Juan Arturo Andrade Mendoza

La vie quotidienne dans la belle époque

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The Belle Époque was distinguished by the visual excesses, the daring in the design and the voluptuous styles; an exaggerate care in liking to the senses. For what many persons consider the Belle Époque as fatuous or become shrivelled.
Of parallel form, people worker of low class, those same ones that was not under the glance of the reporters of social; they survived of very different ways, some very original and other degrading ones.
Anywhere one saw vagabonds and needed people: the other face of the Age of the Progress, that world that reflected Käthe Kollwitz in her dramatic pictorial works.
Friends, Why we haven't learned? Haven't two thousand years been sufficient? Carl Sagan was saying in his work “Contact” we are an able species of the most beautiful dreams, but also of the most frightful nightmares…
The contradiction of the man…
Until soon friends.

The majority of the photographies come from the following web sites:
http://www.photo.rmn.fr/cf/htm/TreeAFtop.aspx?E=A_2C6NU0BF06HG

and
http://www.paris-pittoresque.com/gravures/metiers.htm
Un portrait du Mexique en 1895

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While life in Europe was dynamics and progressive, in Mexico the social contrasts were too flagrant and insulting.
This was the period predecessor to the 1910 revolution, fifteen years later.
Mexico was obviously a late country in end, the poverty and population illiteracy saw one by everywhere.
I hope that you enjoy these images, not only of France and England topics, leading nations of the Epoch of the progress, are the main topic of this space that I thank to the team of MyOpera he grants me.

Again I ask excuses you, by the errors of grammar committed by me.

Greetings, JAAM
La France par les affiches des chemins de fer

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Hello my friends! I am on the way back, excuse my absence of several days.

From the beginning of Age of the Progress, two nations took advantage right away: France and England.
The production in mass of goods of consumption on the part of the factories, obliged this nations to promote the railroad routes construction, railroads whose presence in two nation life did not reached 70 years.
But this nations were beyond the railroad routes construction: They created tourist poles of development.
In second half of the 19th century by everywhere one could see the affiches or the plaquès émaillées referents to tourist numerous destinies. The results in their tourist project jump to the sight of anyone nowadays. France and England are visited and by train traveled safely, fast and pleasant nowadays.
It is a real shame that in Mexico one was leaving the railroad as way of transport of goods and passengers. It was a stupid decision initiated in the period of the president of the Republic Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.
But the most stupid thing has been the disappearance of the Department of Tourism of Mexico, which reflects the short of vision and longings of the current president of Mexico, which is been obstinate in a war lost from the beginning: The traffic of drugs.
None of you is interested in him, In short, nor who remembers that guy, truth friendly? Many of you you do not know who demons is…
Returning to our topic, I want to share you a collection of affiches allusive to tourist destinies by railroad, of France.
Bye-bye friends!
Nous allons au Cirque! Affiches anciens de Cirque et de Spectacles

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Hohh, the Circus! So much emotion transmits to our being the simple idea of witnessing a Circus show.
The people with fantastic abilities they have always liked to people.We admire them, but also we pity them by wandering life that they go, since the past to our days.Magic; surprise; fright; admiration, compassion, fear ... The certain that we like the Circus and another same kind shows.
Friends, I wait enjoy this "small" collection and go on visiting this web site.
I will thank your comments a lot and I will estimate your critiques.
Kind regards.
UN INTERLUDE : L'art Ludique de Narcis Virgiliu

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He is one of the most awarded Romanian photographers having received two first prizes at the Artistic Photography Competition organized by Playboy.
His collections brought him international recognition.
His photo-camera is like the brush of the painter: light, color, shape, and nature create emotions, sensations, beauty, all of these making him a real artist of the image.
Narcis Virgiliu is inspired mostly by the beauty of the feminine body, revealing in a dance of shadows and light the sensuality, gentleness, and transparency of the woman's soul.
Narcis Virgiliu is a fresh face from Romania, he has gained international reputation as photographer of erotic nude, principally.
In agreement to My Opera's rules, which prohibit the photos of nudity, I cannot do physical allusion of his work and style, with which Narcis Virgiliu has obtained success.
Is here a facet little known on the part of the public: the ludic portrait.
This grotesque gallery with its photographies, will make them remember some familiar scene, Inclusive to same you ... greetings of part of JAAM.
Don't forget to visit:
http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=1446489

