality that underneath the cult of the line lay the fear of the machine, and that for these reasons this style could not evolve but only repeat stock patterns.76 Beside vitality, the main characteristics of the modern woman in Art Nouveau were complexity, myster y, sensuality, and organic convergence into nature. René Lalique’s jewelr y, in which feminine f igures, dragonf lies, snakes, and vegetation were combined in curving and tangling lines, was described as “the garden of Aladdin . . . the mysterious product of natural and spontaneous blooming, evoking . . . Salomés or Salammbos, but better yet, this f igure more diverse and more complex: the modern woman.” 77 The cover of Uzanne’s La Femme à Paris: nos contemporaines (The Woman in Paris: Our Contemporaries) is practically a survey of Art Nouveau iconography: butterf lies, f lowers, waves, f lowing hair, and the woman-sphinx embodying the enigmatic Parisienne with a hint of danger.78 Uzanne’s writing displayed a disconnect between his visions of ideal, decorative women on the one hand, and representations of women in posters on the other hand. Uzanne was a prolif ic author on the subjects of the guidance of women’s taste in fashion and interior decoration. He was an af icionado of poster art and one of the most astute commentators on modern advertising techniques. Yet for him the spectators of posters seem to have been distinctly male. Many Art Nouveau posters used timeless settings or scenes from the past. Eugène Grasset created images of stately women using medieval-inspired motifs. Mucha’s posters were filled with exotic and occult language.79 Women in contemporary settings were also featured. In Georges de Feure’s poster for Le Journal des ventes (1897) a woman examines a vase. The eternal youth of Art Nouveau’s female figures with coolly superficial eroticism quickly became clichés of the unfathomable woman. According to Theodor Adorno, Jugendstil, as the name implied, was “permanent puberty” that never matured.80 The sheer quantity of Art Nouveau posters and postcards also led to the erosion of the theme of the female in Art Nouveau. Created and critiqued by men, Art Nouveau’s feminine imagery resonated with male fantasies. However, while women’s responses to these images are harder to get, the images likely had a varied range of impact on men and women of different classes and vocations.

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Poster Art and Other Artistic Movements In the 1890s journals devoted to poster art and lithography multiplied. L’Estampe originale (1893–1895) and L’Estampe moderne (1896–1899) promoted color lithography, and L’Estampe et l’affiche (1897–1904) was aimed at print and poster collectors. Roger Marx, art critic and supporter of Art Nouveau and the decorative arts movement, published Les Maîtres de l’affiche (1895 to 1900) aimed at collectors. Le Courrier français (1884–1914) distributed Chéret’s posters as gifts to subscribers from 1890. La Plume (1889–1905), Symbolist and Art Nouveau in orientation, distributed artistic poster panels and held exhibitions at their Salon des Cent.81 Artists and writers connected with La Plume included Grasset, Feure, Pierre Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, James Ensor and the Symbolist poets Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine.82 The mainstream media did their share of marketing posters. Le Boulevardier published a column from 1900 on posters, prints, and brands, with prices indicated. Newspapers like L’Eclair organized poster competitions.83 While poster art was largely a French phenomenon, it was also a very cosmopolitan one fostering a great deal of exchange of ideas. Although journals occasionally betrayed aesthetic nationalism, they also functioned as an international forum. Roger Marx’s Les Maîtres de l’affiche featured works by French, English, German, Austrian, Belgian, and American artists. An international system of salons and exhibitions promoted both Art Nouveau and poster art. Chéret’s exhibition in 1889 was sponsored by Les XX, a Belgian group of artists aiming to broaden the range of art. Certain Art Nouveau principles, such as the equality of the arts, the use of new materials and techniques, and the application of art to “everything,” overlapped with the efforts to establish poster art as decorative art.84 From 1898 Roger Marx advocated the establishment of the Museum of Modern Posters.85 For Art Nouveau proponents such as Siegfried Bing, Roger Marx, Frantz Jourdain, Emile Gallé, Hector Guimard, Edmond de Goncourt, and Camille Mauclair, Art Nouveau was the Modern Style,86 which was to embody contemporary consciousness, be freed from past styles, and educate the public through “the diffusion of taste” using “everyday objects.” 87 Poster art as decorative art was discussed in columns that treated architecture and decoration. Gustave Kahn in L’Esthétique de la rue (The Aesthetic of the Street) (1901) urged the inclusion of more color in the city through attractive façades, posters, and lighting, thus incorporating the colorful infusion of poster art into a broader project for urban aesthetics.88 Many poster artists were decorators. For Sarah Bernhardt Mucha designed posters, stage sets, costumes, and jewelry. He also designed Georges Fouquet’s jewelry shop.89 Later he left poster design altogether. Chéret was commissioned to design murals at the Hôtel de Ville. Art Nouveau theories and poster art also gave fresh impetus to the older movement of “social art.” This movement ranged from the effort to diffuse aesthetic sensibility through the house and the street, Republicans’ attempt to transmit messages of consumerism and technological progress, to the effort to provide pleasant and affordable housing for the poor. The Republican style

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of simplicity, utility, and harmony turned out to be unsatisfying by 1890.90 Frantz Jourdain’s praise of Toulouse-Lautrec for having “delivered [his art] to the masses” was uttered in the context of the social art movement.91 Likewise André Mellerio, one of the pioneers of the color lithography movement, thought that prints corresponded to “the democratization of art” and “the aesthetic popularization that parallels the scientific one.” 92 Roger Marx would write L’Art social (1918). For advocates of poster art as social art, the poster was an important branch of national industry that was part of an ideal, technocratic future. They saw commerce and technology as essential in the democratization of art. In such a society, according to Vachon, art, industry, and commerce would form a social harmony. For Vachon it was the poster’s faithful depiction of contemporary mores that made it social art, and poster art was the most realistic art because it was done for commerce. Poster art, which dissolved “the antagonism between science and art,” was the expression of the new society itself. Yet he described the chérette as “poetizing mercantilism and vulgarity with the perfume of art,” revealing ambivalence about the capitalist associations with the poster and implying that future poster art would take a different form.93 The commercial role of the poster was a delicate question for journals promoting the poster. The subject came up rarely, and when it did, indirectly. In 1898 L’Estampe et l’affiche asked artists and critics about the value of poster competitions. Many responded that poster competitions were sponsored by companies as a means for cheap publicity. Louis Morin, on the other hand, stated that the raison d’être of a poster is not to give an aesthetic lesson to people but to attract their attention on the product it proposes to sell to them.94 According to Grasset “there is no such thing as a vote of the crowd, as the crowd would not vote for what exerts violence to it, which is the real secret of the poster.” 95 Grasset expressed both the ambivalence with which many artists viewed the commercial role of the poster, and the view that the poster has a more powerful, and sinister, psychological role than seen on the surface. This ambivalence fit into the longstanding ambivalence toward advertising, including political advertising. Le Livre et l’image argued in 1893 that electoral posters were “pure réclames serving the f low of political puffism and do not possess the nice, distracting images of their sisters, the industrial advertisements.” 96 This ambivalence meant that the artistic poster was seen as having the potential to elevate and reform advertising. Gaston Bonnefont, who criticized the use of exaggeration in advertising, and the use of editorial advertising by society women for self-promotion, nonetheless recommended in 1902 the use of colorful posters for “better striking the public.” 97 The gap between idealized visions of the harmoniously combined role of art and industry, and the denigration of advertising as violent puffism, meant that the commercial role of the poster or the impact of the new imaginary of consumption were largely bypassed by the promoters of poster art. No theory on the poster’s commercial role in contemporary society emerged out of such critique.

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The Poster and Decadence, and the Decline of Poster Art The one theory on the commercial role of the poster was articulated by the conservative critic Maurice Talmeyr, who saw the poster as symbolizing the erosion of traditional values in favor of self-indulgent consumption. In “The Age of the Poster” (1896) Talmeyr vehemently criticized the poster for encouraging the immediate satisfaction of superficial desires, which is to say that he actually focused not only on the artistic form of the poster but also its function of advertising. That “the poster speaks only about us, our pleasures, our tastes, our interests” was a sign that poster art was “a degenerate art” full of “voyeuristic images.” Like other critics Talmeyr distinguished the artistic poster from the rest of advertising for its aesthetic value, calling it “veritable art.” He considered Chéret as “indeed a genius.” However he saw the poster as morally corrupting due to its “scandalous character” emblematic of the degenerate aspects of modernity—moral decadence and the acceleration of the rhythm of life. Talmeyr’s criticism was aligned with Senator Bérenger’s campaign against “indecent” or “licentious” images and spectacles that was sweeping the nation and as such was part of the Third Republic’s broader criticism of moral decadence, as well as part of the fin-de-siècle reaction against mass culture seen as social decay.98 The artistic poster was all the more dangerous because of its attractive appearance. The focus on the here and now, on constantly changing desires and whims, undermined solidity, and depth. This was ref lected in the materiality of the poster, “placed in the morning, torn in the evening.” The “palpitating phantoms” of Chéret’s posters ref lected “contemporary life,” “feverish, jerky and shimmering.” This view of modernity is the same as that of the admirers of poster art. However he named the subjects of posters the critics sidestepped or euphemistically called “contemporary mores”: “Nothing is . . . more violently modern” than posters announcing “new oil, soup base, lamp, wax or chocolate.” The magnification and multiplication of banal products fit the “modern soul;” “The necessary result of this mobile and degenerate art is . . . mechanical demoralization . . . as if done with cinematographic images.”99 According to him advertising numbed the faculties of judgment and ref lection as did cinematographic images. Whereas earlier observers like Zola regarded women and the working class as vulnerable to advertising, for Talmeyr it was the whole urban crowd that was susceptible. Talmeyr saw the poster as emblematizing general destabilization: “demolished each evening, and reconstructed each morning, made of showy and changeable images . . . provoking, laughing, following and grabbing him.”100 “The spirit of the poster,” Talmeyr asserted, was that of “prostitution” that “dominates the period.” He equated the “immodest, systematic, calculating, commercial” poster to the “immodesty of prostitution.”101 Talmeyr attributed much greater power to the poster than did contemporary advertising experts, as he saw it as a medium that embodied a transformation of values like morality and roots into modern, superficial ones.

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By 1900 poster art was in decline. The effort to fuse art and industry and inculcate a national consciousness through the expansion of the marketplace had all along coexisted uneasily with both the creative and commercial drives. By this time contemporaries were not sure if they had a truly Modern Style.102 One critic declared that at the 1900 Exposition “the Modern Style triumphs and dies also,”103 due to an overabundance of low-quality Art Nouveau reproductions. Art Nouveau motifs in posters and postcards generally disappeared between 1903 and 1905. Along with Art Nouveau the poster seemed to be “dying,” although not for the lack of posters, as “the smallest corner” was “infested.”104 One cause of this decline was the conf lict between art and commerce. The artistic poster was not cost effective. A large portion of artistic posters never saw the street. Jirí Mucha has not found a photograph showing Alphonse Mucha’s posters on the walls, and suspects that a sizable portion went directly to the collectors.105 The episode surrounding “Gismonda,” the poster that launched Mucha’s career, illustrates this procedure. Sarah Bernhardt ordered 4,000 copies at less than one franc a piece, then sold them all, making estimated 100,000 francs or more. This came out because Bernhardt sued the atelier for withholding 500 copies, which it apparently sold separately.106 Similarly, one employee of the Crespin and Dufayel billposting agency stashed 2,000 posters, including numerous ones designed by Chéret.107 The desire for collection and speculation limited the impact of poster art as social art. After the turn of the century, as posters were packed “à l’américaine”—in multitudes, artistic posters were overwhelmed by “the banality of the product in the infinite seduction of its silhouettes.”108 Advertising experts increasingly recognized the need for overhauling the entire system, but were in disarray as to how.109

Conclusion By 1900 the theories and the aesthetics of the poster were well developed in all their complexities. Chéret was profoundly inf luential in the linking of art, culture, and commerce, through his art and his evolving subject matter. For the first time poster art was held up as modern art that could positively inf luence, and be inf luenced by, other branches of art. Poster art was celebrated as a new kind of modern art. Its popularity reinforced the reputation of Paris as the city of spectacle, and of the French as arbiters of everything aesthetic. The avant-garde celebrated the modernity of poster art but also, as shown in Seurat’s art, problematized the vague sense of joy the chérette spread. Some Republican advocates of social art wanted poster art to reform advertising into rational communication that truthfully depicted contemporary mores, while others wanted poster art to help achieve social harmony by infusing art into industry and commerce. Yet critics set aside the commercial role of the poster and rarely articulated the poster’s power of communication, the ramifications of the impact of the formation of a new pictorial language about consumption, or the vast proliferation of new commercial imagery. The praise of the poster art as modern art chronicling the everyday framed the role of the poster as a

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journalistic, rather than a commercial, one. Nonetheless, as many of the authorities, art critics, and the avant-garde recognized but chose not to articulate, the art of Chéret and other poster artists was a highly effective and innovative commercial technique, albeit repetitive. The new iconography of consumption, including the depiction of the consumer subjectivity, extended and inf luenced the depictions of contemporary urban life started by illustrators and the Impressionists, even though the imagery of posters for the most part lacked the intellectual engagement of the Impressionists. The eventual sheer repetition and chaotic proliferation of images undermined innovation and exhausted motifs. By 1900 marketing experts saw artistic advertising as an increasingly beleaguered and ineffective form of communication that needed reorganization. In 1832 Victor Hugo wrote that architecture no longer held the power to express human thought. He declared that it was the book, the product of the printing press, that overtook this power.110 Talmeyr saw in the poster the triumph of paper over stone. However the decisive factor against street advertising was above all the sheer volume of advertising that turned the street into a disorienting battleground of signs. Such debates fed into the movement for alternative retail methods and the larger issues of luxury and the egalitarian access to goods.111

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CH A P T E R

T E N

Le Courrier Français, Géraudel Cough Drops, and Advertising as Art

You can hunt a monster, you can evade a pest [but] Réclame, she, remains, she that dazes you with her sparkle, her noise; Réclame follows you and catches up with you . . . She is next to us, on our heels; she saturates the air, rushes into our lungs. She is an intelligent, tenacious miasma. —Marcel Falaise, La Réclame (1901)

Introduction Jules Roques’s Le Courrier français, which published works by Montmartre artists and writers, blended art, entertainment, and advertising. The genre and quality of its illustrations by artists such as Adolphe Willette, Jean-Louis Forain, and Louis Legrand made it the most representative publication of the satirical and artistic press of the 1880s. From the 1890s its artistic contributors included Toulouse-Lautrec, Félicien Rops, Beardsley, and Mucha. Its satirical images often suggested the erotic. Realistically portrayed street and domestic scenes were also popular.1 Raymond Bachollet has noted that “The woman” reigned in the “fantastical universe” of the journal’s images in countless suggestive figurations.2 The journal’s enormous popularity coincided with the f lourishing of the illustrated poster. It collaborated closely with Chéret, cleverly marketing and promoting his posters a decade before the onset of poster mania. Chéret’s images of the seductive chérette, innocent yet knowing, matched the tone of the journal. Rodin praised the artists of the Courrier français for “putting art back in circulation.”3 Less known is the journal’s link to commerce. At the fin de siècle, Géraudel Cough Drops was a household name. Unlike other Montmartre journals like Le Chat Noir or Le Mirliton, Le Courrier français was financially supported not by a cabaret, but by a cough drops manufacturer. Just as fait-divers advertising used boulevardier gossip, and vaudeville humor traded in Parisianisms, Le Courrier français cultivated an insider’s sensibility for marketing itself and its main sponsor, the pharmaceutical manufacturer Arthur Géraudel and his cough drops. Le Courrier français (hereafter referred to as Le Courrier also) was one of only two

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journals that were exclusively sponsored by commercial companies, the other being La Chronique parisienne (1880–1888). A. Godchau, the owner of the latter, also owned the large tailor shop Comptoir Général du Vêtement.4 Both journals abounded in advertisements for their respective sponsors, in both texts and images. Advertisements devoted to Géraudel Cough Drops were cleverly deployed in Le Courrier as artistic images and witty faits divers. The idiosyncratic combination of Montmartre culture and a pharmaceutical product becomes more comprehensible when seen in the light of the tradition of editorial advertising. Numerous advertisements in the journal were visual réclames, and Le Courrier’s exploitation of faits divers considerably one-upped Le Figaro. Two decades before Le Figaro began to air apologetics for advertising, Le Courrier promoted advertising by organizing competitions and giving advice. Unlike Le Figaro, Le Courrier’s stance on advertising was ambiguous. Le Courrier relied on inside jokes and the fear of mystification. It both thrived on and denigrated advertising, defining it as a bourgeois means of enrichment and a risky and seductive force.5 Such practices recall those of Le Tintamarre that thrived on ambiguous jokes. Like many other writers and artists, the contributors of Le Courrier français expressed anxiety about the phenomenon of advertising, while simultaneously adding to the overall discursive power of advertising. Even as it promoted and was promoted by Chéret’s posters, the journal seemed torn about the poster’s function as advertising, just as most avant-garde supporters of the poster art were. Through an analysis of Le Courrier français, this chapter discusses the relationships among Montmartre culture, advertising, and the promotion of Chéret’s posters. This chapter highlights the ambiguous relationship between art and advertising, techniques of mutual publicity, the cultivation of signs of cultural recognition, and the perception of advertising as being omnipresent.

Art as Advertising, or Advertising as Art? The founder of Le Courrier français, Jules Roques, was a successful advertising broker of pharmaceutical products who made some extremely inf luential innovations in French advertising. He managed advertising in the popular press, such as Le Petit Journal, Le Figaro, and La Lanterne. Having worked under Villemessant, he was one of the first to transform press advertising by using huge and repetitive ads.6 He also specialized in fait-divers advertising. His first success was for Fer Brevais, an iron supplement, in 1876, for which he used editorial ads disguised as articles on science.7 His biggest success was in launching, in the 1880s, the celebrated slogan: “If you cough, take Géraudel Cough Drops.” He audaciously ran a guerrilla campaign running full-page newspaper advertisements for the cough drops, the first to do so other than department stores. One American critic remarked that “the stupefying success of the simple phrase” of the Géraudel slogan was achieved years before persistent repetition became a popular American technique. He thought the success of the slogan exemplified the uniqueness of French advertising techniques that emphasized art and wit.8 A 1917 police report on the advertising industry noted that boldly, Géraudel

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“did not hesitate to use entire fourth pages of newspapers.”9 Géraudel commissioned full-page articles extolling the virtues of the cough drops and detailing the achievements of Géraudel. One article, titled “Popular Remedies and Their Inventors,” included a photograph of Géraudel.10 On the back page was a fullpage cartoon, around the theme of Géraudel Cough Drops. Since until the 1880s such methods were almost exclusively used by department stores and the mass press, the surprising tactics for the cough drops consisted “an audacious novelty” which “succeeded marvelously.” It achieved “a vogue that hasn’t been quenched” and led the way for the pharmaceutical industry to use “the loudest and the most expensive” methods that are “obsessive, irritating, and imposing through exaggerated proportions.”11 The success of Géraudel Cough Drops singlehandedly turned the pharmaceutics industry into the biggest spenders in press advertising and also drove up the cost of newspaper advertising. Géraudel spent nearly a million francs a year on advertising in France and abroad, including on numerous posters designed by Chéret. A poster for Géraudel Cough Drops depicting a young woman in snow was printed as a supplement to Le Courrier français in 1896.12 Advertisements for the cough drops were also published in English, French and Italian, including in The Illustrated London News.13 The first issue of Le Courrier français included an advertisement for Roques’s agency, Publicité J. Roques.14 In the issue, Roques described, tongue-in-cheek, how his idea for an advertising brochure ended up as a journal.15 He thereby not only anticipated the criticism of his journal as a commercial publicity organ, but also went over the top: the wrapping covering the journal recommended that the reader procure a bottle of the cough drops before opening the journal.16 In the prospectus of the first issue Roques envisioned a distinct project: to include a series of articles on the world of advertising, on agencies, workshops, printers, billposting agencies, and distributors, supplying practical, hitherto little analyzed data that would win over merchants and industrialists.17 What seems to have been at stake was the validation and promotion of advertising by virtue of straightforward discussion and provision of facts. The subsequent issues, however, did not keep to the initial plan. The promised articles never appeared, suggesting that, due to conf licting priorities or a change in strategy, Roques decided that articles on the techniques and industry of advertising did not belong in an art journal. Instead, advertising became an obsessive theme of the journal in numerous ways, as the subject of parodies, visual and textual representations, advice, and competitions. Almost caricatural eulogies to the mighty (but mere) cough drops enabled the journal to represent itself as an ambiguous blend of art and advertising, rather than a subordinate to powerful commerce. Le Courrier’s equivocal subversion of art and commerce fit into Roques’s broader political and artistic outlook. Roques’s contemporary Michel Zévco described Roques’s principles as completely anti-establishment, against everything “official and conventional”—bourgeois pretension being the primary target.18 One of the journal’s foremost concerns was the defense of “French gaiety” and popular, traditional spectacles like the circus, carnival, and fair. The journal worked with circuses, organized famous carnivalesque balls such as the Bal des Quat’z’Arts, and actively promoted street fairs. At the time established commerce was seeking

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to limit the presence of itinerant merchants, and the police regulated these fairs on the grounds of hygiene and noise.19 When, in 1888, Le Figaro endorsed the formation of the Anti-Fair League (la ligue anti-foraine), Roques formed The Fair League (la ligue foraine) in response.20 In a series of articles defending fairs and travelling showmen, Le Courrier highlighted the festive atmosphere of fairs and argued that far from disrupting established commerce, they attracted customers to the area.21 Louis Morin credited Roques, “a man of taste, daring, and organization,” for resurrecting the carnivalesque spirit by organizing balls and also by sponsoring Willette, who spread images that became collective “dreams and memories.”22 In this light it is easy to see the journal’s attraction to the poster art of Chéret, celebrated for reviving the carnivalesque spirit and for being the artistic heir to Watteau. Chéret designed an image used for the posters for the first and second exhibitions of drawings by the artists of the journal, held in 1891 at the Elysées Montmartre at the Winter Garden, and at the Eiffel Tower respectively.23 The image shows a fairy-like chérette with her head thrown back, carrying a bow and arrows, holding the journal, and tickling the face of satyr with a feathered pen. A poster by Chéret advertising the journal as “the most artistic of illustrated journals” was printed as a supplement in January 1900.24 Beneath the defense of French gaiety lurked a certain penchant for authoritarianism. As the title of one anti-Boulangist journal, Le Barnum, indicates, Boulanger was widely seen as adept at mobilizing publicity.25 Le Courrier’s fascination with General Boulanger had much to do with the perception of Boulanger as a phenomenon of publicity.26 Le Courrier used Boulangism as a promotional force and published many anti-parliamentary and Boulangist articles and poems. Le Courrier’s advertisements for Géraudel Cough Drops sometimes linked Géraudel with Boulanger by portraying the former as a father-authority figure. One issue of Le Courrier français included an image of a saint sprinkling the cough drops, along with a portrait of Géraudel accompanied by a biographical text. The portrait was suspiciously similar to that of Boulanger, and this way Géraudel and Boulanger were associated with a figure of salvation.27 Such images had the effect of advertising both Géraudel and Boulanger through mutual endorsement. Yet the overall effect was ambiguous, since the image was also tongue-in-cheek. The journal did not explicitly profess a political ideology and lacked a clear commitment to any political cause, and its contributors expressed a range of political opinions and social critique. Forain’s images of the downtrodden, for example, worked as social commentary that was socialist rather than Boulangist. The polemicist Willette, who directed the journal Le Pierrot (1888–1891) and would found La Vache enragée (1896–1897), ran for the Legislative Elections of September 1889 as an “antisemitic candidate” for the ninth arrondissement of Paris, for which he designed his own poster branding Jews as “a different race and enemy of ours” and calling for gaiety.28 As for Roques, he founded another journal, L’Egalité, in order to express his socialist and revolutionary ideas. He collaborated with anarchists and socialists grouped under his Socialist League, and L’Egalité maintained a rigorously anti-Boulangist stance.29 The main cultural politics of the journal had to do with Montmartre culture and avant-gardism. The artists who contributed to Le Courrier français in the

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1880s and 1890s were mostly based in Montmartre, and they sought to create an alternative to the perceived bourgeois domination of both geographic space and cultural values.30 The journal’s principal artists made thematic and formal innovations that inf luenced artists like Félix Vallotton and Gauguin, who were also later featured in Le Courrier français.31 In the 1880s the most avant-garde component of the journal came from Les Incohérents, self-proclaimed non-artists. Their use of humor for subverting conventional art and their f lair for publicity appealed to the journal, which thrived on jokes and publicity stunts.32 The journal’s identification with Montmartre did not necessarily mean that it represented a bohemian attitude. On the contrary, the journal claimed to possess “the Parisian spirit in its most boulevardier essence.”33 Although the Boulevard was mainstream, worldly, and elegant, and Montmartre bohemian, intimate, and populist, the two were by no means incompatible. Le Courrier français was frequently advertised in the upper-class Le Figaro and the serious Le Temps. In L’Illustration it was advertised as giving the most number of interesting drawings for the price.34 Le Courrier organized spectacles and balls at theaters like the Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Elysées, the Elysées-Montmartre, and the Cabaret des Quartz-‘Arts, presenting Montmartre shows to the Boulevard crowd.35 An exhibition of 1,200 drawings by the artists of the journal was held in 1891 at the Elysées Montmartre at the Winter Garden, and another, of 1,000 drawings, at the Eiffel Tower.36 Le Courrier français sought to reach a wide readership while subverting the establishment by promoting poster art. Chéret’s artistic poster was ideal for such purposes, since the joyous chérette fit in marvelously with the journal’s celebration of French gaiety. In the 1880s, years before poster mania set in, Le Courrier’s innovations and activities created a context for the establishment of poster artists as veritable artists. The journal gave away and sold Chéret’s posters as supplements to subscribers. Praise for Chéret’s posters, including poems devoted to the chérette, teemed in the journal, which devoted special issues to the artist.37 Later The Ambassadeur’s stage curtain featured Chéret’s posters.38 Félicien Champsaur’s Les Bohémiens, ballet lyrique en 4 actes et 9 tableaux (1887) was illustrated by Chéret, Alfred Grévin, Ferdinand Lunel, Louis Morin, Félicien Rops, Willette, and others, many of who were associated with Le Courrier français.39 By 1890, as Chéret’s fame surpassed Le Courrier’s, Chéret’s posters endorsed the journal in return. Le Courrier marketed the poster as an artistic product, announcing upcoming ones. A fait divers in Le Figaro recommended Quinquina Dubonnet as an original gift, and also noted that the liquor would be “announced by Chéret’s new poster.” It added that Le Courrier français would give away to its subscribers six posters by Chéret, including this latest one.40 Such a fait divers, containing multiple endorsements, publicized the artistry of the poster—not any inherent quality of the advertised liquor—as the main source of appeal for the liquor, the journal, and the poster. Georges d’Avenel called Roques “the genius of advertising.” The alliance of Le Courrier with Géraudel led to even greater success of Géraudel Cough Drops.41 Le Courrier français’s advertisements, for the cough drops, for Chéret, and for itself, were clever exercises in the construction of signs of cultural recognition.

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Citations of images and frames-in-frames were frequently used techniques. Le Courrier created a set of strikingly modern advertisements. Whereas the posters of the 1880s and the 90s, by Chéret, Mucha, Grassett, and others, mostly depicted women modeling or handling life-sized commodities, in Le Courrier’s images the bottle of cough drops was enlarged, even free-f loating as in an 1888 image by Oswald Heidbrinck, anticipating enlarged images of products in posters.42 Le Courrier also created clever visual editorial ads. The images usually initially appeared to have nothing whatsoever to do with the cough drops. Willette’s cover image (figure 10.1) from 1886 presents an intriguing scene: an officer is holding the hand of a woman.43 What appears as a scene of an amorous rendezvous turns out to be a medical recommendation to take Géraudel Cough Drops through the caption, one that’s repeated on the kiosk seen outside a window. Legrand’s image of a street scene published in 1889 also turns out to be an advertisement when one reads the text, although a bottle of the cough drops is nowhere visible.44 Such images, visual versions of fait-divers advertisements, relied also on the tradition of the blague ( joke). Such cinematic images suggesting narratives anticipated countless advertisements of the turn of the century. Illustrations as editorial advertisements had been published in Le Charivari and others from the 1830s. Illustrations with advertising as a side effect had also been around for decades. The pictorial space of street furnishings or walls were used for selfpromotion. In many images of illustrated books kiosks repeated the books’ titles. Le Courrier français’s images were therefore not unique but were more complex and ambivalent than earlier ones. During a competition to advertise Géraudel Cough Drops in 1888, in which 162 drawings and 610 manuscripts were received, the journal advised that “exaggerated and grotesque jokes” don’t work at all, and that an advertisement for a pharmaceutical product should be sober to an extent and based on reality.45 Such an advice seems paradoxical, really a joke, given the transgressive and outlandish nature of the majority of the journal’s own advertisements. A typical, fantastic image, by Louis Titz from 1888, depicted a huntress-goddess in the woods riding a bottle of the cough drops that combined iconographies of witches and the goddess Diana.46 Many images had nothing to do with the cough drops but had captions that seemed tagged on. For example, a street scene of vegetable sellers by Heidbrinck had a caption: “These poor vegetable sellers, if they didn’t have their box of Géraudel Cough Drops, how would they resist all the changes of temperatures, humidity, wind, rain, snow, etc.?”47 It is possible that the artist wanted to depict vegetable sellers rather than advertise the cough drops, and that the mentioning of the cough drops had an effect of making the exaggerated claims of the cough drops sound false. The fear of mystification, of not getting a joke, was a key element in the journal’s appeal. The fear of mystification and the importance of jokes in contemporary popular culture were linked to the negative connotation of réclame. We have seen that, already during the July Monarchy, mystification, and the fear of it, had formed a major strand in Parisian popular culture, when Le Tintamarre parodied advertisements and fed its readers inside jokes about the world of the press and advertising. Moreover, the idea of réclame had also been used as a tool

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Figure 10.1

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Adolphe Willette, Le Courrier français, Feb. 7 1886 (BNF).

for criticism and ridicule as early as the 1830s, so that Le Courrier français had at hand a fertile stock of vocabulary and jokes. In Le Courrier the fact that advertising seemed to be a justification for art, although ostensibly it was the other way around, produced a joke. Whereas Le Tintamarre parodied advertisements, creating a conf lict in its own messages, and criticized hidden advertisements, Le

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Courrier français expressed an overall cynical view of advertising, while creating hidden advertisements. Textual ads in Le Courrier français were mostly faits divers. Often such ads initially appeared as opinions against excessive advertising. One article entitled “The inconvenience of advertising” began: “Many people complain rightly that most attestations about medications are false,” and included two letters addressed to Mr. Géraudel “of which we absolutely guarantee the authenticity.”48 Such articles added up to portraying Géraudel as a healer and a saint, ironically echoing the claims of traditional charlatans boasting miracle cures, and sounding tongue-in-cheek when claiming authenticity. Moreover the title of the fait divers undermined the purpose of the fait divers. Another article, entitled “La Réclame,” began by advising merchants to devise new methods of advertising to the Parisian who “prides in seeming blasé about advertising.” Then it recounted how the author tried “the famous Géraudel Cough Drops” after seeing repeated advertisements, and was cured “in spite of [him]self.”49 Such advertisements deliberately skewed the standards of truth in advertising by willfully sounding fake in their assertion of truth. The journal sent mixed messages about the value of advertising by condemning advertising even as it intensively promoted its own sponsor, and by sounding like it was joking when it was promoting the sponsor. Le Courrier’s exploitation of the boundaries of advertising, art, and journalism turned the cough drops into a popular cultural subject. Celebrities gamely participated in tongue-in-cheek campaigns for the cough drops. Attestations by Sarah Bernhardt, Coquelin Ainéa of the Comédie Française, Paulus—“popular singer currently in representation at the Scala”—, Thérésa of the Alcazar d’Hiver, and others as to the great effects of the cough drops, accompanied by their photos and signatures, were printed in full-page advertisements in L’Illustration and Le Temps.50 Such ads mutually publicized the celebrities and the cough drops. At café-concerts and revues, songs featured the cough drops theme,51 and one booklet depicted a duel of the Géraudel and Brachat cough drops.52 Such parodies also anticipated the transformation of actualités in the hands of avant-garde artists, who would integrate bits of cultural ephemera into their art, often with a joke in mind.53 Besides sponsoring advertising competitions, the journal also held competitions for artistically representing Réclame as a figure. In such images Advertising stood for material power, fame, and risk. This iconography of Réclame was based on the iconography of Fame, which had gone through many mutations since the Renaissance.54 Le Courrier’s images complicated the notions of fame and the goddess Fortuna by emphasizing the dangerous unpredictability of Réclame.55 Réclame was also a symbol of materialism, speculation and the venality of the press, as well as a figure that mocked that materialism. The trumpet, gong, and drum, frequently used in Le Courrier’s representations of Réclame, had often stood since the July Monarchy as pejorative symbols of advertising, representing untrustworthy rhetoric, not transparent publicity. Le Courrier’s depictions of Réclame ref lected the journal’s ambivalence toward advertising. If Roques and company wanted to propagate a clearly positive view of advertising, they would have chosen the term publicité, not réclame. At the same time, the figure Réclame formed

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one of the stock themes of the journal that produced numerous images of voluptuous women, associating advertising with feminine seduction, irrationality, and also the prostitute, the same themes that the conservative Talmeyr would use. In an 1888 cover image by Heidbrinck, titled “La Réclame,” a cabaret dancer, a cherub, a street urchin blowing a trumpet, and a kiosk collectively stand for Réclame.56 The Stock Exchange is shaped like a drum, referring not only to enrichment from trade (represented by the ship in the background), but to financial speculation and financial advertising. The drum and the trumpet reiterate the idea of advertising as loud noise. The street urchin and the kiosk suggest that advertising fills the street. The cabaret dancer holding a baton seems to be directing the whole. The fact that they are standing on the globe representing the Earth implies that the force of advertising makes the world go round. The cabaret dancer suggests the idea of seduction and entertainment. The image carries an overall mocking tone: it’s all about brouhaha. A. de Moncourt’s image from 1889 portrays Réclame not only as mocking but also as powerful and destructive.57 Réclame, a nude woman except for being covered with an issue of Le Figaro, raises men, depicted as tiny and thin, upon a pedestal only to drop them precipitously into a gutter. The image not only ref lects the theme of Fame and Fortuna, but also suggests the role of the press in deceiving the blind followers of Réclame. The offerings the victims are carrying for the goddess Réclame seem to represent the bribery and venality involved in press advertising. The setting, a dark street corner with a poster-covered wall, invokes the idea of illicit transactions and reinforces the idea that the victims see only the brightly lit, seductive and imposing goddess or the prostitute, and not the larger picture. An image of Réclame by Lunel exemplifies the daring of Le Courrier’s artists, who used the representation of an abstract concept (advertising) as a justification for producing a risqué image that tested the boundaries of the acceptable.58 It depicts a nude figure with a mocking and delirious smile, holding a gong and standing amidst a pile of newspapers, including Le Courrier français itself. The crumpled papers seem to refer not only to the use of advertising in the press, but to the mutually destructive competition among the papers. The phrase “the only illustrated” on Le Courrier français indicates the latter point. The loud noise of advertising, along with the naked figure and the laughing face, again associates advertising with a seductive and dangerous street woman, an irrational figure who takes away reason. The background banner, “Take my wallet (Prenez mon bourse),” refers to the irrational threat posed by advertising. The presence of Le Courrier français makes the image self-referential, again delineating the journal’s ambivalent stance toward advertising. As in Moncourt’s image, the figure is a realistically portrayed, a naked woman standing on a street and not a nude, mythological figure. Such images associated advertising to the cityscape at night, the prostitute and also identified the primary function of advertising as rhetoric. The competing inscriptions on the walls in Lunel’s image, including a reference to the famous electoral battle between General Boulanger and Brother Jacques, underline the idea of advertising as rhetoric, as do the images of newspapers. The emphasis on

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noise and seduction suggests that perhaps there is no meaning beyond the competing rhetoric. In most of Le Courrier’s images of Réclame, including those that represented it as a mythic figure standing in the air, the background is dark, suggesting night time, danger, secrecy, seduction, and emotion, in short the opposite of everything that the idea of publicity as transparent communication stood for. Nor is Réclame associated with entertainment, style or civility. In another of Le Courrier’s images, Pénot’s “La Réclame,” (1889) Réclame, a naked goddess, unleashes a shower of advertisements against the backdrop of a dark, ominous sky.59 One gets the sense that a thunderstorm—and possibly havoc—is in the works. This anticipates the polemic by Talmeyr, for whom advertising deliberately sought to cloud judgment, causing general moral decadence. One of the few earnest advertising images published in Le Courrier was not by a regular Le Courrier artist but by Georges Rhé, who entered a competition for depicting Réclame. The image depicts Athena drawing on a Morris Column, a picturesque icon for advertising.60 Notably the scene takes place in broad daylight, bolstering the association of advertising with solidity and positive communication. Street furnishings, although not the most enduring of structures, were the icons frequently depicted in advertisements to suggest reliability and street aesthetics. Le Courrier’s iconography of Réclame was taken up by other artists. Fernand LeQuesne’s painting, La Réclame (1897), depicts all the usual symbols of advertising.61 Such symbols were surely clichés by then, but this painting signals the entering of advertising as a subject matter in academic art. A scantily clad young woman, Réclame, looks as if she is about to be lifted off the ground by the numerous balloons she is holding. A drum and a trumpet lie about as do a score of crumpled newspapers. A statue is covered with electoral posters, and the square in the background is filled with advertising vehicles and sandwichmen. The image is straight out of the numerous representations of Réclame in Le Courrier français. More precisely, it is a combination of Lunel’s image—with the newspapers and the posters in the background—and Pénot’s image of Réclame, whose figure, hair, and wide-eyed facial expression are nearly identical to LeQuesne’s. The only difference is that in LeQuesne’s painting it is daytime, and that Réclame is not completely nude. The painting suggests that Paris is saturated with advertising, which pervades all fields including art and journalism. Le Courrier’s artists’ innovative approach to advertising inf luenced others. Many of Vallotton’s prints were used as advertisements. The street was often the subject of his woodblock prints, in which sandwichmen and other advertising media are visible. A frontispiece by Vallotton for Badauderies parisiennes (1896), a collection of essays on Parsisian street scenes, includes a cart that announces the title of the book. The image is comparable to Lunel’s 1891 image depicting a cart that is an advertising vehicle in Le Courrier, which was a part of a series depicting various forms of street advertising.62 The series was based on the traditional “types de Paris” and depicted advertising media as part of the street picturesque.63 Avant-garde artists also expressed negative views or ambivalence toward advertising. Mallarmé depicted advertising as the opposite of the poetic. Other avantgarde writers wrote ads; Apollinaire authored some for his journal Le Tabarin.

