Bohemian Paris
By the end of the nineteenth century, Paris was the epicenter of an international avant-garde. Artists were drawn by its climate of experimentation and the freedom of a bohemian society where rich and poor mingled with marginal characters like circus performers and prostitutes. French aristocrat Toulouse-Lautrec observed the underworld of brothels and cafe-concerts from the sidelines, capturing the silence and emotional isolation of patrons as well as the brassy limelight of a theater stage. The self-taught Rousseau, a customs inspector, made up his own distinctive style. In 1900 Picasso, not yet twenty, arrived from Barcelona. He was insatiable, absorbing with facility a gamut of influences from old masters to Manet, Lautrec, and the symbolists. The lyrical strangeness of his Saltimbanques draws on them all. Bohemian Paris was the crucible in which Picasso and contemporaries such as the Italian Modigliani and the Russian Soutine, forged the future of art in the early twentieth century. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2012)