The Public Turn in French Art during the 1930s

In this chapter, the author aims to reframe and re-evaluate the characteristics that Christian Zervos criticized as a thoughtful response to the period that sought to extract a positive new direction for art from the economic and political challenges it presented. In so doing, he expands on the concepts that structure Zervos's account – the return of representation and the appeal to the “multitude” – by framing the activity of the decade in terms of choices that artists understood themselves to be making between alternatives. The public turn was driven by the “new social conditions” that Zervos mentions but does not describe: the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism. The swift transition from the debates of mid-decade to the unprecedented practical opportunities offered by the 1937 Paris Exposition allows us to trace this process with unusual precision and offers us a window into an often-misunderstood period of French art history.