19th Century Paris: 'Le Peuple de Paris'

The second of the three exhibitions I am featuring this week is 'Le Peuple de Paris' running at the Musée Carnavaet until February 26th 2012. It is a sociological investigation into the lives of the working classes in Paris in the 19th century, looking particularly at how these people and their lifestyles, were portrayed by artists and the media at the time, and provides an intruiging and original insight into an era that continues to fascinate us today.

I asked Miriam Simon, Chief Curator of the exhibition, about how the idea for the exhibition came about and what messages it is seeking to get across about a population and a period which is much misunderstood.

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How did this exhibition originate?
MS: The project stems from the fascinating graphic art collection we have at the Musée Carnavalet, particularly the fascinating and important set of caricature lithographs of the people of Paris. French historiography had, certainly until the 1970s, mainly studied the ‘people’ through the labour movement, so it seemed there was room for a more sociological investigation of this socio-economic category, which - taken in its widest sense - represented over two thirds of the population of Paris in the nineteenth century.

How different was life in Paris in the 19th century for the proletariat compared with earlier centuries?

MS: Paris was confronted by many fundamental changes in the nineteenth century, including the industrial revolution, the extension and transformation of the city, and a population explosion, all of which substantially changed the lives of the people - their rhythms, their working conditions, their housing, the way they moved around, how they were looked after by philanthropic societies or governments, not to mention the beginnings of mass culture and the consumer society. However, some features remained from previous centuries, or in fact became things to fight for, in resistance to what was often becoming a very brutal way of life.

Was there an improvement in the standard of living across the century?

MS: Despite the trauma caused by an industrial revolution that was even more violent than it could have been as protection for the people was very slow to be put in place, we can observe a move towards a better standard of living and an increasing search for intimacy.

What can we learn about the people of Paris in the 19th century from the exhibition?
MS: The exhibition challenges certain assumptions about lifestyles at the time, including the alleged mixing of social classes in the pre-Haussmannian city. In general, the documents - which were very largely produced by the elite - show the "people" in a way which was anything but neutral.

We felt that we needed a common thread to tackle a topic as huge as this, and the one we chose was the human body. The working classes are those who perform manual activities, requiring manual dexterity and - or - physical strength, which distinguishes them from other classes. In the nineteenth century, the working classes found themselves in ever increasing confrontation with the bourgeoisie, and this class - which controlled the media - chose to portray the proletariat in ways that differentiated them from themselves. To this end, the people were often qualified by their body, with historians such as Alain Corbin showing how the bourgeoisie often linked them to the odours of the city and the spread of diseases.


How is the exhibition organised?
An introductory room puts the 'people' in their chronological, spatial and symbolic context. After that, we present the most significant corporeality sectors, which, as we have discussed, was the major characteristic of the people. A large room shows the material living conditions, and also the modes of relaxation and recreation. The work of Daumier, who was a unique artist as he had working class origins and was the only artist to look at the topic of the 'people' from the inside, is also the subject of a special presentation.

Misery, poverty, and their treatment by the elite, are then presented in a section linking them together with the increase in health and social fears. This leads to the last room that ends the exhibition with an evocation of revolution. This subject, which in the collective memory characterises to a large extent the people of Paris of the nineteenth century, highlights the different forms and manifestations of this fear of the 'peuple de Paris'.

http://www.parismusees.com/le-peuple-de-paris/

Le peuple de Paris au XIXe siècle: Des guinguettes aux barricades
Musée Carnavalet 23, rue de Sévigné 75003
Open daily, from 10am - 6pm, except Mondays and public holidays.
Tickets - from €3,5 - €7

19th Century Paris: 'Gaz à tous les étages'

Three very interesting exhibitions have recently begun in Paris, all looking at various aspects of life in the city in the 19th century. In order to get a little more information about each of these, I decided to talk to the curators about the stories behind the shows.

First up, the Gaz à tous les étages exhibition at the Bibliothèque Forney in the Hotel de Sens. The exhibition takes its name from the signs that can still be seen on many buildings around Paris today, and aims to tell the story of how gas arrived in the city and why it became so important. I spoke to Claude Mahuzier, President of COPAGAZ and one of the organisers of the exhibition.

When did gas first arrive in Paris?
CM: Gas was used for the first time in Paris when Philippe Lebon demonstrated his ‘thermolampe’ at the Hotel Seignelay in 1801, following a patent that he had filed in 1799. According to contemporary accounts, this demonstration was a great success, with Parisians rushing to see the rooms and the garden lit by gas. Unfortunately for Lebon, no one was ready to invest in his invention and he died bankrupt in 1804. Gas was brought back to Paris a few years later by a German, Winsor, who knew the work of Lebon and understood the interest it presented. In 1817 he created a gas plant near the Luxembourg gardens to light the Chambre des Pairs and the galleries of the Odeon. This was the real beginning of the adventure of the gas industry.

