This course explores the rise of Paris as a global centre of art between the 18th and early 20th centuries. From royal academies to radical avant-gardes, Paris led artistic innovation and served as a hub for international exchange, where artists, ideas, and patrons from around the world converged. We examine how the city’s state-financed art establishment promoted its cultural authority at home and abroad, while engagement with art traditions from across Europe, Asia and America helped shape the city’s artistic identity. In the first term, we trace the foundations of Paris’s dominance in the arts, focussing on the period from the 17th to the early 19th century. Italy’s classical tradition deeply influenced France’s artistic ideals, while international trade and imperial expansion encouraged a growing taste for Chinoiserie and laid the groundwork for Orientalist art. The second term concentrates on the 19th century, a period which saw the growth of the Parisian art world and its exhibition culture – both official and independent. We address the continuing fascination with distant and ’exotic’ cultures – particularly the Middle East and Japan – and examine Paris’s growing appeal for artists from Europe and America. The third term turns to the early 20th century, when an international community of artists - from the Americas, Scandinavia, Spain and elsewhere – played a key role in shaping modern movements from Cubism to Surrealism – helping to establish Paris as the world capital of avant-garde art.
