Into the Night
Prestel Publishing
If you pay close attention to the portrayal of night clubs and specifically cabarets, the artistic portrayal thereof plays an integral part in creating both perceptions and images.
No matter if it is the iconic 1920ies jazz clubs or cocktail bars, the etablissements that dominate the night have been hotbeds for creative expression.
Into the Night explores the history of cabarets and clubs from the 1880s to the 1960s and not only highlights and conveys what it must have been like to meander through the clubs in Berlin in the era of Weimar and jazz clubs in the new world, but also sheds like to less explored terrain like Africa’s exuberant night club scene of the 1960s.
It becomes apparent that cabarets and to some extent clubs were much more than bohemian places to congregate and indulge in debauchery but veritable alternatives to established museums when it came to pushing boundaries, experimentation and, most importantly, forums to foster collaborations and performance art.
The artwork and posters depicted in this tome paint a comprehensive picture of the ambience and ethos of the clubs, with each depiction telling stories about the DNA of the place it represents.
It also shows that no matter how glamourful spaces are depicted, it is the atmosphere that attracts people and a “je ne sais quoi factor” that at times is not tangible and is difficult to capture in any other form than being part of the action.
However, the book is a welcome reference for anyone interested in interdisciplinary art and how one fact informs the other and thereby ultimately creating a total that is much bigger than the seemingly unrelated sum of the individual constituents would suggest.
