WALTER BENJAMIN
DAGUERRE, OR THE PANORAMAS
Soleil, prends garde
Ii
toi!
A.
J.
Wiertz,
Oeuvres litteraires
(Paris 1870)
185
As architecture begins
LO
outgrow art in the use of iron construc–
tion , so does painting in the panoramas. The climax of the preparation
of panoramas coincides with the appearance of the arcades. There were
tireless exertions of techni cal skill to make panoramas the scenes of a
perfect imitation of nature. The attempt was made to reproduce the
changing time of day in the landscape, th e rising of the moon , the
rushing of waterfalls. David advises his pupils to draw from nature in
the panoramas. In striving to produce deceptively lifelike changes in
their presentation of nature, the panoramas point ahead, beyond
photography, to film and sound film .
Contemporary to the panoramas is a panoramic litera ture.
L e livre
des cent-et-un, L es Fran rais peints par eux-memes, L e diable
d.
Paris,
La grande vi lle
are part of it. In the e books is being prepared the
collective literary work for which, in the thirti es, Girardin created an
arena in the
feui lleton.
They consist of isolated sketches, the anecdotal
form of which corresponds
LO
the plasti c foreground of the panorama,
and their informational base to its painted background . Thi literature
is also panoramic in a social sense. For the las t time the worker
appears, outside his cl ass, as a trimming for an idyll.
The panoramas, which declare a revolution in the relation of art to
technology, are at the same time an express ion of a new feeling about
life. The city dweller, whose political superiority over the country is
expressed in many ways in the course of the century, attempts to
introduce the countryside into the city. In the panoramas the city
dilates
to
become landscape, as it does in a subtler way for the
flan eur.
Daguerre is a pupil of the panorama painter Prevost, whose es tablish–
ment is situated in the Pas age des Panoramas. Description of the
panoramas by Prevos t and Daguerre. In 1839 Daguerre's panorama
burns down. In the same year he announ ces the invention of daguerre–
otype.
Arago introduces photography in an official speech. H e indica tes
its place in the hi story of technology. He prophesies its scientific
