Cabaret des Quat'z'Arts ("

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, casino, hotel, restaurant, or nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or drinking, ...

of the four arts") was a venue at 62

Boulevard de Clichy The Boulevard de Clichy () is a famous street of Paris, which lends its name to the Place de Clichy, resulted from the fusion, in 1864, of the roads that paralleled the Wall of the Farmers-General, both inside and out. It extends from the Place ...

, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, France. The interdisciplinary mixture of the arts created avant-garde collaborative performances. Similar to

Le Chat Noir (; French for "The Black Cat") was a 19th century entertainment establishment in the Montmartre district of Paris. It was opened on 18 November 1881 at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart by impresario Rodolphe Salis, and closed in 1897 not long ...

, the Quat'z'Arts was a gathering place for artists, composers, musicians, performers, poets, illustrators, and theater critics, attracting newcomers such as

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and

Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire (; ; born Kostrowicki; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the early ...

. It provided space for permanent and temporary art exhibits by the likes of Emile Cohl, Jules-Alexandre Grün, Charles Léandre, Georges Redon,

Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola (14 November 1871 in Sète, France – 29 March 1950 in Paris) was a French painter. He is known for his pioneering leadership of the ''List of camoufleurs, Camoufleurs'' (the French Camouflage Department) in ...

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Count, ''Comte'' Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), known as Toulouse-Lautrec (), was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colour ...

, Louis Abel-Truchet, and

Adolphe Willette Adolphe Léon Willette (30 July 1857 – 4 February 1926) was a French Painting, painter, illustrator, caricaturist, and lithographer, as well as an architect of the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret. Willette ran as an "antisemitism, anti-semitic" c ...

History

The Cabaret des Quat'z'Arts was founded in December 1893 by François Trombert on the site of the old

Café du Tambourin Café du Tambourin was a restaurant in Paris, France. Owned by Agostina Segatori, it was opened in December 1883 at 27 rue de Richelieu, and then in March 1885 relocated at 62 Boulevard de Clichy. Famous painter, Jules Chéret, made a poster ...

. He named the establishment after the second annual

Bal des Quat'z'Arts Bal des Quat'z'Arts ("Four Arts Ball") was a Parisian annual ball, the first held in 1892 and the last in 1966. The event was organised by Henri Guillaume, Professor of Architecture at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts for students o ...

, an event of the

École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...

. That costume ball was held 9 February 1893 at the

Moulin Rouge Moulin Rouge (, ; ) is a cabaret in Paris, on Boulevard de Clichy, at Place Blanche, the intersection of, and terminus of Rue Blanche. In 1889, the Moulin Rouge was co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also owned the Olympia (Par ...

and, along with merriment and drinking, included nude models as living paintings, a nude woman standing on a table at midnight, and a subsequent lawsuit. The term "Quat'z'Arts" referred to the school's four disciplines (architecture, painting, printmaking, and sculpture). Theatrical offerings were performed by the cabaret's troupe or by

marionette A marionette ( ; ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by ...

s and included satirical revues and shadow plays. Venues similar to Chat Noir were La Lune Rousse and Les Pantins. After Trombert's death (1908), Martial Boyer took over as director; subsequent editors were Gabriel Montoya and Vincent Hyspa. ''Les Quat'z'arts'', the cabaret's official magazine, was established in November 1897 and included anecdotes, chronicles, jokes, parodies, and satirical commentary. In 1897, the

chansonnier A chansonnier (, , Galician and , or ''canzoniéro'', ) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally " song-books"; however, some manuscripts are call ...

Auguste Tuaillon was appointed chief editor of the magazine. Starting as an eight-page weekly which was sold at the venue, by February 1898, it was reduced to four pages, and three months later, it suspended publication. Thirteen additional issues were printed between 1900 and 1908. Four muses on the masthead depicted architecture, painting, sculpture, and engraving, while swimming across the Seine with lions (symbolizing young artists) following behind them, all to join poetry in Montmartre.

Architecture and fittings

The venue had three rooms. The "locale" featured eclectic interior design by Henri Pille and was decorated in a pseudo-gothic, pseudo-Renaissance style. The "salle de café" had paneled, bronze and statuette embellishments. Between 1894 and 1905, a group of artists and poets in the cabaret produced ''Le Mur'' ("The Wall"), consisting of a display on one of the walls that was changed weekly. Considered a journal by those who created it, the mounted drawings, poems, newspaper clippings, commentary on current events, literature, and art, were meant to be seen rather than to be read (''le voir et non le lire''; "to see it not to read it").

References

;Bibliography * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Quat'z'Arts 1893 establishments in France Cabarets in Paris Montmartre