Valse mignonne – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

European research tour exhibition: ‘Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art’ at the Barbican Art Gallery, UK Part 2

Exhibition dates: 4th October 2019 – 19th January 2020

Visited October 2019 posted January 2020

Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931)
The Ciné-bal (cinema-ballroom) at Café L’Aubette, Strasbourg, designed by Theo van Doesburg
1926-1928
Image: Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, donation Van Moorsel, archive (code): DOES, inv.nr AB5252

Part 2 on this exceptional exhibition. Of particular interest here are:

the inspired paintings and drawings by Jeanne Mammen of Berlin nightlife which documents “the changing role of women and offer rare images of queer female desire.” Her work, associated with the New Objectivity and Symbolism movements, is incisive and sympathetic in its observation of difference and “depravity”. Her line is strong and the characterisation, assured;

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler’s “scenes of Hamburg after dark [which] convey a raw sense of possibility through bold line, clashing colour and startling imagery.” The attitude of the hands in the painting Lissy (1931, below) balanced by the simplicity of the chair at left, and the furious line and bleeding, washes of watercolour of the men at the table at right – replete with their protruding, predatory teeth – make this a compelling image.

I think I might have found myself a new art hero.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Barbican Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the media photographs in the posting. All installation images are iPhone images by Dr Marcus Bunyan. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Strasbourg: L’Aubette 1928 wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931)
L’Aubette: Projet de composition pour le sol du café-brasserie et du café-restaurant (L’Aubette: Design for a composition for the floor of the café-brasserie and the café-restaurant) (installation view)
1927
Gouache and graphite pencil on tracing paper
Paris, Centre Pompidou – Museé national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Theo van Doesburg (Dutch, 1883-1931)
Final colour design for the screen wall of the Ciné-Dancing at L’Aubette (installation view)
1927
East India ink and paint on paper
Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. Gift Van Moorsel
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Theo van Doesburg Ciné-Dancing wall text
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (downstairs gallery, room recreation)
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Downstairs gallery, room recreation

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Swiss, 1889-1943)
Aubette 63 (installation view)
1927
Gouache on paper
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Paris: Loïe Fuller 1890s wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Unknown photographer (attributed to Falk Studio)
Loïe Fuller
c. 1901
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC

Auguste and Louis Lumiere
Film Lumiere no. 765, 1 – Danse serpentine [II]
c. 1897-1899
Hand-coloured 35mm film
49 secs (complete clip)
Video: Marcus Bunyan

Magnificent! Not Loïe Fuller but one of her many imitators. She refused to be captured on film.

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901)
Miss Loïe Fuller
1893
Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Collections Jacques Doucet
Inv. no. NUM EM TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 49 e
Courtesy Bibliothèque de l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Collections Jacques Doucet

Jules Chéret (French, 1836-1932)
Fioles Bergère, La Loïe Fuller (installation view)
1893
Lithograph
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Jules Chéret (French, 1836-1932)
Folies Bergère, La Danse du Feu (The Fire Dance) (installation view)
1897
Lithograph
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Paris: Chat Noir 1880s-90s wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Henri Rivière (French, 1864-1951)
Poster for the performances Clairs de lune by Georges Fragerolle, L’honnête gendarme by Jean Richepin and Le treizième travail d’Hercule by Eugène Courboin (Le Chat Noir, 16 December 1896) (installation view)
Cliché and letterpress printing in black on wove paper on linen
58.7cm x 42.2cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing Henri Rivière and Henry Somm’s shadow theatre and wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (downstairs gallery, room recreation)
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Downstairs gallery, room recreation

Adolphe-Leon Wilette (French, 1857-1926)
La Vierge verte (The Green Virgin) (installation view)
c. 1881
Oil on canvas
Collection Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

In this oil study for a stained-glass window exhibited inside the cabaret, the black cat is held aloft in adoration under the full moon, as though part of an occult ceremony. The ‘chat’ noir’ of the cabaret’s title was celebrated throughout its design, symbolising fierce independence as well as night-time frolics. It gazes imperiously at the onlooker from Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s famous posters, perches on a crescent moon in Adolphe-Léon Willette’s street sign, and endangers pet goldfish in humorous cartoons.

