Bal Bullier

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Garden and building of Bal Bullier, postcard (before 1914)

The Bal Bullier was a famous dance palace in Paris , which from 1847 to 1940 offered its visitors - including students, employees and artists such as Ida Gerhardi , Robert and Sonia Delaunay - a space for dance activities and other leisure activities. It was in the 5th arrondissement in the Latin Quarter . The current address is 39, avenue Georges-Bernanos, Quartier du Val-de-Grâce; in its place stands the Center Bullier du CROUS , a university building.

history

François Bullier on an illustration from 1869
The ballroom
Invitation card for women to the "Bal de l'Internat 1910"

The former employee of the Bal de La Grande Chaumière , François Bullier (1796–1869), bought the Prado d'Ete in 1843 at 31, avenue de l'Observatoire in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. In 1847 he rebuilt the room, planted many lilac bushes and renamed it La Closerie des Lilas , which the establishment had already carried once (from 1804). The dance hall opened on May 9, 1847 and was initially mainly attended by students. The name then changed from "Jardin Bullier" to "Bal Bullier" to "Le Bullier". The decor was inspired by the style of the oriental Alhambra .

Over time and in line with fashion, visitors danced quadrille , waltz , mazurka , Scottish , polka and cancan there . Activities such as billiards and archery or pistol shooting were also offered. Well-known dancers like Jane Avril or La Goulue , who later became celebrities in the Moulin Rouge , which opened in 1889 , presented their dance skills here.

In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 the building served as a field hospital . During the First World War from 1914 to 1918 it was also closed and served as a factory for the manufacture of uniforms and could not reopen until 1920. The decor changed and approached the style of Dadaism .

In the 1930s, the place became a politically motivated meeting place. Among other things, members of anti-fascist groups and the French Communist Party, PCF, gathered here . People such as André Gide , Romain Rolland , Jacques Prévert and Ernst Thälmann were involved .

During the Second World War , the Bal Bullier was closed in 1940. After the war the building was demolished and the Center Bullier built, the official name is Center Jean-Sarrailh. The neighboring brasserie, formerly a post office , still exists today under the name La Closerie des Lilas , which it received in 1883. Here the visitors met before or after the dance. It became a well-known meeting place for intellectuals and artists.

Artist bohemian at Bal Bullier

Around 1900 the ballroom belonged to the Parisian bohemian artists , who met during opening hours on Thursdays and weekends. The German painter Ida Gerhardi moved to Paris in 1891 and continued her studies at the Académie Colarossi , which she had started at the women's academy of the Munich Artists' Association . She spent her most productive time in Paris, during which Bal Bullier's dance pictures were created between 1903 and 1905. For the 150th birthday of the painter in 2012, the State Museum for Art and Cultural History Oldenburg showed her pictures from this time in the exhibition: Ball rush and splendor of colors - Ida Gerhardi in Paris .

American painters also appreciated this meeting place. Maurice Prendergast painted a dancer in the ballroom in 1894. A dance scene by William Glackens followed in 1895 and by Alfred Henry Maurer in 1901 . In 1906, John Marin created an etching showing the outside of the building.

In 1913, the French artist couple Robert and Sonia Delaunay regularly visited the Tanzpalast. The couple entered it as a “living work of art”: Both were dressed in clothes specially designed for the visit by Sonia Delaunay in the style of the Orphism they developed in 1912 ; With the simultaneous contrast of the simultaneous presentation of warm and cold complementary colors , the impression of movement was created in the eye of the beholder by optical effects. Robert, for example, wore red socks, yellow and black shoes, black trousers, a green jacket with an azure blue waistcoat and a small red tie with his red coat with a blue collar. Sonia's dress consisted of different shades of rose, scarlet, yellow-orange and dark blue. There was also a purple-green belt. The artistic result of this year was Sonia Delaunay's tango- inspired simultaneous painting Le Bal Bullier , made up of colored surfaces, measuring 0.97 × 3.90 m, painted in oil on mattress fabric. It is in the holdings of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in the Center Georges Pompidou .

  • François Courboin: Ice-skating rink in Bal Bullier , 1876

  • Jules Chéret : Bullier poster , 1888

  • Georges Meunier: Bullier poster , 1894

  • Ida Gerhardi: Tanzbild XI (Bal Bullier) , 1903, LWL State Museum for Art and Cultural History Münster

  • Ida Gerhardi: Tanzbild VIII (Can-Can dancers at Bullier) , 1904, Lüdenscheid city museums

The three-act play, the lyrical comedy La Rondine by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini , premiered in the Monte Carlo Opera House in 1917 , plays in the second act in the Bal Bullier.

The Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï photographed a group of visitors around 1931, some of them sparingly clad women, as well as a decaying wall of the building in the 1940s.

The writer James Joyce and his publisher Sylvia Beach were also guests at the Bal Bullier. In April 1921 the signing of the contract to publish Joyce's novel Ulysses was celebrated there. Henry James , William Somerset Maugham , Edith Nesbit and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others, mentioned visits to the dance palace in their books.

literature

  • Robert Delaunay - Sonia Delaunay: The Center Pompidou visits Hamburg . Catalog for the exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle , Hamburger Kunsthalle 1999, ISBN 3-7701-5216-6
  • Ida Gerhardi, German artists in Paris . Catalog for the exhibition in the Städtische Galerie Lüdenscheid, Hirmer, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7774-4791-9

Web links

Commons : Bal Bullier  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from the web link Le Bal Bullier
  2. ↑ av Georges Bernanos , parisrevolutionnaire.com, accessed on 31 October 2013
  3. ↑ La Closerie des Lilas (PDF; 9.2 MB), parisquartierlatin.fr, p. 429, accessed on October 20, 2013
  4. ↑ Ballrausch and blaze of colors: Ida Gerhardi in Paris ( memento of September 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), landesmuseum-oldenburg.niedersachsen.de, accessed on August 11, 2015
  5. ^ Robert Delaunay - Sonia Delaunay: The Center Pompidou visits Hamburg . Pp. 23, 92, 98
  6. ^ Arthur Power: Conversations with Joyce , jstor.org, accessed October 13, 2013
  7. ↑ wordincontext.com: Bullier

Illustrations

  1. ↑ Maurice Prendergast: Bal Bullier , 1894 ( Memento of November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ William Glackens: Bal Bullier , 1895
  3. ^ Alfred Henry Maurer: Bal Bullier , 1901
  4. ↑ John Marin: Bal Bullier , 1906
  5. ^ Sonia Delaunay: Simultanist Dress , 1913
  6. ^ Sonia Delaunay: Le Bal Bullier ou Tango Bal Bullier , 1913
  7. ↑ Brassaï: Au Bal de la Horde au "Bullier" to 1931
  8. ^ Brassaï: Le mur de l'ancien bal Bullier , 1940s

Coordinates: 48 ° 50 ′ 25 "  N , 2 ° 20 ′ 15.5"  E