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