Series - Café and bistros in art
What would Paris be without its Café de Flore!!! The famous paper set designed by Sempé and which covers the tables on the terrace. How many are taken away every day... It must be said that it is a nice souvenir of Paris to bring back.
Watering trough, cafeton, stunner, gargote, bar, bibine, bistroquet, refreshment bar, cabaret, caboulot, tavern, estaminet, wine merchant, mastroquet, cork, harbour, restaurant, troquet, zinc, café...
Coffee is also the drink that arrived in Europe around 1600, introduced by Venetian merchants.
Engraving of the Café des incredibles from 1797.
“Madame du Barry taking her coffee” by Pierre Edouard Dagoty (Sep 12, 1775 - 1871). Jeanne Bécu, Countess du Barry, Mistress-in-title of Louis XV.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “At the Café”, circa 1877.
Gustave Caillebotte, “At the café”, 1880.
What a beauty ! “The Café”, by Édouard Manet, 1880.
Here is a “Woman by the Sea” from 1884 by Jean Béraud. He was born in 1849, in Saint Petersburg, so his father, a sculptor, probably worked on the construction site of Saint-Isaac Cathedral. Béraud spent his early childhood in Russia, he was only 4 years old when his mother, a widow, returned to France. As a young man, he joined the Beaux-Arts of Paris and became a painter appreciated by the art-loving bourgeoisie. Friend of Auguste Rodin, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes or Marcel Proust, whom he even witnessed during his duel with the writer Jean Lorrain.
“Le Café de nuit” by Vincent Van Gogh painted in 1888 represents the Café de la Gare, on Place Lamartine in Arles. The scene, as the title of the painting indicates, takes place at night, precisely at a quarter past midnight, according to the time displayed on the clock at the back of the room. It is a magnificent "photograph" of a café in Provence in the 19th century, large room with high ceilings, gas lamps, billiards, beer bottles and a bouquet of flowers.
“Café or portrait of Mme. Ginoux”, 1888 by Paul Gauguin.
Fernand Toussaint, “Café Jacqmotte, Brussels”, circa 1896.
"At the Bar" by Maurice de Vlaminck in 1900, he was 24 years old when he painted this painting. It’s certain that for the time, it must have been a hit!
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, “Chocolate dancing in a bar”, 1900.
Gene Kelly in “An American in Paris”, by Vincente Minnelli, 1951.
Jean Emile Laboureur "Bar in Pennsylvania", 1904.
Raoul Dufy, “Le Café à l’Estaque”, 1908.
This little gem from Édouard Vuillard, “Table Served”.
Pierre Bonnard, "Le Café", 1915. It is in front of a painting like this that I feel what my grandfather, Aimé Maeght, explained to me about Bonnard's art. I obviously talk a lot about the artist in my book, but this passage corresponds so much to this painting. As a reminder, the two men met in Cannes, when Grandpa was a worker in a printing house.
“The discussions between the two men [Pierre Bonnard and Aimé Maeght] make the foal mature and his understanding of the image, both intuitive and technical until now, is enriched with knowledge and sensitivity.
Later, Grandpa would confide: “A very curious kind of friendship had formed between Bonnard and me which went beyond the friendship of two men with such a difference in age. For me, Bonnard is “the” painter. In the long discussions I had with him, it was he who was the basis of my evolution and the opening of my mind to living art. Without Bonnard, I might have continued like the other merchants. Bonnard arrived at the moment in my life when I wanted to make this big leap towards modern art and it was he, first through his painting and through the many reflections and the numerous discussions that we had together, who inspired me. made us understand what modern art could be. » Excerpt from The Maeght Saga.
A hell of a photo that could sum up in itself what the artistic communities of Paris were like. Moïse Kisling, Pâquerette and Picasso, in Montparnasse at the La Rotonde café, photographed on August 12, 1916, by Jean Cocteau!
Kisling's haircut is truly incredible, as for Paquerette, she wears this funny Chinese hat, Picasso is more sober, cap and pipe in his mouth.
Kisling, we don't talk about it enough and yet what a painter!
Pâquerette was an actress whose real name was Marguerite Jeanne Puech, she toured with the greatest, Marcel l'Herbier, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jacques Becker, Yves Allegret and so many others...
This photo is truly a little piece of art history. It is part of an entire reel, and yet film was expensive and rare at the time. The same day Cocteau photographed the friends of Montparnasse with, among others, Modigliani, Max Jacob, André Salmon, Manuel Ortiz de Zarate, Picasso, Kisling!
