Vallotton’s print for the book jacket and cover of Badauderies Parisiennes (Fig.
1) presents a commonplace daily life street scene, the background of which is constituted of the intersection of a bridge reaching the other side of la Seine and a street running along with the river—one of the best places to encounter an acquaintance or appreciate the Seine scenery while waiting for the arrival of a friend. As a bustling place, the intersection is crowded with various kinds of people absorbed in miscellaneous activities: a laborer pulling an advertising board on a cart, an absent-minded person standing still in front of a pillar, people going to work—in brief different types of badauds.
This street scene reveals the following contents of the book—the activity of the crowd which can be described counterclockwise, beginning with the man in black suit in the middle of the flagstones pulling a cart on which an advertisement in two parts is displayed. Composed of a slender sign put on the top of a triangular board, the advertisement presents at its top the book’s title in capital letters: BADAUDERIES PARISIENNES while below we find in grand bold letters the second part of the title, namely Les Rassemblements. Just below this inscription we can find an index finger pointing to the subtitle physiologies de la rue. This advertisement can be translated as follows: “Episodes of Parisian Gawking: Gatherings, Physiologies of the Street”
(Badauderies Parisiennes—Les Rassemblements, physiologies de la rue). The existence of such an advertising cart that carries the illustrated book’s title delivers two
layers of meaning. First, as a part of the street scene that the cover seeks to portray, the cart’s function for promoting products is well emphasized as a spectacle whose relevance is to draw the attention of the crowd. However, when it comes to the content the cart is advertising, the appearance of the illustrated book’s title calls for further consideration since it is promoting a book that is unavailable to the crowd depicted in the book. Such an addition of the book’s title onto the advertising board does not have the ambition to create an intellectual paradox but to stage a dialogue between the character in the image and the reader reading the image. Apart from its advertising functionality, the advertisement also projects a sort of possibility in which a dialogue could take place between the depicted crowd shown on the cover and the future public in contact with the cover. The interplay of these two layers of meaning created by the existence of the advertising board could be further analyzed as follows. On the cover, a working-class man with his mouth wide open turns away his gaze from the Seine to look back at the advertising board that has caught his attention (Fig. 45).80 Meanwhile, another working-class man (Fig. 46) who keeps his hands on his back with a conscientious face is carefully reading the information at the reverse side of the advertising board. Since the two sides of the board contain the same advertisement promoting the Badauderies Parisiennes, the information received by the two male characters is in accordance with what the readers of the book could possibly receive.
The two men are surrogates for our viewing position.81 They are like a mirror that reflects the reader’s reaction when seeing the advertising board.
Secondly, if we move on to the colonne Morris at the crossroad of the bridge and the street in the background, we will notice an absent-minded moustache man (Fig. 47) in white costume standing still.82 Here is another occasion for promoting the authors of Baudauderies Parisiennes. There are three discernable posters on the pillar behind
80 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 220.
81 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 220.
82 It was invented by German printer Ernst Litfaß in 1854 and were named Morris after Gabriel Morris, also a printer, who held the concession for advertising it in France in 1868. Danielle Chadych, Dominique Leborgne, Histoire de Paris pour les nuls, Paris 2013, p. 127.
the man related to the advertising of cabarets, toys, and the magazine la Revue Blanche.83 One among them writes: “LISEZ la revue blanche” (READ the white review). The advertisement which encourages clients to read la Revue Blanche promotes at the same time the publication in which the fifteen writers of the Baudauderies Parisiennes used to write.
Thirdly, since Vallotton’s book jacket of Paris street scene reveals that the main protagonist of the book is the crowd, this entity is naturally not limited to the composition itself. As we can understand through the presence of a little young boy yelling at somebody outside the frame behind the officer standing just at the intersection (Fig. 48), Vallotton makes us understand that there is a vast crowd “out of frame.”84 This invisible crowd corresponds to the community of readers and spectators who are holding the book. This is made clear not only because the advertising sign of the book is clearly meant for the reader’s eyes but also because one of the members of the busy street scene stares back, as if aware of the reader’s gaze.85 This member is the finely dressed young woman (Fig. 48) with the floral hat looking directly at the reader with a pleasant smile.86
Finally, the foreground people who compose all sorts of individuals represent the mixed crowd of professionals. The young man with a flat cap (Fig. 49) who carries a ladder and seems to be about to repair something in the middle of the street is for instance a tradesman; the other individuals wearing bowler hats such as the old bearded man with a refined costume at the center of the foreground (Fig. 50), the other old man with a goatee with his left hand in his pocket (Fig. 51), and the two men seen in profile who are apparently discussing in the back of the composition (Fig. 52), are probably white collars. Vallotton does not limit his list of trades to blue and white collars going
83 “Read the White Review” (Lisez la Revue Blanche) is the poster’s slogan.
84 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 219.
85 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 219.
86 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 219.
to work, he also depicts other professions such as a postman taking letters (Fig. 53), an officer (Fig. 54) seen from his upper back on the second ground walking with a fashionable lady and an artist who holds a large portfolio of prints or sketches under his arm (Fig. 55), possibly on his way to his atelier. Alsdorf considers this character as a self-portrait of the artist—Félix Vallotton who “conveys a canny self-awareness of how his prints and drawings contributed to contemporary views of Parisian Life.”87 However, according to another woodcut on which Vallotton had represented himself in 1892 (Fig. 4), four years before the publication of Badauderies Parisiennes, with his face in the same position as in the book jacket, the presence of a moustache and a beard makes us believe that he represented a younger painter than himself.88 Moreover, the artist’s profile alters wildly from the original sketch (Fig. 56) to the final printed book jacket. The embryo figure’s hair (Fig. 57) is longer than the one which figures in the final printed book jacket. In any case, Vallotton’s book jacket teems with citizens of different age, class, gender and trade crossing the streets of Paris and shows the diversity of the badauds.
In order to have a better understanding of the book jacket, it is necessary to focus on the manner the artist introduces the book’s content in two different zones. The first one is the doubled-sided advertising board carried on a cart (Fig. 58). On one side of the board, we can see besides the title the presence of the names of the book’s initiator and those of the fifteen writers. We can also learn on the lateral side that the graphic artist François Courboin made more than hundred drawings within the text. Moving on to the second zone, which is similar to an ad in the form of an open newspaper protruding in to the lower-right corner (Fig.59), information about the publisher, Henri Floury, the publishing house, Bibliophiles Indépendants, and the publishing date – 1896
87 Alsdorf, (as note 17), p. 219.
88 Vallotton made a lot of woodcut portraits of famous people from different fields in that era, such as Balzac, Rimbaud, Poe, Aubrey Beardsley, etc.
– is provided on one page, while on the other we are informed that Vallotton made thirty woodcuts illustrations that are separated from the text.
This way of hiding information in the image appears in fact also in the book in one of Courboin’s vignette, namely “The Omnibus Bureau” (“Le Bureau d’omnibus”) (Fig. 60). In Courboin’s illustration, three women and one man are sitting on a bench probably waiting their bus in the foreground. One of the ladies is reading a newspaper, in which we only can recognize two reverse words, Le Petit Journal, the avatar of the mass press in France, founded in 1863.89 This manner of playing with the information in the image for commercial purposes has been widely used in the journal at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in France. This is evident for example in the issue of January 3, 1899 from the Supplément illustré du petit journal (Fig. 61). In the image, the crowd is standing on the ground, raising their heads and looking at the flying airship in the air with the name of the journal printed tremendously on it. This situation which shows a commercial vehicle propelled in the air is similar to the one Vallotton uses on the ground to advertise his own publication.