Cafe Society
Oil on canvas
60 x 50cm

.The Café Society was an alternative venue for jazz enthusiasts in New York opened in 1938. It was founded by Jazz lover Barney Josephson who named his club after the term used for the rich white, champagne drinking people who frequented clubs such as The Cotton Club. Café Society would welcome audiences of any colour to be entertained by artists of any colour.
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 'Café Society was festooned in wacky caricatures of music stars, comedians and personalities of the age. Walls were muralled by creations from local artists. The club doorman played with the notion of informal glamour, wearing a tattered top hat and white gloves with the fingertips ripped off.' boweryboyshistory.com 

It would have been the venue that Lautrec would be at home in and my painting mixes some of Lautrec's work with my own interpretation of Billie Holiday on the opening night singing 'Strange Fruit', a song highlighting the violence and discrimination towards Black people.
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Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit

At the Moulin Rouge Toulouse-Lautrec 1892/3

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