The Lapin Agile
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Lapin Agile (http://www.au-lapin-agile.com/)
 This was probably the most popular of the several gathering places in Montmartre. It is mentioned in connection with Picasso and his circle in many sources describing those exhilarating times. Formerly named Cabaret des Assassins, its name was changed according to a common practice in Paris at the time – that of making phonetic puns for the names of establishments. The regular clientele at Assassins began to refer to the place as Le Lapin Agile (the agile rabbit), which described the painting over the door by artist André Gill – as in “le lapin á Gill” (Gill’s rabbit) or even “lá a peint A. Gill” (A. Gill painted here).
The owner Père Frédé was the former owner of a small literary café called Zut. With his guitar and distinctive beard, he was a colorful eccentric known to all the artists and intellectuals. The Lapin was a building swathed in greenery, with a bar, a dining room, a terrace, and a profusion of animals The interior was dark, cleaned and polished every day by Frédé’ s wife, Berthe la Bourguignonne. From time to time, Frédé would tune his guitar and announce an artistic evening. All present would sing or recite poetry. Several artists had painted or hung sculptures on the walls, including Picasso who had done a number of nude figures with a single blue brush stroke and a portrait of his friend Jaime Sabartès.
The Lapin Agile as it appears today. Photograph by a member of Keegan Dramaturg's (Trudi Olivetti) entourage.
Steve Martin (1945- )
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Most of the world knows Steve Martin for his work as a comedian and actor, which continues to flourish, but it can be said that Martin’s first career was as a writer. He began to write as a student and his first break was with the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when he was fresh from the college experience. Since then, his writing has included pieces for television and the movies as well as magazine essays, novellas and stage plays. Picasso at the Lapin Agile, was Martin’s first play, originally produced in 1996 at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. He says that his inspiration came from an afternoon he spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, looking at Picasso’s 1904-05 painting “Au Lapin Agile.” (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/ho_1992.391.htm) 
La Belle Époque
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
This is the name given to the period in French history from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of World War I. It was a time of great optimism, in spite of enormous social upheavals and unrest which had begun around sixty years before. France enjoyed a sense of prosperity and peace with its European neighbors there were significant new inventions and brilliant innovations in the arts.
In this “golden age” there was also a sense of anarchy and a world-wide trend against the conventional, because of a series of social and aesthetic revolutions earlier in the 19th century. These changes were only the beginning, of course, but it was a heady time.
Cubism 1907-1920s
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Cubism 1907-1920s (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/cubism.html)
At that time there were many developing revolutionary ideas about art, combining instinct and intellect with sensation. The breaking away began quite noticeably in the mid to late 19th century with artists like Courbet, Manet, all the Impressionists, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Cézanne. If these artist had not begun to question the traditional principles of painting, the Fauves (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/fauvism.html) and the Cubists could never have expressed themselves with so much liberty. The climate was right for new ideas, on a continuum to abstraction of all kinds.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/hd_pica.htm
www.picasso.fr/anglais
Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, the first child of his parents. His father was a painter, art teacher and curator at a local museum. He recognized his son’s talent and gave him the basics of formal academic art training. It is said that Pablo’s first words were “’piz, ‘piz,” a shortening of the Spanish word for pencil, “lapiz.” He attended art schools throughout his childhood but never finished his studies at the Academy of Arts in Madrid.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Einstein is described as a theoretical physicist widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century. In popular culture, his name is synonymous with great intelligence and genius. His life is associated with three noteworthy events of the century: the creation of nuclear weapons, the rise of German fascism, and the beginning of modern Zionism. There is also a sense of drama and humor connected to his persona as he was prone to a certain kind of public clowning and in spite of the seriousness of his mental output, it was somehow always placed in the perspective of the follies of the human race.
