CULTURES OF IMAGINARY (ART, FASHION, MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY FRENCH LITERATURE) - 24306

DIORAMAS. LITERATURE AND VISUAL CULTURE

Starting from the analysis of the archeology of the popular character of the great theatrical show DIORAMA by Louis Daguerre and Charles-Marie Bouton which dates back to 1822, the course analyzes twelve Nineteenth-Twentieth century Parisian boxed dioramas. These 3D miniatures, which were displayed in the shop windows of the arcades of the French capital to attract passers-by to enter the boutiques, invite a reflection on the interconnections between aesthetic experience and public education, specialized knowledge and dissemination, of which these boxed objects - early video narratives of the time – offer a particularly illuminating example. The course, with a historical-cultural and artistic-literary slant, aims at the same time to address the complexity of the variations of the Diorama and its moving images. From its birth to the present day, the Diorama has attracted the attention of writers and artists. At the center of the imagination of modernity, it is in fact the subject of a continuous revisitation that from the end of the Eighteenth century through the Nineteenth century, takes hold in the Twentieth century to reach the Twenty-first century.