Books by Karen L Carter
Foreign Artists and Communities in Modern Paris, 1870-1914 examines Paris as a center of internat... more Foreign Artists and Communities in Modern Paris, 1870-1914 examines Paris as a center of international culture that attracted artists from Western and Eastern Europe, Asia and the Americas during a period of burgeoning global immigration. Sixteen essays by a group of emerging and established international scholars - including several whose work has not been previously published in English - address the experiences of foreign exiles, immigrants, students and expatriates. They explore the formal and informal structures that permitted foreign artists to forge connections within and across national communities and in some cases fashion new, transnational identities in the City of Light. Considering Paris from an innovative global perspective, the book situates both important modern artists - such as Edvard Munch, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Marc Chagall and Gino Severini - and lesser-known American, Czech, Italian, Polish, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Catalan, and Hungarian painters, sculptors, writers, dancers, and illustrators within the larger trends of international mobility and cultural exchange. Broadly appealing to historians of modern art and history, the essays in this volume characterize Paris as a thriving transnational arts community in which the interactions between diverse cultures, peoples and traditions contributed to the development of a hybrid and multivalent modern art.
Contributors include Juliet Bellow (Associate Professor of Modern European Art History, American University), Ewa Bobrowska (Associate Program Officer of Research at the Terra Foundation for American Art, Europe), Norma Broude (Professor Emerita of Art History, American University), Emily Burns (Assistant Professor of Art History, Auburn University), Paul Fisher (Associate Professor of American Studies, Wellesley College), Sharon Hecker (independent scholar), Zoë Marie Jones (Instructor, University of Alaska, Fairbanks), Cindy Kang (doctoral candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Laura Karp Lugo (University of Tours, France), Donald McCallum (1939–2013; former Professor of Art History at UCLA), Thomas Rimer (Professor Emeritus of East Asian Languages and Literature, University of Pittsburgh), Nicholas Sawicki (Assistant Professor of Art History, Lehigh University), Richard Sonn (Professor of History, University of Arkansas), and Maite van Dyck (Curator of Paintings, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
Contents:
Introduction: Strangers in paradise: foreign artists and
communities in modern Paris, 1870-1914, Susan Waller and Karen L. Carter.
Part I Institutions and Networks: The Italian expatriates: De Nittis and Zandomeneghi, Norma Broude
International artists at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris: the case of Edvard Munch (1896 and 1897), Maite van Dijk
‘Earning a living’ in the International Graphic Arts: the Académie
Julian and the teaching of poster design and illustration, 1890-1914, Karen L. Carter
Between Montparnasse and Prague: circulating cubism
in Left Bank Paris, Nicholas Sawicki
Part II Expatriate Communities:
Polish artists in Paris, 1890-1914: between international modernity and national identity, Ewa Bobrowska
Revising Bohemia: the American artist
colony in Paris, 1890-1914, Emily C. Burns
Catalan artists in Paris at the turn of the century, Laura Karp Lugo
Jewish Modernism: immigrant artists of Montparnasse, 1905-1914, Richard D. Sonn
Part III Incomers and Outsiders:
Everywhere and nowhere: Medardo Rosso and the
cultural cosmopolitan in fin-de-siècle Paris, Sharon Hecker
The Sacre ‘au printemps’: Parisian audiences and the Ballets Russes, Juliet Bellow
Gwen John: posing and painting in Paris, 1905-1914, Susan Waller
A path beyond Paris: the evolving art of Sakamoto Hanjirō, J. Thomas Rimer
Part IV Cosmopolitans and Hybridities:
The lost ambassador: Henrietta Reubell and transnational queer spaces in the Paris arts world, 1876-1903, Paul
Fisher
József Rippl-Rónai’s embroideries: crafting Hungarian Modernism in Paris, Cindy Kang
Japanese painters in Paris, 1880-1912, Donald F.
