Mardi Gras
Among the ritual days and festivals of New Orleans, none is better known or more frequently misunderstood than Mardi Gras. International House, New Orleans' first truly boutique hotel, celebrates its first Fat Tuesday by offering guests and visitors a unique and colorful vision of Carnival history.
The lobby has been decorated by Henri Schindler, who for twenty years has been active as a designer of parades and balls for some of the city's oldest societies. In conjunction with the publication of his lavishly illustrated book, Mardi Gras: New Orleans (Flammarion, Paris 1997) Schindler served as guest curator of an exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art, "The Golden Age of Carnival, 1870-1930" Mardi Gras: New Orleans has been acclaimed an extraordinary work of cultural history; International House is delighted to share images and insights from Schindler's stunning panorama of Mardi Gras' rich history and its exuberant diversity:
"New Orleans is a sensual, sybaritic city, and it is for her pleasures that she has long been celebrated. Mardi Gras is her day of days, and this book will describe its evolution and its legacies. The observance of Mardi Gras predates all else, embracing and infusing all that followed -- the colonial orphan's longing for the crown, the perpetual calendar of fantasy ( of preparation, enactment, and of memory ), the passions for music and dance -- all have been played out amid New Orleans' extravagant vegetation, beneath her blazing suns and warlock moons.
It is impossible to capture even one Mardi Gras in words or pictures; a population devoted to joy is not one to leave records, and those created have had to endure a tropical climate notoriously unkind to paper and velvets. Mardi Gras' surviving fragments exist like buried treasure; few New Orleanians have seen them, and they have remained unknown to the outside world. With a few introductory exceptions, the many images in this volume span a hundred years, from 1857 to the mid-1950s. This was the classical period of Mardi Gras -- an age of artistry, opulence, mystery, imagination and wit -- far different from the Mardi Gras of this waning century. Designs for floats and costumes of the Golden Age processions, the elaborate invitations to tableaux balls, old vintage photographs, and prints offer us, however incompletely, tantalizing glimpses of a fantastic, vanished empire and a fabulous city's heart and soul."
High above the lobby, panels have been emblazoned with enlargements of 13 watercolor designs by Charles Briton for the torchlit procession of the Mistick Krewe of Comus (named for the God of Sensual Pleasure and appropriated from Milton's Paradise Lost) on Mardi Gras night of 1873, The Missing Links to Darwin's Origin of Species. The Missing Links were the characters in a brilliantly layered satire. The pageant presented itself as a send-up of Darwin's theory, then regarded as an abomination by many. The order of march followed the stanzas of a poem of great wit; each stanza was borne aloft on painted glass transparencies, in a succession of verse that identified each Group, and traced the evolution of life from Sponge to Gorilla.
Members of the Mistick Krewe were all afoot, inside one hundred wondrous papier-mache animals, fish, flowers, elephants, insects, and sea-creatures, some of them twelve feet high. In the glare of torches, the parade's true targets were revealed -- many links bore unmistakable resemblances to political figures of the day, from local precincts to the White House. Marching among the Insects was the Tobacco Grub, wearing the face of President Ulysses S. Grant. In the ball that followed on the stage of the fabled Varieties Theater, the cast of papier-mache creatures enacted five tableaux with new scenic lighting effects and dissolving views. The remarkable wit and invention of "The Missing Links" secured its position among the greatest efforts of New Orleans Carnival. This pageant was also the first to be constructed entirely in New Orleans, and it launched a dazzling career of forty years for its young builder, Georges Soulie.
High above the Reception Desk, enthroned in a leafy bower, Rex, King of the Carnival and Monarch of Merriment, greets his loyal subjects and visitors. This lovely Mardi Gras image was created for invitations to the Rex Ball of 1893, and was designed by Bror Anders Wikstrom. Wikstrom, a prominent member of the art circles in 19th century New Orleans, was considered the dean of Carnival designers. For twenty-five years he designed the Rex parade, each year creating watercolor designs for twenty floats, one hundred and twenty costumes, and paraphernalia. The two pages flanking the King, with their cups raised in greeting, were created by Ceneilla Bower Alexander, one of the many talented women who designed floats, costumes and invitations for the Carnival krewes.
The Zulu parade, the most beloved and acclaimed African-American institution of Carnival, was born in 1909. In 1916 the organization was incorporated and renamed the "Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club;" that year also saw the landmark debut of their grass skirts and outrageous blackface makeup. This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the best-remembered events in Mardi Gras history, the reign of Louis Armstrong as King Zulu, and International House shares this important event through a shrine co-created by Schindler and French Quarter artist Linda Sampson. With an oil painting, the cover of the 1949 Time Magazine and authentic elements such as painted Zulu coconuts and grass skirts, the display captures much of the energy and mystique of that day.
Armstrong, New Orleans' most famous native son, had come home for the first time in twenty years to rule as King of the Zulus. He wore the traditional blackface; his royal robe was a red velvet tunic trimmed with gold sequins, worn over black tights and a skirt of yellow cellophane "grass." The red ostrich plumes in Armstrong's crown fluttered in bitter-cold winds, but weather could not diminish the number or warmth of the multitudes that hailed his reign -- the downtown crowds awaiting him were so thick his float could barely proceed. In the annals of Carnival there never had been, nor would there ever be, a king like Louis Armstrong: "You know, I always wanted to be king. Always lived for this day. I always been a Zulu, but King, man, this is the stuff."
Happy Mardi Gras.
