Paris
Rudy Burckhardt American, born Switzerland
Not on view
A Swiss-American filmmaker, photographer, and painter, Burckhardt embodied the idea of the flaneur, the passionate spectator of urban life described by French author Charles Baudelaire in the mid-nineteenth century. Like many street photographers of his generation, Burckhardt’s eye gravitated toward popular and commercial signage, which proliferated throughout European and American cities in the early twentieth century. Depicting Parisians reading political posters that implore French youth to join with workers to stave off possible civil war, this photograph provides insight into France’s political tumult in 1930s. Burkhardt later became enmeshed in the New York art world and befriended several artists associated with Abstract Expressionism.
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