Visual Arts and Music Paris 1890-1930 by Liz Holochwost From the 1890s until about 1940, Paris was a thriving center of artistic activity that provided unequalled conditions for the exchange of creative ideas. Waves of artists of diverse disciplines and of many nationalities gravitated to the French capital and cultivated an inspiring climate of imaginative collaboration. They left their homelands for different reasons. Some were fleeing the anti-semitism of their countries. Like the other artists, they were seeking a land to receive them where their artistic aspirations would find free expression. At first their activity was concentrated in Montmartre, but later moved to Montparnasse. In the early 1880s, students, writers, musicians, and artists settled in Montmartre, located on a hill on the Right Bank of Paris. They were attracted by the liberal reputation of the area. In describing the audience of Le Chat Noir, a local cabaret, a writer of the time, Felicien Champsaur, stated that In this bizarre land swarmed a host of colorful artists, writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, a few with their own places, but most in furnished lodgings, surrounded by the workers of Montmartre Montmartre was home to every kind of artist. They flocked to this bohemian district, frequenting its performance halls and celebrating them in paintings and literature. Degas, Matisse, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec were some of the artists. Claude Debussy was also drawn to the nightlife of Montmartre. He played piano in the crowded cafes, was familiar with singers and popular entertainers and was a regular of Le Chat Noir. By the time of the World s Fair, held in Paris in 1900, Montmartre had developed into a true entertainment industry comprised of cabarets, café concerts, dance halls, music halls, theaters, and circuses. The area s underground bohemian culture had become a part of mainstream bourgeois entertainment. As a result, artists lost interest in Montmartre s nightlife and looked elsewhere for inspiration. From 1910 to the start of WWII, Paris artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse, located on the Left Bank. The cafes and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where ideas were hatched and discussed. In explaining why he went there, Marc Chagall stated I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard from so
far away; this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colors, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in a flow of conceived lives. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only in Paris. In France, the twenties were called Les Annees Folles (the Crazy Years). Even though France was victorious, WWI had a major impact on the morale of the French. After 5 years of distress and loss, they longed for lightness and distractions. The 1920s marked a change in habits and a demand for personal freedom.this was especially true for women as outwardly expressed in fashion. Parisians went out often to music-hall shows, operettas, theater, ballet, and cinemas. However, the economic crisis of 1929 had a social and political impact that put an end to the period of lack of concern and joie de vivre. In fine arts, the term Ecole de Paris (School of Paris) describes many artistic styles and movements that took place in Paris during the period 1890-1940. Picasso, Modigliani, and Chagall were some of the many non-french artists living and working in Paris at this time. School of Paris also refers to the great composers working Paris. How could historians characterize this creative explosion? As Jan Swafford states, the spirit of an age is hard to define, yet eventually scholars attach labels to time periods. In spite of possible disagreements about labels, Swafford asserts that there is a recognition that during a given period something is in the air. Modernism is the term that became associated with the period of 1890-1930. Modernism is an interdisciplinary trend affecting the visual arts, literature, architecture, the social sciences, philosophy, dance, and music. It is more a rebellious state of mind than a distinct style. It emerged out of large-scale changes in Western society in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. Starting in the 1890s, a common way of thinking asserted that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of revising past knowledge in light of current techniques. Thus in the first decades of the 20 th century, a series of writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians made the break with traditional means of organizing literature, painting, and music. There was a desire to make something new. Toward the end of the 19 th century, artists rejected Romantic ideals and sought to capture the reality of what the eye perceived at a given moment rather than what
the mind led the eye to envision. Artists such as Monet focused on light and color rather than definite outlines by employing new techniques. They applied splashes and strokes of colors thus leaving the eye of the viewer to mix them. This new movement was called Impressionism. In music, Claude Debussy represents Impressionism. According to Karl Haas, the revolution he achieved almost singlehandedly amounted to a complete and irrevocable break with the romantic tradition of composing In Debussy s well known preludes, he revolutionized the art of piano playing. Haas states that they are among the building blocks of a new direction in music which replaced romantic programmatic, well defined, and convoluted plots with subtle references to fleeting impressions and sensations. In La Mer, Debussy captured in tone the movement of the ocean, which he never experienced firsthand. Swafford states that there are marvels for the ear in every measure of this score; the orchestra groans, roars, sighs, babbles, erupts in sprays of light and color. In this work we see the essence of what we call musical impressionism. Erik Satie also broke with traditional musical tastes and was one of the most controversial musicians of his day. He rebelled against musicians who took themselves too seriously such as his teachers at the Paris Conservatoire. Developing his own style, he blended popular musical elements, drawing from his experience as a pianist in Montmartre cabarets, in his serious music. In his works, entitled Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear and Flabby Preludes, among others, his satire and wit comprise the originality of his point of view. Moreover, Les Six, followers of Satie (Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Tailleferre, Auric, and Poulenc), became known for their individual styles. Moving away from Impressionism, Expressionism developed in Germany before WWI. Expressionist artists attempt to depict their subjective emotions and their responses to emotions and events rather than objective reality. They accomplish their aims through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent or dynamic manipulation of formal elements. In Paris, Georges Rouault, a French expressionist painter, created designs for Les Ballets Russes.
Although he was not in Paris, Arnold Schoenberg s contributions to Modernism should be noted since many believe that he created the most revolutionary changes in music at this time. In 1909, he turned to atonal writing or non-tonality. Schoenberg brought a new order to non-tonality by employing a twelve tone system. According to Swafford, he created a hyperbolic and sometimes expressive world perhaps closer to the raw unconscious than any other music. His jagged melodies, spiky harmonies, and screaming trumpets are symptomatic of his century s climate. Igor Stravinsky who spent most of his time in Paris during the years between WWI and WWII, created his own unique music. His early works L Oseau de Feu (The Firebird), Petrushka, and Le Sacre du Printemps (the Rite of Spring) are different from previous musical compositions. According to Haas, he expressed himself with dissonances, the simultaneous use of various keys and tonalities known as polytonality, and above all through the vibrant use of constantly changing rhythms based on shifting meters, displaced accents, and syncopated patterns. It is perhaps with his inventive rhythms that Stravinsky made his greatest impact on music. Haas sees an interesting comparison between Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso. Whereas Stravinsky created a new sense of space in music, Picasso created a new sense of space in painting. Stravinsky abandoned traditional tonality and associated key center and Picasso broke up traditional contours, perspectives, and concrete likenesses. In Stravinsky s later works, he searched for a sparer music. In his ballet, Pulcinella, composed in 1920, his use of 18 th century elements expresses a return to the inspiration of the past known as Neo-classicism. Another composer whose work evolved dramatically during his career is Prokofiev. He was in Paris from 1923-1936 and was associated with Les Ballets Russes for 10 years. He called his early symphony classical, but in contrast his bold ballet suites follow the modernist trends of jarring sounds. Toward the end of the 1930s, the unprecedented movement to Paris of foreign artists who worked with French artists came to an end with the outbreak of WWII. Many artists fled to NY or returned to their homeland. The great city of Paris contributed so much to the growth of 20 th century visual arts and music and the Modernist movement. It is a wondrous city filled with history and beauty.