Le Chat Noir

For other uses, see Chat Noir (disambiguation).

Théophile Steinlen's 1896 poster advertising a tour to other cities ("coming soon") of the Le Chat Noir's troupe of cabaret entertainers

Le Chat Noir (French pronunciation: [lə ʃa nwaʁ]; French for "The Black Cat") was a nineteenth-century entertainment establishment, in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris. It opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart by the impresario Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 not long after Salis' death (much to the disappointment of Picasso and others who looked for it when they came to Paris for the Exposition in 1900).

Le Chat Noir is thought to be the first modern cabaret: a nightclub where the patrons sat at tables and drank alcoholic beverages while being entertained by a variety show on stage. The acts were introduced by a master of ceremonies who interacted with well-known patrons at the tables. Its imitators have included cabarets from St. Petersburg (Stray Dog Café) to Barcelona (Els Quatre Gats).

Perhaps best known now by its iconic Théophile Steinlen poster art, in its heyday it was a bustling nightclub that was part artist salon, part rowdy music hall. From 1892 to 1895 the cabaret published a weekly magazine with the same name, featuring literary writings, news from the cabaret and Montmartre, poetry, and political satire.

Early history

Detail from LE CHAT NOIR journal, number 152, 6 Decembre 1884.

The cabaret began by renting the cheapest accommodations it could find, a small two-room site located at 84 Boulevard Rochechouart, (now commemorated only by a historical plaque). Its success was assured with the wholesale arrival of a group of radical young writers and artists called Les Hydropathes ("those who are afraid of water — so they drink only wine"), a club led by the journalist Émile Goudeau. The group claimed to be averse to water, preferring wine and beer. Their name doubled as a nod to the "rabid" zeal with which they advocated their sociopolitical and aesthetic agendas. Goudeau’s club met in his house on the Rive Gauche (left bank), but had become so popular that it outgrew its meeting place. Salis met Goudeau, whom he convinced to relocate the club meeting place across the river to 84 Boulevard Rochechouart.

The cabaret began by serving bad wine and had a rather inferior decor, but from the first, at the door, guests were greeted by a Swiss guard, splendidly bedecked and covered with gold from head to foot. The guard supposedly was responsible for bringing in the painters and poets who arrived, while barring the "infamous priests and the military." Eventually Salis' tongue-in-cheek admirational piece was on a high marble fireplace: The skull of Louis XIII as a child.

Second site

Second location of Le Chat Noir was 12 Rue Victor-Masse Paris (image from 1929)

Le Chat Noir soon outgrew its first site. Three and a half years after opening, its popularity forced it to move into larger accommodations a few doors down, in June 1885. Located at 12 Rue Victor-Masse (which before 1885 had been Rue de Laval 12), the new establishment was sumptuous. It was the old private mansion of the painter Alfred Stevens, who, at the request of Salis, had transformed it into a "fashionable country inn" with the help of the architect Maurice Isabey. On 10 June 1885, with great fanfare, Salis moved to new premises at 12 Rue Victor-Masse. Very quickly, poets and singers who performed at Le Chat Noir found the best practice for their craft to be had in Paris.

With exaggerated, ironic politeness, Salis most often played the role of conférencier (post-performance lecturer, or emcee). It was here that the Salon des Arts Incohérents (Salon of Incoherent Arts), shadow plays, and comic monologues got their start.

Salis declared that the Chat Noir is the most extraordinary cabaret in the world. You rub shoulders with the most famous men of Paris, meeting there with foreigners from every corner of the world."

Famous men and women to patronize the Chat Noir included Jane Avril, Franc-Nohain, Adolphe Willette, Caran d'Ache, André Gill, Émile Cohl, Paul Bilhaud, Sarah England, Paul Verlaine, Henri Rivière, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Charles Cros, Jules Laforgue, Yvette Guilbert, Charles Moréas, Albert Samain, Louis Le Cardonnel, Coquelin Cadet, Emile Goudeau, Alphonse Allais, Maurice Rollinat, Maurice Donnay, Armand Masson, Aristide Bruant, Théodore Botrel, Paul Signac, Porfirio Pires, August Strindberg, George Auriol, Marie Krysinska, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,

Last location

Modern appearance of the last site of Le Chat Noir at 68, Boulevard de Clichy

The cabaret would later move to 68, Boulevard de Clichy.

The last shadow play by Salis's company was staged in January 1897, after which Salis took the company on tour. Salis was talking of plans to move the cabaret to a location in Paris itself, but died on 19 March 1897. Other cabarets successfully copied and adapted the model established by the Chat Noir. In December 1899 Henri Fursy opened his Boîte à Fursy cabaret in the former Chat Noir hôtel on rue Victor-Massé. He claimed to have inherited the mantle of Salis, and said his cabaret "has thanks to Fursy become once again the goal of all who 'climb Montmartre' to hear their favorite chansonniers..."