Wall text

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss-born French, 1859-1923)
Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir (Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret) (installation view)
1896
Lithograph
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss-born French, 1859-1923)
Réouverture du cabaret du Chat Noir (Reopening of the Chat Noir Cabaret)
1896
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

George Auriol (French, 1863-1938)
Théâtre du Chat Noir (Couverture aux coquelicots) (Programme for the Chat noir Theatre (Cover with Poppies)) (installation view)
1890
Photomechanical print
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Opening 4 October 2019, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art explores the social and artistic role of cabarets, cafés and clubs around the world. Spanning the 1880s to the 1960s, the exhibition presents a dynamic and multi-faceted history of artistic production. The first major show staged on this theme, it features both famed and little-known sites of the avant-garde – these creative spaces were incubators of radical thinking, where artists could exchange provocative ideas and create new forms of artistic expression. Into the Night offers an alternative history of modern art that highlights the spirit of experimentation and collaboration between artists, performers, designers, musicians and writers such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Loïe Fuller, Josef Hoffmann, Giacomo Balla, Theo van Doesburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, as well as Josephine Baker, Jeanne Mammen, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Ramón Alva de la Canal and Ibrahim El-Salahi.

Focusing on global locations from New York to Tehran, London, Paris, Mexico City, Berlin, Vienna and Ibadan, Into the Night brings together over 350 works rarely seen in the UK, including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, films and archival material. Liberated from the confines of social and political norms, many of the sites provided immersive, often visceral experiences, manifesting the ideals of the artists and audiences who founded and frequented them. The exhibition features full-scale recreations of specific spaces, such as the multi-coloured ceramic tiled bar of the Cabaret Fledermaus in Vienna (1907), designed by Josef Hoffmann for the Wiener Werkstätte, and the striking abstract composition of the Ciné-Dancing designed by Theo van Doesburg for L’Aubette in Strasbourg (1926-1928). The exhibition will feature a soundscape created by hrm199, the studio of acclaimed artist Haroon Mirza, specifically commissioned for the show.

Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, said: “Into the Night casts a spotlight on some of the most electrifying cabarets and clubs of the modern era. Whether a creative haven, intoxicating stage or liberal hangout, all were magnets for artists, designers and performers to come together, collaborate and express themselves freely. Capturing the essence of these global incubators of experimentation and cross-disciplinarity, immersive 1:1 scale interiors will take the visitor on a captivating journey of discovery.”

Into the Night begins in Paris, on the eve of the 20th century, with two thrilling and iconic locations of the avant-garde. The theatrical shadow plays of the Chat Noir in the 1880s are brought to life through original silhouettes and works that decorated the interior of the cabaret, which acted as a forum for satire and debate for figures such as founder Rodolphe Salis, artist Henri Rivière and composer Erik Satie. The captivating serpentine dances of Loïe Fuller staged at the Folies Bergère in the 1890s were trail-blazing experiments in costume, light and movement. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured her performances in his extraordinary series of delicately hand-coloured lithographs, brought together for the exhibition. Visitors will encounter the immersive “Gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art) design of the Cabaret Fledermaus (1907) in Vienna by the Wiener Werkstätte, where experimental cabaret productions were staged. The exhibition includes original documentation of Oskar Kokoschka’s exuberant puppet theatre and Gertrude Barrison’s expressionist dance.

The Cave of the Golden Calf (1912), an underground haunt in Soho epitomising decadence and hedonism, is evoked through designs for the interior by British artists Spencer Gore and Eric Gill, as well as Wyndham Lewis’s highly stylised programmes for the eclectic performance evenings – advertised at the time as encompassing “the picturesque dances of the South, its fervid melodies, Parisian wit, English humour.” In Zurich, the radical atmosphere of the Cabaret Voltaire (1916) is manifested through absurdist sound poetry and fantastical masks that deconstruct body and language, evoking the anarchic performances by Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings and Marcel Janco. This is the birthplace of Dada, where humour, chaos and ridicule reign. Two significant clubs in Rome provide insights into the electrifying dynamism of Futurism in Italy in the 1920s. Giacomo Balla’s mesmerising Bal Tic Tac (1921) is summoned by colour-saturated designs for the club’s interior, capturing the swirling movement of dancers. Also on show are drawings and furnishings for Fortunato Depero’s spectacular inferno-inspired Cabaret del Diavolo (1922) which occupied three floors representing heaven, purgatory and hell. Depero’s flamboyant tapestry writhes with dancing demons, expressing the club’s motto “Tutti all’inferno!!! (Everyone to hell!!!)”.

