Page 231 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Paris

MONTM AR TRE  229

The deceptively rustic exterior of Au Lapin Agile, in the heart of Montmartre
6 Au Lapin Agile painting was sold at auction a museum and gallery devoted
for $67.5 million. to these “raw” art forms. It also
22 Rue des Saules 75018. Map 2 F5.
Tel 01 46 06 85 87. q Lamarck- Today, the cabaret venue hosts avant-garde theatre and
Caulaincourt. Open 9pm–1am manages to retain much of its musical productions, holds
Tue–Sun. See Entertainment pp334, 336. original atmosphere. regular literary evenings and
∑ au-lapin-agile.com debates and runs children’s
work shops. The permanent
The former Cabaret des Assassins 7 Halle Saint Pierre collection includes more than
derived its current name from a Halle St-Pierre, 2 Rue Ronsard 75018. 500 works of Naïve art collected
sign painted by the humorist Map 7 A1. Tel 01 42 58 72 89. by the publisher Max Fourny in
André Gill. His picture of a rabbit q Anvers. Open 10am–6pm Mon– the 1970s. There is also a
escaping from a cooking pot (Le Fri, 11am–7pm Sat, noon–6pm Sun specialist bookshop and café.
Lapin à Gill) is a pun on his own (Aug: noon–6pm Mon–Fri). Closed
name. The club enjoyed popular- some public hols. & ^ 7 - = 8 Chapelle du
ity with intellectuals and artists ∑ hallesaintpierre.org
at the start of the 20th century. Martyre
Here in 1911, the novelist Roland In 1945, the French painter 9 Rue Yvonne-Le-Tac 75018. Map 6 F1.
Dorgelès and a group of other Jean Dubuffet developed the q Pigalle. Open 3–5pm Fri, 1st Sat &
regulars staged one of the concept of Art Brut (Outsider or Sun of each month.
modern art world’s most Marginal Art) to describe works
celebrated hoaxes, with the help created outside the boundaries This 19th-century chapel stands
of the café owner’s donkey, Lolo. of “official” culture, often by on the site of a medieval
A paintbrush was tied to Lolo’s psychiatric patients, prisoners convent chapel, which was said
tail, and the resulting daub was and children. The Halle Saint to mark the place where the
shown to critical acclaim at the Pierre, at the foot of the Butte, is early Christ ian martyr and first
Salon des Indépendants, under bishop of Paris, Saint Denis,
the enlightening title Sunset was beheaded by the Romans
over the Adriatic, before the joke in AD 250. It remained a major
was revealed. pilgrimage site throughout the
In 1903, the premises were Middle Ages. In 1534, in the
bought by the cabaret crypt of the original chapel,
entrepreneur Aristide Bruand Ignatius de Loyola, founder of
(painted in a series of posters by the Society of Jesus (the mighty
Toulouse-Lautrec). The venue Jesuit order designed to save
was depicted by Pablo Picasso the Catholic Church from the
in an oil painting which was onslaught of the Protestant
sold for $20 by the cabaret’s Reformation), took his Jesuit
owner in 1912. In 1989, the Art Brut at Halle Saint Pierre vows with six companions.

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