Le Chat Noir on Boulevard de Clichy remained popular into the 1920s. Today, this last location has been transformed into a modern boutique hotel, with a few nods to its raucous past.

Shadow play

Le Chat Noir was being designed as a meeting place for artists with a Louis XIII-style interior. At first, they were poets, musicians, writers and singers who acted on stage, but quickly emerged in the Shadow Play of Le Chat Noir: the type of performances which would be remembered for.

Shadow Play was a show that had long been settled in Europe during the eighteenth century in France Dominique Séraphin, but it had vanished art scene during the nineteenth century. So, Le Chat Noir will revive this type of shows in France constructing scenes and characters based on figures and projected cuts as shadow puppets.

The birth of shadow play, there was a rather peculiar way: at the end of 1885 the painter Henry Sommer and the illustrator George Auriol built a puppet theater in Le Chat Noir, designed to make shows for adults. The painter Henri Rivière placed on a white napkin against the opening of small and puppet theater that night, while Jules Jouy sang a song accompanying on the piano cabaret. This was the first show of the Shadow Play at Le Chat Noir.

Later, in 1887, Rivière substituted for a real puppet shadow play, which came with a screen measuring 1.12 meters high and 1.40 meters wide, which is attached through a huge frame.

Artists like the caricaturist Adolphe Willette, the artist Caran d'Ache, Henri Rivière and George Auriol created the cabaret shadow shows. Zinc plates were used to cut the silhouette of several figures or characters (although at first it was used cardboard), which is then used as puppets and its shadow projected on a white screen, illuminating -the behind with electric lights, a method developed by Shadows Plays. The writers who frequented the club wrote stories for this shows and Rodolphe Salis narrated them. [8] Thanks to the collaboration of many artists of the time,Le Chat Noir was able to make complex color effects, sound and movement that accompanied the stories and made the shows more dynamic and exciting. These projections also had a musical accompaniment, usually played by Albert Tincher, the main local pianist, although sometimes other artists, such as Claude Debussy, and they also play the piano during the screenings.

This famous shadow show was projecting performances every night for 11 years, with a repertoire of 40 plays. There are some of the figures used to make zinc works at the Museum of Montmartre.

The spread of this type of show, as well as by its popularity, carried out thanks to the famous poster artist Théophile Steinlen, announcing the Tournée du Chat Noir avec Rodolphe Salis, a tour of Shadows Plays.

The other ways by which these shows were so popular were the weekly magazine that they published. This magazine contains literary works of contemporary authors, cabaret stories, activities that could be in Montmartre, poems, drawings, political cartoons and which specific performances would they do that evening at Le Chat Noir, including the famous shadow play. This weekly literary satirical promo called Le Chat Noir and published between 1882 and 1895 consisted of four pages and it was published every Saturday. Some contributors to the magazine were famous writers such as Guy de Maupassant, Victor Hugo and Edmond de Goncourt.

Le Chat Noir made several tours with the Shadow Play. These tours were started since 1892, mainly in France, and during the summer, although Salis and his company were also going to Tunisia, Algeria and French culture in various countries, such as Belgium. This gave many renowned artists to the Salis' Shadow Play, which made some of them founded their own cabarets and shows.

In January 1897, the cabaret did its last show of shadow play and Salis made a last tour with his company. After this tour, Salis died and his wife was in charge of cabaret, organizing tours of the shows. During the following performances of shadow play, Dominique Bonnaud replaced Salis as narrator. Then, although the Bonnaud performance was quite remarkable, the quality of the performances were increasingly low. At that time, other institutions had already taken over the French art scene copying many of the shows, techniques and decorative elements of Le Chat Noir.

Cultural associations

A poster of "Le Chat Noir" may be seen prominently in the crime scene photographs from the 2001 murder of Kathleen Peterson by her husband and novelist Michael Peterson.

Le Chat Noir is the name of the nightclub where Frank Sinatra and Natalie Wood rekindle their relationship, in the 1958 movie Kings Go Forth. There is also the famous cat painting with blinking eyes on the entrance wall.

References

Sources

• Baldran, Jacqueline (2002). Paris, carrefour des arts et des lettres: 1880-1918. L'Harmattan. p. 62. ISBN 978-2-7475-3141-2. Retrieved 23 September 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Nichols, Roger (2002). The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris, 1917-1929. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-23736-0. Retrieved 23 September 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Vogel, Shane (2009). The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance. U of Chicago P. p. 30. ISBN 9780226862521. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Whiting, Steven Moore (18 February 1999). Satie the Bohemian : From Cabaret to Concert Hall: From Cabaret to Concert Hall. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-158452-7. Retrieved 23 September 2013. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Le Chat Noir 1892-1891 at BnF