Paquebots 1913-1942 : Une Esthétique Transatlantique

Exhibition at the Musée d'arts de Nantes, 25 October 2024 - 23 February 2025
then at the MuMa, Le Havre, 5 April - 21 September 2025

The Roaring Twenties were a golden age for ocean liners, floating palaces and modern machines, the only real links between Old Europe and the Americas. With the various Immigration Acts (1917 and 1924), the transatlantic companies turned their attention to a leisure clientele, including many intellectuals, writers and artists in search of exchanges with the other continent.

A paradoxical object, at once immovable and moving, state-of-the-art machinery dedicated to speed and a luxurious holiday resort where nationalities and social backgrounds mingled for the duration of a crossing, the liner briefly embodied a dream of transatlantic modernity.

This exhibition catalogue brings together works by painters, photographers, poster designers, architects and writers such as Fernand Léger, Charles Demuth, Raoul Dufy, Cassandre, Walker Evans, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Mallet-Stevens and Blaise Cendrars. Their works reflect the modern beauty of these machines and the experience of crossing them.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

The Roaring Twenties were a golden age for ocean liners, floating palaces and modern machines, the only real links between Old Europe and the Americas. With the various Immigration Acts (1917 and 1924), the transatlantic companies turned their attention to a leisure clientele, including many intellectuals, writers and artists in search of exchanges with the other continent.

A paradoxical object, at once immovable and moving, state-of-the-art machinery dedicated to speed and a luxurious holiday resort where nationalities and social backgrounds mingled for the duration of a crossing, the liner briefly embodied a dream of transatlantic modernity.

This exhibition catalogue brings together works by painters, photographers, poster designers, architects and writers such as Fernand Léger, Charles Demuth, Raoul Dufy, Cassandre, Walker Evans, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Mallet-Stevens and Blaise Cendrars. Their works reflect the modern beauty of these machines and the experience of crossing them.