Bateau-Lavoir

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Le Bateau-Lavoir (center), around 1910

Le Bateau-Lavoir was a dilapidated house on Montmartre at 13 rue Ravignan (today place Émile-Goudeau no. 13) in the 18th arrondissement in Paris . The name of the house went down in art history because at the turn of the 20th century a group of artists who later became famous lived there and rented studios. It was destroyed by fire in 1970 and reconstructed as a studio house in 1978 .

The house and its inhabitants

Le Bateau-Lavoir, 2006

Maxime Maufra was the first tenant in the house in 1892, which at that time was still called "Maison du Trappeur" (House of the Trapper). Spanish and Italian artists followed in the circle of the collector and painter Paco Durrio .

The German painter Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann , a pupil of the Académie Matisse , described the studio house as “an incredibly large wooden barrack, which, after Place Ravignan, was too single-story, stretched five floors down the slope at the back.” The name means “ wash ship ” in German. as the house resembled the boats on the Seine on which washerwomen did their work. Probably the writer, painter and resident Max Jacob gave it this name.

At the beginning of the 20th century a number of well-known artists and writers lived in the Bateau-Lavoir. One of the residents was Picasso , who took over the studio from Paco Durrio and lived there with his dog Frika from 1904 to 1909. In 1905 he met his first partner Fernande Olivier here . In this studio he painted the first Cubist works, created Gertrude Stein's portrait in 1906 and his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon the following year . The Bateau-Lavoir studio house can therefore be described as the birthplace of Cubism.

The art collector Gertrude Stein describes the frequent sessions in Picasso's studio for her portrait in her book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas : “There was a couch where everyone sat and slept, there was a small kitchen chair on which Picasso sat while painting, there was a large easel and there were a lot of pictures and there was a little fox terrier… ”So that she wouldn’t be bored, Picasso's companion Fernande Olivier read to her from the fables of La Fontaine .

In addition, Kees van Dongen , Otto Freundlich , Pablo Gargallo , Juan Gris , Max Jacob, Amedeo Modigliani , Pierre Reverdy and André Salmon found their affordable accommodation in the otherwise expensive Paris.

Furthermore, the house was a meeting point for many well-known people of the avant-garde , such as Guillaume Apollinaire , Georges Braque , Henri Matisse and Jean Cocteau , who visited the artists who lived there.

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, many artists moved to the La Ruche artists' colony in the Montparnasse district of Paris .

The house has been part of the Monuments Historiques of Paris since 1965 . In May 1970 the building was destroyed by fire and in 1978 it was replaced by a new building, which in turn houses 25 artist studios. The facade was reconstructed according to the original appearance.

  • Reconstructed facade of the Bateau-Lavoir, 2016

  • Showcase in the building next to the left of the Bateau-Lavoir, 2014

  • Place Émile-Goudeau ( Chansonnier des Montmartre)

The banquet for Rousseau

In November 1908, a banquet for Henri Rousseau was held in Picasso's studio in the Bateau-Lavoir, attended by many Montmartre artists and Picasso's friends. This banquet also went down in art history. The occasion was Picasso's purchase of Rousseau's portrait de femme , which he had bought from a second-hand dealer for five francs. Picasso took this painting with him when he moved and kept it until his death.

Participants of the well-known festival included Apollinaire, Braque, Salmon, Marie Laurencin , Modigliani, the gallery owner Wilhelm Uhde , Gertrude and Leo Stein and Gertrude's friend Alice B. Toklas . Rousseau was so completely convinced of the value of his paintings that among his contemporaries he only accepted Picasso, whose painting style he for inexplicable reasons considered "Egyptian". "We are the two greatest painters of our time," he said to Picasso at the banquet, "you in the Egyptian style and I in the modern."

There are at least five witness accounts of this historic meal, one of the most famous events from the childhood of modern art, but they contradict each other considerably. According to the hostess, Picasso's then companion Fernande Olivier , the customs officer Rousseau was sitting on a "throne", a chair that stood on a box; the studio was decorated with flags and lanterns, and a banner read: "Long live Rousseau!"

The writer Ursula von Kardorff writes in her book Adieu Paris about the festival that Rousseau thanked the speakers and took his violin to play: “He did not notice the wax from the candles dripping down on his bald head formed a small hill. Braque played the accordion, everyone danced. Everyone was pretty blue. Only the siblings Gertrude and Leo Stein and their friend Alice Toklas remained sober. [...] The festival ended when the sun was already in the sky. "

  • Pablo Picasso, 1904

  • Henri Rousseau: Portrait de femme , also called Yadwigha , around 1895, Musée Picasso , Paris

  • Henri Rousseau: Self-Portrait , 1902/03, Musée Picasso, Paris

Known residents

literature

Movies

  • Rendezvous in Paris. (OT: Les rendez-vous de Paris. ) Feature film, France, 1994, 95 min., Script and director: Éric Rohmer , production: Compagnie Éric Rohmer, Canal + ; Rendezvous in Paris in the Internet Movie Database .
  • The adventurers of modern art - 1. The bohemian era (1900–1906). (OT: Bohème (1900–1906). ) Documentary film with archive footage and animations, France, 2015, 48:51 min., Book: Dan Franck , director: Amélie Harrault, moderator: Anke Engelke , production: Silex Films, arte France, Financière Pinault, series: The adventurers of modern art (OT: Les aventuriers de l'art modern ), first broadcast: December 16, 2015 by arte, summary by ARD  / arte.

Web links

Commons : Bateau-Lavoir  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Bateau Lavoir. In: montmartre-guide.com , Le Guide Officiel de Montmartre (French, English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Le Bateau Lavoir in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  2. ↑ a b c d Lexicon entry: Le Bateau-Lavoir. Éditions Larousse, accessed January 15, 2020.
  3. ^ Wilfried Wiegand : Picasso. Rowohlt 1973, ISBN 978-3-499-50205-7 , p. 42.
  4. ↑ Rianne Ojeh, Evelina Hederer: Picasso in Paris, 1900-1907. ( Memento from June 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: holland.com Van Gogh Museum, February 3, 2011, (English).
  5. ↑ Ursula von Kardorff: Adieu Paris. P. 36.
  6. ↑ Tony Perrottet: partying with pablo. He was a genius in painting, less so in party planning. In: The Smart Set. Drexel University, July 8, 2008 ( thesmartset.com , accessed January 15, 2020).
  7. ↑ Customs officer Rousseau. From the department store . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1961 ( online - Apr. 5, 1961 ).
  8. ^ John Malcolm Brinnin : The banquet Rousseau. ( Memento of October 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). In: The third rose. Gertrude Stein and her world. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1991, ISBN 3-518-38320-5 , pp. 122-128.
  9. ↑ Ursula von Kardorff: Adieu Paris. 1993, p. 29 f.

Coordinates: 48 ° 53 ′ 9.2 "  N , 2 ° 20 ′ 16.9"  E