This is the central site for a long-term project to research, examine, and respond to the radical collective of writers, theorists, architects, and visual artists who operated in Paris between 1829 and 1835 under the names of the Jeunes France & the Bouzingo, and through them to build a critical understanding of French Romanticist subculture through the historical lens of a continuing politically vigilant Anglophone avant-garde.

Monday, July 15, 2019

Lecture: A Social History of the Avant-Garde

On July 4 at the AfterMAF festival in Roanoke, VA, I delivered a lecture on the 19th Century Avant-Garde, focusing on the social history, rather than the aesthetic – an anthropological and micro-historical rather than "art/literary history" approach. Here's the video of the presentation. I only got through the Symbolists in the lecture that day, but I'm posting here the lecture notes carrying the story all the way up to the present, and the corresponding slides for the notes, which contain much more detailed information.

I've not had time to assemble a bibliography specific to this lecture, but to trace a bit of information or do follow-up research on your own, email me at olindsann@gmail.com (messages sent via the blog have a tendency not to reach me for months) and I can point you toward relevant sources and/or my bibliographies of related projects. This may eventually become a book, but that would be several years down the road.

Here's the video of the lecture up to the end of the 19th Century (Romanticism through Symbolism & Decadence):


Here are the LECTURE NOTES for the entire history.

Here the accompanying SLIDES including images, charts, and more detailed information referred to in the lecture.