Revolution and Social Upheaval Paul Iribe: Parlons français				1 2 3 4 5
syllabus   units --unit one --unit two --unit three --unit four --unit five conclusions image banks --l'assiette au beurre  --La Vision de Hugo  --Zola au Pantheon  --Les Quatre Saisons de la Kultur		The images on these pages come from Paul Iribe's PARLONS FRANCAIS published in Paris by Floury in1934. The immensely talented Iribe was one of the founders of Art Deco design. He began his career as an artist for L'Assiette au Beurre, was later closely Involved with the world of high fashion (he did publicity illustrations for Paul Poiret and was marrled to Coco Chanel at his premature death in 1935) . He served as artistic director for Cecil B. DeMille's first (silent) version of The Ten Commendments. In the twenties and thirties he published a polemical Journal, Le Témoin ("The Witness"), in which his drawings excoriated political abuses across the Ideologlcal spectrum.  Among the images shown here are references to France squeezed between the competeing interests of what would soon become the Axis and the Allies; and, more drastically still, between a communist left and a fascist right that recapitulate an entire century of social upheaval in the quest for a society of liberté, égalité, fraternité.   Of note also is the allusion to the Stavisky affair ( 1934), the single most devastating French governmental scandal of the 30s. A gigantic scam involving the corruption of many politicians, the Stavisky affair resulted in a popular storming of the Chamber, in an attempt to dump venal politiclans into the Seine. Stavisky himself was murdered in circumstances that have never been clearly explained.
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