La Belle Epoque: Evoking Proust's Place and Time
North Galleries
November 19, 2002 – February 16, 2003
“La Belle Epoque” visually captured the poetics, themes, and some of the well-known imagery of Marcel Proust’s masterwork “In Search of Lost Time”. Though not strictly autobiographical, Proust’s novel describes with incredible detail the material and social world in which he lived, in a time of transition to the modern age.
Because Proust was preoccupied with memory as opposed to fact, the images included in" La Belle Epoque" were evocative, not illustrative. Drawn from the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection, “La Belle Epoque” mingled recent photographs with images from Proust’s era, creating impressions and reminiscences of a particular place and time.