A few years later, a group of artists and writers from the radical movement Estridentismo, including Ramón Alva de la Canal, Manuel Maples Arce and Germán Cueto, began to meet at the Café de Nadie (Nobody’s Café) in Mexico City, responding to volatile Post-Revolutionary change and the urban metropolis. The ¡30-30! group expressed its values by holding a major print exhibition (partially reassembled here) in a travelling circus tent open to all. Meanwhile in Strasbourg, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp worked together to create the L’Aubette (1926-1928), conceived as the ultimate “deconstruction of architecture”, with bold geometric abstraction as its guiding principle. The vast building housed a cinema-ballroom, bar, tearoom, billiards room, restaurant and more, each designed as immersive environments.

After a period of restraint in Germany during the First World War, the 1920s heralded an era of liberation and the relaxation of censorship laws. Numerous clubs and bars in metropolitan cities, such as Berlin, playing host to heady cabaret revues and daring striptease; the notorious synchronised Tiller Girls are captured in Karl Hofer’s iconic portrait. Major works by often overlooked female artists such as Jeanne Mammen and Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, as well as George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, capture the pulsating energy of these nightclubs and the alternative lifestyles that flourished within them during the 1920s and 1930s. During the same time in New York, the literary and jazz scenes thrived and co-mingled in the predominantly African American neighbourhood of Harlem, where black identity was re-forged and debated. Paintings and prints by Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence convey the vibrant atmosphere and complex racial and sexual politics of the time, while poetry by Langston Hughes and early cinema featuring Duke Ellington shed light on the rich range of creative expression thriving within the city.

Into the Night also celebrates the lesser known but highly influential Mbari Artists and Writers Club, founded in the early 1960s in Nigeria. Focusing on two of the club’s key locations, in Ibadan and Osogbo, the exhibition explores how they were founded as laboratories for postcolonial artistic practices, providing a platform for a dazzling range of activities – including open-air dance and theatre performances, featuring ground breaking Yoruba operas by Duro Ladipo and Fela Kuti’s Afro-jazz; poetry and literature readings; experimental art workshops; and pioneering exhibitions by African and international artists such as Colette Omogbai, Ibrahim El-Salahi and Uche Okeke. Meanwhile in Tehran, Rasht 29 emerged in1966 as a creative space for avant-garde painters, poets, musicians and filmmakers to freely discuss their practice. Spontaneous performances were celebrated and works by artists like Parviz Tanavoli and Faramarz Pilaram hung in the lounge while a soundtrack including Led Zeppelin and the Beatles played constantly.

The exhibition is curated and organised by Barbican Centre, London, in collaboration with the Belvedere, Vienna.

Press release from the Barbican Art Gallery [Online] Cited 28/12/2019

Berlin: Weimar Nightlife 1920s-30s wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955)
Damenkneipe (Women’s Club)
c. 1925
Private collection
© Viola Roehr v. Alvensleben, Munich
Photo: akg-images

Rudolf Schlichter (German, 1890-1955)
Damenkneipe (Women’s Club) (installation view)
c. 1925
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view with Rudolf Schlichter’s Damenkneipe (Women’s Club) c. 1925 at left, followed by work by Jeanne Mammen
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Bar (installation view)
c. 1930
Ömer Koç Collection
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Bar
c. 1930
Ömer Koç Collection
© DACS, 2019

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Bierseidelbetrachtung I (The Contemplative Drinkers I) (installation views)
c. 1929
Watercolour and pencil on paper
Ömer Koç Collection
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Untitled (Vor dem Auftritt) (Before the Performance) (installation views)
c. 1928
Jeanne Mammen Foundation at Stadtmuseum Berlin
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Café Nollendorf (installation view)
c. 1931
Watercolour and India ink over pencil
Private collection
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen’s paintings and drawings of Berlin nightlife document the changing role of women and offer rare images of queer female desire. In contrast to the bitingly satirical images characteristic of George Grosz and Max Beckmann, Mammen sympathetically portrays her mostly female figures. Café Nollendorf is one of several by Mammen published in Curt Moreck’s subversive 1931 Guide to ‘Depraved’ Berlin (shown nearby). It illustrates his account of a lesbian club for ‘open-minded’ clientele. Mammen was also a successful commercial artist, recording modern fashions and mores in popular magazines.

