the view from notre-dame

In this article, the reader sees and understands both the evolution of painting and the transformation of Paris. In Edouard Manet’s Un Bal Masque a l’Opera supports one of the cases against Haussmannization, more specifically T.J. Clark’s fifth point discussing how Haussmanizarion has turned Paris into a city filled with “vice, vulgarity, and display” (38). As a result of Haussman, Paris turned into a place of facades where people could pretend to be anything or anyone that they wanted as long as they had the money to pay for clothes. In the painting, Monet, although the majority of the painting is people, does not actually focus on them. Their faces and facial expressions are blurred leaving the viewer unable to come to any concrete conclusions about what the people are feeling at that moment. The only thing that is certain is the elegant clothes that they are wearing further proving Clarks fifth point that the people inhabiting “new” Paris had no substantial depth to them; their money and clothes is what made them who they were. On another note, this painting shows the influence of le grand magasins in which many men and women were able to find the best clothing that Paris had to offer including commodities form England, Egypt, and Kashmir. The people in the painting are all dressed very nicely and extravagantly. The men are in tuxedos and the women in beautiful gowns, which they probably purchased in le grand magasins. Many of the ”old” Parisians felt that le grand magasins, or department stores, were the reason why their “old” city had transformed into the capitalist society that it had become over the years.

In Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, The Mowers, represents the transformation of painting from classical to modern/ abstract art much like Haussman, who wanted to transform Paris from its dull, impoverished city of the early 1800’s and turn it into “new” and modernized city filled with grand buildings, public works projects, fitting new lenses on the gas lamps and many more additions.  He wanted Paris to flourish and prosper. In the end Haussmann was successful and paved the way for artists like Vincent Van Gogh to feel comfortable displaying his work. Because Haussmann was willing to take a chance and embark on rebuilding Paris with his new ideals, it allowed artist like Van Gogh to embrace the modernity as well through painting. The painting, The Mowers, represents the new Paris. The painting itself is very modern because Van Gogh developed a new technique of painting real things in an abstract fashion that makes the discussion of such a piece more ambiguous.