In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Klüver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Café de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. The people were wearing the same clothes in each shot and had the same accessories. Their ties were knotted the same way and their collars had the same wrinkles. A total of twenty-four photographs—four rolls of film with six photographs each—were eventually found. With the challenge of identifying the date, photographer, and circumstances, Klüver embarked on an inquiry that would illuminate the minute texture of that time and place. Biographical research into the subjects' lives led Klüver to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. He then measured buildings and plotted angles and lengths of shadows in the photographs to narrow the time frame to a spread of three weeks. Further investigation eventually allowed Klüver to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. A computer printout of the sun's positions on that date, obtained from the Bureau des Longitudes, together with the length of the shadows, enabled Klver to calculate the time of day of each photograph, and thus to put them in proper sequence. In a tour de force of art historical research, Klüver then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs. With evocative attention to detail—noting when Picasso is no longer carrying an envelope or Max Jacob has acquired a decoration in his lapel—Klüver recreates a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early twentieth-century Paris. Besides the central "portfolio" of photographs by Cocteau, the book contains additional photographs and drawings, short biographies of all the subjects, and a historical section on the events and activities in the Paris art world at the time.
From 1900 to 1930, Montparnasse was the center of artistic life for the whole world. Now this major contribution to the social and cultural history of the period -- with its informative text and hundreds of photographs -- is available in paperback once again.
from Man Ray's early years in the blossoming artistic and political avant-garde in New York, through the heady days of Paris in the twenties, to Man Ray's years in Hollywood.
In 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Klüver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs fell into significant groupings. One group in particular, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Café de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. The people were wearing the same clothes in each shot and had the same accessories. Their ties were knotted the same way and their collars had the same wrinkles. A total of twenty-four photographs—four rolls of film with six photographs each—were eventually found. With the challenge of identifying the date, photographer, and circumstances, Klüver embarked on an inquiry that would illuminate the minute texture of that time and place. Biographical research into the subjects' lives led Klüver to focus on the summer of 1916 as the likely time the photos were taken. He then measured buildings and plotted angles and lengths of shadows in the photographs to narrow the time frame to a spread of three weeks. Further investigation eventually allowed Klüver to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916. A computer printout of the sun's positions on that date, obtained from the Bureau des Longitudes, together with the length of the shadows, enabled Klver to calculate the time of day of each photograph, and thus to put them in proper sequence. In a tour de force of art historical research, Klüver then reconstructed a scenario of the events of the four hours depicted in the photographs. With evocative attention to detail—noting when Picasso is no longer carrying an envelope or Max Jacob has acquired a decoration in his lapel—Klüver recreates a single afternoon in the lives of Picasso and friends, a group of remarkable people in early twentieth-century Paris. Besides the central "portfolio" of photographs by Cocteau, the book contains additional photographs and drawings, short biographies of all the subjects, and a historical section on the events and activities in the Paris art world at the time.
Marcel Duchamp called it "the first really international colony of artists we ever had." The promise of personal freedom and self-fulfillment brought a generation of artists, writers and pleasure-seekers to the quarter-mile area on the Left Bank known as Montparnasse between 1900 and 1930. And at the center of that life was Kiki, known as the queen of the artists' quarter, who has come to symbolize everything Montparnasse had to offer. The artists, writers and composers who were there--Apollinaire, Léger, Mirò, Cocteau, Joyce, Modigliani, Brancusi Pound, Satie, Calder, Duchamp, Matisse, Hemingway, Mondrian, Man Ray, Pascin, Picasso, Soutine, Stravinsky, Stein, and countless others--created modern culture as we know it. For this book, the authors have chosen among thousands of photographs, many never before published, and interviewed artists and models who were there, to convey in photographs and text the reality and flavor of our century's greatest experiment in freedom.--From publisher description.
From 1900 to 1930, Montparnasse was the center of artistic life for the whole world. Now this major contribution to the social and cultural history of the period -- with its informative text and hundreds of photographs -- is available in paperback once again.
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