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By Maximillien de La Croix de Lafayette
Located right in
the heart of artistic Bohemia and Paris' criminal underworld, the establishments
of the Montmartre district were perfectly equipped to serve it up...and to
fulfill that yen which the French even coined a phrase for, that is 'la
nostalgie de la boue' (verbatim: longing for mud).
Crowning the
Montmartre-based world of commercial entertainment was Joseph Oller and Charles
Zidler's landmark music hall, the Moulin Rouge. When the Moulin Rouge opened
its doors on the Place
Blanche at the foot of Montmartre on the 6th of October 1889, all Paris turned
out. Highbrow and lowbrow society alike mobbed the 'Palace of Women' before the
paintwork was dry on its extravagantly decorated interior. The Moulin Rouge's
decor, by Montmartre painter Adolphe Willette, its exotic colors, form and
themeing became an overnight legend. Besides the immense dance hall complete
with galleries to watch the dance floor and an orchestra mounted above the
stage, there was a garden with another stage, cafe tables, cavorting monkeys and
unstockinged prostitutes riding donkeys.
Photo, left: The
legendary La Goulue, former Queen of the Parisian Cabaret and Super Star of Le
Moulin Rouge.
Also in the
garden, as you already know, giant
elephant (gleaned when the Universal Exhibition of 1889 terminated) housed an
Arabian-themed club inside its body. Male clients entered via the elephant's leg
where a spiral staircase opened onto belly dancing performances, an orchestra
and an opium den. Making a radical break with the century's relentless class
divisions, a microcosm of Parisian society rubbed shoulders in scandalous
proximity. European royalty (including the Prince of Wales), ambassadors,
politicians, industrialists and magistrates slummed it with celebrity
courtesans, can-can girls and workers.
The local Montmartre
Bohemians and the cocottes and noctambules (prostitutes), pimps, madams and
thieves who were their neighbors were also out in force. Within the Moulin's
velvet draped walls, the aromas of women's scent, face powder, tobacco, and beer
mingled as promiscuously as the audience. In a class of their own were the
courtesans, a social phenomena that all but died out with the end of the Belle
Epoque and the beginning of World War I. Though springing from the same working
class as the prostitutes, the
more celebrated
courtesans were distinguished by the length and high-style of the relationships
they formed (with, near exclusively, the elite of Europe).
Photo, left: Teri
Hatcher, the face of a contemporary American Cabaret Star
Photo right, up: Toulouse-Lautrec
Like today's
film stars and super-models, they were also cultishly observed by press and
public. But if the Moulin Rouge quickly established its reputation as the most
exotic sex market in Paris, it also represented a kind of cultural and social
revolution. Think of it as a can-can-besotted version of Steve Rubell's
disco-crazed Studio 54 crossed with Bangkok's sex market meets Mardi Gras'
carnival. The Bohemian's anti-establishment mores thrived in Montmartre, whose
Butte district was honeycombed with the studios of struggling, long-haired
poets, painters, sculptors, musicians and students.
Photo, left: The
famous and delightfully infamous, Mome Fromage.
Shunning the
bourgeois world of their parents generation, the Bohemians plunged into cafe
society, leftist ideologies and a drug and alcohol culture that many - notably
the legendary poet Rimbaud and his lover Verlaine - saw as the gateway to
artistic inspiration and transcendence. With characteristically anarchistic
verve, Bohemian artists broke with the ultra conservative Academies and took art
to the streets with their posters, overnight magazines, satiric cabarets,
costume balls and the democratized theatre of the cafe-concerts. Painters began
to observe the demimonde - the streetwalkers, beggars, drunks and petty crims
they cohabited amongst - with a frankness and an observational wit that
challenged establishment mores.
Artist Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, reluctant scion of one of France's oldest aristocratic houses,
became one of the most notorious Bohemians of fin de siecle Montmartre.
At
4'11" - a genetic bone condition had
stunted his growth,
Lautrec immortalized the inhabitants of bar, brothel and dance hall in his
paintings, prints and posters with a stylishly simplified perspective that is
now credited as one of the earliest forms of visual Modernism. Lautrec, whom a
contemporary described as 'a queer top-heavy little man, swaying on his stunted
legs like a ship at sea,' was a favorite at the Moulin Rouge with management and
dancers alike. Armed with his legendary wit and drafting skills, and a
fashionably fatal alcoholic habit, the diminutive Frenchman partied and observed
the world from his regular table, often till dawn.