Academic literature on the topic 'Artistes – France – Biographies'

This essay offers object biographies of two examples of Lakȟóta beaded regalia that traveled with Wild West performers to France in 1889 and in 1911, respectively, as exemplars of Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance. By examining the production of the objects by women artists within the Lakȟóta community and visually analyzing their designs, this article highlights the regalia as an opposition to both settler colonial political suppression and enforced attempts of cultural assimilation. The article stresses that the beadwork’s materiality bears traces of its intended circulation and public display that are enacted when Lakȟóta individuals wore the regalia in the context of Wild West performance in France. Both when rooted in the Lakȟóta community and when circulating through Wild West shows, the objects evince Lakȟóta survivance. When the regalia was acquired by non-Native individuals in France, who projected new meanings onto the objects, the function of the regalia as a public statement of Lakȟóta survivance subtly continued to operate through generated revenue for the community and through the visibility of Lakȟóta culture through continued circulation.

The late 19th struggle for artistic freedom in the capitalist world-system put the artist in a contradictory position. This contradiction is particularly relevant for writers of the periphery. Freedom or autonomy to pursue purely intellectual projects required a certain aristocratic defense of the value of art. At the same time, however, artists and intellectuals did confront structural subordination: they belonged, as Pierre Bourdieu explained, to the dominated fractions of the dominant class, subordinated both to the state and the bourgeoisie. The life of Nicaraguan Ruben Darío (1867–1916), probably the most well-known poet in Latin American history, provides a paradigmatic instance of this dilemma. Moreover, it sheds light into a dilemma particular to the peripheral intellectual. Peripheral writers, in the 19th century and still today, are subject to world-systemic hierarchies, even cultural ones. This double subordination is clear in the case of Ruben Darío. He was in a subordinated position not only vis-à-vis the national state and the bourgeoisie. Darío was also in a subordinated position, even if symbolic, in relation to those same intellectuals that Bourdieu celebrated as creators of the autonomy of culture in France. One can account for this complex of hierarchies only through a 'world-systems biography' approach. World-systems biographies clearly examine the dialectic of personal, national and global levels of social life. Moreover, it can uncover the core-periphery dialectic in the realm of artistic production. Thus, this world-systems biography approach is shown to be a useful framework through a brief analysis of Darío's life and work.

For the first time the article introduces а correspondence between the writers of the Russian Diaspora Ivan Shmelyov and Leonid Zurov into a scientific circulation. Shmelyov’s letters contain some characteristics of the first books of the young writer and his artistic talent as well as outlines the prospects for a further creative path. Shmelyov turns his attention mainly to the inner world and personality of the writer. He advises Zurov to engage in self-education, get acquainted with Russian and European philosophy, develop his artistic word. The letters allow to see Shmelyov’s active care, which revealed in his initiative for publishing Zurov’s works in Paris periodicals, promoting the positive critics responses (reviews by V. Amphiteatrov and K. Zaitsev), and supporting Zurov’s decision to move from Riga to France. Some letters concern the episode with removing of the Zurov’s short story from the newspaper “Russkiy Invalid.” Sincere and warm Zurov’s letters reveal the details of his life in Riga. They also talk about his travelling around Latgale, which served as a source of his creative inspiration. The published correspondence, thus, introduces new nuances in the biographies of two bright creative personalities of the Russian emigration.

Introduction. There are only a few special works about the English poet Matthew Prior as a diplomat in historical literature, and his diplomatic service did not receive an assessment in Russian historiography. Methods and materials. During the study of the poet’s diplomacy practice, the author used systematic and anthropological methods, content analysis of his correspondence, biographies, and research works. Analysis. Prior was one of the few Englishmen of his time who was able to combine a political and poetic career. He met the main criteria for climbing the career ladder in the era of “courts and alliances” because he had professional abilities, excellent knowledge of languages, art knowledge, wit, and the ability to compose well. As a diplomat, Prior successfully proved himself during two European wars: the Augsburg League war and the War of the Spanish Succession. As a secret agent, embassy secretary, and ambassador, he was prominent in all negotiations with France. Results. The most important achievement of his diplomacy was the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht between Britain and France. Prior’s diplomatic activities harmoniously combined with his erudition in the field of artistic culture and poetry. Diplomacy defined his most successful and mature works, and poetry perfected his art of diplomacy.

French cartoonist and filmmaker Joann Sfar has often used the comics medium to reflect on visual representation. His latest bande dessinée, Chagall en Russie ['Chagall in Russia'] (2010-2011), continues some of the meta-pictural elements previously found in his Pascin (2000-2002), which already featured Chagall in several episodes, as well as his acclaimed series, The Rabbi's Cat, where Sfar introduced the character of an anonymous Russian painter, whose biography and artistic stance seemingly referred to that of Marc Chagall. Although Chagall en Russie explicitly refers to the real-life Franco-Russian modernist painter, it is certainly not a standard biographical exercise. By offering a synthetic and often symbolic version of personal and historical events experienced by Chagall, Sfar takes certain liberties with the painter's life story as it was outlined by the artist (in My Life, his 1922 autobiography) and by many biographers and art historians. Sfar does not seek an authentic depiction of his subject's verifiable life journey, but rather views it through a metaphorical narrative, which is itself inspired by Chagall's artistic universe and raises questions about the figurative possibilities of comics.

