Thursday, November 22, 2012

La Vie Parisienne

La Vie Parisienne was a French weekly magazine, founded in 1863. At first it was meant to be a guide to the privileged social and artistic life in Paris, but it soon evolved into a slightly risqué publication, with illustrations of scantly clad women covering the pages. In a few neighboring countries - like Belgium - it was banned, but in reality it was more of a high class humor magazine which reputation got a bit out of hand...

The illustrations were mostly very tastefully made, in the Art Nouveau style, by artists such as Georges Barbier, Chéri Hérouard, Umberto Brunelleschi, Fabien Fabiano, and Léo Fontan. These pictures reflected the aesthetics and values of the time, and this together with the intellectual wit and satire of the texts published in the magazine proved a success!

Here are some of these lovely - "horrible" - illustrations:





The text says "The wind is a good couturier".






























The text reads: "After the husband's train has left".

























3 comments:

  1. These are wonderful...I have some of these in my house..I do love old publications. So funny how these were meant to be so horrible...by today's standards, they are so mild, children could have them practically! Adore them...have a wonderful day doll! xo

    La Femme Nouvelle

    ReplyDelete
  2. These are so beautiful Miss Meadows, I love them and just like Doll find them really mild and quite artistic and apt asides from the mermaid one although that's just because I have a weird thing about mermaids. Have to love them all, I wouldn't mind owning a few of these blown up, would give quite a sophisticated look to a house or whatever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love old publications! I really liked the mermaid and the one where the girl with the pink ruffled dress is kissing! Vintage things are always so beautiful! Sigh... :)

    P.S. Btw, this is Alejandra, from Musings in Red. I've split my old blog into two: an inspirational blog, "Parasol Dreams", and a book review blog that is just in the makings now! :)

    And the reason I'm boring you with all this information is that I'm just letting all the blogs I follow know about my new blog name so that they don't think I've abandoned them. Or that I died. Or some other tragical thing like that. :)

    ReplyDelete

Hyper Smash