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Journal of Design History 2005 18(2):147-166; doi:10.1093/jdh/epi021
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© The Author [2005]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved.

A Franco-American Battle of Beams:

Electricity and the Selling of Modernity

Shelley Wood Cordulack

Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois

In spite of the American lead in the application of electricity, it was the French graphic artists who put forward the new source of light in such a way that won for Paris not only the right to retain its title of ‘la ville lumière,’ but also to sell its modernity. How this was accomplished during the late nineteenth century against the background of both American and French nationalism—through the advanced representation of electricity in Paris-based graphic images of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower in particular—is the subject of this study, which pushes the influence of electric light on art, specifically on French graphic art, back to the 1880s–1890s.

Key Words: Eiffel Tower • electricity • France • graphic design • nineteenth century • United States of America


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