x. INDEX

All drawings by Harald Wolff

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• 8.1. The importance of the economic base

• 8.2. Omissions by trusted authorities

• 8.3. Dramas that show how things work

• 8.4. Notice anomalies and details

• 8.5. Priorities that urban designs reveal

• 8.6. Classic art as a social weapon

• 8.7. Outskirts, cauldrons of the arts

• 8.8. Visits based on observation

• 8.9. Recommendations

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The importance of the economic base

x.i. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ECONOMIC BASE

GRASPING IT CHANGES THE VIEW OF THE PAST, WHICH LEADS TO APPLYING IT TO THE PRESENT

That explains why one finds it at times when the left is strong, and why it disappears when the right is. 

• Setting the scene:Tangible factors explain the city's structure.

• Small farms: ferocious repressions and art de vivre: The impact of sales of émigré and Church lands to peasants during the Revolution on French culture until the 1960's.

• Why nobles rarely adjusted to capitalism (please scroll down).

• Nobles, gods and heroes: When explorations and discoveries bring much more dynamic capitalists, nobles identify with mythological and Roman heroes to claim innate superiority.

• All aspects of the Old Regime reinforced the nobles, a concept that applies to societies generally, including our own.

• Have the kings become subversive?  Today they are reduced to anecdotes: What does that favor?  

• "Objective history sticks to the facts:" which facts?  Choose from a huge amount of data makes it inevitably subjective,  but views based on the economy make much more sense than others. 

• "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:" Why middle-class Western and traditional African views of corpulence differ.

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Omissions by trusted authorities

x.ii. OMISSIONS BY TRUSTED AUTHORITIES

La Commune as shown by the City Museum: The beautiful woman was the compagnon of Communard Jules Vallès — in the 1880's. She was 13 at the time of the upheaval, and had nothing to do with it.

Schoolbooks

Political narratives replace social forces, insurrections are almost absent and individuals replace collective action. 

 

The City Museum

 

• A spectacular homage to the elites

• A French Revolution that is almost peaceful  

• Insurrections as shown before the museum's renovation.

• The Revolution of 1830: Capitalism wins and modish fighters replace plebeians.

• The February Revolution of 1848: Fighting that is (almost) deleted.

• The June Days of 1848: Two sentences at the back of the room and barricades become a game for kids.

• La Commune before the renovation... 

• And after it, via the link above.

Monuments

• Camouflage at the Louvre   xxx

• Marie-Antoinette's cell replaced by a tablet (the Conciergerie)xxx

• Napoleon's tomb: Straight streets lead to a sepulchre. Whose? 

• The Arc de Triumph's lame homage to the plebes

• The July Column, as evasive

• Ignoring the evidence and getting away with it (the Opéra)

Historical panels

 

• The Asian towers of the 13th

• Emblematic site, incompréhensible panel

• A place where the past is deleted

• La Commune is finally mentioned but...

• Vanished industry  

• For an exception, please scroll all the way down.

Establishment accounts

are more sophisticated than social media 

but their bias is often as misleading. 

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x.iii

Dramas that show how things work

x.iii. DRAMAS THAT SHOW HOW THINGS WORK

 "AT LAST I AM KING!" CRIED LOUIS XIII FROM A PALACE WINDOW, AS THE CROWD CHEERED HIS THUGS ASSASSINATING A USURPER

"I played the child," Louis would say of pretending to be retarded. At age 15 he had absorbed the court's duplicity: "Everything becomes cleverness, design, false deference, boundless flattery and and bitterness at heart..."

-- Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV second wife, in dans Madame de Maintenon, "The Age of Conversation" by Benedetta Craveri, 2001, p. 236 (in French).

• A fête that brought a famous downfall (please scroll down).

• A prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street and became the most prolific French writer of her time.

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court: a witch and a royal mistress.

• Catholic nobles become saints and heroes

• "If  your son marries my daughter I'll give you Palais-Royal"

• A tantrum changes the course of history... for awhile: the fall of queen Marie de Medici.

• Revolt at la Bastille: the swan song of the independent nobility.

• Love wins out —  unfortunately: Passion breaks caste barriers... .

• "Bonjour, Sire!" A greeting announces calamity

• Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur

• Louis XVII, a story that has no end

• An intelligent ogre checks in: Adolphe Thiers leads 40 years of repression.

