Rosenberg, H. "The fall of Paris" 1

Itroduction

In this article Harold Rosenberg highlights Paris' great position in international Modernism during the first decades of the twentieth Century. He does this by analysing the social and political changes happened in the pre-war parisian society, and what those changes meant for the development -or fall of Paris' modernity.

He also shows us in fact, how the city's greatness was due to come to an end and leave the place to New York, the next modernist city. The text "The Fall of Paris" is an introduction and the premise for one of Rosenberg's most known essays "The American Action Painters"

The Style of Today

During the course of the twenthieth Century, some exuberant artistic mouvements took place in Europe and in particular in Paris, described as the Holy Place for artists .

Paris was described by Rosenberg as a "passive" city that could be possessed, owned and modified by artists. This passivity was seen by Rosenberg as the key which led Paris to become an art Capital. That extreme and free environment offered by the capital was the ideal context for international artists, students and refugees to settle in; Paris became therefore a pioneer city for culture in the same way that America was for economy.

This intellectual mileu gave birth to "international culture" : the influences received from that international crowd were visible not only in cafes, clothes, street life, but came out also -and especially in Visual art. That art, states Rosenberg, could not be called Parisian, nor European but International. International as a constant and not a variable. The definition for this sort of development in a city's look and culture is by Rosenberg the definition of "the Modern".That concept of Modern started inherently to be associated with Paris, and therefore to create a style which became largely criticised by the conservative and patriotic crowd .

The modern artist tried very hard to push the limits away from what was acceptable, in order to come out from the deadness of the real world and fullfill the search for freedom. What this meant was that the modern artist community in Paris was interested in looking for the now and the immediate feelings of the moment, without having to attain boundaries of time and rules. As such, Rosenberg described this condition as a No-Time Paris. This was a way for that artist community also to get estranged in a way from the present time they were living in. This estrangement, second to Rosenberg, is what made Modernism more of a sentiment than an historical movement. A sentiment for eternity, outside of time boundaries.

In parallel to the "No-Time" Paris, Rosenberg also defines a "No-Place" Paris, which purely concerned the international aspect of the city. The multiculturality of the capital, the many artistic influences, etnicities and religions managed to produce the most neutral, completely past-free context ever seen. Rosenberg points out, however, that this change of paradigma had concerned not only Paris as a single city, but a wider international ground, involving the entire European scene and other countries world wide Central for the future modernity. In fact, what came to be called modern epoch stayed active in these other countries in their variations (social, economic and cultural aspects) .

The Intellectual Form of Defeat

With the growth of a strongly unstable political situation in Europe, Parisian non-conformist artists were forced to change their rebel paradigma to one more conventional.The time of Antifascism had come and the artists' duty became that of saving Culture from the hands of Fascism. The Leftist part of Paris came then out with Communist rebellions.

Rosenberg compairs Germany's political situation to Paris art. As he defines pure art as inhuman form, free and indipendent from its own laws, can german politcs in that period be described as an "avant-gard". Man in that period and in that context could be compared to the artist in Paris from the previous decade, where he was intoxicated by the incoherence of modernity. That Extreme milieu that sorrounded German artists was crucial to determine a stop to new ideas and innovations. A clima of terror would not make it possible for a regeneration of what was already crumbling from the previous two decades in Paris, and the Second War flattened Paris from the modern Capital that was to the France that became.

Commentary

This article by Rosenberg is an interesting proposal about the historiacal succession of events which led to the shift of the Capital culture not only from Paris, but away from the European continent, mostly due to the destructiveness of the german regime and internal political unstabilities.

Literature list

Harrison & Wood. "The Fall of Paris" Modernism as Critique. Art in Theory 1900-2000. Malden: Blackwell,2003

Rosenberg, Harold. Tradition of the New, London and New York, 1962, pp.209-20