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The Symbolist La Vogue printed an editorial advertisement for Chocolat Van Houtten.64

The Pornography Controversy Advertising versus art was not the only boundary that Le Courrier français transgressed. It was also the most prosecuted art journal of the period for images deemed pornographic. Although at first sight the pornography controversy appears to be irrelevant to the question of art and advertising, it helps further determine the limits of the acceptable in art and commerce. The law of August 2, 1882, which modified the 1881 press law, aimed to rigorously suppress moral indecency committed through text or image.65 Various leagues led by the Senator Bérenger vociferously campaigned against the “licentious” or “obscene” in text and image. The policing of images focused especially on those visible in the street, on kiosks or in shop windows. Between 1888 and 1891 five issues of Le Courrier were seized—four for images, and one for a short story—and two of the cases resulted in the imprisonment of Roques and heavy fines. The prosecution of Le Courrier français raised the greatest campaign of protest in the world of journalism and art in the 1880s. These controversies reveal how the journal affronted the surveillance of “licentious” and “disorderly” elements in the street.66 The protest over the prosecution of Le Courrier français focused on the arbitrariness with which the regime seemed to strike the press with indictments. The first image that was seized as obscene was the December 4, 1887 cover image by Willette, featuring a naked woman—with a pose suggesting arrogance—sitting in front of a guillotine.67 The caption, “Democracy awaiting her lovers,” prophesied another Reign of Terror for the Republic. The case received great publicity, not least because Willette was a popular and respected artist. The authorities dropped the case, apparently recognizing that the image could not be construed as obscene, and as this case seemed to have been motivated by the government’s nervousness over anti-Republicanism and Boulangism. Next, the June 24, 1888 issue was seized for Edouard Zier’s cover image, “The Fates (Les Parques)”68 and Legrand’s image entitled “Prostitution,” of a naked woman sitting on a bed in the clutch of a figure representing Death. Legrand, Zier, Roques, and the printer, Lanier, were tried and acquitted in August 188869 but then found guilty at another trial a month later.70 Although politics can explain the authorities’ attitudes to an extent, the profound anxiety over the impact of “licentious” mores has to be analyzed in order to fully understand the motives for the cases. It was the “affront to public decency” that provided the fundamental motive. The seizing of the 1888 issue of Le Courrier français occurred twelve days after a petition signed by numerous Parisians was presented to the Parliament, demanding the intervention of the authorities against an invasion by “indecent engravings, licentious photographs, and obscene drawings that block public passage and besiege the passers-by.” 71 The seizures of Le Courrier’s issues and subsequent judgments provoked a huge wave of protest among journalists and artists whose comments were printed in

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Le Courrier français. In a few days following the initial judgment, Roques received more than 200 letters from painters, sculptors, and engravers who expressed profound shock and indignation at having to wonder what the difference was from then on between “permitted art and prohibited art.” 72 They argued that Le Courrier français was a respected art journal, that the prosecutions were arbitrary, and that far more explicitly bawdy images and texts went unpunished. Artists commented that the authorities’ definition of obscenity would require the closure of the Louvre. While a couple of journalists suggested that Le Courrier’s sympathy toward General Boulanger seemed to have inf luenced the authorities, the overwhelming majority saw the incident as having purely to do with the freedom of artistic expression, freedom of the press, and the ignorance of the authorities.73 They feared the return of arbitrary censorship.74 By January 1889 all but two newspapers and periodicals of “all nuances” protested against the condemnation.75 The second prosecution provoked more shock and outrage.76 The inf luence of images was the subject of an intensive debate at the time. The crux of the debate was defining the limits of legitimate art. The prosecutions of Le Courrier français, I argue, were the result of the journal’s series of relentless satires against the authorities in a period of heightened tension over morality and a rapidly expanding marketplace that mobilized an overwhelming number of feminine imagery.77 The satire over the campaign against “affronts to public decency” had been going on since 1882, when Robida’s La Caricature printed an issue entitled “The Great Epidemic of Pornography,” 78 and Le Courrier published a number of satires against what it perceived as the authorities’ hypocrisy. In the middle of the pornography controversy in 1888, when Le Courrier was full of commentaries from protesting journalists and artists, as well as transcriptions of the trials, another two-page-long transcription of a trial was printed in one issue. It had nothing to do with pornography. It was about a judgment rendered against a printer and a pharmacist, who had been brought to court by Arthur Géraudel. The case had to do with certain advertisements which had appeared in a variety of papers for several months: Garaudel, Garaudel, Garaudel! Inventor of cough drops containing a beneficial liqueur, that cures colds and bronchitis, recommend to pharmacists not to confuse his product with unpleasant medications. A container 1 fr. 25 . . . E. Garaudel, in Sainte-Ménehould and at good pharmacies. E. Garaudel, a printer, along with G.E. Lebœuf, a pharmacist, were sued by Arthur Géraudel for using the similarity of the names Garaudel and Géraudel, as well as the fact that both lived in Sainte-Ménehould, to deliberately wishing to confuse the public and persuade them to buy a product based on this confusion and the renown of the Géraudel Cough Drops, established since many years due to “immense publicity and the spending of a considerable amount of money” and “sought after all over Europe.” 79 Garaudel and Lebœuf were ordered to remove the name Garaudel from their products and advertisements, pay a 100-franc fine, and publish the judgment in two Parisian journals and one provincial journal that were chosen by Géraudel. Thus appearing in the pages

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of Le Courrier français, a Montmartre journal dedicated to art, gaiety, and amusement, and being prosecuted in the name of law, the transcript of the judgment provided a strange parallel between these two legal cases, one happening in the realm of art and morality, and the other in the realm of commerce and ethics. Each case pointed to the journal’s identity and role. The pornography controversy galvanized artists, writers, and journalists against the return of arbitrary censorship, providing a new role to Le Courrier français as the symbol of artistic freedom. The case of the two pharmacists, on the other hand, highlighted the tangled relationship between art and commerce played out in the journal. While the former was initially about publicity in a negative sense as public exposure, the wave of protests supported the journal’s efforts to garner more positive public reception. The latter was about the significance of commercial publicity bolstered through the public exposure of imitators. The transcript must have caused much amusement and double takes. In 1893 Roques and Le Courrier français were prosecuted for the last time by the authorities. Roques, the organizer of the Bal des Quat’z’Arts, and some attendees, were tried and fined for letting models parade semi-nude. Ensuing riots turned into a major social protest when workers joined the students.80 The controversy emblematized the challenge of Le Courrier français against austere Republican mores that sought to sweep away perceived corrupting forces by imposing censorship and surveillance of the public sphere. A regular feature of the journal was the review of all the cafés, bars, and brasseries in Paris, including thorough descriptions of the female servers of the brasseries à femmes popular in the 1880s and 90s, some of which were raided on suspicion of prostitution.81 Many servers were foreign women in national costumes, and each brasserie tried to stand out by dressing women in unique costumes such as “magnificent fin de siècle postman’s uniforms.” Women at one brasserie dressed up as ragpickers.82 In this regard, the journal again affronted Republican moralists. Le Courrier’s provocative politics in the culture war over taboos formed a part of its appeal. Although the controversies and prosecutions caused serious financial damages and personal hardship, and the journal had to struggle for a while to maintain its reputation as an art journal, in the end the journal thrived, promoting some of the biggest artistic talents of the day.83

Conclusion Directed by an advertising agent and sponsored by a cough drop manufacturer, Le Courrier français created innovative artistic advertisements, while establishing itself as the most inf luential Montmartre journal and cooperating with Chéret for added artistic cachet and mutual publicity. Its formal innovations included artistic advertisements that were complex images relying on the cultural resonance of key elements. While such images inf luenced the avant-garde, they were also the products of a specific period in which visual réclames thrived, continuing a French tradition begun in the 1830s or even earlier. The journal incorporated the image of its main sponsor into the romantic, carnivalistic mystique of

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Montmartre, but always with a witty boulevardier attitude. All the advertisements for Géraudel Cough Drops published in the journal appear tongue-in-cheek. This resonated with the tradition of jokes and mystification in French popular journalism. At the same time, it fit into the tradition of French advertising that preferred indirect messages and curious presentations, and anticipated twentieth and twenty-first-century advertising that would privilege jarring images and cinematic narratives. Ambiguity, parodoxes, wit and double innuendos were the critical tools of the journal for satirizing social, political, commercial and cultural taboos. In addition to transgressing the boundary between art and advertising, the journal faced the accusation of transgressing the one between art and pornography. As controversy instantly provided publicity, the pornography controversy—which seriously aggrieved the journal—as well as the journal’s advertising tactics, spurred polemic and fascination that helped ascertain the journal’s place in artistic and popular journalism. Le Courrier’s fascination with the figure Réclame, as a dangerous and seductive female, mirrored the journal’s own risky use of notoriety and risqué images when the campaign against everything “offensive to decency” was sweeping the nation. Whereas Chéret’s images were embraced by the mainstream public and the state alike, Le Courrier français walked a much riskier line. Le Courrier français anticipated three related trends. The first was that ephemeral cultural artifacts would be incorporated into avant-garde art. Moreover, the concept of réclame would be crucial in the reception of the avant-garde from 1909 to 1914, when avant-garde art would be misunderstood by the public who would criticize it as hoaxes, publicity stunts and réclames.84 Finally, the journal anticipated the future in which much artistic talent would be devoted to creating original advertisements.

Conclusion

The reputation of Paris as a beautiful city with many magnificent sites, a reputation that is still very much with us, was forged by the 1840s and continued to expand for the rest of the century. Paris became the capital of modernity, in more ways than one. A visual and mental model of the consumer was constructed gradually beginning in the early nineteenth century and was associated with the modernity characterized by ephemeral experiences of vibrant urban life. An inf luential component in this regard was Delphine de Girardin’s fragmented characterization of Paris as a series of phenomena, seen on the street level. Her writing also forged new links between the sensibility of the high society and that of the f lâneur expressed in a mass medium. Some of the columns written by her imitators, as did fashion columns, had much more promotional functions, further linking journalism, fashion, and retail. A different vision of modernity, that of harmonious organization, ref lected in the fascination with visual and textual panoramas and later expressed through Haussmannian urban planning and architectural modality, was another significant component of the commercial modernity of Paris. Whereas on the Grands Boulevards initially both kinds of modernity were celebrated, by the turn of the century the presence of a huge volume of urban stimuli, much of it commercial, meant that it was the modernity as a stream of stimuli that boulevard culture came to symbolize. It may seem ironic to argue simultaneously that, on the one hand, the inf luence of commercial forces on culture, especially in the July Monarchy, was more significant than had generally been thought, and on the other hand, strong consumer agency existed. That the collective imagery about consumption, or about Paris, did not emanate from a single or limited number of sources, but through an interactive process of circulation and mutual publicity, as well as critique and interpretation, meant that the rise of consumer culture did not unfold following a set, inevitable course. Consumer culture was not imposed upon the public through some kind of mechanical process, a seamless orchestration of diverse fields. Grandville’s images of mechanization, besides depicting the process of commodification and fragmentation of experience as Walter Benjamin saw, also remind the viewer of the human capacity and freedom to imagine and preserve autonomy. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the expansion of specialties created fantasies of artifice. Debates about consumerism and celebrity culture show

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their complexity, yet the debates also continued to help preserve at least potential consumer autonomy. The media coverage of the Bernhardt-Colombier affair shows that Bernhardt was the quintessential modern celebrity because her life was cast as a series of phenomena, as sensational news, through which her real self became increasingly elusive. Yet Bernhardt maintained potential agency, even as the media coverage of her life escaped her control. Mucha’s poster images of her from the 1890s uniformly depict a charismatic and stately woman. How did the spaces for individual and collective creativity and ref lection within consumer culture evolve? What happens when, as happened in the second half of the nineteenth century, there is a vast increase in the volume of commercial material, as well as a consolidation of publishing, retail and advertising as distinct fields? These are guiding questions for further research. The sheer expansion of the media, a rapid turnover of news, sensationalism accompanied by large-scale publicity campaigns, celebrity culture rife with obsessive positive and negative publicity, and a widespread view of advertising as a technology of attention, links the late nineteenth century to the twentyfirst. Some kinds of mechanization Grandville depicted—commodities taking control and doing away with human agency—are becoming reality. The idea of a machine producing serial novels is approaching reality through computer software that writes music, for example. Advertising has diffused beyond the physical spaces of the city into the virtual realms of modern technology. Although saturated with advertisements attempting to harness the psyche, there is also a large array of techniques to filter and block, starting with the spam filter and the video fast-forwarding function. The cinematographic sensibility of many nineteenth-century textual and visual advertisements prefigured TV and radio ads. Surreptitious advertising is now present in new personalized ways, such as an “undercover marketing” motivating people to voluntarily describe the merits of a bottled-water in personal conversations,1 which recalls the French “réclame mania.”2 Gmail’s personalized ads that match the words in individual e-mails are jarring. These are variants of nineteenth-century French advertising and are not radically different, just as the late-nineteenth-century celebrity culture seems familiar to us. The use of the body as the billboard, observed in 2009 as the newest advertising practice,3 already existed in the 1890s and 1900s. Although transparent communication often remains elusive—and in fact never was the predominant aim of advertising and publicity—creativity, wit, and aesthetics, coupled with social conscience, have the potential to be the main aims of advertising. More broadly, consumer culture has much potential to evolve in different ways, to enable the democratization of taste, egalitarian access, and individual and collective creativity while preserving the planet, in spite of the powerful pull of standardization.

NOT E S

Introduction 1. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité 1876–1885, file Maugras et Montaut, 1881–1882. 2. Denis Tapin, “La Guerre au chameau,” Le Clairon ( Jan. 10, 1882) in APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité 1876–1885. 3. Charles Holme, Henri Frantz, Octave Uzanne, Edgar Preston, and Helen Chisholm, Daumier and Gavarni (London: Offices of “The Studio,” 1904), n.p. 4. Victoria de Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes” in Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough eds., The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 11–24: 18. Historians have argued that consumer society—in which subjectivities, identities, and solidarities are associated with commodities—was born in England and the United States in the eighteenth or even earlier. Leora Auslander, “The Gendering of Consumer Practices” in Grazia and Furlough eds., The Sex of Things, 79–112: 80; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 5. Whitney Walton, France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), Ch. 2. 6. For a survey of Paris see Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville (XIXe-XXe siècle) (Paris: Seuil, 1993). To list just a few titles from the extensive bibliography on Second-Empire Paris, see François Loyer, Paris Nineteenth Century: Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988); David van Zanten, Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformation of the French Capital, 1830–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Jean Des Cars and Pierre Pinon eds., Paris-Haussmann, “Le Pari d’Haussmann” (Paris: Picard, 1991). 7. Patricie Higonnet also notes this in Paris, The Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 8. Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 1–3. 9. See Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Walton, France at the Crystal Palace; Grazia and Furlough eds., The Sex of Things; Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981); Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siècle France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Mary Louise Roberts, “Gender, Consumption and Commodity Culture,” American Historical Review 103:3, June 1998, 817–844. 10. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1999) 391, [K1a, 9]. 11. On this idea also see Jennifer Terni, “Paris Imaginaire: Le vaudeville et le spectacle de la ville moderne dans les années 1820 à 1840” in Karen Bowie ed., La Modernité avant Haussmann: formes de l’espace urbain à Paris: 1801–1853 (Paris: Editions Recherches, 2001), 177–190; Jennifer Terni, “A Genre for Early Mass Culture: French Vaudeville and the City, 1830–1848,” Theatre Journal 58:2 (May 2006), 221–248; Jennifer Terni, “Elements of Mass Society: Spectacular Identity and Consumer Logic in Paris (1830–1848),” PhD diss., Duke University, 2002. On the idea of the

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

Notes

imagined community of the newspaper’s public see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). Auslander, “The Gendering of Consumer Practices,” 79; Walton, France at the Crystal Palace. A number of studies on the consumer culture of the second half of the nineteenth century, mentioned in previous footnotes here, likewise take an integrated view of cultural and economic change. Roberta Sassatelli, Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics (London: Sage, 2007), 13, 20. On eighteenth-century French consumption see Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600–1800 (New York: Routledge, 2002). Mary Gluck, Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 5–7. Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981). Gluck, Popular Bohemia, 6–7; Donald Levine ed., Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 324–339; Henri Berson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001). On this sense of modernity, to name but few titles, see: Christopher Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Gluck, Popular Bohemia, 8. See Ruth E. Iskin, Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Sassatelli, Consumer Culture, 18. Crary, Suspensions of Perception. Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 274. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 391, [K1a, 9]. Lisa Tiersten has shown that in the late nineteenth century bourgeois women enjoyed significant measure of consumer autonomy, shaped through cultural, social, and political ideologies expressed by critics, policymakers, and retailers, which underlined both collectivity as well as individual aesthetic sensibility. Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. Judith Coffin has demonstrated that French advertising images for the sewing machine contained rich and diverse layers of meanings and symbols. Judith Coffin, The Politics of Women’s Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Ruth Iskin has analyzed poster images for perceptions and representations such as the changing conceptions of time and women in public space. Ruth Iskin, “Father Time, Speed, and the Temporality of Posters Around 1900” in KronoScope 3:1 (2003), 27–50; “The Pan-European Flâneuse in Fin-de-Siècle Posters: Advertising Modern Women in the City” in NineteenthCentury Contexts, 2003 25:4, 333–356. Clemens Wischermann and Elliott Shore eds., Advertising and the European City: Historical Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) addresses the interaction between the message and the message’s receiver. Also see Frederic Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Social Text (Winter 1979), 130–148. Daniel Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 5, 17. On alternative ideas of consumption including Saint-Simonian views see Ellen Furlough, Consumer Cooperation in France: the Politics of Consumption, 1834–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Clemens Wischermann, “Placing Advertising in the Modern Cultural History of the City” in Wischermann and Shore eds., Advertising and the European City, 1–31: 22. Thomas Richards has argued that a new way of representing commodities emerged at the 1851 Crystal Palace exhibition in London, and that advertising continued this trend of showcasing commodities, forming a culture based on the exchange of material goods. Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). Also see Christoph Asendorf, Batteries of Life: On the History of Things and Their Perception in Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The power of representation in advertising and consumption has been underlined by scholars in various fields. Jean Baudrillard defined consumption as “a systematic act of the manipulation of signs” and argued that “what is consumed are not objects but the relation itself.” Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Objects”

Notes

27.

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

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in Selected Writings 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 13–31: 25. Sociologists and communication scholars have highlighted power relations in twentieth-century advertising messages and argued that advertising creates desire and obscures the real structure of society. Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (London: Boyars, 1978); William Leiss, Social Communication in Advertising (New York: Routledge, 1990). From a structuralist viewpoint, advertising does not innovate but renews and reinforces “hidden myths,” acting as an “anxiety-reducing mechanism.” Varda Langholz-Leymore, Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism in Advertising (London: Heinemann Education, 1975), 141. The leaders of advertising since the eighteenth century are largely thought to have been the English, followed by Americans who developed a massive culture of advertising by the turn of the twentieth century. Pre-Revolutionary French press ads were far fewer in number than the English equivalent, and throughout the nineteenth century the Anglo-American press greatly outpaced the French press in the number of ads, even before the abolition of English newspaper advertisement tax, stamp duty, and newsprint tax in 1853, 1855, and 1861 respectively, resulting in a rapid increase in circulation. Posters were also exempt from duty in England, unlike in France, and London’s streets were awash with vast quantities of posters already at mid-century. Marc Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 1992), 34. Martin’s focus is press advertising. Also see W. Hamish Fraser, The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850–1914 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981), 34–46. By 1900 while a hundred million francs were spent on advertising in France, the English were spending twice as much. “Affiches,” Yves Guyot and A. Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, de l’industrie et de la banque (Paris: Guillaumnin et Cie., 1898–1901), 77; “Publicité,” Guyot and Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, 1170. Advertising has rarely been the focus of a sustained analysis in the studies of French consumer culture. See Aaron Segal, “The Republic of Goods: Advertising and National Identity in France, 1875–1918,” PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1995. Regarding French department stores, while Michael Miller underlines advertising as central in the retail strategies of the Bon Marché store, Lisa Tiersten points to entrepreneurs’ skepticism about advertising and the crisis among advertising experts on the efficiency of French advertising at the fin de siècle. See Miller, The Bon Marché; Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. On this phenomenon also see Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945, v.2 Intellect, Taste and Anxiety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 513–514; Martin, Trois siècles de publicité; Gérard Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, fonction et genèse: Thèse pour le Doctorat d’etat ès Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Académie de Paris, Université René Descartes, Sciences Humaines, 1982; Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 123–124. Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer culture, 1880s to 1910s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 94–95. Raymond Williams also notes that in the 1850s English advertising was “mainly of a classified kind, in specified parts of the publication.” Raymond Williams, “Advertising: The Magic System” in Simon During ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), 324–336: 324. On the representation of the modern world, see Stefan Haas, “Die neue Welt der Bilder: Werbung und visuelle Kulture der Moderne,” in Bilderwelt des Alltags: Werbung in der Konsumgesellschaft des 19, und 20. Jahrhunderts (Steiner: Stuttgart 1995), 64–77, cited in Wischermann, “Placing Advertising in the City” in Wischermann and Shore eds., Advertising and the European City, 23. The best studied topics in French advertising are the illustrated poster and the Havas Agency. Marjorie Beale’s The Modernist Enterprise: French Elites and the Threat of Modernity, 1900–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) includes the issue of the relationship between advertising and art as does Tag Gronberg’s Designs on Modernity: Exhibiting the City in 1920s Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). On the Havas Agency see Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires. Henry Sampson, A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times (London: Chatto and Windus, 1874), 598–599. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 604. Charles Dickens, Dickens’s Dictionary of Paris: An Unconventional Handbook (London: McMillan, 1882), 161.

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34. Georges d’Avenel, “La Publicité,” Le Mécanisme de la vie moderne (Paris: A. Colin, 1902), 121– 178: 143. 35. Octave-Jacques Gérin and C. Espinadel, Le Précis integrale de la publicité (Paris: Dunod, 1918), 5. First published in 1914. 36. L’Illustration, Dec. 22, 1883. An image of this is in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 72. 37. Stefan Haas, “Die neue Welt der bilder,” 70, cited in Wischermann, “Placing Advertising in the City,” 24. 38. Tiersten, Marianne in the Market, 257 n5. 39. On the idea of recasting old sites into new ones also see Terni, “Paris Imaginaire.” 40. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 599–600.

Chapter 1 Consumption as Urban Pleasure: The Rise of Modern Consumer Culture 1. On July-Monarchy consumer culture see Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); Karen Bowie ed., La Modernité avant Haussmann: formes de l'espace urbain à Paris: 1801–1853 (Paris: Editions Recherches, 2001); Alexander Gelley, “City Texts: Representation, Semiology, Urbanism” in Mark Poster ed., Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 2. Clemens Wischermann, “Introduction” in Wischermann and Shore eds., Advertising and the European City, 1. Since the sixteenth century a variety of forms of publicity were used, including posters, hawkers, trade cards, and pamphlets, as well as shop signs. See Marc Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France; Morag Martin, Selling Beauty: Cosmetics, Commerce, and French Society, 1750–1830 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), Ch. 3. 3. On the debate on luxe see Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004); Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 53. 4. Morag Martin, Selling Beauty, Ch. 3; Colin Jones, “The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisement, the Bourgeois Public Sphere and the Origins of the French Revolution,” American Historical Review 101:1 (Feb. 1996), 13–40. Eighteenth-century advertisements used symbols and arguments. 5. Alain Weill, The Poster: A Worldwide Survey and History (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985), 14–15; Martin, Trois Siècles de publicité, 32. 6. Martin, Trois Siècles de publicité, 40–41; Martin, Selling Beauty, Ch. 3. 7. Claire Walsh, “The Advertising and Marketing of Consumer Goods in Eighteenth Century London” in Wischermann and Shore, Advertising and the European City, 79–95: 80, 91. Cissie Fairchilds argues that a consumer revolution in eighteenth-century Paris occurred for the working class. Cissie Fairchilds, “The production and marketing of populuxe goods in eighteenth-century Paris” in John Brewer and Roy Porter eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993), 228–248. Josiah Wedgwood sold mass-produced pottery using press advertising, nice showrooms, and self-promotion aimed at a national market from the 1760s. Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (London: Harper Press, 2006), 62–74. See examples of elaborate English trade cards in Sarah B. Sherrill, Carpets and Rugs of Europe and America (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996), 172–173. 8. Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 275; Natacha Coquery, “French Court Society and Advertising Art: The Reputation of Parisian Merchants at the End of the Eighteenth Century” in Wischermann and Shore eds., Advertising and the European City, 96–112: 97. 9. Pharmaceutical products were prohibited from advertising until 1867, although some broke the rule. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848–1945 v.2, 517; Gaston Bonnefont, “La Publicité,” Revue hebdomadaire, Nov. 22, 1902, 444. 10. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (Hambourg: Virchaux; et Neuschâtel: S.Fauche, 1783) v.6, 118.

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11. Richard Wrigley, “Between the Street and the Salon: Parisian Shop Signs and the Spaces of Professionalism in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Oxford Art Journal 21:1 (1998), 45–67: 47, 53. 12. Wrigley, “Between the Street and the Salon,” 59. 13. Lithograph. LE JEU DE PARIS EN MINIATURE dans lequel sont representés des Enseignes, décors, maisons, boutiques et divers établissements des principaux marchands de Paris, leurs rues et leurs numéros. BNF Estampe. Wrigley, “Between the Street and the Salon,” 63. Artists who painted signs from the 1750s to the 1870s include Jean Baptiste Greuze, Carle Verneta, Théodore Géricault, Diaz de la Peña, and Eugène Delacroix. J. F.-Louis Merlet, “La Publicité” in John Grand-Carteret ed., L’Histoire, la vie, les moeurs, et la curiosité par l’image, le pamphlet et le document 1450–1900, v.5 1830–1900 (Paris: Librairie de la Curiosité et des Beaux-Arts, 1928), 313. Balzac’s Le Petit Dictionnaire critique et anecdotique des enseignes de Paris par un batteur de pavé was published in 1826. 14. Réjane Bargiel-Harry and Christophe Zagrodzki, The Book of the Poster (Paris: Editions Alternatives, 1985), 10; Weill, The Poster, 17. 15. BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie 1825–29.” Paris was a center of lithography, with more than 300 lithographic printers in 1839, while London with double the population of Paris had 70. Michael Twyman, Breaking the Mould: The First Hundred Years of Lithography (London: The British Library, 2002), 28. On perfume ads also see Elisabeth Barillé and Catherine Laroze, The Book of Perfume (Paris: Flammarion, 1995), 67–68. 16. BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie 1830–39,” “Eau de Cologne.” 17. BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie 1830–39.” “Poudre dentifrice conservatrice désinfectante.” 18. Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 39–40. 19. Baron de Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. C. J. Betts (New York: Penguin, 1993), 83. On the use of current events in early-eighteenth-century advertising see Colin Jones, “Pulling Teeth in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Past and Present 166 (Feb. 2000), 100–145. 20. Avril Hart and Emma Taylor, Fans (London: Quite Specific Media Group, 1998), 69. All the principal events in Swift's Gulliver’s Travels (1726) were depicted on both sides of a fan. “The Art History of the Fan,” The Penn Monthly 3 ( July 1872), 259–365: 364. 21. “The Art History of the Fan,” 364. Also see Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988); Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearance: The Symbolism and Representation of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 22. Gabriel Dardaud, Une Girafe pour le roi (Paris: Dumerchez-Nahoum, 1985); “La giraf à la mode,” 1827. Musée Carnavalet Engraving, Topo 90C. Thanks to Florence Lemoine for sharing her paper on the subject. 23. BNF Estampe “Etiquettes,” “Bonbon Saint Simonienne.” On Saint-Simon and feminism see Claire G. Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), Chs. 3 and 4. 24. See BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie 1835–39.” 25. BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie,” “Elixir du St.Allian.” 26. In 1842 the annual transaction of publishing in Paris was 10 million francs. Germain Sarrut and Saint-Edme (pseud. of Edme-Théodore Bourg), Paris pittoresque, rédiagé par une société d’hommes et lettres (Paris: 45 Rue de la Harpe, 1842) v.1, 405. For a comprehensive study of the publishing of illustrated books see Philippe Kaenel, Le Métier d’illustrateur 1830–1880: Rodolphe Töpffer, J.-J. Grandville, Gustave Doré (Paris: Editions Messene, 1996). On publishing also see Martyn Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 27. Maurice Crubellier, “L’Elargissement du public” in Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin eds., Histoire de l’édition française, v.3 Le temps des éditeurs. Du romantisme à la Belle Epoque (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 15–41. 28. Crubellier, “L’Elargissement du public,” 31; Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Gabriel Weisberg eds., The Popularization of Images: Visual Culture under the July Monarchy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 4. The number of new book titles increased from 3,357 in 1815, 6,739 in 1830, 11,905 in 1860 to 14,195 in 1875. Crubellier, ”L’Elargissement du public,” 31. 29. Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris. La Restauration 1815–1830 (Paris: L’Associaton pour la publication d'une histoire de Paris, 1977), 344. 30. Isaac Appleton Jewett, Passages in Foreign Travel (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1838) v.1, 155.

