This course will explore how Paris evolved as this unique field of cultural production through the network of institutional interrelationships forged between the French State, Paris Salons, Universal Expositions, art dealers, artists, critics and patrons. It will also address the huge number of artists from Rupert Bunny and Marie Vassiliev to Pablo Picasso, who flocked from cities as geographically diverse as Sydney, St. Petersburg and Barcelona to this modern art centre.

Students will explore the persistence of traditional Salon art, Republican Naturalism and revivals of Classicism alongside the emergence of cross-disciplinary aesthetics unifying the fine arts with interior and exterior architecture, design, dance, music and literature.

Other topics incude the impact of French cultural politics and events as the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, WW1, Fascist riots, the Popular Front, WW2, Nazi occupation of Paris, the Resistance and Liberation. It will conclude by charting the emergence of American cultural imperialism to consider "how New York stole the idea of Modern Art". This will entail reflecting upon ways in which cultural imperialist strategies had been alive and well in nineteenth and twentieth century France long before they were deployed by America during the Cold War.