Figures, figurants, figurines

Based on a comparison of the diorama of La Grande Semaine — a depiction by the designers Sem and Roubille of characters from Parisian high society as figurines, an exposition that ends in 1910 with a lecture by Robert de Montesquiou — and À la recherche du temps perdu, this text reveals in Proust’s work the presence on the one hand of an everyday culture of representing people in the form of physical objects (caricatures, statuettes, cut-outs, marionettes, shadow theater), and the panoramic apparatus on the other hand.