La Belle Epoque

As we look forward in Picasso at the Lapin Agile to the 20th century, it is important that we also look back to see how the stage was set.

"La Belle Epoque" is the name given to the period in French history from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of World War I. It was a time of great optimism, in spite of enormous social upheavals and unrest which had begun around sixty years before. France enjoyed a sense of prosperity and peace with its European neighbors there were significant new inventions and brilliant innovations in the arts.

In this “golden age” there was also a sense of anarchy and a world-wide trend against the conventional, because of a series of social and aesthetic revolutions earlier in the 19th century. These changes were only the beginning, of course, but it was a heady time.

Brief chronology of the time surrounding the events of Picasso at the Lapin Agile

1900

• Paris universal exhibition (http://www.nga.gov/resources/expo1900.shtm)
  There were several other such exhibitions earlier; they were opportunities to take stock of new inventions – in Paris 1889 the Eiffel Tower was featured; there were some also in other places in the world. This one was especially grand; it featured “Palace of Electricity,” and was the most revolutionary in terms of inventions
  
• Guide Hachette (Paris newspaper) report: In the centennial museums, divided into many sections, the Fair shows the ascent of progress step by step-from the stagecoach to the express train, the messenger to the wireless and the telephone, lithography to the X-ray, from the first studies of carbon in the bowels of the earth to the airplane…It is the exhibition of the great century, which opens a new era in the history of humanity.
• Large exhibition of the works of sculptor Auguste Rodin held in Paris

1901

• Death of Queen Victoria, the woman who had represented moral values and adherence to principles. Now that she was gone, it was permissible to enjoy oneself – the English equivalent of La Belle Époque was the Edwardian Era
• Australia declares itself a republic and inaugurates its first parliament
• Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, NY
• Astronomer Sir Richard Ball holds a conference in Milan on “possible communication between earth and mars.” Sir Richard is skeptical, but Italian Nicola Tesla says, “in a short while we shall be in communication with mars.”
• First distribution of Nobel Prizes takes place in Paris
• Guglielmo Marconi transmits a radio message from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland
• American President McKinley is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo

1902

• Barnum and Bailey circus comes to Paris
• Trans-Siberian Railway complete

1903

• Although a luxury, already 13,000 autos in France
• Wright Brothers completed their first successful flight, Kitty Hawk, SC
• New American Negro dance, the Cakewalk, is the craze of Paris
• Curie wins the Nobel prize

1904

• Lumière Brothers invented the autochrome process for photography
• First performance of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly at Milan’s La Scala

1905

• A new group of artists, disrespectfully labeled Les Fauves (“wild beasts”) by an art critic, had their successful debut in Paris at the “Salon d’Automne”
• Composer Richard Strauss’s opera Salomé, with text by Oscar Wilde, made its scandalous debut at the New York Met
• Russian Revolution of 1905 consists of a series of strikes and anti-government violence against Tsar Nicholas II. The tsar is finally obliged to sign the “October Manifesto,” promising direct civil liberty and an elected legislative assembly.
• 24th exhibition of the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors held in Paris
• After six years of research, six doctors in Massachusetts have arrived at the conclusion that the human soul weighs about an ounce. Experiments have shown that when dying patients are laid on a balance, their weight, after they have drawn their last breath, is one ounce less than before. An observer reports, “At last the soul is being studied by scientific principles and experimental methods.”

Dreyfus Affair
Special mention should be made of the Dreyfus Affair, as it was a political scandal which dominated France during the 1890s and early 1900s, dividing the country between nationalists and the upholders of the truth (the left). It involved the wrongful conviction for treason of Alfred Dreyfus, for treason. Dreyfus was the highest ranking Jewish artillery officer in the French army. Based on some documents found in a waste-paper basket, he was charged with passing military secrets to the Germany Embassy in Paris. In 1894 he was convicted and sent to Devil’s Island in French Guiana. By the time it was realized that they had little evidence, it was politically impossible to withdraw the charges. Dreyfus’s cause was taken up by many, including the writer Emile Zola. Dreyfus was finally exonerated in 1906, readmitted into the army and even made a knight in the Legion of Honor. Unfortunately, the factions created by the affair remained in place for decades afterwards and had a number of political repercussions, including the 1905 legislation separating church and state which Pope Pius X vilified (see above).

Art Nouveau (http://www.nga.gov/feature/nouveau/exhibit_intro.shtm)
For political and social reasons, Paris was the scene of great turmoil during the several years before 1900. In many ways, the century had ended badly and there was a desire to change the atmosphere and create a new beginning as a response to the industrial urban environment. One innovation was a new decorative style which grew out natural forms, but in a stylized manner and the remaining interest in Japanese. Picasso and others in his circle were certainly aware of this phenomenon and, to a certain extent, their work was a reaction against it.