1920s PARIS

It was the decade of Coco Chanel, Joséphine Baker Art Deco, Surrealism, pochoir art of breezy ladies and the latest fashions, café culture and cabarets. American luminaries mingled with European artists like Dalí and Picasso in Montparnasse’s bohemian arts scene, while artists captured the vibrant dance halls of Montmartre. Carefully curated pictures and text offer us an immersion into Paris life in a wild time. Paris is the City of Light in all its facets. In the 1920s La Ville des lumières gleamed especially bright and became a magnet for creative people from around the world. The most famous artists of the epoch, later called Classic Modernism, were in close contact and had lively exchanges with one another -- including Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, René Clair, Sonia Delaunay, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. The creative life and all its excesses flourished– bohème is the word for this way of living. Composers like Igor Stravinsky, writers like James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway and exiles from Eastern Europe like Constantin Brancuşi or Marc Chagall enriched the illustrious scene on Montparnasse. The pulsing bars and dance halls of Montmartre were captured by photographers André Kertesz and Brassaï. The French economy was booming and luxury department stores like La Samaritaine opened their doors. Coco Chanel created her own perfume and designed the little black dress. More than 30 outstanding works of architecture, painting, sculpture, film, photography, design and fashion are presented, including Giacometti’s Surrealist Suspended Ball and the film Un chien andalou by Dalí and Luis Buñuel. Each picture or piece of art introduces us to the artist behind it with a  a biography and career examination. The long introductions put the entire period in perspective with many more illustrations and photos. To this day, the burgeoning creativity, diversity and savoir vivre make Paris a place of longing for night owls, bons vivants and aficionados of the fine arts.