Today we all admire the early 20th century’s artists comprising the so-called ‘School of Paris’, don’t we? Most were foreigners, but you must know that some of them were more foreigners than the rest, because they came not from other countries but from other planets. The first thing you need to know is that Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Jean Metzinger, Chaim Soutine, Henri Matisse, Max Jacob, Albert Gleizes, etcetera, were not always the groundbreaking geniuses that we admire so much nowadays. Nor were they a bunch of nuts, of course: they were all talented artists, but of the academician kind. Their studies’ walls were all filled with Renaissance reproductions and ostriches nudes lying down. Into their portraits it was still not impossible to distinguish between a nose and a thumb, and their poems used to begin with the verse “Oh my love is like a red, red rose”. But the night of June 7, 1909 was a turning point. As almost every night, a number of artists were in a lively gathering at Le-Bateau-Lavoir when, all of a sudden, the room was illuminated with a spectral light. Chaim Soutine would later say: “I thought it was going to be Josephin Péladan, that would have just arrived” (this influential art critic and occultist was a somewhat sinister character who posited the need to carry a stork nest on one’s head in order to reach salvation), “but when I was sucked through the roof, I ruled out that Péladan was behind this and I started to worry.”
SILLY HUMOR FOR SMART PEOPLE 