city of modernity

Between 1853 and 1870 one fifth of the streets of Paris were the creation of Baron Haussmann. [1] He was appointed by Napoleon III to the position of ‘Prefect of the Department of the Seine’, a position he held from 1853-1870. During this period Paris was rapidly transformed, and modernised into a new, ‘imperial city’. The reasoning behind this huge undertaking was to make the city secure, by preventing the erection of barricades in the labyrinthine Parisian streets. Also, the city was dirty and unhygienic, polluted by the waste that flowed openly in the streets, and the Seine. So as well as creating over 85 miles of straight, wide, tree-lined avenues and boulevards[2], Haussemann also built a vast new network of sewers, that dispersed the waste out of the city.

During this same period, a new movement was gathering pace in the art world and the old academic system was slowly being superseded by a ‘new’ style of painting, which would come to be known as ‘Impressionism’. This new painting was a thoroughly modern construct, and came into being largely due to the industrialisation that was sweeping across Europe, particularly the chemical industry in France. This in turn caused an industrialisation of the manufacture of paint, canvas, and paintbrushes. With this new painting came new artists, - Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Sisley, Caillebotte, and many others. They painted what they saw, what the poet Baudelaire termed the ‘heroism of modern life’- the boulevards, the café’s the river, and any other aspect of modern life, these were there themes, or more specifically, modernity was their theme.

Therefore, the rapidly changing Paris is documented for us in a rare and incredible way; the mark of ‘Haussmanization’, and the changing nature of Paris and its people is recorded in some of the most famous works of art, by the most famous artists of the 19^th century. By studying this medium, of Impressionist painting, we can also explore a key historical moment in the development of a modern city.

As a begging to this study of Haussmanization, via the medium of Impressionist painting, we can turn to depictions of the boulevards, for which the Baron is perhaps most remembered for building. These straight, lengthy streets enabled the movements of people, flows of traffic to be sped up, and perhaps most importantly for Haussmann, allowed troops to access the city centre in the quickest possible time. In fact, may of the boulevards led directly to army barracks, and many believed Haussmann had built the boulevards so the soldiers could have uninterrupted views, and thus a long range for shooting. By creating these spaces, and allowing flows of traffic to circulate, Haussmann took away the threat of the mob; he believed that if you kept the people moving, they were not a threat, it was only when they stopped moving, or met an obstacle that the people turned to insurrection. Also, the boulevards created a lot more space, and ‘openness’, and these spaces enabled greater surveillance, there was now a greater emphasis on the ‘gaze’ – one of the main aims of Haussman’s reforms was visibility, being able to see, and being seen.

In the late 1880’s and 1890’s, Camille Pissarro, the first major Jewish painter[3], founder and leading member of the Impressionist movement and left-wing anarchist, returned to Paris, living in hotels, first on the Place du Harve, then later the Hotel de Russie, on the rue Drouot. During this period he painted hundreds of pictures of the streets of Paris, the new boulevards. They all show how busy, and how wide open the new streets were; in ‘Boulevard des Italians’ (1897) and ‘Avenue de l’Opera’ (1898) we can see the tree lined avenues, filled with carriages and street-sellers, and people of all description – people in a rush, people standing round aimlessly, people reading the paper; it goes on and on. Interestingly however, considering his extreme leftist views, Pissarro’s pictures seem to be colluding with Hausmann’s control of Paris. Throughout these paintings, the viewpoint he adopts gets gradually higher and higher, as Paris becomes more and more an object for the gaze. The images are almost the equivalent of modern day CCTV cameras; they have a similar viewpoint, and richness of detail – yet paradoxically it is Pissarro who is showing us these images, and not resisting this controlling gaze. In what is probably his most famous boulevard scene, ‘Boulevard Montmarte, Night Effect’ (1897), which hangs in the National Gallery London, Pissarro shows us that in the new, street-lit Paris, even at night nobody is hidden from the ‘gaze’. For this new Paris, there is no night, in the picture the streets are still lined with carriages, and the pavements with people. Pissarro represents in these paintings the ‘flow’ of the city, and how it functioned as a circulatory system – almost like a machine controlling the movement, resulting in a ‘functional ecstasy’.

Pissarro was not the only impressionist to paint the new boulevards of Paris; Renoir (‘Grand Boulevard’ 1875), Monet (‘Le Boulevard Capucines’ 1873) and Caillebotte (‘Rue de Paris’ 1877) all depicted the changing nature of Paris, as it was happening. Particularly this last painting, by Caillebotte, shows the grandeur of the boulevard, and the “sheer appeal of modernity”.[4] Yet, on closer inspection, perhaps what it reveals is more along the lines of the description Walther Benjamin gave of Hausmann’s reforms; he accuses him of “estranging Parisians from their city…” leading them to “become conscious of the inhuman character of the metropolis.”[5] The groups, neighbourhoods, districts and traditions were being eroded away by the ‘new’ Paris. Charles Yriarte wrote in Paris-Guide 1867, “The Rue de Rivoli is a symbol; a new street, long, wide, cold, frequented by men well dressed, affected, and cold as the street itself…” [6]

With these new boulevards came space, and to fill the space café’s and bars sprang up, and new, expensive apartments. A ‘café culture’ began to grow, and there were café concerts to entertain the people, a sort of mixture of cabaret and opera. With growth and industrialisation came leisure time; people were earning money, and they needed something to spend it on. Drugs, alcohol, sex and paintings were all available as commodities for anyone willing to pay. There were new forms of entertainment, and new ways of enjoying them. Absinthe was a particular favourite of the café frequenters, and was hallucinogenic in strength. The artist Degas painted, drew and sketched in pastel several scenes from inside these café’s ‘Le Café concert’ (1882), ‘Cabaret’ (1875-77), and one of his most famous pictures shows the affect of the drug-like drink, Absinthe (L’Absinthe 1876) . It is both intoxication as an experience and as a representation; Degas was almost certainly drunk on Absinthe himself whilst painting, and the viewer is given a real sense of the disorientation of these Parisians, lost in the ‘imperial city’.