Wall text

Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969)
Anita Berber (installation view)
1925
Pastel on paper
Private collection
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Dix met the 26-year-old cabaret dancer and silent film star Anita Berber in Dūsseldorf in 1925. Berber was among the most provocative performers of her time, appearing at major Berlin venues like the Wintergarten and the Apollo, as well as the political cabaret Schall und Rauch and the lesbian club Topkeller. In her notorious dance ‘Cocaine’, accompanied by Camille Saint-Saëns’ Valse mignonne (1896), Berber played a sex worker and addict, wearing a leather corset with her breast exposed. Simulating trembles of pain, she dances spasms of hallucination before collapsing on the floor. Despite her theatrical makeup, Dix’s portrait offers a more intimate side of Berber.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing on the left, the work of Dodo Burgner and on the right, the work of George Grosz.
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Dodo (Dodo Burgner, German, 1927-1933)
Revue neger (Josephine Baker) (installation view)
c. 1926
Gouache over pencil on cardboard
Collection Krümmer, Hamburg
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Dodo (Dodo Burgner, German, 1927-1933)
The Fortune Teller, published in ULK (installation views)
February 1929
Gouache over pencil on cardboard
Collection Krümmer, Hamburg
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)
Schönheit, dich will ich preisen (Beauty, Thee Will I Praise) (installation views)
1923
Offset lithograph
Publisher: Malik-Verlag, Berlin
Printer: Kunstanstalt Dr. Selle & Co. A.G. Berlin
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler’s Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) 1930
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (German, 1899-1940)
Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) (installation view)
1930
Pastel on paper
Private collection, Berlin
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub) wall text
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (German, 1899-1940)
Ausblick im Nachtlokal (View of a Nightclub)
1930
Private collection, Berlin

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, showing at left, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler’s Lissy (1931) and at right, Karl Hofer’s Tiller Girls (before 1927)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (German, 1899-1940)
Lissy (installation views)
1931
Watercolour and pencil on paper
Private collection. Courtesy Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (born Anna Frieda Wächtler; 4 December 1899 – 31 July 1940) was a German painter of the avant-garde whose works were banned as “degenerate art”, and in some cases destroyed, in Nazi Germany. She was murdered in a former psychiatric institution at Sonnenstein castle in Pirna under Action T4, a forced euthanasia program of Nazi Germany. Since 2000, a memorial centre for the T4 program in the house commemorates her life and work in a permanent exhibition.

Life

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler grew up in a middle-class family, but left at the age of 16 to study at the Royal Arts School Dresden from 1915 to 1918 (fashion, then applied graphics). From 1916 to 1919, she also attended drawing and painting courses at the Dresden Art Academy. She came into contact with the Dresden Secession Group 1919 and became part of the circle of friends around Otto Dix, Otto Griebel, and Conrad Felixmüller. Renting part of the studio of the latter near the Dresden city center she made a living with batiks, postcards and illustrations.

In June 1921, she married the painter and opera singer Kurt Lohse [de], following him to Görlitz in 1922 and in 1925 to Hamburg. The marriage was a difficult one and the couple separated several times in the following years. In 1926, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler joined the Federation of female Hamburgian artists and art lovers; in 1928. she was able to participate in some exhibitions of the New Objectivity.

In 1929, she suffered a nervous breakdown because of financial and partnership difficulties and was committed to a psychiatric institution in Hamburg-Friedrichsberg. During the two months’ stay she painted the Friedrichsberg heads, a piece of work consisting of about 60 drawings and pastels, mainly portraits of fellow patients. After her recovery and a final separation from Kurt Lohse (in 1926), she had a very creative phase. She painted numerous paintings of Hamburg’s harbor, scenes from the life of workers and prostitutes, and pitiless self-portraits. But despite some exhibitions, sales, and smaller grants, she lived in grinding poverty.

