The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France - 1885 to World War I

The definitive chronicle of the origins of French avant-garde literature and art, Roger Shattuck's classic portrays the cultural bohemia of turn-of-the-century Paris who carried the arts into a period of renewal and accomplishment and laid the groundwork for Dadaism and Surrealism. Shattuck focuses on the careers of Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, and Guillaume Apollinaire, using the quartet as window into the era as he exploring a culture whose influence is at the very foundation of modern art.

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LibraryThing member bluepiano

This is an outstandingly good work on the immediate origins of early 20th-century artistic movements and writing. A chapter of biography of one of the four figures--Rousseau (le Douanier), Satie, Apollinaire, Jarry-- is followed by an evaluation of his work, but the book is so smoothly written that

one scarcely notices the scheme of it.The lives are of course rivetingly interesting. Shattuck conveys the pathos in each one depressingly well but his joy in the works almost dispels the melancholy strain.

Despite its being a serious study the book is far from dry, and there's a good balance between the evocative and the informative. I only wish I had read this as a teenager, before I began to delve into writings and art of the following decades; I would have been spared a good deal of puzzlement. If ever you've failed to 'get' early 20th-century art, the last two chapters in particular are an excellent introduction.

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