Camilla Murgia (dir.), Staging and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century France: Appearing, Revealing, Disappearing

This book discusses the mechanisms and patterns of staging in nineteenth-century France. Often associated with theatre and performance, staging also applies to visual arts. It is thoroughly embedded in a more general cultural development comprising the dissemination of knowledge, political awareness and consumerism. The notion of staging applies to a process of appearing, revealing and disappearing that puts forward new ways for the individual to be seen and to make the self (and the other) visible.

Staging determines and questions the process of appearing and disappearing by generating connections and interactions between multiple layers of reality (i.e., artistic, theatrical, literary, and visual) – but according to what criteria, through what mechanisms and with what materials? What are the repercussions of staging, and, even more important, what does staging not show? This book argues that the notion of staging goes beyond interdisciplinarity. Looking at the different ways staging was used and conceived introduces new approaches to understanding visual culture in nineteenth-century France.

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Cet ouvrage collectif traite des mécanismes et des modèles de mise en scène dans la France du XIXe siècle. Souvent associée au théâtre et à la performance, la mise en scène s’applique également aux arts visuels. Elle est profondément ancrée dans un développement culturel plus général comprenant la diffusion des connaissances, la prise de conscience politique et le consumérisme.

Les contributions réunies par Camilla Murgia (Université de Lausanne) vont au-delà de l’approche traditionnelle de la mise en scène et s’articulent autour de trois mots clés principaux – paraître, apparaître et disparaître – qui proposent de nouvelles façons pour l’individu d’être vu et de rendre le soi (et l’autre) visible.

Au cœur de ce processus d’apparition et de disparition se trouvent les interactions et les échanges entre disciplines, mais aussi entre réalités diverses. Cette variété de thèmes et d’approches contribue ainsi à l’étude de la culture visuelle de la France à cette époque.

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Contributors : 

Erik Anspach

Anastasia Belyaeva

Elena Di Raddo

Annemarie Iker

Bart Moens

Pauline Noblecourt

Caroline Schuster Cordone

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Camilla Murgia studied art history at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, with a thesis on Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-Germain (1752-1842). She was a Junior Research Fellow in the history of art at the University of Oxford (St John’s College) and subsequently taught at the universities of Neuchâtel and Geneva. She is a junior lecturer in history of art at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the visual and material cultures of the long 19th century, with a particular attention to the relationship between theatre and fine arts.