Lexicon – explanation of references in the script
Study Guide for Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Artists
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti (1475-1564) – Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Florentine Leonardo da Vinci. (http://www.michelangelo.com/buonarroti.html)
Raphael (1483-1520) – Italian Renaissance painter and architect; celebrated for his clarity of form, perhaps best known for his paintings of the Madonna. (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/raphael.html)
Titian (ca. 1485-1576) – Italian late Renaissance painter, regarded as the leader of the Venetian school; adept at landscapes, portraits and religious subjects. (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/titian.html)
El Greco (1541-1614) – Cretan-born painter, sculptor, and architect who settled in Spain and is regarded as the first great genius of the Spanish School. He was known as El Greco (the Greek), but his real name was Domenikos Theotocopoulos. His characteristic style depicted figures elongated into flame-like forms and usually painted in cold, eerie, bluish colors express intense religious feeling. (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/greco/)
Diego Velazquez (“Bell-ath-kweth”) (1599-1660) – regarded as Spain’s greatest painter; highly developed individual style; possibly had more influence than any other European painter of the time. (http://www.cyberspain.com/passion/velazq.htm)
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) – Flemish Baroque painter, probably the most popular of his time; Baroque style emphasized movement, color and sensuality. (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rubens_peter_paul.html)
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) – Spanish artist whose paintings, etchings and drawings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced many 19th and 20th century artists. (http://www.cyberspain.com/passion/goya.htm)
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) – French landscape painter; one of the first artists to be known as a Realist (vs. Romantic), interested in the direct observation of nature. (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/courbet_gustave.html)
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) – French sculptor whose strong and realist works had a profound influence on 20th century art. He was commissioned in 1891 by the Société des Gens des Lettres to create a statue of the French realist poet and novelist Honore de Balzac (1799-1850). He did several versions of the sculpture, finalizing his study in 1896. During the following year it caused a sensation because of its association with an erected phallus. In fact, he had actually created a nude study of Balzac with an erect penis in his left hand before he covered the figure with a (sculpted) cloth. It was eventually rejected by the Société. (http://www.musee-rodin.fr) (http://www.rodinmuseum.org)
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) – French artist known for his use of vivid color and original draftsmanship; one of the “fauves,” he was influence by the work of Gauguin and Van Gogh, among many others. He was a friend an rival of Picasso; they painted the same subject matter, although Picasso is said to have worked more from his imagination and Matisse from nature. (http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/artists/MatisseHenri.html)
Other
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) – Jewish Czech-born writer, most famous for his story “The Metamorphosis,” about a man who awakens to find himself turned into a cockroach. He died of tuberculosis.
Marie Curie (1867-1934) – Polish physicist, who, with her husband, isolated the elements polonium and radium. They received a Nobel Prize in 1903.
Max Planck (1858-1947) – German physicist who developed the quantum theory, based on the assumption that energy was emitted in bursts, not as a steady flow. He was one of the first to recognize the significance of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) – French poet, writer and art critic; one of the circle of artists and intellectuals who lived in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century; he died during the Spanish flu epidemic
Euclid (ca. 325 – 265 B.C.E.) – Egyptian mathematician, who wrote in Greek, often considered to be the father of geometry; he also wrote the earliest surviving treatise on perspective
“Ta rah rah boom dee ay” – this is an actual song, “Tha ma ra boum de hé,” composed in 1891, by Henri J. Sayers, performed in French cafés at the time. It took on another life during the next century…
Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant – first published in 1781, it is one of the most influential works in the history of Western philosophy, an attempt to bridge the gap between rationalism (pure thought) and empiricism (conclusions drawn from observation). Einstein was introduced to this text at the age of 10.
unified field theory – is an attempt to unify all the fundamental forces and the interactions between elementary particles into a single theoretical framework. The term was coined by Einstein who attempted to reconcile his general theory of relativity with electromagnetism in a single field theory. He worked on this during his tenure at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in the 1930s and 40s. His quest proved elusive and a unified field theory, sometimes grandiosely referred to as the Theory of Everything (TOE, for short), has remained the holy grail for physicists, the long-sought theory which would explain the nature and behavior of all matter.
absinthe – a highly alcoholic green anise-flavored drink derived from a medicinal plant; it originated in Switzerland as a medicine, but is best known for its popularity in late 19th and early 20th century France among artistic communities, portrayed as a highly addictive and dangerous drug.
Bar Rouge – most likely the Moulin (or, Moulon) Rouge (red windmill), the most famous of the Montmartre cafés at the end of the 19th century; the night life there immortalized by the posters and paintings of Toulouse Lautrec
manifesto – any written declaration of intention or principles, usually of a political nature, but also popular among some artist groups in the early 20th century.
idiot savant – an intellectually disabled person who exhibits extraordinary ability in a highly specialized area, such as music or mathematics.
Symbolism – movement of late 19th century writers and artists, chiefly French, who rejected Realism and used symbolic or dream-like images to evoke ideas and emotions.
Romanticism – An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions.
The “Post” and “Neo” romanticism of the 20th century (and currently) are essentially synonymous – referring to many aspects of a long-lived tradition in art and music, interested in beauty, intuition and feeling. There are other applications of “neo” and “post” to art movements which can be differentiated from each other. “Post” tends to mean the development of a movement naturally into a new phase, such as “Post-Impressionism,” whereas “neo” usually refers to a revival of a phenomenon long gone, such as the “Neo-Gothic” of the mid 19th century.
triptych – a work of art divided into three sections; usually the term is applied to sacred panel or altar painting, common in the Renaissance.
Tiffany’s – famous jewelry store in New York City.
Hiawatha – American Indian leader of the Mohawk and Onondaga tribes, who lived around 1550, and who is credited with founding the Iroquois Confederacy. The famous poem by Longfellow is actually based on an Algonquian trickster figure and not the historical peace-maker.
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