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31. George Sand, Consuelo, 1979, 11, cited in Crubellier, “L’Elargissement du public,” 31. It is hard to tell to what extent women read illustrated books. Publishers targeted women for novels and aristocratic memoirs. Martyn Lyons, Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France: Workers, Women, Peasants (London: Palgrave, 2001), 82 32. Amédée Pommier, “Les Musées en plein vent” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un (Paris: Ladvocat, 1831–34) v.8, 109–114. Also see images of merchants of print from the Restoration in Patricia Mainardi, Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 84–85. 33. Caricatures-omnibus. Nouvelle publication à bon marché (Paris, 1834). 34. See Margaret Cohen, “Panoramic Literature and the Invention of Everyday Genres” in Leo Charney and Vanessa Schwartz eds., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 227–252; Gluck, Popular Bohemia, 81–83. Some of the most famous panoramic literature included Muséum Parisien. Histoire physiologique, pittoresque . . . (1841) and Les Rues de Paris (1844) with 300 illustrations. Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840–2) was an iconographical classif ication of the French—mostly Parisian— population with a great emphasis on images. 35. Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un , n.p. 36. Les Cent-et-une nouvelles nouvelles des cent-et-un, ornée de cent-et-une vignettes dessinées et gravées par cent-et-un artistes (Paris: Ladvocat, 1833). This series was not completed. 37. Jillian Taylor Lerner, “The French Profiled by Themselves: Social Typologies, Advertising Posters and the Illustration of Consumer Lifestyles,” Grey Room 27 (Spring 2007), 6–35. 38. Le Tintamarre, Mar. 19, 1843. 39. Charles Holme, Henri Frantz, Octave Uzanne, Edgar Preston, and Helen Chisholm, Daumier and Gavarni (London: Offices of “The Studio,” 1904), n.p. Paul Gavarni was the pseudonym of Hippolyte-Guillaume-Sulpice Chevalier. 40. Bargiel-Harry and Zagrodzki, The Book of the Poster, 12. 41. Bargiel-Harry and Zagrodzki, The Book of the Poster, 22. 42. Bargiel-Harry and Zagrodzki, The Book of the Poster, 12. 43. Alain Weil, L’Affiche française (Paris: PUF, 1982), 19. 44. See Jennifer Wicke, Advertising Fiction, Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading (New York: Columbia University, 1988). 45. Bargiel-Harry and Zagrodzki, The Book of the Poster, 12. 46. Old Nick (pseudonym of E. D. Forgues) and J.-J. Grandville, Petites misères de la vie humaine (Paris: H. Fournier, 1843). The poster is reprinted in Charles Hiatt, Picture Posters: A Short History of the Illustrated Placard, 2nd ed. (London: G. Bell, 1895), 14. 47. For an analysis of this motif see Lerner, “The French Profiled by Themselves.” 48. P.-J. Stahl (pseudonym of Pierre Jules Hetzel) et al., Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux: vignettes par Grandville. Etudes de moeurs contemporaines (Paris: J. Hetzel et Paulin, 1842). 49. L’Illustration, Mar. 11, 1843, 29. 50. Kaenel, Le Métier de l’illustrateur, 386. 51. George Sand et al., Le Diable à Paris - Paris et les parisiens- Moeurs et coutumes, caractères et portraits des habitants de Paris, tableau complet de leur vie privée, publique, politique, artistique, littéraire, industrielle, etc. (Paris: J. Hetzel, 1845–1846). 52. L’Illustration, Mar. 30, 1844, 76. 53. L’Illustration, Jan. 11, 1845, 293–294. 54. James Cuno, “Charles Philipon, La Maison Aubert and the Business of Caricature in Paris, 1829–1841,” Art Journal 43 (Winter 1983), 347–354: 349, 352. 55. James Cuno, “Violence, Satire, and Social Types in the Graphic Art of the July Monarchy,” in ten-Doesschate Chu and Weisberg eds., The Popularization of Images, 17. 56. David S. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture, 1830–1848: Charles Philipon and the Illustrated Press (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 60. 57. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture, 60–61. 58. See Martine Contensou, Balzac et Philipon associés (Paris: Paris Musées, 2001). 59. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture, 61. 60. Kerr, Caricature and French Political Culture, Ch. 2. Jean Watelet, “La presse illustrée” in Chartier and Martin eds., Histoire de l’édition française v.3, 369–382: 371. After Le Charivari was sold to Armand Dutacq in 1836 Philipon remained as the editor in chief until 1842.

Notes 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79

80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

227

Le Charivari, Dec. 1, 1832. Le Charivari, July 12, 1833, 3. Le Charivari, Jan. 15, 1836. Le Charivari, Dec. 20, 1838, 3. Le Charivari, printed in Johann Geist, Arcades: The History of a Building Type, trans. Jane Newman and John Smith (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 504. Le Charivari, Nov. 30, 1836, 1. On the September Laws and La Caricature see Robert J. Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1989), Ch. 4. Les Modes parisiennes, Dec. 21, 1845, 818. Les Modes parisiennes, Feb. 11, 1844, 41; Dec. 27, 1846, 1241. La Presse, June 27, 1840, 3. Louis Huart, Charles Philipon et al., Paris comique, revue amusante des caractères, moeurs, modes, folies, ridicules, excentricités, niaiseries, bêtises, sottises, voleries et infamies parisiennes (Paris: Aubert, 1844), n.p. William Makepeace Thackeray, The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2002), 152–153. Thackeray also wrote on Philipon’s pear caricatures against Louis Philippe. Thackeray, 156–159. L’Album-revue de l’industrie parisienne (Paris: Garnier, 1844), n.p. L’Album-revue, n.p. Maurice Alhoy, “A propos de ce portrait et de beaucoup d’autres” in Maurice Alhoy, Louis Huart, and Charles Philipon, Le Musée pour rire, dessins par tous les caricaturistes de Paris (Paris: Aubert, 1839–1840) v.2, n.p. Fanny Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1985), 313. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes du vicomte de Launay, ed. Anne Martin-Fugier (Paris: Mercure de France, 1986) v.1, Mar. 29, 1837: 117–118. Frank Ames, The Kashmir Shawl and Its Indo-French Influence (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1997), 135. La Mode du châle cachemire en France, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Musée de la Mode et du Costume, 1982), 17. Two comedies entitled “Le Cachemire” were staged in 1810 and 1826. A. Durand, “Châles-Cachemires indiens et français,” Paris chez soi: revue historique, monumentale et pittoresque de Paris ancien et moderne (Paris: P. Boizard, 1855), cited in Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 55. During the late 1840s four million francs’ worth of Kashmir shawls were being imported into France annually. Commission française sur l’industrie des nations, Londres, 1851, Travaux de la commission française sur l'industrie des nations, 13 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie imperiale, 1854–1862), cited in Ames, The Kashmir Shawl, 156. Joseph Méry, Les Parures. Fantaisie par Gavarni. Histoire de la mode par le Cte Foelix (Paris: Gonet, 1840), 35–37. Méry, Les Parures, 37. Balzac, Cousin Bette, trans. Sylvia Raphael (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 45. Susan Hiner, “Lust for Luxe. ‘Cashmere Fever’ in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 5:1 (2005), 76–98: 85–86. On reader’s uses of Balzac’s novels see Judith Lyon Caen, La Lecture et la vie. Les usages du roman au temps de Balzac (Paris: Tallandier, 2006). Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 20, 1845 plate n.74. Judith Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780–1830 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 170. On this aspect see Hiner, “Lust for Luxe.” Petit Courrier des dames, Dec. 25, 1832, 273. Alida de Savignac, “Exposition Des Produits De L'Industrie De 1839,” Journal des demoiselles 7:6 (1839), 188–9, cited in Hiner, “Lust for Luxe,” 78. Au Paradis des dames: nouveautés, modes et confections 1810–1870, exhibition catalogue. (Paris: Paris-Musées, 1992), 126; Mrs. (Catherine) Gore, Paris in 1841 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1842), 250. Au Paradis des dames, 126; Moniteur de la mode, Jan. 30, 1847 8:30, 239–240. “Chronique de la mode,” Revue parisienne (Sylphide): litterature, beaux-arts, modes, 1843, 172. “Chronique de la mode,” Revue parisienne, 172. Jules Burat, Exposition de l’industrie française. Année 1844 (Paris: Challamel, 1844) v.1, 3. Monique Lévi-Strauss, Cachemires parisiens 1810–1880 à l’école de l’Asie, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Paris Musées, 1998), 93.

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95. La Mode du châle cachemire en France, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Musée de la Mode et du Costume, 1982), 25. 96. John Grand-Carteret, XIXe siècle en France, Classes, moeurs, usages, costumes, inventions (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1893), 685. 97. Statistics provided in Paul Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881 à la liberté de l’affichage. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris, Faculté du droit, 1912, 60. 98. See Rouchon: un pionnier de l'affiche illustrée (Paris: U.C.A.D., Musée de l'Affiche et de la Publicité: Editions H. Veyrie, 1983); Weill, The Poster, 23. 99. L’Album-revue, 1845, n.p. 100. At the time London gave much freer reign to advertising; it was full of poster-carriages, strangely shaped vehicles, construction fences lit at night, banners hung across streets, and sandwichmen on horsebacks. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 337; Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth Century London (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 58. 101. APP D/b1 204 Affichage, affiches, afficheurs. Ordinance of Sept. 20, 1847. 102. AN F/21/1130 Batiments 1851–60. Letter (Mar. 7, 1857) from the Prefect of Police to the Minister of State. 103. AN F/21/1130 Batiments 1851–60. Letter (May 17, 1865) from Epailly to the Director of the Administration of Theaters. 104. AN F/21/1046 file Préfecture de police. Théâtres de Paris. Vente et distributions de journux et d’imprmés dans les theâtres, 1831–47. 105. Pierre Pinon, “A travers révolutions architecturales et politiques, 1715–1848” in Louis Bergeron, Paris, genèse d’un paysage (Paris: Picard, 1989), 147–215: 208; Bernard Rouleau, Le Tracé des rues de Paris: formation, typologie, fonctions (Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1988), 102. 106. Geist, Arcades, 449; Simone Delattre, Les Douze Heures noires: la nuit à Paris au XIXe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2003), 136. Attractions in the 1800s included the Panorama de Wagram commemorating Napoleon’s great victory. Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 18. 107. Geist, Arcades, 464. 108. Nathaniel Parker Willis, Pencillings by the Way Written during Some Years of Residence and Travel in France, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Turkey and England (New York, Morris & Willis, 1844), 72. 109. Amédée Kermel, “Les Passages de Paris” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.10, 50–56, 69. 110. Geist, Arcades, 464. 111. Peter Hervé, How to Enjoy Paris: Being a Guide to the Visitor of the French Metropolis (London, 1816) v.1, 54–55. On the Boulevards of the 1800–1815 period, see Denise Davidson, France after Revolution: Urban Life, Gender and the New Social Order (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 112. Geist, Arcades, 467. 113. Victor Ducange, “Une demoiselle de Paris, en 1832” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.8, 34. 114. Antoine Caillot, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des moeurs et usages des français (Geneva: Slatkine, 1976) v.1, 322–323. First published in 1827. 115. Kermel, “Les Passages de Paris,” 50. 116. Geist, Arcades, 452; Edmond Texier, Tableau de Paris, 1852–1853, cited in Bernard Marrey, Les Grands magasins des origins à 1939 (Paris: Librairie Picard, 1979), 19. 117. Guide universel de l’étranger de Paris (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1849), 253. 118. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Oct. 27, 1837: 266. 119. Delattre, Les Douze Heures noires, 127–128. 120. Nicholas Papayanis, Planning Paris before Haussmann (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 64. 121. Pinon, “A travers révolutions architecturales et politiques,” 206. 122. See Louis Normand, Paris moderne, choix de maisons construites dans les nouveaux quartiers de la capitale et dans ses environs (Paris: Normand Ainé, 1843) v.1. Also see Johann Krafft, Choix des plus jolies maisons de Paris et de ses environs (Paris: Maison Bance ainé, 1849); Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 123. Francis Hervé, How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 (London: Anthem Press, 2007), 81, 73. First edition 1842.

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124. The Builder 3, Dec. 20, 1845, 607. 125. The Builder 5, Sept. 11, 1847, 430. 126. Donald Olsen, who describes Haussmann’s boulevard as the perfected street, emphasizes the sheer scale of the projects under Haussmann and does not underline the presence of many of the commercial practices predating the Second Empire. Donald J. Olsen, The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986). For an assessment of Haussmannisation see David Jordan, “Haussmann and Haussmannisation: The Legacy for Paris,” French Historical Studies 27:1 (Winter 2004), 87–113. 127. Roland Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées: trois siècles d'histoire (Paris: Editions de La Martinière, 1997), 85; L’Exposition, Journal de l’industrie et des arts utiles, May 1, 1844, 3; Alexandru Vari, “Commercialized Modernities, A History of City Marketing and Urban Tourism Promotion in Paris and Budapest from the Nineteenth-Century to the Interwar Period,” PhD diss., Brown University, 2005, 41. 128. Vari, “Commercialized Modernities.” On national marketing also see David Pinkney, Decisive Years in France, 1840–1847 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 129. Vari, “Commercialized Modernities,” 42. 130. L’Exposition, journal de l’industrie et des arts utiles, May 1, 1844, 1–2. 131. This title, as well as the fact that its office was at 27 Place de la Bourse, next door to La Maison Aubert, indicate that the magazine may have been bought by Aubert. 132. L’Exposition, journal de l’industrie et des arts utiles, May 1, 1844, 4; La Presse, May 5, 1844, 2. 133. Burat, Exposition de l’industrie française. Année 1844 v.1, 3. 134. L’Illustration, Apr. 13, 1844, 111. 135. L’Illustration, May 11, 1844, 173. 136. L’Exposition, journal de l’industrie et des arts utiles, May 1, 1844, 4; La Presse, May 5, 1844, 1. 137. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, June 8, 1844: 281. 138. Louis Huart, Les Prodiges de l’industrie! revue philosophique, critique, comique et fantastique de l’exposition de 1844 (Paris: Aubert, 1844). 139. AN F/12/2441 file Maure, formation d’un musée industriel. 140. AN F/12/2441 file Philippe, formation d’un musée industriel. The period of the Second Republic, marked by new policies, experiences, and experiments, should be researched further especially for trends in cultural and commercial evolution. 141. Marc Fournier, “Specialités parisiennes,” Paul de Kock et al., La Grande Ville. Nouveau tableau de Paris comique, critique et philosophique (Paris: Publications Nouvelles, 1842–1843) v.2, 61; Georges Cain, “Le Passage des Panoramas où fût fondée la Maison Susse Frères,” (Paris, 1910), cited in Geist, Arcades, 471. 142. Le Charivari, Feb. 28, 1836, “Museum Dantanorama”; Grandville: Das Gesamte Werk (Munich: Rogner und Bernhard, 1969), n.278. The initials J.J.G are not visible in the image reproduced here. 143. Pierre-Frédéric-Adolphe Carmouche, Varin and Louis Huart, Le Puff, revue en trios tableaux, par MM. Carmouche, Varin et Huart, ornée de ROY-GLAG, Parodie en prose rime de RUY-BLAS (Paris: Marchant, 1838), 8. It was staged at the Théâtre des Variétés on Dec. 31, 1838. 144. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Dec. 19, 1836: 50. 145. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Jan. 4, 1840: 582–583. 146. Hippolyte de Villemessant, Mémoires d’un journaliste (Paris: Dentu, 1867–1878) v.1, 97. 147. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Nov. 25, 1837: 279–282. 148. L’Album-revue, 1844, n.p. 149. L’Album-revue, 1844, n.p., Almanach-Bottin du commerce de Paris, des départemens de la France et des principales villes du monde (1842), 345. 150. Pierre Cadet, Susse Frères: 150 Years of Sculpture (Arcueil: Susse Frères, 1992), 27; Le Tintamarre, Aug. 5, 1855, 7. 151. L’Album-revue, 1844, 1. 152. A gold and jewelry shop noted that French goldsmiths procured “to the State nearly five million francs of revenue.” L’Album-revue, 1844, n.p. Jewelry- and clock-making and furnituremaking were the two largest fields of Parisian employment in this period. Albert Broder, L’Economie française au XIXe siècle (Gap: Ophrys, 1993), 74. On L’Album revue also see Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, “Paris et la presse illustrée durant les années 1840” in Bowie ed., La Modernité avant Haussmann, 328–337. 153. L’Album-revue, 1845, n.p.

230

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154. L’Album-revue, 1844, n.p. 155. Walton, France and the Crystal Palace, 7. Only 11 percent of the total Parisian industrial value represented export. Michel Lambert, “Recherches statistiques sur la grande industrie à Paris et dans le département de la Seine sous la Monarchie censitaire (1815–1848),” Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris X, 1973, 81. 156. L’Album-revue, 1844, 1. 157. Galignani’s New Paris Guide, or, Stranger’s Companion through the French Metropolis (Paris: Galignani, 1826), 666. 158. L’Album-revue, 1845, n.p. 159. Piedade Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés” in Au Paradis des dames: nouveautés, modes et confections 1810–1870, 16–24: 16. 160. Auguste Luchet, “Les magasins de Paris” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.15, 236–268: 241. 161. Aileen Ribeiro, Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres’s Images of Women (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 110. 162. Michael S. Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in France, 1800–1930 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 120. 163. Journal des dames et des modes, Nov. 20, 1817, cited in Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés,” 17. On shops under the Empire see Hector Lefuel, Boutiques parisiennes du premier empire (Paris; Morancé, 1925). 164. Miroir des modes parisiennes (Paris: L. Janet, 1823), cited in John Grand-Carteret, XIXe siècle, 682. 165. Luchet, “Les magasins de Paris,” 240–247. 166. Luchet, “Les magasins de Paris,” 259–260. 167. Luchet, “Les magasins de Paris,” 265–267. 168. Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise, 120. 169. Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 271. For an astute analysis of the fashion industry see Henriette Vanier, La Mode et ses métiers: frivolités et luttes des classes, 1830–1870 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1960). 170. William Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 88; Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 53–54. 171. Au Paradis des dames, 146–149; Coffin, The Politics of Women’s Work, 54. 172. Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise, 121. 173. César Daly, in Revue générale de l’architecture 1 (1840), col. 166, cited in Olsen, The City as a Work of Art, 44. During the 1830s delicatessens, dessert shops, and even bakeries became distinctive through the use of all kinds of ornaments. Le Journal des peintres, cited in J. Chamarat, C. Reinharez, C. Faivre, and G. Delcroix eds., Paris: Boutiques d’hier (Paris: Musées Nationaux, 1977), 27. 174. La Mode, Dec. 26, 1835, cited in Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés,” 19. 175. Bruno Ulmer and Thomas Plaichinger, Les Murs réclames: cent-cinquante ans de murs peints publicitaires (Paris: Editions Alternatives, 1986), 20. 176. Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés,” 19. 177. “Magasins de la Chaussée d’Antin,” BNF Estampe Va 285 a 9/34 qt. 178. Le Moniteur de la mode, May 30, 1845, 67; May 30, 1845, 43. 179. Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés,” 18. 180. L’Illustration, Dec. 9, 1843, 239, repeated, Nov. 25 1843, 207. 181. L’Illustration, 2:48, Jan. 27, 1844, 551. 182. “Magasins de nouveautés,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville v.1, 241–250: 243. 183. BNF Estampe Li Mat 30. 184. L’Illustration, Oct. 4, 1845, 79. 185. Huart and Philipon et al., Paris comique, n.p. 186. L’Illustration, Oct. 17, 1846, 109. 187. John Grand-Carteret, Les Almanachs français: bibliographie-iconographie, des almanachs-années-annuaires-calendriers-chansonniers-étrennes-états-heures-listes-livres d'adresses-tableaux-tablettes et autres publications annuelles éditées à Paris (1600–1895) (Paris: J. Alisie et cie, 1896), XC. 188. “Magasins de nouveautés,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville, 243. 189. Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 1846. 190. Rouchon: un pionnier de l'affiche illustrée, 39. 191. Leila W. Kinney uses the phrase in “Fashion and Figuration in Modern Life Painting,” in Deborah Fausch, Paulette Singley, Rodolphe El-Khoury, and Zvi Efrat eds., Architecture: In Fashion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 270–313: 271. 192. Le Charivari, Apr. 23, 1844.

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193. F.C. de Damery, De la Publicité commerciale, ou de l’annonce dans le Journal-Programme et dans les journaux à clientèle fixe (Paris: Frey, 1847), 23. 194. Jann Matlock, Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution, Hysteria, and Reading Difference in NineteenthCentury France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 253. 195. Louis Lazare, Revue municipale n.126 ( July 16, 1853), 1036. 196. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners, trans. Margaret Mauldon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 89. Originally published in the Revue de Paris. 197. The decrees of May 22 and June 28, 1791 abolished all requirements, even of prior declaration, endowing a complete liberty of billposting, only prohibiting anonymous posters. The Apr. 13, 1814 decree of the provisionary government prohibited any posting in Paris without a prior submission at the Police headquarters. The decree was repeated by the article 290 of the Penal Code. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 10–12; Police Ordinances, APP Usuel. 198. Law of Apr. 23, 1816 and law of June 16, 1824, Article 10. Gustave Le Poittevin, Traité de la presse, réglementation de l’imprimerie, de la librairie, de la presse périodique, de l’affichage et du colportage, et infractions commises par l’impression, l’écriture et la parole (Paris: A. Colin, 1902), 76; The penalty was 500 francs in 1816, reduced to 50 francs in 1824. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 76. Electoral posters were exempt from fiscal duty after 1881. 199. Charles-Jean Duval Colnet, L’Hermite du Faubourg Saint Germain (Paris: Pillet aîné, 1825) v.2, 191–193. 200. Law of Nov. 28, 1829, Police Ordinances, APP Usuel. The law required billposters to show the ability to read, a justification of residence, a certificate of good conduct with three witnesses, and the opinion of a police superintendent. A billposter wore a numbered badge. 201. “Aff iche,” La Grande Encyclopédie, inventaire raisonné des sciences, des lettres et des arts sous la direction de Berthelot (Paris: Société Anonyme de la Grande Encyclopédie, 1885–1902), 685. Possible penalties were a f ine of 25 to 500 francs or a prison term of 6 days to 1 month. 202. Law of Dec. 10, 1830, Police Ordinances, APP Usuel. The law allowed billposters, criers, and distributors to work with simple prior declarations at the municipal authority, but police authorization requirement returned for criers and distributors in 1834. Henri Avenel, Histoire de la Presse française depuis 1789 jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 1900), 307; Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 12. 203. Cited in Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 12. 204. The regime held a policy of noninterference in business operations, and governmental concessions and financial guarantees favored private enterprise. Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times (New York: Norton & Company, 1981), 158. 205. Law of Feb. 22, 1834, Police Ordinances, APP Usuel. 206. Pierre Gascar, Le Boulevard du crime (Paris: Hachette, 1980), 102. 207. AN F/21/1046 file Préfecture de police. Théâtres de Paris. Vente et distributions de journaux et d’imprmés dans les théâtres, 1831–47. The pertinent law was the Dec. 10, 1830 law permitting the publicity of dailies in public space by title only, and articles 9 and 10 of the police ordinance restricting publicity only to bulletins announcing the spectacles of the day. 208. Gascar, Le Boulevard du crime, 108. 209. Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature, 23. 210. The Police ordinance of Aug. 4, 1836 prohibited billposting on monuments, churches, and public edifices. APP D/b1 204, Affichage, affiches, afficheurs. The Tuileries Palace, the Palais Royal, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Stock Exchange were such edifices. The ubiquitous “Defense d’afficher (Do not billpost)” sign on public edifices dates from 1881, an ironic result of the cornerstone law on the freedom of the press and of billposting. 211. APP D/b1 204 Affichage, affiches, afficheurs. These are reiterated in the ordinance of Sept. 3 1851. 212. APP D/b1 204. A directive of Nov. 9, 1840 reminded police officers to seize posters in white paper and to levy 100-franc fines to violators. Ibid.

Chapter 2

Paris, the Capital of Amusement, Fashion, and Modernity

1. See Philippe Vigier, Paris pendant la Monarchie de Juillet (1830–1848) (Paris: Association pour la publication d’une histoire de Paris. Diffusion Hachette, 1991) and Delattre, Les Douze Heures noires. 2. See Carol Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and the Uses of Emulation (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Maurice Agulhon, Le Cercle dans la France bourgeoise 1810–1848 (Paris: EHESS, 1995).

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3. Camille Peretz, “The Development of the Parisian Tourist Industry as Described in Travel Narratives of American Travelers in the French Capital, 1780–1850,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2003. 4. Philip Mansel, Paris between Empires 1814–1852 (London: John Murray, 2001), 322–323. 5. Mansel, Paris between Empires, 41. 6. Bertier de Sauvigny, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, 126; W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 3. 7. Mariana Starke, Travels on the Continent: Written for the Use and Particular Information of Travellers (London: John Murray, 1820), 6. 8. Lady Morgan, France in 1829–30, 2nd ed. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1831) v.1, 47, 51. 9. Rebecca L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 2. 10. Lloyd Kramer, Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and Exile Experience in Paris, 1830–1848 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 15–22; Louis Desnoyers, Jules Janin, Old-Nick et al., Les Etrangers à Paris (Paris: A. Warée, 1844). 11. In the 1830s there were reading rooms, bookstores, shops, restaurants, cafés, gambling rooms, billiard rooms, bathing houses, food markets, theaters, art galleries, other exhibitions, brothels, a stock exchange, a real estate agency, betting offices, artists’ studios, dentists, hair stylists, and apartments. Geist, Arcades, 458; M. E. Roch, “Le Palais Royal,” Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v. 1, 21. 12. ADLA 133 J 43 Fonds Louis Bouchaud letter dated Sept 21, 1821, cited in Denise Davidson, France after Revolution, 79–80. 13. Paris in All Its Glory. A New Pocket Companion in Visit to France: Showing, more Particularly, How to Enjoy Paris in its various amusements, recreations, and pleasures (London: W. Ingham, c.1835), 34. 14. Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 299–300. 15. Lady Morgan, France in 1829–30, 271–273. 16. A. Lemaistre, A Rough Sketch of Modern Paris (London: J. Johnson, 1803), 175. 17. Lady Morgan, France in 1829–30, cited in Charles Simond, Paris de 1800 à 1900 (Paris: PlonNourrit et Ciel., 1900–1901) v.1, 383–384; Bertier de Sauvigny, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, 88. 18. Amédée Gratiot, “Le Bois de Boulogne” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.9, 109. 19. Gore, Paris in 1841, 20. 20. Jules Janin, The American in Paris during the Summer (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1844), 70. 21. Les Modes parisiennes, Feb. 4, 1844, 35. 22. Greg M. Thomas, “Women in Public: The Display of Femininity in the Parks of Paris” in Aruna D’Souza and Tom McDonough eds., The Invisible Flâneuse?: Gender, Public Space, and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 32–48: 34. 23. L’Illustration, May 4, 1844, 152. 24. Thomas, “Women in Public,” 34. 25. Victor Ratier, “Les Champs-Elysées” in Charles Philipon ed., Paris et ses environs. reproduits par le Daguerréotype (Paris: Aubert et Cie., 1840), 3; A. Baudin, “Paris illuminé” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.12, 122. 26. Petit Courrier des dames, July 10, 1833, 9. 27. Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 484–485. 28. Delphine de Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Aug. 2, 1839: 498–499. 29. Hittorff, Un architecte du XIXe, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Le Musée, 1986), 75–109; Jean Aillaud ed., Les Champs-Elysées 1789–1989 (Paris: Le Ministre de la Culure, de la Communication des Grands Travaux et du Bicentenaire, 1990), 33. 30. Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 322. The Avenue was completely lit in 1864. Ibid., 322. 31. Hittorff, Un architecte du XIXe, 75–109; Donald David Schneider, The Works and Doctrine of Jacques Ignace Hittorff (1792–1867): Structural Innovation and Formal Expression in French Architecture (New York: Garland Press, 1977), 431–493. 32. “Les Champs-Elysées” in Kock et al., La Grande Ville v.1, 290–291. 33. Hittorff, Un architecte du XIXe, 431–493; Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 18. The Summer Circus was renamed Cirque de l’Impératrice in 1853. Under the Second Empire Hittorff designed a series of buildings encircling the Place de l’Etoile. Hittorff, Un architecte du XIXe, 211. 34. Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 19, 101. On café-concerts see Concetta Condemi, Les Cafés-concerts. Histoire d’un divertissement, 1849–1914 (Paris: Ircam, 1992). 35. L’Illustration, Apr. 18, 1846, 333; Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 31. 36. Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 32.

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37. Les Modes parisiennes, July 13, 1845, 633; Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 103; Aillaud, Les Champs-Elysées 1789–1989, 33. 38. Les Modes parisiennes, July 13, 1845, 633. 39. Le Moniteur de la mode, June 30, 1846 plate n.117. 40. Honoré de Balzac, Lettres à Madame Hanska, III, Sept 23, 1846, 365, cited in Mansel, Paris between Empires, 367. 41. Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, La France et les Français vus par les voyageurs américains, 1814– 1848 (Paris: Flammarion, 1982), cited in Anne Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 331. 42. Georg Kohlmaier and Barna von Sartory, Houses of Glass: A Nineteenth-Century Building Type, trans. John C. Harvey (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 37; L’Illustration, Jan. 8, 1848, 295. 43. Kohlmaier and von Sartory, Houses of Glass, 37. 44. L’Illustration, Jan. 8, 1848, 295; L’Illustration, Dec. 24, 1847, 255. 45. Festivals included the festival of Fraternity in Apr. 1848, the festival of la Concorde in May, a ceremony rendering homage to the victims of the June Days in July, and the festival of the Constitution in November. Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 76. 46. Victor Hugo, The Memoirs of Victor Hugo. With a Preface by Paul Meurice, trans., John W. Harding (New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1899), 265, 266. 47. Amédée Pommier, “Charlatans, jongleurs, phénomènes vivants, etc.” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.2, 195–228: 196; AN F/21/1046 Réclamations des Directeurs Concernant les affiches, 1830–1856, Letter (Dec. 8, 1846), from theater directors to the minister of the Interior. 48. AN F/21/1046 Réclamations des Directeurs Concernant les affiches, 1830–1856. The theaters were Délassemens Comiques, Funambules, Petit Lazary, and Luxembourg. 49. “Champs-Elysées,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville v.1, 296. 50. “Quelques mots savants d’entrer en matière,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville v.1, 1. 51. M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainments (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 68. 52. Richard Becherer, Science Plus Sentiment: César Daly’s Formula for Modern Architecture (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984), 176. 53. Becherer, Science Plus Sentiment, 204. 54. Edouard Renard, cited in “L’Esthétique des grands boulevards,” Mar. 11, 1832, in BHVP AA 38. 55. John Sanderson, Sketches of Paris: In Familiar Letters to His Friends (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838), 62–63. 56. Un Flâneur, “Le Flâneur à Paris” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.6, 98, 104–105. On the flâneur see Keith Tester ed., The Flâneur (London: Routledge, 1994); Christopher Prendergast, Paris and the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Esther Leslie, “Flâneurs in Paris and Berlin,” in Rudy Koshar ed., Histories of Leisure (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Gluck, Popular Bohemia, Ch. 3. On versions of the flâneur in American culture in the Antebellum period predating commodity production see Dana Brant, The Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1–10. 57. Gaëtan Niépovié, (pseudonym of Karol Frankowski), Etudes physiologiques sur les grandes métropoles de l’Europe occidentale (Paris: Ch. Gosselin, 1840), 26–29, 40, 108, 118. 58. Jules Janin, Un Hiver à Paris, 3rd ed. (Paris: Cumer, 1845), 32, 93. 59. Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne (New York and London: Da Capo Press, 1986), 13. 60. Peter Hervé, How to Enjoy Paris, 51. 61. Francis Hervé, How to Enjoy Paris in 1842, 69, 81. 62. Louis Huart, Charles Philipon et al., Paris comique, n.p. 63. Honoré de Balzac, “Histoire et Physiologie des boulevards de Paris. De la Madeline à la Bastille,” in Oeuvres Complètes de Honoré de Balzac (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009), 445–456: 446–447. 64. Physiologies des cafés de Paris (Paris: Desloges, 1841), 104. 65. L’Illustration, Aug. 23, 1845, 411; Physiologies des cafés de Paris, 104. Also see Amaury Duval, “Une journée de f lâneur sur les Boulevarts du Nord” in Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un v.12. 66. Lady Morgan, France in 1829–30 v.2, 404. 67. Lady Morgan, France in 1829–30 v.2, 398. 68. Le Charivari, 1833, plates 1833–1834, “L’Intérieur d’un café,” n.p. 69. Haine, The World of the Paris Café, 53, 201. 70. John P. Hiester, Notes of Travel, Being a Journal of a Tour in Europe (Philadelphia: James M. Campbell, 1845), 97.

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71. Cited in Siegfried Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris, trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher (New York: Alfred A. A. Knopf, 1938), 70. 72. La Lumière électrique, 1881, cited in Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 147. 73. Bonnie L. Grad and Timothy A. Riggs, Visions of City and Country: Prints and Photographs of Nineteenth-Century France (Worcester: Worcester Art Museum and the American Federation of Arts, 1982), 226–253. “The picturesque” was used from the mid-eighteenth century in guidebook titles for artistic tourism. One of the first in this genre on Paris was Dezallier d’Argenville’s Voyage pittoresque de Paris ou Indication de tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau dans cette grande Ville en Peinture, Sculpture, & Architecture (1749). 74. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory, 240. 75. Daniel Oster and Jean-Marie Goulemot, La Vie parisienne. Anthologie des moeurs du XIXe siècle (Paris: Sand/Conti, 1989), 21; Bruce Mazlish, “The Flâneur: From Spectator to Representation” in Tester ed., The Flâneur, 43–60: 46; Boris Lyon-Caen, “ ‘L’énonciation piétonnière’; Le boulevard au crible de l’Etude de moeurs (1821–1867)” Romantisme: revue du dix-neuvième siècle n.134 (2006), 19–31: 21. 76. See in particular the extremely popular Paris Anecdote. Les industries inconnues (Paris: P. Jannet, 1854/1984) by the nightwalker, Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont. Also see Delattre, Les Douze Heures noires; Joachim Schlör, Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin, London, 1840–1930 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). 77. Janin, Un Hiver à Paris, 191. Ségolène Le Men and Luce Abélès, Les Français peints par eux-mêmes: Panorama social du XIXe siècle, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1993). 78. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd,” The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. T. O. Mabbott (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978) v.2, 505– 518. On the English equivalent of the flâneur—the idler or the lounger— see Albert Smith, The Natural History of the Idler upon Town, first serialized in 1842 in Punch as “Physiology of the London Idler” and which was inf luenced by the literature on the flâneur. 79. Heinrich Heine, French Affairs. Letters from Paris, trans. Charles Godfrey Leland, v.2 Lutetia (New York: United States Book Company, 1893) Dec. 11, 1841: 253. 80. Heine, French Affairs, 254, 257, 259. 81. Heine, French Affairs, 265. 82. Ludwig Börne, “Briefe aus Paris,” Gesammelte Schriften 9, 5–9, cited in Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books, 1997), 159. 83. Hiester, Notes of Travel, 51. 84. Caroline Le Roy Webster, “Mr. W. & I,” Being the Authentic Diary of Caroline Le Roy Webster, during a Famous Journey with the Hon. Daniel Webster to Great Britain and the Continent in the Year 1839 (New York: Ives Washburn, 1942), 164–165. 85. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson v.1, 1813–1835, ed. Ralph L. Rusk (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 386, 390–391. 86. Le Roy Webster, Mr. W & I 169; Anne-Claude Lelieur and Raymond Bachollet, Célébrités à l’affiche (Lausanne: Conti, 1989), 56. 87. Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 61–62. 88. Charlotte Bronson, The Letters of Charlotte Brinckerhoff, Written during Her Wedding Journey in Europe in 1838, with Her Husband Frederic Bronson and His Niece Caroline Murray, to Her Mother Mrs. James L. Brinckerhoff (Cambridge, MA: 1928 [1838–1839]), cited in Bertier de Sauvigny, La France et les français, 123. 89. Henry Coleman, European Life and Manners in Familiar Letter to Friends (London: John Petherham, 1849) v.1, 35; John Henry Sherburne, The Tourist’s Guide: Or Pencillings in England and on the Continent (Philadelphia: G. B. Zieher, 1847) cited in Bertier de Sauvigny, La France et les français, 123; Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835, 271. 90. Paris et ses environs par arrondissement. Distribué aux voyageurs dans les principaux hotels, Apr. 1845. Dollingen and Desorgy’s Le Panorama de l’industrie, guide de l’acheteur (Paris: Dollingen et Desorgy, 1837) also surveyed shops for tourists. 91. In July 1843 the Illustrierte Zeitung of Leipzig was launched, followed by, in Lisbon in 1845, A Illustração; Stuttgart, in 1853, Illustrierte Welt. Madrid. Jean Watelet, “La presse illustrée,” 374. 92. Watelet, “La presse illustrée,” 374. 93. Watelet, “La presse illustrée,” 375. 94. Watelet, “La presse illustrée,” 375.

