Shocking Paris Soutine, Chagall and the Outsiders of Montparnasse

by Meisler, Stanley

• ISBN13: 9781137278807
• ISBN10: 1137278803
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-04-14
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

For a couple of decades before World War II, a group of immigrant painters and sculptors, including Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and Jules Pascin dominated the new art scene of Montparnasse in Paris. Art critics gave them the name "the School of Paris" to set them apart from the French-born (and less talented) young artists of the period. Modigliani and Chagall eventually attained enormous worldwide popularity, but in those earlier days most School of Paris painters looked on Soutine as their most talented contemporary. Willem de Kooning proclaimed Soutine his favorite painter, and Jackson Pollack hailed him as a major influence.

Soutine arrived in Paris while many painters were experimenting with cubism, but he had no time for trends and fashions; like his art, Soutine was intense, demonic, and fierce. After the defeat of France by Hitler's Germany, the East European Jewish immigrants who had made their way to France for sanctuary were no longer safe. In constant fear of the French police and the German Gestapo, plagued by poor health and bouts of depression, Soutine was the epitome of the tortured artist. Rich in period detail, Stanley Meisler's Shocking Paris explores the short, dramatic life of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

Author Biography

Stanley Meisler is an emeritus foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. He is a distant relation (by marriage) of Chaim Soutine and has written several articles on Soutine and the School of Paris for the Smithsonian and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 La Ruche, Young Soutine, and the Russian Jews
Chapter 2 Modi, Montparnasse, Netter, and Zbo
Chapter 3 Midi, Landscapes in Turmoil, a Pastry Chef, and Assaults on the Canvas
Chapter 4 Doctor Barnes, the Discovery of Soutine, and the Rise of the Foreigners
Chapter 5 Moyshe/Marc Chagall, the Great Bakst, Paris and the October Revolution
Chapter 6 André Warnod, the School of Paris, and the Jews
Chapter 7 Artistes Juifs, Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef, and the daughter of Elie Faure
Chapter 8 The Great Depression, Pascin, the death of Zbo, and the Judgments of Soutine
Chapter 9 Idyll, Madeleine & Marcellin, and the Portrait
Chapter 10 Charles Maurras, Léon Blum and the Resurgence of Anti-Semitism
Chapter 11 Mademoiselle Garde, Trapped Aliens, and Roundup in the Velodrome
Chapter 12 The Fall of France, Vichy and a Death Warrant
Chapter 13 Two American Heroes, the Escape of Chagall, and the Fall of the School of Paris
Chapter 14 Marie-Berthe, Hiding, and a Desperate Dash to Paris
Chapter 15 The Aftermath
Acknowledgments
Sources