McCallum
Gino Severini’s Bohemian Paris: integrating the Italian artist,
1906-1914, Zoë Marie Jones
Selected bibliography; Index. 288 pages. 978-1-4724-4354-0
Peer-reviewed Publications (Articles) by Karen L Carter
Space and Culture, 2015
This essay argues that the revolutionary potential of the poster—established by a legacy of the p... more This essay argues that the revolutionary potential of the poster—established by a legacy of the political poster extending back to the French Revolution—and the poster's mode of collective spectatorship made it subject to greater scrutiny, censorship, and public debate in the period after the passage of the 1881 Press Law (loi de press, 29 Juillet, 1881) until 1893 when political propaganda was increasingly repressed following anarchist bombings. Through an examination of archival material and contemporary press articles, the essay analyzes the poster's mode of reception and its political message as having earned its reputation as a subversive object that required surveillance and scrutiny even after its display had been authorized under the 1881 Press Law. Despite these challenges, political activists from 1881 to 1893 were able to disseminate their radical viewpoints through clandestine distribution of posters that represented ephemeral resistance to the Third Republican government.
Yale French Studies, no. 122, 2012
Historians of nineteenth-century France have often characterized the changes in modernity (both i... more Historians of nineteenth-century France have often characterized the changes in modernity (both in relation to public life and urban spaces) as resulting in the withering of public engagement with politics and the atomization of the individual. This sense of disengagement from public life was particularly acute in the decades after the humiliating defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the harsh suppression of the Paris Commune (1871) and the intense commercialization of Paris following Haussmannization. The reasons for the de-politicization of nineteenth century “public culture” are varied and include the withdrawal of the bourgeoisie from the public sphere, the rise of the commercial mass media, and the encroachment of capital into every facet (and space) of daily life.
Rather than consider the overarching economic issues related to the development of capitalism, Carter’s essay instead discusses another, less frequently examined, cause for the de-politicization of culture and the rise of individual (as opposed to collective) spectatorship: police interference and political pressure. In the case examined here—political posters displayed in the streets of Paris in the 1880s and 1890s—the deliberate actions of agents of the municipal police and their dispersal of crowds that gathered around posters were attempts to eradicate expressions of political dissent as well as to prevent the collective reading that had historically been associated with the poster. These police actions were the result of a wider perception that the city space had been dramatically transformed and potentially radicalized by the greater distribution of textual and pictorial posters during these decades.
As Carter argues in her essay, the revolutionary potential of the poster— established by a legacy of the political poster extending back to the French Revolution— and the poster’s mode of collective spectatorship made it subject to greater scrutiny, censorship and public debate in the period after the passage of the 1881 Press Law (loi de press, 29 juillet 1881). Ultimately, Carter analyzes—through an examination of archival material and contemporary press articles—the poster’s mode of reception and its political message as having earned its reputation as a subversive object that required surveillance and scrutiny even after its display had been authorized under the new Press Law. That process of surveillance, monitoring and, above all, the dispersal of crowds by the Parisian police around posters lead, in Carter’s analysis, to the decline of the political force of the fin-de-siècle poster.
NIneteenth-Century French Studies, 2012
This article analyzes Joris-Karl Huysmans's essay on French poster designer Jules Chéret (1836-19... more This article analyzes Joris-Karl Huysmans's essay on French poster designer Jules Chéret (1836-1932) as an early example of art criticism devoted to mass-produced advertising posters. Huysmans's "Chéret" essay, published in the collection of art criticism, Certains (1889), interpreted late nineteenth-century poster imagery as capturing the sexual allure of the female figures represented. In doing so, Huysmans, a dénicheur--or cultivator of unconventional interpretations of popular culture--wedded decadent themes of the comic and sexuality in order to challenge bourgeois morality and capitalist forms of culture.
Journal of Design History, Jan 2012
As a response to Susan Sontag’s classic writing on the poster, this essay analyses the phenomenon... more As a response to Susan Sontag’s classic writing on the poster, this essay analyses the phenomenon of the French ‘pictorial’ publicity poster, which developed in concert with a specific type of spectatorship delineated in contemporary poster criticism as linked to the city of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. By comparing the collective reading of political placards and announcements in the early modern period to the hurried viewing of illustrated publicity posters at the dawn of the consumer economy, this essay contextualizes the poster’s spectatorship as dependent upon its conditions of public display in Paris after the city’s renovation and rationalization under Haussmannization.