Mexique
Les Visages Féminins de l'époque du Art Deco

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The women of this epoch placed between the decades of them 20s and 30s were provoking different reactions:
For some, they were revolutionary challenging women; For others, they were profligate.
But they all clear that those girls of 19 or 21 years of age - whose dress bright and adorned with fringes showed almost the entire leg- possessed a playfulness charming; with horror of the frightened parents, obviously...
The Art Deco was all a life style, especially for the twenty women, this women denominated "flappers" derogatorily; Them who managed to transform the dressing, the amusement options and even the way of relating to the couple into the whole world.
Adorable “flappers” as writer H.L Mencken denominated them, acute critic of the age, was, according to the opinion of him, rather “some small idiots, floods of wild presumptions, with tendency to rebel against the rules and the older people advising”.
But nobody could see with indifference his contagious exhibitionism, the attitude towards "me costs a cumin," or his youthful boost, in special after the First World War.
Younger girls' of 25 years generation knocked down per first time the bonds and the prejudgments that paralysed the children and submitted them to the paternal yoke.
This period was "Charleston" birth witness, dancing rate that was considered as immoral, like an attack to the chastity and the good customs at first.
I expect not to have bored you with this brief essay, the true is that I want to share with you this small tribute the period girls; by their rebelliousness and overcoat by their singular beauty.
If this album pleases you and in addition you want to obtain more photographies, go to the following link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/141120547/Belles_femmes_cartes_anciennes.rar.html

This packaging includes 450 girls' photographies of this epoch.
Les premières Photographies aux Couleurs: La Photo Autochrome

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The autochrome is a process of color photographic film patented on December 17th, 1903 by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière. It is the first industrial technique of photography colors, it produces transparent images.
It was used between 1907 and 1932 approximately. We owe it in particular numerous photos of the First World War.
History
The history of the color begins in 1675 with Isaac Newton's discovery of the composition of the white light (phenomenon which we can discern in a rainbow).
It continues in the 1870s, when Louis Ducos du Hauron succeeds for the first time in fixing a color image from an assembly of three superimposed monochrome images. But the process stayed in the state of experiment.
* May 30th, 1904 Louis Lumière presents the technique autochrome- plates to the Academy (Regional education authority) of the sciences.

* At 1907, its marketing seduces of numerous French and foreigners. The Lumière's factories produced 6 000 plates of autochrome a day, 50 million clichés (pictures) all in all.

* Albert Kahn, banker philanthropist, sends photographers on five continents to constitute the archives of the planet. He was so able to collect testimonies on about fifty countries in the world.
From 1935, Kodachrome; then, in 1936, Agfachrome replace gradually the autochrome.
Technique: the potato
Still it was necessary to think of it! Grains of starch of potato colored. Having gone for a long time in wrong tracks, Louis Lumière works out at the beginning of the century the process of the autochrome.
On a glass plate, it arranges a homogeneous mixture of starch of potato colored in red-orange, green and blue-purple. A fine layer of coal fills chinks between grains. Over this layer (7000 grains of starch by mm2), it arranges an emulsion black and white. The plate, once exposed back to front in a camera, then skillfully developed, is transformed into a slide which we observe in transparency.
With an exposure time about 1 second and a perfect printing of neatness, the autochrome becomes the first process capable of registering the color. Imperfect colors certainly, in tones pastel halfway between painting and photography, with a very fashionable pointillist aspect in the period. More than a transposition of the nature, the autochrome gives an esthétisante interpretation.
Today, we rediscover with a certain nostalgia autochrome of the beginning of the XXth century. With their rough color and désaturée, their weft close to printers ink jet current and their small format, they appear as miniatures of another time which the custom took for habit to seeing in black and white.
Among the most famous photographers who used Louis Lumière's autochrome, with sometimes a lot of success, we can quote Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Fernand Cuville, Jules Gervais-Courtellemont, Eugène Atget, Léon Gimpel, Albert Kahn, Paul Castelnau, … Also, Jean Tournassoud who will be one of first to realize color photos in his war reports by using the process of Louis Lumière.

Hundred years after its invention, the autochrome remains a delicious exception of the history of the photography.