The article is about the frankoznavchyi experience of one of the most productive researchers of the Ukrainian diaspora, the well-known Ukrainian scientist, journalist and editor Luka Lutsiv (1895-1984). First of all, about his monograph “Ivan Franko is a fighter for national and social justice” (1967). The importance of L. Lutsiv’s work provides not only for a complex illustration of I. Franko’s life and creative work, taking into account various com- plex moments, not only for a simple, lively presentation of the leading ideas, not only for the argumentative refutation of the valuations of the Soviet Franco studies, but also for the use of classical methods of research. The methodological base of his work was biographism (closely related to the cultural-historical approach) and hermeneutics. In the mono- graph we have not only the desire of the researcher to go deep into the artist’s biography and the cultural-historical context of the epoch, but also to protect Franko from the Soviet falsifications and to get to the essence of his creative work – the “truth” (in the terminology of classical philosophy). A literary scholar through the going out of the funda- mental hermeneutic layers understands this “truth”: the deep meanings, values, ideals and imperatives of the writer’s creative work, however, without more concrete terminological definitions. The work is also about the interpretation valuations of L. Lutsiv through the prism of main imperatives, which he identified in Ivan Franko, that is, categorical orders that appear at the same time as the main regulative idea of thinking and the system-forming element of the ideological base of the individual. The first leading imperative for the researcher is the national imperative (the “ideal of independence”), which re- veals the national-centered (natsiosofskyi, natsionalistychnyi or natsiolohichnyi) component of I. Franko’s worldview. Another central imperative of I. Franko’s life and creative work is the social imperative associated with the problem of social justice. One can state that L. Lutsiv’s monograph, despite all the possible defects, today thanks to the classical methodological base can be positioned not only as a document of the epoch but also as a valuable scientific source, though probably not as academic but as a popular science genre. This study helps to understand I. Franko’s worldview and thinking as a definite integrity, as a complex system and gives significant impulses for the continuation of episte- mological studies of this kind.

The article reveals both the history of origin and specificity of existentialism philosophical movement development under the terms of French humanistics in the 1940–1980. The author traces the originality of the «European course» of this philosophical system, which, having been formed within the tradition of the Russian worldview between the 19th and 20th centuries, began to transform into philosophical-ideological or philosophical-ethical models in Germany and France. After the Second World War, existentialism was widely accepted among the Spanish and Italian philosophers, occasionally «capturing» the entire European cultural space. The study emphasizes that existentialism has common roots, although each of the existing models requires independent analysis, since they were chronologically formed in an interval of one or two decades, introducing marked changes into the orthodox model. The author finds out that existentialism played an important role in the development of French humanistics because it could rely on intuitivism and personnelism, which contributed to the renewal of philosophical thinking in the 1920–1940s. The paper demonstrates that the French model of existentialism was developed on the basis of inter-scientific approach, organically combining philosophy, natural science, psychology and literary studies, achieving significant success in the development of various types of art, in particular, literature and theater. The aim of the research suggests the following objectives: to reconstruct the history of existentialism formation, to identify the specificity of the French model of this philosophical system and to create the essence of possible transformational processes within the humanistic development based on application of existentialism. Methodology of the research is based on historical and cultural, biographical, analytical and comparative approaches. The scientific novelty of the article is defined by the possibility to use and exploit the potential of inheritance, which exists between existentialism and postmodernism, since, according to the chronology, the former determined by philosophical system in its logical development, came close to the latter in the logical sequencing. The author justifies the significance of the article considering works of French existentialists The obtained results make it possible to conclude: 1) the French model of existentialism should be evaluated as eclectic, because it was formed on the basis of the ideas of S. Kierkegaard and L. Shestov, demonstrating, at the same time, interest to its religious criterion (H. Marcel). 2) J.-P. Sartre's ‘transformational’ philosophical position: «Marxism – existentialism» should be taken into consideration. The article explains both his sympathy to politicalization of existentialism and his interest in the problems of «biographism», which strengthened the literary orientation of the philosopher's views, and his interest in «pathological» experiments of psychoanalysis. 3) The link between theoretical ideas of A. Camus and artistic practice, which enables to transform «philosophy of absurdity» at first into «dramaturgy of absurdity», and – later – into «theater of absurdity» has been established. Within this context, the works of J. Genet, S. Beckett and E. Ionesco are referred to. Theoretical and practical significance lies in the fact that the material of this study promotes further scientific and theoretical comprehension of French humanities at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries. The results can be used while lecturing aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, history and theory of art for students of higher institutions of humanities and rstistic creativity.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). They are sociocultural phenomena that emerge through interactions and negotiations among multiple actors and institutions to envision and enact a Chinese imagination of “journeying abroad” from and to the country.ReferencesBakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1982.Bohlman, Philip V. “World Music at the ‘End of History’.” Ethnomusicology 46 (2002): 1–32.Davis, Sara L.M. Song and Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.Duan, Wenjie. “The History of Conservation of Mogao Grottoes.” International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property: The Conservation of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and the Related Studies. Eds. Kuchitsu and Nobuaki. Tokyo: Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, 1997. 