Arts & Culture of Paris
Literature
During the Belle Époque Paris was the home and inspiration for some of France's most famous writers. Victor Hugo was sixty-eight when he returned to Paris from Brussels in 1871 and took up residence on Avenue d'Eylau (now Avenue Victor Hugo) in the 16th arrondissement. He failed to be re-elected to the National Assembly, but in 1876 he was elected to the French Senate.[55] It was a difficult period for Hugo; his daughter Adèle was placed in an insane asylum, and he his longtime mistress, Juliette Drouet, died in 1883. When Hugo died May 28, 1885 at the age of eighty-three, hundreds of thousands of Parisians lined the streets to pay tribute as his coffin was taken to the Panthéon, on 1 June 1885.
Émile Zola was born in Paris in 1840, the son of an Italian engineer. He was raised by his mother in Aix-en-Provence, then returned to Paris in 1858 with his friend Paul Cézanne to attempt a literary career. He worked as a mailing clerk for the publisher Hachette, and began attracting literary attention in 1865 with his novels in the new style of naturalism. He described in intimate details the workings of Paris department stores, markets, apartment buildings and other institutions, and the lives of the Parisians. By 1877, he had become famous and wealthy from his writing. He took a central role in the Dreyfus affair, helping win justice for Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish background, who had falsely been accused of treason.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) moved to Paris in 1881 and worked as a clerk for the French Navy, then for the Ministry of Public Education, as he wrote short stories and novels at a furious pace. He became famous, but also became ill and depressed, then paranoid and suicidal, dying at the asylum of Saint-Esprit in Passy in 1893.
Other writers who made a mark in the Paris literary world of the Third Republic's Belle Époque included Anatole France (1844-1924); Paul Claudel (1868-1955); Alphonse Allais (1854-1905); the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918); Maurice Barrès (1862-1923); René Bazin (1853-1932); Colette (1873-1954); the poet and novelist François Coppée (1842-1908); Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897); Alain Fournier (1886-1914), author of Le Grand Meaulnes (1913)- his only published novel-, who died on the battlefield in September 1914; André Gide (1869-1951); Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925); Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), a Belgian poet and essayist; the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1840-1898), who had a literary salon every Tuesday including the leading artists and writers of Paris; Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917); Anna de Noailles (1876-1933), poet and novelist; Charles Péguy (1873-1914), killed at the front on 5 September 1914; Marcel Proust (1871-1922), born in the first year of the Belle Époque, completed in 1913 the first part of In Search of Lost Time, begun in 1902; Jules Renard (1864-1910); Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), the young poet with whom Verlaine had a passionate but disastrous affair; Romain Rolland (1866-1944); Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), author of the world-renowned Cyrano de Bergerac; Paul Verlaine (1844-1890). Paris was also the home of one of the greatest Russian writers of the period, Ivan Turgenev.
Music
Paris composers during the period had a major impact on European music, moving it away from romanticism toward impressionism in music and modernism.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was born in Paris on rue du Jardinet in the 6th arrondissement, and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire when he was thirteen. When he finished the Conservatory, he became organist at the church of Saint-Merri, and later at La Madeleine. During the Belle Époque he lived on rue Monsieur-le-Prince in the Latin Quarter. His most famous works included the Danse Macabre, the opera Samson et Dalila (1877), the Carnival of the Animals (1877), and his Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" in C minor, op. 78 (1886). On 25 February 1871, he co-founded with Romain Bussine the Société nationale de musique, to promote French contemporary and chamber music. His students included Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré, two of the foremost French composers of before and after World War I.
Georges Bizet (1838-1875), born in Paris, was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire when he was only ten years old. He finished his most famous work, Carmen, written for the Opéra-Comique, in 1874. Even before opening, Carmen was criticized as immoral, the musicians complained that it could not be played, and the singers complained that it could be not be sung. The reviews were unfavorable, and the audience cold; and when Bizet died in 1875, he considered it a failure. Nonetheless, Carmen became one of the best-known and beloved operas in the repertoire, worldwide.
The most famous French composer of the late Belle Époque in Paris was Claude Debussy (1862-1918). He was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, and entered the Conservatory in 1872. He became part of the Parisian literary circle of the symbolist poet Mallarmé, and an admirer of Wagner, then went on to experiment with impressionism in music, atonal music and chromaticism. His most famous works included Clair de Lune (1890), La Mer (1905) and the opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1903-1905). He lived at 23 square de l'Avenue-Foch in the 16th arrondissement from 1905 until his death in 1918.
The most revolutionary composer to work in Paris was the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure.
Other influential composers in Paris during the period included Jules Massenet (1842-1912), author of the operas Manon and Werther; and Eric Satie (1866-1925), who, after leaving the Conservatory, made his living as a pianist at Le Chat Noir, a cabaret on Montmartre. His most famous works were the Gymnopédies (1888).
Painting
Paris was the home and the frequent subject of the impressionists, who tried to capture the city's light, its colors, and its motion. While they painted in many different places, they and future artists survived and flourished because of the support of Paris art dealers, such as Ambroise Vollard and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and wealthy patrons, including Gertrude Stein,
The first exhibit of tho impressionists took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the studio of the photographer Nadar. It was open to any painter who could pay a fee of sixty francs. Claude Monet showed the painting, "Impression: Sunrise" (Impression, soleil levant), which gave the movement its name. Other artists who took part included Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) spent much of his short life in Montmartre, painting and drawing the dancers in cabarets. He produced 737 canvases in his lifetime, thousands of drawings and a series of posters made for the cabaret Moulin Rouge. Many other artists lived and worked in Montmartre where rent was low and the atmosphere congenial. In 1876, Auguste Renoir rented space at 12 rue Cartot to paint Bal du moulin de la Galette, showing a popular ball at Montmartre on a Sunday afternoon. Maurice Utrillo lived at the same address from 1906 to 1914, and Raoul Dufy shared an atelier there from 1901 to 1911. The building is now the Musée de Montmartre.