To ending, let us take advantage of this article to appreciate this appearance of the color in the photography.
Article translated from the same article in French language, translated into the English language by JAAM
Visit the source site:
http://www.deliciarum.info/08/07/2009/la-photo-autochrome/

The majority of the photographies come from the web site:
http://www.tournassoud.org/en/index.php
Le Génial Jules-René Lalique

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René Jules Lalique (b.1860 – d.1945) is considered to be one of the world's greatest glass artists and jewellery designers of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods. In fact, he was one of the few artists who successfully made the transition from the mannered, self-consciously opulent and sinuous Art Nouveau (1880’s – 1900’s)
aesthetic to the sweeping, modern and elegant functionality of Art Deco (1910 – 1940).
His superb work features naturalistic elements inspired by nature,Greek classical themes,and social pursuits of his time such as hunting.
Like many other Art Nouveau artists, Lalique employed the most modern manufacturing techniques and equipment of his time to mass-produce his work while retaining a hand-made look. His clear and frosted glass creations were popular during his lifetime and are still collected by museums as well as glass enthusiasts.
Early Years & Jewellery Career.
Born on April 6, 1860 in the village of Aÿ in the Champagne region of France, Lalique’s family moved to Paris when he
was two years-old.
Beginning at age of 12, Lalique studied drawing with Jean-Marie Lequien. Four years later, upon the death of his father, Lalique began apprenticing with Louis Aucoc, one of the best jewelers of Paris, while continuing his drawing classes at the "Ecole des Arts Décoratifs de Paris".
He later studied drawing at Sydenham College in London where he developed a unique naturalist style which was to influence his style as a jeweler.
Back in Paris, Lalique worked as a designer for a relative while freelancing on the side for jewelers such as Aucoc, Boucheron, Cartier, Destape, Gariod, Hamelin and Jacta. He also studied sculpture modeling and etching.
In 1885, Lalique began manufacturing his jewellery designs out of his own workshop. These employed non-conventional materials such as translucent enamel, semiprecious stones and ivory.
Success followed in 1893 when he won second prize in the Centrale des arts Décoratifs goldsmiths’ competition for his Chardon glasses and an honourable mention for his Pampas and Satyrs vase. The following year, Lalique exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in the sculpture section and began creating jewellery for Sarah Bernhardt. Four years later, he won the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition in Brussels and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.
In 1902, Lalique was living, manufacturing and showing out of his mansion in Paris, which featured his designs on the balconies, entrance and hall. By 1908, he had begun creating fashion accessories such as handbags, scarves and belts as well as perfume bottles for François Coty.
These bottle designs, which evoked the enclosed fragrance, revolutionized the perfume industry and led to work for other leading perfumers such as Roger & Gallet, Houbigant, Molyneux, d’Orsay, Molinard and Worth.
GLASS CREATIONS
By 1912, Lalique had largely turned away from jewellery to focus on glass. During World War I, his Combs-la-Ville workshops manufactured laboratory glass for hospitals and pharmaceuticals. He opened another factory in Wingen-sur-Moder in 1921, and had created the first of his emblematic vases, bowls and figurines in frosted glass by 1926.
By 1932, Lalique had designed the Champs-Elysées Pigeons fountain, the main doors of Prince Asaka Yasuhiko’s Palace in Tokyo (now Teïen Museum), as well as St. Matthew’s Church on the island of Jersey in the UK.
He had also designed the interior of several French ocean liners, the Orient Express, radiator caps for Citroën and stained-glass windows for Saint Nicaise Church in Reims, La chapelle de la Vierge fidèle in Douvres la Délivrande as well as several boutiques including the Coty Building windows at 712, 5th Avenue in New York City.
CRISTAL LALIQUE
In 1939, Lalique’s factory in Wingen-sur-Moder was occupied by the German army. Lalique did not live to see his factory re-opened, dying on May 5, 1945 at the age of 85. He is buried in Le Père Lachaisse Cemetery in Paris.
Lalique’s son, Marc revived the family business under the name Cristal Lalique after World War II. The firm, currently run by grand-daughter Marie-Claude, produces new designs as well as favourites by René and Marc.
La Commune 1871

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The commune of Paris of 1871 has been matter of discussion by very many years and it would not be possible to be let speak more of the subject by many years.
The Era of the Progress brought with itself, an increase in the social inequalities and a bourgeois society that refused to make concessions labor…
A discredited political family and a presumptuous sovereign defeated. The ice castle which it represented the empire of Napoleon III, it collapsed. All those factors were the parents of the commune.

