Between the Victory parade along the Champs-Elysées in 1919 and the Germans’ march through the Arc de Triomphe in 1940, Paris enjoyed a twenty-year period of cultural and intellectual expansion, receptive to the avant-garde while loyal to the French tradition of classicism. During  this between-the-wars period, France remained a major economic, military, and colonial power. Philosophy, art, and fashion radiated from Paris. Artists and intellectuals came from every part of the world to the City of Light to find inspiration.

Paris sparkled in the années folles that followed the euphoria of victory in World War I. The bohemian lifestyle of Montparnasse attracted international painters and sculptors such as Chagall, Giacometti, and Calder to studios, cafés, and bars such as La Coupole. The chameleon-like genius Picasso experimented simultaneously with a myriad of art styles, including Surrealism.  Matisse and Léger opened academies. The School of Paris encompassed artists as varied as Balthus, Calder, Derain, van Dongen, Foujita, and Maillol, while the capital became the world center of abstract art, thanks to Mondrian and Miró. Photographers such as Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï explored new techniques, while Bellmer and Dora Maar’s edgy, psychosexual work broke boundaries. Haute couture confirmed Parisian chic with the emergence of Chanel, Vionnet, Lanvin, and Schiaparelli. Luxurious objects and decorative arts, epitomized by the glossy ebony cabinetry of Ruhlman, the sophisticated lighting of Lalique, and the stylishly glamorous portraits of Tamara de Lempicka, created the Art Deco style. A similar creative fever animated dance (Ballets Russes), architecture (Le Corbusier, Chareau, Mallet-Stevens), and film (René Clair).

 

Intellectual life was in full flower, punctuated by arcane disputes between Dadaists and Surrealists. American writers artists and photographers, powered by the almighty dollar, flocked to Paris and formed a boisterous section of the international community. The “lost generation” of Hemingway and Fitzgerald took tea with Gertrude Stein, were photographed by Lee Miller and Man Ray, and cheered Josephine Baker’s La Revue Negre; the party continued into the late hours, attended by Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, drawn by Paris’s tolerance for all forms of sexuality. Then came the crash of 1929 and the rise to power of authoritarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain. While Paris remained an active cultural and intellectual center, it had lost some of its carefree spirit. Artistic experimentation, notably in architecture, reverted to more classical antecedents, or reflected the growing insecurity and violence, as in Picasso’s Guernica.

 

Richly illustrated with hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs, and posters, this book is a cross-cultural history of a great city’s intellectual and cultural ferment in the dazzling post-World War I era.