 Art and Literature
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Art
The visual and plastic arts of France have had an unprecedented diversity along centuries. Architecture
Over the centuries, France has been at the forefront of architectural innovation. In Medieval times, the radical new Gothic style found its beginnings in France. During the Renaissance, the French borrowed from Italian ideas to create magnificent castles. In the 1600s, the French brought classical restraint to the elaborate Baroque style. Neoclassism was popular in France till about 1840, followed by a revival of Gothic ideas. From 1885 till about 1920, the hot new trend was "Beaux Arts": an elaborate, highly decorated fashion inspired by many ideas from the past. Art Nouveau originated in France in the 1880s. Art Deco was born in Paris in 1925. Then came the various modern movements with France solidly in the lead. Museum / Exhibitions
France has plenty of museums, galleries and exhibitions devoted to any topic imaginable. The French enjoy spending many of their weekends in museums, which you can find in every town and in some villages. The most famous museum is Le Louvre in Paris for his fantastic collections. Painting
Throughout centuries, France has known a very strong art culture with several leanings such as Impressionism with famous painters like Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Then came the Postimpressionism with Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Pierre Bonnard. These artists had few qualities in common, but their individual styles did much to determine the directions that painting would take in the 20th century. The Expressionism descends from van Gogh and other post-impressionists through the Fauve group that formed around Henri Matisse, one of the most influential French artists of the 20th century. Picasso and Georges Braque changed the direction of painting through their cubist experiments. The last influential Parisian artistic movement was surrealism, a literary and artistic movement devoted to the exploration of irrational and subconscious states of mind. Cinema
The invention of the cinematograph, allotted to Louis Lumiere, is in fact the result of a collective research of nearly one century. From the invention of photography by Nicéphore Niepce towards 1816 to research on the movement, the XIX century is punctuated by technical and scientific discoveries such as the recording of sound and images. As of the first public and paying projection, on the 28 th December 1895 in Paris, the cinematograph caused an extraordinary enthusiasm within the public who were awe-struck in front of these moving images. Through decades, French cinema has evolved. In the 1920s, the artists seized the cinema. 1930 saw the arrival of voice which had considerable effects. After the second world war, in 1945, the festival of Cannes awarded its first trophy, a gold Palm, with "the Battle of the rail", of Rene Clément. Thereafter, the entries in the room beat all the records: 423 million entries in 1947, more than 400 million entries per annum in the ten years which followed. Since the 1960s, French cinema has retained it’s individuality and originality. It has succeeded in keeping its place in the French and European cinema landscape despite facing great competition from large US productions. Many French actors are well-known abroad such as Gerald Depardieu, Jean Reno, Juliette Binoche, Brigitte Bardot, Louis De Funes. Literature
French literature is a vast subject in French history. French literature evolved through centuries and counted plenty of famous writers such as Rabelais, Jean de La Fontaine, Balzac, Moliere, Descartes, Victor Hugo, Jules Vernes, etc. Literature is something which matters deeply to the people of France and which plays an important role in their own sense of identity. |