1–8.Faxian. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms. Translated by James Legge. New York: Dover Publications, 1991.Herzfeld, Michael. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.Kuang, Lanlan. Dunhuang bi hua yue wu: "Zhongguo jing guan" zai guo ji yu jing zhong de jian gou, chuan bo yu yi yi (Dunhuang Performing Arts: The Construction and Transmission of “China-scape” in the Global Context). Beijing: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she, 2016.Lam, Joseph S.C. State Sacrifice and Music in Ming China: Orthodoxy, Creativity and Expressiveness. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.Mair, Victor. T’ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, 1989.Pollack, Barbara. “China’s Desert Treasure.” ARTnews, December 2013. Sep. 2016 <http://www.artnews.com/2013/12/24/chinas-desert-treasure/>.Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo. Translated by Ronald Latham. Penguin Classics, 1958.Rees, Helen. 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Sep. 2016 <http://news.getty.edu/press-materials/press-releases/cave-temples-dunhuang-buddhist-art-chinas-silk-road>.Stromberg, Joseph. “Video: Take a Virtual 3D Journey to Visit China's Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.” Smithsonian, December 2012. Sep. 2016 <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/video-take-a-virtual-3d-journey-to-visit-chinas-caves-of-the-thousand-buddhas-150897910/?no-ist>.Tian, Qing. “Recent Trends in Buddhist Music Research in China.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 3 (1994): 63–72.Tuohy, Sue M.C. “Imagining the Chinese Tradition: The Case of Hua’er Songs, Festivals, and Scholarship.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington, 1988.Wade, Bonnie C. Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India. 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Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)The Screen would light up. They would feel a thrill of satisfaction. But the colours had faded with age, the picture wobbled on the screen, the women were of another age; they would come out they would be sad. It was not the film they had dreamt of. It was not the total film each of them had inside himself, the perfect film they could have enjoyed forever and ever. The film they would have liked to make. Or, more secretly, no doubt, the film they would have liked to live. (Perec 57) Over the years that I have watched and thought about Jean-Luc Godard’s films I have been struck by the idea of him as an artist who works with the moving image and perhaps just as importantly the idea of cinema as an irresolvable series of problems. Most obviously this ‘problematic condition’ of Godard’s practice is evidenced in the series of crises and renunciations that pepper the historical trace of his work. A trace that is often characterised thus: criticism, the Nouvelle Vague, May 1968, the Dziga Vertov group, the adoption of video, the return to narrative form, etc. etc. Of all these events it is the rejection of both the dominant cinematic narrative form and its attendant models of production that so clearly indicated the depth and intensity of Godard’s doubt in the artistic viability of the institution of cinema. Historically and ideologically congruent with the events of May 1968, this turning away from tradition was foreshadowed by the closing titles of his 1967 opus Week End: fin de cinema (the end of cinema). Godard’s relentless application to the task of engaging a more discursive and politically informed mode of operation had implications not only for the films that were made in the wake of his disavowal of cinema but also for those that preceded it. In writing this paper it was my initial intention to selectively consider the vast oeuvre of the filmmaker as a type of conceptual project that has in some way been defined by the condition of doubt. While to certain degree I have followed this remit, I have found it necessary to focus on a small number of historically correspondent filmic instances to make my point. The sheer size and complexity of Godard’s output would effectively doom any other approach to deal in generalities. To this end I am interested in the ways that these films have embodied doubt as both an aesthetic and philosophical position. There is an enduring sense of contentiousness that surrounds both the work and perceived motives of the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard that has never come at the cost of discourse. Through a period of activity that now stretches into its sixth decade Godard has shaped an oeuvre that is as stylistically diverse as it is theoretically challenging. This span of practice is noteworthy not only for its sheer length but for its enduring ability to polarise both audiences and critical opinion. Indeed these opposing critical positions are so well inscribed in our historical understanding of Godard’s practice that they function as a type of secondary narrative. It is a narrative that the artist himself has been more than happy to cultivate and at times even engage. One hardly needs to be reminded that Godard came to making films as a critic. He asserted in the pages of his former employer Cahiers du Cinema in 1962 that “As a critic, I thought of myself as a filmmaker. Today I still think of myself as a critic, and in a sense I am, more than ever before. Instead of writing criticism, I make a film, but the critical dimension is subsumed” (59). If Godard did at this point in time believe that the criticality of practice as a filmmaker was “subsumed”, the ensuing years would see a more overt sense of criticality emerge in his work. By 1968 he was to largely reject both traditional cinematic form and production models in a concerted effort to explore the possibilities of a revolutionary cinema. In the same interview the director went on to extol the virtues of the cine-literacy that to a large part defined the loose alignment of Nouvelle Vague directors (Chabrol, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette, Truffaut) referred to as the Cahiers group claiming that “We were the first directors to know that Griffiths exists” (Godard 60). It is a statement that is as persuasive as it is dramatic, foregrounding the hitherto obscured