FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

GAY PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s: Background, People, Places, Personalities, Pleasure, Style, Fashion, Arts, Poetry, Music and Adventure. According to Maximillien de Lafayette.

 

Mon Dieu! To be and live in Paris during "Les annees folles", between the end of  1917 and 1934, especially if you were an eccentric artist, an intellectual adventurer, a frou-frou femme fatale, a genius or an independently wealthy American, willing to spend a lot of money on arts, dating and women. Ask Madonna, Paulette Attie, Penelope de Vassy and Louise de Chambertin. Really "real" America's la crème de la crème was there. The "real" American high society, the privileged class, the snobs (Although it was too early for the Americans to know how to be a snob), les bourgeois,  wealth filthy characters, the hustlers with a style, the scandalous adventurous women, the schmoozer and the cruisers, the handsome gigolos, the champagne, the caviar, the kisses and the misses, sex, the drama and all the "chic" pleasures of the era. Hemingway was here. Paramour Stein too. Why Paris - what made everybody want to come here and create, and drink, and dance, and paint, and write stories or invent them? Women? obnoxious, over-cultured and over-sophisticated Frenchmen? Bubbly champagne? Sinfully good wine? Nice plat de fromage? A nostalgia? A fantasy? A new social, political and artistic era? A modern Parisian revolution? Yes! Yes! All of the above! Paris was a magic. And the people who lived in Paris were fabulous and delightfully mad! Tout le monde etait fou et philosophe, meaning "Everybody was crazy and  a philosopher." Mistinguet, Edith Piaf, Sacha Guitry, Leo Ferre, Charles Trenet, Fernandel, Patachou, Jean Cocteau, Jean Gabin, Marlene Dietrich, Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril, La Goulue, Zozo Baker, Ernst Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso lived that magical era.

FAMOUS PEOPLE OF THE ERA. THE WHO'S WHO OF GAY PARIS

Photo, left: Marlene Dietrich. Right: Mistinguet.

 Mistinguet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Edith Piaf, Sacha Guitry, Leo Ferre, Charles Trenet, Fernandel, Patachou, Jean Cocteau, Jean Gabin, Marlene Dietrich, Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril, La Goulue, Zozo Baker, Ernst Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Constantin Brancusi, Fernand Léger, Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Appolinaire, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Coco Chanel, James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Sylvia Beach, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, Prevert, Bourvil, Man Ray, Margaret Anderson, Kiki,  E. E. Cummings, Georges Braque, Erik Satie, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, Matisse, André Derain, Darius Mihaud, Lucienne Delysle, Charles Boyer, Michele Morgan, Diaghilev, Paul Renouard, Jean Wiéner, Carlos Gardel, Maria Felix, Gershwin, Youmans, Andre Marlaux, Jane Bathori, Maurice Chevalier, William Carlos, Nina Hamnett, Zyg Brunner, Debussy, E. Renaudin, Leonide Massine, Poulenc, Auric, the shadow of Mata Hari, Stravinsky, Jacques Rivière, Honegger, Paul Méral, Charlie Chaplin, Paul Claudel, Mayol, Rolf de Maré, George Antheil, T. S. Eliot, Roger de la Fresnaye, Marcel Duchamp, Filippo Marinetti,Jacques Leclerc, Alice B. Toklas, Philippe Soupault, Walter Benjamin.
 

 

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

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

 

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s: Background, People, Places, Personalities, Pleasure, Style, Fashion, Arts, Poetry, Music and Adventure.

 

LES ANNEES FOLLES

BACKGROUND

Photo: Josephine Baker.

The First World War devastated many of the assumptions of the nineteenth century. Many in Europe had thought technology would lead to an ever more stable and prosperous mankind. The Great War showed it could kill and maim millions. The art and music of that period must be seen in the context of this radical shift in perspective. Things weren't just going to get better and better, old assumptions were turned over and hey... if the world's in a mess - maybe you should just say to hell with it, and have a big party. During the first quarter of the 20th century Paris became the magnet for a growing international colony of young artists, poets and musicians. The American poet Ezra Pound described it as the centre of the world, and the place for those who had "cast off the sanctified stupidities and timidities" and were looking for radical new directions.

Photo: The lady pays the bill: illustration by Lorenzi in Fantasio, 15th Jan 1923

