Port d'eaux-mortes - George Grosz in France

George Grosz (1893-1959) is best remembered for his violent satirical drawings of the decadent Berlin of the 1920s, which depict a corrupt world of leering businessmen pawing at prostitutes. These drawings were collected and reproduced in publications such as Ecce Homo (1923). Ecce Homo was seized by the Public Prosecutor, and in February 1924 Grosz was tried for obscenity and fined 6,000 marks. It was perhaps this that prompted an extended trip to France, for the whole of April and May of 1924, resulting in his first French exhibition in that November, and a further extended spell in France from June to October in 1925. Grosz had studied in Paris in 1912 at the Atelier Colarossi, at which time he met likeminded artists such as Moise Kisling and Jules Pascin, and made friends with Bohemian figures such as the writer Pierre Mac Orlan. It was to Mac Orlan that Grosz turned for guidance to the new post-war Paris. As Hans Hess writes in his excellent biography George Grosz, "In April 1924 Grosz travelled to Paris for the first time since the war. With his old friend, Pierre Mac Orlan, he visited Pascin, and with Francis Carco and Man Ray, explored 'Montmartre at night', making the typical remark all visitors make that they 'went to those hidden places which no foreigner ever gets to know'." The kind of hidden places Mac Orlan and Carco favoured is made clear in the subjects of Grosz's Paris drawings: the brothel Le petit moulin, another famous maison close in the rue Blondel, or the seedy Bar du Dingo, full of pimps and their girls.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Prix 300

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Au Beau Patron

Lithograph, 1926

It was probably the following year that George Grosz made the eight original lithographs in this post, for a novella by Pierre Mac Orlan entitled Port d'eaux-mortes (eaux-mortes means a neap tide rather than the literal "dead waters", though no doubt Mac Orlan liked the metaphorical heft of the phrase). The book was published in 1926 by Au Sans Pareil, in a total edition of 1260 copies, plus 120 suites of the lithographs on Chine, 40 on Hollande, and 20 on vieux Japon. The title page reads: Pierre Mac Orlan, Port d'eaux-mortes, r�cit orn� de huit lithographies originales de Georges Grosz. The lithographs were printed by Duchatel, Paris. The bulk of the edition (including my copy) was printed on v�lin Lafuma de Voiron.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Oncle Paul, accord�oniste

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La Chance

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue � Brest

Lithograph, 1926

The lithographs for Port d'eaux-mortes reprise many of Grosz's Berlin themes, but with a slightly less savage eye - though the frontispiece does set a dark tone, with its despairing and suicidal man sucking on a cigarette and cradling a bottle of brandy, with a pistol on the table and a noose hanging overhead, never mind the faceless prostitute mutely holding up her card reading Prix 300. The main action of the story takes place in the port of Brest, centering on the caf�-cum-brothel Au Beau Patron. Towards the end the narrative moves to Limehouse in London, before the villain Judat is hanged in Pentonville Prison (or Pontonville, as Mac Orlan insists on spelling it). Perhaps the most successful of the lithographs is the fourth, which I have called La Chance (all the titles are mine), in which a group of card-players remain enthralled by their game, while a murdered prostitute lies dying in her crib, and her slayer makes his getaway. But all of them have a great deal of suggestive power - just look at those phallic streetlamps that illuminate the girls on the street. Another thing that strikes me about these images is the subtle organisation of space - Grosz really fills up the available picture-space with exceptionally balanced and well-thought-out compositions.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Pub � Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue � Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

A copy of Port d'eaux-mortes from Harvard College Library was included in the exhibition The Artist and the Book, 1860-1960 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1961; see the catalogue of the same title by Eleanor M. Garvey, cat. no. 129, p. 91).

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La prison de Pontonville

Lithograph, 1926

The presence of George Grosz in Paris had an electrifying effect on several Paris-based artists associated with Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco. You can trace the influence on Andr� Dignimont, on Chas Laborde, on Marcel Vert�s, on Pierre Falk�. Below is just a little gallery of images from these artists from 1926-1930, which show the impact of Grosz on the French scene. In the case of Laborde especially this case could be made more strongly with other material - etchings from Rues et visages de Paris (1926), for instance. Of course all these artists were also influencing each other, and were also working in the shadow of Pascin, but I think there is an identifiable shift towards a more expressionistic vision, especially in the art of Dignimont and Vert�s.