Flowers of Evil

The prints and drawings in this installation present what may be a less familiar view of art from France in the late 1800s—a period typically associated with the colorful scenes of Impressionism, the lively streets of modern Paris, or the tranquility of the French landscape. This gallery borrows its title from an influential book of poems by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil), which explores the decadence and isolation of the modern metropolis.

In a Paris shaken by dramatic social upheaval, from the expansion of industry to the destruction of Old Paris and the shocks of war and revolution, the artists in this gallery made works both visionary and everyday that dwell in the ruins and shadows of the modern imagination.