PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s: Background, People, Places, Personalities, Pleasure, Style, Fashion, Arts, Poetry, Music and Adventure.
FABULOUS PEOPLE AND COLORFUL CHARACTERS OF THE ERA
Ernst Hemingway
Marlene Dietrich
in 1930
Josephine Baker
Coco Chanel T. S. Elliot
Part: 233
As a back-drop to this incredible cross-fertilisation within the arts the war raged for 4 years. It ravaged the lives of many, and changed forever the way the arts and the artist himself were viewed. No-one dreamed it would go on so long and the front line drew so close to Paris at one point that the guns could be heard. In the Battle of Verdun alone 300,000 French troops were killed, and in 1917 masses of ordinary soldiers were beginning to mutiny because of bad leadership. Many artists did their bit for the war. The poet Blaise Cendrars lost an arm fighting at the front, and the artist Fernand Léger also enlisted, going on to celebrate both the machinery of war and his fellow soldiers in his paintings. Braque served in the infantry and was decorated twice and wounded in the head. The Italian poet and critic Guillaume Appolinaire joined the French army, receiving head injuries in 1916 just before being awarded French nationality, while the ubiquitous poet Jean Cocteau served as an ambulance driver on the Belgian front. The Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani was turned down due to health problems, much to his disappointment.
PEOPLE
These were crazy times fuelled by crazy people. Artists were mad for Paris in the twenties. Flocking there to explore the meaning of the 'modern' world. The list of people who lived and worked there included Pablo Picasso, Apollinaire, Igor Stravinsky and a young Ernest Hemingway. The scene wasn't just run by blokes, the American collector Gertrude Stein played a crucial role in championing the art of the day. Who was there? Paris attracted all kinds of artists from a wide range of nationalities, and in the years surrounding the First World War Montparnasse was the place to be. The most popular of the quarter's early artistic colonies was La Ruche (The Beehive), which housed struggling artists at very cheap rents and in correspondingly poor conditions, from which they escaped into the relative comfort of Paris's cafés and bars. The influential Catalan artist Pablo Picasso had been in Paris since 1904, where he was joined in 1906 by the Spanish artist Juan Gris. Picasso moved from Montmartre to his new studio on a street overlooking Montparnasse cemetery in 1920. Amongst his early followers were the talented writers Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. 1906 also saw the arrival of the Italian sculptor and painter Amadeo Modigliani, hoping to discover the latest developments in modern art. By 1920 Ezra Pound was also there, along with James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and the revolutionary Romanian Tristan Tzara, co-founder of the Dadaist movement. It's incredible to think that in one small corner of Montparnasse the artists Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger, the poets Jean Cocteau and Ezra Pound and writer Ernst Hemingway could all be found living within a stone's throw of each other, swapping ideas and supporting each other's work. Many Americans were attracted to Paris at this time. Hemingway lived over the sawmill on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in Montparnasse between 1924-26. When he first arrived he brought letters of introduction to both Ezra Pound and the American Gertrude Stein whose home at 27 Rue de Fleuris housed a brilliant art collection. By 1914 Stein, a great champion of Cubism, had become a significant figure in Parisian cultural life. Pablo Picasso was among her many visitors and her Saturday night soirées drew all kinds of artists, musicians and writers together. Another American woman, Sylvia Beach, settled in Paris in 1916 and three years later opened the bookshop "Shakespeare and Company". One of the shop's first visitors was the Surrealist writer Louis Aragon, and it was through "Shakespeare and Company" that James Joyce's Ulysses was first published. Also in Paris was the innovative American photographer Man Ray. According to Margaret Anderson of The Little Review he was there "photographing pins and combs, sieves and shoe-trees", as well as immortalising the young model Kiki in some of his most famous pictures. The poet and painter E. E. Cummings lived in Paris between 1921-1923, continuing to visit throughout the 20s and 30s. He described the city as a "divine section of eternity".
234
PLACES
Artists in Paris like an area where they can get drunk, drink coffee and smoke
ciggies. During this era the centre of the action was Montparnasse. Favourite
hang outs included cafés the Dôme and Rotonde. Here you might see
Modigliani doing some
sketches, or Picasso
and Erik Satie
doodling on some napkins - dreaming up some wild scheme. Praise art and pass
the Gauloise, baby.
What they got up to and where...
The cafés and bars of Montparnasse were a vital meeting place where new ideas
were hatched and mulled over. By night Modigliani, a notorious night prowler,
could be found drinking cheap red wine and sketching ideas for his sculptures
and paintings. In the afternoons Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford
played chess on the terrace of the Dôme, which was also frequented by
Braque and André Derain, and occasionally Picasso and
Matisse.
