Montparnasse (French:[mɔ̃paʁnas]ⓘ) is an area in the south ofParis,France, on theleft bank of the riverSeine, centred at the crossroads of theBoulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split between the6th,14th, and15th arrondissements of the city. Montparnasse has been part of Parissince 1669.[citation needed]
The area also gives its name to:
Students in the 17th century who came to recite poetry in the hilly neighbourhood nicknamed it after "Mount Parnassus", home to the nineMuses of arts and sciences inGreek mythology. The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During theFrench Revolution many dance halls andcabarets opened their doors, becoming gathering points for artists. The area is also known for cafés and bars, such as theBreton restaurants specialising incrêpes (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from the Gare Montparnasse.[1] ThePasteur Institute is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of theCatacombs of Paris.
During the Interwar period, Montparnasse was the central hub of theSchool of Paris.[2]
In the 18th century, students recited poems at the foot of an artificial hillock of rock rubble from theCatacombs of Paris. Ironically, they decided to baptise this moundMount Parnassus, named after theMount Parnassus celebrated inAncient Greek literature. In the early 20th century, manyBretons who were driven out of their region by poverty arrived by train atGare Montparnasse, in the heart of the Montparnasse district, and settled nearby.[3] Montparnasse became famous in theRoaring Twenties, referred to asles Années Folles (the Crazy Years), and the 1930s as the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start ofWorld War II, Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse as the alternative to theMontmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris ofCharles Baudelaire,Robert de Montesquiou,Zola,Manet,France,Degas,Fauré typically indulged in theBohemianism cultural refinements ofDandyism.
The cultural scene during the late-1920s forexpatriates in Montparnasse and the6th arrondissement is described inJohn Glassco's 1970 bookMemoirs of Montparnasse. Virtually penniless painters, sculptors, writers, poets and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere of Montparnasse and for the cheap rent at artist communes, such asLa Ruche. Living without running water, in damp, unheatedAteliers, many sold their works for a fewFrancs just to buy food.Jean Cocteau once said that poverty was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such asDaniel-Henry Kahnweiler, today works by those artists sell for millions of euros.
In post-World War I Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting place for the artistic world.Fernand Léger wrote of that period: "man...relaxes and recaptures his taste for life, his frenzy to dance, tospend money...an explosion oflife-force fills the world."[4] They came to Montparnasse from all over the globe - from Europe, including Russia,Hungary andUkraine, from the United States, Canada,Mexico,Central and South America, and from as far away as Japan.Manuel Ortiz de Zárate,Camilo Mori and others made their way fromChile where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of theGrupo Montparnasse inSantiago. A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse wereJacob Macznik,[5][6]Pablo Picasso,Guillaume Apollinaire,Ossip Zadkine,Julio Gonzalez,Moise Kisling,Jean Cocteau,Erik Satie,Marios Varvoglis,Marc Chagall,Nina Hamnett,Jean Rhys,Fernand Léger,Jacques Lipchitz,Max Jacob,Blaise Cendrars,Chaïm Soutine,James Joyce,Ernest Hemingway,Yitzhak Frenkel Frenel,Michel Kikoine,Pinchus Kremegne,Amedeo Modigliani,Ford Madox Ford,Toño Salazar,Ezra Pound,Max Ernst,Marcel Duchamp,Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti,Henri Rousseau,Constantin Brâncuși,Eva Kotchever,Claude Cahun andMarcel Moore,Paul Fort,Juan Gris,Diego Rivera,Federico Cantú,Angel Zarraga,Marevna,Tsuguharu Foujita,Marie Vassilieff,Léon-Paul Fargue,Alberto Giacometti,René Iché,André Breton,Alfonso Reyes,Pascin,Nils Dardel,Salvador Dalí,Henry Miller,Samuel Beckett,Emil Cioran,Reginald Gray,Endre Ady,Joan Miró,Hilaire Hiler,Magdalena Rădulescu, and, in his declining years,Edgar Degas.
Montparnasse was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members. WhenTsuguharu Foujita arrived from Japan in 1913 not knowing a soul, he metChaïm Soutine,Amedeo Modigliani,Jules Pascin andFernand Léger virtually the same night and within a week became friends withJuan Gris,Pablo Picasso andHenri Matisse. In 1914, when the English painterNina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse, on her first evening the smiling man at the next table atCafé de la Rotonde graciously introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became good friends and Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night.
