In this bold exploration of the political forces that shaped
Impressionism, Albert Boime proposes that at the heart of the
modern is a "guilty secret"--the need of the dominant, mainly
bourgeois, classes in Paris to expunge from historical memory the
haunting nightmare of the Commune and its socialist ideology. The
Commune of 1871 emerged after the Prussian war when the Paris
militia chased the central government to Versailles, enabling the
working class and its allies to seize control of the capital.
Eventually violence engulfed the city as traditional liberals and
moderates joined forces with reactionaries to restore Paris to
"order"--the bourgeois order. Here Boime examines the rise of
Impressionism in relation to the efforts of the reinstated
conservative government to "rebuild" Paris, to return it to its
Haussmannian appearance and erase all reminders of socialist
threat.
Boime contends that an organized Impressionist movement owed its
initiating impulse to its complicity with the state's program. The
exuberant street scenes, spaces of leisure and entertainment,
sunlit parks and gardens, the entire concourse of movement as
filtered through an atmosphere of scintillating light and color all
constitute an effort to reclaim Paris visually and symbolically for
the bourgeoisie. Amply documented, richly illustrated, and
compellingly argued, Boime's thesis serves as a challenge to all
cultural historians interested in the rise of modernism.
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