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95. Articles in the first issue of The Illustrated London News included “Destruction of the City of Hamburgh by Fire,” “Foreign Intelligence,” “Awful Steam Boat Explosion,” “Law Intelligence,” “Central Criminal Court,” “Police,” “Sporting Intelligence,” “Fashions,” news of the court and the “Haut Ton,” and reviews of literature and the theater. The Illustrated London News, May 14, 1842. 96. L’Illustration, Mar. 11, 1843, 28. 97. Gluck, Popular Bohemia, 83. 98. G. M. Dreyfus ed., Annuaire de la publicité (Paris: Ollendorf, 1895), 171. 99. Later in the centur y the readership of the magazine changed to the conservative middle class. Jean-Pierre Goubert, The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age, trans. Andrew Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 120. 100. On the representation of traditional venues as modern sites also see Terni, “Paris Imaginaire.” 101. L’Illustration, Apr. 12, 1845, 103; Sept. 20, 1845, 590; Apr. 12, 1845, 106; Aug. 23, 1845, 410; Apr. 12, 1845, 170; Aug. 23, 1845, 410. 102. L’Illustration, Aug. 1, 1846, 344–345; Jan. 8, 1848, 295–296; Jan. 25, 1845, 325; Mar. 27, 1847, 57; May 2, 1846, 133–134; Oettermann, The Panorama, 93. 103. L’Illustration, Nov. 2, 1844, 132. 104. L’Illulustration, Mar. 2, 1844, 7–10. 105. L’Illustration, June 10, 1843, 231–234. 106. L’Illustration, Mar. 9, 1844, 24. 107. L’Illustration, Sept. 14, 1844, 52. 108. L’Illustration, Aug. 5, 1843, 361; Aug. 15, 1846, 373. 109. L’Illustration, Jan. 18, 1845, 316. 110. L’Illustration, Jan. 8, 1848, 293. 111. L’Illustration, Aug. 22, 1846, 391–392. 112. Reprinted in Edmond Texier, Tableau de Paris (Paris: Paulin et le Chevalier, 1852) v.2, 198, 201, 206. 113. L’Illustration, Feb. 3, 1844, 353. 114. L’Illustration, Dec. 16, 1843, 256. On women’s visibility see Jann Matlock, “Seeing Women in the July Monarchy Salon: Rhetorics of Visibility and the Women’s Press,” Art Journal 55:2, 73–84. 115. L’Illustration, July 4, 1844, 291–292. 116. Le Charivari, June 21, 1838, 3. Another image of the Ranelagh was published in 1839, and the Musard Concert was also featured. Le Charivari, June 27, 1839, 3; Le Charivari, July 24, 1838, 3. 117. Shops written about included a new market and the Bazar des Ménages, a “special shop for women’s work,” both on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle. L’Illustration, Jan. 27, 1844, 341; L’Illustration, Oct. 28, 1843, 115. 118. L’Illustration, Dec. 16, 1843, 243. 119. The Illustrated London News, Dec. 24, 1842, 524. 120. L’Illustration, Nov. 25, 1843, 207. 121. Martha Babcock Amory, The Wedding Journey of Charles and Martha Babcock Amory (Boston: Privately Printed, 1922), 19. 122. L’Illustration, Jan. 5, 1846, 275. 123. The Illustrated London News, Sept. 3, 1842, 272. According to Méry the English were taking French “tailors, seamstresses and designers by hundreds each year.” Méry, Les Parures, 203. 124. The Builder 5 (Sept. 11, 1847), 430. 125. David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 56–96. 126. David van Zanten, “Mais quand Baron Haussmann est-il devenu moderne?” in Bowie, Modernité avant Haussmann, 152–164; David Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 1, 8–10. Also see Papayanis, Planning Paris before Haussmann. 127. For balanced views of the old and new boulevards see in particular Robert Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Loyer, Paris Nineteenth Century; van Zanten, Building Paris; Christopher Mead, “Urban Contingency and the Problem of Representation in Second Empire Paris,” JSAH ( June 1995) 54:2, 138–174: 167. 128. The Illustrated London News, 1855.

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Chapter 3 Fashion Discourses in Fashion Magazines and Delphine de Girardin’s Lettres Parisiennes 1. See Annemarie Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” ou la conquête de l’Europe feminine (1797–1839) (Stuttgart: Jan Thorbecke, 2001); Annemarie Kleinert, Die frühen Modejournale in Frankreich: Studien zur Literatur d. Mode von d. Anfängen bis 1848 (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1980). On fin-de-siècle fashion magazines see Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. On fashionability see Sima Godfrey, “Haute Couture and Haute Culture” in Denis Hollier ed., A New History of French Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 761–769. 2. To cite a couple of early-modern examples, the exotic tulip became the unrivaled f lower of fashion by the 1620s, leading to the extraordinary Dutch speculation fever especially for the rarer types in the 1630s. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Vintage, 1997), 350–366. And carrots, which became predominantly orange in Europe by the seventeenth century, were regularly featured in Dutch paintings as exotic vegetables. A. C. Zeven and W. A. Brandenburg, “Use of Paintings from the 16th to 19th Centuries to Study the History of Domesticated Plants,” Economic Botany 40:4 (Oct.–Dec. 1986) 397–408; Ghillean Prance and Mark Nesbitt eds., The Cultural History of Plants (New York: Routledge, 2005), 71. 3. See Jennifer Jones, Sexing la Mode; Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: H. Holt, 2006). On eighteenth-century consumption also see Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime, trans. Jean Birrell (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Clare Haru Crowston points out that toward the end of the Old Regime fashion emanated not from the royal court but from the high society and fashion merchants. Clare Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 70. 4. Henri Vathelet, La Publicité dans le journalisme, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris, Faculté de droit (Paris: Albin Michel, 1911), 66. 5. Journal des dames et des modes, Nov. 20, 1817, cited in Da Silveira, “Les magasins de nouveautés,” 17. 6. Villemessant, Mémoires d’un journaliste v.1, 86. Editorial ads were also common in Le Bon Ton 1834. 7. La Mode illustrée under the Second Empire, then Petit Echo de la mode after 1879, would make decisive steps to broaden the aimed readership even further. Crubellier, “L’Elargissement du public,” 31. 8. Germain Sarrut and Saint-Edme eds., Paris pittoresque (Paris: 45 Rue de la Harpe, 1842) v.1, 405. 9. Broder, L’Economie française au XIXe siècle, 74. 10. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 128. 11. Twyman, Breaking the Mould, 130. 12. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 16. 13. Jean-Pierre Vittu, “Le printemps de la presse de mode,” Au Paradis des dames, 56–63: 56. 14. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 208. 15. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 208. 16. Le Moniteur de la mode, Dec. 30, 1847, 214. 17. Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (Oxford: Berg, 1998), 75. 18. Vittu, “Le printemps de la presse de mode,” Au Paradis des dames, 59. 19. Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 279. 20. Once Girardin sold La Mode in 1831, the magazine was about fashion in name only, as conservative politics became its main focus. Vittu, “Le printemps de la presse de mode,” 59. 21. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 479. 22. Vittu, “Le printemps de la presse de mode,” 59. The original title for the magazine was Nouveau Journal des dames ou Petit courrier des modes, des théâtres, de la littérature et des arts, which was changed in 1822. 23. Vyvyan Holland, Hand Coloured Fashion Plates 1770–1899 (London: Batsford, 1988), 93. On earlier fashion plates see Raymond Gaudriault, Gravures de mode feminine (Paris: Les Editions de l’Amateur, 1983). 24. Another female publisher of a fashion magazine was Marie de l’Epinay, who became the owner, editor in chief, and director of Journal des dames et des modes in 1836. After the magazine ceased publication in 1839 l’Epinay became an important collaborator for several periodicals for

Notes

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

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women. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 214. On the Colin sisters, who designed fashion plates, see Steele, Paris Fashion, 105–106. On taste professionals see Auslander, “The Gendering of Consumer Practices,” 81; Auslander, Taste and Power. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 194. Emily Johnston De Forest, James Colles, Life and Letters (New York, 1926), 141. Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 100–101. Petit Courrier des dames, July 10, 1833, 9, 81. “The Fashions,” The Illustrated London News, May 14, 1842, 6. De Forest, James Colles, Life and Letters, 143. For a satire of an aristocratic femme à la mode see Madame Ancelot, “A Leader of Fashion” in Pictures of the French: A Series of Literary and Graphic Delineations of French Character by Jules Janin, Balzac, Cormenin, and other Celebrated French Authors (London: Orr and Co., 1840): 65–72. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 140. Petit Courrier des dames, Mar. 31, 1832, 137. Petit Courrier des dames, Jan. 5, 1834, 1. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Apr. 12, 1837: 122. Petit Courrier des dames, Dec. 20, 1837, 271. Petit Courrier des dames, Dec. 20, 1837, 271. Petit Courrier des dames, Nov. 20, 1840, 220. Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 10, 1845 plate n.73. Le Moniteur de la mode, Sept. 20, 1846 plate n.125. Le Moniteur de la mode, Oct. 30, 1845 plate n.93. Le Moniteur de la mode, Jan. 30, 1846 plate n.100. Jordana Pomeroy, An Imperial Collection: Women Artists from the State Hermitage Museum (London: Merrell, 2003). See Ribeiro, Ingres in Fashion. Karl Brullov, “Portrait of the Shishmareva Sisters,” 1839. Oil on canvas. 284 x 213. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. L’Oriflamme des modes, 1841, plate n.55; Petit Courrier des dames, Mar. 31, 1843 plate; Jennifer Terni, “Elements of Mass Society,” 420. L’Oriflamme des modes, 1841, plate n.55. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture. Les Modes parisiennes, Jan. 5, 1845, 418. For a similar phenomenon in the 1790s see Jennifer M. Jones, “Repackaging Rousseau: Femininity and Fashion in Old Regime France,” French Historical Studies 18 (Fall 1994): 939–967. Les Modes parisiennes, July 1, 1849. Les Modes parisiennes, Feb. 23, 1845, 471. Balzac, “Histoire et Physiologie des boulevards de Paris,” 92. Walton, France at the Crystal Palace, 47. Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 52. On Madame Bovary also see Tiersten, Marianne in the Market, 1–2; Lyons, Readers and Society in Nineteenth-Century France, 86–91. Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 52. Les Modes parisiennes, Feb. 25, 1844, 64. Les Modes parisiennes, Dec. 21, 1845, 818. Les Modes parisiennes, Nov. 9, 1845, 771. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 286. Les Modes parisiennes, Feb. 11, 1844, 41; Les Modes parisiennes, Dec. 27, 1846, 1241. Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 10, 1843, 2. Le Moniteur de la mode, May 30, 1846 plate n.114 L’Illustration, Apr. 18, 1846, 111. Steele, Paris Fashion, 106. Kleinert, Le “Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 286. From 1839 Popelin-Ducarre had published a brochure entitled Journal spécial des nouveautés de la maison Popelin-Ducarre, modes de Paris, accompanied by an engraving designed by Jules David from October 1842. Françoise Tétart-Vittu, “Le catalogue,” Au Paradis des dames, 53. Le Moniteur de la mode, May 20, 1845, 34.

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69. Le Moniteur de la mode, Jan. 20, 1845, 226. 70. Le Moniteur de la mode, Oct. 10, 1844, 147. 71. Le Moniteur de la mode, Oct. 20, 1844: 154–156; Oct. 30, 1844: 163–165; Nov. 10, 1844: 171–172; Dec. 10, 1844: 195–196; Dec. 20, 1844: 203–204; Jan. 10, 1845: 218–219. 72. Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 10, 1844, 171. 73. Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 10, 1844, 172. 74. Le Moniteur de la mode, Dec. 20, 1844, 203. 75. Le Moniteur de la mode, Oct. 30, 1844, 165; Nov. 20, 1844, 180. 76. Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 20, 1844, 179. 77. Le Moniteur de la mode, May 30, 1845, 67; May 30, 1845, 43. 78. Le Moniteur de la mode, Jan. 10, 1845, 219. 79. Le Moniteur de la mode, Nov. 20, 1846, 177. 80. Le Bon Ton, Feb. 1, 1839, 111. 81. Le Moniteur de la mode, Apr. 20, 1843, 9. 82. The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons, Dec. 1, 1837, 275. 83. The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons, Sept. 1, 1841, 213. 84. The Illustrated London News, Oct. 8, 1842, 349–350. 85. On English fashion plates see Alexandra Macculloch, “Reality, Embellishment and Exaggeration: The Fashion Plates of Women’s Magazines in England, 1821–1839,” Master’s Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2000. 86. On this idea also see Anne Martin-Fugier, preface, Girardin, Lettres parisiennes, ii–viii. 87. Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 234. 88. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Aug. 25, 1837: 230. 89. Alison Finch, Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 131. 90. Martin-Fugier, preface, Girardin, Lettres parisiennes, v; Madeline Lassère, Delphine de Girardin: journaliste et femme de lettres au temps du romantisme (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 171. On Girardin also see Claudine Giacchetti, Delphine de Girardin, la muse de juillet (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004); Whitney Walton, Eve’s Proud Descendants: Four Women Writers and Republican Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 91. Martin-Fugier, “Preface,” Lettres parisiennes, v; Lenard R. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture: Famous Women in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Women’s History 16:4 (Dec. 2004), 69. 92. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture,” 69. 93. Martin-Fugier, “Preface,” Lettres parisiennes, v, viii. When the column did not appear for eighteen months between 1841 and December 1842 a rumor spread that the real Vicomte de Launay was the Countess O’Donnell, who died in August 1841. Lassère, Delphine de Girardin, 171. 94. Catherine Nesci, Le Flâneur et les flâneuses. Les femmes et la ville à l’époque romantique (Grenoble: ELLUG, 2007), 227. 95. Dorothy Kelly, “Delphine Gay de Girardin (1804–1855)” in Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy Wynne Zimmerman eds., French Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 193–197: 194. 96. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Sept. 28, 1836: 9. 97. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Sept. 28, 1836: 9. 98. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Oct. 19, 1836: 16. 99. The Dublin University Magazine 22 (1843), 714–715. 100. Annemarie Kleinert, “Balzac et la presse de son temps. Ses oeuvres et son activité vues par le ‘Journal des Dames et des Modes,’ ” L’Année balzacienne nouvelle série 9 (1988), 366–393. 101. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, Nov. 9, 1844: 335. 102. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Nov. 9, 1836: 26. 103. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, June 21, 1837: 165. 104. Finch, Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France, 136–137. 105. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Jan. 11, 1837: 71. 106. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Apr. 27, 1839: 452. 107. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Aug. 10, 1839: 503. 108. “Les Modes,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville v. 1, 205. 109. L’Empire de la mode (Paris: Chez Janet, 1817). 110. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, Mar. 9, 1844: 252.

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111. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, Mar. 9, 1844: 252. 112. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Jan. 22, 1840: 597. 113. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, Apr. 11, 1847: 465–470. On the negative connotations of the word “bourgeois” see Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie. 114. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Oct. 19, 1836: 21. 115. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Sept. 21, 1839: 534; v.1, Feb. 8, 1837: 86. 116. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.2, Apr. 20, 1844: 240. 117. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Jan. 4, 1840: 582–583. 118. Bertier de Sauvigny, La France et les Français vus par les voyageurs américains, cited in MartinFugier, La Vie élégante, 331. 119. Les Modes parisiennes, July 13, 1845, 633; Pozzo di Borgo, Les Champs-Elysées, 103. 120. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, May 3, 1839: 455. 121. Victoria Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830–1870 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 10.

Chapter 4 Charlatanism or Modern Merchandising?: the Mentalités of Publicity and the Commercialization of Culture 1. On market culture and consumption see Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture; Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace; Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. 2. Colin Mooers, The Making of Bourgeois Europe: Absolutism, Revolution, and the Rise of Capitalism in England, France, and Germany (London: Verso, 1991), 83. On middle-class wealth see Adeline Daumard, Les Bourgeois et la bourgeoisie en France depuis 1815 (Paris: Aubier, 1987). 3. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 299. 4. Balzac, “L’Agence Havas vue par Balzac,” Revue parisienne n.2 (Aug. 25, 1840). 5. La Nouveauté, journal pratique des modes 4 (1830), 94. 6. La Presse, July 1, 1836, 1. On Girardin see Pierre Pellissier, Emile de Girardin: Prince de la presse (Paris: Denoël, 1985). 7. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 54–59. The advertising revenue for Le Journal des Débats was approximately 200,000 francs in the late 1820s. Vathelet, La Publicité dans le journalisme, 34. 8. Mansel, Paris between Empires, 319. 9. La Presse, July 1, 1836, 1. 10. Zeldin, France 1848–1945 v.2, 514. 11. Grand-Carteret, XIXe siècle en France, 668, 672; Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing, 46. 12. Thomas Cragin, Murder in Parisian Streets: Manufacturing Crime and Justice in the Popular Press, 1830–1900 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 38. 13. La Presse, June 1, 1836, specimen, 1. 14. Grand-Carteret, XIXe siècle en France, 673. 15. Finch, Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France, 131. 16. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 64. 17. Zeldin, France 1848–1945 v.2, 513–514. Also see Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 123– 124. Other common categories were the broadside—a big plate placed usually on the last page—and the entrefilet—a small paragraph placed between two “nets” in order to separate it from an article. Vathelet, La Publicité dans le journalisme, 46, 64. 18. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 598–599. 19. La Presse, Apr. 29, 1845, cited in Marcel Galliot, La Publicité à travers les ages (Paris: Editions Hommes et Techniques, 1955), 104. 20. Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 104–105. The term le prière d’insérer continues to be used by French publishers today, but its function is different. 21. “Les Eaux Minérales d’Uriage,” Revue parisienne (Sylphide): littérature, beaux-arts, modes, 1843: 203–204. 22. Girardin, Lettres parisiennes v.1, Apr. 12, 1839: 448. 23. Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “De la littérature industrielle,” Portraits contemporains (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1870–1871) v.2, 444–471: 455; first published in the Revue des deux mondes 4:19 (1839).

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24. Gluck, Popular Behemia, 34. 25. Gluck, Popular Behemia, 35. 26. Robert J. Bezucha, “An Introduction to the History,” The Art of the July Monarchy: France 1830 to 1848 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 17–48: 40. 27. Honoré de Balzac, César Birotteau (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 71, 257, 192–194, 259. For the analysis of the new campaign in light of twentieth-century strategies, see Christian Denis, “César Birotteau et la communication publicitaire,” L’Année balzacinne, n.14 (1993), 157–170. Denis finds the methods of launching a new product, such as brain-storming for the name, “behaviorism,” uses of reputation and of professional values, and packaging, as precedents for patterns that would be fully developed later. 28. Balzac, César Birotteau, 259–261. The “newspaper ads—writing and inserting articles” category appeared in the commercial almanac Bottin in 1828. Advertising agencies handled both press advertising and bills. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 342. 29. Merlet, “La Publicité,” 319. 30. Balzac, Lost Illusions, trans. Herbert J. Hunt (London: Penguin, 1971), 64, 244, 246–247, 273, 362–363. 31. Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms (London: Verso, 1988), 109–129. 32. Balzac, Lost Illusions, 410. 33. Balzac, “Monographie de la Presse Parisienne” in Kock et al., La Grande Ville v.2, 129–208: 146–147. 34. J. B. Gouriet, Les Charlatans célèbres ou tableau historique des bateleurs, des baladins, des jongleurs . . . (Paris: Lerouge, 1819). 35. “Charlatan,” Le Trésor de la langue française informatisé. 36. BNF factum, 4 Fm 4416, F. C. Briant, Consultation pour le sieur Briant, pharmacien à Paris, contre le Commissaire de Police à Perpignan (May 21, 1828). 37. “Les Charlatans” is reprinted in Eugène Bouvy, Daumier: l’oeuvre gravé du maître (Paris: M. Le Garrec) v.1, n.350. Daumier also caricatured “L’annonce et la réclame” in 1839, condemning pseudo-medical ads. La Caricature, May 5 and June 9, 1839. He also noted that “Ads are in general a very useful invention for industry and consumers. However, too often, this method of publicity is exploited by charlatanism, intrigue and ridicule.” Le Charivari, Mar. 13, 1838. 38. Balzac, “Ce qui disparait de Paris” in Le Diable à Paris. Paris et les Parisiens. Moeurs et coutumes, caractères et portraits des habitants de Paris, tableau complet de leur vie privée, publique, politique, artistique, littéraire, industrielle, etc., etc. (Paris: Lévy Frères, 1857). 170–179: 176. 39. The national lottery, traditionally a part of the budget, was suppressed in 1836. During the Second Republic, a scandal erupted involving close associates of Louis Napoleon regarding a lottery for free emigration to California at the time of the gold rush. Gérard Descotils, Le Grand Livre des loteries: Histoire des jeux de hasard en France (Paris: La Française de Jeux, 1993), 35. 40. Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen v.3, 1836, 228, cited in “charlatan,” Le Trésor de la langue française. 41. Philippe Hamon, Expositions: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-century France, trans. Katia Sainson-Frank and Lisa Maguire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 133n. Hamon focuses on the Second Empire, but such words were popular also in the July Monarchy. The word puff originated in the mid-eighteenth century in England and was imported into French in the late eighteenth century. Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 274. 42. Balzac, Lost Illusions, 143–150, 183, 263, 273, 362. 43. Balzac, The Firm of Nucingen, in The Works of Honoré de Balzac (New York: Crowell, 1900) v.X, 2–3. 44. Such upward mobility, also depicted in Balzac’s Père Goriot (1834), was not systematic in reality. Balzac’s description of the lower middle class becoming middle class with facility was inaccurate. 45. Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (Paris: Curmer, 1840–1842), 573. 46. Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin, trans. Herbert J. Hunt (London: Penguin, 1977), 57, 60, 72. 47. Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin, 181. 48. Pommier, “Charlatans, jongleurs, phénomènes vivants, etc.,” 206. 49. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 69. Also see Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (New York: The Library of America, 1984). See Jonathan Elmer, Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass

Notes

50.

51. 52.

53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83.

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Culture, and Edgar Allan Poe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), for a discussion of publicity for literature and popular culture. Balzac collaborated on La Silhouette, Philipon’s earlier journal. See Alan B. Spitzer, The French Generation of 1820 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987) on the generation that came to maturity after Napoleon. La Caricature, Apr. 28, 1831, 199. La Caricature also parodied the nouveaux riches; it suggested that a brochure entitled Theory of the lucrative magnificence, or Art of making money, while ruining oneself at parties, should follow a Manual of the Charlatan. La Caricature, Feb. 5, 1835, 1. La Caricature, June 30, 1831, plate n.69; Apr. 18, 1833, plates n.265–266; Feb. 17, 1831, plate n.32. La Caricature, Feb. 17, 1831, 1. Stanislav Osiakovski, “History of Robert Macaire and Daumier’s Place in It” in Burlington Magazine 100 (Nov. 1958), 388–392: 389. On Macaire also see Nathalie Preiss, Pour de rire! La blague au XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). Osiakovski, “History of Robert Macaire,” 390. Each delivered piece was composed of four pages, including one lithographed illustration and Philipon’s legend. The first 100 drawings were published in Le Charivari from Aug. 20, 1836 to Nov. 25, 1838. A second series of twenty drawings was published in Le Charivari, Oct. 25, 1840 through Nov. 7, 1841 and in La Caricature, Sept. 11, 1842. Cited in Osiakovski, “History of Robert Macaire,” 389. Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin, 141–142. Osiakovski, “History of Robert Macaire,” 390, and F. Saint-Guilhem ed., Honoré Daumier: L’oeuvre lithographique (Paris: Arthur Hubschmid, 1978) v.1. James Rousseau, Physiologie du Robert-Macaire (Paris: Jules Laisné, 1842), 5. Le Charivari, Aug. 20, 1836, cited in Louis Provost, Honoré Daumier: A Thematic Guide to the Oeuvre (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989), LD354. Le Charivari, Sept. 30, 1836. Girardin won the trial but let his collaborators be convicted. Thackeray, The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, 165. Le Charivari, Nov. 26, 1836, “Robert Macaire Libraire.” Bezucha, “An Introduction to the History,” 42. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (London: Routledge, 1990), 76–77. Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin, 182, 193. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 76. Carmouche, Varin, and Huart, Le Puff, revue en trios tableaux, 2–3. Janis Bergman-Carton, The Woman of Ideas in French Art, 1830–1848 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 19. Holme et al., Daumier and Gavarni, n.p. In another caricature a bluestocking is eating alone in a restaurant, as men around her snigger. She says to herself: “No review of my novel yet! These journalists take no notice of me . . . It is inconceivable!” Ibid. Commerson, pronounced like commerçant (merchant), may be a pseudonym. Le Tintamarre, Apr. 9, 1843, 1; July 30, 1843, 1. Le Tam-Tam, Nov. 15, 1835. Eugène Dubief, Le Journalisme (Paris: Hachette, 1892), 219. Le Tintamarre, Sept. 20, 1845, 4. Le Tintamarre, Mar. 19, 1843, 1. Vathelet, La Publicité dans le journalisme, 45–46. L’Illustration, July 12, 1845, 509. Following the 1848 revolution, a new liberty of the press, and the ensuing keen competition, SGA ceased practice. During the Second Empire, it quickly became the agent of the four major newspapers, Le Journal des Débats, Le Siècle, La Presse and Le Constitutionnel. In 1857 it would merge with the Havas Agency—which during the July Monarchy provided all the major Parisian newspapers with foreign news—, thereby dominating both foreign news and press advertising well into the twentieth century. Vathelet, La Publicité dans le journalisme, 54; Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 299, 354. Gérard Lagneau, “la Société Générale des Annonces, 1845–1865,” Le Mouvement social n.146 Jan.–Mar. 1989, 5–25: 10. Le Tintamarre, July 25, 1852, 4. Philippe Hamon also refers to Le Tintamarre’s practices as an encounter between literature and advertising prose. Expositions, 133. Martin in Trois siècles de publicité en France argues that Le

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Tintamarre was “the privileged domain of charlatanism” and of “advertisements that exploit the public’s credulity,” full of fake medications, treatments for “secret diseases,” editorial advertising, and dubious financial advertisements promising fantastic returns. According to Martin Le Tintamarre, which appealed to urban shop owners and small manufacturers, “associated blackmail and advertising for good,” “above all contributing to the discrediting” of advertising. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 69–71. I see Le Tintamarre’s strategy and practices as much more complex, that it sought to promote straightforward advertising while criticizing and parodying editorial advertising. 84. “L’affichomanie,” Le Charivari, Sept. 14, 1836. 85. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 383. 86. Georges Pradalié, Le Second Empire (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1957), 49–50. 87. Le Tintamarre, Jan. 19, 1851, 5. 88. Le Tintamarre, May 12, 1850, 1. 89. Terdiman, Discourse/Counter Discourse. 90. See Gluck, Popular Bohemia. 91. See Roland Chollet, Balzac journaliste, le tournant de 1830 (Paris: Klinckseick, 1983); Pierre Caizergues, Apollinaire journaliste. Textes retrouvés et textes inédits avec présentation et notes. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris III, 1977. 92. “Les Tréteaux de Polichinelle,” Le Tintamarre, Nov. 22, 1846, 3. 93. Le Tintamarre, Dec. 31, 1843, 1. 94. Le Tintamarre, Feb. 14, 1847, 5. 95. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 193. 96. Le Tintamarre, Apr. 2, 1843. 97. Renée Mauperin (1864), cited in Jean René Klein, Le Vocabulaire des moeurs de la “vie parisienne” sous le Second Empire: introduction à l’étude du langage boulevardier (Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts, 1976), 205. 98. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 307. 99. Le Tintamarre, Mar. 19, 1843. 100. Le Tintamarre, Apr. 9, 1843, 1; July 30, 1843, 1. 101. Le Tintamarre, “Avis,” July 23, 1843. 102. Georges Roque, Ceci n’est pas un Magritte: Essai sur Magritte et la publicité (Paris: Flammarion, 1983), 131. 103. Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 126. 104. Le Tintamarre, Nov. 24, 1867, 8. 105. La Réclame, fragment d’un discours de Mme Servier prononcé dans une distribution de Prix à son Institut Musical (Paris: Claye et Taillefer, 1847), 1. 106. La Réclame, fragment d’un discours, 3. 107. Gustave Flaubert, Dictionnaire des idées reçues (Paris: Editions Mille et Une Nuits, 1994), 76. 108. Dollingen, Agence de publicité Dollingen (Paris, 1842), 1–2; Le Tintamarre, Sept. 24, 1843, 8. 109. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal (Paris: Bouquins, 1989) v.1, 169. 110. Le Tam-Tam, Dec. 20, 1835, 2. 111. Le Tam-Tam, Dec. 11, 1836, 1. 112. Le Tam-Tam, Dec. 11, 1836, 1. 113. Le Tam-Tam, Dec. 17–23, 1837, 1. 114. Anon., La publicité au point de vue industriel et commercial (Paris: Bénard et compagnie, 1858), 6–7. 115. “Lecture du journal,” Kock et al., La Grande Ville, 305–314: 312–313. 116. Fournier, “Les spécialités parisiennes,” 72. 117. Maurice Alhoy, “Agence paternelle,” in Alhoy, Huart, and Philipon, Le Musée pour rire v.1, n.p. 118. Auguste Villemot, “La Comédie contemporaine” (c.1865) in BHVP AA 119. 119. Elie Frébault, La Vie de Paris. Guide pittoresque et pratique du visiteur (Paris: Ventu, 1878), 206, 216. 120. Frébault, La Vie de Paris, 216–217. 121. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal v.1, 233. 122. Hamon, Expositions, 186. 123. See P. F. Mathieu, Le Puff et la réclame (Read at the public session held by the Société philotechnique, Nov. 28, 1852). 124. Le Tintamarre, Sept. 9, 1855, 3–4; Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin, 142.

Notes 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135.

136.

137.

138.

243

Le Boulevard, May 10, 1863, 7. Le Tintamarre, June 27, 1852. Le Tintamarre, Apr. 9, 1854, 1. Le Figaro, May 14, 1854, 4. Léon Delaverne and Charles Brune, Les Abus dévoilés depuis A jusqu’à Z (Paris: P. Masgana, 1857), 5–7. Edmond Texier and A. Kaempfen, Paris, capitale du monde (Paris: Hetzel, 1867), 312–315. On American press and advertising see David M. Henkin, City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 114–116. Paul-Ernest de Rattier, Paris n’existe pas (Paris: Balarac Jeune, 1857), 94–95. Arnould Frémy, La Réclame (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1857), 20. Jules Nast, La Réclame (Paris: Faure, 1863), 45. Louis Veuillot, Les Odeurs de Paris, (Paris: Palmé, 1867). 34, 40, 82, 123–124, 161, 155. By 1884 there were twelve editions. Pseudonyms were used instead of real names. Paul Lacombe, Bibliographie parisienne: tableaux de moeurs (Paris: Rouquette, 1887), 1867. On the Second Empire’s use of rituals and display see Harmon, Expositions; Mathew Truesdell, Spectacular Politics: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Imperiale: (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Patricia Mainardi, Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987). Such techniques were adopted by the regimes of the Third Republic as well. Jacques Boulenger, Les Tuileries sous le Second Empire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1932), 168–169; Kirsten Elisa Morrill, “Politics, Prosperity, and Pleasure: Fashioning Identity in Second Empire Paris, 1852–1870,” PhD. diss., Duke University, 1998, 56–57. See Jeffrey Weiss, The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp, and Avant-Gardism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). Weiss argues that avant-garde art in the 1909–1914 period was misunderstood and criticized as hoaxes and publicity stunts.

Chapter 5 Puff Marries Advertising: Mechanization and Absurd Consumerism in J.-J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde 1. J.-J. Grandville, Un Autre Monde (Paris: P, H. Fournier, 1844). J.-J. Grandville was a pseudonyme of Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard. 2. See Walter Benjamin, “Exposé of 1935” and “Exposé of 1939,” The Arcades Project. 3. Peter Wick characterizes it as “a visionary and highly illusionistic fantasy—almost a forerunner of Star Wars.” Peter A. Wick, “Introduction” in J.-J. Grandville, The Court of Flora: Les Fleurs Animées (NY: George Braziller, 1981), 3. On contemporary mores and culture as the source of Grandville’s art, as well as Grandville’s social and artistic milieu, see Kaenel, Le Métier d’illustrateur; Clive Getty and S. Guillaume, Grandville: Dessins originaux, exhibition catalogue (Nancy: Le Musée, 1986). 4. Wick, “Introduction,” in Grandville, The Court of Flora, 3. 5. According to Stanley Applebaum the public was “respectfully awed and disconcerted, and many people today still view the book as a random collection of whimsies and eccentricities.” Stanley Applebaum ed., Bizarreries and Fantasies of Grandville: 266 Illustrations from “Un Autre Monde” and “Les Animaux” (New York: Dover, 1974), xii. 6. Théophile Gautier, “Granville [sic],” in Histoire de l’art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans (Paris: Magnin, Blanchard et Cie, 1858–1859), v.5, 64. The obituary appeared in La Presse, Mar. 29, 1847. Cited in Getty and Guillaume, Grandville: dessins originaux, 7. An homage by Grandville’s friend Edouard Charton appeared in L’Illustration on Mar. 27, 1847 with a portrait by Charles Geoffroy. 7. harles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1976–1977) v.2, 558, 604. 8. Joseph Méry, in J.-J. Grandville, Les Etoiles, dernière féerie. Astronomie des dames par Cte Foelix (Paris: G. de Gonet, 1849), xi. 9. Charles Blanc, “Grandville (1803–1847)” in Les Artistes de mon temps (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1876), 275–312. The article is also in G. Havard’s 1854 edition of Métamorphoses du jour. 10. Champf leury was nostalgic for the bygone period of “romantic,” “pittoresque” illustrations. Kaenel, Le Métier d’illustrateur, 6.

