Le Bateau-Lavoir

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Le Bateau-Lavoir, c.1910 Le Bateau-Lavoir, circa 1910.jpg
Le Bateau-Lavoir, c.1910

Le Bateau-Lavoir ("The Boat Wash-house") is the nickname for a building in the Montmartre district of the 18th arrondissement of Paris that is famous in art history as the residence and meeting place for a group of outstanding early 20th-century artists, men of letters, theater people, and art dealers. It is located at No. 13 Rue Ravignan at Place Emile Goudeau, just below the Place du Tertre.

Montmartre hill in the north of Paris, France

Montmartre is a large hill in Paris's 18th arrondissement. It is 130 m (430 ft) high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank in the northern section of the city. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by rue Caulaincourt and rue Custine on the north, rue de Clignancourt on the east, and boulevard de Clichy and boulevard de Rochechouart to the south, containing 60 ha. Montmartre is primarily known for its artistic history, the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit, and as a nightclub district. The other church on the hill, Saint Pierre de Montmartre, built in 1147, was the church of the prestigious Montmartre Abbey. On August 15, 1534, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis Xavier and five other companions bound themselves by vows in the Martyrium of Saint Denis, 11 rue Yvonne Le Tac, the first step in the creation of the Jesuits.

18th arrondissement of Paris French municipal arrondissement in Île-de-France, France

The 18th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as dix-huitième.

Place du Tertre square in Paris, France

The Place du Tertre is a square in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France. Only a few streets away from Montmartre's Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and the Lapin Agile, it is near the summit of the city's elevated Montmartre quarter. Place du Tertre was the heart of the prestigious Benedictine Montmartre Abbey, established in 1133 by King Louis VI. Montmartre Abbey thrived through the centuries and until the French revolution under the patronage of the Kings of France. Place du Tertre was opened to the public in 1635 as Montmartre village central square. From the end of the 18th century until World War One, the whole Montmartre Boheme could been seen here: painters, songwriters and poets.

Contents

A fire destroyed most of the building in May 1970 and only the façade remained, but it was completely rebuilt in 1978.

History

Place Emile Goudeau in the 18th arrondissement of Paris Place Emile-Goudeau, Paris 20 May 2014.jpg
Place Émile Goudeau in the 18th arrondissement of Paris

Formerly a ballroom and piano factory, Bateau Lavoir was squatted and divided into twenty small workshops in 1889. Distributed along a corridor, small rooms were linked without heating and with a single point of water. [1] The name "Le Bateau-Lavoir" was coined by French poet Max Jacob. The building was dark and dirty, almost seeming to be scrap pile rather than a dwelling. On stormy days, it swayed and creaked, reminding people of washing-boats on the Seine River, hence the name. [2]

Squatting illegal occupation of an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building

Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.

Max Jacob French poet, painter, writer and critic

Max Jacob was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.

The building stands on a small cobblestone square that was known as Place Ravignan. In 1911, it was rechristened Place Émile Goudeau for Émile Goudeau (1849–1906), a popular novelist, poet, and journalist who founded Les Hydropathes, a renowned and famous literary club. The square now has a Wallace fountain and is planted with horse chestnut trees.

Émile Goudeau French writer

Émile Goudeau was a French journalist, novelist and poet. He was the founder of the Hydropathes literary club.

Wallace fountain type of public drinking fountain designed by Charles-Auguste Lebourg

Wallace Fountains are public drinking fountains designed by Charles-Auguste Lebourg. They are small cast-iron sculptures scattered throughout the city of Paris, France, mainly along the most-frequented sidewalks. They are named after the Englishman Richard Wallace, who financed their construction. A great aesthetic success, they are recognized worldwide as one of the symbols of Paris. A Wallace Fountain can be seen outside the Wallace Collection in London, the gallery that houses the works of art collected by Sir Richard Wallace and the first four Marquesses of Hertford.

Maxime Maufra (1863–1918) was the first noted artist to take up residence in Bateau-Lavoir, around 1890. [3] Kees van Dongen and Pablo Picasso took up residence between 1900 and 1904. After 1904 more artists and writers moved in, including Otto van Rees, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre Mac Orlan, Juan Gris, André Salmon, Pablo Gargallo, Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy.

