Paris, a happy-go-lucky place.
The pianist and composer Frederic Chopin came to this
conclusion in 1831, shortly after arriving m the Seine metropole as a
Polish emigre. "You can amuse yourself here, you can laugh — you can
delight in all things. And no one gives you dirty looks, for here everyone
does what they please." Half a century later, Montmartre was looked on as
the centre of dissolute life in Paris. A quartier on the urban
fringes, Montmartre had only recently become part of the city. Where pious
nuns had once prayed and decent wine-growers earned an honest, hardworking
wage, beggars, prostitutes and drug dealers were now in abundance. They
were followed by singers, writers and penniless painters, all of them
unknown. This dubious artists' colony was to turn Montmartre into a
household name, even though its fame was of a decidedly dubious nature.
Most of the money earned there fell into the pockets of pimps, pickpockets
and streetwalkers. Montmartre was shunned by the bourgeoisie and by most
successful artists.
The poet Aristide Bruant was one artist who managed to
make a living there. Born in 1851, he left the local lycee at the
age of seventeen because his family faced financial ruin. Working as a
goldsmith and on the railway, he became intimately acquainted with
destitution and the underworld. His experience provided the material for
the many chansons he wrote and sang, making him one of the first French
chansonniers as we know them today. After founding his own cabaret in
Montmartre, where his mocking of the public was met with outrage, he made
the acquaintance of a young painter in 1886. A scion of the aristocracy,
the twenty-two-year-old
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
was fascinated by Montmartre. As Bruant's friend, he became the leading
chronicler of Pans nightlife. Painting in bars and brothels, dance-halls
and cabarets, he also found time to draw for a gazette Bruant had launched
and illustrated the poet's chansons when they were published. The public
got to know
Toulouse-Lautrec
through his posters. He sold his first one to the Moulin Rouge music-hall.
Well-founded criticism was offset by a strong resistance to
Toulouse-Lautrec's
style of poster. When Bruant was planning to appear at Les Ambassadeurs, a
cafe with concerts in the centre of the city, the stage manager was
appalled by the poster designed for the occasion. He considered it a cheap
advertisement and a "nasty smear" on his establishment. Bruant however,
already a celebrated eccentric, simply refused to appear in the cafe if
the poster was not displayed — a poster that is now one of the most famous
in the world.
