Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds. A Tale of 3 Cities: Paris - Lecture Response

"The bash before the crash" Paris was the place to be throughout the late 20's, after being rebuilt into the most attractive city in the world where everything was cheap with no limit to what you could achieve, it was hard to realise why people wouldn't want to live there. Paris was seen as a magnet, drawing people from allover the world, inspired and envious of the success everyone seemed to receive there.

1928 was a extremely successful year for many artists in Paris, one being young american composer George Gershwin, who moved to Paris in the mid 1920's. Overwhelmed by the noise and pace, which he used as inspiration to create one of his famous hits 'An American in Paris' which captures the elegant and romantic spirit of Paris perfectly.

Andre Breton is known best as the founder of surrealism, which would seem an unusual thing to hear from a previous Doctor from the First World War. Andre had a revelation after working this occupation which changed his perception on reality itself. He believed that Europe was rotten to its core due to capitalism. And the antidote needed for this revolution was to celebrate the obscurity of the human experience. He sat himself at a desk between 4.30-6.30 everyday inviting members of the public to confess secrets, lusts, crime, unsettling dreams or nightmares however, not many people took up this offer to confess deep secrets to a random stranger. Although the downfall of this experiment, he did not give up. He then founded the idea to create a surreal fantasy of his own 'Nadger' published in 1928. This novel was a complete hit and turned Paris into a great surrealist dream state.

Another surrealist, (or under cover surrealist I should say) is Rene Magritte who's first exhibition was in 1927 in Brussels which unfortunately was rather unsuccessful, which is why he decided to move to Paris in 1928 where he made over 100 paintings in the year, almost 1 every 3 days! Rene played with a bazaar and amusing tension between dreams and reality within his artwork, his most famous being 'Ceci n'est pas une pomme'.

Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel are two more successful surrealist artists who are both very flamboyant characters from Spain. They collaborated to make a surrealist film, 'Un Chien Andalou' which became extremely popular and famous and had the likes of Pablo Picasso in the audience.Although the film did, it wasn't directed to shock people, the scene where a woman's eye is cut open owns a symbolic message; you do not need your eyes, as Salvador and Bunuel are taking you into a world of your own imagination. The film was an unforgettable combination of surrealism.

Ernest Hemingway was a hard drinking journalist turned novelist, yet to be a world class one. His second and greatest book, 'Farewell to Arms' was published in 1928. Based in the First World War the powerful tale was stripped back to the bone with short sentencing with no room for any sentiment. As the novel develops the two main characters fall in love, escape the war, fall pregnant, and then tragedy. One hemoridge after another. The simplicity of the writing and language makes it so unbelievably powerful with a sudden and compelling ending, which took 47 attempts to perfect.

I really enjoyed receiving all this knowledge, helping myself become more aware of the amazing artists before my time which I may not have come across before hand.