Did someone see at some time to a nation conquered by the enemy and to be allied to the enemy to squash the population who was in opposition to the decisions thought by a governing class in decadence?

That Commune, who showed lack of leadership to solved specific the truly important subjects of its time. That lack of leadership I do not mean lack of anger and value to defend the pride of a defeated nation. The People of Paris demonstrated to more value and dignity to hoist the pride of all France. The answer: death and desolation.

The rising and fall of the commune it meant two things: the agony of an age and the beginning of another one. They spent 43 years until World War I. Same years that the parish society licked its wounds. It needed to invent itself: The Art Noveau and the Art Deco were the CATHARSIS.
France never returned to be the same one luckily…So that I say all this? Because in Mexico we have lived many shameful periods on our history because been we have divided…
1847 Mexico-United Estates of America war is the sample. We lost more than half of the territory of the nation and we at the moment became the first step of the new World-wide Empire…

I request excuses to those feel like offended, but being France the nation that but it influences in the democracies of the world, but mainly, the democracies of Latin America, were necessary to speak of the subject. It was the legacy of the event, mainly.
Truly JAAM
Jules Cheret Le Père de L'Affiche Moderne

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Jules Cheret born in Paris to a poor but creative family of artisans, a lack of finances meant Jules Cheret had a very limited education. At age thirteen, he began a three-year apprenticeship with a lithographer and then his interest in painting led him to take an art course at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin. Like most other fledgling artists, Cheret studied the techniques of various artists, past and present, by visiting Paris museums.

He was trained in lithography in London, England, from 1859 and 1866, and there he was strongly influenced by the British approach to poster design and printing. On returning to France, influenced by the scenes of frivolity depicted in the works of Jean-Honore Fragonard and other Rococo artists such as Antoine Watteau, Cheret created vivid poster ads for the cabarets, music halls, and theaters such as the Eldorado, the Olympia, the Folies Bergères, Theatre de l'Opera, the Alcazar d'Ete and the Moulin Rouge.

So much in demand was he, that he expanded his business to providing advertisements for the plays of touring troupes, municipal festivals, and then for beverages and liquors, perfumes, soaps, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. Eventually he became a major advertising force, adding the railroad companies and a number of manufacturing businesses to his client list.
As his work became more popular and his large posters displaying modestly free-spirited females found a larger audience, pundits began calling him the "father of the women's liberation." Females had previously been depicted in art as prostitutes or puritans. The women of Cheret's posters, joyous, elegant and lively - 'Cherettes', as they were popularly called - were neither. It was freeing for the women of Paris, and lead to a noticeably more open atmosphere in Paris where women were able to engage in formerly taboo activities, such as wearing low-cut bodices and smoking in public. These 'Cherettes' were widely seen and recognised, and a writer of the time said "It is difficult to conceive of Paris without its 'Cherets' (sic)."
In 1895, Cheret created the Maîtres de l'Affiche collection, a significant art publication of smaller sized reproductions featuring the best works of ninety-seven Parisian artists. His success inspired an industry that saw the emergence of a new generation of poster designers and painters such as Charles Gesmar and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. One of his students was Georges de Feure.
In his old age Jules Cheret retired to the pleasant climate of the French Riviera at Nice. He died in 1932 at the age of ninety-six and was interred in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.

He was awarded the Legion d'honneur by the French Government in 1890 for his outstanding contributions to the graphic arts. Although his paintings earned him a certain respect, it was his work creating advertising posters, taken on just to pay his bills but eventually his dedication, for which he is remembered today.

In 1933 he was honored with a posthumous exhibition of his work at the prestigious Salon d'Automne in Paris. Over the years, Cheret's posters became much sought after by collectors from around the world. (From Wikipedia)
Les Colorizations

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The first idea that happens through my head is: How would see the protagonists of “Belle Epoque” really?
I decided to spend time in placing color those photographies that I liked.
I hope you enjoy them and you might contribute to increase the collection, why not, with some one of yours own imagination, with respect to the use of color, by all means.
I send you a lot of greetings since México.