A new generation of artists arrived in Montmartre at the turn of the century. Drawn by the reputation of Paris as the world capital of art. Pablo Picasso came from Barcelona in 1900, sharing an apartment with the poet Max Ernst, and began by painting the cabarets and prostitutes of the neighborhood. Amedeo Modigliani and other artists lived and worked in a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir during the years 1904–1909: where in 1909 Picasso painted one of his most important masterpieces, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Led by Picasso and Georges Braque, the artistic movement cubism was born in Paris.
Henri Matisse came to Paris in 1891 to study at the Académie Julien in the class of painter Gustave Moreau, who advised him to copy paintings in the Louvre and to study Islamic Art, which Matisse did. He also made the acquaintance of Raoul Dufy, Cézanne, Georges Rouault and Paul Gaugin, and began to paint in the style of Cézanne. Matisse visited Saint-Tropez in 1905, and when he returned to Paris, he painted a revolutionary work, Luxe, Calme et Volupté, using bright colors and bold dabs of paint.[61] Matisse and artists such as André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Jean Metzinger, Maurice de Vlaminck and Charles Camoin revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Henri Matisse's two versions of The Dance (1909) signified a key point in the development of modern painting.
The Paris Salon, which had established the reputations and measured the success of painters throughout the Second Empire, continued to take place under the Third Republic until 1881, when a more radical French government denied it official sponsorship. It was replaced by a new Salon sponsored by the Société des Artistes Français, In December 1890, the leader of the society, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, propagated the idea that the new Salon should be an exhibition of young, yet not awarded, artists. Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin and others rejected this proposal and made a secession. They created the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and its own exhibition, immediately referred to in the press as the Salon du Champ de Mars or the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts; it was soon also widely known as the Nationale. In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin organized the Salon d'automne.
Art Nouveau
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Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, especially the decorative arts, that was most popular between 1890 and 1910. A reaction to the academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures, particularly the curved lines of plants and flowers.
English uses the French name Art Nouveau ("new art"). The style is related to, but not identical with, styles that emerged in many countries in Europe at about the same time: in Austria it is known as Secessionsstil after Wiener Secession, in Spanish Modernismo, in Catalan Modernisme, in Czech Secese, in Danish Skønvirke or Jugendstil, in German Jugendstil, Art Nouveau or Reformstil, in Hungarian Szecesszió, in Italian L'Art Nouveau, Stile floreale or Stile Liberty, in Norwegian Jugendstil, in Polish Secesja, in Slovak Secesia, in Russian Модерн (Modern), and Swedish Jugend.
Art Nouveau is considered a "total" art style, embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts including jewelery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils, and lighting, as well as the fine arts. According to the philosophy of the style, art should be a way of life. For many well-off Europeans, it was possible to live in an art nouveau-inspired house with art nouveau furniture, silverware, fabrics, ceramics including tableware, jewelery, cigarette cases, etc. Artists desired to combine the fine arts and applied arts, even for utilitarian objects.
By 1910, Art Nouveau was already out of style. It was replaced as the dominant European architectural and decorative style first by Art Deco and then by Modernism.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau#Relationship_with_contemporary_styles_and_movements
Sculpture
The Belle Époque was a golden age for sculptors; the government of the Third Republic commissioned very few monumental buildings, but did commission a large number of statues to French writers, scientists, artists and political figures, which soon filled the city's parks and squares. The most prominent sculptor of the period was Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Born in Paris into a working-class family, he was rejected for entry into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and rejected by the Paris Salon. He had to struggle for many years to win recognition, supporting himself as a decorator and later as a designer for the Sèvres porcelain factory. He gradually won attention for his design for the Gates of Hell, for a museum of decorative art which was never built; its plan included what became his most famous work, The Thinker. He was commissioned by the city of Calais to make a monument, The Burghers of Calais (1884), commemorating a marking event that took place in that city in 1347, during the Hundred Years' War. He was also commissioned to make a monument to Balzac (now on boulevard Raspail), which caused a scandal and made him a celebrity. Rodin's work was exhibited near the 1900 Exposition, which won him many foreign clients. In 1908, he moved from Meudon to Paris, renting the ground floor of a private mansion in the 7th arrondissement, the Hôtel Biron, now Musée Rodin. By the time of his death, he was the most famous sculptor in France, perhaps in the world.
Other more traditional sculptors whose work won acclaim in Paris during the Belle Époque included Jules Dalou, Antoine Bourdelle (also a former assistant of Rodin), and Aristide Maillol. Their works decorated theaters, parks, and were featured at the International Expositions. The more avant-garde artists organized themselves into the Société des Artistes indépendants, holding annual Salons, which helped set the course of modern art. At the turn of the century, Paris attracted sculptors from around the world. Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) moved from Bucharest to Munich to Paris, where he was admitted, in 1905, to the École des beaux-arts. He worked for two months in the workshop of Rodin, but left, declaring that "Nothing grows under big trees", and went in his own direction into modernism. Brancusi won fame at the 1913 Salon des indépendants and became one of the pioneers of modern sculpture.