history of cinema while positioning the group firmly within its master narrative. However, given the benefit of hindsight one realises that perhaps the filmmaker’s motives were not as simple as historical posturing. For Godard what is at stake is not just the history of cinema but cinema itself. When he states that “We were thinking cinema and at a certain moment we felt the need to extend that thought” one is struck by how far and for how long he has continued to think about and through cinema. In spite of the hours of strict ideological orthodoxy that accompanied his most politically informed works of the late 1960s and early 1970s or the sustained sense of wilful obtuseness that permeates his most “difficult” work, there is a sense of commitment to extending “that thought” that is without peer. The name “Godard”, in the words of the late critic Serge Daney, “designates an auteur but it is also synonymous with a tenacious passion for that region of the world of images we call the cinema” (Daney 68). It is a passion that is both the crux of his practice as an artist and the source of a restless experimentation and interrogation of the moving image. For Godard the passion of cinema is one that verges on religiosity. This carries with it all the philosophical and spiritual implications that the term implies. Cinema functions here as a system of signs that at once allows us to make sense of and live in the world. But this is a faith for Godard that is nothing if not tested. From the radical formal experimentation of his first feature film À Bout de soufflé (Breathless) onwards Godard has sought to place the idea of cinema in doubt. In this sense doubt becomes a type of critical engine that at once informs the shape of individual works and animates the constantly shifting positions the artist has occupied. Serge Daney's characterisation of the Nouvelle Vague as possessed of a “lucidity tinged with nostalgia” (70) is especially pertinent in understanding the way in which doubt came to animate Godard’s practice across the 1960s and beyond. Daney’s contention that the movement was both essentially nostalgic and saturated with an acute awareness that the past could not be recreated, casts the cinema itself as type of irresolvable proposition. Across the dazzling arc of films (15 features in 8 years) that Godard produced prior to his renunciation of narrative cinematic form in 1967, one can trace an unravelling of faith. During this period we can consider Godard's work and its increasingly complex engagement with the political as being predicated by the condition of doubt. The idea of the cinema as an industrial and social force increasingly permeates this work. For Godard the cinema becomes a site of questioning and ultimately reinvention. In his 1963 short film Le Grand Escroc (The Great Rogue) a character asserts that “cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world”. Indeed it is this sense of the paradoxical that shadows much of his work. The binary of beauty and fraud, like that of faith and doubt, calls forth a questioning of the cinema that stands to this day. It is of no small consequence that so many of Godard’s 1960s works contain scenes of people watching films within the confines of a movie theatre. For Godard and his Nouvelle Vague peers the sale de cinema was both the hallowed site of cinematic reception and the terrain of the everyday. It is perhaps not surprising then he chooses the movie theatre as a site to play out some of his most profound engagements with the cinema. Considered in relation to each other these scenes of cinematic viewing trace a narrative in which an undeniable affection for the cinema is undercut by both a sense of loss and doubt. Perhaps the most famous of Godard’s ‘viewing’ scenes is from the film Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live). Essentially a tale of existential trauma, the film follows the downward spiral of a young woman Nana (played by Anna Karina) into prostitution and then death at the hands of ruthless pimps. Championed (with qualifications) by Susan Sontag as a “perfect film” (207), it garnered just as many detractors, including famously the director Roberto Rosellini, for what was perceived to be its nihilistic content and overly stylised form. Seeking refuge in a cinema after being cast out from her apartment for non payment of rent the increasingly desperate Nana is shown engrossed in the starkly silent images of Carl Dreyer’s 1928 film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc). Godard cuts from the action of his film to quote at length from Dreyer’s classic, returning from the mute intensity of Maria Faloconetti’s portrayal of the condemned Joan of Arc to Karina’s enraptured face. As Falconetti’s tears swell and fall so do Karina’s, the emotional rawness of the performance on the screen mirrored and internalised by the doomed character of Nana. Nana’s identification with that of the screen heroine is at once total and immaculate as her own brutal death at the hands of men is foretold. There is an ominous silence to this sequence that serves not only to foreground the sheer visual intensity of what is being shown but also to separate it from the world outside this purely cinematic space. However, if we are to read this scene as a testament to the power of the cinematic we must also admit to the doubt that resides within it. Godard’s act of separation invites us to consider the scene not only as a meditation on the emotional and existential state of the character of Nana but also on the foreshortened possibilities of the cinema itself. As Godard’s shots mirror those of Dreyer we are presented with a consummate portrait of irrevocable loss. This is a complex system of imagery that places Dreyer’s faith against Godard’s doubt without care for the possibility of resolution. Of all Godard’s 1960s films that feature cinema spectatorship the sequence belonging to Masculin Féminin (Masculine Feminine) from 1966 is perhaps the most confounding and certainly the most digressive. A series of events largely driven by a single character’s inability or unwillingness to surrender to the projected image serve to frustrate, fracture and complexify the cinema-viewing experience. It is however, a viewing experience that articulates the depth of Godard’s doubt in the viability of the cinematic form. The sequence, like much of the film itself, centres on the trials of the character Paul played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. Locked in a struggle against the pop-cultural currents of the day and the attendant culture of consumption and appearances, Paul is positioned within the film as a somewhat conflicted and