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11. Getty and Guillaume, Grandville: Dessins originaux, 340. 12. On Grandville’s use of allegory see Michele Hannoosh, “The Allegorical Artist and the Crises of History: Benjamin, Grandville, Baudelaire,” in Word & Image, 10:1 ( Jan–Mar. 1994), 38–54; Hannoosh, Baudelaire and Caricature: From the Comic to an Art of Modernity (University Park: Penn State Press, 1992), 158–172. For the inf luence on Grandville of the doctrine of correspondences stemming from the mythical and utopian-socialist traditions, as well as the idea of metamorphosis that dates back to Ovid, see Asendorf, Batteries of Life, 36–40. 13. Mise-en-abyme, a term of art history, had been used in earlier works. Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (c.1790–1815), for example, consists of many stories-within-stories. The narrative of Potocki’s work, however, is straightforward and does not play with the viewpoints of the author nor is it self-referential. These aspects would become common in the modern and the postmodern novels of the twentieth century. See Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Fiction (Waterlow, Ont: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980). 14. Annie Renonciat, La Vie et l’oeuvre de J. J. Grandville (Paris: ACR Edition, 1985), 230. Delord also wrote the texts of Grandville’s Cent proverbs (1844) and Les Fleurs animées (1847). For interpretations of the pencil and pen episode also see Kaenel, Le Métier d’illustrateur 1830–1880. 15. Applebaum characterizes the text as “generally a lame, hotchpotch attempt to group and interpret pictures that were conceived independently.” Appelbaum, Bizarreries and Fantasies of Grandville, xi. A manuscript project by Grandville in a private collection attest to the extent to which Grandville participated in the text, including the title and the subtitle. Renonciat, La Vie et l’œuvre de J. J. Grandville, 230. 16. Michel Melot, “Le Texte et l’image” in Chartier and Martin eds., Histoire de l’édition française v.3, 329–355: 336. 17. Grandville’s contract, signed with Fournier in Dec. 1842, specified that the text would be written by a writer, at the publisher’s expense. Renonciat, La Vie et l’oeuvre de J. J. Grandville, 230. 18. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 9–10, 17. 19. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 10. 20. Carmouche, Varin and Huart, Le Puff, 3. 21. Thanks to James Rubin for this idea. 22. Elizabeth Anne McCauley, Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848–1871, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 22. 23. L’Illustration, Mar. 11, 1843, 29. 24. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 18–19. 25. Genette, Paratexts, 104–116. 26. Balzac, “Monographie de la Presse Parisienne,” 146–147. 27. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 17. 28. Applebaum, Bizarreries and Fantasies of Grandville, 2. 29. Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 236. 30. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 17–18. 31. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 18, 22–23. 32. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 17–18. 33. Théophile Gautier, Histoire de l’art dramatique v. 5, 212, cited in Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 274. 34. Amédée-Charles-Henry de Noé (pseudonym Cham), Revue comique de l’exposition de l’industrie (Paris: Aubert et Cie., 1849), 1–11. 35. Barthélemy, Jouhaud and Bricet, Un Deluge d’inventions, revue de l’exposition de l’industrie, vaudille en trois actes. Théâtre des Délassemens-Comiques, July 28, 1849, 5, 13. 36. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 35, 45–48, images 44–48. 37. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 206. 38. “MARIAGES. L’honorable Maison DE FOY. la première de l’Europe,” Le Tintamarre, June 23, 1867, 8. 39. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 62. 40. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 70. 41. Contensou, Balzac et Philipon associés, 20. 42. Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), 165. 43. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 70.

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44. This caricature seems to make fun of the French custom of mothers with eligible daughters soliciting prospective sons-in-law while keeping their daughters away from men. For a discussion of this custom see Trollope, Paris and the Parisians in 1835. 45. Hannoosh, “The allegorical artist and the crises of history,” 46. 46. Carmouche, Varin and Huart, Le Puff, 2–3. 47. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 233. 48. Roque, Ceci n’est pas un Magritte, 132. 49. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 239. 50. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 237–240. 51. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 239. 52. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 45. 53. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 74–75. 54. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 271. 55. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 271–272. 56. Umberto Eco, De Superman au surhomme, trans. Myriem Bouzaher (Paris: Grasset, 1978). 57. Grandville, Un Autre Monde, 288–292. 58. For the vogue for the rebus with Egyptian hieroglyphs see Kaenel, Le Métier d’illustrateur, 227. 59. “Ah! crois-moi, ami lecteur, ne fais pas comme cet [imbécile qui se casse la tête pour me deviner.],” Applebaum, Bizarreries and Fantasies of Grandville, 7. 60. Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, 165. 61. Hannoosh, Baudelaire and Caricature, 163. Hannoosh sees Grandville and Baudelaire as the central figures in Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. 62. Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe Siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1981), 195, 191. 63. Lebende Bilder aus dem modernen Paris (Cologne 1863–1866) II, 292–294, cited in Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe Siècle, 194. 64. Le Tintamarre, cited in Lebende Bilder aus dem modernen Paris, II, 292–294, cited in Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe Siècle, 194. 65. Roque, Ceci n’est pas un Magritte. 66. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 76. 67. “Cacao Van Houten.” BN Estampe “Publicité: confiture, chocolat, 1900–1909.” See Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995) for similar examples of Pears soap advertisements. 68. BNF Estampe “Publicité 1900–1910.” “Savon Dentifrice du Docteur Pierre.”

Section II 1848–1914 1. Goubert, The Conquest of Water, 121–122. 2. Jacques Wolgensinger, Histoire à la une: la grande aventure de la presse (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 78–79; Avenel, Histoire de la Presse française, 854. 3. Frank Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising (Garden City, NY: Double Day, Doran & Company, 1929), 244. On the department store see Miller, The Bon Marché; Pierre Giffard, Paris sous la Troisième République: les grands bazars (Paris: Havard, 1882), 230. 4. Le Tintamarre, 10 Mar. 1867, 8. 5. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 601. 6. Emile Mermet, La Publicité en France: guide-annuaire (Paris: Chaix, 1878), 79–80; H. Laffite, La Réclame est l’âme du commerce. Traité de publicité (Paris: Laffite, 1890), 13; Hart and Taylor, Fans, 117. 7. Léon Duclos, Des Transformations du commerce de détail en France au dixneuvième-siècle, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris, Faculté de droit (Paris: Boyer, 1902), 52. 8. Bonnefont, “La Publicité,” BHVP AA 119; “Les jolies boîtes en tôle,” Polichinelle 1 ( Jan. 1981), 17–19. 9. Lawrence Birken, Consuming Desire: Sexual Science and the Emergence of a Culture of Abundance, 1871–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 118; Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds, 9–10. 10. André Kaspi and Antoine Marès eds., Le Paris des étrangers (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1989), 39.

246 Chapter 6

Notes Boulevard Culture, Consumption, and Spectacle

1. Georges Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards: Madeleine-Bastille (Paris: Quantin, 1896), 42. Montorgueil was the director of the faits divers section of L’Eclair. 2. Denis Caillaud ed., Les Grands Boulevards, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1985), 5. 3. On the demolition of streets under the Second Empire see Edouard Fournier, Paris Démoli (Paris: Auguste Aubry, 1855). Marcel Carné’s film “Les Enfants du paradis” (1943) recreated the world of popular theaters of the Boulevard du Temple. 4. Eustace A. Reynolds-Ball, Paris in Its Splendour (London: D. Estes and Co., 1900), 190. 5. On the consumer as a spectator also see Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle (Paris: Gallimard, 1996); Jean Baudrillard, La Société de consummation, ses mythes, ses structures (Paris: S.G.P.P., 1970); T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999); Charney and Schwartz ed., Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life; Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 6. Bernard Landau, Claire Monod, and Evelyne Lohr, Les Grands Boulevards: un parcours d’innovation et de modernité (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2000); Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, Ch. 1; Romantisme: revue du dix-neuvième siècle n.134 (2006), special issue on the Grands Boulevards. 7. K. Baedeker, Paris and Environs (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1888), 68. The name of the Métro station “Rue Montmartre” in Paris was changed in the 1990s to “Grands Boulevards,” giving them due historical recognition. 8. Edmond Texier, “Les boulevards,” Tableau de Paris (Paris: Paulin et le Chevalier, 1852) v.1, 30. 9. Paris chez soi, 52. 10. L’Illustration, Aug. 25, 1855, 141. 11. Louis Lazare, “Promenades dans Paris. Les boulevards intérieurs de Paris,” Revue municipale ( July 20, 1857). 12. Lazare, “Promenades dans Paris,” 43–45. Charles Auberive (pseudonym of Mlle de Vare) also observed in 1860 that the new streets of “beautiful modern neighborhoods” were almost deserted, whereas the Grands Boulevards were full of life. Voyage d’un curieux dans Paris (Paris: V. Sarlit, 1860), 53. 13. Julie de Marguerittes, The Ins and Outs of Paris; or, Paris by Day and Night (Philadelphia: W. White Smith, 1855), 29, 30. 14. Musée Carnavalet Estampe TOPO PC 141 C. 15. E. La Bédollière, “Les Boulevards de la Porte Saint-Martin à la Madeleine,” in Paris Guide, 1868. BHVP AA 38, 1293–1294. 16. Alfred Delvau, Les Plaisirs de Paris: Guide pratique et illustré, (Paris: A. Faure, 1867), 19; Albert Wolff, Mémoires du boulevard (Paris: Libr. Centrale, 1866), 1. 17. James McCabe, Paris by Sunlight and Gaslight (Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1870), 661. 18. Delvau, Les Plaisirs de Paris, 21. 19. The Illustrated London News, Aug. 18, 1855, 218. Also see The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1869, 27. 20. Le Boulevard, sample issue, Dec. 1, 1861, 1. 21. Delvau, Les Plaisirs de Paris, 17–18. 22. Xavier Aubryet and A. P. Martial, n.t. (Paris, 1878), vii, in BHVP AA 38; Richard Whiteing, Paris of To-Day (New York: The Century, 1900), 172. 23. Richard H. Davis, About Paris (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1895), 16. 24. Guy de Maupassant, “Madeleine Bastille,” Le Gaulois, Nov. 9, 1880, in Oeuvres complètes v.14, Chroniques littéraires et chroniques parisiennes (Paris: M. Gonon, 1970), 84. 25. APP D/b1 204. Report (Nov. 11, 1849) by the Direction of Sanitation and Lighting. File Delion. 26. McCauley, Industrial Madness, 22, 94, 142. On publicizing photography see 76–145. 27. Biscotin, Le Spectacle dans la rue, grande revue nouvelle de l’année 1861, en 20 tableaux . . . couplets de Biscotin, musique de Pont-Neuf (Paris: Koch, 1861). Another spectacle mentioned is “atmospheric roads” for replacing railroads.

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28. Paul Sentenac, “Transports et moyens de locomotion” in Grand-Carteret, L’Histoire, La vie, Les moeurs v.5, 350. 29. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture,” 72. 30. Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 37, 42. 31. Engraving by Everson and Deroy (1884), after a drawing by Henri de Hem, in Le Journal illustré, n.5. (Mar. 14–20, 1864), Musée Carnavalet, Topo 42 C 1; Dubief, Le Journalisme, 215. 32. Dubief, Le Journalisme, 215. 33. The paper’s anti-Dreyfus stance was mainly responsible for its decline. The figure went down to 800,000 in 1900. Jacques Wolgensinger, Histoire à la une: la grande aventure de la presse (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 78–79; Avenel, L’Histoire de la Presse française, 854. In 1908 circulation numbers of other popular newspapers were: Le Petit Parisien 1,200,000; Le Journal 850,000; Le Matin 525,000. 34. Dubief, Le Journalisme, 189. 35. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité 1879–1880, file Delalande. 36. Le Journal illustré, Jan. 30, 1887. 37. Michael B. Palmer, Des Petits journaux aux grandes agences: Naissance du journalisme moderne (Paris: Aubier, 1983), 15. 38. APP D/b1 204. Etude sur la publicité industrielle et commerciale, June 1917, 71. This is a much more detailed and extended version of a prewar report focusing on the Havas Agency. It seems to be the result of a decision to observe the activities of the Havas Agency and its potential as an organ of propaganda. Also after the war, advertising techniques began to change quickly, and the state became much more aware than before of their role in commerce. The report begins with a premise of patriotism and economic competition against other nations. The earlier report is at the AN, F/7/12842 (12) May 30, 1914. 39. Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 36; A. Michele, “Salle de Dépêche du Figaro” (1879). BNF Estampe Va 286 t.3 9th arr./35 qt.; Dubief, Le Journalisme, 185. 40. BNF Estampe Va 286 t.7 9th arrondissement/359t. 1879. 41. Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 36. 42. Edouard Fournier, Histoire des Enseignes de Paris (Paris: E. Dentu, 1884), 439. 43. Le Petit Journal, Sept. 9, 1891, BNF Estampe Va 286 t.7 9th arr./35qt; Dubief, Le Journalisme, 188–189. 44. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities; On the Musée Grévin also see Mark B. Sandberg, Living Pictures, Missing Persons: Mannequins, Museums, and Modernity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 45. Pierre Louys, “Le Boulevard” (c.1914), n.p., BHVP AA 38. Louys described the kingdom of the press as consisting of the Place and the Avenue de l’Opéra, Rue Richelieu, Rue du Croissant, Rue Montmartre, Rue du Helder, Rue Drouot, Rue Réaumur and Rue La Fayette—in sum, the area near the Opéra and the Stock Exchange. 46. Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 42. 47. APP D/a1 62. Voitures de publicité. Files Peinte, Taullard, Hefty, Villard, Maugras, and Montaut; Musée de la Publicité, Centre de Documentation, P. Bruyant, ‘Fiacres-réclame à demi-tarif.’ Old England 1881–1887; Giffard, Paris sous la Troisième République, 233; Pierre Vidal, Paris qui crie. Petits métiers (Paris: G. Chamerot, 1890). 48. George Bastard, Paris qui roule (Paris: G. Chamerot, 1889), 174. 49. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885 ( July 1878). 50. APP D/a1 62 Voitures de publicité. Files Peinte, Taullard, Hefty, Villard, Maugras, and Montaut; Musée de la Publicité, Centre de Documentation, P. Bruyant, “Fiacres-réclame à demi-tarif.” Old England 1881–1887. 51. Bastard, Paris qui roule, 174. 52. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 169. 53. Le Soleil, Jan. 9, 1889, cited in Marie de Thézy, Paris, la rue (le mobilier urbain du Second Empire à nos jours) (Paris: Société Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1976), 71. 54. Fournier, Histoire des enseignes de Paris, 441. 55. La Lumière électrique, 1881, image in Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 117. 56. “A Summer Evening on the Paris Boulevards,” The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1869. 57. McCabe, Paris by Sunlight, 644. On prostitution see Alain Corbin, Les Filles de Noce (Paris: Flammarion, 1978). 58. Amicis, cited in Reynolds-Ball, 187–188.

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Notes

59. Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 76. 60. Marcel Roncayolo, “Logiques urbaines,” in Histoire de la France urbaine, v.4, ed. Maurice Agulhon (Paris: Seuil, 1983); David P. Jordan,Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (New York: The Free Press, 1995). 61. Caillaud, Les Grands Boulevards, 199. 62. Henry James, Parisian Sketches: Letters to the New York Tribune 1875–1876 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), 189. 63. Henry James, The Tragic Muse (London: Penguin, 1995), 74. 64. James, The Tragic Muse, 113. 65. Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (London: Penguin, 1989). 66. La Liberté (Sept. 19, 1876). “Nos Informations. Les hommes-affiches.” APP D/b1 203. 67. Georges Maillard, “L’homme-affiche,” Le Pays, Sept. 20, 1876, APP D/b1 203. 68. A. Coffignon, Paris-vivant. Le pavé parisien (Paris: Librairie illustrée, 1890), 67–68. 69. Elie Frébault, La Vie de Paris. Guide pittoresque et pratique du visiteur (Paris: Ventu, 1878), 211. 70. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 17; Georges Maillard, “L’homme-affiche,” Le Pays (Sept. 20, 1876), APP D/b1 203. 71. La Caricature, Jan. 21, 1888, 1. 72. Béraldi characterized Robida’s art as “fantastic, scientific, enchanting . . . future-oriented and divinatory, Gallic, Rebelaisian, Parisian, eccentric and feminist.” Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle (Paris: Conquet, 1885–1892), cited in Marcus Osterwalder ed., Dictionnaire des illustrateurs, 1800–1914 (Neuchatel: Ides et Calendes, 1989), 903. 73. Ordinance of Nov. 20, 1888, cited in Edouard Feltaine, De la Publicité commerciale, annonces commerciales et industrielles, notes d’histoire, de doctrine et de jurisprudence, Thèse de droit. Université de Caen, Faculté de droit, Caen, 1903, 373. 74. Coffignon, Paris-vivant, 127–128. 75. Coffignon, Paris-vivant, 127–128. 76. APP D/b1 204. Etude sur la Publicité, 42. La Publicité ( Jan. 1909), 23. 77. Edmond de Goncourt et al., Les Types de Paris (Paris: Plon, 1889). 78. Coffignon, Paris-vivant, 129. 79. Paul Pottier, “La Psychologie des manifestations parisiennes,” in La Revue des revues (1899), 573. On the emergence of the mass public see Gregory Shaya, “The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860–1910,” American Historical Review 109:1, 41–78. 80. Elie Frébault, “Curiosités parisiennes. Les industries de la rue,” L’Histoire (May 26, 1870), in APP D/b1 197, Camelots, crieurs, distributeurs. 81. Frébault, “Curiosités parisiennes”; Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 44. 82. See Vincent Milliot, Les cris de Paris ou le peuple travesti: les représentations des petits métiers parisiens, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1995). For the nineteenth century see Carle Vernet, Les Cris de Paris (1820); Joseph Mainzer, “Les Cris de Paris,” Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (Paris: L. Curmer, 1841) v.4. For earlier types, Victor Fournel wrote several volumes: Tableau du Vieux Paris. Les spectacles populaires et les artistes des rues (Paris, 1863); Les Rues du vieux Paris. Galerie populaire et pittoresque (Paris, 1879); Les Cris de Paris, types et physionomies d’autrefois (Paris, 1887); Also see Alfred Franklin, Les Rues et les cris de Paris au XIIIe siècle (Paris: L. Willem, 1874) and La Vie privée d’autrefois, arts et métiers, modes, moeurs, usages des Parisiens du XII au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie. 1887). 83. Ferdinand Bloch, Types du boulevard (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1880), iii–v. 84. Frébault, La Vie de Paris, 311, 16, 49. 85. Bloch, Types du boulevard, 17. 86. Louis Paulian, “Une heure à la terrasse d’un café,” Le Monde moderne (1895), 421–425. 87. Paulian, “Une heure à la terrasse d’un café,” 420–421. 88. Edmond Pilon, “Le Crieur de Dernières Nouvelles,” in Octave Uzanne et al., Figures de Paris, ceux qu’on rencontre et celles qu’on frôle (Paris: Libraire Henri Floury, 1901), 37. Law of Mar. 19, 1889, cited in Gustave Le Poittevin, Traité de la presse: réglementation de l’imprimerie, de la librairie, de la presse périodique, de l’affichage et du colportage et infractions commises par l’impression, l’écriture et la parole (Paris: A. Colin, 1902), 338. 89. Pottier, “La Psychologie des manifestations parisiennes,” 570. 90. Le Soleil, Dec. 23, 1896, BHVP AA 38; Le Figaro (1895), cited in “La Foire du Nouvel An,” BHVP AA 38. 91. Musée de la Publicité. Many frontispieces of alphabet manuals also depicted a billposter, a symbol of the beginning of the book and a symbol of communication.

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92. Le Journal illustré, Sept. 4, 1881. 93. Camile Legrand, “La Quinzaine Parisienne,” Revue illustrée 24 ( June–Dec. 1897), 399. 94. Jho Pâle, Croquis Parisiens (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1897), 103; La Publicité. Journal technique des annonceurs (May 1912), 215. Advertising on celluloid created “most remarkable artistic works.” Ibid., 216. 95. Marcel Théaux, “Chronique,” La Grande Revue, Aug. 1, 1899, 503; Montorgueil, La Vie des boulevards, 37. Romain Coolus, “Illuminated Advertisements” in Octave Uzanne ed. Badauderies parisiennes. Les rassemblements: physiologies de la rue (Paris: Floury, 1896). Coolus, like other writers, expressed ambivalence at such attractions. A drawing by Jean Béraud in the Revue illustrée depicted people watching a gigantic screen. 96. AN AJ/13/1284, file Bals Masqués. Letter ( Jan. 9, 1891), Office des Théâtres. Publicité de Jour et de Nuit. For the curtains the fee was 50 francs per month. Each view in black and white cost 5 francs, in color 10 francs; H. Fuzet, “Publicité” in H. Gilis ed., Encyclopédie pratique du commerce de l’industrie et de la finance (Paris: Hasselt, 1908), 625. 97. “Publicité Lumineuse,” Annuaire-almanach du commerce, de l’industrie (1912). 98. “Publicité,” Annuaire-almanach du commerce, de l’industrie, de la magistrature et de l’administration: ou almanach des 500.000 adresses de Paris, des départements et des pays étrangers (1900). 99. APP D/b1 204. Etude sur la Publicité, 42; Henri Gaisser ed., Annuaire général de la publicité et des industries qui s’y rattachent (Tours: Alfred Mame et Fils, 1914), 253; Gaisser, Annuaire général de la publicité (1922); André Billy, Paris vieux & neuf (Paris: E. Rey, 1909), 84. 100. Octave Uzanne, “L’ingénieuse publicité,” La Dépêche de Toulouse, Dec. 28, 1904. 101. Le Rire, Aug. 16, 1902, 4. 102. La Publicité (Oct. 1906), 5. 103. Breslauer Zeitung, cited in La Publicité (May 1912), 213. 104. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 169. 105. Le Figaro, n.d., Cited in La Publicité (Mar. 1912), 114. 106. American Advertiser, cited in La Publicité moderne (Nov. 1905), 15–16. 107. Rund ums Jahr 1911, Jahrbuch für junge Deutsche, von Dr. Hugo Gruber (Berlin: Gr. Grotescher Verlag, 1911), cited in La Publicité (May 1912), 213. 108. Rund ums Jahr 1911, in La Publicité (May 1912), 211; Breslauer Zeitung, cited in La Publicité (May 1912), 213; Er ika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End ( Pr inceton, NJ: Pr inceton Universit y Press, 2000), 149. 109. Il Messagero, Feb. 6, 1911. 110. La Publicité (May 1912), 213. 111. Franz Kaf ka, “Description of a Struggle,” Complete Stories (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), 41–43. 112. Booth Tarkington, The Beautiful Lady, in The Works of Booth Tarkington (Garden City: Doubleday, 1922) v.9, 1. 113. Molly Nesbit, Atget’s Seven Albums, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 133–135. 114. On the myths of Paris see Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 115. Charles M. Taylor Jr., Odd Bits of Travel with Brush and Camera (George W. Jacobs and Co, 1900), 166. 116. Taylor, Odd Bits of Travel, 94. 117. Charles E. Bolton, Travels in Europe and America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903), 75. 118. E. V. Lucas, A Wanderer in Paris (London: Methuen, 1911), 179. 119. Léo Claretie, Les Amis de Paris n.12 (1912), 301–302. 120. A law of Apr. 8, 1910 levied a tax on handouts, for the first time since an 1857 law suppressed it. La Publicité n.87 (Sept. 1910), 373. 121. APP D/b1 204. Etude sur la Publicité. 122. Gronberg, Designs on Modernity. 123. Jean-Pierre A. Bernard, Les Deux Paris: les représentations de Paris dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2001), 125–126. 124. Mortimer Menpes, text by Dorothy Menpes, Paris (London: A. and C. Black, 1907), 82. 125. In 1884 it was noted that the Boulevards had been invaded by “really scandalous lemonade sellers.” AP Vo n.c.132. Réglementation et attributions de concessions: notes, décisions, rapports 1884–1903. Report (Oct. 23, 1884). 126. On Berlin and London see, for example, Charles Werner Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr eds., Berlin: Culture and Metropolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990); Mary Ann Caws ed., City Images: Perspectives from Literature, Philosophy, and Film (London: Routledge, 1991).

250

Notes Chapter 7

Furnishing the Street: Urban Rationalization and Its Limits

1. On catacombs see Shelley Rice, Parisian Views (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). 2. APP D/b1 204 Report (Nov. 11, 1849) by the Direction of Sanitation and Lighting, file Delion. 3. AN F/21/1046 Report ( July 8, 1851) to the Minister of the Interior. 4. “Entrepreneurs d’affichage,” Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1842). 5. Cited in Bruno Ulmer and Thomas Plaichinger, Les Murs réclames: cent-cinquante ans de murs peints publicitaires (Paris: Editions Alternatives, 1986), 23. 6. Ulmer and Plaichinger, Les Murs réclames, 27. 7. “Entrepreneurs d’affichage,” Annuaire-almanach du commerce, de l’industrie, de la magistrature et de l’administration: ou almanach des 500.000 adresses de Paris, des départements et des pays étrangers (1859), Administration Réunie de l’Affichage Spéciale et Departementale, Rénier et Ellies. 8. AP Bankruptcy file Entrepreneurs d’affichage D11 U3 326 n.17536 (Sept. 18, 1860), Delanativité dit Ellies. Starting in 1852 files under the heading “advertising (publicité)” appeared; there were seven before Rénier and Ellies, described usually as “advertising broker.” In the bankruptcy documents “Rénier” is written as “Régnier,” but the Annuaire-almanach du commerce lists it as Rénier. Annuaire-almanach du commerce (1883) lists the year of foundation of Rénier’s later company as 1856. In the bankruptcy file Rénier’s former occupation is listed as billposting. 9. “Entrepreneurs d’affichage,” Annuaire-almanach du commerce (1865). 10.. “Affichage,” Annuaire-almanach du commerce (1875); Emile Mermet, La Publicité en France: guideannuaire (Paris: Chaix, 1879), 57. 11. APP D/a1 127 Affichage sur les omnibus et tramways, 1875–80. Letterhead of Rénier et Cie, May 23, 1878. 12. G. Dubourg, Ville de Paris. Promenades et plantations. Halles et marchés. Mémoire sur un projet de panneaux décoratifs pour affichage des actes, décrets et arrêtés préfectoraux, et pour publicité permanente. Presenté par E. Rénier, Directeur de l’Administration de l’Affichage Départemental, rue d’Aboukir, n.3 (Aug. 1, 1872), Brochure, BNF. 13. AP, Vo 3 n.401 file Affichage sur murs et soutênement, 1875, Note (Feb. 9, 1876) from the Chief Engineer to the Second Division. 14. APP D/b1 202 Foires et fêtes foraines. Ordinance of Feb. 24, 1863. 15. On the disappearance of street merchants see T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, 50–51. 16. APP D/b1 Etude sur la Publicité, 40; Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1880), “Affichage.” 17. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1879), 57. Another agency advertising in theaters was L’Administration d’Affichage, which in 1878 contracted with eight large theaters, including the Palais-Royal, Folies-Dramatiques, and Châtelet. AN F/21/1046 file Préfecture de police. Théâtres de Paris. Vente et distributions de journux et d’imprmés dans les théâtres. 18. APP Industrielle et commerciale, June 1917, 40; Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1883). Here FabreGuette is spelt as “Fabreguette.” Rénier’s company is also referred to as “Maison Rénier jeune” or as “Agence Rénier fils.” Maurice Rénier then administered newspaper kiosks and urinals of the city of Paris. Ibid. 19. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 79. 20. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 119; AN F/7/12842 n.12 Société générale des annonces et Agence Havas, Police Report (May 30, 1914). One legacy of the refusal to allow advertising on state property is the Assemblée Métro station, beneath the National Assembly building, which does not carry advertising on the platform. 21. AN F/12/8711 Legion of Honor file Léon-Prosper Rénier. 22. APP Db1/204 Etude sur la Publicité, 80. 23. APP Db1/204 Etude sur la Publicité, 119. 24. “Agences de publicité,” Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1858). 25. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 187. 26. Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1859). In 1861 the company became Drouart et Cie, after the new director. 27. Almanach-Bottin du commerce (1869), “Agences publicitaires,” E. Roulin. 28. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 83. 29. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 84.

Notes

251

30. Comité des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, Affichage politique (Montpellier, 1895), 12. Political campaigns also relied on volunteers especially for visiting villages. 31. L’Illustration, Jan. 22, 1881, 64. The same article appeared in Le Monde illustré, Jan. 1, 1881 and Mermet, Annuaire de la presse française (1881), 1120, and, almost unchanged, in Annuaire de la presse française (1890) v.3, 905. 32. Phillip Dennis Cate and Sinclair Hamilton Hitchings, The Color Revolution: Color Lithography in France, 1890–1900 (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1978), 10. 33. L’Estampe et l’affiche, (Oct.–Nov. 1898), 255. 34. La Publicité ( July 1906), 5. Dufayel’s store was well known for its installment plans that “developed into a national institution” in the 1870s, attracting three million customers by the turn of the century. Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds, 93. On Dufayel’s retail practices see Coffin, Politics of Women’s Work, 81–88. 35. AN AD/BD/30–2 Affichage National Dufayel. Liste des murs. 36. AP Vo 3 n.401 file Affichage sur murs et soutènement. Report (Oct. 22, 1891). 37. Tabarin, n.50, cited in Pierre Caizergues, Apollinaire journaliste: les débuts et la formation du journaliste, 1900–1909: textes retrouvés d’Apollinaire, Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris III, 1977, 104. 38. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 39–40. 39. La Publicité ( July 1906), 5. 40. AN F/21/1046 file Réclamations des directeurs concernant les affiches, 1830–1856. 41. AN F/21/1046 file Préfecture de police. Service des Bals 1832–1849. 42. AN F/21/1046 file 1840 à 1868. Affichage des pièces nouvelles. Arrêté concernant l’affichage des spectacles, bals et concerts dans la Ville de Paris (Dec. 1, 1850), Préfecture de la Police. The order was as follows: (1) Théâtres subventionnés: Opéra et Bals de l’Opéra, Théâtre Français, Opéra-Comique, Italiens, Odéon; (2) Théâtre Historique; (3) Théâtres de Vaudevilles: Vaudeville; Variétés, Gymnase; Montansier, Lyrique; Palais Royal; (4)Théâtres de Drames: Gaité; Ambigu-Comique, Porte-St Martin, Cirque National, Folies-Dramatiques; (5) Petits Théâtres: Funambules, Délassemens-Comiques, Luxembourg, Lazary, Beaumarchais, St-Marcel; (6) Spectacles de Curiosités: Cirque des Champs-Elysées, Hippodrome, Spectacle Choiseul, Spectacle Bonne-Nouvelle; Autres Spectacles de Curiosités; and (7) Concerts et Bals: Concerts publics, Jardins publics, Bals publics. 43. APP D/b1 204 Communication from the Prefect (Mar. 28, 1856). Theater posters continued to be uniformly of 5-centime size, as the directors determined this to be the only way to maintain the hierarchical order. AN F/21/1046. File Réclamations . . . , Report ( July 8, 1851). 44. AN F21 1046 Proposal of Jules Leriche for the Posting Commission, Oct. 23, 1863. 45. BNF factum, “Affiches en magasins, Droit d’affichage,” 9. La Grande Encyclopédie noted that “the fever of billposting that marked the first half of the Second Empire contributed in a large part” to the rise of advertising, along with developments in manufacturing, transportation, and distribution. “Publicité,” La Grande Encyclopédie, 909. 46. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 601. 47. Charles Garnier, “Les Affiches agaçantes,” reprinted in Bulletin de la Société des amis des monuments parisiens 1:4 (1886), 129–138: 134. 48. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Gazette des beaux arts (1859), cited in Revue populaire des beaux-arts (Feb. 19, 1898), 282. 49. Victor Fournel, Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris (Paris: A. Delahaye, 1858), 299. 50. Fournel, Ce qu’on voit dans les rues de Paris, 294. 51. Louis Lazare, “L’Affichage dans Paris,” Revue municipale (Aug. 1, 1853), 44. 52. AN AJ/13/451 Opéra. Traités matériels 1827–68, Waché: affichage des colonnes 1840. The urban planning carried out under the Prefect Rambuteau, based on private speculation, was a model for Haussmann’s much larger planning. Rue Rambuteau was the first wide street to be created by demolishing parts of existing neighborhoods. 53. Bouchot, “Les Embellisemens de Paris n.5. Les colonnes moresques du Boulevard.” Musée Carnavalet. 54. Louis Lazare, “L’Affichage dans Paris,” Revue municipale ( July 16, 1853), 1036. 55. AN F/21/1846 file 1850–1862 Correspondance générale. Affichage. Letter (Mar. 6, 1860) from Caumont to the Minister of State. 56. Anon., La Publicité au point de vue industriel et commercial (Paris: Bénard and Cie., 1858), 5. 57. Anon., La Publicité au point de vue industriel et commercial, 5.

