{
"data": {
"id": 165543,
"accession_number": "2007.282",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Novice Prostitute, Place d'Italie, c. 1931 (printed 1950s). Brassa\u00ef (French, 1899\u20131984). Gelatin silver print, ferrotyped; image: 23.5 x 17.5 cm (9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of David Raymond, 2007.282. \u00a9 The Brassa\u00ef Estate - RMN ",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Novice Prostitute, Place d'Italie",
"creation_date": "c. 1931 (printed 1950s)",
"creation_date_earliest": 1926,
"creation_date_latest": 1936,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 20th century"
],
"technique": "gelatin silver print, ferrotyped",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - French 20th Century",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 23.5 x 17.5 cm (9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.235,
"height_inch": 9,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"width": 0.175,
"width_inch": 6,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 The Brassa\u00ef Estate - RMN ",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"Fille en robe frientauere (not sure if that is correct) Italie vers 1931 No 15 (in a circle)/11/15 Pl. 327\r\nWritten in pencil on verso: Brassa\u00ef (signed, possibly, not clear)\"\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
},
{
"inscription": "Stamps on verso of print: \"BRASSA\u00cf/81, rue de Faub.-St. Jacques/PARIS XIV-PORt-Royal 23-41; \u00a9 COPYRIGHT by BRASSA\u00cf/81, Faubourg St. Jacques/PARIS 14\u00e8me Tel. 707.23.41",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 335432,
"title": "Begierde im Blick: Surrealistische Fotografie",
"description": "Begierde im Blick: Surrealistische Fotografie. Hamburger Kunsthalle (May 11-29, 2009).",
"opening_date": "2009-05-11T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 203169,
"title": "Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography",
"description": "Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).",
"opening_date": "2014-10-19T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Madame Brassai [1920-2005], Paris",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, NY)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2007",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Unlike Brassa\u00ef, whose views of Parisian night life included people of all professions and proclivities, Monsieur X devoted himself to one subject: erotic views of the women in a Paris brothel. This amateur, whose identifity remains unknown, took professional quality photographs in the 1920s and 1930s purely for his own pleasure. Not until he was in his eighties did he sell them to a bookseller known for his discretion. The Three Graces, female figures who served as exemplars of beauty, charm, and creativity in Greek and Roman mythology, have been a popular subject in art since the Renaissance.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79994690"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014.",
"page_number": "cat. no. 137, p. 182",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Schneede, Uwe M. Begierde im Blick: surrealistische Photographie. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2005.",
"page_number": "p. 57",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2007.282",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of David Raymond",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 165543,
"creators": [
{
"id": 46,
"description": "Brassa\u00ef (French, 1899\u20131984)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Brassa\u00ef (Gyula Hal\u00e1sz) French, born Austria-Hungary, 1899-1984 A photographer, painter, sculptor, and writer, Brassa\u00ef became known during the 1930s for his photographs of Parisian nightlife. Initially interested in painting, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest (1918-19), and the Academische Hochschule, Berlin-Charlottenburg (1921-22). He adopted the name Brassa\u00ef (after his hometown, Brasso) following his move in 1924 to Paris, where he worked as a painter and journalist for Hungarian and German newspapers. Around 1929-30 Brassa\u00ef began to take photographs, receiving advice from Hungarian photographer Andr\u00e9 Kert\u00e9sz. His special interest was the city at night; during his walks after dark he photographed Paris dance halls, cafes, bars, and bordellos, as well as the vagrants and thugs who roamed the dimly lit streets. In 1933 Brassa\u00ef's nocturnal views of Paris were published as Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night). The book was a great success and helped to launch his photographic career. Brassa\u00ef began to receive assignments from such journals as Verve, Labyrinthe, and Minotaure, a new review of art and literature which commissioned him to photograph artists and their studios. He also became associated with Harper's Bazaar and over the next three decades completed many assignments for the magazine. Among the artists and writers he came to know during this period were Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Alberto Giacometto, Andr\u00e9 Breton, Tristan Tzara, and Man Ray. During the German occupation of Paris in the 1940s, no longer able to wander freely through the streets, Brassa\u00ef turned to drawing; he also began to photograph Picasso's sculpture in his Paris studio. After the war, Brassa\u00ef continued his photographic series Graffiti and designed the photographic backdrops for several plays and ballets; he also published Histoire de Marie (1949), a surrealist poem with a preface by Henry Miller. In the mid-1950s he won a prize at the Cannes film festival for his movie Tant qui'il y aura des b\u00eates and in 1964 published a critically acclaimed book, Conversations avec Picasso. Throughout his career Brassa\u00ef exhibited his pictures widely, including a one-person exhibition of his photographs of graffiti at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the mid-1950s, followed by a retrospective of his work there in 1968. M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1899",
"death_year": "1984",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2008-03-03T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1926,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1931 (printed 1950s)",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:52:47.004000"
}
}