Diego Rivera, “The Café Terrace”, 1915. Between cubism and pointillism. Everything is there: the pedestal table, the absinthe spoon, the siphon…
Drink a kawa at the counter, with Amedeo Modigliani, who died in 1920, he is in the center, all in black.
A quick lunch with a friend at "Chop Suey", with Edward Hopper as witness, 1929.
“At the café with Fernand Fleuret”, 1940, by the Breton painter Pierre Savigny de Belay.
"Rarely provincial of my age (I was fifteen to sixteen years old) was, without transition, transplanted into such a singular environment. I met Picasso daily who was in the middle of the blue era. Guillaume Apollinaire, armored in velvet and ringed with evil stones, laid the foundations of a new religion – assisted by André Salmon, Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco It was the full bloom of Cubism, but it had no influence on me a fundamental law guided my research: the study of nature alone can lead any artistic creator to perfect his means of expression.
Portrait of Alexander Calder by Saul Steinberg from 1946.
You have to look carefully at the details, the bistro chair, the mustard pot... And the face, that's really it! Calder was in Paris in 1946 for an exhibition.
Steinberg, too, is a devotee of Paris and the Galerie Maeght. Two Americans in Paris.
Masterpiece of photography, Robert Doisneau, “Café noir et blanc, Joinville-le-Pont”, 1948.
Léonard Foujita, “At the café”, 1949.
Tsuguharu Foujita means: heir of peace and field of wisteria!
Tokyo and Paris are his two homelands, of birth and of heart: “My body grew up in Japan, but my painting grew up in France,” said Foujita. The composition is astonishing, with the edge of the table slightly slanted, taking up the codes of Dutch still lifes, the colors also recall them, and this small space under the table, which catches our eye, the mystery is there!
This corner of Saint Germain des Prés has not changed too much. Marguerite Duras on the terrace of Petit Saint Benoit, photo Robert Doisneau, 1952.
at the Wiener café by Moriz Jung.
Alberto and Annette Giacometti, Café Express, Paris. December 1957. Photo by Robert Doisneau.
Ahhhh, good coffee, unheard of, it hasn't even gotten cold since 1961, Roy Lichtenstein, "Cup of Coffee". This is an emblematic work of Pop Art. Representation of everyday or over-consumption objects. The object, nothing but the object.
"Café terrace", Alberto Giacometti, plate from "Paris sans fin", sublime book composed of original lithographs", 1965.
Jörg Immendorff, "Cafe Deutschland", 1980.
Between 1977 and 1982, Immendorff created a series of paintings, drawings and prints entitled Café Deutschland, in which the opposing ideologies of East and West Germany are depicted on a metaphorical stage.
Uninhabited tables occupy the foreground of this monumental canvas, on which candles burn in red, black and yellow — the colors of the German flag. On the surface of a large freestanding bookcase on the left, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate is painted, seen from the west. Small figures desperately climb the library; it's a stand-in for the Berlin Wall, which physically divided the city from 1961 to 1989.
Manolo Valdes, “La Taza”, 1994.
For my Cafés and bistros series, the most beautiful counter is that of the Café de la Place in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, of course. At the very end of the counter, on the wall, “Fanny” see below.
This jewel hangs on the wall, it is the Fanny of the Café de la Place in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
It was Caesar, the sculptor who created it; the Dadaists would not have denied it.
Being "Fanny" in the south is when at pétanque a loser has not scored any points in the game, so he has to kiss Fanny's buttocks.
So we crowd in front of the little theater, attracted by the ardently ringing bell, the curtain is closed, the loser is placed in front, and under the whoops, the curtain opens and he must kiss the beautiful pink buttocks. César even hung a mini stool “for the little ones”. Public humiliation which announces a general tour! Traditions are not lost, and that's fortunate.
Coffee with Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich.
Dear Jacques Brel, timeless.
Morning coffee with Marilyn is even better.
Aki Kuroda, a must in Parisian bars, here rue Daguerre, photo by my sister Flo.
And finally, another painting by Pierre Bonnard.
Pierre Bonnard, “The red checkered tablecloth or “Luncheon with the dog”, 1910.
We feel the dog's wait, we imagine his gaze trying to catch that of the woman, and yet Bonnard does not need to paint the detail of the eyes. This is what makes it fabulous, it gives an impulse and the spectator continues his work.