ultimately doomed romantic. His relationship with Madeleine played by real life yé-yé singer Chantal Goya is a source of constant anxiety. The world that he inhabits, however marginally, of nightclubs, pop records and publicity seems philosophically at odds with the classical music and literature that he avidly devours. If the cinema-viewing scene of Vivre Sa Vie is defined by the enraptured intensity of Anna Karina’s gaze, the corresponding scene in Masculin Féminin stands, at least initially, as the very model of distracted spectatorship. As the film in the theatre starts, Paul who has been squeezed out of his seat next to Madeleine by her jealous girlfriend, declares that he needs to go to the toilet. On entering the bathroom he is confronted by the sight of a pair of men locked in a passionate kiss. It is a strange and disarming turn of events that prompts his hastily composed graffiti response: down with the republic of cowards. For theorist Nicole Brenez the appearance of these male lovers “is practically a fantasmatic image evoked by the amorous situation that Paul is experiencing” (Brenez 174). This quasi-spectral appearance of embracing lovers and grafitti writing is echoed in the following sequence where Paul once again leaves the theatre, this time to fervently inform the largely indifferent theatre projectionist about the correct projection ratio of the film being shown. On his graffiti strewn journey back inside Paul encounters an embracing man and woman nestled in an outer corner of the theatre building. Silent and motionless the presence of this intertwined couple is at once unsettling and prescient providing “a background real for what is being projected inside on the screen” (Brenez 174). On returning to the theatre Paul asks Madeleine to fill him in on what he has missed to which she replies, “It is about a man and woman in a foreign city who…”. Shot in Stockholm to appease the Swedish co-producers that stipulated that part of the production be made in Sweden, the film within a film occupies a fine line between restrained formal artfulness and pornographic violence. What could have been a creatively stifling demand on the part of his financial backers was inverted by Godard to become a complex exploration of power relations played out through an unsettling sexual encounter. When questioned on set by a Swedish television reporter what the film was about the filmmaker curtly replied, “The film has a lot to do with sex and the Swedish are known for that” (Masculin Féminin). The film possesses a barely concealed undertow of violence. A drama of resistance and submission is played out within the confines of a starkly decorated apartment. The apartment itself is a zone in which language ceases to operate or at the least is reduced to its barest components. The man’s imploring grunts are met with the woman’s repeated reply of “no”. What seemingly begins as a homage to the contemporaneous work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman quickly slides into a chronicle of coercion. As the final scene of seduction/debasement is played out on the screen the camera pulls away to reveal the captivated gazes of Madeleine and her friends. It finally rests on Paul who then shuts his eyes, unable to bear what is being shown on the screen. It is a moment of refusal that marks a turning away not only from this projected image but from cinema itself. A point made all the clearer by Paul’s voiceover that accompanies the scene: We went to the movies often. The screen would light up and we would feel a thrill. But Madeleine and I were usually disappointed. The images were dated and jumpy. Marilyn Monroe had aged badly. We felt sad. It wasn't the movie of our dreams. It wasn't that total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we would have liked to make. Or, more secretly, no doubt the film we wanted to live. (Masculin Féminin) There was a dogged relentlessness to Godard’s interrogation of the cinema through the very space of its display. 1963’s Le Mépris (Contempt) swapped the public movie theatre for the private screening room; a theatrette emblazoned with the words Il cinema é un’invenzione senza avvenire. The phrase, presented in a style that recalled Soviet revolutionary graphics, is an Italian translation of Louis Lumiere’s 1895 appraisal of his new creation: “The cinema is an invention without a future.” The words have an almost physical presence in the space providing a fatalistic backdrop to the ensuing scene of conflict and commerce. As an exercise in self reflexivity it at once serves to remind us that even at its inception the cinema was cast in doubt. In Le Mépris the pleasures of spectatorship are played against the commercial demands of the cinema as industry. Following a screening of rushes for a troubled production of Homer’s Odyssey a tempestuous exchange ensues between a hot-headed producer (Jeremy Prokosch played by Jack Palance) and a calmly philosophical director (Fritz Lang as himself). It is a scene that attests to Godard’s view of the cinema as an art form that is creatively compromised by its own modes of production. In a film that plays the disintegration of a relationship against the production of a movie and that features a cast of Germans, Italians and French it is of no small consequence that the movie producer is played by an American. An American who, when faced with a creative impasse, utters the phrase “when I hear the word culture I bring out my checkbook”. It is one of Godard’s most acerbic and doubt filled sequences pitting as he does the implied genius of Lang against the tantrum throwing demands of the rapacious movie producer. We are presented with a model of industrial relations that is both creatively stifling and practically unworkable. Certainly it was no coincidence that Le Mépris had the biggest budget ($1 million) that Godard has ever worked with. In Godard’s 1965 film Une Femme Mariée (A Married Woman), he would once again use the movie theatre as a location. The film, which dealt with the philosophical implications of an adulterous affair, is also notable for its examination of the Holocaust and that defining event’s relationship to personal and collective memory. Biographer Richard Brody has observed that, “Godard introduced the Auschwitz trial into The Married Woman (sic) as a way of inserting his view of another sort of forgetting that he suggested had taken hold of France—the conjoined failures of historical and personal memory that resulted from the world of mass media and the ideology of gratification” (Brody 196-7). Whatever the causes, there is a pervading sense of amnesia that surrounds the Holocaust in the film. In one exchange