sem gigi caricature exhibition catalog

ABOUT THE GORMAN RARE ART BOOK COLLECTION

The Francis V. Gorman Rare Art Book Collection began from an endowment given to the University of Minnesota Libraries in 1987, for the growth of the art collection and in support of the professional activities of the art librarian. The collection consists of a broad range of rare art exhibition catalogs, artists books, illustrated periodicals (19th century), published sketchbooks from artists and architects, rare

monographs, style guides, and zines. Materials range and date from the 1500s to the present with a focus on the 19th century and the post 1950 avant-‐garde. Annual Exhibitions highlight the collection. EXHIBITION CONTRIBUTORS Lindsay Keating and Nikki Otten CO-‐CURATORS Deborah Ultan Boudewyns EXHIBITION COORDINATOR Darren Terpstra EXHIBITION DESIGNER Dr. Gabriel Weisberg FACULTY ADVISOR

1 | SEM, GIGI, AND CARICATURE

Gentle Ribbing: Caricature in Sem au Bois Nikki Otten, Co-‐curator

The French artist Sem (Georges Goursat, 1863-‐1934) built his reputation in Paris on his caricatures of prominent public figures. Born in Périgueux, Sem worked in Bordeaux and Marseille before traveling to Paris for the 1900 Universal Exposition. The first work he published in the city was Le Turf, a print album of instantly recognizable personalities at the racecourse. He began selling the album on the day of the prestigious Grand Prix race at Longchamp, and his deft ability to capture the essence of his subjects made him a success. Even the people he caricatured in Le Turf wanted a copy, and it quickly sold out.[1]

Sem revisited the subject of his first Parisian success in the Sem au Bois scroll. He drew the fashionable elite of France (and their laughable hangers-‐on) en route to Longchamp. The races were social events where central

members of society were expected to put in an appearance.[2] Sem adopted this obligatory parade down the Bois de Boulogne as an opportunity to gently mock the celebrities of his day, caricaturing members of the aristocracy, artists, politicians and socialites. Although the individuals were not identified in the chromolithograph, a weekly newspaper, L’Illustration, published a complete list of names in its October 5, 1907 issue. The names have also been penciled in on the Gorman Rare Art Book Collection’s copy of the scroll, possibly by a previous owner who transferred the list from L’Illustration.

This scroll also contains one carriage that is not included in the image reproduced in L’Illustration. Colette, the author of Gigi, is riding in a coach driven by her husband, Willy (Henry Gauthier-‐Villars). Colette is seated next to her mistress, the Marquise Mathilde de Morny. Missy, as she was known, was notorious for dressing in men’s clothing and seducing a number of women. The press assiduously documented her affair with Colette, and the pair roused a scandal when they kissed onstage as part of a pantomime production at the Moulin Rouge. Their relationship does not seem to bother Willy in the slightest, perhaps because he and Colette were separated by that time.

In addition to specific figures like Colette and the Marquise de Morny, Sem has included a few generalized “types.” One example is the woman peering out the heart-‐shaped window of her pink, floral carriage, which is being pulled by a horse prancing in a corset, black stockings, high heels, red garters and lipstick. The caption beneath the image reads, “Hue! Cocotte!!!” Cocotte was a term for a fashionable prostitute, and “Hue!” translates to “Giddy up!” The red lantern (lanterne rouge) on the side of the carriage was a symbol that marked the brothels of