Picasso and the composer Erik Satie doodled on napkins and
tablecloths cooking up ideas for their collaborations, and by the light of a
street gaslight Satie was remembered feverishly scribbling in his
notebook. On Saturday nights Cocteau, Milhaud and other composers and
poets visited the Parisian fairgrounds, music-halls and circuses together,
enthralled by the barrage of sounds that assaulted their ears all at once. The
cafés at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were the Dôme,
La Rotonde, Le Selecte, and Le Coupole which were all
on the Boulevard de Montparnasse. The Metro Vavin station was conveniently
close by. The Dôme in particular was popular with the English and
Americans. Their normal day would start with breakfast at the Dôme
after which they would go about their business until the afternoon when they
would return again to the café's terrace as a prelude to the night's
activities. Hemingway, a frequent visitor at the Closerie des Lilas
just down the road, described the Dôme and Rotonde as the
places to be seen publicly, which "anticipated the columnists as the daily
substitutes for immortality". Montparnasse's cafés and bars were the perfect
environment for being seen, doing business deals, swapping ideas and all with
the inimitable influence of alcohol to oil the inspiration and conversation. After the
First World War, Jean Cocteau and the group of composers who became
known as Les Six began to frequent Le Boeuf sur le Toit. The
bar was named after a work by Darius Mihaud, a member of Les Six,
and on its opening night the pianist Jean Wiéner played tunes by
Gershwin and Youmans while Cocteau and Milhaud played
percussion. Amongst those to be spotted there were the Russian impresario
Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso, the film-maker René Clair, the singer
Jane Bathori and even Maurice Chevalier. In the Parisian cafes,
night-clubs and bars large amounts of alcohol were often consumed. It could
inspire the mind, but notably amongst the Americans who gathered at night in
Montparnasse, large amounts often led to bar fights. For many years absinthe
had been the favourite drink amongst artists and writers, but was officially
banned in France in 1915. The powerful and enigmatic green liquor was 68%
proof and thought to be the ruin of many a great mind, and was soon replaced
by Pernod. Women were no exception when it came to alcohol and
pleasure-seeking in Montparnasse, and in the view of some, they dominated the
quarter. The American writer William Carlos Williams observed
that "The men merely served as their counterfoils". They indulged in the same
abandonment as many of the men. The bohemian British artist Nina Hamnett
described how during the pre-war July 14th celebrations she borrowed a jersey
and corduroy trousers from Modigliani, went to the Rotonde and
danced in the street all night.
235
MUSIC
Cocteau, Satie and Les Six
"Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites, and nocturnal scents;
what we need is a music of the earth, everyday music".
Between 1914 and 1924 a
complex mood of change was in the air which, in its simplest terms, involved
a new freedom to experiment and a sweeping aside of traditionally held
values. In music this took the form of a revolt against the Impressionism of
Debussy and the dense chromaticism of German romanticism. Jean
Cocteau led the way with his new aesthetic for a Parisian musical
avant-garde claiming Erik Satie as its leader, and members of Les
Six as its chief protagonists. In 1918 Cocteau published his
manifesto The Cock and the Harlequin, calling for the creation of a
new, truly French music. It was to be based on simplicity, clarity and
humour and inspired by popular Parisian entertainment - the sounds of the
fairs and circuses, musical-hall and cabaret singers, the syncopated dance
music coming from America, and notably the sounds of everyday life - sirens,
machinery, steamships, typewriters.The group of musicians surrounding
Cocteau at this time were known as Les Nouveau Jeunes of which
Satie was a member during 1918. The other members were Louis Durey,
Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric, Darius Milhaud
and Francis Poulenc. From 1916 onwards the group's chief venues were
the Salle Huygens, which also included works of art and performances of
poetry, and the Théatre du Vieux-Colombier, which was run by the singer
Jane Bathori. Milhaud began to add to these regular performances with
Saturday evening dinners at his apartment. Afterwards they would all adjourn
to the fairgounds, circuses, cinemas or music-halls and soak up the effects
of a million experiences and sounds all going on at once which were to
become a crucial part of their compositions. Paris's popular Nouveau
Cirque and Cirque Medrano included a cosmopolitan array of
acts - clowns, acrobats, jugglers, magic and animal numbers - as well as
musical plays, pantomimes and even operettas. The annual fair was a
spectacular event too, containing many of the elements of the circus, as
well as stalls selling household goods and food. The pivotal work as far as
Cocteau's ideas were concerned had been Erik Satie's ballet
Parade, which he saw as symbolising the emergence of a new Parisian
musical avant-garde. It was the result of the colourful collaboration
between Cocteau (who devised the scenario), Picasso (who
designed the sets and costumes), the choreographer Leonide Massine
and Satie, and its premiere in 1917 caused a riot. By 1920 the group
of six composers had transformed into Les Six and become a
prominent force in Parisian musical life. It has to be said though that
their musical styles were all very different, and they followed Cocteau's
ideas to a greater or lesser degree. Their main bond seems to have been one
of friendship although they were often extremely critical, as well as
supportive, of each other's work. The group eventually dissolved as their
careers and musical outlooks developed and took different paths. Satie,
Milhaud, Poulenc and Auric continued to be inspired by popular
genres up until 1924. With Satie's death in 1925 the era drew to a
close.
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