Great Meetings in 20th Century Arts & Culture
At Doodle we work to bring you a product that makes getting together effortless and fast. Collaboration is key to great outcomes: we believe every meeting has the potential to be a Great Meeting. In this series, we explore the meetings that shaped the 20th century.
When we think of an artist, we’re likely to think of a lone genius, refining their masterpiece in perfect solitude. And, yes, some iconic 20th century creators — Picasso, Woolfe, Stravinsky — fit that mould. But some of the most exciting and influential artists of the 20th century were committed collaborators. Here are three creative partnerships who prove the myth of the lonely, tortured artist is often just that — a myth!
The Dancing Duo who Changed Choreography
In 1930, when Fred Astaire met Ginger Rogers, he was thirty, an established star, and a respected choreographer. She was a mere nineteen and she’d been on Broadway all of two weeks. The odds were good that after they met on the set of the stage show ‘Girl Crazy’, Astaire would forget all about the young, inexperienced dancer, and move on to his next starring vehicle. But Rogers had something special, and Hollywood was quick to capitalise on her spark, pairing her up with Astaire for Flying Down to Rio (1933). The pair danced smoothly but had a sometimes-rocky relationship. Astaire wrote to his agent in 1934, complaining that he hadn’t gone into movies to be partnered with anyone.
Nevertheless, the duo went on to star in ten films together, including Top Hat (1935) Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937), and pulled off countless iconic dance sequences . As choreographer, Astaire revolutionised dance on screen, combining classical ballroom steps with more contemporary styles like tap and swing in a way that was completely new for the time. And, though he sometimes worked with other partners, Rogers proved best at interpreting his challenging routines in a way that looked effortless. Rogers was certainly the only onscreen other-half Astaire viewed as a partner, not a prop, in the choreographic process. As Edward Horton, a friend of Astaire’s wrote, “He was able to do dances on screen that would have been impossible to risk if he hadn’t had a partner like Ginger — as skillful as she was attractive.” Or, as cartoonist Bob Thaves put it, “Rogers did everything Astaire did — only backwards and in high heels.” Rogers and Astaire may have had a push-pull personal relationship, but their artistic relationship was built on respect and innovation — and, as generations of film-lovers can attest, it’s a pleasure to watch them work.
Artistic collaborations needn’t always run smoothly — sometimes creative tension is where it’s at!
The Artists — and Lovers — Who Were All Wrapped Up in Each Other
Theirs was the great artistic and romantic partnership that almost wasn’t: Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon first met the Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff in Paris, 1958, when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of her mother. It was love at first sight for Christo…and Jeanne-Claude’s half-sister Joyce. Jeanne-Claude, meanwhile, was engaged to someone else. Despite a rough start to their romance, Jeanne-Claude and Christo soon fell in love. Jeanne Claude’s aristocratic parents weren’t thrilled about the match — but the art world soon would be.
While Christo had previously worked as a painter, once he partnered with Jeanne Claude, the pair began to think beyond the gallery walls. While art installations were nothing new — Marcel duChamp installed his Fountain in 1917 — Christo and Jeanne Claude were at the vanguard of site-specific artists, who made it their mission to bring fine art outside and into the public. Guerilla-style, they made art by wrapping barrels or blocking streets, working up to their first iconic piece, Wrapped Coast, where they wrapped 2.5 kilometers of Australian coastline, with 5,600 m2 of synthetic fabric and 56 km of rope.
The pair established a unique working relationship: while Christo was responsible for the initial drawings of the pair’s large-scale works, Jeanne-Claude was point person for logistics, and spearheaded negotiations with local governments: she negotiated with then-French president Jacques Chirac for nine years, before the pair were given permission to install one of their most iconic works, Pont Neuf Wrapped.
Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, but Christo continues to work. Today the pair are known for iconic pieces, like Wrapped Reichstag and Gates — and for democratising art, taking it out of the gallery and turning it into public experience.
Two heads can be better than one when it comes to thinking laterally.
The Fab Four and the Tambourine Man
No list of groundbreaking 20th century musicians would be complete without two entries: The Beatles and Bob Dylan. When the two first crossed paths in 1964, they were already big names, but their legacies were far from secure. They were also at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. The Beatles were squeaky-clean pop-stars, singing ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’: not exactly edgy. Dylan, meanwhile, was a renegade folk troubadour — and strictly acoustic. The Beatles were fresh off a set at New York’s Forest Hill’s Tennis Stadium when they were invited to join Dylan at the Delmonico Hotel. Also in attendance was journalist Al Aronowitz who would go on to say, “…that meeting didn’t just change pop music — it changed the times.”
The evening at the Delmonico was, by all accounts, a pretty raucous one: the musicians stayed up until the early hours of the morning. But the exchange didn’t stop there. According to Mark Ellen, co-founder of Mojo Magazine, “…the two parties had already regarded one another with envy long before they met. The Beatles were becoming tired of screaming teenage fans and life as a group, just as Dylan was becoming enamoured of exactly those things. “
The meeting at the Delmonico established a friendship between the five men, but also a healthy artistic admiration. The Beatles were soon borrowing freely from Dylan’s playbook…and vice versa. The Beatles became much more involved in the 60s counter culture. Soon enough they stepped outside the rigid confines of the three minute pop songs that had made them famous. Experimenting with new methods of songwriting and composing, they abandoned teen heartthrob status and took on the mantle of serious musicians. Soon after that meeting they would release game-changing albums like ‘Revolver’ and ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band’.
As for Bob Dylan, well — he took to the stage at the 1965, Newport Folk Festival where he infamously ‘went electric’ and seemingly never looked back. The parent-friendly pop-singers had become counterculture icons; the lo-fi folk legend had transformed into a bonafide rock star. And music would never be the same again.
You may already be successful — that’s no reason not to break the mould!
Dance, art, and music are three disciplines we often associate with individual artists but as these three partnerships proved, well-executed creative collaborations revolutionized art and culture in the 20th century. Next, we’ll take a look at three key meetings that changed the course of 20th century politics.
Jessica Miller is an Australian writer currently based in Berlin