252

Notes

58. Louis Lazare, “Promenades dans Paris. Les boulevards intérieurs de Paris,” Revue municipale ( July 20, 1857), 43. 59. AN F/21/1046 file Commission de l’affichage 1863–4. Arrêté, Sept. 29, 1863, au Nom de l’Empereur. Similar columns were also built in Austria. 60. The Drouart company (CGAA)’s project for kiosks included eleven spaces reserved at the front for imperial theaters. AN F/21/1846 letter (Nov. 5, 1863) from the Drouart Company to the Commission. Also see Marie de Thézy, Paris, la rue (le mobilier urbain du Second Empire à nos jours) (Paris: Société Historique de la Ville de Paris, 1976), 39–40. Compagnie de Publicité Diurne et Nocturne proposed using existing kiosks, also using glass and lighting. AN F/21/1846 letter (Oct. 28, 1863) from Peytrignet to the Commission. The Morris Company had written that adopting a new system of theater posters would mean a “complete ruin” of their company. AN F/21/1046 file Commission de l’Affichage 1863–4. Letter (Oct. 12, 1863) from the Morris Firm to the Commission. The company had contracted with theaters and the Opéra for printing their posters. AN F/21/1046 file 1850–1862, Correspondance Générale. Affichage. Letter ( June 25, 1860) from the Police Prefect to the Minister of State. At the time theater posters were printed by the Morris Company and placed on urinals adminstrated by the Drouart Company. 61. Le Moniteur Universel, May 4, 1868, in APP D/b1 513 Colonnes d’affichage dans Paris. In order to economize on the fiscal duty, the company grouped the programs of several theaters on one piece of paper, resulting in a supplementary profit of 120,000 francs per year. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 163. Richard Morris, the head of the Morris Company, had been working in the field of printing since 1823 and also published Le Journal du dimanche (1855–1901). Bulletin de l’Imprimerie, Aug. 30, 1884, 259; AN F/12/5218. It is not clear how many illustrated posters were placed on Morris Columns. The majority of images of Morris Columns, including photographs, show standard 5-centime size posters with text, but many illustrations, caricatures, and one photograph depict columns with illustrated posters. AN F/12/5218 Legion of Honor, file Richard Morris (1883). 62. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 600. 63. Le Courrier français, Nov. 7, 1886. 64. Philippe Trétiack, “Un mobilier de style pour la rue,” Architecture Intérieure-Créé n.192–193, 1983, 78–91. 65. Trétiack, “Un mobilier de style pour la rue.” 66. Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 126–130. 67. APP D/b1 257 Concessions sur la voie publique. Projet de budjet municipal de 1882 (Aug. 30, 1881); AP Vn 5 n.67 Voirie publique, dossier sur la publicité sur édicules 1877–1899, Cahier des charges du droit d’affichage sur 350 Kiosques lumineux et sur 30 Urinoirs lumineux à 3 stalles et du droit de location des 350 kiosques (1889). 68. AP Vo n.c. 16 Decree, July 6, 1897, “M. Gabriel Morris, imprimeur, rue Amelot n. 64” E. de Crauzat, “Murailles,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 271. Theaters paid 3 to 5 francs of tax per 100 posters. Crauzat, “Murailles,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 270. When the contract for Morris Columns was passed on to Marcel Picard in 1906, the annual commission was raised to 125,000 francs for 225 columns, until 1924. AP 1304 w p.j. 30, dossier 15. Concessions des édicules sur les voies publiques, 1906–1923. Rapport du Conseil municipal de Paris (May 29, 1911); L’Eclair, May 1906, in BHVP AA 38, Kiosques, edicules, coupures de presse. 69. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 167. 70. APP Db1/204 Etude sur la Publicité, 40–41. In 1911 his business figure with foreign countries was 1.5 million francs. APP Db1/204 Etude sur la Publicité, 40–41. 71. AP Vo n.c. 69. 72. AP 1304 w p.j. 30 dossier 15 Concessions des édicules sur les voies publiques 1906–1923. Report (May 29, 1911). 73. Locations on the Boulevard des Italiens, Place de la Bastille and Boulevard des Malesherbs cost 15 francs. AP Vo n.c. 256 Kiosques. Rapports relatifs aux propositions, révocations, annulations de concessions, 1872–78; AP Vo 3 n.415 Concessions, dossier kiosques à journaux. Itinerant merchants, seen as disrupting established commerce, were controlled. A decree from 1859 required them to remain 40 meters away from an established shop selling similar products. AP Vn 5 n.52. Concession de Trink-halles ou Buffets parisiens, 1864–1899. 74. AP Vo n.c. 76 Ville de Paris. Tarifs des concessions sur la voie publique, 1885–1887; AP Vo n.c. 167 Concessions temporaires étalages, terrasses, petits marchands, tarifs 1884/1888. Direction des affaires municipales. 75. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 69.

Notes 76. 77. 78. 79.

253

Gaisser, Annuaire général de la publicité (1914), 244. AN AD/BD/30–2 Affichage National Dufayel. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 166. BNF Estampe Va 239C 2e arr.; L’Illustration, July 1870, BNF Estampe Va 286 t.5 9e arr.; AP Vo n.c. 248 Projet de Chalet de Toilette et de Necessité (1877). For the mid-century, it is difficult to establish what exactly was advertised on the kiosks. There are few photographs depicting them, and illustrations depicting kiosks mostly do not show the exact names of the objects illustrated on the posters. On the regulations of brand names in the Third Republic see Segal, The Republic of Goods, 199–213. 80. BNF Estampe, Oa 615 Atget “Vie et métiers à Paris” (1898–1900) v.3. “Marchand de journaux” (1898); “Fleuriste, Boulevard Saint Michel” (1898). 81. BNF Estampe, Va 290 t.6 10e arr. (1898). 82. Gaisser, Annuaire général de la publicité (1914), 244. Also see F. Ghozland, Un siècle de réclames alimentaires (Toulouse: Milan, 1984). Advertising of brand names spread to new media like tents at fairs. The Société Générale de Publicité Foraine was established in 1898 in order to specialize in advertising at fairs. Société Générale de publicité foraine. Catalogue (Paris, 1898). 83. Claude Maillard, Les Vespasiennes de Paris ou les précieux édicules (Paris: La Jeune Parque, 1967), 55. 84. Léon Martin ed., L’Encyclopédie municipale de la ville de Paris (Paris: G. Roustan, 1902), 781. See Adolphe Alphand, Les Promenades de Paris (Paris: Rothschild, 1867). Until 1892 the administration of public routes that handled advertising at the Préfecture de la Seine consisted of two branches: the Administrative Direction of Services of Public Routes, Plantations and Alignment, Lighting, the Water Board, Sewers and Quarries of Paris, which was the engineering side of the administration; and the Administrative Direction of Services of Architecture, Promenades, and Plantations, which dealt more with the architectural and aesthetic side of the street. AP Les Attributions de la direction de la Voirie: aperçu sur l’évolution des services depuis le debut du Siècle: Annexes. Service des Archives de Paris, Répertoire numérique sommaire de la Sous-Serie V.O non côte (3148 articles) (1993), 3. Also see A. des Cilleuls, Histoire de l’administration parisienne au XIXe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1900). In 1892 works of the Deparment of the Seine were separated from those at the municipal level. 85. Marius Vachon, Les Arts et les industries du papier en France. 1871–1894 (Paris: LibrairiesImprimeries réunies, 1894). 86. APP D/b1 204 Police report (May 13, 1903). 87. American Advertiser, cited in La Publicité moderne (Nov. 1905), 16. 88. Ordinance of July 10, 1900. 89. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885. File Argy, Compagnie de Publicité AmbulanteArtistique. 90. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885. File Argy, Letter (Feb. 28, 1877) from Picard to the Prefect of Police. Argy was authorized to circulate two carriages, and the number was increased to ten in 1878. In 1880, however, the entreprise was suppressed. 91. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885. File Argy, Letter (Sept. 26, 1876). 92. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885. Report (Oct. 7, 1876). 93. APP D/a1 127 Voitures de publicité, 1880–1885. Report (Oct. 7, 1876). 94. Frébault, La Vie de Paris, 211. 95. Feltaine, De la Publicité commerciale, 373. 96. Le Livre et l’image (1893), 192. 97. Ami des monuments (1887–1914) was the journal of the former, founded by Charles Normand. The subjects it treated were “architecture, painting, sculpture, curiosities, historic souvenirs, picturesque sites.” Normand also founded Le Bulletin de la Société des amis des monuments parisiens (1885–1900). 98. Article clipping, n.d., BHVP AA 119; Revue populaire des beaux-arts, Dec. 11, 1897, 114. 99. Gaston Bonnefont, Revue hebdomadaire, Nov. 22, 1902, in BHVP AA 119, 447. 100. François Maury, Figures et aspects de Paris (Paris: Perrin, 1910), 278–279. 101. Léon Jules, Romans-Revue, cited in La Publicité (Apr. 1910), 141–142. 102. La Publicité (Mar. 1913), 93. 103. Bulletin de l’Union des anciens elèves des Ecoles supérieures de commerce, cited in La Publicité ( June 1910), 233. 104. La Paix, Jan. 17, 1891, n.p. 105. Le Siècle, Feb. 18, 1892, cited in Trétiack, “Un mobilier de style pour la rue,” 78. 106. Also see Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art.

254

Notes

107. In 1888 54,455 francs were paid in tax for painted advertisements, a small amount dictated by the laws of July 8, 1852, Aug. 23, 1871 and July 22, 1881. In 1881 the tax was 60 centimes for size of 1 meter square or less, 1.20 francs for larger sizes. A law of Dec. 26, 1890 transformed the tax into an annual tax divided into various categories according to the population of the community and the dimensions of the poster. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 133. The tax was primarily aimed at advertisements along railroad lines. Ibid., 143. Also a fine was set at 100 francs. In 1893 another law replaced it. Instead of annual taxation, a one-time duty was payable at the time the advertisement was used. The amount was 1 franc/m2 for communities of more than 5,000 people, and 2.50 francs in Paris. Ibid., 139. 108. La Publicité (May 1908), 11. 109. AP 1304 w p.j. 30 dossier 12 Affichage-réclames. Administration des Services d’Architecture et des Promenades et Plantations, Report ( Jan. 7, 1909). Augé and Viélitch, 1898; Martin and Carliéd, 1899. 110. AP 1304 w p.j. 30 dossier 12 Agliani; Report ( Jan. 7, 1909). 111. AP 1304 w p.j. 30 dossier 15 Concessions des édicules sur les voies publiques 1906–1923. Report (May 29, 1911), note presented by Adolphe Chérioux; Note (Sept. 29, 1911). Billboards on the sides of the Boulevards were often cited for inconvenience, and using trees for hanging posters around theaters was prohibited. AP Vo n.c. 215. Dossier poteaux-indicateurs, affiches. Notes ( June 12, 1896; Nov. 17, 1907; Apr. 22, 1908; Dec. 20, 1910). 112. Les Amis de Paris (Feb. 1911), 1. 113. Les Amis de Paris ( June–July 1912), 354. 114. In Prussia, for example, the Diet enacted a law that allowed the prefects to remove posters spoiling the landscape. Henry Baudin, L’Enseigne et L’affiche (Geneva: Atar, 1905), 93. 115. Law of Apr. 22, 1910. Les Amis de Paris, n.1 (1911), 3; Charles Lortsch, La Beauté de Paris et la loi (Paris: L. Larose et L. Tenin, 1913), 305; Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 96. 116. Law of July 12, 1912. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 133, 167. 117. A law of Apr. 8, 1910 levied a tax on handouts, for the first time since it was abolished in 1857. La Publicité (Sept. 1910), 373. 118. Le Livre et l’image 1 (Mar.–July 1893), 191–192; Comité des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, Affichage politique (Montpellier, 1895), 14; Norman L. Kleeblatt ed., The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 119. Sigmund Engländer, Geschichte der französischen Arbeiter-Associationen (Hamburg, 1864) v. 2, 279–280, cited in Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 177. 120. Keith Randell, France: Monarchy, Republic and Empire, 1814–70 (London: Edward Arnold, 1986), 66–70. 121. Randell, France: Monarchy, Republic and Empire, 70. 122. John M. Merriman, The Agony of the Republic: The Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France, 1848–1851 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 25–26. During the revolution the right to post electoral bills was reinstated. A law of Apr. 21, 1849 set the electoral period to forty-five days. This law was kept during the Second Empire, with the number of days reduced to twenty. La Grande Encyclopédie, 685; Mermet, La Publicité en France (1879), 354. 123. Merriman, The Agony of the Republic, 93–97. 124. Law of July 30, 1850. AN F/21/1046 file Réclamations des directeurs concernant les affiches, 1830–1856. 125. The 1852 constitution omitted any mention of the rights of the press. Avenel, Histoire de la Presse française, 448. 126. Ordinance of May 18, 1853, Police Ordinances, APP Usuel. 127. On the surveillance of cafés see Susanna Barrows, “Nineteenth-Century Cafés: Arenas of Everyday Life.” Barbara S. Shapiro ed., Pleasures of Paris: Daumier to Picasso (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991). 128. Article 22 of the decree of Feb. 17, 1852 and laws of July 8, 1852 and Aug. 25, 1852. In 1852 the Police Fine Arts Division reported to the Minister of the Interior that for a year theater posters had been including engravings, lithographs, or other illustrations reproducing scenes or characters of plays. 129. AN F/21/1046 file Circulaires concernant les gravures qui sont sur les affiches de théâtre. Letter (Sept. 1, 1852). 130. Article 22 of the law of Feb. 17, 1852, Dalloz, Presse-outrage, n.5 (1871), cited in Mermet, La Publicité en France (1879), 359.

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131. Article 30 of the law of July 8, 1852 and the decree of Aug. 25, 1852 by Louis-Napoleon required prepayment and registration of advertisements painted on walls, fixing duty at 50 centimes for those of 1 square meter or less and 1 franc for above, punishable by 100 to 500 franc fines. Although the primary motive for the measure was fiscal, the registration of the text of the advertisement and the advertiser’s name, profession, and address could potentially be used for political purposes. APP D/b1 204 Bulletin des lois de la République française, n.570. 132. Avenel, “La Publicité.” An example of a new material was “ruberroïde,” a combination of cardboard and rubber. When taken to court, judgments were “incoherent and contradictory.” Ibid., 164. The law of July 18, 1866 required printers to apply duty stamps only after printing but before posting bills. A law of July 27–30, 1870 allowed printers to apply stamps on paper before printing. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1879), 341–342. There were 1,064 mural advertisements in Paris in 1878. Mermet, cited in Ulmer and Plaichinger, Les Murs réclames, 33. 133. BNF factum, [Affiches en magasins, Droit d’affichage] Procès fait aux Affiches en magasin, brevetées S.G.D.G. (Musée des affiches animées) 164 r de Rivoli. Examen de la question “Si dans peut être dehors!” dans l’intérêt de tous les boutiquiers. Signed Eugène Roch (1857). 134. Lagneau, Les Institutions publicitaires, 329. 135. Cited in Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 347. 136. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 347–348. 137. BNF factum, [Affiches en magasins, Droit d’affichage] (1857), 2, 8. 138. Sol de la Regie de l’Enregistrement, Sept. 7, 1860. Sic: Garnier, Rép. Gén. n.1892, cited in Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 62. 139. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 62. 140. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 62. 141. See Vari, “Commercialized Modernities,” Ch.2. 142. Philip G. Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 60–61; Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie, 58. 143. BNF factum, “publicité.” Albert Gigot, “Consultations pour M. Edouard Villetard, ancien Gérant du journal le Courrier du dimanche, Contre M. Dubosc, Agent de publicité” (1868). 1–18. 144. For a catalogue of posters from the Commune see Marie-Christine Moine and Odile Krakovitch, Affiches imprimées XIXe-XXe siècles. Révolution de 1848, 1870–1871 Commune, 1914–1918 (Paris, 1992). 145. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 12. 146. Wright, France in Modern Times, 237. A law of Nov. 30, 1875 had extended the liberty to post electoral bills to those signed by at least one elector and after a simple registration at the public prosecutor’s department. H. Ballot, De l’Affichage politique et électoral, Thèse de doctorat, L’Université de Paris, Faculté de droit (Paris, 1916), 9. 147. Report by Lisbonne to the Chamber, cited in Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 12. 148. Le Petit Parisien, Jan. 18, 1883, 1–2. 149. Le Petit Parisien, Jan. 22, 1883, 2. 150. “Affiche,” La Grande Larousse, 2e Suppl. (c.1888). 151. Le Petit Parisien, Jan. 20, 1883, 1. 152. In 1866 stamp duty was raised “very modestly” for posters larger than 25 square decimeters to 15 centimes. Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 60. 153. “Affiches,” Guyot and Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, 79. 154. Another method of calculating the number of painted advertisements would be to analyze the stamp tax collected by the treasury. Private archives of printers that created and produced posters would be crucial sources to investigate. The largest of such archives seem to be lost, including that of the Chaix company. 155. “Publicité,” Grande Encyclopédie, 910. 156. “Affiches,” Guyot and Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, 77; “Publicité,” Guyot and Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, 1170. 157. Office Général d’Annonces Fauchey Laffite et Cie, in Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 152. In 1880 Audbourg & Cie charged the following for dailies: 3–6 francs per line for annonces; 8–10 per line for réclames; 12–15 per line for faits divers. 158. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1880), 812–818.

256

Notes

159. 160. 161. 162.

Le Boulevardier. Journal illustré, satirique, financier, Mar. 13, 1881, 1. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 69. “Publicité,” Guyot and Raffalovich eds., Dictionnaire du commerce, 1171. G. M. Dreyfus ed., Annuaire de la publicité (Paris: Ollendorf, 1895), 489–490. Advertising in illustrated theater programs cost 2 francs per line for the Opéra, and 1.50 for other theaters. Ibid., 491. 163. La Grande Encyclopédie, 911. 164. L’Estampe et l’affiche (Oct.–Nov. 1898), 270.

Chapter 8

Consumer Technologies and Celebrity Culture

1. BNF Estampe ENT DN-1 (Rouchon, Jean Alexis/1)-Grand Rouleau. 2. Musée Carnavalet. Topo F 12 203. 3. Vallet de Viriville, “Iconographie historique. De la reproduction des figures par voie d’impression,” Revue de Paris 16 (1853), 177–200: 195. 4. Louis Huart, “Les Magasins de Nouveautés,” Almanach du Charivari 1 (1861), 26–29. 5. See J. Chamarat, C. Reinharez, C. Faivre, and G. Delcroix eds., Paris: Boutiques d’hier (Paris: Musées nationaux, 1977). On building façades see Jean-Marc Léri and Yvan Christ, Paris des illusions. Un siècle de décors éphémères 1820–1920 (Paris, 1984). 6. Le Journal manuel de peinture, Cited in Chamarat, Paris: Boutiques d’hier, 14. 7. Edmond Texier, Les Choses du temps présent (Paris: J. Hetzel, S.D., 1862), 83. 8. Jean-Pierre A. Bernard, Les Deux Paris: les représentations de Paris dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2001), 103. 9. Mead, “Urban Contingency and the Problem of Representation.” Also see Marilù Cantelli, L’Illusion monumentale: Paris, 1872–1936 (Paris: Mardaga, 1991). 10. L’Illustration, June 8, 1878, n.1841, 373–380. 11. Smith, The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise, 121–122. 12. Marie Simon, Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impressionism, trans. Edmund Jephcott (London: Zwemmer, 1995), 134. 13. Petit Messager des modes, Nov. 1, 1887 plate n. 2401. 14. L’Illustration, May 11, 1878, 303, 309; July 18, 1878, 29; Dec. 23, 1876, 416. The 1889 Universal Exposition also spurred a variety of illustrated articles. An eight-page article on the Bon Marché was published in L’Illustration, Aug. 10, 1889, 117–124. Also see L’Illustration, Oct. 5, 1889, 275, 277. 15. A daily titled L’Actualité, founded in 1884, promised “a thousand facts of every nature” produced in Paris. L’Actualité, Mar. 21, 1884, 1. Also see M. Nègre, “Sur le fait-divers” in Etudes de presse I (Feb. 1946), 52–54. 16. On Veblen see Lori A. Loeb, Consuming Angels: Advertising and Victorian Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), who contests the Veblen thesis, arguing that Victorian advertising sanctioned the expansive ideology of the bourgeoisie including the egalitarian access to goods. 17. McCauley, Industrial Madness, 82. 18. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 603. 19. Henri d’Alméras, La Vie parisienne sous le Second Empire (Paris: Albin Michel, c.1968), 110. 20. Journal des dames et des demoiselles et Brodeuse illustrée réunis (Oct. 1868), 367. 21. Musée Carnavalet, file Moeurs, Métiers, Publicité, N91 (c.1856), “Noncioramas”; Le Petit Journal, Jan. 4, 1866, 1; Sampson, A History of Advertising, 605. 22. AN F/21/1046., file Préfecture de police. Théâtres de Paris. Vente et distributions de journux et d’imprmés dans les théâtres, 1831–47. Letter (May 29, 1855) from Henri Petit to the Minister of State. In 1878 the agency L’Administration d’Affichage contracted with eight large theaters, including the Palais-Royal, Folies-Dramatiques, and Châtelet. 23. Le Boulevard, Aug. 24, 1862, 8. 24. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 63. 25. Le Petit Journal, May 25, 1868, 1. 26. Le Petit Journal, Dec. 10, 1868, 1. 27. La Publicité (Nov. 1907), 8; Frébault, La Vie de Paris, 212. 28. Le Petit Journal, Apr. 3, 1876, 3.

Notes 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

257

Sampson, A History of Advertising, 601. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 603–604. Journal des dames et des demoiselles et Brodeuse illustrée réunis (May 1868), 206. Journal des dames et des demoiselles et Brodeuse illustrée réunis (Oct. 1868), 367. Journal des dames et des demoiselles et Brodeuse illustrée réunis ( July 1868), 275. Journal des demoiselles (1870), 222; (1872), l27; (1873), l296, (1879), 20, cited in Judith Coffin, “Consumption, Production, and Gender: The Sewing Machine in Nineteenth-Century France” in Laura L. Frader and Sonya O. Rose eds., Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 111–141: 136. Journal des demoiselles et petit courrier des dames réunis n.3837 (1868). Sampson, A History of Advertising, 605. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1878), 26–27. Mermet, La Publicité en France (1883), 620–621. Mermet, Annuaire de la presse française (1883), 619. “Nouvelles Diverses,” Le Figaro, Apr. 6, 1883, 2. Alfred Sirven, Au Pays des roublards (Paris: E. Dentu, 1886), 273–274. Le Figaro, Dec. 1, 1895. Edmond Théry, “Annonces,” La Grande Encyclopédie, 85. Le Figaro illustré, “La Réclame et l’art,” n.183 ( June 1905), 1, 13–16. See for example La Vie parisienne, Nov. 17, 1888, 630 for Vin Mariani; Jan. 25, 1888, 56 for a shoe store; and July 13, 1878, 416 for an editorial advertisement for the Coates shop. Jack Rennert, Posters of the Belle Epoque: The Wine Spectator Collection (New York: Wine Spectator Press, 1990) n.p. Le Figaro, clipped article. AN 65 AQ u 111. Paul Pottier, Les Journalistes (Paris: Lecoffre, 1907), 30. C. Lully, “Le journal à un sou,” Les Archives de l’imprimerie: revue illustrée des arts graphiques, Oct. 1901, 4. The Herald, cited in La Publicité (Feb. 1912), 64. La Publicité (Sept. 1912), 315; Marie-Claire Bancquart in M-C Bancquart ed., Bel-Ami (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979). Hervé, The Histoire de la France et de l’Europe pour les grands (1910), cited in Nesbit, Atget’s Seven Albums, 124. American Advertiser, cited in La Publicité moderne (Nov. 1905), 16. Gustave Fustier, “La Littérature murale. Essai sur les affiches littéraires en France,” in Le Livre, bibliographie rétrospective V (1884), 337. La Pertuisine, poster from circa 1895, at the Musée de la Publicité, Paris. Here Henri Nocq, an artisan associated with L’Artisan Moderne, is shown, and the image may mean that the artisan is to cure the sickness of the woman, the embodiment of France, brought on by inferior industrial products. Riva Castleman, Toulouse-Lautrec: Posters and Prints from the Collection of Irene and Howard Stein (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1998), 108. American Advertiser, cited in La Publicité moderne (Nov. 1905), 15. Alexandre Henriot, “Soirée chez un amateur d’affiches,” in Le Monde moderne (Aug. 1897); L’Affiche vécue, reproduction des affiches célèbres par le modèle vivant n.1 (Oct. 1897). This preceded parodies at revues, in which actors impersonated commercial brand names as well as newspapers. See Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art. “Publicité,” La Grande Encyclopédie, 910. E. de Crauzat, “Murailles,” in L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 14. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 12. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 12–13, 3. La Publicité (Apr. 1905), 13. Octave-Jacques Gérin and C. Espinadel, La Publicité suggestive: commerce et industrie. Les procédés modernes de vente, 2nd ed. (Paris: Dunod, 1927), 15–16, 46, 21, 51–53. Emile Zola, “Une victime de la réclame,” Contes et nouvelles II. Oeuvres complètes (Paris: François Bernouard, 1928) v.37. First published in L’Illustration, Nov. 17, 1866; republished as “Une victime des annonces” in L’Evénement illustré, Aug. 29, 1868; as “Causerie” in La Tribune, Dec. 12, 1869, and in La Cloche, June 29, 1872. Le Petit Journal, Sept. 18, 1866, 1. Edmondo de Amicis, Souvenirs de Paris et de Londres (Paris: Hachette, 1880), 14–16.

258

Notes

68. Félicien Champsaur, Dinah Samuel (Paris: Pierre Douville, 1881). Jacques Noiray discusses this in Le Romancier et la machine. L’Image de la machine dans le roman français 1850–1900 (Paris: José Corti, 1981) v.2, 255. 69. First published in 1889 in Forum of New York, was taken up again in 1910 in Hier et Demain. Noiray, Le Romancier et la machine, 255. 70. Robida, Le Vingtième siècle, 201, 304–305. The original subtitle is Roman d’une parisienne d’après-demain siècle. On Robida’s predictions about the urban expansion of Paris see Bernard Marchand, Paris, histoire d’une ville, 165–167. 71. Robida, Le Vingtième siècle, 212. 72. Guy de Maupassant, “Un Vieux,” first published in Gil Blas, Sept. 26, 1882 under the name Maufrigneuse, Contes et nouvelles (Gallimard: Biliothèque de la Pléiade, 1979) v.2, 1236. 73. Emile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 209. 74. Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 237. 75. B. Nogaro and W. Oualid, L’Evolution du commerce, du crédit et des transports depuis cent cinquante ans (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914), 310–311. 313. Also see Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. 76. See Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. 77. Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 23. 78. Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 208. 79. Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, 349. 80. “1879! Grande parade avec coups de tam-tam, cris d’animaux et musiques,” La Caricature, Jan. 3, 1880, 1. 81. La Caricature, Feb. 7, 1880, 1. 82. La Caricature, 1883. 83. Gil Blas, Nov. 16, 1890, cited in Genette, Paratexts, 106–107. 84. Grand-Carteret ed., L’Histoire, la vie, les moeurs, et la curiosité v.5, 326. 85. La Caricature, May 15, 1880, 1. 86. Quoted in Catherine Simon Bacchi, Sarah Bernhardt: Mythe et réalité (Paris: S.E.D.A.G., 1984), 15. On Bernhardt’s elusive self see Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 196. 87. Roberts, Disruptive Acts, 196. 88. Joanna Richardson, Sarah Bernhardt, and Her World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), 146. 89. Roberts, Disruptive Acts, 228. 90. Marie Colombier, The Life and Memoirs of Sarah Barnum, trans. Bernard Herber (New York: Norman L. Munro, 1884), 85, 72, 129–130. 91. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture,” 75; Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale call the book cruel, sensational, and anti-semitic in The Divine Sarah (New York: Knopf, 1991), 27. 92. Le Figaro, Dec. 19, 1883, 1. 93. “Sarah Bernhardt’s Revenge; A Graphic Account of the Whipping of Mlle. Colombier,” The New York Times, Dec. 21, 1883. 94. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier-Sarah Bernhardt: pièces à conviction (Paris: Chez tous les libraries, 1884), 56. 95. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture,” 75. 96. Colombier, The Life and Memoirs of Sarah Barnum, 129–134. 97. The New York Times, Dec. 23, 1883. 98. Berlanstein also notes that there was much suspicion that the whole affair was Bernhardt’s doing. Berlanstein, “Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture,” 76. 99. Mermeix, Le Gaulois, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 61. 100. Eclat de rire, Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 62. 101. Le Petit Lyonnais, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 68. 102. The Daily Telegraph, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 69. 103. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 6. 104. Mermeix, Le Gaulois, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie-Colombier, 60–61. 105. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 8–9. 106. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 15. 107. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 16–17. 108. The Daily Telegraph, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 69.

Notes

259

109. 110. 111. 112. 113.

La Cravache, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 64. Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 13, 19. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 121–178: 143. Le Figaro, Dec. 19, 1883, 1. Samuel R. Crocker et al., The Literary World: A Monthly Review of Current Literature 28 (1883), 309. 114. Maurice Ordonneau, Le Clairon, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 53. 115. Jehan Soudan, L’Etat, cited in Anon., Affaire Marie Colombier, 60. 116. Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 26. 117. “Sarah Bernhardt’s Revenge,” The New York Times, Dec. 21, 1883. 118. Glenn, Female Spectacle, 89. 119. Mary Louise Roberts also argues this point. Roberts, Disruptive Acts, 228. 120. Sarah Bernhardt, The Life of Marie Colombier: Sarah Barnum’s Answer (New York: Norman L. Munro, 1884), 4. 121. Pigeonnier, pigeon loft, is a pun on Colombier, meaning dovecote. In 1899 Jules Huret wrote in a biography of Bernhardt that the evening before the opening of “Nana Sahib” the scandal around Colombier’s book created a great uproar, but that Bernhardt was not blamed for taking the law into her own hands. Jules Huret, Sarah Bernhardt, trans. G. A. Raper (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899), 102. 122. Texier and Kaempfen, Paris, capitale du monde, 312–315. 123. The New York Times, Nov. 22, 1884. 124. Antoine Truquet, “L’annonce et la réclame, les cris de Paris,” in Alfred Franklin, La Vie d’autrefois: arts et métiers, modes, moeurs, usages des parisiens, du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit, 1887–1902), 1. 125. John Grand-Carteret titled a chapter of XIXe siècle en France “The modern forces. The press. Stores and advertising. The Expositions.”

Chapter 9

The Modernity of Poster Art

1. Cate and Hitchings, The Color Revolution, 10. On debates about poster art also see Phillip Dennis Cate, Karen L. Carter, Carmen Vendelin, and Sara Bujanda Bujanda, Toulouse-Lautrec and the French Imprint: Fin-de-Siècle Posters in Paris, Brussels, and Barcelona (New Brunswick, NJ: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum of Art, 2006); Marcus Verhagen, “The Poster in Finde-Siècle Paris: ‘That Mobile and Degenerate Art,’ ” in Charney and Schwartz ed., Cinema and Modern Life, 117–126; Karen Carter, “L’Age de l’affiche: the Reception, Display and Collection of Posters in Fin-de-Siècle Paris,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2001. 2. Gustave Fustier referred to a 15,000-piece collection by Lépine. Fustier, “La Littérature murale. Essai sur les affiches littéraires en France.” Le Livre, bibliographie rétrospective V (1884), 337–356: 338. 3. In 1891 Octave Uzanne used the term affichomanie in La Nouvelle bibliopolis (Paris: Henri Floury, 1897), 85–179. 4. See Aaron Segal, “Commercial Immanence: The Poster and Urban Territory in NineteenthCentury France” in Wischermann and Shore eds., Advertising and the European City, 113–138. 5. Cate and Hitchings, The Color Revolution, 4. 6. Amy Katherine Kazee, “Jules Chéret, the Father of Color Lithography: A Study of Chéret’s Posters Considering His Role as an Advertiser and Artist,” Masters Thesis, University of Louisville, 1998, iii. 7. Rennert, Posters of the Belle Epoque, n.p. 8. Lucy Broido ed., The Posters of Jules Chéret: 46 Full-Color Plates & an Illustrated Catalogue Raisonné (New York: Dover Publications, 1980). 9. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 176. On Chéret also see Bradford R. Collins, “The Poster as Art; Jules Chéret and the Struggle for the Equality of the Arts in Late Nineteenth-Century France” in Dennis P. Doordan, Design History, an Anthology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 17–27. 10. Segal, “Commercial Immanence,” 116. 11. The seconnd volume, published in 1896, covering the 1886–1895 period, was a comprehensive study of the illsutrated poster, with a third of the posters by Chéret.

