-- Remarkable selection of objects that surpass the typical design associations of their day and enter into the realm of art -- First time most of these objects have been published -- Features 90 superb examples of jewelry, furniture and architecture with fascinating stories of their creation and provenance Throughout history, French artists, artisans and designers have created astonishingly beautiful decorative arts. Stuff of Dreams features 90 marvelous pieces that have surpassed all standards of tradition, craftsmanship and utility. Many of these objects possess a latent surrealistic element, linking the rich, the elegant, the elaborate, the curious and the sensuous. This publication accompanies an international exchange exhibition organized by the Portland Art Museum, which will travel to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, and then to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama before the artworks return to be permanently installed at the Paris Musee des Arts Decoratifs in 2003. Most of the works of art selected for this publication carry with them fascinating stories about their origins, their makers, and those persons who commissioned, collected, used or loved them.

Published to accompany the Royal Academy exhibition 'Matisse in the Studio', this book is the first in English to explore the essential role that Henri Matisse's personal collection of objects played in his studio practice. Featured frequently in the modern master's bold paintings, drawings, and cut-outs, and influencing the development of his work in sculpture, Matisse's objects formed a secret history hiding in plain sight. Works that span the artist's entire career are presented here alongside the objects that inspired them, from Asian vases and African masks to intricate textiles from the Islamic world. With lush illustrations and archival images, Matisse in the Studio provides exceptional insights into the world of the artist at work.

From the walls of the Salon to the pages of weekly newspapers, war imagery was immensely popular in postrevolutionary France. This fascinating book studies representations of contemporary conflict in the first half of the 19th century and explores how these pictures provided citizens with an imaginative stake in wars being waged in their name. As she traces the evolution of images of war from a visual form that had previously been intended for mostly elite audiences to one that was enjoyed by a much broader public over the course of the 19th century, Katie Hornstein carefully considers the influence of emergent technologies and popular media, such as lithography, photography, and panoramas, on both artistic style and public taste. With close readings and handsome reproductions in various media, from monumental battle paintings to popular prints, Picturing War in France,1792–1856 draws on contemporary art criticism, war reporting, and the burgeoning illustrated press to reveal the crucial role such images played in shaping modern understandings of conflict.

Artists have long been stimulated and motivated by the work of those who came before them—sometimes, centuries before them. Interviews with 120 international contemporary artists discussing works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection that spark their imagination shed new light on art-making, museums, and the creative process. Images of works from The Met collection appear alongside images of the contemporary artists' work, allowing readers to discover a rich web of visual connections that spans cultures and millennia.

Expanding the narrow script of what it means to be Parisian, Laila Amine explores the novels, films, and street art made by Maghrebis, Franco-Arabs, and African Americans, including fiction by Charef, Chraïbi, Sebbar, Baldwin, Smith, and Wright, and such films as La haine, Made in France, Chouchou, and A Son.

2015 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Longlisted for the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. These women were participants in the life of the American expatriate colony, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, and they commingled with bohemian avant-garde writers and artists like Picasso, Breton, Colette, and Matisse. Bricktop's Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into a Paris whose elegance masks a thriving underworld.

Originally published in 1984. In The Working People of Paris, 1871–1914, Lenard Berlanstein examines how technological advances, expanding industrialization, bureaucratization, and urban growth affected the lives of the working poor and near poor of one of the world's most influential cities during an era of intense social and cultural change. Berlanstein departs from other historians of the working classes in treating, in a parallel manner, not only craftsmen and factory laborers but also service workers and lower-level white-collar employees. Avoiding the fallacy of letting the city limits set the boundaries of an urban study, he deals also with the industrial suburbs, with their considerable concentration of workers, to examine the transformation of the work, leisure, and consumer experiences of the people who did not own property and who lived from one payday to the next during the Second Industrial Revolution. The Working People of Paris describes a cycle of adaptation and resistance to the forces of economic maturation. For several decades after 1871, Berlanstein argues, working people and employees preserved accommodations with management about reciprocal rights in the workplace. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, these forms of adaptation had broken down under new economic pressures. The result was a crisis of discipline in the workplace, as wage earners and modest clerks began to challenge managerial authority. Berlanstein's study confronts the widely accepted view that, during this period, workers became better integrated into a society of improving standards of living and mass leisure. Instead, he documents uneven patterns of material progress and growing conflict over work roles among all sorts of laboring people.

The scientific and social history surrounding the 1880 incident of a foul odor in Paris and the development of public health culture that followed. Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors enveloped large portions of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later—when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink—the public conversation about health and disease had changed dramatically. Parisians held their noses and protested, but this time few feared that the odors would spread disease. Historian David S. Barnes examines the birth of a new microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness. Tracing a series of developments in French science, medicine, politics, and culture, Barnes reveals how the science and practice of public health changed during the heyday of the Bacteriological Revolution. Despite its many innovations, however, the new science of germs did not entirely sweep away the older “sanitarian” view of public health. The longstanding conviction that disease could be traced to filthy people, places, and substances remained strong, even as it was translated into the language of bacteriology. Ultimately, the attitudes of physicians and the French public were shaped by political struggles between republicans and the clergy, by aggressive efforts to educate and “civilize” the peasantry, and by long-term shifts in the public’s ability to tolerate the odor of bodily substances. “A well-developed study in medically related social history, it tells an intriguing tale and prompts us to ask how our own cultural contexts affect our views and actions regarding environmental and infectious scourges here and now.” —New England Journal of Medicine “Both a captivating story and a sophisticated historical study. Kudos to Barnes for this valuable and insightful book that both physicians and historians will enjoy.” —Journal of the American Medical Association

“Une histoire d’espoir—a story of hope.” —Kirkus Reviews “A memorable, heartfelt read.” —Publishers Weekly Fans of the Nate series by Tim Federle and The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm will love Cleveland Rosebud Potts in this poignant and heartfelt novel from the award-winning author of Lily and Dunkin. Cleveland Rosebud Potts has a plan. If she can check off the six items on her très important Paris Project List she will make it out of the small-minded and scorching town of Sassafras, Florida, to a rich and cultured life at The American School of Paris. Unfortunately, everything seems to conspire against Cleveland reaching her goal. Cleveland is ashamed of her father and angry that her mother and sister are never around because they have to work extra shifts to help out the family. Her Eiffel Tower tin has zero funds. And to top it all off, Cleveland’s best friend Jenna Finch has decided she’s too fancy for her and her neighbor Declan seems to be hiding something. As Cleveland puts her talents to the test, she must learn how to forgive family for their faults, appreciate friends for exactly who they are, and bloom where she’s planted—even if that’s in a tiny town in central Florida that doesn’t even have a French restaurant. C’èst la vie!

"In the bohemian and brilliant Montparnasse of the 1920s, Kiki escaped poverty to become one of the most charismatic figures of the avant-garde years between the wars. Partner to Man Ray, she would be immortalised by many artists. The muse of a generation, she was one of the first emancipated women of the 20th century." -- Provided by publisher.