P.D. All these colorizations were made using AKVIS Coloriage Plugin. For those whom feel curiosity...
La Divine Sarah Bernhardt

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To speak of Sarah Bernhardt is blasphemous, being Mexican I; Sarah, one of the greater icons of the Beautiful Arts of France, also icon of world-wide the theater community. Theater community to which I, when was younger, belonged and embraced with passion.
The charisma and talent of Madame Sarah marked a landmark in history contemporary, since no artist was present with such force, throughout 40 years in the cultural, artistic life, social and of the fashion. At Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Oh Madame Sarah! It is a pain, after as much time, One is had to access to images yours. The called wonder Internet makes possible.
Friends, remember this: Sharing is culture and the knowledge it is spreading...
Now you have a biography of Sarah Bernhardt here, this because major of people do not know that were she; mainly the children and young people of the present time, in case that they required it, have information to make their tasks scholastic.

Sarah Bernhardt, (1844-1923), French actress, one of the most famous in the history of the theater, known by an adoring public as ``The Divine Sarah'' She was born Rosine Bernard in Paris on Oct. 23, 1844, an illegitimate child of mixed French-Dutch parentage and of partly Jewish descent. At the age of 13 she entered the drama school of the Paris Conservatoire. Her debut at the Theatre Francais (later the Comedie Francaise) on Sept. 1, 1862, in Racine's Iphigenie en Aulide, was greeted with only mild interest. She soon quarreled with the Comedie and left it for an unsuccessful attempt at burlesque.
Bernhardt's reputation was established in 1869 by her appearance as Zanetto, the wandering minstrel in Francois Coppee's Le Passant, and affirmed in 1872 by her triumph as the Queen in Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas. Soon after this she returned to the Comedie Francaise, where she won further acclaim for her performances in Racine's Phedre and Hugo's Hernani. Bernhardt's position as the greatest actress and one of the most magnetic personalities of her time was by now secure. She was eulogized for her voix d'or (golden voice) and for the scope and emotional power of her acting.
In 1880, after a triumphant season in London, she broke her contract with the Comedie Francaise and embarked upon an independent career with the first of six tours of America, returning to Europe for triumphs in England and Denmark. Her repertoire included La Dame aux Camelias by the younger Alexandre Dumas and Frou-frou by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy. She became manager of the Theatre de la Renaissance, which she opened with a performance of Jules Lemaitre's Les Rois. In 1898 she sold her lease of this theater and bought the Theatre des Nations, which she renamed the Theatre Sarah-Bernhardt.
The opening play, a revival of Victorien Sardou's La Tosca, was followed by a production in French of Hamlet. Max Beerbohm, in a review, captured the essential incongruity of Bernhardt in the title role by labeling her ``Hamlet, Princess of Denmark.'' Undaunted by her critics, she promptly ventured on the title role in Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon. The hero of this play is Napoleon's son, who is kept in semi-captivity after the fall of the empire. Despite the seeming audacity of a middle- aged woman playing a boy's part, L'Aiglon was one of the greatest financial successes ever achieved in Paris. In 1905, while performing in Rio de Janeiro, she suffered an injury to her right leg. By 1911 she was unable to walk unsupported, and in 1915 the leg was amputated. Despite the handicap of an artificial leg, she continued her acting career, even performing at the front during World War I. In 1914 she became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Her last stage appearance was in La Gloire (1922) by Maurice Rostand. She died in Paris on Mar. 26, 1923.
Bernhardt was the first great actress to appear in films, starring in La Reine Elizabeth and La Dame aux Camelias in 1911. Bernhardt’s artistic gifts included sculpture and writing; she published several plays and her memoirs, Ma Double Vie (1907).
Les Symboles Sexuels Anciens ( 3 ): Mata Hari

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The first time which I listened about Mata Hari was I an adolescent, the admiration of my mother by Greta Garbo. Garbo made an interpretation of the main personage for the film of same name, in the Thirties. Such interpretation motivated commentaries of my mother. Biographies about Margaretha Geertruida Zelle have been written many, ones says more either says the less. Only the certain thing is that historically to Mata Hari it is associated with espionage and treason, sensuality and promiscuity . Mata Hari was a femme fatal briefly.
This album is tribute to its beauty and importance, which cannot be denied…
I would like that the visitors of my personal web page, spilled their commentaries, you criticize (constructive, by all means…) and it helps; this last one I mention it because I write in a language that is not the native one and, by all means, is easy that it commits grammar errors. Greetings.
Les Symboles Sexuels Anciens (2): Clèo de Merode

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That is what turns to a person sexual symbol? For many, those repressed intimate yearnings, the personal dissatisfaction in relation to its common and ordinary life. Yearnings that to the being showed by those people who break the canon of the normal life, are hoisted like banner or flag by common people.

