{
"data": {
"id": 165605,
"accession_number": "2007.39",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "At the White Ball, Montparnasse, 1932. Brassa\u00ef (French, 1899\u20131984). Gelatin silver print, ferrotyped; image: 24 x 18.1 cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2007.39. \u00a9 The Brassa\u00ef Estate - RMN ",
"current_location": null,
"title": "At the White Ball, Montparnasse",
"creation_date": "1932",
"creation_date_earliest": 1932,
"creation_date_latest": 1932,
"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: 24 x 18.1 cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.24,
"height_inch": 9,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 0.181,
"width_inch": 7,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 The Brassa\u00ef Estate - RMN ",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"A la boule/blanche/montparnasse/vers 1932/Brassa\u00ef (signed)\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 335582,
"title": "Par\u00eds y los Surrealistas.",
"description": "Par\u00eds y los Surrealistas.. Centre de Cultura Contempor\u00e0nia de Barcelona, Spain (February 18-May 22, 2005); Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (June 20-September 18, 2005).",
"opening_date": "2005-02-18T05:00:00"
},
{
"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": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": 4
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This image was taken at one of several dancehalls in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris in the 1930s that offered Caribbean music for the enjoyment of both blacks and whites who ate, drank, and danced together.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79994853"
],
"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. 138, p. 183",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Combali\u0301a Dexeus, Victoria. Pari\u0301s y los surrealistas. Bilbao: Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2005.",
"page_number": "p. 224",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2007.39",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 165605,
"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": "2007-02-26T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1932,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1932",
"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": "2026-06-02 11:23:18.056000"
}
}