Through the lens of seven scholars, this book examines fine art and commercial design as they both reflected and helped create the vibrant culture of public spectacle in late nineteenth-century Paris. Posters and prints circulated across the city, as the new art form of cinema flourished, all part of a diverse urban climate of leisure that was particularly French. These rich visual materials served to promote the careers and talents of such celebrities as Jane Avril, Loie Fuller, and Sarah Bernhardt. Alphonse Mucha and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec developed the potential of color lithography to meet the demands of these stars, while fine artists ranging from Edgar Degas andedouard Manet to Pablo Picasso andedouard Vuillard focused on such spectacles as the racetrack, ballet, cafe-concert, theater, and opera, asserting them as defining elements of Parisian modernity in this image-saturated milieu.

Elizabeth C. Childs, Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History at Washington University in St. Louis, is a specialist in modern European art and has published extensively on nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century French art and visual culture.