Haute Montmartre

A search for simpler forms: Toulouse-Lautrec's "La Danse au Moulin Rouge" at the Musee D'Orsay.

A hundred and thirty years ago, the highest point in Paris was well on its way to becoming the world's most important art hub. Van Gogh lived at 10 Rue Cortot in the 1880s. So did Gaugin (but not at the same time). Picasso arrived in the fall of 1900, during the World's Fair. They wore Lenny Kravitz scarves and big coats with paintbrushes poking out of their pockets, something we can say with certainty because they painted portraits of one another. In the hillside's steep streets of mud, they lived with tightrope walkers, acrobats and dancing girls and ate at the glorified soup kitchens at Montmartre's pinnacle, around the Place du Tertre.

Climbing the hill was not as easy as it is today ― it was too steep for horse-drawn carriages, and the funiculaire would not be built until 1901. It was a slum, really. Today's French government, which tosses around euphemisms like they're horseshoes, would have labeled it a "sensitive urban area." Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gustave Moreau were familiar figures in the neighborhood, and if they shared one artistic trait in common, it is the pursuit of drawing single figures and crowds in motion by means of simplifying their forms. To depict animated motion, a few simple lines would do. Picasso's evolution into cubism would not begin for another decade.

Province of China: The Sacre-Coeur Basilica looks over the village-like district in north Paris.

Today, Montmartre is the world capital of Chinese paintings of familiar French scenes. They are advertised in the neighborhood's art shops as original French art and sold at exaggerated prices, which is a disservice to customers, obviously, but also to the hardworking artists en plein air  who churn out vivid Parisian landscapes from memory and subtly exaggerated portraits of tourists with the patience to sit for awhile.

The Montmartroise who actually reside in this toy-town-within-a-town must feel like they are living above City Hall at Disneyland. I would like to report that there is something new under the sun at the Place du Tertre, but there is no communal search on this hill for ways of painting that would feel more iconoclastic, no desire to capture the radically political spirit of the early 21st century. Only an aging cancan dancer whose high kicks aren't what they used to be.

Skilled, licensed and accredited ― but out of ideas.

Think of it as an escalator, if it helps: Attacking the Montmartre butte from the north.