The Arcades Project - Operi

G
[Exhibitions, Advertising, Grandville]
Yes, when all the world from Paris to China
Pays heed to your doctrine, 0 divine Samt-Sinl011,
TI,e glorious Golden Age will be reborn.
Rivers will flow with chocolate and tea,
Sheep roasted whole will frisk on the plain,
And sauteed pike will swim in the Seine.
Fricasseed spinach \'\Till grow on the ground,
Garnished with crushed fried croutons;
The trees will bring forth apple compotes,
And fanners will harvest boots and coats.
It will snow wine, it will rain chickens,
And ducks cooked with turnips will fall from the sky.
-Ferdinand Langle and Emile Vanderburch, Louis-Bronze et Ie Saint-
Simonien.' Parodic de Louis XI (Theatre du Palais-Royal, February 27,
1832), cited in nleodore Muret, L'Histoire par Ie tlllfdtre, 1789-1851
(Paris, 1865), vol. 3, p. 191
Music such as one gets to hear on the pianofortes of Satunl's
rmg.
-Hector Berlioz, A travers chants, authorized German edition pre"
pared by Richard Pob! (Leipzig, 1864), p. 104 ("Beethoven irn Ring
des Sal1.Un")
From a European perspective, things looked this way: In all areas of production,
from the Middle Ages until the beginning of the nineteenth cenntry, the develop­
ment of technology proceeded at a much slower rate than the development of art.
Art could take its time in variously assimilating the technological modes of
operation. But the transformation of things that set in around 1800 dictated the
tempo to art, and the more breathtaking this tempo became, the more readily the
dominion of fashion overspread all fields. Finally, we arrive at the present state of
things: the possibility now arises that art will no longer fmd time to adapt some­
how to technological processes. Tne advertisement is the ruse by which the
dream forces itself on industry. [G 1,1]
Within the frames of the pictures that hung on dining room walls, the advent of
whiskey advertisements, of Van Houten cocoa, of Amieux canned food is her-