ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the urban culture of several cafes, cabarets and other performance spaces in Montmartre. The most well-known performance space and arguably the most important was the Chat Noir cabaret. The dramatic growth of the Montmartre cultural industries which many advocates of contemporary arts-led urban regeneration have attempted to replicate via the manufacture of supposedly neo-bohemian urban spaces is often attributed to this single venue. The Chat Noir was not a conventional cabaret, but a cabaret artistique, a novel kind of caf where artists would come to perform and display their works, as well as exchange ideas, in a relaxed and convivial environment. Foucault's theorization of the relationship between art and life can be contrasted with a type of Marxist perspective that has been highly influential in scholarly literature on urban avant-garde movements of the early and mid-twentieth century.
