The Arcades Project - Operi

sentation of certain still-life objects . ... WIll the example of M. Wiertz give birth
to a new genre?" Commentary on La Curieuse, in the catalogne written by the
painter himself and entitled L'Atelier de M. Wiertz. In Oeuvres litteraires , pp. 501-502. [QJa,5]
'Nocturnorama. A new sort of concert will entertain the fashionable society of
Paris this winter. All that the music expresses, during these concerts, will he rendered
visible through painted transparencies of superior quality. Haydn '8 Creation
is in rehearsal and, accompanied by the appropriate phantasmagorias, will no
doubt doubly captivate the senses of the audience. / To me, however, this arrangement
seems more suited to gay and sentimental diversions than to this great work.
I Thus, for example, a strikingly lifelike and moving portrait of Malibran is to
appear, wlrile, behind the seenes, a very fine singer delivers an Italian aria-as
though one were hearing the shade of Malibran sing." August Lewald, Album der
Boudoirs (Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1836), pp. 42-43. [QJa,6]
From time to time in his diorama, Daguerre would have, among other things, the
Church of Saint-Etienne du Mont. Midnight Mass. With organ. At the end: extin­
guishing of candles. [QJa,7]
The fact that film today articulates all problems of modern form-giving-lmder­
stood as questions of its own technical existence-and does so in the most
stringent, most concrete, most critical fashion, is important for the following
comparison of panoramas with this medium. "The vogue for panoramas, m110ng
which the panorama of Boulogne was especially remarkable, corresponds to the
vogne for cinematographs today. The covered arcades, of the type of the Passage
des Panoramas, were also beginning their Parisian fortnnes then:' Marcel Poete,
Une Vie de cite Paris ( p aris, 1925), p. 326. [QJa,8]
David exhorted his students to make studies of nature in the
panorama. [QJa,9]
"Many people imagine that art can be perfected indefinitely. Tbis is an error.
There is a limit at which it stops. And here is why: it is because the conditions in
which the imitation of nature is confined are innnutable. One wants a pictnre­
that is to say, a flat surface, surrounded or not surrounded by a frame-and on
this surface a representation prodnced exclusively by means of various colored
snbstances . ... WIthin these conditions, which constitute tlle picture, everything
has been attempted. The most diffienlt problem was perfect relief, deep perspec­
tives carried to the most complete illnsion. The stereoscope resolved it:' A. J.
Wiertz, Oeuvres litteraires (Paris, 1870), p. 364. This comment not only throws an
interesting light on the points of view from which people looked at things like
stereoramas in those days; it also shows very clearly that the theory of "progress"
in the arts is bound up with the idea of the imitation of natnre, and must be
disenssed in the context of this idea. [Q7,1]