Early Popular Visual Culture, May 2010
In April 1891, the Parisian and French authorities censored a poster created by designer Alfred C... more In April 1891, the Parisian and French authorities censored a poster created by designer Alfred Choubrac advertising a performance by the dancer Ilka de Mynn for outraging public morals. This essay analyzes Choubrac's case in relation to the law that defined obscenity violations and, more importantly, the commentary published in the press, which discussed whether the poster was explicitly appealing to base instincts and/or simply representing the female body in a manner considered beyond the boundaries of good taste. According to the press, the reasons for the poster's immorality were its clumsy form, its public accessibility and its manipulation of female sexuality, which, it was feared, would disseminate a contagion of desire to young females.
Book Chapter by Karen L Carter
Design History Beyond the Canon, edited by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, Victoria Pass and Christopher Wilson (New York: Bloomsbury), 2019
This book chapter presents strategies for instructors teaching graphic design history to help stu... more This book chapter presents strategies for instructors teaching graphic design history to help students critique the use of racial and sexist stereotypes in publicity of the past and present. The case studies presented here were integrated into a junior-level history of graphic design course that is required for all graphic design majors at Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD), Ferris State University. This pedagogical project was initiated in the NEH Summer Institute at Drexel University ("Teaching the History of Modern Design: Beyond the Canon") in 2015 and has been adjusted to capitalize on local collections, in particular those in the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University. The students in the class analyzed stereotypes in examples of posters, objects, and ephemera through the lens of gender and race studies. The goals for this teaching module were: 1) to enhance students’ awareness of sexual and racial stereotypes in the past and link those stereotypes to contemporary publicity and ephemera and 2) to help students generate a culturally respectful set of standards for their own design practice that engages with design history.
Essays (invited) by Karen L Carter
Magasin du XIXe siècle, 2020
From 1881 to 1905 color, illustrated posters were displayed on kiosks in bourgeois neighborhoods ... more From 1881 to 1905 color, illustrated posters were displayed on kiosks in bourgeois neighborhoods and plastered on large hoardings over the crumbling architecture in working-class neighborhoods. Produced in the thousands by industrial lithographic companies and distributed by professional affichage firms, posters were in essence the mass media of the age. Rather than focus on the aesthetic qualities of the poster, this article analyzes the spatial dynamics of publicity display in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Using period photographs and industry documents published by poster distribution firms, it examines the prevalence of large poster hoardings in the central and eastern Parisian arrondissements that were overwhelmingly working class well into the early twentieth century. In short, the rampant displays of poster and billboard advertising in fin-de-siècle Paris were not created accidentally or haphazardly, but targeted to specific areas of the city and promoted by the municipal and state governments.
“Advertising in Nineteenth-Century America, c.1860-1920.”
Trade Catalogues and the American Home. Malborough, UK: Adam Matthew Digital, 2017. , 2017
Invited essay published in the database, Trade Catalogues and the American Home. Malborough, UK: ... more Invited essay published in the database, Trade Catalogues and the American Home. Malborough, UK: Adam Matthew Digital, 2017.
Exhibition catalogue essay (invited) by Karen L Carter
Toulouse-Lautrec and the French Imprint: Sources and Legacies of Fin-de-Siècle Posters, Paris – Brussels – Barcelona. , 2005
Phillip Dennis Cate curated the exhibition, which traveled to the following venues: the Birmingha... more Phillip Dennis Cate curated the exhibition, which traveled to the following venues: the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England (April 8 – June 19, 2006), the Museum of the City of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland (Summer 2006), and The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum of Art, New Brunswick, New Jersey (Spring 2007).
The catalog also includes essays by Carmen Vendelin and Sara Bujanda Bujanda.
