Hashischin Dinner Party, 1909

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Pablo Picasso 1909

Hashischin Dinner Party

It was Paris 1908, a thick layer of smoke hangs over a hole in the wall cafe that will set the stage for the nights madness.

Pablo Picasso was friends with existing remnants of the original ‘Club des Hashischins’ members. He was also known to frequent the ‘Cabaret des Assassins’ (The Lapin Agile) legendary for hash parties late into the Paris night’s. Continuing in the historic clubs traditions a hashish dinner party was planed by Picasso and friends.

Picasso with Fernande Oliver, his mistress, Guillame Apollinaire & Marie Laurencin arrive at their favorite hangout at the time the ‘Cafe Azon’. A typical Paris night made special with the plan of a Hashish…

Les Invités (The Guests) – Marie Laurencin – 1908 (Picasso, Laurencin, Apollinaire, Fernande Olivier)

“Apollinaire was having the time of his life in an imaginary brothel; Marie Laurencin, ever controlled and dignified, left early to return to her mother and her cat; and Picasso was lost in a horrible vision that he had come up against a wall and could no longer progress or develop. In his nightmare he shrieked that he had discovered photography, that there was nothing left for him to learn, that he was condemned to paint the same thing over and over again”

– Fernande Oliver (Picasso’s mistress) recalled about that night

The night would have gone down in history unnoticed, like so many others, although this night would be captured in paint on canvas for all time…

Marie Laurencin would capture the night in paint in her 1908 work Les Invités (The Guests). Marie would paint herself presenting a flower, hinting at the nights intoxicant?

One year later, Laurencin would paint another ode to a Hashischin party. In her painting Un Réunion a la Campagne (A Reunion in the Country), that is believed to be of a second hashish party the following year, she pictures herself as reclining as a host would do.

Whether Marie was a host or just a participant at these parties, the tradition of the Hashischin was captured in vivid color for all to see.

Un Réunion a la Campagne (A Reunion in the Country) – Marie Laurencin – 1909 (the poets Marguerite Gillot and Maurice Cremnitz are among those added to the 2nd ‘party’)