the character of Charlotte, the married woman in question, momentarily confuses Auschwitz with thalidomide going on to later exclaim that “the past isn’t fun”. But like the barely repressed memories of her past indiscretions, the Holocaust returns at the most unexpected juncture in the film. In what starts out as Godard’s most overt reference to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Charlotte and her lover secretly meet under the cover of darkness in a movie theatre. Each arriving separately and kitted out in dark sunglasses, there is breezy energy to this clandestine rendezvous highly reminiscent of the work of the great director. It is a stylistic point that is underscored in the film by the inclusion of a full-frame shot of Hitchcock’s portrait in the theatre’s foyer. However, as the lovers embrace the curtain rises on Alain Resnais’s 1955 documentary Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). The screen is filled with images of barbed wire as the voice of narrator Jean Cayrol informs the audience that “even a vacation village with a fair and a steeple can lead very simply to a concentration camp.” It is an incredibly shocking moment, in which the repressed returns to confirm that while memory “isn’t fun”, it is indeed necessary. An uncanny sense of recognition pervades the scene as the two lovers are faced with the horrendous evidence of a past that refuses to stay subsumed. The scene is all the more powerful for the seemingly casual manner it is relayed. There is no suspenseful unveiling or affected gauging of the viewers’ reactions. What is simply is. In this moment of recognition the Hitchcockian mood of the anticipation of an illicit rendezvous is supplanted by a numbness as swift as it is complete. Needless to say the couple make a swift retreat from the now forever compromised space of the theatre. Indeed this scene is one of the most complex and historically layered of any that Godard had produced up to this point in his career. By making overt reference to Hitchcock he intimates that the cinema itself is deeply implicated in this perceived crisis of memory. What begins as a homage to the work of one of the most valorised influences of the Nouvelle Vague ends as a doubt filled meditation on the shortcomings of a system of representation. The question stands: how do we remember through the cinema? In this regard the scene signposts a line of investigation that would become a defining obsession of Godard’s expansive Histoire(s) du cinéma, a project that was to occupy him throughout the 1990s. Across four chapters and four and half hours Histoire(s) du cinéma examines the inextricable relationship between the history of the twentieth century and the cinema. Comprised almost completely of filmic quotations, images and text, the work employs a video-based visual language that unremittingly layers image upon image to dissolve and realign the past. In the words of theorist Junji Hori “Godard's historiography in Histoire(s) du cinéma is based principally on the concept of montage in his idiosyncratic sense of the term” (336). In identifying montage as the key strategy in Histoire(s) du cinéma Hori implicates the cinema itself as central to both Godard’s process of retelling history and remembering it. However, it is a process of remembering that is essentially compromised. Just as the relationship of the cinema to the Holocaust is bought into question in Une Femme Mariée, so too it becomes a central concern of Histoire(s) du cinéma. It is Godard’s assertion “that the cinema failed to honour its ethical commitment to presenting the unthinkable barbarity of the Nazi extermination camps” (Temple 332). This was a failure that for Godard moved beyond the realm of doubt to represent “nothing less than the end of cinema” (Brody 512). In October 1976 the New Yorker magazine published a profile of Jean Luc Godard by Penelope Gilliatt a writer who shared the post of film critic at the magazine with Pauline Kael. The article was based on an interview that took place at Godard’s production studio in Grenoble Switzerland. It was notable for two things: Namely, the most succinct statement that Godard has made regarding the enduring sense of criticality that pervades his work: “A good film is a matter of questions properly put.” (74) And secondly, surely the shortest sentence ever written about the filmmaker: “Doubt stands.” (77)ReferencesÀ Bout de soufflé. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. 1960. DVD. Criterion, 2007. Brenez, Nicole. “The Forms of the Question.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Brody, Richard. Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt & Co., 2008. Daney, Serge. “The Godard Paradox.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Gilliat, Penelope. “The Urgent Whisper.” Jean-Luc Godard Interviews. Ed. David Sterritt. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Godard, Jean-Luc. “Jean-Luc Godard: 'From Critic to Film-Maker': Godard in Interview (extracts). ('Entretien', Cahiers du Cinema 138, December 1962).” Cahiers du Cinéma: 1960-1968 New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood. Ed. Jim Hillier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Histoires du Cinema. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. 1988-98. DVD, Artificial Eye, 2008. Hori, Junji. “Godard’s Two Histiographies.” For Ever Godard. Eds. Michael Temple, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt. London: Black Dog, 2004. Le Grand Escroc. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jean Seberg. Film. Ulysse Productions, 1963. Le Mépris. Dir. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jack Palance, Fritz Lang. 1964. DVD. Criterion, 2002. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer. Film. Janus films, 1928. MacCabe, Colin. Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70. London: Bloomsbury, 2003. Masculin Féminin. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Jean-Pierre Léaud. 1966. DVD. Criterion, 2005. Nuit et Brouillard. Dir Alain Resnais. Film. Janus Films, 1958. Perec, Georges. Things: A Story of the Sixties. Trans. David Bellos. London: Collins Harvill, 1990. (Originally published 1965.) Sontag, Susan. “Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador, 2001. Temple, Michael, James S. Williams, and Michael Witt, eds. For Ever Godard. London: Black Dog, 2004. Une Femme Mariée. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Macha Meril. 1964. DVD. Eureka, 2009. Vivre Sa Vie. Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. Perf. Anna Karina. 1962. DVD. Criterion, 2005. Week End, Dir. and writ. Jean Luc Godard. 1967. DVD. Distinction Series, 2005.

