Le Sphinx
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Le Sphinx
Le Sphinx was a ''maison close'' ( brothel) in Paris in the 1930s and 1940s. Along with the "Le Chabanais" and "One-Two-Two" it was considered one of the most luxurious and famous Parisian brothels. It was the first luxury brothel and opened on the left bank of Seine. Because of its location in the triangle of "literary" cafés (La Coupole, Rotonda and the Cafe du Dome in Montparnasse, it was popular with literary and artistic bohemians. Inside the Brothel "Le Sphinx" was not a brothel in the usual sense of the word. The main attraction in it was not in the richly decorated rooms with air conditioning and nickel-plated beds, but in the dance bar on the first floor, where you could also make a haircut or a pedicure. There were normally 15 girls, selected by the madame, in the bar. However, no one forced them to have sex with the clients, the girl decided themselves. Some Sphinx workers never engaged in prostitution, but worked in as "hostesses", receiving commission from drinks ...
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Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ...
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André Salmon
André Salmon (4 October 1881, Paris – 12 March 1969, Sanary-sur-Mer) was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the early defenders of Cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal. Biography André Salmon was born in Paris, in the XI arrondissement, the fourth child of Émile-Frédéric Salmon, a sculptor and etcher, and Sophie-Julie Cattiaux, daughter of a founder of the Radical Socialist Party. Often assumed to come from a Jewish family,Peter Y. Medding, ''Studies in Contemporary Jewry: Volume XIV: Coping with Life and Death: Jewish Families in the Twentieth Century'', Oxford University Press (1999), p. 313 they were in fact secular Republicans, frequently in financial difficulty, and moved several times. André Salmon claimed in a letter to the editor of Le Crapouillot, now in a private collection, that his family descended from the Renaissance poet Jean Salmon Macrin, whose position in the court of Francis I may have indicated that his forebears wer ...
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Exposition Internationale Des Arts Et Techniques Dans La Vie Moderne
The ''Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne'' (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. Both the Palais de Chaillot, housing the Musée de l'Homme, and the Palais de Tokyo, which houses the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, were created for this exhibition that was officially sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions. A third building, , housing the permanent Museum of Public Works, which was originally to be among the new museums created on the hill of Chaillot on the occasion of the Exhibition, was not built until January 1937 and inaugurated in March 1939. Exhibitions At first the centerpiece of the exposition was to be a tower (" Phare du Monde") which was to have a spiraling road to a parking garage located at the top and a hotel and restaurant located above that. The idea was abandoned as it was far too expensive. Pavilions Finnish P ...
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Simone De Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even though she was not considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory. Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise ''The Second Sex'', a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including ''She Came to Stay'' (1943) and '' The Mandarins'' (1954). Her most enduring contribution to literature is her memoirs, notably the first volume, "Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée" (1958), which has a warmth and descriptive power. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 ...
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Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he started writing at a very young age and excelled as a student, but abandoned his formal education in his teenage years to run away to Paris amidst the Franco-Prussian War. During his late adolescence and early adulthood, he produced the bulk of his literary output. Rimbaud completely stopped writing literature at age 20 after assembling his last major work, ''Illuminations''. Rimbaud was a libertine and a restless soul, having engaged in a hectic, sometimes violent romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine, which lasted nearly two years. After his retirement as a writer, he traveled extensively on three continents as a merchant and explorer until his death from cancer just after his thirty-seventh birthday. As a poet, Rimbaud is wel ...
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Sacré-Cœur, Paris
The Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre (Sacred Heart of Montmartre), commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica and often simply Sacré-Cœur (french: Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, pronounced ), is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica in Paris, France, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was formally approved as a national historic monument by the National Commission of Patrimony and Architecture on December 8, 2022. Sacré-Cœur Basilica is located at the summit of the butte of Montmartre. From its dome two hundred meters above the Seine, the basilica overlooks the entire city of Paris and its suburbs. It is the most popular tourist destination in the capital after the Eiffel Tower. The basilica was first proposed by Felix Fournier, the Bishop of Nantes, in 1870 after the defeat of France and the capture of Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War. He attributed the defeat of France to the moral decline of the country since the French Revolu ...
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Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven. Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ...
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Toulouse-Lautrec
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the sometimes decadent affairs of those times. Born into the aristocracy, Toulouse-Lautrec broke both his legs around the time of his adolescence and, due to the rare condition Pycnodysostosis, was very short as an adult due to his undersized legs. In addition to his alcoholism, he developed an affinity for brothels and prostitutes that directed the subject matter for many of his works recording many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec is among the painters described as being Post-Impressionists, with Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Seurat also commonly considered as belon ...
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La Fleur Blanche
La Fleur blanche was a famous ''maison close'' ( brothel) in the city of Paris, located at 6 rue des Moulins in the 1st Arrondissement. The property was also known as ''rue des Moulins'' and was famous for its torture room. History The building was originally the home of a regency financier, and became a brothel in 1860 during the Second Empire. It was one of the most luxurious brothels in Paris. Its clientele included kings, crown princes, members of the aristocracy, and numerous heads of state. The brothel was known for its extremely lavish bedrooms, each one having its own theme; for example, one was in a Moorish style, another was ducal. During the German occupation, La Fleur blanche, like several other luxury Parisian brothels, was requisitioned for the use of German officers, in order to prevent their contacts with the local population. The health services of the Wehrmacht were responsible for organizing the sanitary control of these establishments. Captain Haucke, com ...
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Kees Van Dongen
Cornelis Theodorus Maria "Kees" van Dongen (26 January 1877 – 28 May 1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauvism, Fauves. Van Dongen's early work was influenced by the Hague School and symbolism and it evolved gradually into a rough pointillist style. From 1905 onwards – when he took part at the controversial 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibition – his style became more and more radical in its use of form and colour. The paintings he made in the period of 1905–1910 are considered by some to be his most important works. The themes of his work from that period are predominantly centered on the nightlife; he paints dancers, singers, masquerades, and theatre. Van Dongen gained a reputation for his sensuous – at times garish – portraits of especially women. Life and work Kees van Dongen was born in Delfshaven, then on the outskirts, and today a borough, of Rotterdam. He was the second of four children in a middle-class family. In 1892, at age 16, Kees va ...
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Frescos
Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word ''fresco'' ( it, affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective ''fresco'' meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. The word ''fresco'' is commonly and inaccurately used in English to refer to any wall painting regardless of the plaster technology or binding medium. This, in part, contributes to a misconception that the most geographically and temporally common wall painting technology was the painting into wet lime plaster. Even in appar ...
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Jean-Paul Crespelle
Jean-Paul Crespelle (24 December 1910 – 1994) was a journalist and author. He was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, Île-de-France, France. Crespelle wrote important historical works on the artistic and nocturnal life of the artists who gathered in Montmartre and Montparnasse Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ... at the turn of the 20th century. Works (Partial bibliography) * A la découverte de l'art dans les musées de Paris (1961) * The Fauves (1962) * Montparnasse vivant (1962) – Prix Hercule Catenaccihttps://www.academie-francaise.fr/jean-paul-crespelle * Montmartre vivant (1964) – Prix Charles Blanc * La folle époque: Des ballets russes au surréalisme (1968) – Prix Charles Blanc * Picasso and his women (1969) * Modigliani: Les femmes, les amis, l'œuvre (196 ...
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