260

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12. Alexandre Henriot, “L’Affiche a l’étranger,” in L’Estampe et l’affiche (1897), 52; Vachon, Les Arts et les industries du papier, 194. 13. Hiatt, Picture Posters, 24. 14. See the list of posters in Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret; Segal, “Commercial Immanence,” 122. 15. Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret. 16. J.-K. Huysmans, Certains (Paris: Tresse and Stock, 1889). 17. J.-K. Huysmans, Oeuvres complètes de J.-K. Huysmans (Paris: G. Cres, 1928–1934), VI, 14, cited in Collins, “The Poster as Art,” 21. 18. Huysmans, Oeuvres VI, 12, cited in Collins, “The Poster as Art,” 21. 19. Léon Hennique and J.-K. Huysmans, Pierrot Sceptique: Pantomime (Paris: Edouard Rouveyre, 1881). 20. Ségolène Le Men, Seurat et Chéret: le peintre, le cirque et l’affiche (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994), 44. 21. Huysmans, “Chéret,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 482–483. 22. The poster is reprinted in Maindron, Les Affiches illustrées (1886), and Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 43. 23. Thiébault-Sisson, “Visites artistiques,” La Nouvelle Revue 62 (1890), 835–839: 837. 24. Phillip Dennis Cate and Patricia E. Boyer, The Circle of Toulouse-Lautrec, exhibition catalogue (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 93. 25. Verhagen, “The Poster in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.” 26. Segal, “Commercial Immanence,” 121. 27. Segal, “Commercial Immanence,” 121. 28. Le Men, Seurat et Chéret, 38. 29. Le Men, Seurat et Chéret, 38. 30. Cited in Jane Abdy, The Complete Poster (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1969). 31. Segal, “Commercial Immanence,” 122. 32. Le Men, Seurat et Chéret, 38. 33. Miriam Levin, When the Eiffel Tower Was New (South Hadley: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), 12. 34. Raoul Sertat, “Merci à Chéret!” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 501. 35. Emile Zola, “Quelques opinions sur l’affiche illustrée,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 503. 36. Jean Richepin, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 498. During the 1848 revolution, Jules Michelet encouraged educating the public using colorful illustrated posters with large typefaces. Letter to Béranger, June 16, 1848, cited in Chantal Georgel, L’Enfant et l’image au XIXe siècle, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1988), 8. 37. Anatole France, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 496. 38. Camille Lemonnier, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 497. 39. Maurice du Seigneur, Paris, voici Paris! (Paris: Bourloton, 1889), vii–viii. 40. Félicien Champsaur, “Le roi de l’affiche,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 481. 41. René Dubreuil, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 501. 42. Raoul Sertat, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 501. 43. Jules Claretie, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 495. 44. On seeing as a physiological act see Jonathan Crary, The Techniques of the Observer: On Visision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990). 45. André Mellerio, “Le renouveau de l’estampe,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1897), 45–46. 46. Jules Bois, “Le salon du pauvre,” Le Courrier français, Nov. 16, 1890, 480. 47. Yvanhoé Rambosson, “Psychologie de Chéret,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 501. 48. Vachon, Les Arts et les industries du papier, 200. 49. Vachon, Les Arts et les industries du papier, 200. 50. Champsaur, “Le roi de l’affiche,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 481. 51. Jules Bois, “Le Salon du pauvre,” Le Courrier français, Nov. 16, 1890; René Dubreuil, “Sur les ‘femmes’ de Jules Chéret,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 493; Henri Lavedan, “Jules Chéret,” Revue illustrée 9 (Dec. 1899–June 1890), 178; Germain Hediar, L’Affiche illustrée. Exposition E. Sagot (Paris: L’Artiste, 1892), 9. 52. Gustave Kahn, La Femme dans la caricature française (Paris: Mericant, 1907), v; Nesbit, Atget’s Seven Albums, 133. On the Parisienne see Octave Uzanne, The Modern Parisienne (London: William Heineman, 1912); Tamar Garb, “Painting the ‘Parisienne’; James Tissot and the Making of the Modern Woman” in Katharine Lochnan ed., Seductive Surfaces: The Art of Tissot (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 95–120: 96. 53. Simon, Fashion in Art, 136; Garb, “Painting the ‘Parisienne.’ ”

Notes

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54. Patrick Offenstadt, Jean Béraud, 1849–1935: The Belle Epoque: A Dream of Times Gone By, catalogue raisonné. Research consultancy, Nicole Castais and Pierre Saurisse (Cologne: Taschen, 1999), 7. 55. Ebria Feinblatt and Bruce Davis, Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries: Posters of the Belle Epoque from the Wagner Collection (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams Publishers, New York, 1985), 45. 56. Cited in Jane Abdy, The French Poster: Chéret to Cappiello (London: Studio Vista, 1969), 9. 57. Uzanne, La Nouvelle bibliopolis, 92, 94. 58. Vachon, Les Arts et les industries du papier, 200. 59. See Iskin, Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture. 60. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 103. 61. Clarence Moran, The Business of Advertising (London: Methuen and Co., 1905), 12. 62. See Le Men, Seurat et Chéret. 63. Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18. On posters of celebrities see Lelieur and Bachollet, Célébrités à l’affiche. 64. Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 46. 65. Tiersten, Marianne in the Market, 150–236. 66. Iskin, “The Pan-European Flâneuse,” 339. Also see Ruth Iskin, “Popularising New Women in Belle Epoque Advertising Posters,” in Diana Holmes and Carrie Tarr eds., A “Belle Epoque”? Women in French Society and Culture 1890–1914 (New York: Beghahn Books, 2006), 95–112. 67. Stanley Applebaum, The Complete “Masters of the Poster”: All 256 Color Plates from “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche” (New York: Dover, 1996), xi. 68. Roger Marx, Les Maîtres de l’affiche (Paris: Chaix, 1895–1900), plate n.31. 69. Feinblatt and Davis, Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries, plate n.127. 70. Misti, Cycles Gladiator in Marx, Les Maîtres de l’affiche, plate n.86. 71. Offenstadt, Jean Béraud, 1849–1935, 168. 72. See Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. 73. La Vie parisienne, Dec. 14, 1878, 722. 74. BNF Estampe “Publicité Parfumerie 1900–1910.” 75. On American posters see Lears, Fables of Abundance. 76. Claude Quiguer, Femmes et machines de 1900: lecture d’une obsession modern style (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979), 37. On the decadent style see John Reed, The Decadent Style (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985) and Jean Pierrot, The Decadent Imagination, 1880–1900 trans. Derek Coltman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 77. Léonce Bénédite, “La bijouterie et la joiaillerie a l’Exposition Universelle de 1900: René Lalique,” Revue des arts décoratifs 20 (1900), 201–210. 78. On Uzanne’s view of women and the ecole de Nancy see Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 70. The emphasis on primitive vitality was much more pronounced in artistic prints rather than in posters. In posters the darker and erotic side of Art Nouveau— women swimming alongside water snakes, swooning women, or the evocation of ecstasy or death—was mostly absent. 79. Henri Degron, La Plume, July 1, 1897. 80. T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 281. 81. Jirí Mucha, Alsphone Maria Mucha: His Life and Art (London: Academy Editions, 1989), 95. 82. Mucha, Alsphone Maria Mucha, 95. 83. Besides Chéret and Mucha, some of the most popular artists were Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Georges Meunier, Lucien Lefevre, Jules-Alexandre Grün, Pierre Bonnard, Alfred Choubrac, Albert Guillaume, Adolphe Willette, and Henri Privat-Livemont. 84. “Principaux courants de pensée de la fin du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle,” Architecture d’aujourd’hui 158 (Oct.–Nov. 1971), 6–17. 85. “Un Musée de l’affiche,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 263–264. On social art also see H. A. Needham, Le Développement de l’esthétique sociologique en France et en Angleterre au XIXeme siècle (Paris: Champion, 1926); Meredith Clausen, “Architecture and the Poster: Toward a Redefinition of the Art Nouveau,” Gazette des beaux arts 106 (1985). 86. For the decorative arts movement see Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France; Nancy Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Gabriel Weisberg, Art Nouveau Bing: Paris Style 1900 (New York: Abrams, 1986). 87. Camille Mauclair, “La réforme de l’art décoratif en France,” Nouvelle revue (1896), 736.

262

Notes

88. Gustave Kahn, L’Esthétique de la rue (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1901), 205. 89. Rennert, Posters of the Belle Epoque, cat. 72; Raymond Escholier, Le Nouveau Paris: La vie artistique de la cité moderne (Paris: Nilsson, 1913), 170. 90. Levin, When the Eiffel Tower Was New, 212. 91. Frantz Jourdain, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893. On Toulouse-Lautrec also see Richard D. Sonn, Anarchism and Cultural Politcs in Fin-de-Siècle France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 92. André Mellerio, “Le Renouveau de l’estampe,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1897), 45–46. 93. Marius Vachon, Les Arts et les Industries du papier, 196, 200, 202. 94. Louis Morin, “Murailles,” L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 85. 95. Eugène Grasset, L’Estampe et l’affiche (1898), 133. 96. Le Livre et l’image (1893), 192. 97. Bonnefont, “La Publicité,” Revue Hebdomadaire (Nov. 22, 1902), 439, 443, 451. 98. Maurice Talmeyr, “L’Age de l’affiche,” Revue des deux mondes (Sept. 1, 1896), 201–216. For a close reading of Talmeyr see Verhagen, “The Poster in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.” On mass culture see Patrick Brantlinger, Bread & Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). On debates on visual culture see Richard Thomson, The Troubled Republic: Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889–1900 (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 99. Talmeyr, “L’Age de l’affiche,” 201, 208–210. 100. Talmeyr, “L’Age de l’affiche,” 209. 101. Talmeyr, “L’Age de l’affiche,” 213. 102. “L’Art Nouveau,” Revue des arts décoratifs (1897), 129–192. 103. André Hallays, Débats, cited in Charles Genuys, L’Orientation de l’art moderne, Revue des arts décoratifs (1901), 412. 104. E. de Crauzat, “Murailless,” L’Estampe et l’affiche, 1899. 105. Jack Rennert and Alain Weill, Alphonse Mucha: The Complete Posters and Panels (Boston: J.K. Hall, 1984), i. 106. Mucha, Alphonse Maria Mucha. 107. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 176; “Les détournements d’affiches illustrées,” Bulletin de l’Imprimerie, June 1, 1891, 576. 108. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 166; Emile Magne, L’Esthétique des villes (Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1908), 85. 109. On consumer culture in the interwar years see Tag Gronberg, Designs on Modernity; Simon Dell, “Production, Consumption and Purism: Juan Gris between Nord-Sud and L’Esprit Nouveau’,” Word & Image 15:2 (Apr.–June 1999); Simon Dell, “The Consumer and the Definition of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, 1907–1925,” Journal of Design History 12:4 (1999). 110. Notre Dame de Paris, 1832, cited in Neil Levine, “The Book and the Building: Hugo’s Theory of Architecture and Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève,” in Robin Middleton ed., The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth-Century French Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 139–173. 111. See Williams, Dream Worlds.

Chapter 10

Le Courrier Français, Géraudel Cough Drops, and Advertising as Art

1. Philippe Jones, “La Presse satirique illustrée entre 1860 et 1890,” Etudes de presse 8 (1956), 40–41. 2. Raymond Bachollet, “Panorama de la presse satirique française,” Le Collectionneur français n.218 (Dec. 1984), 9–11, 10. 3. Rodin, “Quelques opinions . . . ,” La Plume, Nov. 15, 1893, 499. 4. Jones, “La Presse satirique illustrée,” 36. From 1886 Le Courrier also advertised “L’Abbaye de Thélème” at the Place Pigalle, where the collaborators for the journal met on Fridays. Ibid. On Le Courrier français and advertising also see Segal, The Republic of Goods, Ch.5. 5. On the Chat Noir and publicity see Jerrold Seigal, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (New York: Penguin, 1986). On Montmartre and

Notes

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

263

mass culture see Gabriel P. Weisberg ed., Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Michel Zévaco, Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui n.411, “Jules Roques,” 3; Le Courrier français (Nov. 10, 1884), 7. Francis Magnard, Le Figaro, Aug. 15, 1886, cited in Jacques Néré, Le Boulangisme et la presse (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964), 41. American Advertiser, cited in La Publicité moderne (Nov. 1905), 16. “Everything that is really artistic, witty and clear is sure to obtain attention of the French public, as long as it is a French procedure.” He emphasized the necessity for cultivating a “sentiment of local color” for launching effective advertising campaigns in France. Ibid. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 5. “Les remèdes populaires et leurs inventeurs,” Newspaper clipping. APP D/b1 204 Etude sur la Publicité, 6. The author noted that following Géraudel’s success, “the procedure was improved,” and “the Vlada Cough Drops and products of the Urodonal lab, Jubol, [and others] have done much better.” Ibid., 6. Le Courrier français, Jan. 19, 1896; Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 45, plate n.36. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 141. Patricia Eckert Boyer, “Posters” in The Picture of Health: Images of Medicine and Pharmacy from the William H. Helfand Collection, exhibition catalogue (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 25. Le Courrier français, Nov. 10, 1884, 7. Le Courrier français, Nov. 10, 1884, 2. Jones, “La Presse satirique illustrée,” 40. Le Courrier français, Nov. 10, 1884, 7. Zévco, Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui, 4. An 1863 ordinance, prohibiting clowns, organ players, and itinerant singers from performing in public spaces without authorization, was still applicable in the 1880s. Police ordinance of Feb. 23, 1863. APP D/b1 202 Foires et fêtes foraines. The ordinance was repeated in 1897, 1898, and 1906. An 1887 report on the fêtes foraines recommended the suppression of fairs on the exterior boulevards, except for the Foire aux Jambons and the Foire au Pain d’Epice. APP D/b1 202. Préfecture de Police. Conseil d’Hygiène publique et de Salubrité du Département de la Seine. Rapport sur les Fêtes foraines à Paris et sur les dangers qu’elles peuvent présenter pour la santé publique (Feb. 16, 1887), 4. Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui n.411, 4. Le Courrier français, Dec. 2, 1888, 2. Louis Morin, “Carnavals parisiens,” La Revue illustrée 25 (Dec. 1897). Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 21, 29. Le Courrier français, Jan. 7, 1900; Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 28. The original title of Le Barnum, founded in 1886, was Le Boulangiste. Jacques Lethève, La Caricature et la presse sous la IIIe République (Paris: Armand Colin, 1961), 242. See Segal, “The Republic of Goods,” Ch.5 on Boulangism and publicity. Also see Adrien Dansette, Le Boulangisme (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1946) and Jacques Néré, Le Boulangisme et la presse (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964). Le Temps, Mar. 11, 1886, 3. Poster by Adolphe Willette, Elections Législatives. Ad. Willette, candidat anti-Semite, 1889. Segal, “The Republic of Goods,” 336. See Phillip Dennis Cate and Mary Shaw eds., The Spirit of Montmartre: Cabarets, Humor, and the Avant-Garde, 1875–1905 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 1996). Henri Dorra, “Les Pastilles Géraudel et les grands maîtres fin-de-siècle,”Gazette des beaux arts 103:1381 (1984), 35–90. Later contributors included Jacques Villon, Marcel Duchamp, and Juan Gris. Catherine Charpin and Sarah Wilson, “One Hundred Years Ago: The ‘Incohérents’ (1882– 1893)” in Art Monthly ( July–Aug. 1989), n.128, 709. Le Temps, Mar. 8, 1886, 3. L’Illustration, Oct. 5, 1889, 278. On café-concerts see Françaois Caradec and Alain Weill, Le Café-concert (Paris: Hachette, 1980). Broido, The Posters of Jules Chéret, 21, 29. One such issue was the Feb. 16, 1890 number.

264 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

Notes

Hugues Delorme, “Sur l’affiche de Chéret,” Le Courrier français, Aug. 25, 1895, 8. Félicien Champsaur, Les Bohémiens (Paris: E. Dentu and Cie, 1887). Le Figaro, Dec. 29, 1895, 3. Avenel, “La Publicité,” 141. Le Courrier français, Feb. 19, 1888, 12. Le Courrier français, Feb. 7, 1886, 1. Louid Legrand, Le Courrier français, Jan. 20, 1889, 24. Le Courrier français, Feb. 5, 1888, 2. Le Courrier français, Mar. 18 1888, 11. Le Courrier français, Feb. 3, 1889, 12. Le Courrier français, Mar. 1, 1885, 6. Le Courrier français, Mar. 18 1888, 4. L’Illustration, Jan. 8, 1887, 35; Feb. 26, 1887, 151; Nov. 24, 1888, 383; Le Temps, Nov. 28, 1898, 4. Henry Buguet, Revues et revuistes (Paris: Lévy, 1887), 16–17, cited in Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art, 14. Gabriel Faresne, Les Deux pastilles ennemies, dialogue tragi-comique en vers (Troyes: E. Caffé, 1887). Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art, 46. See Segal, “The Republic of Goods,” 31–37. At the 1867 pharmacists’ congress an orator described advertising as a risky, “productive or ruinous” force like the “capricious and perfidious [goddess] Fortuna.” Emile Genevoix, Congrès général des pharmaciens de France et de l’étranger. Rapport sur la publicité et les spécialités (1867), 1, 2. Heidbrinck, “La Réclame,” Le Courrier français, Mar. 24, 1888, 1. A. de Moncourt, “La Réclame,” Le Courrier français, Apr. 14, 1889, 11. Ferdinand Lunel, “La Réclame,” Le Courrier français, Mar. 24, 1889, 6–7. Pénot, “La Réclame,” Le Courrier français, Apr. 21, 1889, 9. Le Courrier français, Feb. 5, 1888, 11. Fernand LeQuesne, La Réclame (1897). Le Salon, Catalogue illustré. The painting is reproduced in Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art, 50. Ferdinand Lunel, “La publicité à Paris. Les Pousse-Pousse,” Le Courrier français, Feb. 5, 1891, 12. The ambiguous fascination some artists and writers held for advertising was similar to their love affair with fashion. Both involved modernity, originality, and a mixture of conformity and individuality. Richard Terdiman, in Discourse/Counter-Discourse, notes Baudelaire’s disdain for advertising and attraction to fashion, as well as Mallarmé’s work as the editor of a fashion magazine. La Vogue (Aug. 1889). Bernelle, Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881, 27; Ballot, De l’Affichage politique et électoral, 69. In 1893 billposting restrictions aimed to suppress anarchist activities. Robert Goldstein argues that in the Belle Epoque caricatures’ subject matter shifted to mores, away from (the more meaningful subject of ) politics, as political censorship was no longer a problem. He sees the harassment inf licted upon Le Courrier français as motivated by politics, since Le Courrier aired some favorable views of General Boulanger. Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature, 244. Otherwise he finds the prosecution of Le Courrier français “almost inexplicable.” This interpretation underestimates the importance of the leagues’ program to eradicate what they saw as corrupting and degenerative inf luences in culture. Adolph Willette, Le Courrier français, Dec. 4, 1887, 1. Edouard Zier, Le Courrier français, June 24, 1888, 1. Le Courrier français, Aug. 12, 1888, 12. Legrand was condemned to two months in prison and a 500 franc fine, Zier to one month in prison and a 100 franc fine, Roques to four months in prison and a 2,000 franc fine, and Lanier to a one-month prison term and a fine of 1,000 francs. Le Courrier français Sept. 30, 1888, 2. The drawing appeared in the June 24, 1888 issue. Le Courrier français, Apr. 7, 1889, 4. Le Courrier français, Apr. 7, 1889, 4. Le Courrier français, Sept. 30, and Oct. 7, 1888. See Goldstein, Censorship of Political Caricature, 246–247 for a detailed account.

Notes 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84.

265

La Justice, July 10, 1888. Le Courrier français, Jan. 27, 1889, 8; Sept. 30, 1888, 4; Oct. 7, 1888, 3; Oct. 14, l-2. La Paix’s angry commentary was a good example. Le Courrier français, Mar. 3, 1889, 4. On censored posters see Karen Carter, “L’Age de l’affiche.” “La Grande epidémie de pornographie,” La Caricature, May 6, 1882, 1. Le Courrier français, Nov. 11, 1888, 8 See Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), Ch.1. On brasseries à femmes see Barrows, “Nineteenth-Century Cafés”. Le Guide de Paris mystérieux (Paris: Tchou, 1985), 218. Annie Stora-Lamarre in L’Enfer de la IIIe République: Censeurs et pornographes, 1881–1914 (Paris: Imago, 1988) states that heavy fines practically ruined the journal, but the journal seems to have perservered. In 1914 it was converted into a monthly publishing only original artworks. Weiss, Popular Culture of Modern Art.

Conclusion 1. Jim Rutenberg, “Phenomenon. (Buy Me). Listen closely—The Secret Agents of Capitalism Are All around Us,” The New York Times Magazine, July 15, 2001, 21. 2. Sampson, A History of Advertising, 605. 3. Andrew Adam Newman, “The Body as Billboard: Your Ad Here,” The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2009.

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S E L EC T E D

BI BLIO G R A PH Y

Primary Sources Archival Sources Archives Nationales. AN. 48/AQ/4438 Le Matin 65 AQ u 111 Le Figaro AD/BD/30–2 Affichage AJ/13/451 Opéra AJ/13/1284 Bals Masqués F/12/2441 “Maure, formation d’un musée industriel” F/12/5218 Richard Morris F/12/8711 Léon-Prosper Rénier F/21/1130 Batiments 1851–1860 F/21/1046 Affichage théâtral

Archives de Paris/ Archives du Département de la Seine. AP. Bankruptcy files. Entrepreneurs d’Affichage; Publicité Vn 5 n. 52, Concession de Trink-halles ou Buffets parisiens, 1864–1899 Vn 5 n.67, Voirie publique, dossier sur la publicité sur édicules, 1877–1899 Vo 3 n. 40, Affichage sur murs et soutênement, 1875 Vo 3 n. 415, Concessions, dossier kiosques à journaux Vo n.c. 16, Colonnes Morris, kiosques lumineux Vo n.c. 69, Plan de l’emplacement des colonnes Morris Vo n.c. 76. Tarifs des concessions sur la voie publique, 1885–1887 Vo n.c.132, Réglementation et attributions de concessions, 1884–1903 Vo n.c. 167, Concessions temporaires étalages, terrasses, petits marchands, tarifs, 1884/1888 Vo n.c. 215, Poteaux-indicateurs affiches Vo n.c. 248, Projet de Chalet de Toilette et de Necessité, 1877 Vo n.c. 256, Kiosques, 1872–1878 Vo n.c. 842, Affaires diverses et générales 1304 w p.j. 30, dossier 15, Concessions des édicules sur les voies publiques, 1906–1923 1304 w p.j. 30 dossier 12, Affichage-réclames. Note: 1304 w p.j. files were temporary files that were being reclassified.

Archives de la Préfecture de la Police. APP. D/a1 127, Affichage sur les omnibus et tramways, 1875–1880 D/a1 127, Publicité par voitures 1876–1885; Publicité par moyens divers, 1879–1880 D/a1 478, Placards injurieux ou obscènes. Rapport hebdomadaire: surveillance L’exposition et de la mise en vente des livres et gravures obscènes, 1880–1888

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Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. BHVP. Anciennes Actualités. AA. AA 38, Kiosques, édicules, coupures de presse AA 39, Kiosques, édicules, coupures de presse AA 119, Revue populaire des Beaux-Arts

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Published Books, Articles, and Dissertations Anon. Affaire Marie Colombier-Sarah Bernhardt: pièces à conviction. Paris: Chez tous les librairies, 1884. Anon. signed “A Lady.” Bubbles and Ballast. Life in Paris during the Brilliant Days of Empire, A Tour through Belgium and Holland, and a Sojourn in London. Baltimore, MD: Kelly, Piet and Company, 1871. Anon. Physiologies des cafés de Paris. Paris: Desloges, 1841. Anon. La Publicité au point de vue industriel et commercial. Paris: Bénard et compagnie, 1858. L’Album-revue de l’industrie parisienne. Paris: Garnier, 1844 and 1845. Alhoy, Maurice. Louis Huart and Charles Philipon. Le Musée pour rire, dessins par tous les caricaturistes de Paris. Paris: Aubert, 1839–1840.

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Alphand, Adolphe. Les Promenades de Paris. Paris: Rothschild, 1867. Amicis, Edmondo de. Souvenirs de Paris et de Londres. Paris: Hachette, 1880. Arnal, Albert. Paris qui crie. Petits Métiers. Paris: G. Chamerot, 1890. Auberive, Charles (pseud. of Mlle de Vare). Voyage d’un curieux dans Paris. Paris: V. Sarlit, 1860. Avenel, Georges d’. “La Publicité,” Le Mécanisme de la vie moderne v.4. Paris: A. Colin, 1902. Avenel, Henri. Histoire de la Presse française depuis 1789 jusqu’à nos jours. Paris: Flammarion, 1900. Ballot, H. De l’Affichage politique et electoral. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris, Faculté de droit. Paris: Jouve, 1916. Balzac, Honoré de. César Birotteau. Paris: Gallimard, 1975. ———. Cousin Bette, trans. Sylvia Raphael. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. ———. “Histoire et physiologie des boulevards de Paris. De la Madeleine à la Bastille,” Le Diable à Paris. Paris: Hetzel, 1845: 89–104. Reprinted in Adrien Provost. Panorama des grands boulevards: Paris romantique. Paris: Le Cadratin, 1980. ———. Lost Illusions. trans. Herbert J. Hunt. London: Penguin, 1971. ———. The Wild Ass’s Skin. trans. Herbert J. Hunt. London: Penguin, 1977. Barthélemy, Jouhaud et Bricet. Un Deluge d’inventions, revue de l’exposition de l’industrie, vaudeville en trois actes. Théâtre des Délassements-Comiques, July 28, 1849. Bastard, George. Paris qui roule. Paris, 1889. Baudelaire, Charles. Oeuvres complètes. ed. Claude Pichois. Paris: Gallimard, 1976–1977. Baudin, Henry. L’Enseigne et L’affiche. Geneva: Atar, 1905. Bellows, Henry W. The Old World in Its New Face. Impressions of Europe in 1867–1868 v.2. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1869. Benjamin, Edmond and Paul Desachy. Le Boulevard, croquis parisien. Paris: Martpon et Flammarion, 1893. Bernelle, Paul. Des Restrictions apportées depuis 1881 à la liberté de l’affichage. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris, Faculté de droit, 1912. Bernhardt, Sarah, The Life of Marie Colombier: Sarah Barnum’s Answer. New York: Norman L. Munro, 1884. Billy, André. Paris vieux & neuf. Paris: E. Rey, 1909. Biscotin. Le Spectacle dans la rue: grande revue nouvelle de l’année 1861. Paris: Koch, 1861. Bloch, Ferdinand. Types du boulevard. Paris: E. Flammarion, 1880. Bolton, Charles E. Travels in Europe and America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903. Burat, Jules. Exposition de l’industrie française. Année 1844 v.1. Paris: Challamel, 1844. Caillot, Antoine. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des moeurs et usages des français. Geneva: Slatkine, 1976. First published in 1827. Callet, Albert. L’Agonie du vieux Paris. Paris: H. Daragon, 1911. Caricatures-omnibus. Nouvelle publication à bon marché. Paris, 1834. Carmouche, Pierre-Frédéric-Adolphe, Varin and Louis Huart. Le Puff, revue en trios tableaux, par MM. Carmouche, Varin et Huart, ornée de ROY-GLAG, Parodie en prose rime de RUY-BLAS. Paris: Marchant, 1838. Champsaur, Félicien. Dinah Samuel. Paris: Pierre Douville, 1905. Cilleuls, Alfred de. Histoire de l’administration parisienne au XIXe siècle. Paris: Champion, 1900. Claretie, Léo. “Les Grands Boulevards” in Paris au temps jadis. Paris: Bibliothèque Universelle, 1897. Coffignon, A. Paris-vivant. Le Pavé parisien. Paris: Librairie illustrée, 1890. Coleman, Henry. European Life and Manners in Familiar Letter to Friends v.1. London: John Petherham, 1849. Colnet, Charles-Jean Duval. L’Hermite du Faubourg Saint Germain. Paris: Pillet aîné, 1825. Colombier, Marie. The Life and Memoirs of Sarah Barnum. New York: Norman L. Munro, 1884. Comité des droits de l’homme et du citoyen. Affichage politique. Montpellier, 1895. Cooper, James Fennimore. Gleanings in Europe: France. Albany, 1983. Coppée, François. L’Homme-affiche. Paris: Lemerre, 1891. Damery, F. C. de. De la Publicité commerciale, ou de l’annonce dans le Journal-Programme et dans les journaux à clientèle fixe. Paris: Frey, 1847. Daragon, Henri and E. Dolis. Le Tsar à Paris en 1896. Paris: Daragon, 1896. Davis, Richard Harding. About Paris. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1895.

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I N DE X

accessories. See fashion. Action française, L’ 188 Adorno, Theodor 198 Advertising 1–5, 15, 31–32, 35, 37, 40, 43, 63–64, 66–74, 79–93, 103–105, 107–109, 113–122, 125–127, 136, 143–160, 161–175, 180–181, 183–203, 205–218, 220. See also publicity, news, poster, brand, catalogue, furnishing, label, sandwichman, sandwichwoman, sign, streets, marketing, consumption advertising agency 82, 86, 95, 99–100, 116, 127, 139–141, 143–144, 146–147, 152, 159, 207. See also poster, Havas Agency American 5–6, 103, 125, 139–140, 154, 180, 188, 198–199, 206 brochure and handbill 17, 31, 34, 38, 84, 86, 115–116, 131, 141, 144, 146, 155, 173, 196 classified ad 83–84, 86, 88, 93, 100–102, 116–117, 159 compared to twenty-first-century advertising 220 cost of press advertising 64, 83–84, 86–89, 99, 102, 159–160, 169, 173, 207 critique and perceptions of 81, 84–105, 112–119, 122, 141, 148–149, 152–155, 172–173, 200, 202, 206, 210–215 definition of the terms of 5–7, 82–86, 95 editorial 5–7, 9–10, 25, 57, 63–64, 67, 79, 84, 86–90, 93–100, 102–105,

113, 116–118, 121, 156–157, 160, 164–173, 200, 205–215, 217–218 eighteenth-century 16–17, 63, 85, 223 English 5–6, 17, 83, 139–140, 188, 199, 223–224 mobile 1, 31–32, 128, 131–134, 136–142, 148, 152–156, 171, 214, 228 mural 31, 42, 132, 143–144, 148, 153–154, 157, 172, 199 parody of 10, 82, 93–98, 102, 104–105, 207, 211 press advertising 5–7, 16–17, 21, 25–27, 31, 36–37, 39–42, 57, 63–64, 69–72, 75, 79, 81–90, 94–105, 107– 109, 112–119, 122, 125, 144–146, 154, 156–160, 164–175, 205–215, 217–218 psychological effect of 41, 105, 125–126, 139–141, 153–154, 171– 175, 181, 189, 191, 200, 212–214, 220 publicité 5–7, 17, 82–86, 99, 121, 164, 167, 171, 212 rationality in 12, 20, 81, 84, 86–87, 154, 167, 190 réclame 5–6, 12, 17, 84, 82, 84–89, 93–103, 116–117, 159, 167, 206, 210, 217–218, 220 reaction against 11, 141, 144, 153–155, 202 regulation of 42–44, 134, 136, 141, 144, 147, 152–159, 183, 215. See also poster, press laws screen 131, 132, 139 slogan 132, 140, 206 symbols in 17, 148, 193, 198, 212, 214. See also drum

278

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aesthetic national 188, 199–200, 202 of streets 1, 11, 51, 127–130, 141, 148–152, 155, 188, 191, 199, 202, 214 affiche. See poster Algeria 1, 145 Alhoy, Maurice 27, 42, 91, 101 Alphand, Adolphe 33, 149, 151, 253 Amicis, Edmondo, De 134, 172 amusement. See entertainment Amis de Paris, Les 154 Apollinaire, Guillaume 97, 145, 214 arcade 2, 15, 22, 23, 32–33, 36–37, 41, 52, 55, 61, 64, 67, 79 architect 11, 35, 49, 92, 148, 188 architecture 3, 8, 15, 33–34, 40, 51–53, 58, 135, 142, 199, 203, 219 used for publicity 37, 121, 132, 161–162, 164 aristocrats. See class art. See also decorative art, culture, Salon art gallery and salon 20, 36–37, 50, 57, 59, 83, 151, 193, 199 painting 8, 24, 25, 35, 37, 48, 55, 179, 185, 214 press coverage of 65, 74, 84 Social art 183, 199–202 sculpture 8, 35, 36, 37, 47, 67 articles de Paris 34, 39, 138–139. See also decorative items Art Nouveau. 12, 183, 192, 198–199, 202 artisan manufacturing 2, 35, 57, 82 artist consumer as the 2, 192 consumer culture and the 4, 8, 12, 17, 22, 24, 25, 48, 56, 69, 71, 76, 97, 99, 107–122, 131, 151, 161, 184–203 portrait of the 21–22 Atget, Eugène 141 Aubert, Gabriel 22, 24, 25, 98, 107, 109–110, 115. See also Maison Aubert audience. See public and spectator author. See writer automata 61, 113, 119 Autre Monde, Un. See Grandville avant-garde 12, 185, 188–191, 203, 206 Bakhtin, Mikhail ball. See dancing

98

Balzac, Honoré de 9, 20, 22, 24, 50, 53, 65, 70, 74, 76, 81–83, 85–92, 97, 113 César Birotteau 9, 86–88, 90 Cousin Bette (La Cousine Bette) 29 Firm of Nucingen, The (La Maison Nucingen) 90 Lost Illusions (Illusions perdues) 9, 87–88 Wild Ass’s Skin (Le Peau de Chagrin) 9, 90, 92 Barthes, Roland 18 Baudelaire, Charles 4, 9, 52, 108, 264 Baudrillard, Jean 222, Barnum, P.T. 12, 103, 177, 179–181, 208 Benjamin, Walter 2–4, 20, 108, 120–121, 219 bazaar 31, 33, 131–132 Béraud, Jean 190, 193 Bérenger, Senator René 154, 201, 215 Bergson, Henri 4 Berlin 47, 142, 152 Berlioz, Hector 49, 113 Bernhardt, Sarah 11–12, 126, 162, 172, 175–181, 212 in posters 190, 192, 202, 220 Biétry, Laurent 31, 102 billposting, cost of 147, 149–150, 154, 159–160 billposting and billposting agencies 8, 11, 17, 21–22, 42–44, 132, 136–139, 143–160, 164, 171, 173 Bing, Siegfriend 199 bluestocking. See women Bonaparte, Prince Jérôme 11, 144, 158 Bonnard, Pierre 199 Bon Marché (dept. store) 162, 173 book. See publishing bookstore 21, 99, 185, 232 Boulanger, General 156, 208, 213–216 Bourdieu, Pierre 2 boulevard culture 10, 52, 71, 102, 104, 127–136, 219. See also Grands Boulevards, modernity and advertising and publicity 1, 127–142, 150–155, 191 criticism of 11, 134–136, 141 Boulevard des Italiens 33, 39, 57, 62, 66–67, 69, 129, 134, 139, 164 Boulevard du Temple 32, 43, 57, 127

Index Boulevard Montmartre 23, 36, 39, 52, 55, 57, 69, 132–134, 150 boulevards, Haussmannian 125, 128, 141–142, 162. See also Grands Boulevards bourgeois. See class boutique 17, 38, 52–53, 125 brand 7, 125–126, 151, 166, 199 brochures and handbill. See advertising Brullov, Karl 69 businessman. See entrepreneur café

15, 33, 46–47, 52–53, 56–57, 59, 62, 83, 94, 127–128, 136, 138, 146, 157, 159–160, 185 café-concert 49–50, 105, 156, 183, 185, 212 Camescasse, Jean 1 canards (fake news). See press capitalism 4, 41, 82, 85, 90–92, 97, 141, 146, 147, 200. See also marketplace, industrialization caricature 2, 6, 8, 10, 20–28, 29, 35, 40–42, 56, 91, 93–94, 96, 104, 107–122, 131, 136–137, 140, 164, 169, 174–176, 184, 216 and publicity 36, 41–42 in display windows 20, 26 marketing of 20, 24, 107–109, 122 Caricature, La (Philipon) 24, 91–92, 98, 112 Caricature, La (Robida) 136, 164, 174–176 carpet 37, 39, 162 cashmere shawl. See shawl catalogue 37, 39, 125, 144, 154, 163, 173, 194 celebrity 18, 22, 24, 74, 83, 88, 125–126, 132, 134, 162, 174–181, 188, 192, 212, 219–220 censorship. See press laws Chaix publishing firm 184 Cham 21, 35, 40, 56, 115, 244 Champf leury (pseud. Of Jules Fleury) 108, 244 Champs-Élysées 40, 46–50, 58, 60, 66, 72, 115, 136, 209 Champsauer, Félicien 138, 172–173, 189, 209 Charcot, Jean-Martin 186

