Chapter 27 II Departure from Montparnasse to join the war (1) The "beehive" house

Montparnasse became the Montmartre that painters and poets had been fifteen years ago: a habitat of beauty, freedom and simplicity. Guillaume Apollinaire There is no Sacre Coeur on the left bank of the Seine.At the turn of the century, Montparnasse was a kingdom of stables and farmsteads, with occasional markets on street corners and flocks of sheep roaming the streets. More men of letters than entertainers lived there: many poets in black, a few painters in blue.They lived sensibly between painting schools and large stone houses with cart doors.Even the bourgeoisie still walk among the dung of cattle and sheep, and they have not yet found any quiet place where they can contemplate.

The only feature of Montmartre is that you can see people writing and reciting poems everywhere.College students used to leave their campuses in the Latin Quarter to recite the poems they had learned on the hills piled with waste near the quarry.Later, the long-term laborers of the farm and stables, the vegetable growers, and the workers who excavated the construction site of Raspail Avenue often came here to rest. There were also several sculptors in Montparnasse, where the parks, courtyards, and warehouses provided them with the necessary workplaces.They also use the temporary space opened up in the courtyard of the residence to create.When architects built houses for the bourgeoisie, they also built workshops for artists in those courtyards: glass walls or roof skylights were installed so that people could examine the work or make due judgments about it.Gradually, some farmsteads there were demolished and converted into art workshops separated by large glass walls.

In this way, Montparnasse, with herds of cattle and sheep, gradually opened its door to fine arts.As a result, famous sculpture and painting art training schools appeared in the area, such as Budell Training School.Teaching here is more free than official.Painting shops, frame shops, and painting model markets have sprung up at the gate of the Grand Thatched Cottage Training School, at the corner of the Grand Thatched Cottage Street and on Avenue Montparnasse.Boxers, typists and plenty of workers (mostly Italian, far less shy than the others) make an appearance here too. Montparnasse also has some of its own "laundry boats" - homes for artists.The tenants there come, go, and come back according to their financial capabilities.They are: Rue Menard, where the Budell School, where sculpture is trained, is located; the residential complex of Faguier, called the Villa des Roses because of the color of its walls.Fujita Foujita, a French painter, was born in Japan.Living here, Modigliani was evicted by the landlord Mrs. Durso due to long-term arrears of rent.

Another residential complex that deserves special mention is the "Beehive", a circular building in the German style.It is one of the most important buildings in Montparnasse.All the artists have been there, at least once, and many have stayed. "The Beehive" was the "laundry boat" of Jewish painters from Eastern countries. The building is the work of Alfred Boucher, patron of the literary arts and decorative sculptor.After returning from the World Expo in 1900, he bought the ruins of the villa that belonged to Mr. Gustave Eiffel and connected it with the pre-purchased piece of land not far from the Vaugerard slaughterhouse. .He built a large number of workshops around the main building.The main building was originally a hotel, and its roof resembles a "beehive", from which the residence takes its name.On both sides of the courtyard entrance stands a caryatid column brought from Indonesia.There are many small buildings around the main building, one of which is a small theater with 300 seats (French director, actor, and head of the Adney Theater from 1934 to 1951, Louis Jouwet took classes here), in the middle of the lawn There are many exhibition halls between the Flower Trail, the Love Trail and the Three Musketeers Trail...

M. Boucher leased these workshops to poor painters at low prices.They each had at their disposal a small single room they called a "coffin": a triangular room with a platform above the door, furnished with a thin mattress, that served as the lodger's bed.No water, no electricity, and no gas.But there are dimly lit corridors, filthy trash and dug open ditches everywhere.However, from the circular platform and the numbered door openings came the beautiful songs of the Italians, the lively discussions of the Jews, and the shouts of the models in the Russian room. Chagall himself admitted that before the war he worked alone, and often worked late, and only received a few visitors-Sandras and Apollinaire, looking like an exile.When they returned to their residences drunk and noisy, the artists living in the "beehive" area threw stones on the windows of their houses and asked them to find them.However, Chagall, a child born in a poor Belarusian family and helped by lawyers from the Russian Duma, is much more serious than others.According to his own ideology and mental state, he independently carries out his own artistic creation.He often paints shirtless, eats a herring head at the beginning of the week, eats the fish tail the next day, and only eats bread every day for the rest of the day, without any complaints.His painting workshop is located on the balcony.

With the exception of a few people, such as Fernand Leche, a close friend of the Norman Alcipenco, most of the tenants of the "Hive" came from Central Europe.Every Sunday, they gather together to organize an imitation market in their hometown, play their hometown music, and dance their hometown dance... A Jewish businessman with a black beard came up the hill from the St. Herring, sliced ​​liver, and black bread, which he had grown accustomed to as a child. They were all immigrants who came here in the years before the war.At that time they were not yet members of the Paris School, which later became famous all over the world.Alcipenko was a Russian sculptor who came to Paris in 1908.Lithuanian sculptor Lipsitz came a year later than the former.Kikoyin is also a Lithuanian. He is a socialist, the grandson of the Jewish doctor, and he studied at the Wilno Academy of Fine Arts with Klimeny and Soutine.Cremeny, who smuggled across the border in 1912, remained frustrated by his severe clumsiness in movement and movement.Klemeni thought he was evenly matched with Soutine, so he was a little jealous of him.Manekaz left Kyiv in 1913 for the "beehive" residential complex.Sana Orlov arrived the same year.Kisling, an excellent student at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in Poland, is more optimistic than many others, loves to play, likes to be lively, likes to drink and paint.Painter and decorator Leon Bakst (1866-1924), Russian painter and set designer. In 1909, he completed the set design and decoration of the first Russian ballet "Cleopatra" performed at Chatelet in Paris.Soutine was the poorest of them all, but he always sang while he painted.

None of these immigrants were more than 20 years old when they first arrived in France.They have abandoned family, friends, and traditions, and have no weapons other than pencils and paintbrushes in their hands.Before departure, they had already made certain preparations, including academic and ideological preparations.The ascetic laws of Eastern Europe forbade the personality cult, and therefore the portrait, and they had no creative freedom at home: It is not allowed to create statues and anything up to the sky, down to the ground, underground, or in the water. [Excerpt from the Bible]

In the East, Jewish art is all religious art, and there is no other traditional art other than religion.The Jews who were closed in the ghetto all day could not integrate into the outside world at all.Artists paint like children read books: during the day, they show what others can see; at night, they show what others cannot see.If anyone wishes to liberate himself, the only way is to go away. They also left their homeland to escape official anti-Semitism.In many countries there, the doors of universities were closed to Jews, and in particular the Royal Academy in St. Petersburg banned Jewish students.

When these exiles came to France, they only knew one French word—Paris.They chose this city only because the people who came to Paris early conveyed the information about it to them: in Paris, people can live and create freely; they can freely say what they want to say and express what they want to express.Their lives are indeed very difficult, but most of them can barely manage NFDA4.Without knowing the language, they can learn.The most important thing is that they can finally paint and create in broad daylight.They were far from school, but as free men they discovered Impressionism and, more recently, Cubism.As soon as De Chirico Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Italian painter. ——Written in the translation note: Paris is a place that people with all kinds of thoughts, mentalities and creative desires yearn for.Therefore, Paris is the Paris of all, and Paris is the capital of artists all over the world.