What changes did gas bring to people's lives? Did it also bring any problems?
CM: The impact on people's lives was considerable! Firstly, gas lighting brought them security. Gas lamps replaced inefficient oil lamps, enabling people to start going out in the evenings, to cafes and restaurants, which were also quickly lit by gas themselves. They also went to the theatre - where the footlights were gaslit - in the evening. As a result, meal times changed, and life was no longer dictated by the sun.

It also became possible, thanks to gas lighting, for artisans to work after dark, although such activity was banned for much of the nineteenth century. When they did work after dark, they took care to blacken out their windows to avoid being noticed, hence the term "travailler au noir"!

Cooking gas, which developed from 1855, offered a real advantage over wood and charcoal, both in terms of handling, and the odours and fumes that came from coal. When running water arrived in homes, after gas in about 1860, hygiene levels improved, even if such facilities were reserved for a wealthy minority. With stoves and gas heaters, people were warmer – at least a little bit!

We can't talk about gas without mentioning the pipes that distributed it. The major concern for cities was initially to manage the many projects launched by the gas companies, who were more concerned with serving the greatest number of customers – and demand was very strong – than in coordinating their work.

With the development of the gas industry, security concerns were also raised. The government quickly imposed safety regulations and although there were some accidents during the nineteenth century, none managed to put consumers off using gas.

How did gas change the face of Paris?
CM: It's thanks to gas that Paris became the ‘city of light’ in the 1900s!

How is the exhibition organised?
CM: The exhibition, in the beautiful surroundings of the Hotel de Sens, mixes objects, illustrations - including posters - and recreated rooms from this period. Our experience has taught us that using such settings, even very simple ones, multiplies the interest of the objects for our visitors.

The exhibition follows the principal developments of the gas industry. It begins with the invention of the industry, featuring gas plants, pipes, meters, then shows how gas lighting entered into the public and private world. Cooking Gas is shown through a recreated kitchen from the 1920s, and there's an art nouveau bathroom showing how hot water by gas changed lives.

Gas heating is explained in a living room, with a magnificent brass fireplace, and gas powered signs show how this medium was also very widely used over the years. Finally, there are two examples of professional uses. One is more traditional, but the other - an organ - is a little more "wacky". However, we wanted to include it to show how at the time people thought that gas could be used for everything!

Gaz à tous les étages
Bibliothèque Forney 1 rue du Figuier 75004
Entrance €3-€6
Tuesday to Saturday, 1pm - 7pm
Guided visits on Saturday at 3pm (included in the ticket price)

Where the Système Hennebique lives on

I have already taken you to the eccentric home of François Hennebique, France’s first king of concrete, but the Paris offices of his company on the Rue Danton are equally deserving of investigation.

Built by the architect Emile Arnaud in 1901, it was one of the first buildings in Paris to use only concrete in its construction. The forms of the building reflect the Art Nouveau tastes of the period, but here everything is merely decoration. Hennebique wanted physical proof - in the form of a building - that his system could rival traditional methods and produce structures that were equally as handsome (whilst also being far cheaper to build!)

Make no mistake - Hennebique was a formidable businessman. His offices, centrally positioned alongside the Seine at Saint Michel, were attractive to potential clients, but also a permanent advertising structure. All of the ceramics on the facade incorporate the words 'Système Hennebique', reminding passers-by exactly what they were looking at.

The first slogan Hennebique used to sell his system was ‘Plus d’incendies désastreux’ (no more disasterous fires). Initially then, concrete was not seen as being cheap or easy to use, but rather something that was safe. Whatever the reasons, the système Hennebique was an immediate success, with several industrial buildings going up across France before the end of the 19th century. In 1899, he designed his first reinforced concrete bridge, the Pont Camille de Hogues in Châtellerault, a type of structure that would become one of the company’s biggest successes.

Celebrated at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, Hennebique’s company would just a few years later control 20% of the world market in reinforced concrete. It was a business that deserved prestigious offices in the centre of the city.

Hennebique had clearly second guessed the way the world would develop, but another significant aspect of his success was the way he organised the company. In each of the countries in which he operated, he insisted that local agents create their own offices and find their own staff to complete the projects.

By insisting on this organisation, Hennebique was able to ensure rapid growth for his company with minimal headaches for himself. It was almost like a franchise system, and at the company’s height – in around 1910 – the firm had more than 30 agents operating in over 20 countries.

It was the job of the local agents to identify opportunities, with the head office in Paris making tweaks and giving projects the final go-ahead (making sure that they always used all of the principles of the Hennebique system!). With this system in place, the group was capable of studying over seven thousand dossiers, and working on around 2300 of these during this period.