Cette recherche s'appuie essentiellement sur l'étude des biographies de Van Gogh, Lautrec et Monet afin de mettre en lumière les processus de constitution de représentations collectives d'un public vers les artistes. Dans la majorité des cas, l'artiste est vu comme personnage exceptionnel, mythique, image largement répandue prenant appui sur les mythes les plus anciens, mais aussi sur la littérature du XIXème siècle. Il semble que ces vies, porteuses de mythe et de sacré, focalisent les besoins d'un monde en quête de repères concrets, mais aussi de rêve et d'imaginaire, créateurs de lien social, dans une société individualiste, froide et anomique. Cette recherche cherche à révéler comment une société, à une époque, peut construire une telle représentation en fonction des valeurs et des idéologies qui l'animent. Une brève étude historique sur les biographies d'artistes, et un travail d'analyse sur la forme et le contenu des récits permettent d'accéder à la connaissance de ces valeurs
This research work is based upon the study of Van Gogh's, Lautrec's and Monet's biographies. It aims to bring to light the process of setting up of the collective representations people have towards artists. The artist ist mostly regarded as an outstanding, mythical character : this image is being widely spread and leans on the oldest myths and on the 19th century's literature as well. Those lives, conveyors of myth and of sacred, seem to focus the needs of a world in quest of concrete marks, but in quest of dream and imaginativeness too, those marks being the architects of social relationship inside an individualistic, unmoved and anomic society. The purpose of this research is to reveal how one society, during one definite period, can built an image of the artist, according to the values and the ideology which enliven it. An historical study about biographies of artists, added to an analytic work about both contend and form of the stories enable to get to the knowledge of those values

Fils d’un facteur de piano, Pierre Joseph Guillaume Zimmerman (1785-1853), virtuose, pédagogue, compositeur et homme du monde, trouve sa place au sein d’une pléiade de promoteurs du piano et de la littérature pianistique. Son originalité réside dans la dualité que l’on distingue entre, d’une part, sa conscience de compositeur académique héritée de Cherubini et, d’autre part, cet esprit novateur que lui inspira la modernisation de la facture instrumentale dont il suivit et entérina l’évolution. Cette thèse se veut la première monographie qui envisage les activités nombreuses et variées dans lesquelles le musicien s’illustra aux différentes époques de sa vie. La première partie traite de ses origines et de l’époque d’avant 1831. Nous nous intéressons à ses études au Conservatoire, à sa première carrière pédagogique, à ses mariages, à ses œuvres classiques pianistiques (la Sonate op. 5 et les deux concertos) et à ses deux opéras. La deuxième partie porte sur la période de 1831 à 1845. Nous parlons des lauréats sortis de sa classe qui se multiplient à l’époque, de sa méthode Encyclopédie du pianiste compositeur qui favorise le genre des études, ainsi que des soirées musicales qu’il organise dans son appartement du Square d’Orléans. La troisième partie étudie la période post-Cherubini, de 1842 à 1853. Nous y abordons sa contribution à l’organisation de l’Association des artistes musiciens, ses deux messes, ses dernières années comme professeur au Conservatoire, ainsi que l’époque postérieure à sa retraite en 1848. Le second volume d’annexes complète cette étude en présentant un arbre généalogique, les portraits et les états civils des Zimmerman, ses lettres et d’autres documents
Born as the eldest son of a piano manufacturer, Pierre Joseph Guillaume Zimmerman (1785-1853) was one of the piano promoters in the first half of the nineteenth century, this can clearly be seen from his activities as a piano virtuoso, educator, composer and socialite. His unique role consisted of his dual occupation as a successor to Cherubini in academic composition, and also his role as a passionate supporter of the modernization of the piano. This thesis is a monographic study of Zimmermann, and explores the multiple aspects of the activities in which the musician became famous for in different periods of his life. In the first part, I discuss his origins and his life before 1831. I discuss his studies at the Conservatoire, his first pedagogical contributions, his marriages, his classical piano works (Sonata op.5 and two concertos) and two operas. The second part covers the period from 1831 to 1842. I consider the increase in the number of students from his class who became winners of the annual piano competition, his method Encyclopédie du pianiste compositeur – which favours the études as a genre – and the salon concerts that he organized at his apartment in the Square d’Orléans. The third and final part relates to the post-Cherubini period from 1842 to 1853 in which I focus on his contribution to the organization of the Association des artistes musiciens, his two masses, his last years as a professor of Conservatoire, and the life after his retirement in 1848. The information provided in the second volume of annexes also highly complement this study by presenting a family tree, his portraits, civil registers of the Zimmermans, his letters and the other documents

Etienne Dupérac est un artiste français de la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle qui fut à la fois peintre, aquafortiste, architecte et spécialiste des jardins. Il a commencé sa carrière à Venise et à Rome où il séjourna pendant environ vingt ans (vers 1560-1578), avant de rentrer en France où il devint vers 1596 l’un des architectes d’Henri IV. Nous avons cherché à reconstituer l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Dupérac, qui était mal connu, mais aussi la complexité de son parcours, caractérisé par une forte ascension sociale. Notre thèse met l’accent sur la polyvalence de l’artiste, sa connaissance de l'antique et l’originalité de ses estampes - en particulier les vues de ruines, les planches d’architecture et les restitutions antiques. Elle montre que l’historien Onofrio Panvinio a joué un rôle déterminant dans son initiation aux sciences antiquaires. Elle suggère enfin l’existence d’un lien étroit entre ses restitutions archéologiques et son œuvre architectural, profondément influencés par les travaux de Pirro Ligorio
Etienne Dupérac is a French artist of the second half of the sixteenth-century, who was active as a painter, an etcher, an architect and a specialist of garden design. He began his career in Venice and Rome, where he passed nearly twenty years (ca. 1560-1578), then he turned back to France where he became, about 1596, one of Henri IV’s court architects. In our study, we tried to describe the whole work of Dupérac, which was quite unknown, but also the different stages of his life and of his social ascent. We have emphasized Dupérac’s versatility, his knowledge of roman antiquities and the interest of his prints, especially his views of roman ruins and modern buildings. And his reconstruction drawings of roman scenes and monuments. We proved that the historian Onofrio Panvinio played a major role in Dupérac’s initiation to antiquarian studies. We have also compared his architectural projects with his reconstruction drawings, which are very influenced by the work of Pirro Ligorio

