CEMH Digital Talk: Katie Scott (Art History, Courtauld Institute of Art)

“Rue Quincampoix in 1720: Place and time in the representation of financial speculation”
Print of street in France in 1719.
Event Date & Time

Title: “Rue Quincampoix in 1720: Place and time in the representation of financial speculation”

Abstract: How did John Law’s financial system and the Mississippi Bubble transform the experience of Paris as an urban environment and its representation in print?  This lecture focuses on two satirical prints: Bernard Picart’s Monument consacré à la postérité en mémoire de la folie de 1720 and Antoine Humblot’s La Rue Quincampoix en 1720.  A striking feature of both is the attention paid to locating the events and practices of speculation at a specific site and to the experience of money and it's getting as a momentary collective fantasy.  The prints will be analysed and discussed in the context of topographical imagery of the city and the academic tradition of history painting.

This lecture of our series, "Panic and Plague in 1720 & 2020: the View from Minnesota."

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