Musee du Montparnasse

21 Avenue du Maine
75015 Paris
Metro: Montparnasse (or Falguiere)
Tel. 01 42 22 91 96
Closed Mondays.
Open Tues-Sunday 12:30 pm to 7 pm.

If you were intrigued by the work of Marie Vassilieff in a previous post, visiting the Musee du Montparnasse is an opportunity to immerse yourself in her world: the world of Montparnos – during and following World War I when émigrés from all parts of the world arrived and found a home and a kitchen here – Marie Vassilieff’s cantine.
Not only a gathering spot for artists including Modigliani, Soutine, Chagall, Picasso – to name a few – but also Lenin and Trostky supped here.

The brick courtyard that leads to the jumble of art studios and the current Musee du Montparnasse is unobtrusive. You could easily walk past this cul-de-sac in your hurry to catch a train at Gare Montparnasse. But something catches your eye as you follow the gentle incline of Avenue du Maine toward the glacial ‘tower’ that dominates the Montparnasse landscape. A bit of green ivy in a sea of concrete.

Jean Cocteau writes of Montparnasse – how it was in 1916: “Montparnasse was just a village, a little provincial town. Grass grew between the cobblestones. There were only two cafes, the Rotonde and Le Dome. We didn’t know that ‘the public’ existed. Everything happened among ourselves while the Parisians were focused on the war. The entire revolution of art happened there on that little corner of land.”

Perhaps the seventies landscape of broad esplanades, metal and glass highrises makes the idea of ducking into an ivy covered museum even more appealing – a place where –even though you could not have known Montparnasse as it appeared in those early decades of the 20th century, you can, from the collection of photos and personal accounts, grasp some sense of this artist community, a United Nations of Artists.

Marie Vassilieff, a Russian émigré from Smolensk made her first trip to Paris in 1906. She received a scholarship from the Tsarina to study art in France – and soon afterwards meets Matisse. She quickly immersed herself in the hotbed of artistic endeavors, opened a Russian academy of art, participated in independent shows and salons and opened her cantine soon after the outbreak of World War I where artists (and others like Lenin and Trotsky) could have a meal for 50 centimes.

Because the cantine was recognized by the police as a private club it wasn’t under the usual ‘couvre feu’ (black-out) laws – resulting in nightly partying. Vassilieff’s ‘open door’ policy to revolutionaries as well as artists eventually resulted in her condemnation by a military tribunal. But eventually she was freed and continued her artistic career into the late 1930s.

Vassilieff not only painted in a whimsical fashion (you can see some of her murals at La Coupole) but she also created whimsical costumes for the balls that became part of Montparnasse history – like the Bal Transmetal in 1923 Banal Banal in 1924, the Bal de la Grand Ourse, 1925.

In the opening ceremonies and dedication for the Musee du Montparnasse in May, 1998,
Pierre Restany wrote: “What’s saved Montparnasse is that people have always talked more about Art than about Money.”