LE QUAT'Z'ARTS CABARET

Founded in 1893 by François Trombert and located at 62 boulevard de Clichy, the Quat'z'Arts continued into the twentieth century the dynamic role of the Montmartre cabaret artistique, which had been initiated by Salis at the Chat Noir. Like the Chat Noir, the Quat'z'Arts provided an "alternative space" where both permanent and temporary exhibitions of works by artists such as Abel Truchet, Jules Grun, Charles Léandre, Guirand de Scévola, Adolphe Willette, Georges Redon, Emile Cohl, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

 The Quat'z'Arts also shared the Chat Noir's taste for eclectic interior design inspired by the past. Designed by Henri Pille, the "locale," one of the three rooms of the cabaret, was decorated in a pseudo-gothic, pseudo-Renaissance spirit, again recalling the Chat Noir. The second room, the "salle de café," was embellished with wood panels, bronze objects and statuettes, including a group of Rabelaisian figures. But the Quat'z'Arts cabaret took the interdisciplinary mixture of the arts, and the fraternal spirit between the artists and the audience, one step further, creating avant-garde collaborative performances that surpassed the genres seen at the Chat Noir.

Named "fumistically" after the four disciplines of the Ecole des Beaux Arts architecture, painting, printmaking, and sculpturethe Quat'z'Arts served not only as a gathering place for many artists, but also for composers, musicians, performers, poets, illustrators, and even established theater critics. Some of the regular performers at the Quat'z'Arts were discovered by Trombert, who launched their careers there. Also featured were well-known performers who had made their debuts at other cabarets like the Chat Noir. The Quat'z'Arts was still going strong in the early years of the twentieth century, attracting newcomers such as the young Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, and writers such as Apollinaire.

Auguste Roedel, Odilon Redon, from Le Mur, 1894, pen and ink. Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers,
The State University of New Jersey, Herbert D. and Ruth Schimmel Museum Library Fund. (Photo by Jack Abraham)