This elegant and theoretically informed book, illustrated with forty-five photographs, explores the cultural significance of six exhibitions or new museum installations, all opening in Paris between mid-1937 and early 1938: the commercially oriented world's fair titled L'Exposition Internationale des Art et Techniques; the historical Musée des Monuments Français; the ethnographic Musée de l'Homme; two massive art retrospectives, one sponsored by the state of France and the other by the municipality of Paris; and L'Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme.James D. Herbert capitalizes on the proximity of these disparate exhibits to show how they competed with and yet also complemented one another in visually rendering the full scope of human accomplishment through time and across the globe. In this task, Herbert argues, they both succeeded and failed in interesting and productive ways. He asserts that the exhibitions projected and, in a sense, created (created precisely through the act of projection) the real world that they ostensibly only represented.In fact, Herbert argues, the exhibitions developed a particular sense of French national identity—one that, in managing to be at the same moment both inwardly focused and beneficently expansive, would present a vivid contrast to the growing German nationalism of the Third Reich. His epilogue takes a final look at these issues from the perspective of Jean Cocteau's 1950 film Orphée. A ground-breaking work in cultural history, Paris 1937, with its insightful examination of objects from a variety of fields, is a pioneering text in the field of visual studies.

Franco-German cultural exchange reached its height at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, where the Third Reich worked to promote an illusion of friendship between the two countries. Through the prism of this decisive event, Grand Illusion examines the overlooked relationships among Nazi elites and French intellectuals. Their interaction, Karen Fiss argues, profoundly influenced cultural production and normalized aspects of fascist ideology in 1930s France, laying the groundwork for the country’s eventual collaboration with its German occupiers. Tracing related developments across fine arts, film, architecture, and mass pageantry, Fiss illuminates the role of National Socialist propaganda in the French decision to ignore Hitler’s war preparations and pursue an untenable policy of appeasement. France’s receptiveness toward Nazi culture, Fiss contends, was rooted in its troubled identity and deep-seated insecurities. With their government in crisis, French intellectuals from both the left and the right demanded a new national culture that could rival those of the totalitarian states. By examining how this cultural exchange shifted toward political collaboration, Grand Illusion casts new light on the power of art to influence history.

The classic reference work that provides annually updated information on the countries of the world.