This time is a good example of it. As I showed it in the opening of my page, when saying that many consider that time like too much stereotyped or become stiff, in the aspect of the social life of the high class and average of the same time, by all means.

What unites to Lina Cavalieri and Clèo de Merode is obvious, the celestial beauty of both, although is possible to mention that Lina Cavalieri was equipped better in talent than Merode, she was unquestionable soprano; whereas Merode battled with the dance and definitively it was limited in excess with respect to the song. But that did not concern the public to her who pardoned everything to her, except that was not let see…

Back in the day, sex symbol status didn't necessarily entail any degree of bodily exposure. Take Cleo de Merode: while being an indisputable turn-of-the-century sex symbol, she never ever posed naked or engaged in any form of promiscuous behavior whatsoever. And yet the impact her beauty had on the masses was such as to set their collective imagination running wild. This could've been the reason for the appearance of the only nude likeness of the lady in question, a sculpture by Alexandre Falquiere, made when the subject was still in pre-puberty.
In reality, Cleo de Merode must've been true to the impression her portraits give, and that is one of a prim and proper as well as calm and collected damsel, with good looks to boot. Endowed with a winning combination of talent and diligence, she makes it big as a ballet dancer by the age of 13 as well as being voted the Parisian Beauty Queen by readers of the Illustrator, a popular French newspaper. The hair do she sports on stage becomes her trademark and spawns numerous copies. In 1896, while she dances as Phrynee with the Ballet de l'Opera National de Bordeaux, her fame comes to a head, a scandal breaks out.
One night, Leopold II, King of Belgium, comes to her performance. Enchanted by the young dancer, he sends her a bouquet of red roses in token of his admiration. The keen-eyed scandalmongers are fast to note it down, and the next day the grapevine has it that Cleo and the king are having an affair, the 46-year age difference notwithstanding. Now Cleo will never live it down. Her protests come to nothing, not even a lawsuit can clear her name. The more she tries to defend herself, the more nudges and winks it draws. The newshounds rub their hands with glee, the rabble point their fingers and snicker. Cleo is dubbed "Cleopold" by the press, and her famed locks are now said to serve the lowly purpose of hiding her jutting ears. Mortified by the ceaseless chitchat, she finally leaves Paris to dance all over the world. In 1915, she checks back briefly, but leaves again in the absence of worthwhile offers, never to return this time. Now isn't it outrageous how cruel the world can be to its darlings? First they worship you as all get out, but then one little accident, and… I shudder at the prospect.
Les Symboles Sexuels Anciens (1) : Lina Cavalieri

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The menfolk of the world worshipped Cavalieri’s beauty, blazoned all over the place by photographers. Her visage adorned hundreds of magazine covers and postcards in hundreds of stores all over Europe. Opera cognoscenti beguiled by her charming aspect and daring histrionics readily pardoned her vocal shortcomings and flocked to see her perform.

It is hard to say in all certainty what ensured Lina Cavalieri her place in history, whether it was her fabled beauty or her dramatic talent. Most likely of all it was a special sort of charisma together with a good measure of ambition and perseverance. Before the age of twenty she had already been touring all over Europe, rounding up an extensive following in spite of her limited vocal capacity.

What with her immense popularity she also led such an active social life that it makes one wonder how she managed so many things at once.

