Demaskirt! Gemälde von Enrique Serra.

Title

Demaskirt! Gemälde von Enrique Serra.

Description

Unmasked circus acrobat.

c. 1885

Artist

Sadurni

Historical Description

The cradle of the classic circus was industrialized England. Since the middle of the 18th century, the art of riding emancipated itself from courtly or military occasions. The first art riders appeared. The venues of the so-called art equestrian societies were board-fenced areas under the open sky. This is where the round shape of the ring developed: Centrifugal force was used for the acrobatic tricks on horseback. In 1769 Astley bought a site on Westminster Bridge for his Riding School, covered the spectator galleries and expanded his troop to include riders, acrobats and a clown. From 1770 on Astley performed regular programs with increasing involvement of other arts such as Chinese shadow theater or ballet. The idea of a program surrounding the horse dressage was not new, but it was only realized sporadically. Astley opened a permanent home in London in 1778/79, and performances became a permanent part of the city's entertainment culture. In 1782 he opened another house in Paris. Astley's goal was to create a theater that everyone could understand and could get by with few words. He developed the genre "hippodrama", which referred to the performance of pantomimes (theater pieces rich in images) with horses. Mainly battles and current events were depicted, such as the storming of the Bastille one month after the event in 1789. The reenactment of striking moments from the recent past was common in popular theater. This type of performance was very popular with the population streaming into the cities. - Astley fought against the term "circus" throughout his life. The term circus prevailed in the years after Astley in particular through events of the Antoine Franconi (1737-1836) owned Cirque Olympique in Paris. Since the beginning of the 19th century, he no longer only referred to the shape of the building, but also to the content of the performance, which was so differentiated from the theater. Until the end of the 19th century, the circus only took place in permanent playhouses. An innovation that has fundamentally changed this image to this day came from the United States: the tent circus developed here at the end of the 19th century. The ringmaster Aron Turner used an umbrella-like, single-mast canvas tent as early as 1830. In 1873 the tent construction company Ludwig Stromeyer was founded in Konstanz, which developed into the main supplier of the German circuses. Paul Busch started his first trip with Chapiteau in 1884. From 1900 the tents spread rapidly in Germany. This had the advantage that you could play in cities that were too small to have a permanent circus building.