Art Market Monitor

Global Coverage ~ Unique Analysis

  • AMMpro
  • AMM Fantasy Collecting Game
  • Podcast
  • Contact Us

Cafés Were Central to Parisian Life Which Is Why a Picasso Briefly Hung in the Center of a Parisian Café

January 12, 2017 by David Norman

picasso-au-lapin-agile

David Norman was for more than 30 years a senior specialist at Sotheby's in Impressionist and Modern art. Here he discusses the context of Parisian nightlife in the making of Picasso's Au Lapin Agile (above) which is now in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

This essay is available to AMMpro subscribers only. Members receive a free month before their credit card is charged. Feel free to sign up to read the essay and cancel before your credit card is charged.

In 1875, the artist Andre Gill, painted a sign for a well known Montmartre tavern known as the Cabaret des Assasins. It took its name from the fact that its walls were lined with portraits of famous murderers. Homicide aside, Cabaret’s were exciting venues for performances and nightlife, decadent behavior, the mingling of the upper and lower classes and often the nexus where artists, writers and progressive thinkers gathered.

Around the turn of the last Century, Cabarets were the home to the avant-garde in Germany, Poland, Sweden, America, Holland and England, but none so popular and singular in the social history of emerging modernism as the famed Parisian night spots of the Belle Epoque and after. Some of the great early landmarks of Impressionism are the great cafe-concert scenes—Renoir ’s Bal de Moulin de la Galette (Musée d’Orsay), Manet’s Bar aux Folies-Bergère (Courtauld Institute of Art, London) and the many great paintings and graphics by Toulouse-Lautrec of rollicking nightclub scene.

This is the story of a very different kind of cabaret scene and the winding road that led Picasso to one particular establishment and to the painting he created for it: Au Lapin Agile.


Sign up to Art Market Monitor Premium today

You need a membership to AMMpro to view this article and other exclusive content daily.

You can register today for $90 per month—with your first month free!—or for $756 per year (no free trial period.)

Screenshot 2016-08-05 16.28.45

If you already have an account, sign in here:

 
 
Forgot Password

Filed Under: Artists, Premium

About David Norman

Want to get Art Market Monitor‘s posts sent to you in our email? Sign up below by clicking on the Subscribe button.

Top Posts

  • Keith Haring’s 1989 Retrospect Comes to Sotheby’s London Prints Sale
  • Four of Picasso's Women Valued at $28m Come to Christie's from Rose-Walters Collection
  • Rare Photo Album by Dutch Street Photographer Bought at Auction by Rijksmuseum
  • Norman Rockwell's Not Gay. But Is He a Great Artist?
  • Roy Lichtenstein’s Top Ten Auction Prices
  • Christie's Announces $70m Picasso Self Portrait
  • Sotheby’s Offers Pop-Culture Memorabilia, from Nike to Yeezy, in New Series
  • David Hockney's $20m Pacific Coast Highway & Santa Monica
  • Rauschenberg’s Buffalo II Leads Mayer Collection at Christie’s
  • Re-discovered John Constable Painting at Sotheby's in December
  • About Us/ Contact
  • Podcast
  • AMMpro
  • Newsletter
  • FAQ

twitterfacebooksoundcloud
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
California Privacy Rights
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Advertise on Art Market Monitor