Drawing upon theories concerning visuality, spectatorship, consumption, and the institutionalization of culture, this dissertation considers the ways that the art exhibition at the Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) attempted to make modern art accessible and acceptable to a mass audience in America. The story of the exhibition in the Palace of Fine Arts demonstrates how the American artistic establishment incorporated modernism into the conservative idiom of a major international exposition by promoting a definition and understanding of "modern" art that was distinctly national, celebrated individual style over subject matter, and was even open to personal interpretation. Making use of lessons learned at the Armory Show, the PPIE Art Department provided visitors with clear instruction on how to experience the exhibition, how to contextualize it within the broader history of art, and how to subjectively engage with individual works. Through analysis of the exhibition's design, the didactic practices of the Art Department, and the commentary that ensued in the popular press, this project documents the PPIE as a significant institutional venue for the advancement of American art history, as well as the process and contradictions of creating a public for modern art. Chapter One provides an overview of the details of the exhibition's organization, its role within the larger structure of a vastly popular, commercial, and nationalistic enterprise, as well as a framework for defining modernism as it pertained to the PPIE. Chapter Two compares paintings in the art exhibition with other attractions that featured fine art as paid entertainment at the Fair, as a means of examining provincial and national anxieties about nudity, the Futurists, and the definition of high art. Chapter Three analyzes the fine art guidebooks and how they organized, controlled and encouraged certain kinds of viewing experiences of the art exhibition. Focusing on Sargent and Bellows as case studies in how Art Department officials attempted to create a genealogy for modern art, Chapter Four considers the relationship established between the more radical artists in the competition galleries and those canonized as major figures with galleries of their own. The conclusion discusses the lasting impact of the fair through sales and the establishment of a permanent museum for San Francisco.

En adaptant la philosophie de Spinoza aux analyses de Marx, Frédéric Lordon a montré comment le capitalisme s'est développé en modelant les désirs, les affects et les imaginaires des travailleurs, afin d'en capter efficacement la force de travail. Partant de ces postulats, on se propose d'analyser trois stratégies affectives, mobilisant des images et des mises en scène du travail, à trois phases historiques distinctes du capitalisme. La première partie sera consacrée à l'Encyclopédie des Lumières et à ses planches des "Arts mécaniques". Nous évoquerons les premiers pas d'un capitalisme utopique découvrant les bienfaits de la division du travail, dont les gravures donnent un aperçu idéalisé. Nous aborderons ensuite l'Exposition Universelle parisienne de 1867, qui présente l'intérêt de multiplier les mises en scène spectaculaires des marchandises, des machines et des "petits métiers", autant que les perspectives théoriques de domination, allant du fétichisme des biens matériels à l'apologie du paternalisme. Enfin, la collection La France travaille, enquête ethnographique agrémentée de photographiques de François Kollar, offre un panorama nationaliste et conservateur des classes laborieuses à l'orée des années 1930, s'efforçant de rassurer devant les incertitudes de la mécanisation et de la crise économique. Nous montrerons que chacun de ces objets, vision du travail sous l'oeil du capital, entend recouvrir de son voile la réalité de l'ouvrier. Nous réfléchirons aux formes politiques susceptibles de lever ce voile et de représenter le vécu du travail et à leur efficacité. / French economist and philosopher Frédéric Lordon renews our comprehension of marxist structures by his interpretation of Spinoza's philosophy. He showed that capitalism had to shape desires, affects and imaginary of working class to expand its own influence and catch the labour power. We will analyze three "affective strategies", using pictures and stagings of work, at three historical periods of capitalism development. The first chapter will be devoted to the Encyclopédie and its plates of "Mechanical Crafts". Based on this exemplary work of the Enlightenment, this chapter will evoke the beginnings of utopian capitalism and its faith in division of labour, illustrated by the plates which give some ideal vision. Then, we will address the Second Paris International Exposition of 1867 : it displays merchandises, industrial devicesand workshops. It rewards too different contemporary experience of paternalism. Finally, the collection La France travaille, ethnographical survey illustrated by François Kollar's photographs, shows a nationalist and conservative panoramic view of French working class in 1930's. These books try to reassure readers faced with the financial crisis and fear of mechanization. Each studied object shines a light on labor under the eye of capital and covers the experience of worker. We will remind the experience through accounts and writings of working people.

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