SEM, GIGI, AND CARICATURE | 2

Paris, and the large number 14 inside may be referring to the city’s Fourteenth Arrondissement. The Fourteenth contains Montparnasse, which would overtake Montmartre as the artists’ quarter of Paris by the 1920s. With this garishly dressed horse, Sem is likely mocking the increasing brazenness of prostitutes in these areas, a trend that was frequently lampooned in the press.[3] Despite her high heels, this coquettish horse’s stride is surprisingly realistic. All of her fellow equines, too, are carefully posed in accordance with relatively recent discoveries about horses’ gaits. Auguste Roubille, a caricaturist who collaborated with Sem on a number of projects, drew most of the horses in the Sem au Bois procession, and it is likely that he was familiar with the motion studies of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. In 1872, railroad industrialist Leland Stanford hired Muybridge to settle a bet about whether all four of a horse’s hooves left the ground while it was trotting. When Muybridge embarked upon his task, the exposure times required to record an image were so long that motion was either appeared as a blur or did not register at all. After experimenting with shutter speeds, Muybridge managed to capture the exact positions of a trotting horse’s legs, proving that all of its hooves were indeed in the air at one point in its gait. By 1878, he was able to photograph the complete range of motion of both a trot and a gallop.

Thirty years later, photographs of horses in motion no longer posed an impossible challenge. They appeared frequently in newspapers that covered races like the Grand Prix, where they were surely seen by at least some of the people caricatured in Sem au Bois. Muybridge’s groundbreaking work still had currency during the Belle Époque, however. In 1903, Le Sport Universel Illustré, one of the newspapers that reported on horseracing, ran illustrations that reproduced Muybridge’s series of galloping and trotting horses. For the precision he needed in his scroll, it is likely that Roubille studied Muybridge’s series.

Amidst the throng of horse-‐drawn carriages in Sem au Bois, there are a few early automobiles. The automobile industry flourished in France after about 1891, and the country boasted the greatest number of car manufacturers in the world by the end of the century.[4] But automobiles were still remarkably expensive, and there are far fewer cars than horse-‐dawn carriages in Sem au Bois. This most elite of vehicles is reserved for the kings, princes and dukes depicted in the scroll while even the aristocracy relies on literal horse power. The balance between cars and horses continued to shift rapidly in the years after the scroll was published, however, and the number of cars driven to the annual races at Deauville greatly outnumbered the number of carriages by 1909.[5]

The scroll format itself allowed Sem and Roubille to incorporate a much slower form of motion into viewers’ interactions with the work. At a total of thirty feet, the scroll is far too long


to be viewed all at once. Only one or two cars or carriages could be unrolled at a time. To view the entire length of the work, the individual holding the scroll would have to continually take up the imprinted paper by winding the scroll from the left. This motion would cause the images to

process slowly under his gaze, allowing viewers to reproduce the experience of attending the pre-‐race parade.

Sem and Roubille literally enlarged and expanded upon the idea of moving pictures in 1909, when they collaborated on a circular, forty-‐foot diorama based on the same theme as Sem au Bois. This diorama, called La Grande Semaine, featured many of the figures who appear in the scroll, though they have generally exited their carriages to stroll on foot along the Bois. As with

Sem au Bois, Sem drew the main caricatures while Roubille created supplementary figures, cars and horses. The artists created a sense of depth by building several layers of small cutouts in front of a painted backdrop. The diorama rotated around visitors to the gallery where it was installed, creating the impression that the demi-‐monde of Paris was processing from right to left. Thus, while the caricaturists were looking to new technologies like photography, they put these influences to use in a form that was already considered outdated. In an article about the diorama, L’Illustration noted that Sem and Roubille had made “a forgotten genre, which has its charm, fashionable again.”[6] By building a diorama in the age of the cinema, Sem extended his caricature of French society beyond his incisive style to the dioramic form itself. While they were powerful and stylish for the moment, the central figures of Parisian popular culture were doomed to become as passé as a diorama in the age of cinema.

[1] Françoise Gouyou-‐Beauchamps, “La Belle-‐Époque,” Site officiel de la famille de Georges Goursat dit Sem, accessed January 14, 2015, http://www.sem-‐caricaturiste.info/pages/belle%20epoque.html. [2] Philippe Julian, La Belle Époque (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982), 16. [3] See Elizabeth K. Menon, “Images of Pleasure and Vice: Women of the Fringe,” in Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture, ed. Gabriel P. Weisberg (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), especially pages 46-‐58. [4] Eugen Weber, France, Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 207. [5] Weber notes that 2,218 cars and 896 carriages arrived at the Deauville racecourse. By 1912, attendees took 3,613 cars and no carriages to the annual race. Ibid., 208. [6] “Cet heureux diorama pourrait bien remettre pour quelque temps à la mode un genre oublié et qui avait son charme.” In “‘Tout Paris’ Avenue du Bois,” L’Illustration 3483 (November 27, 1909), 392.