Due to financial problems and increasing social isolation, she returned to her parents’ home in Dresden by midyear 1931. When her mental state worsened her father admitted her to the state mental home at Arnsdorf in 1932. There she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. From 1932 to 1935 she was still creatively active, drawing portraits and creating arts and crafts. After Kurt Lohse divorced her in May 1935 she was incapacitated due to “incurable insanity”.

After refusing to consent to a sterilisation, she was denied the permission to go out of the hospital any more. In December 1935, she underwent a forced surgical sterilisation in the Dresden-Friedrichstadt women’s hospital on the grounds of Nazi eugenicist policies. After this traumatic event she never painted again. In 1940 she was deported to the former psychiatric institution at Pirna-Sonnenstein (located in the Sonnenstein castle in Pirna), where, on 31 July, she was murdered along with the majority of the other residents as part of the Nazi “euthanasia” program, Action T4. The official cause of death was “pneumonia with myocardial insufficiency”. In the years of 1940 and 1941, a total of 13,720 mainly mentally ill or handicapped people were gassed by Nazis in this institution formerly well known for its humanistic traditions.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Karl Hofer (German, 1878-1955)
Tiller Girls (installation view)
before 1927
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Karl Hofer (German, 1878-1955)
Tiller Girls
before 1927
Kunsthalle Emden – Stiftung Henri und Eske Nannen
© Elke Walford, Fotowerkstatt Hamburg

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020 showing at left, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler’s Lissy (1931, above); and at centre, Karl Hofer’s Tiller Girls (before 1927, above)
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Karl Hofer’s Tiller Girls (before 1927, above); and at third from left, Erna Schmidt-Caroll’s Chansonette (Singer) (c. 1928, below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Erna Schmidt-Caroll (German, 1896-1964)
Chansonette (Singer) (installation views)
c. 1928
Private collection
© Estate Erna Schmidt-Caroll
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Erna Schmidt-Caroll (German, 1896-1964)
Chansonette (Singer)
c. 1928
Private collection
© Estate Erna Schmidt-Caroll

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing the work of George Grosz and Max Beckmann
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

George Grosz (German, 1893-1959)
Menschen in Cáfe (People in a Cáfe) (installation view)
1917
Black ink and pen on paper
On loan from the Trustees of the British Museum
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950)
Nackttanz (Striptease), from Berliner Reise (Trip to Berlin) (installation view)
1922
Lithograph, one from a portfolio of eleven (including cover)
Publisher: J.B. Neumann, Berlin
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Sie reprasentiert! (She Represents!), published in Simplicissimus vol. 32, no 47, February 1928
Printed magazine
Jeanne Mammen Foundation at Stadtmuseum Berlin
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Maskenball (Masked Ball), published in Jugend vol. 34, no 5, January 1929
Printed magazine
Jeanne Mammen Foundation at Stadtmuseum Berlin
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890-1976)
Fasting (Carnival), published in Simplicissimus vol. 34, no 46, February 1930
Printed magazine
Jeanne Mammen Foundation at Stadtmuseum Berlin
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Unknown photographer
‘Slide on the Razor’, performance as part of the Haller Revue ‘Under and Over’, Berlin, 1923
Courtesy Feral House

Ibadan & Osogbo Mbari Clubs 1961-66 wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Twins Seven-Seven Devil’s Dog (1964) and at right, Twins Seven-Seven THE BEAUTIFUL LADY and THE FULLBODIED GENTLEMAN THAT REDUCED TO HEAD (1967)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Twins Seven-Seven
Devil’s Dog (installation view detail)
1964
Ink, gouache and varnish on paper
Iwalewahaus, Universitat Bayreuth
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Twins Seven-Seven
THE BEAUTIFUL LADY and THE FULLBODIED GENTLEMAN THAT REDUCED TO HEAD (installation views)
1967
Gouache on paper
Iwalewahaus, Universitat Bayreuth
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at left, Muraina Oyelami’s Burial Ground (1967) with Georgina Beier’s Gelede (1966) third from right
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Muraina Oyelami (Nigerian, born 1940)
Burial Ground (installation views)
1967
Oil on board
Collection of M.K. Wolford
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Georgina Beier (British, b. 1938)
Gelede (installation view)
1966
Woodcut
Iwalewahaus, Universitat Bayreuth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery, London showing at second left, Valente Malangatana Ngwenya’s Untitled (1961)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Valente Malangatana Ngwenya (Mozambican, 1936-2011)
Untitled (installation views)
1961
Oil on canvas
Iwalewahaus, Universität Bayreuth
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