In 1914, Hennebique could count 25,000 creations across the world that had been built using his system, including 1,500 bridges. However, when war broke out that year, Hennebique’s model was brutally stopped.

Hennebique’s company continued after the war, but using a much changed model, concentrating almost entirely on the French market. The Hennebique company continued – still at the same address - until 1967 when it was finally wound up. François Hennebique himself had died in 1921, but not without leaving a solid mark behind him!

Signs of the times

One of my favourite blogs is Lost City, run by the playfully named Brooks of Sheffield who chronicles the parts of New York that are slowly disappearing off the map because of "the ruthless real estate market and the City Fathers' disregard for Gotham's historical and cultural fabric", as he puts it.

The blog reeks of New York, and reads as if it is being spoken to you - by some gruff guy on a barstool who can't believe how far downhill his city is slipping. Posts alternately pan new builds that are 'ugly', and 'occupied by young couples who fight a lot', or mourn the passing of non-descript pizza joints. It is the journal of one man's struggle to preserve the traces that give his city its soul, and his raging against the implantation of chainstore logos and anywheresville aesthetics.

We have a tendancy to believe that time moves more slowly in Paris, and that the streets are covered with some kind of protective dust sprinkled by the museum-minded city fathers. However, when you attempt to count how many Starbucks are now installed in the city, and remember that McDonalds is more popular in France than anywhere else outside of the US, you realise how wrong this idea is.

Sure, the city is still home to a huge number of independant traders, but on a regular basis one of these survivors will slowly come to the end of its life. Its death is not necessarily a sad event, but - like on Lost City - it seems important to capture it before it disappears for ever.

L'Optique Michaud on the Avenue de Wagram is one of these places. Cameras and related equipment have been sold here for more than three generations, but its chunky vintage sign will soon be removed, probably to be replaced by the luminous blandness of a bank. Although times are tough in a market which has switched to digital and moved largely online, Philippe Michaud lived well enough from his business, and has now taken the opportunity to retire.

Nobody else would be able to take over the unit and install a similar business today in what is one of the most exclusive parts of the city. The public has moved on, and the city's face will reflect this.

The disappearance of the teinturerie on nearby Avenue Niel is more difficult to understand. Dry cleaning services are abundant in Paris, but also seemingly copper-bottomed even in times of financial hardship. Once the equipment has been purchased, it is a business that needs little in the way of fresh investment, and can survive with limited staff numbers.

The wonderfully preserved sign and polychrome frontage here seems to point to a unit that had not changed hands in a number of years, suggesting another retirement. Other owners may be found to keep the dry cleaning tradition going at this spot, but will they want to keep the vintage sign, or will they be looking to make their own fresh mark on the city?

In a few months time, I'll publish a follow up to this post, telling you exactly who has moved into these two units. I don't know what I'll find, but we will know what has been lost.

17 octobre 1961

October 17th 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of an event which even today five decades later remains unexplained. The date is a significant one for many people, and several parts of Paris - including the Pont Saint Michel where this plaque can be found - are marked by the event, but accounts of what actually happened differ widely.

In 1961, France was a country at war. It had begun in 1954, when an Algerian uprising against French colonial rule led to a war that would last until independance was granted in 1962. Although the conflict took place on Algerian soil, it naturally increased tensions across France, a country which was home to many people who had been born in Algeria.

In early October 1961, the French government installed a curfew, stating that all people of North African origin should stay at home between the hours of 8.30pm and 5.30am. As a protest against this restriction, the Algerian community decided to organise a peaceful march through the streets of Paris on October 17th (although some reports state that the Algerian community was told to march by their leaders, the FLN, under threat of death if they disobeyed).

The details of what happened next have been debated ever since, and it is far too complex a topic for me to attempt to analyse. Nobody seems to deny that people died that day, but estimates of the number vary from 70 to 300, which is why the plaque says simply 'des nombreux algeriens'. Here on the Pont Saint Michel, protesters are said to have been trapped by the police and then either thrown in the Seine, or to have jumped there themselves in panic. Many others were reportedly killed later after their arrest.

The French state has never acknowledged responsibility for this event which is today known as the Paris massacre of 1961. Police actions during the day remain a state secret, although the city of Paris did place this plaque - which speaks of a sanglante repression - on the Pont Saint Michel 10 years ago for the 40th anniversary.

It seems incredible that a fully democratic country such as France could keep such secrets today. A march is being organised to mark the anniversary, but it seems unlikely that the full truth will emerge in the short term (particularly with Presidential elections looming in 2012). Behind the huge drama of this event though, are numerous smaller tragedies. What price a life if nobody can say when you died or why?