Book Reviews by Karen L Carter
By now the centrality of modern Paris for the visual, literary, and performing arts as well as fa... more By now the centrality of modern Paris for the visual, literary, and performing arts as well as fashion, spectacle, and tourism has become a familiar topic for scholarly literature on the history of France. The contribution that Hazel Hahn makes in Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century to this rich tradition of writing is to extend the periodization of the development of the culture of consumption in France to the beginning of the nineteenth century rather than focus exclusively on the period after 1860. In her interpretation, consumerism is seen as the unifying element of culture for this period, which she characterizes as having produced a powerful collective "imaginary" for Parisian society from 1815 to 1914. Hahn therefore dates the advent of consumer culture (and in particular the rise of marketing) much earlier in the nineteenth century than previously theorized and not exclusively in England, but in France where these developments are usually regarded as happening much later.
Exhibition Review by Karen L Carter
Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 2022
A review of the exhibition and exhibition catalogue of Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret, h... more A review of the exhibition and exhibition catalogue of Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret, held at the Milwaukee Art Museum (June 3-October 16, 2022)
Design and Culure, 2017
Review of the exhibition, Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia at the Walker Art Center.
Grants, Fellowships, and Awards by Karen L Carter
National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, 2015
Selected to participate in the NEH Summer Institute, "The Teaching of Modern Design: The Canon an... more Selected to participate in the NEH Summer Institute, "The Teaching of Modern Design: The Canon and Beyond," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Talks by Karen L Carter
Poster Mania in Turn-of-the-Century Paris
In the 1880s and 1890s, illustrated posters displayed on walls throughout Paris were accused of t... more In the 1880s and 1890s, illustrated posters displayed on walls throughout Paris were accused of turning the city into a bazaar and mounting an aggressive assault on the eyes and souls of passersby. Kluge Fellow Karen Carter examines "poster mania," a topic of late 19th-century commentary that linked the viewing of publicity to pathology and madness. French writers appropriated the concepts of hypnosis and subconscious suggestion in order to investigate the powerful attraction of the poster's accentuated visuality and psychological impact.
Dissertation by Karen L Carter
L’Age de l'affiche: The Reception, Display and Collection of Posters in Fin-de-siècle Paris
Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, illustrated publicity posters were increasingly produced, distrib... more Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, illustrated publicity posters were increasingly produced, distributed and displayed in the streets of Paris. Covering the walls of buildings throughout the city, these large-scale color lithographed posters were regarded as a ubiquitous, if not inescapable part of the urban landscape. Critics’ reactions to this newly-emerging, mass-produced advertising included enthusiastic accounts of the poster’s enlivening effects on the impersonal urban environment, characterizations of new modes of visual perception sparked by the poster’s designs, and vehement objections to the poster’s seductiveness, especially to those that flaunted female nudity. The poster could be simultaneously regarded as the most egalitarian form of art, accessible to all citizens dans la rue, as the quintessential emblem of urban corruption and licentiousness, and as l’estampe originale for the print connoisseur. This fin-de-siècle visual culture, rather than being confined to fixed and rigid conceptions of “art,” was often the product of unprecedented dialogues between artistic production and critical reception, and between mass-produced culture and socially-diverse audiences.
The purpose of my dissertation is to examine the fin-de-siècle poster through its critical reception, display and collection during the 1880s and 1890s. Accordingly, my project retrieves the multiple purposes that were once attributed to posters and extends the boundaries of art historical scholarship beyond an examination of poster artists and styles to analyze the poster’s reception and consumption. In doing so, I examine the immense body of poster criticism that was written in the late nineteenth- century by mapping the different issues brought to bear on the proliferation of visual imagery at this time and by tracing the ideological values at work in its reception. I also explore the consumption of posters within the various spaces in which they were amassed or displayed—the streets, the collection and the exhibition—that ultimately helped to determine their reception. Through this examination of critical responses to the fin-de-siècle affiche, I have sought to explore the ways in which culture was newly defined in an age that witnessed the birth of mass consumption and its emblematicization in the illustrated poster.