• Empathy from a countess alone: Breaking the rules brings siding with rebels.

• An unaware general steps into the fray: La Commune begins.

• Escape by socializing with the enemy: how two Communards survive the repression.

• Love humanizes an icon: Louise Michel, heroine of La Commune.

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• The fate of a political painter: Gustave Courbet, target of revenge.

• How France became a republic

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x.iv.

Notice anomalies and details

x.iv. NOTICE ANOMALIES AND DETAILS

THEY CAN REVEAL UNFAMILIAR MENTALITIES OR UNSTATED AGENDAS 

     Harald Wolff

Louis XVI tries to flee revolutionary Paris. Secrecy is essential but postillons' bright yellow liveries resemble those of the hated lord of the lands through which he passes...

 

• A métro station's face lift: Why the spectacular renovation at forgotten Château Rouge?

• A parade route changes course: What were the royal entries, and what did changing their route imply? 

• The successive statues of place des Vosges: Why is a royal statue held up by a tree trunk?

• A royal statue for a bridge: Why is the king's statue on a bridge instead of in the center of a royal square?

• Napoleon's tomb was built for Louis XIV. Why is the architecture and decor that trumpets that reality overlooked? 

• The discipline of the February and June 1848 insurrections terrified the privileged. Why not say so? 

• Emblematic site, odd marker: Why emphasize an impossible shooting?

• Masking the Opéra's purpose: Why is the salon at the heart of the edifice decorated by an orgy? 

• King, queens, their children, their siblings, their cousins, all of their wives and children have households of hundreds of heirarchically-organized subordinates: Why?

• Louis XVI stops seizing legacies of British manufacturers.

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x.v.

Priorities that urban designs reveal

x.v. VISITS BASED ON OBSERVATION

Harold Wolff

The statue of Henri IV on the pont Neuf bridge

Walks in historic Paris 

• Start with a spectral rampart : the left bank, from Odéon to the Seine.

• Saint-Germain-des-Prés, rampart heir

• Antiquarians on the way to Versailles: the 7th district near the Seine.

• Power takes off from the river: the Louvre and Palais-Royal

• Rue Saint-Denis, a trade route for pilgrims and kings: Its different sections reveal the past.

• A parade route changes course: the royal imprint

• The Latin quarter after victory: a Communard survivor describes it.

• A Communard bastion erased and transformed: the overlooked 13th district.

 Visits of monuments and famous sites 

• A bastion of the Old Regime: The Institut de France lives on

• Eternal France: river banks and booksellers

• The Palais-Gardens gardens, a world apart

• A cemetery that bewilders: the cemetery of the Holy Innocents.

• The "Court of Miracles"

• The huge open space at the city's heart (les Halles)

• Above and below the Halles now

• Specters emerge from the cemetery

• The place that is ancestor of all (place des Vosges)

• A royal statue for a bridge (pont Neuf)

• The arc announces three centuries of calamity (at the Saint-Denis gate)

• Napoleon's tomb: Straight streets lead to a sepulchre. Whose?

• The Obelisk announces a new era

• The Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

• The Arc de Triomphe's lame hommage to the plebes

• The July Column, as evasive

• Notre-Dame Cathedral, from eternity to repression

• A fountain where the emperor crushes Socialism (at place Saint-Michel)

• What Opéra tours won't say (full chapter)

Exploring outskirts

East

• Crime that shook the Sun King's court (near the Saint-Denis gate)

• The east, where new worlds emerge (full chapter)  

• A "masterly line" cuts through the working-class east (the Saint Martin canal overpass)

• The grand void of the blue-collar east

• A similar site shows how far the tumult spread

North

• If you absolutely must buy globalized brands (a discount shopping center)

• "Barbès don't panic" 

• The unhailed energies of  La Goutte d'Or

• The "marché Saint-Pierre," textile hub

South (the 13th district)

• Europe's "Chinatown"

• A Communard bastion, erased and transformed: the overlooked 13th

• A market replaces the army

• A Communard bastion erased and transformed (the overlooked 13th)

Visiting churches

• The importance of the Saint-Denis basilica

• The church where "Gothic" architecture began

• A church that changes the way to salvation (Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, 4th)

• "An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

• A church of vengeance: Montmartre's Sacré-Cœur

• The Sacre-Cœur scares, Sainte-Anne heals

Discovering parks and gardens

• Palais-Royal, a world apart (and next pages)

• A mini-wood where children play (20th)

• A park that flows through the eastern city

• Gardens replace a sugar refinery (13th)

• A giant park now occupies a gas-making site (13th)

• Gardens whose military origin seems hard to imagine (the canal overpass, 10th; please scroll down)

Suggestions for families

• To do with children (or without them)

• New horizons 

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VIII.9. 

