2023-12-05 19:00:11
“La Danse du pan-pan au Monico” (1910-1911), by Gino Severini. RMN-GRAND PALAIS /CENTRE POMPIDOU, MNAM-CCI/ HélèNE MAURI
“The whole globe was there. It was colorful and musical. » This is how Kiki de Montparnasse, model and muse of the artists of the poorly named “Belle Epoque”, born – illegitimate child – Alice Prin in Châtillon-sur-Seine (Côte-d’Or) in 1901, raised the hard way and accustomed from his childhood to cold, hunger and mad cows, recounts his Parisian life in his Memoirs, prefaced by Ernest Hemingway, for whom, too, Paris was a celebration.
This is what the last exhibition in a trilogy begun by Christophe Leribault before his departure for the presidency of the Musée d’Orsay intends to show: after “Romantic Paris (1815-1858)” in 2019, and “Paris 1900, the city of spectacle” in 2014, the Petit Palais evokes “The Paris of modernity (1905-1925)”. Annick Lemoine, who took over the management of the place, completes the program of her predecessor by adding her touch, with a less present scenography, works more varied in terms of their nature.
Indeed, we had to dare to bring together paintings by Matisse, Picasso or Modigliani, dresses by Paul Poiret or Jeanne Lanvin, jewelry from Cartier, with an airplane (Deperdussin type B, from 1911), a Bébé automobile. Peugeot from 1913 and what is undoubtedly the first folding bike (Gérard system from 1895, modified in 1912)! Four hundred pieces in all which, through painting, sculpture, drawing but also cinema, photography, dance, design or architecture, tell a complex story, often refreshing, sometimes chilling, always a little crazy .
Donkey Lolo
As far as the history of art is concerned, the exhibition begins with the so-called “de la cage aux fauves” scandal, during the Salon d’Automne of 1905. The word is due to a critic, Louis Vauxcelles, who, seeing charming and innocuous sculptures by Albert Marque (1872-1939) surrounded by stridently colored paintings by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Manguin and Camoin has this cry from the heart: “It’s Donatello among the wild beasts!” » The museum has reconstructed the original hanging as best it could, or at least its spirit, and we can only salute the colleague’s foresight: it is indeed a new world that was opening and roaring there.
The Delphinium dress known as “Robe Bonheur” with modesty slip for Denise Poiret (1912), by Paul Poiret, and the absinthe green Lesbos dress (around 1925), by Jeanne Lanvin. PARIS MUSEUMS/PALAIS GALLIERA, FASHION MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF PARIS – HERITAGE LANVIN, FRANCE “Airplane type B” (1911), by Bechereau Deperdussein. LE BOURGET AIR+SPACE MUSEUM / C. SEMENOFF TIAN-CHANSKY
A whole bunch of young people arriving from all over the world will rush in. France has just adopted the law separating Church and State. For the Jews of Eastern Europe who came, often on foot, from their shtetl and fleeing pogroms, for the American blacks subjected to segregation, or later their white friends who were upset by Prohibition, being able to live, broke but free for the former, without fear of being emasculated and hanged for the latter who had the misfortune of looking at a white woman, and drinking until they were thirsty for the others – all the others –, yes, Paris was a party. Even the hares are happy there, like the one painted on the sign of the famous Montmartre cabaret Au Lapin Agile, which, to deserve its reputation, juggles with a bottle while dancing in its copper saucepan…
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