Papers by Karen L Carter
Nineteenth-century art worldwide, Oct 15, 2022
The 1880s and 1890s are often referred to as a Golden Age for the poster in France. Color lithogr... more The 1880s and 1890s are often referred to as a Golden Age for the poster in France. Color lithograph posters flourished due to changes in the press laws that liberalized poster distribution, new technological advances in printing that made it easier and cheaper to print posters, and the emergence of a consumer culture that demanded images to help market goods to the public. In these decades, critics described the advertising poster as ubiquitous and claimed it represented a uniquely modern, urban form of culture that captured the very essence of the Belle Époque in its representations of the entertainments and spectacles that were on offer throughout the city. The poster designer who received the most critical attention at this time was the Frenchman Jules Chéret; most of it was overwhelmingly positive. After apprenticing at a young age in a printing company in Paris and then working in England to perfect his skills at color lithography, Chéret moved back to Paris in the 1860s and was soon recognized for his skill in poster design. He gained recognition because of his stylistic flair and his prominent signatures on his posters. The year 1889 marked a breakthrough year for Chéret when he was inducted into the Legion of Honor, won a gold medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, and garnered his own solo exhibition that resulted in wide-ranging critical acclaim.
Confronting racial stereotypes in graphic design history
Unfit for public display: female sexuality and the censorship of fin‐de‐siècle publicity posters
Early Popular Visual Culture, May 1, 2010
In April 1891, the Parisian and French authorities censored a poster created by designer Alfred C... more In April 1891, the Parisian and French authorities censored a poster created by designer Alfred Choubrac advertising a performance by the dancer Ilka de Mynn for outraging public morals. This essay analyzes Choubrac’s case in relation to the law that defined obscenity violations and, more importantly, the commentary published in the press, which discussed whether the poster was explicitly appealing
Joris-Karl Huysmans, A <i>Dénicheur</i> of Jules Chéret's Posters
Nineteenth-century French Studies, 2012
This article analyzes Joris-Karl Huysmans's essay on French poster designer Jules Chéret (183... more This article analyzes Joris-Karl Huysmans's essay on French poster designer Jules Chéret (1836-1932) as an early example of art criticism devoted to mass-produced advertising posters. Huysmans's "Chéret" essay, published in the collection of art criticism, Certains (1889), interpreted late nineteenth-century poster imagery as capturing the sexual allure of the female figures represented. In doing so, Huysmans, a dénicheur—or cultivator of unconventional interpretations of popular culture—wedded decadent themes of the comic and sexuality in order to challenge bourgeois morality and capitalist forms of culture.
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Books by Karen L Carter
Contributors include Juliet Bellow (Associate Professor of Modern European Art History, American University), Ewa Bobrowska (Associate Program Officer of Research at the Terra Foundation for American Art, Europe), Norma Broude (Professor Emerita of Art History, American University), Emily Burns (Assistant Professor of Art History, Auburn University), Paul Fisher (Associate Professor of American Studies, Wellesley College), Sharon Hecker (independent scholar), Zoë Marie Jones (Instructor, University of Alaska, Fairbanks), Cindy Kang (doctoral candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), Laura Karp Lugo (University of Tours, France), Donald McCallum (1939–2013; former Professor of Art History at UCLA), Thomas Rimer (Professor Emeritus of East Asian Languages and Literature, University of Pittsburgh), Nicholas Sawicki (Assistant Professor of Art History, Lehigh University), Richard Sonn (Professor of History, University of Arkansas), and Maite van Dyck (Curator of Paintings, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).
Contents:
Introduction: Strangers in paradise: foreign artists and
communities in modern Paris, 1870-1914, Susan Waller and Karen L. Carter.
