Paris Between the Wars: Art, Style and Glamour in the Crazy Years

(Hardback)

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Between 1919 and 1939, Paris experienced a cultural and intellectual boom. Packed with evocative illustrations, this book is a vibrant kaleidoscope of the incomparable city at its dazzling peak.

The city was ablaze with bright lights and the sound of jazz, and the ideas and fashions born there spread across the world, attracting a host of international artists, writers and performers to come and share the excitement of the period that the French called les annes folles - the crazy years.

Bohemian Montparnasse, with its cafs, bars and studios, was a hub of creative energy. Cubism, Surrealism and Dada turned Paris into the home of the avant-garde, and Picasso and Matisse were just two of the leading lights in a scene that included Chagall, Giacometti, Lger, Mir and Calder.

Intellectual life was punctuated by artistic quarrels, ideological debates, rival literary schools and competing theatrical styles. In literary circles, Gide, Valry and Malraux were at the forefront of French thought, while world writers who found inspiration there included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce.

But Paris was not just a city of the mind: it was a city of unsurpassed style. The International Exhibition of 1925 became a landmark event, and Art Deco and modernist designers embraced the beauty of technology, machinery and all that contemporary life had to offer.

It was a golden age for haute couture, too, with the houses of Chanel, Lanvin and Schiaparelli dressing the emancipated women who peopled Paris's glittering social scene, while the exotic nightlife was embodied in the sensational glamour of Josephine Baker.

When the Great Depression of the 1930s cast a shadow over the world, the carefree days were over but the city's creative spirit continued to flourish. Political and social turmoil began to be reflected in such challenging works as Picasso's Guernica, while the films of Ren Clair and the photography of Brassa and Andr Kertsz captured a darker side to life.

Reviews

'A sumptuous book [all of] Paris is littered tantalisingly amongst the pages of this superb book' - Birmingham Post
'The book is to be valued most for the astonishing quality and range of its photographs of paintings, objects, buildings and street scenes' - Independent
'A rich collection of texts and images, which range over the art scene, the intellectual life and also the very look of the city as it defined itself as the epicentre of 20th-century fashion' - Financial Times

Author Bio

Vincent Bouvet is an authority on early 20th-century French culture.

Grard Durozoi is the author of numerous books on art and culture, most notably The History of the Surrealist Movement.