page_title: Dancer in a Café
section_title: Paul Poiret, Isadora Duncan and the art world
hierarchical_section_title: Dancer in a Café / Paul Poiret, Isadora Duncan and the art world
caption_attribution_description: TITLE: Poiret model - Gimbels CALL NUMBER: LOT 7177 [item] [P&amp;P] Check for an online group record (may link to related items) REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-85524 (b&amp;w film copy neg.) No known restrictions on publication. SUMMARY: Model wearing gown, full lgth., facing slightly left. MEDIUM: 1 photographic print. CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1914 March. NOTES: Photo by Bain News Service. Title and other information transcribed from caption card and item. George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress). Caption card tracings: Clothing; Models. REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA DIGITAL ID: (b&amp;w film copy neg.) cph 3b32052 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b32052 CARD #: 2002714473
context_page_description: Danseuse au café is a large oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger. The work was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1912, entitled Danseuse. The Cubist contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne created a controversy in the Municipal Council of Paris, leading to a debate in the Chambre des Députés about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such 'barbaric' art. The Cubists were defended by the Socialist deputy, Marcel Sembat. This painting was realized as Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, in preparation for the Salon de la Section d'Or, published a major defence of Cubism, resulting in the first theoretical essay on the new movement, Du «Cubisme». Danseuse au café was first reproduced in a photograph published in an article entitled Au Salon d'Automne "Les Indépendants" in the French newspaper Excelsior, 2 Octobre 1912. The painting is now located at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo New York.
context_section_description: The French fashion designer Paul Poiret actually worked for the House of Worth early in the 20th century, however, the "brazen modernity of his designs" proved too much for Worth's conservative clientele. Poiret established his own house in 1903 and threw spectacular parties to promote his work.
  In June 1911 Poiret unveiled “Parfums de Rosine" in a grand soirée held at his palatial home (a hôtel particulier avenue d'Antin), a costume ball christened “la mille et deuxième nuit,” (the thousand and second night), attended by the Parisian high-society and the artistic world. Raoul Dufy—with whom Metzinger had exhibited at the gallery of Berthe Weill in 1903, the Indépendants of 1905 and Galerie Notre-Dame-des-Champs in 1908—designed the invitation. Gardens were illuminated by lanterns and live tropical birds. His marketing strategy became a sensation and the talk of Paris. A second scent debuted in 1912, "Le Minaret," again emphasizing the harem theme.
  In 1911, the photographer Edward Steichen was challenged by publisher Lucien Vogel to promote fashion as a fine art by the use of photography. The photographs of Poiret's gowns, published in the April 1911 issue of the magazine Art et Décoration, are now considered to be the first modern fashion photography shoot. In 1912, Vogel began his renowned fashion journal La Gazette du Bon Ton, showcasing Poiret's designs, along with other leading Paris designers such as the House of Charles Worth, Louise Chéruit, Georges Doeuillet, Jeanne Paquin, Redfern & Sons and Jacques Doucet (the Post-Impressionist and Cubist art collector who purchased Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, directly from Picasso's studio).
  Paul Poiret had a lifelong interest in modern art for the purposes of self-promotion and the benefit of his diverse commercial enterprises. In 1911 he rented and restored a mansion built by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louis XV, 1750, called Pavillon du Butard in La Celle-Saint-Cloud (not far from Albert Gleizes' studio and close to the Duchamp residence, where the Section d'Or group gathered) and threw lavish parties, including one of the more famous grandes fêtes dated 20 June 1912, La fête de Bacchus (re-creating the Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles). Guy-Pierre Fauconnet (1882-1920) designed the invitation. Isadora Duncan, wearing a Hellenic evening gown designed by Poiret, danced on tables among 300 guests and 900 bottles of champagne were consumed until the first light of day.
  Isadora Duncan, a girl from California said to have posed for Eadweard Muybridge, placed an emphasis on "evolutionary" dance motion, insisting that each movement was born from the one that preceded it, that each movement gave rise to the next, and so on in organic succession. Her dancing defined the force of progress, change, abstraction and liberation. In France too Duncan delighted her audience.
  André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Max Jacob, André Salmon and others such as Kees van Dongen and Raoul Dufy are known to have attended Poiret's balls. Salmon writes about one of them in L’Air de la Butte: 'Poiret who opens his home to artists of his choice, who prepare, in his gardens, a party in the spirit of 1889'. Here Salmon makes reference to the Exposition Universelle (1889).
  By 1912, Marie Laurencin had entered into an intimate lesbian relationship with the fashion designer Nicole Groult, born Nicole Poiret (the sister of Paul Poiret). In 1906 Nicole Poiret, with her brother Paul and friend Isadora Duncan fought a tense battle for the liberation of women, which began by the abolition of the corset. Laurencin had shown together with Metzinger and other Cubists in Room 41 of the 1911 Salon des Indépendants (at the suggestion of Guillaume Apollinaire), which provoked the 'scandal' out of which Cubism emerged and spread throughout Paris, France, Europe and so on. In the company of her friend Marie Laurencin, Nicole Poiret frequented the bohemian world of Montmartre, Le Bateau-Lavoir and the Cubists.
  The sculptor Emile-Antoine Bourdelle had met Isadora in 1903 at Auguste Rodin's picnic, and in 1909 
caption: Dress designed by Paul Poiret, ca. 1912, Poiret model - Gimbels[9]
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