À propos de lesbianisme clandestin en plein Paris : la décadence et Le Rond-point des Champs-Elysées de Louis Anquetin

Louis Anquetin’s Rond-point des Champs-Elysées : about lesbianism in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Anquetin’s large pastel, Le Rond-point des Champs-Elysées (1889, Saint-Germain en Laye, musée départemental du Prieuré), is a highly stylised form, which in its strong outlines, repetitive forms and exaggerated linearity bears comparison with Seurat’s Chahut. But what does it represent ? The evidence of a contemporary text, Léo Taxil’s La corruption fin-de-siècle (1891) strongly suggests that Anquetin’s pastel alludes to the fact that lesbians used this stretch of the Champs-Elysées as a rendezvous between women on foot and in carriages. Several other works of this period represent the same practice. This group shows Anquetin’s close engagement with decadent Paris and his development of a stylised art to account discreedy with his clandestine subject.