Abstract
In this essay, we will look at how artists portray city life, how they make the most common things in our lives becoming special and how they transform reality into art. Indeed, everyday, ordinary life often becomes special under their brushes. Some of them like Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec liked painting after shows instead of the show in itself, the most commune scene rather than the spectacle. Indeed, city life is what we experience every day and its portrayal could be assimilated with reality shows, nowadays: it aims at showing the most common things of our lives. Some of the pictures even disturb by showing aspects of city life, which people would have rather forget (like Degas' L'Absinthe or his Interior (The rape) ). In this essay, we are going to reflect on how painters portray city life, and what effects it has on the general public, looking at a group of works we saw in the Tate Britain's special exhibition dedicated at Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec. First, we will look at how they painted the city in itself, and then its activities, and, to finish, its people.
