Art Exhibits
‘Electric Paris’ at Bruce Museum Illuminates with Impressionist & Other Works
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By KAREN SHEER
The Bruce Museum exhibit, “Electric Paris,” transports visitors to 19th-century Paris as the light shaped the works of numerous modern artists. The exhibit was meticulously curated by Margarita Karasoulas, a former Bruce Museum intern and now a Ph.D. candidate art history at the University of Delaware. She describes en plein air where a painter reproduces the actual visual conditions seen at the time of the painting. She explains, “we are presenting the exhibition into four thematic sections: Nocturnes, Lamplit Interiors, Street Light, and In and Out of the Spotlight, which examines the spectacle of artificial light in Parisian cafés, theaters, dance halls, and cabarets.”
In the late 17th and 18th centuries, Paris became known as the “City Of Light” — a metaphor for its reputation as an enlightened center of reason and forward thinking. At night, however, its streets and boulevards could be dark, scary and dangerous.