MONTMARTRE
Way
back when I was a small boy, a 5th 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.
