The Political Eye: Nineteenth-Century French Caricature and the Mass Media
Teaching Gallery
In the wake of the expansion of the rights of freedom of speech in France in the early 1830s, again in the later 1860s, and finally again in the Third Republic, the vibrant and expressive art form of caricature emerged, finding its venue in political journals, cafés, and the windows of newly fashionable printers shops in Paris. Artists gave form to their opinions in a broad range of public images--lithographic caricatures, satirical journals, illustrated books, political posters--all arms of an emergent mass media that shaped the public discourse of the middle classes on matters both political and social. The Political Eye: Nineteenth-Century French Caricature and the Mass Media features a selection of thirty-five of the most powerful of these prints and drawings.
The Political Eye is curated by Elizabeth Childs, associate professor and chair in the department of art history and archaeology, and Steve Hause, senior scholar in the humanities. The exhibition will be used as a teaching tool in Art and Politics in Belle Epoque France, a seminar co-taught by professors Childs and Hause in spring 2009. The seminar will draw Washington University students from art history and archaeology, history, and the Interdisciplinary Project of the Humanities (for which it will serve as the junior colloquium).
Selected works
Teaching Gallery
The Teaching Gallery is a space in the Kemper Art Museum dedicated to presenting works from the Museum's collection with direct connections to Washington University courses. Teaching Gallery installations are intended to serve as parallel classrooms and can be used to supplement courses through object-based inquiry, research, and learning. Learn more