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The Art Institute of Chicago
(Chicago Art Institute Website)
111 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60603
312.443.3600
Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre
July 16 – October 10, 2005
Susan Weinrebe
July 13, 2005
Enter a globe-lighted allée. Pass life-size period photos of crowds indulging in evening pleasures. Become part of the mise en scène of Montmartre, the fin de siècle Parisian district that was the creative nexus for Toulouse-Lautrec and artists of his day.
He was only 36 when he died in his mother’s arms of a combination of factors including alcoholism, syphilis, and stroke. Nonetheless, during his 20 years as a working artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was in the lead of his modern compatriots, documenting nightlife and personalities in the vibrant world of the “city on the hill.”
Relative to the boulevard life of Paris, Montmartre was still dotted with windmills (moulins) which, in their turn, became entertainment magnets attracting bourgeois men seeking the pleasures of wine, women, and anything else available. It was the perfect place and time for a new wave of artists, living cheaply among the working class, performers, and entrepreneurs, to come together in a tasty potage, of glamour, debauchery, and creativity.
Over 250 posters, lithographs, sculptures, sketches, and paintings capture the “renegade” spirit of Montmartre and the people who lived, worked, and dallied there. Fourteen galleries are laden with work by Steinlen, Rusiñol, van Gogh, Manet, Degas, Vuillard, Valtat, Bonnard, Ibels, Carabin, Picasso, and, most dominantly, Lautrec. They were first hand observers and often participants in their subject matter.
Views of circuses, dance halls, cafés, brothels, and entertainers, super stars of their day, are reprised by the artists. Immense photographs of personalities such as Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril, and others are positioned at the entrance to the rooms and throughout. They give an objective point of comparison with the art. The symbiosis between personalities, needing publicity, and artists, looking for subject matter, demonstrates that then, as today, the only bad publicity was no publicity.
Keeping this in mind, even caricature was desirable, for instance to Yvette Guilbert, who knew how to promote her small talent and appearance to maximum advantage. Over and over, Lautrec’s exaggeration of her features and opera length, black gloves creates an unmistakable signature. Incised into one of his ceramic portraits of her, she calls him “little monster,” apparently as an endearment. Yet, period photographs show a pleasantly featured woman. The flavor of her stage persona, with gawky poses, jutting chin, and Fanny Brice-like recognition of deficiencies as strengths, is what Lautrec captured in many likenesses.
Compare this to the delightful depictions in another room of Loïe Fuller. A plain mid-western girl, she entranced audiences with her routine. Twirling muslin swathes, somewhat like a ribbon dancer, she danced across a lighted floor, surrounded by mirrors. Archival film shows her mastery of lengths of fabric, but it is the magical appearance she created, rather than her persona, that was the subject of her act.
Six exquisite little bronzes by François-Rupert Carabin represent the airy quality of Fuller’s swirling fabric. She is slim, clean-limbed, and weightless in this artist’s vision. Elsewhere, in a progression of differently colored lithographs, some dusted with metallic powders (predating, by a lifetime, Andy Warhol’s multiple image genre), Lautrec abstractly portrays her as all grace and performance art. No grotesque caricatures for Miss Fuller!
Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, Lautrec’s poster, advertising the popular can-can dancer, propelled him to acclaim. Following the context of Impressionism, this poster became a whirlwind, blowing the points of color away from people’s eyes! Flat plains, outlines, silhouettes, and words framed and collided with the immediately recognizable dancer. It did no harm to the notoriety of the subject that her whirligig high kicks gave a generous revelation of knickers, sometimes sans center seam! This was publicity that money couldn’t buy.
In another feat of poster art, as elevation of the performer, Aristide Bruant, whose talent was to insult his audience and tell coarse stories, is depicted as cavalier and dashing. Slabs of color and suggestive line, a haughty over-the-shoulder glance, and cocked evening hat gave him such dash, that he asked of Lautrec, the print maker, “Am I really so grand?” Well, he had commissioned the poster as an advertisement!
Brothels were illegal, but tolerated in the district, and Lautrec knew the prostitutes, as well as their rooms and trade. Leaving the clamor of the cabarets, les maisons closes quietly contrasted with the commotion of more public entertainments. Though the subject matter was forbidden, the paintings seem surprisingly lacking in erotic charge. These women, too, were performers, but were painted with tenderness. Their humanity trumped the showy business of dance halls and reflected an outsider, Lautrec. In these images, Lautrec’s soft lines, quiet colors, rounded shapes, and somewhat dreamy focus all demonstrate the breadth of his versatility.
Short of using sound to achieve a sense of immediacy, the exhibit succeeds in recreating the flavor of Montmartre’s halcyon days. A small clip from John Huston’s film, Moulin Rouge, depicts a can-can with the flash and dash of the entertainment. And Baz Luhrman’s much later Moulin Rouge creates a whirl of colorful activity that echoes the original art. Artists were magnetized to the place that provided as much sensory stimulation as they could tolerate – and beyond.
Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is stunning. It can be enjoyed on so many levels that one visit won’t be completely satisfying. Besides the main exhibit, there are two small rooms that highlight Lautrec’s poster work and lithographic process. A printing press is on display, and demonstrations are scheduled to show his multi-colored technique. Family programs with shadow puppets, dancers, actors speaking in the artists’ words, life drawing classes, lectures, and more are scheduled. There is, of course, the obligatory shop annex and the delightful Garden Restaurant featuring a “Toulouse-Lautrec Prix-Fixe Menu.” Or, enjoy the French bistro with umbrella-shaded tables and the opportunity to sample a gustatory Lautrec work of art, chocolate mousse, from his own cookbook!
With assistance of The Art Institute of Chicago Press Notes.
Jules Chéret (French, 1836–1932) Bal du Moulin Rouge, 1889, reprinted in 1892. Lithograph in vermilion, yellow, blue violet, gray green, and black; 120 x 87 cm (47 1/4 x 34 1/4) plate; 124.1 x 88 cm (48 7/8 x 34 5/8) sheet. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kurt J. Wagner, M.D., and C. Kathleen Wagner Collection, M.87.294.7 (cat. 56/G23161)
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). The Blue Room, 1901. Oil on canvas; 50.4 x 61.5 cm (19 7/8 x 24 1/4). The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1554 (cat. 203/G23170)
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Divan Japonais, 1901. Oil on cardboard mounted on panel; 69.9 x 53 cm (27 1/2 x 21). Mugrabi Collection, 1218 P24 (cat. 152/G23172)
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Jardin de Paris, 1901. Brush and ink and watercolor on paper; 64.8 x 49.5 cm (25 1/2 x 19 1/2). Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Raymonde Paul, in memory of her Brother, C. Michael Paul, 1982, 1982.179.17 (cat. 174/G23168)
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (Swiss, naturalized French, 1859–1923). Tournée du Chat Noir, 1896. Color lithograph; 135.9 x 95.9 cm (53 1/2 x 37 3/4). The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Gift of Susan Schimmel Goldstein, 77.050.003 (cat. 104/G23167)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant, 1892. Lithograph (poster) in olive-green, orange, blue, red, and black on two sheets of tan wove paper; 139 x 95.2 cm (54 3/4 x 37 1/2) image, including stray marks; 147.2 x 99.9 cm (57 15/16 x 39 5/16) both sheets. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection, 1948.450 (cat. 113/G21016)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). At the Moulin Rouge, 1892/95. Oil on canvas; 123 x 141 cm (48 7/16 x 55 1/2). The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1928.610 (cat. 66/C49967)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge, 1892. Lithograph in aubergine, green, yellow, blue, orange, and black on ivory laid paper; 52.7 x 37.3 cm (20 3/4 x 14 11/16) image; 61.8 x 48.7 cm (24 5/16 x 19 3/16) sheet. The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of the Print and Drawing Club,1931.67 (cat. 142/G20781)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Equestrienne (At the Circus Fernando), 1887–88. Oil on canvas; 100.3 x 161.3 cm (39 1/2 x 63 1/2). The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection,1925.523 (cat. 266/E29396)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Jane Avril, 1899. Brush lithograph, key stone in black, one color stone in red, one in yellow and blue (the snake on dress printed from one stone) on one sheet of white wove paper; 55.6 x 30.9 cm (21 7/8 x 12 3/16) image; 55.6 x 37.6 cm (21 7/8 x 14 13/16) sheet. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection, 1949.1009 (cat. 178/G20780)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Mademoiselle Eglantine’s Troupe, 1896. Lithograph (poster) in yellow, turquoise, and red on tan wove paper laid down on fabric; 61.4 x 79.5 cm (24 3/16 x 31 5/16) image; 62 x 79.9 cm (24 7/16 x 31 7/16) sheet. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection, 1936.220 (cat. 176/G21009)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in "Chilpéric," 1895–96. Oil on canvas; 145 x 149 cm (57 1/8 x 59). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1990.127.1 (cat. 227/G23173)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). May Milton, 1895. Lithograph (poster), with transferred screen, in blue, olive-green, yellow, red, and black on tan wove paper laid down on cream wove paper; 80.3 x 60.1 cm (31 5/8 x 23 11/16) image, including registration marks; 80.4 x 61.9 cm (31 5/8 x 24 3/8) sheet, primary support; 85.6 x 67.3 cm (33 11/16 x 26 1/2) sheet, secondary support. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection, 1948.451 (cat. 202/G20776)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901). Moulin Rouge: La Goulue, 1891. Lithograph (poster) in black, yellow, red, and blue on three sheets of tan wove paper; 189 x 115.7 cm (74 7/16 x 45 9/16) image; 191 x 117 cm (75 3/16 x 46 1/16) sheet. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison Collection, 1954.1193 (cat. 10/G20799)
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–90). Agostina Segatori at the Café du Tambourin, 1887. Oil on canvas, 55 x 46.5 cm (21 5/8 x 18 5/16). Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation), s 17 V/1962 (cat. 90/G23171)
Photograph of Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892. Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
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