The Spirit of Montmartre is the story of Paris's earliest, original, avant-garde groups - an essential part of the cultural context for Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters and for such important writers and composers as Mallarme, Zola, Huysmans, Debussy and Satie. Relying on Rabelaisian humor, this ephemeral avant-garde group phenomenon anticipates twentieth-century Dada, Surrealism fluxus, and Performance Art.