Into The Night: Clubs & Cabaret. Barbican Art Gallery London
Jan 16th 2020
This was a most fascinating and, I thought, unusual exhibition which I was very glad I stumbled across before going to London – and particularly as I was in town for the last week of the show.
It focused on a series of cabarets and clubs in a range of (almost entirely) European locations ranging from the 1880’s to the mid-60’s. Each club had a designated area with pictures/artefacts/drawings and sketches etc. etc. and aspects of three of them were set up to evoke the actual space and in some evenings they ‘became’ those club spaces as a means of actually evoking the environments.
One of the most interesting characteristics that all the clubs seemed to share was an immersive quality, by which I mean all aspects of the club – décor/fittings/light/music – were seen as related and important and that each fitted with the other. In one club for example this extended down to the design of the little badge worn by the waiters. They seemed to have an organic quality to them which was intriguing but not the same as how spaces now are very self-consciously ‘designed’ which I think does not often convey that quality. I think also today if something is successful in pace A then there is always the desire to reproduce it in other places/sell and market as a brand rather than being a unique and specific place for a particular time. The other, related but also contrasting, aspect was that one individual was not responsible for this but that many artists – covering all creative branches, were involved in these places and that while each one made their own often very unique contribution, the overall effect was one of wholeness – somehow all these different aspects ‘jelled’ (or is it ‘gelled’?) to create a unique and special club. This was fascinating – and of course this was often reflected in the clientele – varied and wide-ranging but at the same time very distinctly individualistic. |I wonder too if the fact that many of these clubs were relatively short-lived was related to this.
However, one significant difference between some of these was that while, for example, the Harlem clubs and cabarets were very many in number, and were a significant cultural indicator of their time and of a particular social group, others seemed to be unique places which flared up briefly and then vanished. And those latter ones were far better documented of course. This difference was also shown in what actually physically remained of the clubs themselves – some very little indeed, as of course this was before the digital era and in in at least one case no more than initial sketches and ideas was largely all that remained. It was often radical and boundary-pushing artists that were involved in these clubs (unsurprisingly)
The two French ones were particularly intriguing – not least as a performer was caught on (very) early film performing a marvelous abstract dance which really helped to give a strong sense of place. The London one (Cave of the Golden Calf – again very short-lived) was intriguing too although I did have the feeling that somehow it was trying too hard and had a less natural and grown organic quality than many of the others. One of the most interesting (and in fact, saddest) was a Tehran Club from 1966-69 which was as edgy as anything on elsewhere in the world at that time and so the contrast with that and the theocratic hell that is Tehran now was very strong and powerful. Loved th Viennese one the Fledermaus Club too – although a surprisingly unoriginal name.
A marvelous show and one that I will remember for quite some time.