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The Greatest Show on Paper and Stone: Carnival and Circus Lithography, 1880–1940

 Dr. Taylor Hagood, Guest Lecturer

July 20 | 6 p | FIA Theater

When Parisian print dealer, Edmond Sagot, glimpsed the market for Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters of Montmartre nightlife, a realization emerged of the distinct and colorful carnivalesque appeal of posters as both advertisements and works of art. Such a mixture of high and low pleasures formed the essence of La Belle Époque, and the relatively new form of lithography lent itself well to capturing the era’s blend of carnival and circus. Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, and many other European artists mastered the form. Meanwhile, in the United States, such companies as Strobridge and Otis carried forward that momentum in visually defining the nation’s traveling productions deep into the first half of the twentieth century. In this lecture, Dr. Taylor Hagood explores the medium of lithography and the technical, cultural, and historical forces that wedded it to European and American entertainment and produced a body of visual work at once edgy and nostalgic. Taylor Hagood, Ph.D. lectures on literature, art, history, travel, music, and the history of magic. His publications include the C. Hugh Holman Award-winning Faulkner, Writer of Disability and Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers. A former Fulbright Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich, Germany, he is currently Professor of American Literature at Florida Atlantic University.