The programme at the Mbari clubs was highly international: in addition to artists from across Africa, those from Europe, the Caribbean and the UA (particularly African Americans) were often invited to participate. When Mozambican artist Malangatana exhibited in Ibadan in 1962, Uli Beier’s accompanying text described his work as ‘wild and powerful but it is more than that. Far from being repelled by the scenes of horror, we are brought under an irresistible spell. For Malangatana’s work also contains a strong element of human sympathy and suffering and agony… he is full of stories. The artist was closely involved in the struggle against Portuguese rule in Mozambique and many of his works can be seen as allegories of colonial oppression.

Wall text

Colette Omogbai (Nigeria, b. 1942)
Agony (installation view)
1963
Oil on hardboard
Iwalewahaus, Universität Bayreuth
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Collete Omogbai held her first solo exhibition at the Mbari club in Ibadan in 1963, while still a student. Deconstructing the body ith saturated colours and jagged shapes, Agony conveys great emotional intensity. Omogbai’s highly expressive forms reflect the modernist ideas advocated in her 1965 manifesto, ‘Man Loves What is “Sweet” and Obvious’, in which she parodied mainstream taste: “‘Give us reality’, Man proclaims, ‘if possible, the reality as real as that of Bouguereau… No touch of black’.” Like many of the works in this section, it was acquired by Mbari founder Ulli Beier and later entered the collection of the University of Bayreuth in Germany.

Wall text

Twins Seven-Seven
Untitled (Devil’s Dog) (installation views)
1964
Iwalewahaus, Universität Bayreuth
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Devil’s Dog wall text
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Twins Seven-Seven
Untitled (Devil’s Dog)
1964
Iwalewahaus, Universität Bayreuth
© DACS, 2019. Courtesy DEVA|Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth and CBCIU, Oshogbo

Interior courtyard of the Mbari Artists’ and Writers’ Club, Ibadan, with murals by Uche Okeke
© Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo, Oshun State, Nigeria / Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, Germany

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art
Installation view Barbican Art Gallery 4 October 2019 – 19 January 2020
© Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing some of the publishing output of the Mbari clubs and wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

London Cave of the Golden Calf wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Spencer Gore (British, 1878-1914)
Design for Tiger Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club (installation view)
1912
Oil and pencil on card
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Spencer Gore (British, 1878-1914)
Design for Deer Hunting Mural in the Cabaret Theatre Club (installation view)
1912
Oil and chalk on paper
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

None of the original decorations from the Cave of the Golden Calf survive except for Eric Gill’s carved bull calf. Contemporaneous reports, however, describe their collective impact as intense, conveying a hedonistic energy. Gore’s murals depicted an Arcadian hunt, with frisking tigers and deep portrayed in glowing colours. The Times recounted ‘mural decorations representing we should not care to say what precise stage beyond impressionism – they would easily, however, turn into appalling goblins after a little too much supper in the cave’. The artists then at the forefront of modernism in Britain, were dubbed ‘Troglodytes’ or ‘Cave-dwellers’ by the press.

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Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing some of the works by Wyndham Lewis (below)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wyndham Lewis (English, 1882-1957)
Kermesse (installation views)
1912
Gouache, watercolour, pen and black ink, black wash and graphite on paper
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Wyndham Lewis designed the cabaret’s programme and posted as well as some of its interior decorations, which are now lost. His large oil painting, Kermesse (1912), whose dynamic figures evoked a carnival spirit hung on the club’s wall; only this drawing now survives. Along with other British modernist contemporaries, Lewis was fascinated by dance during this period, producing multiple works that may have been inspired by the cabaret’s ‘exotic’ programme.

