Paris in the Belle Époque arrived in Montmartre at the turn of the century. Drawn by the reputation of Paris as the world capital of art, Pablo Picasso came from Barcelona in 1900 to share an apartment with the poet Max Ernst and began by painting the cabarets and prostitutes of the neighborhood. Amedeo Modigliani and other artists lived and worked in a building called Le Bateau-Lavoir during the years 1904–1909. In 1909, Picasso painted one of his most important masterpieces, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", in Le Bateau-Lavoir. Led by Picasso and Georges Braque, the artistic movement cubism was born in Paris. Henri Matisse came to
20th-century French literature Valéry and Larbaud). In the novel, André Gide's early works, especially "L'Immoraliste" (1902), pursue the problems of freedom and sensuality that symbolism had posed; Alain-Fournier's novel "Le Grand Meaulnes" is a deeply felt portrait of a nostalgic past. But radical experimentation was not appreciated by all literary and artistic circles in the early 20th century. Popular and bourgeois tastes were relatively conservative. The poetic dramas of Edmond Rostand, especially "Cyrano de Bergerac" in 1897, were immensely popular at the start of the 20th century, as too the "well-made" plays and bourgeois farces of Georges Feydeau. Anatole France, Maurice Barrès, Paul