By the time of the First World War Montparnasse, which had taken over from Montmartre as the centre for artists' studios, cafés and bars, was the meeting place for a wide cross-section of new thinkers and experimenters. There was a huge exchange of ideas between these artists, composers, poets and writers, who met and discussed their work in the many cafés and nightclubs for which Montparnasse had became famous. At the same time various artistic movements and influences came and went, overlapping and cross-fertilising along the way. The most significant of the movements these young artists came to absorb was Cubism. Developed in Paris by the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Cubism and its legacy changed the face of the arts forever. Representing its subjects in terms of geometrical figures - cones, cubes and spheres - with sober colouring, and in such a way that every aspect of the object could be seen, it also later incorporated collage techniques and stencilling using brighter colours. Cubism's influence steadily infiltrated the worlds of poetry, music and film for many years. Concurrent with Cubism, and pre-figuring many of the radical movements of these years, came the influence of Italian Futurism, expounded by the eccentric Filippo Marinetti. The first exhibition of Futurist works in Paris took place in 1912 and heralded a violent departure from traditional artistic values, glorifying the beauty and sleekness of the machine. Not only were the techniques of artistic representation changing, but the actual objects described were being revolutionised too. Cubism having more or less run its course, by 1918 the post-Cubist movement Purism had produced its manifesto, Aprés Cubisme, calling for clear and simple forms and strong basic shapes. The following year Dada took Paris by storm claiming new subjects to be described by the arts: "machinery, massacre, sky-scrapers, urinals, sexual orgies, revolution …" and through its more political stance ridiculed important governmental figures and institutions as a reaction to the meaningless horror of war. By 1924, with the publication of the Manifeste du Surréalisme Dada in turn was giving way to the Surrealist movement - "Its tyranny had made it intolerable". The writer André Breton, one of Surrealism's leading figures, described it as "pure psychic automatism" producing art works that were a true expression of the subconscious mind. All the arts felt its influence in some way. Not everybody chose to tread these new experimental paths though. In Montparnasse the École de Paris while adopting some modernist tendencies kept to more traditional forms and subjects, including the portraits, nudes and still-lives which Dada and "machine-art" had turned its back on. The artists Amadeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall and Constantin Brancusi were its chief exponents.

 

 

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s.

Photo: Ezra Loomis Pound, American poet, critic and editor:
Illustration by Jeffrey Morgan.

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.

Photo: merican author Gertrude Stein (left) standing
with her partner, American secretary and writer
Alice B Toklas, 1925.
 

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".

 

 

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s.

 

Photo: Towards Verdun, France: aquatint by Paul Renouard, 1916.

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.

Photo: Cafe de la Paix, Paris is crowded with foreigners and visitors in the aftermath of the war's end - illustration by Louis Sabattier in the Graphic, 1919.

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.
 

 

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s.

 

Photos from L to R: #1.American painter, photographer and film-maker
Man Ray, with one of his paintings. #2.La Rotunde: illustration by Zyg Brunner, La Vie Parisienne, 1923.
 

MUSIC

FABULOUS TIMES, PLACES AND PEOPLE

PARIS IN THE 20s and 30s.

MUSIC

Photos from L to R: #1. "A couple of flappers with a gentleman friend - La Vie Parisienne, 1926." #2. Writer, artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau with composer Darius Milhaud, 1921
 

Hypnotic rhythms, strong primary colours, lots of woodwind and a theme of pagan ritual - the 1913 Parisian premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused a complete riot. The police had to be called as the sound of the orchestra was drowned out by the shouting of those for and against the tumultuous, barbaric new music. The venue was Paris's Théatre des Champs-Élysées and the performance was given by Diaghilev's eminent Ballets Russes. When the critic Jacques Rivière reviewed the premiere he described the Rite as the first work to challenge Impressionism with its rawness, primitive rhythms, and preference for woodwinds over the romantic sound of the strings. This view was ignored by Jean Cocteau who later hailed Satie's Parade as the pivotal work in the war against Impressionism. Written four years after The Rite of Spring's scandalous first performance, Debussy's final sonata comes from quite a different sound world, with themes and ideas that seem to swirl about in the wind. "Debussyism" became a key target for Paris's new avant-garde composers, who were tired of the haziness of Impressionism and saw the sounds of popular entertainment as the new way forward. Here, though, even Debussy lightens his music with references to popular music. Writing for the violin and piano in a balanced way is notoriously hard. Yet according to Poulenc, in this sonata Debussy created a masterpiece through "sheer instrumental tact". The theme of the last movement was a real headache for Debussy, who described it as circular, "like a snake swallowing its own tail". During the First World War Debussy was ill with the cancer that would eventually kill him. Disturbed by the war's hideous events he had decided to write the final, but unfinished, group of sonatas to which this sonata belongs, not so much for himself but to "give proof, however small it may be … that French thought will not be annihilated". After his name on the title page of the three sonatas he managed to finish appeared the qualification "musicien francais".
 

Photos from L to R: #1. Dancing to a Jazz band in a French night club:
illustration by Zyg Brunner in La Vie Parisienne, 1926. #2. French writer, artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau, circa 1925:
illustration by Selbstbildnis.

When Diaghilev commissioned Jean Cocteau to come up with a new ballet scenario he said "Surprise me", and Parade was the result. Parade got its name from the small afternoon shows put on by the Parisian fairs and circuses to advertise the evening's programme. It had a fine pedigree - Satie wrote the music, Cocteau devised the scenario, Pablo Picasso designed the costumes and sets and Leonide Massine was the choreographer. It was premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 18th May 1917 by Diaghilev's brilliant Ballets Russes. Satie's score was certainly a big "surprise" and caused a riot on its first night. The writer E. E. Cummings was there shouting angry abuse at the crowd when they booed the work. The music included the sounds of a typewriter, sirens and a lottery wheel, and Picasso's costumes included some in the shape of American sky-scrapers. Parade can be seen as reflecting the growing interest in all things American, especially the cinema, in Paris at the time. Cocteau's creation of the "Little American Girl" in Parade was thought to have been inspired by The Perils of Pauline which were showing in Parisian cinemas. Parade's greatest significance was as a turning point in the so-called war against Impressionism and German romanticism espoused by Cocteau through its use of everyday themes and sounds.