Erik Satie’s mise-en-scène: Uniforms and the self-image of a composer in turn-of-the-century Paris

Dressed as a dandy, a bureaucrat, a regional schoolteacher or even as an undertaker, French composer Erik Satie was easily spotted in Paris during the first half of the twentieth century. Hundreds of testimonies and anecdotes about the musician reveal that his appearance was perceived in itself as an artistic statement. After World War I he was known as ‘The Velvet Gentleman’ to the anglophile artists of Montparnasse and during the last 25 years of his life; not even on the sunniest of days in the Ville Lumière did he leave his house without his famous umbrella. With all these eccentric uniforms, Satie embraced his lifelong habit of defying preconceived notions of the connections between art and everyday life. The self-image he carefully tailored was in clear opposition to the setting of his room in the suburb of Arcueil-Cachan, which he never cleaned or tidied up. Satie is hence an interesting case study of the opposition of private and public image as well as of the unification of art and life. Many of his friends recall that watching him come out of his house was like seeing an actor going onstage.