279

Charivari, Le 6, 22, 24–26, 31, 36, 39, 41, 59, 61, 70, 92–94, 96, 108, 110, 210 charlatan and charlatanism 17, 35, 50, 81, 85–86, 89–99, 102–104, 112, 115–116, 126, 147–148, 172, 181, 212 Charles X 10 Chateaubriand 20, 98, 131 Chéret, Jules 12, 126, 151, 160, 183–192, 194, 199, 201–203, 205–210, 217–218 critique of 183–192 representation of women by 184–192, 194, 202, 205, 208–209 children, representation of 92, 122, 130, 134, 136, 138, 140, 163, 166, 186–187, 193–194, 196–197 cinematography 126, 132, 139–140, 171, 193, 201, 220 circus 49, 136, 184–187, 191–192, 207 Circus (painting) 191–192 city city authorities 11, 50, 143–145, 151–158, 215–218 urban sociability 3, 8, 16, 22, 26–27, 36–37, 45–47, 56–62, 129–130, 142 class as a value associated with consumption 3, 192. See also specific classes all classes 26–27, 33, 35, 39–40, 42, 47, 50, 73, 125, 131, 139, 144, 157 aristocrats and the upper class 29, 33, 39, 46, 50, 56, 58–59, 63, 65–72, 75–79, 83, 89–90, 151, 166, 185, 193, 200, 219 class tensions 9, 46, 54–55, 58, 153, 198 middle class 2, 4, 25, 34, 37, 40, 42, 43, 46–48, 51–55, 57–59, 62–63, 63–65, 67, 70, 73, 78–80, 82–83, 85, 93, 97, 131, 154, 190 working classes and lower classes 11, 27, 31–32, 53–55, 57–58, 83, 132, 136–139, 141–142, 167, 172, 186. See also type classical style 18, 38–40, 86, 188

280

Index

clothes 25, 35, 63, 83, 25, 116, 118, 136, 161, 167. See also fashion, tailor, shops, magasin de nouveautés, retail ready-made 38–39, 56 clown 24, 91, 98, 145, 185–186, 191 Colombier, Marie 177–181, 220 colonialism 1, 56 commerce 23, 27, 34, 37, 42–43, 65, 67, 82–83, 92, 135, 139, 155, 200, 208 culture and 3, 10, 21, 24, 37–38, 64, 80, 81–82, 114, 118, 121, 183–203 Commerson, Auguste 83, 98, 103 commodity culture 2–4, 125–126, 184 concert. See café-concert, music, opera consumer 3, 7–8, 12, 15–16, 21, 35–39, 41, 67, 82, 86, 184, 191, 219 agency of the 2–5, 28, 41–42, 71, 77–79, 104, 121–122, 127, 219 identities of the 2–4, 8, 15–16, 25, 28, 36, 45, 62, 64, 97, 116, 164, 184, 221 male 4, 27, 37, 161, 164 subjectivity of the 12, 42, 48, 80, 126, 184, 193, 203 consumer culture. See also modernity definition of modern 2–10, 40–46 in the early modern period 16–17, 63, 192 historiography of 2–5 consumption and conformity 4, 42, 69, 71, 77, 97, 264 criticism of 8, 122, 172–173, 190, 194, 201–203, 213 districts of 2, 7, 23, 32–34, 37–42, 45–62, 63–64, 66–67, 69–73, 79, 86, 127–142, 150–155, 190 feminization of 4, 15, 63–80, 184–198 imaginary and scenes of 2–4, 7–10, 15–42, 45–62, 63–80, 125–142, 161–175, 185–198, 200, 203 luxury 39, 125–126, 130, 162, 203 mass 2, 5–6, 125–126, 150, 155, 172, 203. See also mass culture as urban pleasure 3, 7–8, 15–42, 45–62, 63–80, 125–142, 161–168, 173–174, 192–194 country estate 67, 70, 78, 166 countryside

advertising in the 154–155 marketing aimed at the 24, 27 Courbert, Gustave 112 Courrier français, Le 12, 188, 189, 199, 205–218 and pornography controversy 215–218 representation of advertising in 12, 211–214 courtesan 33, 47, 104, 134 Crary, Jonathan 4 crowd 1, 9, 24, 26, 32, 33, 43–44, 46, 49, 53–55, 57–58, 61, 134, 139, 173, 193, 200–201. See also spectator, Grands Boulevards and boulevard culture 1, 132, 139, 154, 209 culture, commercialization of 8, 21, 81–85, 89–90, 92–93, 97, 99, 109–120, 126, 181. See also commerce current event 1–2, 27, 28, 38, 56–58, 74, 116, 132, 138, 164–165, 212. See also fait divers customer. See consumer Daly, César 39, 51 dancing 28, 49–50, 59, 78, 184–186, 192, 209 Daumier, Honoré 1, 6, 9, 35, 50, 56, 81, 85, 89, 91–94, 97 Davioud, Gabriel 149 decorative art and industrial art 35, 56, 126, 183, 188, 199 decorative items 15, 33, 34–37, 39, 63 Degas, Edgar 162, 190 department store 2, 99, 121, 125, 132, 145, 150, 152–153, 158–159, 162, 167, 173, 175, 185, 194, 206–207 advertising for 125, 147, 152–153, 158–159, 173 Diable à Paris, Le 22, 53, 110 Dickens, Charles 6, 31 display (étalage) 35, 38, 41, 57, 61, 132, 134, 140, 142, 150, 157, 173. See also self-display, window display Doré, Gustave 21 Dufayel Agency and Store 147, 202 Dumas, Alexandre 22, 50, 65, 98 Dutacq, Armand 82–83, 226

Index Eco, Umberto 119 economy, development of the 2–3, 125–126 Eiffel, Gustave 149, 162 Eiffel Tower 149, 188, 208–209 electricity. See lighting elegance and taste, perception of French 2, 9, 17, 25–26, 29, 33–40, 45–62, 63–80, 125, 131, 140, 148– 155, 162, 173, 185, 192–193, 199 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 55 emotion and marketing 25, 105, 125– 126, 171–173. See also advertising, psychological effect of engraving, development of 35 Ensor, James 199 entertainment 6, 8, 20, 23, 31, 34, 38, 46–50, 52, 56–62, 79, 87, 91, 99, 115, 127, 142, 147, 149, 151, 156–157, 183–192, 201, 207, 209, 212. See also theater, café-concert, music, opera entrepreneur 1, 24, 43, 45, 76, 88, 90, 96, 101, 128, 134, 149, 152, 157, 169 Ernst, Max 110 exhibition 35–38, 45–46, 57, 59, 61, 114–115, 126, 128, 134, 139, 146, 149, 153, 162, 183, 188, 193, 199, 202. See also display, Industrial Exposition, Universal Exposition exotic 19, 26, 38, 140, 198, 236 Exposition. See Industrial Exposition, Universal Exposition Fabric. See textile fair ( foire) 24, 50, 89, 136, 145, 207–208. See also exhibition fait divers 6, 11, 84, 87–88, 102, 138, 159, 161, 164, 167, 169–172, 206, 212 family, as a value associated with consumption 3, 24–25, 40, 48, 63, 194 fashion 2, 9, 16–17, 32, 37, 39, 47–48, 50–51, 55–57, 59, 61, 63–80, 104, 108, 127, 138, 190, 198. See also clothes accessories 3, 18, 15, 18, 28–31, 38, 67–70, 72, 76–78, 83, 116, 125. See also jewelry, articles de Paris

281

criticism of 77, 80 designer 65, 69–70, 72 dressmaker 63, 69, 70, 72, 77, 78 fashion trends 28, 42, 63, 63–80, 84, 129 fashion house 37, 63, 65, 69, 72, 99, 151 theory of 9, 76–77 fashion column 6, 9, 30, 31, 37, 39, 59, 61, 63–65, 67, 69–70, 72–74, 79–80, 83–84, 103, 219 fashion plate 24, 29, 30, 61, 64, 67–70, 72, 163, 166–167, 193–194 fashion magazine 3, 6, 9, 26, 34, 45, 57, 61–74, 76, 79–80, 94, 166, 193 American 64, 72 English 64, 73–74 femininity. See women feminism 111, 118, 121 Fénéon, Felix 185 Figaro, Le 6, 37, 83, 98, 102–103, 128, 132, 151, 159, 164, 167–170, 177, 179, 206, 208–209, 213 flâneur 9, 20, 26, 41, 46, 51–52, 54–55, 57, 70, 75–76, 101, 129, 138, 189, 219 flâneuse 46, 64, 75–76, 129, 192–193 Feure, Georges de 198, 199 Flaubert, Gustave 42, 71. See also Madame Bovary Fournel, Victor 148 France, Anatole 188 free market 17 freedom of the press. See press laws French Revolution 17, 18, 34, 43, 47, 82, 142, 158 frontispiece 21–23, 42, 110–111, 214, 249 Fuller, Loïe 192 furnishing, street (mobilier urbain) 1, 10–11, 126, 128–129, 131–134, 143–159, 171, 185, 210, 213–215 furniture 30, 33, 34, 35–37, 39, 50, 63, 67, 76, 77, 83, 101, 167 Gallé, Emile 199 gambling 47, 88–91, 153, 232 garden 46–48, 53, 57, 59, 67, 70, 83, 145,149, 208–209. See also Jardin de Tuileries

282

Index

Garnier, Charles 148 Gautier, Théophile 108, 114, 175 Gavarni, Paul 8, 21–22, 29, 50, 56, 65, 76, 101–102 Géraudel, Arthur 159, 165, 188–189, 192, 199, 205–218 Girardin, Emile de 65, 74, 81–85, 92, 95 Girardin, Delphine de 8–9, 33, 35, 36, 42, 48, 63–64, 67, 74–80, 84, 97, 219 Gluck, Mary 2, 97 God, in advertisements and posters 17–18, 84 goddess, in advertisements and posters 12, 17, 19, 193, 210, 212–214 Goncourt, Edmond de 98, 99, 101, 138, 199 Grande Ville. Nouveau Tableau de Paris comique, critique et philosophique, La 40–41, 50–51, 77, 100 Grands Boulevards, the 1–2, 8, 11, 32–34, 38–39, 44, 46–47, 51–55, 57, 61, 64, 70–71, 77, 127–142, 143, 148–150, 152, 154–155, 181, 191, 219. See also boulevard culture cafés on 33, 46–47, 52–53, 128, 134– 135, 138, 140 compared to Haussmannian boulevards 128–129, 131 shops on 33, 46, 52–53, 70, 132, 134, 142, 164–165 traffic on 128–129, 134–136, 139, 152–154. See also crowd Grandville, J.-J. 8–10, 21, 27, 36, 42, 76, 81, 91, 97, 107–122, 219, 243–244 Autre Monde, Un 10, 22, 107–122 as a bohemian artist 22, 112 Fleurs animées, Les, 76, 108 Petites misères de la vie humaine 21 Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux 21, 108 self-portraits by 22, 110 Grasset, 198, 199, 200, 210 grisette 39, 40 guidebook for Paris 38, 33, 37, 39, 41, 45, 47, 52–53, 55, 57, 61, 112, 127, 160, 193 Guilbert, Yvette 192

guild system 16 Guimard, Hector

199

hairstyle 67–69, 77, 79, 167–168 Haussmann, Baron Georges-Eugène, urban planning under 2, 11, 34, 46, 51, 126, 127, 131, 134, 141–144, 148–149, 155, 219 Haussmannization, impact on street advertising 11, 125, 127–128, 143–150, 155–156 limits of 11, 62, 131, 134, 141, 155, 162 Havas Agency 82, 104, 144, 146, 223, 241, 247 hawker (camelot) 11, 89, 128, 138–144, 154 Heine, Heinrich 9, 46, 54–55 Hetzel, Pierre Jules 226 Hetzel Publishing 21–22, 110 Hippodrome 31, 50, 79, 164, 185, 251 Hittorff, Jacques 49 Horeau, Hector 50 hotel 46, 56, 125, 146, 150, 157, 159 Huart, Louis 35, 55, 91, 93, 115, 161 Hugo, Victor 50, 76, 98, 203 Huysmans, Joris-Karl 138, 185, 190 hype. See puff hysteria 180, 189 illumination. See lighting Illustrated London News, The 56, 61, 62, 74, 130, 134–135, 207, 235 illustration. See also image, L’Illustration, lithography, poster, publishing development of 21, 35, 112 as editorial advertising 5, 25, 42, 60, 62, 69, 83, 129–130, 157, 160, 206, 210–212, 217–218 in books 3, 8, 10, 16, 20–22, 29, 45, 50–51, 64, 107–122, 138, 173, 175, 185. See also panorama literature in magazines 8–9, 21, 35, 39–42, 45, 48, 56–62, 64, 74, 84, 109–110, 130–135, 162–164, 168–169, 207, 209–210 of books used in posters 21 spectators in 22, 48

Index Illustration, L’ 6–7, 9, 22, 26, 31, 35, 37, 39, 46, 48–50, 54, 56–62, 72, 74, 95, 102, 112, 125, 162, 164, 209, 212 representation of Paris in 9, 46, 48–50, 56–62 representation of women in 9, 59–60, 62 images. See also caricature, engraving, illustration, joke, visual culture circulation of 8, 15, 27–28, 42, 45 regulation of 44, 156–158, 215–218 and texts 5–7, 9, 44, 64, 69, 79, 107, 109–111, 115, 119–122, 169–171, 210–212 Impressionism 4, 48, 131, 189, 190–191 India 28–30, 38, 59, 73, 179 industrial art. See decorative art Industrialization 2–5, 42, 82, 85, 110, 113 Industrial Exposition 2, 30–31, 34–37, 39, 86, 114–115 industry, French 29, 31, 35–38, 42–43, 52, 60, 65–66, 82–83, 183, 188, 200, 202 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique 29, 69 invention and inventor 35, 65, 93, 1 12–113, 115–117, 136, 138, 172, 207, 216 Iskin, Ruth E. 4, 222 James, Henry 11, 135 Janin, Jules 47, 52, 54, 60, 72 Japonisme 188 Jardin de Tuileries 46–48, 50, 72, 75 jewelry 30, 66, 77, 116, 167, 198–199 joke (blague) in text and image 22, 92, 93, 95–98, 101–102, 105, 112, 119, 121, 169–170, 206, 209–211, 257 Joséphine, Empress, 29 Jourdain, Frantz 188, 199, 200 Journal des dames et des modes 38, 63, 65–67, 71, 76, 83 journalism and journalist 9, 58, 75, 82, 84–100, 127–128, 131–133, 205–218. See also magazine, press Kaf ka, Franz 11, 140–141 Kahn, Gustave 190, 199 king, in advertisements 17, 86 kiosk. See furnishing

283

label 18, 31 Lalique, René 198 Lamartine, Alphonse de 20, 76, 98 Lazare, Louis 41, 128, 148 leisure. See entertainment LeQuesne, Ferdinand 214 lifestyle 2, 7–8, 21, 25, 27, 36, 38, 41–42, 68, 84, 164, 166, 171, 191. See also consumption lighting 48–50, 53, 56, 72, 134–135, 149, 151, 184, 199 electric 6, 128, 132, 139 gas 2, 26, 32–34, 131, 135, 143, 156 illuminated advertising 134, 139, 141. See also sign Liszt, Franz 78, 113 literacy, rate of 20, 159, 183 literature 8, 35, 38, 46, 56–57, 86, 119, 153, 172–175, 185, 188. See also novel, serial novel, publishing, culture inf luence on fashion trends 31, 34 marketing of 20, 107, 109, 119, 122, 171, 174–175, 184, 188, 210, 214 marketplace for 4, 10, 55, 82, 85–86, 92 panoramic literature 20, 22, 40, 45, 50, 52, 54–56, 62, 77 popular literature 3, 41–42, 53, 71, 119, 153 press coverage of 6, 64–65, 74, 84, 87–88, 93, 99–100, 102, 104, 113, 117, 165. See also advertising, editorial lithography 2, 17–18, 21–27, 35–36, 65, 92, 107–108, 125, 143, 183–184, 199–200 London, consumer culture and advertising in 2, 5, 17, 20, 27, 35, 46–47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 59, 61, 141– 142, 152–153, 161, 193, 207, 228 Longchamps 31, 50, 66, 116 lottery 37, 89, 91, 96, 132 Louis Philippe, King 25, 66, 91–92 Louvre, the 23, 27, 41, 46, 216 luxury 54, 59, 64, 66–67, 70, 72–73, 125–126, 130, 141, 151, 162 criticism of 17, 66, 116, 141, 162, 203 luxury trade 32, 126, 130

284

Index

Macaire, Robert 10, 85, 91–93, 98, 112 Madame Bovary 42, 71 magasin de nouveautés 16, 31, 35–42, 60, 73, 83–84, 99, 125, 161, 167, 186 magazine 20–21, 24, 45, 56–62, 67, 99, 103, 113, 116, 118, 136, 140, 162, 165–166, 169, 171, 184–185, 193. See also specific titles. See also fashion magazine, illustration, press for decorative arts 34–35 for women 17, 45, 65, 71, 193 for young people 65 Maindron, Ernest 184, 188 Maison Aubert, La 8, 16, 21, 22–25, 37, 42, 55, 60, 65–66, 69–71, 94, 107, 109–110, 115 Mallarmé, Stéphane 136, 199, 214 Manet, Edouard 48, 179, 190, 195–196, mannequin 115–116, 136, 139–140 manufacturing 5, 29, 35, 37, 39, 41, 63, 69, 77–79, 86, 125, 159. See also artisan manufacturing, industrialization, industry marketing See also advertising, publicity, retail, shop, shawl, perfume, publishing for books 8, 10, 20–28 giveaways 26, 71, 83, 93, 96, 98, 113, 116, 125, 156 for Paris 2, 45–62 marketplace 62, 80, 82, 85, 93, 96, 100, 104–105, 152, 188, 202, 216. See also literature, marketplace for marriage agency 92, 101, 115–116 marriage casket 30–31 Marx, Roger 185, 199 mass consumption. See consumption mass culture 103–104, 191–192, 201–203 mass press. See press mass production 125–126, 162 Maupassant, Guy de 131, 138, 173 mechanization, representation of 35, 107, 115, 119, 122, 219–220 Méliès, Georges 171 Mercier, Louis Sébastien 17, 20, 54 Mermet, Emile 146, 150, 167 Meunier, Georges 193 mobile advertising. See advertising Mode, La, 39, 65, 74, 76

Modern Style 198. See also Art Nouveau modernity and boulevard culture 8–9, 51–56, 62, 131–142, 191, 219 urban sense of 4, 46, 51, 75–76, 97, 126, 127–131, 144, 155, 162–163, 184, 188–191, 219 Modes Parisiennes, Les 26–27, 47, 50, 63, 65, 67, 70–72, 76 Moniteur de la mode, Le 29, 39, 50, 63, 65, 67–68, 71–74, 79, 166 Montesquieu, Baron de 18 Montmartre, culture of 2, 10, 12, 188, 205–218 monuments and landmarks 43–44, 57, 148. See also Louvre protection of 44, 153–155 Morisot, Berthe 48 Mucha, Alphonse 160, 180, 185, 198–199, 202, 205, 210 Musée Grévin 132, 151, 185, 191 museum 36–37, 41, 45–46, 57, 59, 132, 151, 157, 199. See also Louvre music 31, 44, 46, 48–50, 56–57, 59, 62, 66, 99, 153, 183–188, 212. See also café-concert, dancing, entertainment, opera, theater Musset, Alfred de 22 Nadar (pseudo. Gaspard Félix Tournachon) 24, 102, 164, 178 Napoleon Bonaparte (emperor of France) 4, 17, 28, 43, 48, 228 Napoleon III 155–156, 240, 255 Narrative, in advertisements and posters 7, 18, 21, 27,29, 40, 42, 169–170, 175, 210, 218, 220 in fashion columns 9, 64, 70, 72–73, 79–80 Structure of 10, 107, 109–110, 119 nation, as a value associated with consumption 3, 19, 27, 35, 37–38. See also patriotism, industry, aesthetic nationalism 188, 199 Naturalism 175, 186. See also Zola Neo-Impressionism 185 neurasthenia 190 New York, advertising in 153

Index news 1–2, 5–6, 11, 94, 107, 127, 132, 136, 138–139, 142, 150, 156, 167, 173, 177, 191, 220. See also press, magazine, fashion magazine, advertising and advertising 5–7, 21, 107, 113, 118, 145. See also editorial advertising, fait divers new item (nouveauté) 9, 16, 20, 22, 28–29, 38, 40, 64, 67, 89 New Year’s gifts 21, 37, 39, 54, 61, 72–73, 84, 119, 139, 194 New York 91, 177 advertising in 153 newspaper. See press Niépovié, Gaëtan 52–53, 233 night 34, 48, 53, 54, 67, 132, 135, 141, 149, 186, 213–214 nouveautés. See new items novel 8–9, 29, 41–42, 47, 71, 85, 87–88, 90, 117, 135–136, 151, 162–163, 165, 172–175, 183–184, 186, 198. See also literature, serial novel, publishing, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, fashion trends Offenbach, Jacques 184 Old Nick 22, 226 omnibus 15, 33, 41, 129, 134–135, 146, 156 opera 7, 38, 46, 185 Opéra, the 46, 59–60, 71–72, 75, 157 Opéra Garnier, the 148, 150 Orientalism and Orientalist style 18, 59, 61, 86 Palais Royal 22–23, 27, 31–34, 39, 47, 52, 55, 58, 64–65, 67, 70, 87, 89–90, 150, 231–232 panorama 9, 32, 49 panoramic literature. See literature Paris, as center of amusement, fashion and modernity 8–9, 11–12, 34, 45–62, 63–64, 66, 73, 142, 153, 219 Paris, ou le livre des cent-et-un 20, 33, 38, 52, 91 Parisienne, the 72, 186, 189–190, 198 park 46–49, 57, 67, 70–71, 136, 193. See also garden

285

patriotism 17, 35 37–38, 73, 80 Paulin, Alexandre 56 perfume and cosmetics 20, 125 advertisements and publicity for 8, 16–19, 37, 83, 86–88, 93, 99, 103, 107, 117–118, 125, 134, 151, 172, 184–185, 192, 196–197 perfumery 23 periodicals. See press, magazine, fashion magazine Petit Courrier des dames, 29, 62, 63–67 Petit Journal, Le 58, 98, 125, 128, 132, 159, 164–165, 167, 169, 172, 206 Philipon, Charles 8, 22–28, 42, 70, 80–81, 85, 91–92, 97, 108, 112 Photographer 53, 112, 131, 141, 164. See also Nadar, Atget Photography 2, 100, 125, 131–132, 189 Physiologie 23, 28, 54–55, 92 picturesque, urban 9, 11, 46, 53, 55, 58, 130, 138–141, 148, 214 play. See theater Plume, La 185, 188–189, 199 Poe, Edgar Allan 54, 102 police 1, 42–44, 134, 138, 145, 147, 151–153, 156–157, 206, 208, 215–218, 231, 263 popular cultural knowledge, shared 8, 15, 18, 27, 28, 36, 97 politics, critique of 81–82, 85, 91–92, 103–104 pornography 154, 215–218 portrait 18, 24, 27–28, 37, 42, 58, 68–69, 110, 112, 134, 173, 177, 179, 208 posters 2, 11, 17, 31, 34, 50, 82, 84, 86, 88, 96, 102–103, 113, 129, 132, 136, 142–160, 161, 164–165, 169–172, 175, 180. See also Chéret, other artists, billposting, lithography art of 12, 122, 126, 171, 183–190, 201–203, 205–210, 214 collecting of 199, 202 Commercial role of 21, 126, 184, 190–191, 200, 202 colors in 183–185, 191–192 cost of the production of 160, 184, 202

286

Index

posters—Continued criticism of 141, 153–155, 201–203 eighteenth-century 17 Illustrated 2, 3–4, 10–12, 21, 31, 41–42, 50, 80, 103, 122, 126, 139, 143–144, 147, 151, 159, 161, 164, 169–172, 175, 180, 183–203 journals for 199 modernity of 12, 126, 183–203 political 42–44, 88, 105, 139, 145–147, 155–156, 158, 200, 213–214, 254–255 poster mania 10, 96, 141 regulation of 17, 42–44, 144–147, 153–158, 231, 254–255. See also press laws, billposting and the social art movement 12, 199–200 subjects of 31, 41, 50, 122, 151, 184–190, 202 press, the See also advertising, culture, fait divers, fashion magazine, journalism, magazine, publicity, subscription, individual titles canards (fake news) 2, 88, 101–102 English 83 mass 1–2, 125, 132–133, 177–180. See also Petit Journal, culture modernization of the 1–2, 5–6, 20, 22, 24–31, 34–37, 40–42, 45, 48–50, 56–62, 63–80, 81–89 newspaper column 6, 26, 36, 63–64, 74, 83, 93, 98, 103, 116, 138, 165, 167, 219. See also fashion column press headquarters 57–58, 62, 69, 127–128, 132–133 press laws 11, 20, 26, 31, 42–44, 92, 97, 104, 139, 143–144, 155–158, 183, 215 Presse, La 27, 35, 37, 39, 64, 74–75, 82–83, 92, 100, 125 print shop 22, 26, 226. See also Maison Aubert promenade 33, 36, 40, 53, 57, 59, 62, 64, 67, 70, 74–75, 116, 129–130, 142 See also Grands Bouelvards, parks and gardens prostitute 154, 190, 201, 213. See also courtesan

public, the 7, 11, 17, 35, 41–46, 54, 57–58, 92, 94, 104, 148–149, 153–158, 176–181, 184, 188, 190, 199–200. See also crowd, spectator, reader public opinion 4, 17, 41–42, 87, 154 public space 44, 47–48, 62, 66, 89, 142, 143–160. See also streets regulation of 34, 43–44, 157–158, 216 public sphere 9, 46–48 publicité. See publicity, advertising publicity 5–6, 10, 15–16, 22, 31, 35, 38, 63–64, 66–74, 79–80, 81–105, 107–109, 112–122, 125, 127–129, 131–142, 143–145, 155–158, 161–181, 188, 200, 205–220. See also advertising, marketing, press, fashion magazine, fashion column, boulevard culture calling card 25 definition of the terms of 5–7, 82–86 drum as a symbol of 24, 92, 94, 117, 212 negative 11, 88, 94, 134–136, 140–141, 177–181, 217 for Paris 45–62 self-promotion 4, 22, 24, 69, 82, 84, 93, 99, 129–133, 173, 177–181, 200 stunts for 11–12, 128, 131–132, 136, 162, 178–180, 209, 218. See also spectacle publishing. See also press, caricature, illustration, literature, novel, reader, subscriber, subscription advertising and publicity for 21–25, 71, 83–84, 93–94, 125, 184 book preface 20, 40, 103 modernization of 3–4, 8–10, 15, 20–28, 34–37, 42, 45, 56–62, 70, 81–89, 107–109, 122, 125 puff (hype) 2, 5–6, 36, 88, 93–97, 101–103, 107–119, 139, 200. See also Grandville, self-promotion, publicity reader 27, 52, 58, 70, 76, 108–112, 118–122. See also public, spectator, subscriber railroad 15, 83, 113, 121, 126, 151, 154, 185, 193

Index parody of railroad advertisements 95, 97 reading room 50, 57, 83, 94 réclame See advertisements and advertising, publicity Rénier, Emile, Léon Rénier and Maurice Rénier 145–146, 152, 158 restaurant 15, 31, 46–47, 49, 52, 56, 59, 128 retail 2–3, 7, 9–11, 15–17, 22, 28, 31, 33–39, 46, 64, 57, 70, 73, 86, 89, 125–126, 140, 161–163, 173–174. See also shop, department store, magasin de nouveautés, bazaar, display, sign encouragement of 34 Revolution of 1830 66, 85, 142, 158 Revolution of 1848 29, 31, 50, 142, 156, 158 Ribot, Théodule 186 Richards, Thomas 222 Richepin, Jean 138, 178–179, 188 Robida, Albert 136, 164, 173–176, 206, 216, 248 Robertson, Chrtistina 68 Rodin, Auguste 205 Romanticism 53, 80 Rops, Félicien 188 Roques, jules 12, 159, 188, 205–209, 212, 215–217 Rouchon, Jean-Alexis 31, 41, 50, 161 Rue de Rivoli 21, 34, 46, 55, 165 Rue Vivienne 31, 41, 52, 55, 64, 67 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de 18 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 81, 85, 88–89 salon, intellectual 8, 45, 47, 66, 74 Salon, the (academic) 46, 59, 67, 185 Sand, George 20, 22, 65 sandwichman 11, 31, 92, 132, 136–137, 142, 152–153, 156, 171, 214, 228 sandwichwoman 11, 136–137 season for fashion. See time Second Empire, the economic development under 80, 162 publicity for the regime of 104 women at the court of 104 Second Republic 36. See also revolution of 1848

287

self-display 3, 9, 33, 46, 66, 142 self-promotion. See publicity serial novel 6, 83, 86, 104, 119, 132, 171–172, 220 Seurat, Georges 191–192, 202 sewing machine 151, 166, 184, 222 shawl 38, 64 Cashmere shawl 16, 28–31, 39, 102, 161 shop 9, 15, 31, 33–34, 37–41, 46–47, 52–56, 60–62, 83, 86, 99, 125, 161–175, 183–185, 190–191, 193–194, 199. See also magasin de nouveautés, boutique, bazaar, department store, retail, sign, window display and fashion magazines 9, 63–64, 66–74, 79 interior design of 17, 33, 36–40, 56, 65, 67, 86, 162 shop front 17, 36–37, 86, 129–130, 190 specialty shop 16, 34, 36–37, 61, 67, 71, 79 shoppers. See consumers shopping. See consumption Siècle, Le 6, 82, 84, 100 sidewalk 33, 102, 128, 130, 134, 149, 151–155 sign and shop sign 17–18, 38, 43, 116, 126, 134, 136, 139, 141, 143, 148, 154, 172, 185, 203 silk 39, 43, 52, 70, 74 Simmel, Georg 4, 92–93, 121–122, 141 society, critique of 81–82, 103–105, 201, 203, 213 spectacle 1–3, 11–12, 22, 26–27, 52, 57–58, 61, 68, 74, 126, 127–142, 162, 169, 178, 191 spectator 11, 15, 21, 22, 28, 32, 36, 48–50, 52, 52, 54, 57, 164, 189, 191, 198. See also crowd, public Steinlen, Théophile-Alexander 160, 199 Stock Exchange 75, 231, 232, neighborhood of the 33, 67, 69, 93, 144, 247 representation of 93, 175, 213 store. See shop

288

Index

streets. See also Grands Boulevards, names of streets, aesthetic, city, public space, mobile advertising, hawker, type construction of new 34, 46, 59 cost of renting spaces in 150 representation of 53, 74, 189–190 sounds of the 11, 31, 43, 132, 135, 138–139, 156 Société Générale des Annonces (SGA) 95–98, 144, 146 subscriber 27, 58, 65, 83, 87, 98, 113, 116, 166, 199, 209 subscription 24, 58, 71, 83, 96, 98, 101, 167 Sue, Eugène 20, 22, 65, 83, 98, 104 Summer Circus 49 Susse 36–37, 71, 229 Symbolism 188, 190, 199, 215 Tableau de Paris (Mercier) 17, 20, 54 Tableau de Paris (Texier) 57, 128 tailor 23, 24, 31, 71, 83, 89, 116, 133, 164, 206, 235 Talmeyr, Maurice 201, 203, 213 Tam-Tam, Le 82–83, 94, 99–100 Tarkington, Booth 141 taste. See elegance and taste text. See image and text textile 35, 38–39, 61, 65, 67, 69, 70, 73. See also silk Thackeray, William 27 theater 23, 29, 31, 38, 46–47, 49, 52, 56–57, 62, 66, 74, 84, 88, 99, 104, 132, 146, 149–150, 160, 165, 169, 171, 175–181, 188, 192, 198, 209, 228, 232–233, 246, 250–252, 254–257. See also entertainment, spectacle posters for 44, 50, 144, 147–149, 153, 155, 157, 184, 198 regulation of 43–44, 152, 156 theater curtain as advertising medium 32, 42, 145, 165, 173, 209 vaudeville 36, 93 Thiébault-Sisson, François 186 Third Republic, ideologies of the 183, 188, 199–202 time season, for fashion 67, 78 standardization of 78

Tintamarre, Le 9–10, 21, 81–82, 94–105, 160, 206, 210–211, 242 parody of advertisements in 121, 206, 210–211 Tissot, James 190 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 169–170, 185, 190, 199–200, 205, 257, 259, 262 tourism 138, 185, 193, 234 in Paris 2, 8, 11, 15, 45–62 tourists and visitors, American 20, 46–47, 53, 55–56, 61, 66, 134–136, 141 travelogue 55, 64, 141 Trollope, Fanny 28, 39, 47, 48 Universal Exposition and Great Exhibition 126, 128, 134, 139, 146, 149, 153, 161–162, 181, 188, 222 upper class. See class urban. see city urban masses. See public, crowd, spectator urban planning and embellishment 3, 126–135, 138, 142–145, 148, 190, 251 from 1815 to 1848 16, 32–35, 45–62, 67, 251 See also Haussmann, Haussmannization type 11, 54–55, 58, 104, 129, 136, 138–139, 141–142, 145, 214. See also billposter, hawker, sandwichmen, sandwichwomen Uzanne, Octave 140, 190, 198 Vachon, Marius 189–190, 200 Vallotton, Félix 138, 209, 214 vaudeville. See theater Veblen, Thorstein 164 Verlaine, Paul 199 Verne, Jules 173 Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Auguste de 134, 172 Vienna 4, 130 viewer. See spectator, public, reader Villemessant, Hyppolyte de 37, 63, 83–84,164, 206 Vingtième Siècle, Le Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 148

Index visual culture 4–5, 7, 15, 22, 42, 46, 51–52, 56–62, 65, 105, 126, 127–128, 183, 188–191. See also advertising, caricature, illustration, image, spectacle, spectator, consumer culture, display, window display Walton, Whitney 71 Watteau, Antoine 17, 185, 188, 208 Willette, Adolphe 205, 208–211, 215, 262 window display 15, 20, 25–26, 29, 41, 52–55, 57–58, 88, 129–130, 132, 140, 215. See also retail, shop, display Winter Garden, The 50, 57, 62, 208–209 women. See also consumer, flâneuse, Parisienne, fashion, L’Illustration, poster, self-display and agency 2, 4, 28, 62, 70, 79, 192–193 as consumers 4, 26–29, 37, 39, 41, 46, 59–60, 62, 63–80, 83–84, 100–101, 161, 164–168, 173–174, 192–198, 202–203. See also consumption, feminization of

289

at the court of Napoleon III 66 depiction in illustrations and posters 4, 12, 46–47, 50, 53, 59–62, 126, 169–171, 184–198 female artist 48, 65, 68 female writer 64, 74–80, 85, 93–94, 103. See also Colombier, Marie and domesticity 64, 66, 71, 73, 192, 205 objectification of 12, 77, 195 public sphere for 9, 47, 50–62, 64, 70–72, 192–194 as spectators 48, 50, 59, 72, 75, 169, 193 working-class women 53, 130, 136–138. See also type working class. See class World War I 6, 128 effect of on advertising and retail 141, 144 Worth, Charles Frederick 72 Zola, Emile 138, 174–175, 188, 201 “A Victim of Advertising” 172–173 Au Bonheur des dames (The Laides’ Paradise) 2, 162–163, 173–174