![]() Singing in Argot, Bruant would meditate on the lives of local laborers while making fun of the bourgeois clientele in the audience. The two would go on to collaborate for many years, and it's clear to see why the performer would interest Steinlen: Bruant's performances exemplified the socialist priorities with which Steinlen was concerned. Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (77.050.003). ![]() Tournée du Chat Noir de Rodolphe Salis, 1896. Left: Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (French, 1859–1923). It was there that Steinlen met Aristide Bruant, a singer who would influence the artist's work and politics, and serve as a frequent subject in his work. ![]() Local Montmartre café concerts such as the famous Le Chat Noir would host provocative performers whose songs would engage in working-class narratives. Steinlen became best known for his lithographic posters from the 1890s. This approach put his art in the hands of the individuals and environs he was concerned with-both artistically and socially-challenged traditional artistic hierarchies, and empowered the working class. Since these widely circulated publications were part of a more democratic dissemination and reception of art, he viewed each of his works as a tool of resistance against oppression. Through illustrating and printmaking, Steinlen aimed to communicate the chronicles of the working class as directly as possible, as he believed that understatement would affect the clarity of his argument. ![]() He regularly contributed to the art-criticism periodical Gil Blas, the leftist satire journal Le Rire, the Marxist periodical Le Chambard Socialiste, and the anarchist paper La Feuille, as well as other publications and novels, often without compensation. Upon his move to Montmartre, the artist quickly engaged with the leftist community in France. Steinlen was a socialist and a relentless supporter of working-class rights. Though the artist created a number of paintings in his lifetime, it does not compare to the endless volume of politically focused ephemera he devoted his career to making. This suited artists like Steinlen perfectly. From journals, periodicals, and newspapers to party invitations and public posters, the visual and literary arts quickly flooded the city with social discourse. Following the 1881 lifting of censorship in France and the passing of the Law on the Freedom of the Press, the production of politically focused artistic and literary ephemera flourished. He settled in Montmartre, an area in the north of the city where many ex-patriots, artists, and working-class people lived. However, as the devastation of World War I emerged across Europe, the urgency of the human effects of war moved to the forefront of his priorities.īorn in Lausanne, Switzerland, Steinlen moved to Paris in 1881 at the age of 21. Like many of his vanguard contemporaries, Steinlen's artistic focus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was centered on leftist social commentary. The three works on display- Mobilization, The Exodus, and Program for the Matiné Extraordinaire-represent the range of imagery Steinlen produced during wartime and a significant shift in the artist's practice. One of the first artists that visitors encounter upon entering the exhibition World War I and the Visual Arts is Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Program for the Matinée Extraordinaire, Casino de Paris, 1915. Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (French, 1859–1923).
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