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Wyndham Lewis (English, 1882-1957)
Drop curtain design (installation views)
1912
Pencil, black in and watercolour on paper
V&A Theatre and Performance, London
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Wyndham Lewis (English, 1882-1957)
Indian Dance (installation view)
1912
Chalk and watercolour on paper
Tate, Purchased 1955
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Harlem Jazz Clubs and Cabarets 1920s-1940s wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing at left in the bottom image, Jacob Lawrence’s Vaudeville (1951); at second left, William H, Johnson’s Jitterbugs (III) (c. 1941); at second right, William H, Johnson’s Jitterbugs (II) (c. 1941); and at right, Edward Burra’s Savoy Ballroom, Harlem (1934)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917-2000)
Vaudeville (installation view)
1951
Egg tempera and pencil on Fibreboard
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

in this work, Lawrence pays tribute to his formative experiences watching vaudeville performances at the Apollo Theater as a young man during the Harlem renaissance. He later recalled, ‘I wanted a staccato-type thing – raw, sharp, rough – that’s what I tried to get’. The vibrant composition reveals Lawrence’s virtuoso handling of colour and form. The patterned backdrop comprises circles, triangles and organic forms in myriad colours, interlocking to create a syncopated, rhythmic effect. In contrast to their carnivalesque costumes and the comedic nature of vaudeville, the figure bear sorrowful expressions, perhaps reflecting the ‘melancholy-comic’ mood that contemporary Harlem writer Claude McKay identified as central to the black American experience.

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William H. Johnson (American, 1901-1970)
Jitterbugs (III) (installation view)
c. 1941
Oil on plywood
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

William H. Johnson (American, 1901-1970)
Jitterbugs (II) (installation view)
c. 1941
Oil on paperboard
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Harmon Foundation
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Edward Burra (English, 1905-1976)
Savoy Ballroom, Harlem (installation views)
1934
Gouache and watercolour on paper
Omer Koc Collection
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Aaron Douglas (American, 1899-1979)
Dance (installation view)
c. 1930
Gouache on illustration board
Collection of Dr Anita White
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Aaron Douglas (American, 1899-1979)
Untitled (Dancers and Cityscape) (installation views)
c. 1928
Ink on paper
Private collection
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Tehran Rasht 29 1966-69 wall text
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation views of the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art at the Barbican Art Gallery showing the Tehran Rasht 29 1966-69 section
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Kamran Diba (Iranian, b. 1937)
I’m a Clever Waterman (installation view)
1966
Lithograph (reproduction of lost painting)
Collection Kamran Diba
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

I’m a Clever Waterman was first created during a performance by artist and architect Kamran Diba and his contemporaries, which combined movement and live music with live painting. Faramarz Pilaram added the calligraphic text, which includes the work’s enigmatic title and the number 29, reflecting the importance of the Rasht 29 club to their artistic circle. The painting was shown at the bar area at Rasht but was lost during the 1979 Iranian Revolution: only the print survives now.

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Leyl Matine-Daftary (Iranian, 1937-2007)
Still-life (installation view)
1962
Oil on canvas
Mohammed Afkhami Collection
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Parviz Tanavoli (Iranian, b. 1937)
Cage, cage, cage (installation view)
1966 (repaired 2009)
Wood, metal, feather, glass, paint and light
Tate
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Parviz Tanavoli (Iranian, b. 1937)
Boohoo, boohoo, boohoo, or her, or a gazelle (installation view)
1966
Wood, paint, plexiglass and metal
Collection Parviz Tanavoli
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Throughout the 1960s Iran’s economy was rapidly industrialising. Tanavoli began incorporating found industrial elements into his work, scouring welding shops, blacksmiths, potteries and street vendors for salvage. Boohoo, boohoo, boohoo, or her, or a gazelle, which was shown at Rasht 29, incorporates the decorative grille motif that recurs in the artists work. Playfully juxtaposed with elements from pop culture, the grille alludes to the traditional design of a saqqakhaneh, the sacred commemorative water fountains from which the artistic community took its name.

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Faramarz Pilaram (Iranian, 1937-1982)
Untitled (Composition 8) (installation view)
c. 1960-1965
Ink, metallic paint and acrylic on paper
Mohammed Afkhami Collection
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

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