MONTMARTRE

MONTMARTRE

Way back when I was a small boy, a 5^th grader as I recall, my mother decided that it was time for me to be exposed to the arts rather than just the games that boys play; thus music lessons were in order as well as a change of bedroom décor – from model airplanes to famous paintings. In actuality, the model airplanes remained, only suspended in “flight” from the ceiling. There were two walls that she had to “play” with, the other two being occupied by a large picture window and a big, walk-in closet. One day she made a trip down to the Tro Harper bookstore on Powell Street (San Franciscans from my generation might remember that wonderful place) and returned with what she was certain were real treasures (albeit inexpensive). On one wall, she hung large, framed prints by Maurice Utrillo and on the other, framed prints by Vincent Van Gogh. Now these weren’t just the paper prints we commonly see today, but prints mounted on heavy, textured cardboard so as to give texture to the prints, as though they actually were paintings. And for years afterward, until I left at age eighteen, they hung there, and I looked at them, and wondered, and dreamed.

There was Utrillo’s 1938 Montmartre,

  

his 1937 Lapin Agile,

  

his 1934 Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre and Passage Cottin,

 

and lastly his 1914 Street in Paris.

 

To the right of those, on the next wall was my Van Gogh “collection”: Wheat Field and Cypresses (1889),

  

Starry Night (1889),

  

Café Terrace at Night (1888),

  

Irises (1889),

  

and just for good measure, upstairs, over the fireplace was Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1888).

  

Irises I wasn’t so excited about. What young boy really is; however, especially in summer, I used to look at Wheat Field and could easily imagine being right there — I could smell the wheat and the cypresses carried on a warm breeze. I used to imagine myself at one of the tables in Café Terrace at Night, on the Place du Forum in Arles, just watching the world go by. And Starry Night I could look at for hours — as though in a dream courtesy of Vincent. I found myself wanting to go to the Lapin Agile of Utrillo’s painting, and wanted to go inside, even though I had no idea what a lapin agile was or what the actual place was. I could imagine people walking past the wine and liquor store in his Montmartre, wondered what the church at the top of the butte in Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre was like inside, and wished I could go into the boulangerie in Street in Paris — I could almost smell the bread baking.

It was at about that same time that I became acquainted with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec via John Houston’s 1952 production of Moulin Rouge with José Ferrer as Lautrec. What a marvelous movie; one in which Houston went to great lengths to match the appearance of actors and actresses with the characters of Lautrec’s Montmartre posters and paintings, not to mention the incredible detail paid to the interior shots of the cabarets and bars. His characters came alive and I was enthralled by their exoticism.

 

So one might say that in a sense I grew up in Montmartre, at least the Montmartre of the time of Van Gogh, Utrillo, Degas, and so many other artists, as well as the Montmartre of the Chat Noir, the Moulin Galette, and the Moulin Rouge. Montmartre was art, it was music, and was home to so many famous and some notorious folk that stirred the imagination. I went there once. Some visitors to France prefer the Louvre, or Versailles, or the Riviera, but not I. Montmartre was art and life at its grittiest, even then. I could almost hear the ghosts; for it was both wonderful and ghostly all at once. Truth be told, if I were to live in Paris, I would most certainly have to live in Montmartre — no other place would do.

There is a lot more to Montmartre than the average person realizes in terms of its history, art, music, and people. I made the district a sort of hobby and have studied it off and on through the decades, and I hope over the next few weeks to share some of what I have learned about this wonderful, ghostly, sinister and strange place.