Recommendations

x.v. PRIORITIES THAT URBAN DESIGNS REVEAL

STREET DESIGNS, VOIDS AND GIANT SPACES

In front of the Basilique Saint-Denis, the royal mausoleum (12th century)

Majesty on a human scale, forgotten gift of kings

• France's first straight street and point of focus: the space before the Saint-Denis Basilica, the royal mausoleum

• Paris's first straight street and point of focus: rue de Birague

• The path that links kings with their ancestors: rue Saint-Denis

• Straight streets and monarchy

• The place that is ancestor of all: place des Vosges, once place Royale

• Royal places multiply

• A design that was inconceivable elsewhere: the Grand Axis

• The Grand Axis as model

• Straight streets and points of focus, key to the city's grandeur

Fear, unlikely promoter of urban grandeur

The street that leads from the center to the church (Notre-Dame de la Gare, 13th, 1860)

• Rebel areas' sudden mutation

• Open the town to the army

• A military network crisscrosses town

• The new arteries' military purpose

• The "masterly line" that cuts through the working-class east

• Blue-collar neighborhoods' grand open spaces

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VIII.6.

Classic art as a social weapon

x.vi. MYTHOLOGY, NOBLES' CLAIM OF PRIMACY AND MORE POLITICAL ART

 

A MESSAGE THAT ALL UNDERSTOOD

After a painting of the Fontainebleau school (toward 1550)

Diane de Poitiers, member of the top nobility and favorite of Henri II, as Diana, goddess of the hunt.

• Nobles, gods and heroes : Figures from Antiquity represent nobles.

• Supermen: the décor of mansions, châteaux and churches 

• Rubens's decor for a queen: the series for Marie de Médicis., the first modern biography.

• Allegory and an issue of a day: a plea for peace and a threat of revolt

• An arc of triumph heralds three centuries of calamity... The homage to Louis XIV at the Saint-Denis gate.

• The violent imagery of victors on horseback

• Heroes on white horses

• The first great work of defiance: The Raft of the Medusa

• A goddess becomes a plebeian revolutionary: Liberty guides the people

• Freedom's great painting, fervent but ambiguous: same

• The goddess's descendants 

• Ballet, an art of the French court 

• A ceiling decorated by an orgy: the Opéra

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• Faceless poor and bourgeois heroes: the Revolution of 183

• Millionaires and ballerinas: the Opéra

• The City Museum's sole proletarian seen full face (please scroll down)

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 Outskirts, cauldrons of the arts

x.vii. OUTSKIRTS, CAULDRONS OF THE ARTS

Art that immigrants invent 

(In La Goutte d'Or, a part-African neighborhood)

• Looks, a sociable art

• Making oneself a composition

• How styles that became universal began

•  Reinventing dandies

• "The emergent design hub of Paris"

• Africans' buoyant creativity

• A portal to the music of the suburbs

Making the street a prop

• Ménilmontant, where walls turn into art galleries

• Kids follow pictures: street art in the 13th 

• Theater that makes the street a stage: La Goutte d'Or

• Sculpture that hovers over a washroom: La Goutte d'Or

• Cluster of unstandardized arts (13th, full section) 

• A festival has just appeared: In the 13th

In the outskirts

• Europe's Chinatown (full section)

• "To feel the real pulse of the city go east" 

• Eastern bars and music

• Art known only to neighbors: La Goutte d'Or

• World and urban music for the planet? La Goutte d'Or

• The city's newest festival (13th)

Unrecognized art 

• Spectres emerge from the cemetery

• Looks, a sociable art

• "Art is anything for the public done with passion:" small businesses that Communards would appreciate.

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x.viii

Recommendations