At the Moulin Rouge

The National Gallery of Art features an exhibit entitled Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre. It seems the exhibit is well titled, because it is about the district of Montamarre more than it is about the famous artist whose name entitles the exhibit.

Artists’ fascination with the decadent spirit and glamour of bohemian life in the Parisian district of Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century is the focus of this major exhibition of more than 250 works primarily by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Paintings, drawings, posters, prints, sculptures, zinc silhouettes from the Chat Noir shadow play, and printed matter, such as illustrated invitations, song sheets, advertisements, and admission tickets, will be presented alongside depictions of similar subjects by fellow artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec’s predecessors Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet; his contemporaries Pierre Bonnard, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso; and poster artist Jules Chéret.

The themes of the exhibition include dance halls, cafés-concerts, and cabarets (featuring a section devoted to the Chat Noir); and performers, such as Aristide Bruant, La Goulue, Jane Avril, Yvette Guilbert, May Belfort, May Milton, Loïe Fuller, and Marcelle Lender. The exhibition will be dominated by Toulouse-Lautrec’s most important paintings and celebrated posters, including A la Mie (c. 1891), Ambassadeurs: Aristide Bruant (1892), The Laundryman (c. 1894), Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric” (1895-1896), the Elles poster and album of prints (1896), and 12 of the 50 known Loïe Fuller prints from 1893, colored by hand by the artist.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s work will be seen in the company of important works by many of his contemporaries, including Van Gogh’s Agostina Segatori at the Café du Tambourin (1887); Picasso’s Le Divan Japonais (1901); and Degas’ Café-Concert (c.1876-1877). In addition to seminal paintings, the exhibition will feature a number of important early posters by Jules Chéret, including his Bal du Moulin Rouge (1889) and Folies-Bergère: La Loïe Fuller (1893), and Théophile Alexandre Steinlen’s Tournée du Chat Noir (1896).

Maybe it was because of the length of the line, which gave me time to read the entire text of the exhibition brochure, but I noticed that the exhibition had a text with it. The brochure, the placards beneath the artworks, and the writings on the walls were all taken from the same text. You can read that entire text in the exhibition’s website as well.

It was nice to see some reality shed upon the subject of the “Moulin Rouge” which has been popularized in a recent movie by that name. I had no idea until the exhibit that these words mean “Red Windmill” and that there was one such structure in the neighborhood, near the bar and the brothel.

Another popular hangout in the neighborhood of Montmartre was a club called The Black Cat, which was a scene of many of the performances advertized by the now famous posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

What startled me about this exhibition was that I left it with very little sense of the mood of the place “with its skewed perspective, lurid colors, and perplexing social dynamic… both alienating and arresting — an embodiment of the spirit of Montmartre.”

I guess I’m just jealous of anyone who got to live in such a time and place. In short, this exhibition gave a fascinating account of the context surrounding Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s life and work (the hypertext if you will), but that in turn created a desire to know more about the setting, whic might be something inappropriate to discuss in a public setting such as The National Gallery of Art.

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Dylan

Pleased to meet you! I'm Dylan Kinnett, your friendly neighborhood writer.