La Belle Époque and the Golden Age of Caricature, 1890-‐1914 Lindsay Keating, Co-‐curator

Strict censorship laws were in place during the nineteenth century, particularly on artists who worked for the press. Not only was the art censored, some artists were even jailed for their offending caricatures (Chenut 440). Restraints were loosened on July 29 1881 resulting in an explosion of illustrated caricature journals (Wechsler et al. 4), and from 1870-‐1900 over 139 caricature journals were founded in Paris, followed by another boom between 1900-‐1914 (4). Censorship still occurred in direct violation of the 1881 law, regardless, and illustrated journals that featured caricature witnessed censorship such as banned street sales, confiscated issues and required modification of cartoons (Goldstein 238; 251).

Two of the longest running popular journals featured in this exhibit, “SEM, Gigi, & Caricature”, and that emerged during La Belle Époque, were Le Rire (Laughter) and L’Assiette Au Beurre. L’Assiette Au Beurre (The Butter Plate) was a weekly illustrated magazine, almost entirely visual, published from 1901-‐1912. Prominent artists took on social and political issues and had a presence of nearly 10,000 illustrations over the course of eleven years. (Applebaum introduction). Le Rire was the most successful humor journal of its time, published weekly in Paris from 1894-‐1950, with front and back

covers and centerfold printed in color. Aspiring artists who were featured in Le Rire gained renown from their publications in Le Rire. (Eskilson 61).

The illustrated journals, specializing in caricature, of La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Age), that generally dated between 1890 to 1914, took on the aesthetics of the era. The journals featured the luxurious lifestyle of the bourgeoisie with lavish imagery and color (Jullian 4). Imagery highlighted magnificently rendered horse and carriages, new motorcars, dance halls, and decorative fashion, and celebrity culture. An almost mythic like representation of the period was represented.

Early caricature consisted of exaggerated comical portraiture, which eventually expanded into satire (Wechsler et al. 1). The caricature represented in this exhibit is satirical and depicts figures in political and social contexts. The caricaturists targeted La Belle Époque society, especially Sem, (Georges Goursat) who drew scathing yet lighthearted pictorial critiques of the bourgeoisie.


Bibliography Applebaum, Stanley. French Satirical Drawings from “L’Assiette Au Beurre”: Selection,

Translations, and Text. New York: Dover Publications, 1978. Chenut, Helen. "Anti-‐Feminist Caricature In France: Politics, Satire And Public Opinion, 1890–

1914." Modern & Contemporary France 20.4 (2012): 437-‐452. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design : A New History. London: Laurence King, 2007. Goldstein, Robert Justin. Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-‐Century France. Kent,

Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989. Judith Wechsler, et al. "Caricature." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University

Press. Web. 5 Feb. 2015. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T014063>.

Jullian, Philippe. La Belle Époque : An Essay. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.


Caricature on Screen: Colette’s Gigi Lindsay Keating, Co-‐curator

Caricature was present in the

literature of La Belle Époque as expressed in the work of Colette Willy, a French writer of the early 20th century who wrote over 50 novels. Inspired by the caricaturist, Sem, Colette blended fiction and autobiography with both glamour and humor. Colette was a bold and fearless woman of her time, initially publishing under her husband’s pseudonym “Willy” until she published Dialogues de bêtes in 1904, when she began to use her own name.

