The Politics of the Provisional : : Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France / / Richard Taws.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Taws, Richard,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2015]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.) :; 24 color/66 b&w illustrations

In revolutionary France the life of things could not be assured. War, shortage of materials, and frequent changes in political authority meant that few large-scale artworks or permanent monuments to the Revolution’s memory were completed. On the contrary, visual practice in revolutionary France was characterized by the production and circulation of a range of transitional, provisional, ephemeral, and half-made images and objects, from printed paper money, passports, and almanacs to temporary festival installations and relics of the demolished Bastille. Addressing this mass of images conventionally ignored in art history, The Politics of the Provisional contends that they were at the heart of debates on the nature of political authenticity and historical memory during the French Revolution. Thinking about material durability, this book suggests, was one of the key ways in which revolutionaries conceptualized duration, and it was crucial to how they imagined the Revolution’s transformative role in history.The Politics of the Provisional is the first book in the Art History Publication Initiative (AHPI), a collaborative grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Thanks to the AHPI grant, this book is available on a variety of popular e-book platforms.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter one Made of Money: Transparent Bodies, Authentic Values, Paper Signs -- Chapter two Between States: Passports, Certificates, and Citizens -- Chapter three Revolutionary Models/Model Revolutionaries: Architecture, Print, and Participation at the Festival of the Federation -- Chapter four Performing the Bastille: Pierre-François Palloy and the Memory-Work of the Revolution -- Chapter five Material Futures: Marking Time in a Revolutionary Almanac -- Chapter six Paper Traces: Playing Games with the Revolutionary Past -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index