The Back Table

Paris, 1870–1940. Every evening, in a handful of smoky cafés, modern art was born, between rivers of wine and rivers of argument. The Back Table follows the painters, poets and writers who made Montmartre and then Montparnasse the centre of the artistic world. They were poor and proud. They fought over ideas at night and couldn't wait to meet again the next evening and start all over. Sarcasm was a weapon, friendships broke and mended, and a quarrel could end in a duel at dawn. This is a narrative history told through the places where it happened: the cafés, the cabarets, the studios, the long walks across the city. It is also the story of the people behind the legends: where they came from, how they paid the rent (or didn't), what they ate, who they loved, the illnesses that followed them, the patrons who saved them and the dealers who exploited them. From Picasso to Modigliani, from the Bateau-Lavoir to the terraces of the boulevard du Montparnasse, each chapter leads into the next like an evening that never quite ends. And for the curious traveller, the book also tells which of these places can still be visited today. A nostalgic journey into the most creative and quarrelsome seventy years of modern art.