Obviously, Cavalieri was one of the first supermodels in history. Her beauty and growing popularity won her the attention of some of the greatest opera singers of the time. Great Italian baritone Mattia Battistini fell hard for Lina’s rather modest soprano and strongly advised her to go in for an opera career. A spell of serious voice training fitted Cavalieri to collaborate with the operatic luminaries of the day, and even though her vocal performance was still merely fair-to- middling, her beauty and expressive acting invariably carried the audience. Jules Massenet, the author of the opera Tais, once observed after Cavalieri’s flawed rendition of the leading part that her beauty entitled her to strike a false note every now and then. Men adored her while women kept tabs on her looks. Lina’s beauty and mass appeal redeemed all her errors and shortcomings. Through the medium of photography Lina Cavalieri became one of the first sex symbols, with her beauty and sex appeal parlayed into a trademark. It is hard to say today whether she could have made it so big without all that hype. Perhaps she would have remained a low-profile chanteuse. But…Indeed, beauty is a mighty force.
Les 120 ans de la tour Eiffel

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Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) trained as an engineer and founded his own company specializing in metallic frameworks, of which the Eiffel Tower of 1889 was the crowning achievement. He built hundreds of metallic structures all over the world: road bridges, railway bridges and viaducts. He constructed several huge metallic structures: the concourse of Toulouse railway station in 1866; the church of Notre Dame des Champs in Paris in 1867; the dome of the Nice Observatory in 1885 and the armature of the Statue of Liberty in New York.
Despite some initial objections, the Eiffel Tower, designed to be the highlight of the 1889 World Expo, was the showcase of French steel technological expertise. Its silhouette and size made it the symbol of Paris. But the Tower is far more than just a tourist monument. Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years meaning it would have had to be dismantled in 1909, but it was allowed to remain as it proved valuable for military purposes, numerous scientific experiments and as a radio and television transmitter. It was Gustave Eiffel's most important construction and was designed by the engineers Nouguier and Koechlin for the competition held on the occasion of the 1889 World Exhibition. The Tower was never destroyed and remained the world's tallest structure until 1930.
Since the beginning, the idea of building the tower was object of many protests; without speaking about the skeptics questioning the possibility of concluding a so new and so gigantic work, one had attended true raised shields on behalf of the artists. Here an extremely curious letter, from the point of view of Emile Nouguier ( Library of the School of the mines of historical Paris), addressed to Alphand, Emile Nouguier towards the beginning of February 1887, and which carried the signature of the painters, sculptors, architects and the writers most known.
Here the letter:
“We come, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, impassioned amateurs of the beauty until now intact of Paris, to protest of all our forces, all our indignation, in the name of the ignored French taste, the art and of the French history threatened, against the erection, in full heart of our capital, the useless and monstrous Eiffel tower, that public malignity, often impressed good sense and spirit of justice, already baptized name of “Tower of Babel”.
Examples there are many, but history demonstrate those were wrong, the Eiffel Tower became one of most famous icon on earth.

This year celebrates 120th anniversary.
Congratulations!
Les affiches de Alphonse Mucha

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Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivancice, Moravia, which is near the city of Brno in the modern Czech Republic. It was a small town, and for all intents and purposes life was closer to the 18th than the 19th century. Though Mucha is supposed to have started drawing before he was walking, his early years were spent as a choirboy and amateur musician. It wasn't until he finished high school (needing two extra years to accomplish that onerous task) that he came to realize that living people were responsible for some of the art he admired in the local churches. That epiphany made him determined to become a painter, despite his father's efforts in securing him "respectable" employment as a clerk in the local court.

Like every aspiring artist of the day, Mucha ended up in Paris in 1887. He was a little older than many of his fellows, but he had come further in both distance and time. A chance encounter in Moravia had provided him with a patron who was willing to fund his studies. After two years in Munich and some time devoted to painting murals for his patron, he was sent off to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian. After two years the supporting funds were discontinued and Alphonse Mucha was set adrift in a Paris that he would soon transform. At the time, however, he was a 27 year old with no money and no prospects - the proverbial starving artist.
For five years he played the part to perfection. Living above a Cremerie that catered to art students, drawing illustrations for popular (ie. low-paying) magazines, getting deathly ill and living on lentils and borrowed money, Mucha met all the criteria.
It was everything an artist's life was supposed to be. Some success, some failure. Friends abounded and art flourished. It was the height of Impressionism and the beginnings of the Symbolists and Decadents. He shared a studio with Gauguin for a bit after his first trip to the south seas. Mucha gave impromptu art lessons in the Cremerie and helped start a traditional artists ball, Bal des Quat'z Arts. All the while he was formulating his own theories and precepts of what he wanted his art to be.
On January 1, 1895, he presented his new style to the citizens of Paris. Called upon over the Christmas holidays to created a poster for Sarah Bernhardt's play, Gismonda, he put his precepts to the test. The poster, was the declaration of his new art. Spurning the bright colors and the more squarish shape of the more popular poster artists, the near life-size design was a sensation.
Bernhardt signed him to a six year contract to design her posters and sets and costumes for her plays. Mucha was an overnight success at the age of 34, after seven years of hard work in Paris...
Commissions poured in...
Les Protagonistes...La Collection de Fèlix Potin

