Premium
REGENERATION THROUGH THE EVERYDAY? CLOTHING, ARCHITECTURE AND FURNITURE IN REVOLUTIONARY PARIS
Author(s) -
Auslander Leora
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2005.00462.x
Subject(s) - architecture , clothing , politics , multitude , aesthetics , argument (complex analysis) , everyday life , power (physics) , sociology , art , visual arts , history , law , political science , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics
Throughout the decade of the French Revolution, those involved in the events argued that the aesthetic and the rhythms of everyday life needed to be transformed. Contemporaries justified the rather counter‐intuitive idea that a change in the political ordering of society required changes in clothing, language, calendars, weights and measures, theatre and street names, by arguing for the extraordinary power of signs and symbols. Political discourse reached the mind; signs and material things reached the heart. Armand‐Guy Kersaint made this point eloquently in his argument for republican architecture: ‘If I were to speak to men chosen at random and in need of education … I would focus on … the need to strike the spirit of the multitude with the help of buildings and monuments, at the same time as I attempted to convince them by reason.’ This essay focuses on one domain of revolutionary transformation of the everyday – furniture (in comparison with clothing and architecture) – to explain and demonstrate revolutionaries' vision of change, the constraints they faced in their projects, and the aesthetic outcomes.