Laure Dautriche, edited by Laura Laplaud 10:00 am, November 29, 2021
Franco-American artist Joséphine Baker will "enter" the Pantheon on Tuesday in Paris.
She will be the first black woman to be honored at the Pantheon.
She will thus join the "great men" and the great women of the history of France.
If his performances were sometimes controversial, the artist remains the muse of the Roaring Twenties.
The muse of the Roaring Twenties, Joséphine Baker, will become the first black woman to enter the Pantheon on Tuesday.
Symbol of the fight for equality, she danced a frenzied Charleston and performed a painting, called
La danse sauvage
, at the Champs-Elysées theater in Paris in 1925, at the same time when France was praising its colonial empire.
A performance that was controversial at the time.
"A muse for the time"
If his performance is considered indecent by women, the public is enthusiastic about these African-American rhythms.
"She has this grotesque face, with her facial expressions and grimaces when she dances, which makes her both incredibly suave and somewhat childish", underlines Ophélie Lachaux, in charge of public relations at the Champs-Elysées theater.
"She will become a muse. Women will want to copy even her hairstyle. She will democratize jazz and Charleston in Paris. She will inspire Coco Chanel for her little black dress. She is really a muse for the era."
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Strolling in the Dordogne, in the footsteps of Joséphine Baker
In France, his career took off.
She will say later that she left her native continent, America, and New York not to fall into prostitution.
In Paris, she discovers a new world that she no longer wants to leave.
She says that, for the first time, she is served in a restaurant by a white person.
A few months later, she will successfully present a new
Revue
to the Folies Bergères.