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Félix Potin, a pioneer of mass distribution in France, opened a groceries store in Boulevard of Sebastopol, Paris in 1860, which was followed by numerous other stores throughout France. As an innovative entrepreneur, he came up with the idea of giving his customers photographs to collect featuring personalities of the time. This idea marked the beginning of loyalty marketing and the advent of the first ever "celebrity" photographs. Félix Potin produced two albums of 510 portraits between 1900 and 1907. Nadar and other photographers captured writers, politicians and kings and queens of foreign countries on film as well as sportsmen, explorers, artists, members of the clergy, magistrates and other stars. The albums met with resounding success and a century later, these photos have become collectors' items that can be found on the internet.
The Great Exposition of London 1851

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Great Exposition of London 1851, that splendid revelation of the faith that the XIX century had in the idea of the progress. The prince Albert, the main sponsor of the Exhibition, considered it as the irrefutable test of the advance toward the "realization of the humanity's unit". For him, the enormous technical achievements embodied in pavilions replete of new machines, as well as the aesthetic unfolding that Palace of Glass by itself was. that housed the Exhibition, was they were only external signs of an interior grace. The Exhibition was the symbol of the progress ethical present and future of the human bean.
This simple faith in the progress suffered an smash deep because of the catastrophe that First World War meant, a smash of the one that was already recovered never; they would already be considered never the victories of the science, the technique and the learning with an unworried and simple "ecstasy". Still in 1920 year in that John Bagwell Bury published its book of vanguard "The Idea of Progress", many caressed the dream that the progress is unavoidable law of the Nature, as it is it the law of the gravitation; on the other hand, Bury sustained that it is about a law invented by the man, by the way it doesn't make a lot.
That faith in an unavoidable and beneficent progress crumbled finally not only for the deception that the two world wars produced, due deception to the same war, but to the horrors of Auschwitz and Belsen, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On the other hand, we face the inverse danger now to which faced the XIX century with their belief in the idea of the progress. We don't care great thing the true achievements of the era.

Thanks to the advances made in the XIX and XX centuries, people reached bigger longevity, the infantile mortality was diminished, less children suffered malnutrition, and better housings and education they put on within reach of more people. The vapors, the railroads, the automobile and the airplane made possible the physical unit of the world; as example of scientific unit it is necessary to remember that the practice of the antiseptic surgery, works of Scottish Joseph Lister, it was based on the discoveries that Luis Pasteur had made previously with bacterias in Paris. Many regions of the world until then hostile and uninhabitable they transformed into generous and welcoming lands.

For more than one century West was flattered because everybody adhered to its unyielding faith that the progress, was in the politics, the science or the art, the progress was an uninterrupted road; that meant change and that all the changes are to improve. Now we know that they are sometimes to worsen, although we should not forget that many changes are good. This way, the demand for the change gave for example, for result that at the end of the XVIII century the "search of the happiness" was easier and it was within reach of more people than never. The same as other prophets of the progress, the prince Albert sinned of optimist, but neither their aims neither their hopes of having achieved were mistaken.

I would like to offer my respects to the People of the United Kingdom. I read about this theme and it was amazing. JAAM Mexico.
Paris 1900 The Transition...

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The step of the century of XIX to the XX century was characterized to give signs of harmony, the peace and hope. A generation had grown without knowing what an armed conflict was; there were many ones that, they even ended up supposing that the war , as the feudalism, It was a habit that the civilized man had left behind. Everything seemed to indicate that the progress and the prosperity were limitless that the poverty and the illness would stop to be a serious problem and that the man would arrive to a higher stage, but. The history demonstrated that it was not this way, after that illusion there was an atrocious nationalism whose consequences showed in the following century.