Cette thèse, ancrée à la croisée de la sociologie de l'art et du travail, se propose de faire une sociologie des collectifs d'individualités au travail à partir d'une enquête comparée qualitative de collectifs d'artistes plasticiens à Paris et à Berlin de formes diverses (atelier autogéré, espace-projet, artiste-collectif). Dans une première partie, après une histoire originale des formes de collectifs d'artistes pour l'art moderne et contemporain, la comparaison Paris-Berlin met en évidence, malgré une différence massive de volume au profit de Berlin, des situations de marginalité partagée. Dans une deuxième partie, consacrée à la cohésion des collectifs d'individualités, les espaces de recrutement des futurs membres sont identifiés et les finalités des collectifs cernées : plus qu'artistiques ou politiques, elles sont professionnelles. Trois facteurs de cohésion sont dégagés : la personnification du collectif, le type d'auctorialité artistique et la situation de parité artistique entre les membres. Selon le degré et la nature cohésive du collectif, celui-ci oscille ainsi entre une subordination ou une émancipation des individualités en son sein. Dans une troisième partie, consacrée à la construction des parcours professionnels des membres, l'approche par les capacités de Sen permet de revenir sur ce choix improbable des artistes solitaires de s'engager en collectif. Quatre ethos d'artiste-en-collectifs sont révélés par l'analyse, selon le désintéressement artistique et collectif vécu. L'approche multiscalaire du social mise en œuvre ici permet d'identifier des parcours professionnels typiques attachés à ces ethos, se déployant au sein ou en dehors du champ de l'art
At the cross-road between Art and Work sociology, this thesis intends to do a sociological study of a collective of individualities at work, using a qualitative compared investigation on different ! types of visual artist collectives in Paris and Berlin (studios community, artist-run-space, artist group). The first section includes a historical description of artists collectives for the modern and contemporary art history, and discusses the comparison Paris-Berlin: this shows a shared ; situation of precarity, despite a great difference in terms of volume in favour of Berlin. The I second part is devoted to the cohesion of such collectives of individualities. Recruitment fields of the future members are identified and the finalities of the collectives are grasped: more than artistic or political, they are professional. Three factors of cohesion are distinguished: the personnification of the collective, the type of artistic authorship and the situation of artistic parity among the members. According to the cohesive nature of the collective, it swings between a subordination or an emancipation of the individualities in its centre. The third part is devoted to ; the construction of the members' professional paths. The capability approach by Sen allows to ; revisit this unlikely choice of solo artists to engage themselves in a collective. Four ethos of artist-| in-collective are highlighted by the analysis according to the degree of artistic and collective selflessness of the members. This multi-scalar approach of the social conducts to identify typical professional paths stick to these ethos, which unfold themselves within or without the artistic field

Cette thèse tente de présenter l'ensemble de la carrière et de l'œuvre de Jean-François de Troy (Paris, 1679 - Rome, 1752), sous la forme d'un catalogue raisonne de ses nombreuses peintures et quelques dessins, précède d'un premier volume biographique. Cette introduction met en valeur le déroulement de sa carrière, de son long séjour de jeunesse en Italie à ses premiers succès parisiens pour une clientèle de financiers, jusqu'aux prestigieuses commandes pour Versailles et Fontainebleau. Elle permet de définir la place originale de son œuvre notamment dans le domaine de la scène de genre, mais aussi dans le développement de la peinture d'histoire nationale et dans celui de la tapisserie. Son rôle à la tête de l'Académie de France à Rome, de 1738 à sa mort, est ensuite plus particulièrement étudié ainsi que son insertion dans le milieu artistique romain, à travers ses relations avec l'académie de Saint-Luc dont il fut élu prince. Cette étude est complétée par un chapitre consacré à la fortune du peintre et par un autre dédié à ses rapports avec l'estampe, qui définit sa stratégie d'éditeur aussi bien que la postérité qu'elle a assurée à son œuvre.

Issu d’une famille d’artisans parisiens, loin des dynasties d’artistes qui émaillent l’époque moderne, Charles Michel-Ange Challe (1716-1778), peintre d’histoire, professeur de géométrie et de perspective à l’Académie royale, puis dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du roi, témoigne d’une émancipation professionnelle caractérisée. Parallèlement, la trajectoire personnelle de l’artiste, né de parents fort modestes, atteste une mobilité sociale certaine, marquée par nombre de reconnaissances tels que ses appartenances académiques, ses liens privilégiés avec la famille Nattier et la progression remarquable de sa situation économique, culturelle et sociale. Ponctué d’autant de chaos que de victoires, le parcours de Michel-Ange Challe, tantôt agissant, subordonné, contraint ou émancipé, éclaire à de nombreux égards, la situation des artistes parisiens au milieu du XVIIIe siècle
Charles Michel-Ange Challe (1716-1778) began as an History painter, a professor of geometry and perspective at the Royal Academy in Paris, before being appointed as Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du roi. He was born among a family of Parisian craftsmen, with no link with the numerous dynasties of artists flourishing during this era. The way he pursued his life attest to his outstanding professional emancipation. At the same time, the personal life of the artist, whose background was very modest, attest to a certain social mobility, marked by many recognitions such as his academic affiliations, his links with the Nattier family and the exceptional progress of his economic, cultural and social situation. Punctuated by as many chaos as victories, the career of Michel-Ange Challe, alternately acting, subordinate, forced or emancipated, illustrate in many ways the situation of the parisian artists in the mid of the 18th century

This chapter reveals the complex afterlives of Peninsular War memoirs, many of which outlived their authors and continued to be published and re-published in different formats over the long nineteenth century. It considers the many different groups of people involved behind the scenes in the production of a Napoleonic military memoir: family members, especially women; editors; publishers; indexers; printers; illustrators; archivists; lawyers; even luxury booksellers. It shows in detail the alterations that were made to veterans’ autobiographies over time, from omitting or adding sections of text to changing the title, inserting portraits of the author, or commissioning artist’s impressions of his battles. Along the way, some war memoirs underwent an almost total transformation, becoming dry family biographies, ‘boy’s own’ adventure stories, regimental histories, consumer objects, or, in the decades before the First World War in Britain and France, tools for national military education, targeted to children.