Staging and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century France

Download or read book Staging and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century France written by Camilla Murgia and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the mechanisms and patterns of staging in nineteenth-century France. Often associated with theatre and performance, staging also applies to visual arts. It is thoroughly embedded in a more general cultural development comprising the dissemination of knowledge, political awareness and consumerism. The notion of staging applies to a process of appearing, revealing and disappearing that puts forward new ways for the individual to be seen and to make the self (and the other) visible. Staging determines and questions the process of appearing and disappearing by generating connections and interactions between multiple layers of reality (i.e., artistic, theatrical, literary, and visual) – but according to what criteria, through what mechanisms and with what materials? What are the repercussions of staging, and, even more important, what does staging not show? This book argues that the notion of staging goes beyond interdisciplinarity. Looking at the different ways staging was used and conceived introduces new approaches to understanding visual culture in nineteenth-century France.