Part I Institutions and Networks: The Italian expatriates: De Nittis and Zandomeneghi, Norma Broude
International artists at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris: the case of Edvard Munch (1896 and 1897), Maite van Dijk
‘Earning a living’ in the International Graphic Arts: the Académie
Julian and the teaching of poster design and illustration, 1890-1914, Karen L. Carter
Between Montparnasse and Prague: circulating cubism
in Left Bank Paris, Nicholas Sawicki
Part II Expatriate Communities:
Polish artists in Paris, 1890-1914: between international modernity and national identity, Ewa Bobrowska
Revising Bohemia: the American artist
colony in Paris, 1890-1914, Emily C. Burns
Catalan artists in Paris at the turn of the century, Laura Karp Lugo
Jewish Modernism: immigrant artists of Montparnasse, 1905-1914, Richard D. Sonn
Part III Incomers and Outsiders:
Everywhere and nowhere: Medardo Rosso and the
cultural cosmopolitan in fin-de-siècle Paris, Sharon Hecker
The Sacre ‘au printemps’: Parisian audiences and the Ballets Russes, Juliet Bellow
Gwen John: posing and painting in Paris, 1905-1914, Susan Waller
A path beyond Paris: the evolving art of Sakamoto Hanjirō, J. Thomas Rimer
Part IV Cosmopolitans and Hybridities:
The lost ambassador: Henrietta Reubell and transnational queer spaces in the Paris arts world, 1876-1903, Paul
Fisher
József Rippl-Rónai’s embroideries: crafting Hungarian Modernism in Paris, Cindy Kang
Japanese painters in Paris, 1880-1912, Donald F.
McCallum
Gino Severini’s Bohemian Paris: integrating the Italian artist,
1906-1914, Zoë Marie Jones
Selected bibliography; Index. 288 pages. 978-1-4724-4354-0
Peer-reviewed Publications (Articles) by Karen L Carter
Rather than consider the overarching economic issues related to the development of capitalism, Carter’s essay instead discusses another, less frequently examined, cause for the de-politicization of culture and the rise of individual (as opposed to collective) spectatorship: police interference and political pressure. In the case examined here—political posters displayed in the streets of Paris in the 1880s and 1890s—the deliberate actions of agents of the municipal police and their dispersal of crowds that gathered around posters were attempts to eradicate expressions of political dissent as well as to prevent the collective reading that had historically been associated with the poster. These police actions were the result of a wider perception that the city space had been dramatically transformed and potentially radicalized by the greater distribution of textual and pictorial posters during these decades.
As Carter argues in her essay, the revolutionary potential of the poster— established by a legacy of the political poster extending back to the French Revolution— and the poster’s mode of collective spectatorship made it subject to greater scrutiny, censorship and public debate in the period after the passage of the 1881 Press Law (loi de press, 29 juillet 1881). Ultimately, Carter analyzes—through an examination of archival material and contemporary press articles—the poster’s mode of reception and its political message as having earned its reputation as a subversive object that required surveillance and scrutiny even after its display had been authorized under the new Press Law. That process of surveillance, monitoring and, above all, the dispersal of crowds by the Parisian police around posters lead, in Carter’s analysis, to the decline of the political force of the fin-de-siècle poster.
Book Chapter by Karen L Carter
Essays (invited) by Karen L Carter
Exhibition catalogue essay (invited) by Karen L Carter
The catalog also includes essays by Carmen Vendelin and Sara Bujanda Bujanda.
Book Reviews by Karen L Carter
Exhibition Review by Karen L Carter
Grants, Fellowships, and Awards by Karen L Carter
Talks by Karen L Carter
Dissertation by Karen L Carter
The purpose of my dissertation is to examine the fin-de-siècle poster through its critical reception, display and collection during the 1880s and 1890s. Accordingly, my project retrieves the multiple purposes that were once attributed to posters and extends the boundaries of art historical scholarship beyond an examination of poster artists and styles to analyze the poster’s reception and consumption. In doing so, I examine the immense body of poster criticism that was written in the late nineteenth- century by mapping the different issues brought to bear on the proliferation of visual imagery at this time and by tracing the ideological values at work in its reception. I also explore the consumption of posters within the various spaces in which they were amassed or displayed—the streets, the collection and the exhibition—that ultimately helped to determine their reception. Through this examination of critical responses to the fin-de-siècle affiche, I have sought to explore the ways in which culture was newly defined in an age that witnessed the birth of mass consumption and its emblematicization in the illustrated poster.
Papers by Karen L Carter