With an ever-growing population, largely due to Hausmann’s redevelopment, the government was facing a crisis in regulating and managing prostitution. Under the ‘regulatory system’ the state controlled prostitution, it was a profession, and any woman identified as a prostitute had to work and live in a ‘house of tolerance’. This way the state could confine prostitution, and keep prostitutes out of the public eye. However, around the middle of the 19^th century, the state was becoming aware that they were violating these women, by forcing them to remain prostitutes, and they were also realising that they were the biggest ‘pimp’ in the city. Out of this situation, new forms of prostitution were arising; street prostitution, café prostitutes and ‘places of rendezvous’. Also, public sites of mass leisure and entertainment such as dance halls and café-concerts were becoming places of prostitution. Edouard Manet depicted the scene of a young woman, a waitress at a café/theatre, in his painting, ‘Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère’ (1882) . The viewer is confronted with an ambiguous scene; is the young lady a weary prostitute, or a waitress weary of men assuming she is. Her position at the bar, lined up with all the other commodities available for purchase certainly seems to suggest so. The painting sums up the ideology of Haussmann’s reforms, that of visibility.

Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris was a vast undertaking. As well as the miles of endless boulevard, over 100, 000 trees were planted and four extra bridges were built across the Seine, and a further ten were widened or restored. Whilst all this may sound like a great improvement, there was as much destruction going on as construction. 27, 500 houses were demolished, and 102,500 were built or rebuilt.[7] This inevitably led to a continual displacement and dispersal of peoples and communities. An estimated 350,000 people displaced during this period. Dirkheim described the feeling that modernity can cause as ‘Anomie’ – a feeling of despair at modernity and the way it swallows up and destroys everything you knew about social structure. This movement of people to and away from the city was not just due to demolition; there were new and improved rail links to the suburbs – to facilitate the ‘escape’ from the city. Parks, racecourses and the riverbank all awaited those who ventured out of town. The Gare St-Lazare, was one of the main stations that led out of Paris, and most of the impressionists were familiar with it, as they frequently travelled out to Fontainbleu and other locations to paint. Monet painted several series’ of various railways, including ‘La Gare St-Lazare’ (1877) .

From the train stations, people would travel out to the suburbs and surrounding countryside. However, when they got there, the number of factories may well have surprised them. Dozens of impressionist ‘landscape’ paintings feature the tall, smoking chimneys of factories in the background. As well as wanting to be counterrevolutionary in his re-designing of Paris, Haussmann wanted to rid his ‘imperial city’ of its factories, and so offered the business cheaper coal and taxes if they would move out of the city. The factories can be seen in many of the paintings of Seurat, such as ‘L’Homme Assis’ (1883). Manet was well aware of Haussmann’s attempt to promote the image of Paris as a new, clean city, as would most Parisians of the time. It is with this in mind that he painted ‘L’Exposistion Universalle de 1867’ (1867) . The ‘Exposistion was Haussmann’s attempt to show off what he had done, and what he was planning to do. Manet’s painting seems absurd, there is an almost no sense of perspective, and there are some bizarre characters, co-existing uneasily in a sort of nowhere-space. Perhaps this was the artists way of passing comment on Haussmann and his schemes. Certainly, not many people were in favour of the drastic changes.

Going sailing was also now a favourite pastime of the new, leisured class, with small towns on the upper Seine soon becoming tourist attractions. The process of Haussmannization did not only affect the city of Paris itself, but also the surrounding area. The industry, of renting out boats by the hour developed to satisfy the demand of the people, whose leisure time was becoming just as regimented as their working time. Sisley painted ‘Bridge at ‘Villeneuve-la-Garenne’ (1872) , which shows people lounging on the banks of the Seine, and ‘messing about in boats’, clearly amateurs. Monet and Renoir both painted pictures at La Grenouillere, which as well as being a popular place for bathing and rowing, was also a sight of assignation. In Monet’s ‘Bathers at La Grenouillere’ (1869) , we can see groups of unaccompanied woman, which, unless they were prostitutes would have been unheard of at the time.

The people and factories were not the only thing moving out of Paris, toward the suburbs. As well as redeveloping the streets of Paris, Haussmann also redeveloped its sewers, and now the waste of Paris was pumped out to the Seine, on the outskirts of the city. Perhaps ‘the piece de resistance’ of the ‘new’ painting was Seurat’s ‘Une Baignade, Asniéres’ (1883-4) . It is an ironic, almost sarcastic look at what had happened to Paris, and it’s people. It contains almost all the elements of the new painting, and of Haussmannized, modern French life. Railway bridges, sailing yachts, rowing boats, fully dressed city people and smoking chimneys. Yet the irony is, the ‘picturesque’ spot it depicts, is where the main Paris sewer outlet was. The people, in their attempt to get out of Paris, have in a way, quite literally ended up back in it. In more ways than one this is a painting of Paris going out to the countryside.

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[1] Frascina, F (et al) ‘Modernity and Modernism’ (London, 1993) pg. 97

[2] Ibid.

[3] Shikes, R.E & Harper, P ‘Pissarro His Life and Work’ (London, 1980) pg.5

[4] Clark, T.J ‘The Painting of Modern Life’ (London, 1984) pg.15

[5] Benjamin, W ‘The Arcades Project’ (London, 2002) pg.12

[6] Clark ‘Painting Modern Life’ pg.44

[7] Frascina, F (et al) ‘Modernity and Modernism’ (London, 1993) pg. 97