Between 1921 and 1924, the number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000. While most of the artistic community gathered here were struggling to eke out an existence, well-heeled American socialites such asPeggy Guggenheim, andEdith Wharton from New York City,Harry Crosby fromBoston andBeatrice Wood from San Francisco were caught in the fever of creativity.Robert McAlmon, andMaria andEugene Jolas came to Paris and published their literary magazineTransition. Harry Crosby and his wifeCaresse would establish theBlack Sun Press in Paris in 1927, publishing works by such future luminaries asD. H. Lawrence,Archibald MacLeish,James Joyce,Kay Boyle,Hart Crane,Ernest Hemingway,John Dos Passos,William Faulkner,Dorothy Parker and others. As well,Bill Bird published through hisThree Mountains Press until British heiressNancy Cunard took it over.
The cafés,bistros and bars of Montparnasse were a meeting place where cultural ideas and connections were hatched and mulled over. Thecafés at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso.
In Montparnasse's heyday (from 1910 to 1920), the cafésLe Dôme,Closerie des Lilas,La Rotonde,Le Select, andLa Coupole—all of which are still in business—were the places where starving artists could occupy a table all evening for a fewcentimes. If they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them. Arguments were common, some fueled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights (and there often were) thepolice were never summoned. If you could not pay your bill, people such as La Rotonde's proprietor, Victor Libion, would often accept adrawing, holding it until the artist could pay. As such, there were times when the café's walls were littered with a collection of artworks.
There were many areas where the artists congregated, one of them being near Le Dôme at no. 10 rue Delambre called theDingo Bar. It was the hang-out of artists and ex-patriate Americans and the place where Canadian writerMorley Callaghan, who came with his friendErnest Hemingway, both still unpublished writers, met the already-established writerF. Scott Fitzgerald. WhenMan Ray's friend andDadaist,Marcel Duchamp, left for New York City, Man Ray set up his first studio at l'Hôtel des Ecoles at no. 15 rue Delambre. This is where his career as a photographer began, and whereJames Joyce,Gertrude Stein,Kiki of Montparnasse,Jean Cocteau and the others filed in and posed in black and white.
Therue de la Gaité in Montparnasse was the site of many of the greatmusic-hall theatres, in particular the famous "Bobino".
On their stages, using then-popular single name pseudonyms or one birth name only,Damia,Kiki,Mayol andGeorgius, sang and performed to packed houses. And here too,Les Six was formed, creating music based on the ideas ofErik Satie andJean Cocteau.
The poetMax Jacob said he came to Montparnasse to "sin disgracefully", butMarc Chagall summed it up differently when he explained why he had gone to Montparnasse: "I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard of from so far away: this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colours, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in a flow of conceived lines. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only on Paris."
While the area attracted people who came to live and work in the creative,bohemian environment, it also became home for political exiles such asVladimir Lenin,Leon Trotsky,Porfirio Diaz, andSimon Petlyura. But, World War II forced the dispersal of the artistic society, and after the war Montparnasse never regained its splendour. Wealthy socialites likePeggy Guggenheim, an art collector who married artistMax Ernst, lived in theHôtel Lutetia and frequented the artist studios of Montparnasse, acquiring pieces that would come to be recognized as masterpieces now in thePeggy Guggenheim Museum inVenice, Italy.
TheMusée du Montparnasse opened in 1998 at 21Avenue du Maine and closed in 2015. Although operating with a tiny city grant, the museum was a non-profit operation. TheGallery of Montparnasse was one of the first to introduceabstract expressionism in France in the 1940s, and still holds contemporary art exhibitions today.
SNCF, the French rail company, has its head office in Montparnasse near the 14th arrondissement.[7][8]
Prior to the completion of the currentAir France head office inTremblay-en-France in December 1995,[9][10] Air France had its headquarters in a tower located next to theGare Montparnasse railway station in Montparnasse and in the15th arrondissement; Air France had its headquarters in the tower for about 30 years.[11][12][13]
The Vandamme Library (Bibliothèque Vandamme) is located in the neighbourhood.[14][15]
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