In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910 (2014) is an account of the beginnings of the cultural revolution in France – not in the 1920s but earlier, among the cafes and cabarets of rural Montmartre. Montmartre was not a suburb of Paris then; it was its own community of windmilled vineyards and farms, with emerging cafes and nightclubs, such as the Moulin Rouge in an artificial windmill.
The book is in four parts: (1) The World Fair and Arrivals, (2) The Rose Period, (3) Carvings, Private Lives, ‘Wives’ and (4) Street Life. It primarily focuses on Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, but it also includes Rainer Maria Rilke, Georges Braque, Andre Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Rousseau, Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas, and Maurice de Vlaminck in a fusion of painting, writing, textiles, music, fashion design, and dance.
The Society for Independent Artists had been established in 1884 with many exhibitions in Paris; and the annual art exhibition, Autumn Salon, commenced in 1903.
When Picasso arrived in Paris in October 1900 from Barcelona at the age of 19, Matisse, aged 30, had already been there for 10 years, and poet Rainer Maria Rilke had already spent two years writing a monograph on sculptor Auguste Rodin. Van Dongen had been in Paris for three years as an illustrator for a satirical magazine, and Paul Poiret would change the course of fashion design. Paul Cezanne, at 50, was still in Paris, with writer Emile Zola. Gertrude Stein was writing a novel, arriving in 1903, and there is a chapter on Stein with Picasso in 1905-1907. Not all were successful – they were mostly starving artists.
Roe describes Picasso’s Paris apartment and his early paintings and muses. She describes the opinions, views, and influences of the creatives in the region – where they went, what they saw, where they lived, and what they painted or sculpted or wrote. In Paris, the City of Light, it is the light that stirs the creative imagination of the artists. And ‘la joie de vivre’ – the Joy of Life – everyday people doing everyday things.
There are references to the political and economic situation in Paris – and across Europe – and their effects on the artists. By 1907, cinemas were popular in the French capital, bringing jobs in production, photography and art, stage sets and designs, posters and advertisements, as well as entertainment. Russian ballet was a great source of inspiration in 1909 and 1910 with Vaslav Nijinksy, but moreso with set designer Leon Bakst.
‘Foreigners would come, go or stay; and through it all France would remain herself … they lived as they pleased, painting, writing or dancing, for what the French really respected were art and letters.’
Roe concludes in 1911 with the opening of the Café Rotunde in Montparnasse, ‘marking the definitive removal of artistic café life from Montmartre to Montparnasse.’
This is an interesting comprehensive examination of culture, art and artists, and the economy in which they lived, in the first ten years of the 20thcentury, from 1900 to 1910. In an easy-to-read style, and well-structured, it is amazing who was in Paris, and the closeness of the artistic community. It’s an enjoyable read.
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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