Picasso penned the diary of his life with a paintbrush. The Adventures of Modern Art IV: Paris: Capital of the World
Everything was still Dada … A new type of show blending music, painting, poetry, dance and percussion. ibid.
Dada and its manifesto had crossed the borders of Europe to join the ranks of other publications. ibid.
The small band of Surrealists took part in the post-war Dada scandals. ibid.
Man Ray immortalised the small band with this camera before returning to the arms of Kiki. The Adventures of Modern Art V: Libertad!
Salvador Dali explored the dark side of his unconscious and was sidelined by the Surrealists as a result. ibid.
1st May 1937 Picasso set to work … By early June the work was completed … On July 12th 1937 Guernica was exhibited … He decided not to return to Spain so long as freedom had not been restored. ibid.
You may think our modern world was born yesterday. But it wasn’t, not even the day before yesterday. Democracy in the streets and the rise of people power. The raw passion of national belonging. Good and bad. Our obsession with the self and our own psychology and the dark recesses of the human mind. Even our love of nature, our concern for the future of the planet, all of this was the creation of the Romantics: a generation of artists living and working two hundred years ago around the time of the French revolution. Their art was created over nearly a century of upheaval and change. And it speaks to us now with as much ferocious power as it did then. The Romantics & Us With Simon Schama, BBC 2020
The Romantics lived hard, worked feverishly, and many of them died young. ibid.
If you’ve ever been on a march for whatever cause, you’ve experienced one of the great inventions the Romantics brought into the modern world … A new religion of insurrection and agitation in which everyone can take to the streets to fight for freedom, equality and justice. ibid.
Liberty Leading the People (1830) by Delacroix: It’s been a focal point of intoxicated devotion ever since … Delacroix was born into an age of revolutions in which the monarchy and aristocracy was under siege from the ideals of liberty, equality and the rights of man. ibid.
Delacroix’s image had its most famous resurrection during the Paris Uprisings of 1968 when students and workers came together on the barricades to break apart the rigid conservatism of French society under [Charles] de Gaulle. ibid.
The students took over the most prestigious art school and covered Paris in revolutionary slogans, poetry and street art. ibid.
William Blake: His head swam with visions. As he walked through the streets of his city he saw angels in the trees and amongst the haymakers in the fields. He was always reaching for that bit of heaven and he sees everyone as potentially wonderful. ibid.
Perhaps the most surprising or at least the bravest was the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1792, fired up by the revolution, Mary had written A Vindication of the Rights of Women … And so she arrived in Paris. ibid.
Over the next two years Mary witnessed the worst excesses of the Jacobean government. ibid.
You could see how the will of the people and the language of liberty became increasingly debased into the propaganda slogans of unlimited state power. ibid.
For Banksy, there was no influence more important than the French stencil artists: Blek le Rat. Blek, who had first encountered graffiti on a trip to New York, adapted the idea of street art to the European tradition, stencilling political statements on walls … 1981: stencils of rats started to appear in Paris. Banksy & the Rise of Outlaw Art, Sky Arts 2021
Talk about the History Channel – you would love it here. The Sopranos s6e11: Cold Stones, Carmela in Paris calls Tony, HBO 2006