Instead of focusing on celebrity culture, Colette approached challenging topics such as women’s independence in a

patriarchal world, and issues that protested the social norms and hypocrisy of La Belle Époque (Freeland "Colette, 1873-‐1954”). In 1944, Colette published her last and most famous novel Gigi late in life at the age of 72 (“Colette” Oxford Reference). Set in 1899, Gigi is Colette’s homage to La Belle Époque, with caricatures in her novel inspired by Sem’s caricatures (Dunant 47). A coming-‐of-‐age love story threaded with comedic elements, Gigi tells how an innocent 16-‐year-‐old girl, the daughter of courtesans, is expected to display the proper etiquette of an aristocratic lady. Gigi is raised by her aunts whose primary concerns are wealth and status, however, Gigi refuses conform to expectations and social norms in an amusing and charming way.

Gigi was adapted to the screen in 1950, as a Broadway play starring Audrey Hepburn in 1954, and finally as a musical film directed by Vincente Minnelli in 1958 (Hischak “Gigi”). As the last great Hollywood musical, the 1958 film adaptation of Gigi directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a huge international success winning nine Oscars, including the first Best Director Oscar ever given to a musical director (Hischak “Gigi”). The musical is visually stunning which was


Minnelli’s primary concern. Minnelli spared no expense on costumes and scenery. He wanted full regalia and lavish scenery so the audience was completely enveloped in La Belle Époque. Minnelli sought to capture the look and feel of the time period using artists such as Sem, Boudin and Constantin Guys for inspiration (Levy 299). Sem’s caricatures were used in the opening credits of the film, which made for a perfect fit since Colette used them as inspiration for the novel (Dunant 47). The cinematic caricature of Gigi is established at the beginning with the Sem caricatures and throughout the Minnelli film. Bibliography "Colette." Who's Who in the Twentieth Century. : Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford

Reference. 2003. Date Accessed 5 Feb. 2015 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192800916.001.0001/acref-‐9780192800916-‐e-‐390>.

Dunant, Caroline. "Visions of Paris." Monthly Film Bulletin Winter 1991: 42. ProQuest. Web. 5 Feb. 2015 .

Freeland, Petra. "Colette, 1873-‐1954." Literature Online Biography. Chadwyck-‐Healey, 2004. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

Hischak, Thomas. "Gigi." The Oxford Companion to the American Musical. : Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 5 Feb. 2015 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195335330.001.0001/acref-‐9780195335330-‐e-‐698>.

Levy, Emanuel. "Chapter Nineteen: The Height of His Career: Gigi." Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer. New York: St. Martin's, 2009. 295-‐315. Print.

Thurman, Judith. Secrets of the Flesh : A Life of Colette. 1st ed.. New York: Knopf, 1999.


Animal Locomotion, 1887 Eadweard Muybridge

TC Andersen Library Rare Books

Sem au Bois, excerpt, 1907 Sem (Georges Goursat) and August Roubille Wilson Library Rare Books (Gorman Art)

La Grand Semaine, excerpt, 1909 Sem (Georges Goursat) and August Roubille

L’Illustration December 11, 1909 TC Wilson Library Annex Sub-‐basement


Sous Les Tilleuls Sem (Georges Goursat)

La Baionnette No. 6 August 12, 1915 TC Wilson Library Annex Sub-‐Basement

Jules Renard Sem (Georges Goursat)

Le Carnard Sauvage April 18-‐24, 1903 TC Wilson Library Rare Books (Gorman Art)

Les Presidents Possibles Sem (Georges Goursat)

Je Sais Tout December 1905 TC Wilson Library Annex Sub-‐Basement


A La Scala Leonetto Cappiello Le Rire, June 3, 1899

TC Wilson Library Annex Sub-‐Basement

Les Gueules de Bois Demetrius Emmanuel Galanis

L’Assiette Au Beurre, June 17, 1905 TC Wilson Library Rare Books

Gigi, movie still, 1958 Vincente Minnelli, director

TC Music Library Closed Stacks

Three Short Novels, 1952 Colette Willy

TC Wilson Library General Collection


Documents

sem gigi caricature exhibition catalog