Beyond the Margins: Picasso and Company in Montmartre

Claire Le Thomas (1)

1 LAHIC - Laboratoire d'anthropologie et d'histoire de l'institution de la culture

Living in Montmartre on the periphery of central Paris, young artists of the avant-garde were located in a marginal urban space. This fringe area of Paris provided a refuge for the dispossessed and artists alike, and Picasso and his friends were part of this unconventional population. Although they shared the harsh conditions of the resident working class, at the same time the artists of Montmartre enhanced their marginality by adopting transgressive patterns of behavior How did this constructed identity relate to the neighborhood in which they lived? In what ways did the geographical boundaries of the city play a part in the creation of a marginal group of artist and practices? The location of the young and penniless avant-garde in the north of Paris was not a coincidence: living in Montmartre was both a necessity and a choice for the artists. This district was cheap but it was above all an area physically and sociologically at the margins of the city, the precise position that the avant-garde was seeking to create in wider society and the world of art. By choosing Montmartre as their quarter, Picasso and his circle expressed in a double way their marginality. They displayed a spatial and a social difference which indirectly associated them with the deprived. Belonging to a popular neighborhood in turn affected the very nature of the non-conforming identity they developed. For the first time the working class with which they were in contact became a model to follow for the artistic bohemian set. In other word, the particularities of Montmartre's avant-garde, their distinctive identity, reflected their marginal geographical localization and even influenced the works of art the Cubists created there.

Mots clés: Bohemia; Montmartre; Margins

Domaines: Art et histoire de l'art

Claire Le Thomas. Beyond the Margins: Picasso and Company in Montmartre. Urban History Group 2008 Annual Conference Urban Boundaries and Margins, 2008, Nottingham, France. ⟨hal-00872759⟩