Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art, Barbican Centre

Into the Night at the Barbican has created the opportunity to discuss an interesting contributing factor to the modern art scene that seems rarely discussed: the role of nightclubs. As the exhibition points out, venues for social gatherings and consummation of intoxicants have played a role in art for centuries. Among many, two of the earliest examples the curators mentioned were William Hogarth and his accomplices visitation of Tom and Moll King’s in London in the 1730s and Sir Joshua Reynolds, Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke’s clique Reynolds created in 1764, known simply as the Club, where they met over dinner on Monday nights at the Turk’s Head in Soho.

The exhibition focusses mainly on the 20^th Century, however, including recreations of 1920s club L’Aubette and Vienna’s Cabaret Fledermaus bar, as well as a close look at Berlin clubs in Weimar Germany, Harlem’s jazz scene and Mbari clubs in 1960s Nigeria. The importance of exploring this particular influence on modern art now is the documentation of the women who performed in these clubs, such as Loie Fuller, American dancer at the Folies Bergere in Paris in the 1890s who was captured in a series of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec. As is often the case in art history, the inspiration (or worse, the muse) was an energetic and creative young woman, and the recorder of her creativity was a man. The male artist has long received the attention and praise for the artworks that ensued and the woman at the heart of it lost to history.

There is lots of interesting and slightly odd artworks in the exhibition, lots of which probably wouldn’t turn up in any other type of show. There is also attention drawn to women, members of the queer community and ethnic minorities, which is all good. However, the slightly niche topic and the lack of any showstopping pieces risk the show falling a bit flat for someone that’s made the trip. A collection of weird and titillating pieces and an inclusive atmosphere is good as a base for an exhibition but can’t exist on its own. This is where the recreation of nightclubs and bars comes into its own.

In a clever move, the Barbican has managed to combine the tactic of including interactive, immersive spaces in exhibitions and the tactic of holding live music events in art spaces as a double whammy for drawing in young audiences. Like a mixture of Tate Lates and a theatrical installation, the Barbican holds live music and cocktail events in the mock-ups of famous bars of days gone by. This provides the exciting grand finale that the exhibition needed.

The only problem I encountered with this, however, is the limitation of only being able to hold these events on certain days, for short amounts of time. As a member of staff at the Barbican, I have spent lots of time in this exhibition at all times of day and have seen the dramatic difference in the experience of the exhibition when there are no performances happening and when there are. Arriving at the exhibition on a quiet afternoon, when there isn’t many people walking around and no music, the exhibition has no atmosphere. As an exhibitiongoer told me when I was sitting at the desk: for a show about nightlife, crowds of creatives, excitement and music, it doesn’t make much sense to walk around alone in silence.