156 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | November 2019 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk
LIFE IS A
CABARET
The Barbican shines a spotlight on
the places where history’s most
spirited artists and performershave thrived
By FRANCES HEDGES
EXHIBITIONS
whose work was too fragile, ephem-
eral or experimental to have been
properly documented. ‘This exhibi-
tion has allowed me to celebrate
artists who may never be part of
the canon, simply because there
aren’t tangible objects to remember
them by,’ says the curator Florence
Ostende. ‘Many of them were doing completely different work
from what you’d find at the salons and academies.’
Clubs and cabarets have long served as catalysts for creative
experimentation, allowing performers to express themselves
freely, outside the confines of a particular art form. In the 1890s,
for instance, Paris’ notorious Folies Bergère became the testing
ground for the American dancer Loïe Fuller’s pioneering perfor-
mances, described by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé as simultaneously
an ‘intoxication of art’ and an ‘industrial achievement’. Dressed
in swathes of silk and using a projector-based technique of herW
ith its graphic style,
eye-catching colour
palette and bewhisk-
ered black cat, the
Chat Noir poster has become syn-
onymous with French cabaret. It is
also, fittingly, the point of departure
for the Barbican’s ambitious new
exhibition, ‘Into the Night’, which reveals the important role played
by clubs, cafés and other social spaces in the history of artistic
production. Starting in the bohemian Parisian neighbourhood of
Montmartre in the 1880s – home to Le Chat Noir and its famous
shadow plays – the immersive show transports visitors all the way
to 1960s Tehran, taking in New York, London, Mexico City, Berlin,
Vienna and Ibadan. There are encounters with numerous house-
hold names, from the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris to
the jazz composer Duke Ellington in Harlem, but there are also
introductions to lesser-known designers, performers and writers
Clockwise from right: ‘Untitled (Vor dem Auftritt/
Before the Performance)’ by Jeanne Mammen
(about 1928). ‘Réouverture du Cabaret du Chat
Noir (Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret)’ by
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, 1896. A Frederick
Glasier photograph of Loïe Fuller, from about- Jeanne Mammen’s ‘Sie Reprasentiert! (She
Represents!)’ from 1928
IMAGES: JEANNE-MAMMEN-STIFTUNG AT STADTMUSEUM BERLIN, © DACS 2019. PHOTO, © MATHIAS SCHORMANN, BERLIN. © VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, WASHINGTON DC, MUSÉE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS, PARIS, © VIOLA ROEHR V ALVENSLEBEN, MUNICH, PHOTO: AKG-IMAGES, KUNSTHALLE EMDEN – STIFTUNG HENRI UND ESKE NANNEN, © ELKE WALFORD, FOTOWERKSTATT HAMBURG, ARIEL MUZICANT COLLECTION, VIENNA, COURTESY OF CHRISTIAN HESSE AUCTIONS