Maxime Maufra French painter

Maxime Maufra, was a French landscape and marine painter, etcher and lithographer.

Kees van Dongen Dutch painter

Cornelis Theodorus Maria 'Kees' van Dongen was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onwards - when he took part at the controversial 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition - his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. The paintings he made in the period of 1905-1910 are considered by some to be his most important works. The themes of his work from that period are predominantly centered around the nightlife; he paints dancers, singers, masquerades and theatre. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous - at times garish - portraits of especially women.

Pablo Picasso 20th-century Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.

It became an unofficial club that included artists Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Marie Laurencin, Modigliani, Jean-Paul Laurens, Maurice Utrillo, Jacques Lipchitz, María Blanchard, Jean Metzinger and Louis Marcoussis; writers Guillaume Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, Jean Cocteau, Gustave Coquiot, Cremnitz (Maurice Chevrier), Paul Fort, André Warnod, Raymond Radiguet, and Gertrude Stein; actors Charles Dullin, Harry Baur, and Gaston Modot; and art dealers Ambroise Vollard, Clovis Sagot  (fr ), Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and Berthe Weill.

Henri Matisse French artist

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Georges Braque French painter and sculptor

Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1906, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. Braque’s work between 1908 and 1912 is closely associated with that of his colleague Pablo Picasso. Their respective Cubist works were indistinguishable for many years, yet the quiet nature of Braque was partially eclipsed by the fame and notoriety of Picasso.

André Derain French painter and engraver

André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.

While residing at the Bateau-Lavoir Picasso painted works such as Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a Pipe) in 1905, and one of his most noted works, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907, considered by art historians as a proto-Cubist painting (the precursor of a movement that became known as Cubism).

<i>Garçon à la pipe</i> painting by Pablo Picasso

Garçon à la Pipe is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was painted in 1905 when Picasso was 24 years old, during his Rose Period, soon after he settled in the Montmartre section of Paris, France. The oil on canvas painting depicts a Parisian boy holding a pipe in his left hand and wearing a garland or wreath of flowers.

<i>Les Demoiselles dAvignon</i> painting by Pablo Picasso

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is a large oil painting created in 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. The work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and are rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. The three figures on the left exhibit facial features in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The racial primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force."

Proto-Cubism transition phase in art history toward Cubism

Proto-Cubism is an intermediary transition phase in the history of art chronologically extending from 1906 to 1910. Evidence suggests that the production of proto-Cubist paintings resulted from a wide-ranging series of experiments, circumstances, influences and conditions, rather than from one isolated static event, trajectory, artist or discourse. With its roots stemming from at least the late 19th century this period can be characterized by a move towards the radical geometrization of form and a reduction or limitation of the color palette. It is essentially the first experimental and exploratory phase of an art movement that would become altogether more extreme, known from the spring of 1911 as Cubism.

Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, creative artists living at the Bateau-Lavoir and in the neighborhood began moving elsewhere, mainly to Montparnasse.

Bateau-Lavoir 2005 Bateau Lavoir for wikipedia by davequ.jpg
Bateau-Lavoir 2005

Notable residents

Notable events

The rebuilt building now on the site of Le Bateau-Lavoir Bateau-Lavoir face avant.jpg
The rebuilt building now on the site of Le Bateau-Lavoir

In 1908, a celebration banquet for Henri Rousseau was organized in Picasso's studio in the Bateau-Lavoir. [4]

One night, Amedeo Modigliani destroyed a number of his friends' paintings while in an alcoholic rage in the Bateau-Lavoir, according to memoirs of his daughter, Jeanne.

The Le Bateau-Lavoir is a featured setting in the 2018 season of Genius , which focuses on the life and art of Pablo Picasso.

See also

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References

  1. "Montmartre". Paris Digest. 2018. Retrieved 2018-08-11.
  2. Anderson, Darran (2013). Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN   9781623562878.
  3. "Bateau-Lavoir". www.serdar-hizli-art.com.
  4. Harris, Jessica B (26 October 2017). "The Dinners That Shaped History". Magazine Section: The New York Times. Retrieved 30 November 2017.

Coordinates: 48°53′09.24″N2°20′16.88″E / 48.8859000°N 2.3380222°E / 48.8859000; 2.3380222