Jazz It Up! Into the Night at the Barbican

Night is falling, and in Paris and Vienna, Berlin and New York, the clubs and cabarets are getting ready for business. There's music to be made, avant-garde art on the menu, a hint of rebellion in the air. That's the atmosphere we were hoping for in Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art, an exhibition at London's Barbican Art Gallery.

So can you feel the energy, sense the vibe? Frankly, no. Keep your jacket on, they advised us at the cloakroom, it's a bit cold in there. And they were right.

It's not that there's a lack of interesting material on show here; there's some compelling art and some cracking stories to tell. But sadly, it's largely a dry and clinical exhibition-going experience. Where's the music, where's the action? Where's the life? Only occasionally do you feel truly drawn in to the maelstrom of artistic experimentation.

Anyway, Fremder, étranger, stranger, where shall we begin our night on the tiles? How about Rome at the start of the 1920s, where the Futurists were making art that reflected the speed of the machine age. Two joints in particular were jumping; the Bal Tic Tac, designed by artist Giacomo Balla, who, we are told, wore a celluloid tie illuminated by a light bulb to the opening night.

And a few streets away, fellow Futurist Fortunato Depero designed the Cabaret del Diavolo, the Devil's Cabaret, with three spaces on three levels: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.

Here are some of those little devils heating up the hot Roman nights even further. Looks fantastic. How did it feel, how did it sound when they were introducing American jazz to the Italians for the first time, with the sensational innovation of the saxophone? No idea, alas, because there's no soundtrack, no background music. Many of the artworks and artefacts in this show are just set against plain-coloured gallery walls. It feels very flat.

On the other hand, a lot of effort has been expended on recreating the bar of the Cabaret Fledermaus in Vienna from before World War I, with its exuberant scheme of mosaic tiles.

But weirdly, all the artwork and objects related to the Fledermaus are exhibited in a different section of the show, so what you get here is an oddly sterile empty space. Examples of the chairs, tables, ashtrays and plant-pot holders -- designed to match the decor -- are upstairs. The cabaret offered fancy drinks such as a Kiss Me Quick or a Cabaret Smash, we're told. No chance of even a glass of Grüner Veltliner at this bar, which our fellow visitors just wandered through on their way to the next section.

Another recreation is of a modernist interior by Theo van Doesburg for L'Aubette, essentially an ahead-of-its-time arts centre in Strasbourg. It too feels very dry; there's nothing inside it. Presumably things are oomphier on Thursday evenings, when there are live performances. At least there are a few scattered stools in the attempt to bring to life a 1960s Nigerian club, but there was no one sitting on them watching the film.

One of the better bits of this show takes us to the Berlin of the Weimar Republic, where we do get a video of some performance art. And there are fine pictures on the walls, including Jeanne Mammen's drawings of both upmarket and seedy drinking joints, as well as by George Grosz and Otto Dix.

Rudolf Schlichter's Damenkneipe is clearly catering to a particular clientele. Karl Hofer's chorus line of synchronised Tiller Girls seems unlikely to have been booked as that evening's star turn. Though on the other hand....

To us, this show seemed oddly laid out. It flits about geographically and chronologically. From 1920s Mexico City we head to Strasbourg, then find ourselves back at the Folies Bergere in Paris in the early 1890s, where Miss Loie Fuller was wowing the audience with her Serpentine Dance in billowing robes. She wouldn't let herself be filmed, but we do get the chance to see her imitators captured in glorious action on coloured celluloid (no music, of course, perhaps in the mistaken idea that this is the era of silent film).

And, in probably the most stunning piece of art in this entire exhibition, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec translated Fuller's sinuous movements into a series of thrilling abstracted prints in different colours. These really are quite amazing, as if in some way Toulouse-Lautrec was doing an Andy Warhol, decades early.

You can listen in to some music when you get to the section on Harlem; there's an extract from a Duke Ellington movie, and pictures from the likes of Aaron Douglas and the swinging Edward Burra catch the rhythm.

Which night spot to head to? E Simms Campbell drew up a handy map with names of the places to go, the pianists to listen to, and hints on how to get an illicit drink in the era of Prohibition. It's quite a showstopper. 

Any Brits in this Culture Club? Well, we do take an excursion to the Cave of the Golden Calf, which had a brief incarnation just off Regent Street in the run-up to World War I as bohemian London's answer to the cabarets on the Continent. Weirdly, this is one of only a couple of the 12 exhibition spaces where the curators have attempted to liven up the background walls with a blow-up photo. 

The decor was certainly avant-garde: Here Spencer Gore goes all Fauvist with a hunting scene. Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill also contributed work.

It all ended with the outbreak of war; the Austrian impresario had to leave the country and many of the artists were never paid.

It's not that this exhibition is lacking in interest; it's a great subject. But this show just seemed so drably presented; when you're focusing so much on spectacle, it seems odd that there's relatively little performance to be experienced, so little, particularly in the way of music, to really summon up a mood. And if you've got a screen showing something, give us a couple of seats to sit on to watch; hard gallery floors are tough on visitors' feet and backs. We felt the Barbican could have jazzed it up a little more in their attempt to make us willkommen, bienvenus, welcome, im Cabaret, au cabaret, to cabaret.

Practicalities

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art is on at the Barbican Art Gallery in the City of London until January 19. It's open 1000 to 1800 Sunday to Tuesday and 1000 to 2000 Wednesday to Saturday. Standard ticket prices are £15 during the week and £17 at weekends, and you can book in advance here, though you have to specify an entry time, which hardly seems necessary; it wasn't at all crowded when we went. The gallery is situated within the Barbican Centre, and Barbican is the nearest Underground station, just a few minutes' walk away.

Images

Fortunato Depero, Diavoletti neri e bianchi: Danza di diavoli (Black and White Little Devils: Dance of the Devils), 1922, Mart, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto/Fondo Depero.  © DACS 2019; Archivo Depero, Rovereto; courtesy Mart - Archivio Fotografico e Mediateca
Recreation of the bar at the Cabaret Fledermaus, originally designed by Josef Hoffmann (1907), 2019. Conceived by the Barbican Art Gallery and Caruso St John, in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. © Tristan Fewings/Getty Images
Rudolf Schlichter, Damenkneipe (Women's Club), c. 1925, Private collection. © Viola Roehr v. Alvensleben, Munich; photo: akg-images
Karl Hofer, Tiller Girls, before 1927, Kunsthalle Emden. © Elke Walford, Fotowerkstatt Hamburg; © DACS, 2019
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Miss Loie Fuller, 1893, various lenders
Aaron Douglas, Dance, c. 1930. © Heirs of Aaron Douglas/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2019
Spencer Gore, Study for a mural decoration for the Cave of the Golden Calf, 1912, Tate. © Tate, London 2019