The Monsters of Society , L´Assiette au Beurre No. 79, 4 Octobre 1902
Following the traces of Honoré de Balzac, whose “Comédie humaine” was modelled on a theory of zoological species, Charles Lucien Léandre drafts a dire panorama of the Parisian Society as a freak show. His special edition for Samuel Schwarz´ anarchistic magazine “L Assiette au beurre” represents a late apocalyptic variation of a long tradition of caricatural menageries or bestiaries, which was shaped by graphic cycles of Grandville, Gustave Doré, Paul Hadol and Alfred Le Petit. Léandre was one of the last students of the historical painter Alexandé Cabanel, whose lucid kind of “L’art pompier” is reflected in many of the monstrous sceneries.
Not all freaks were gone with Barnum´s show. The author intends to show some of the French left overs.
The Bourgeois. Tomorrow he will seep the sweat of the people, which fattened him.
The dwarf and the giant.
The electric ray-woman.
The monstrous parvenu, who turns his labourers into machines.
The cerberus, who guards the gates of hellish Paris.
The sphinx and the androgynous.
The beautiful adolescents
The deflowerer and the semi-virgin or the teacher and his disciple.
The fishy ones. The beautiful gentlemen circle around their proteges.
The human dog and the human offertory box.
Man, the king of the animals in his predominant states of transformation.
The passers-by and the lighters.
The bluestockings.
The administration employee.
The monster of the monsters. The abortionist.
The journalist.
Paris, the biggest monster of the world, the insatiable colossus.
The snobs.
The usherettes.
The gluttons.
The magic safe of Medusa attracting small pensioners and employees. What a meduse! What a raft! What a shipwreck!
