Product Description
Childhood illness and injuries steered Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) away from customary rural aristocratic avocations and toward a profession as an artist. He became a painter, draftsman, and lithographer whose work was immersed in famously hedonistic, fin-de-siècle Paris. In his hands, advertising posters were raised to a high art; he portrayed the nightlife of Montmartre-circuses, cafés, dance halls, and brothels-with clear, bold color and a certain seamy panache that is instantly recognizable as his. His much mythologized life has found its way into many biographies and into two feature-length movies called Moulin Rouge. Lavishly illustrated with 370 color plates, Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is the first major work to present the artist's oeuvre in the context of Montmartre's lively art scene from roughly 1885 to 1901. Accompanying an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, the book features the important paintings, drawings, prints, and posters Toulouse-Lautrec made on Montmartre subjects. It also includes masterpieces by contemporaries he inspired or who inspired him-Degas, Van Gogh, Picasso, and others-as well as rarely seen illustrations, lithographs, photographs, and ephemera of the era. And it discusses the artists, writers, actors, singers, and dancers who formed Toulouse-Lautrec's circle. The book's gracefully written essays by Richard Thomson, Phillip Dennis Cate, and Mary Weaver Chapin, with Florence E. Coman, address these themes in light of the rise of the color poster, the proliferation of new forms of entertainment, and the emergence of a celebrity-oriented popular culture. Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre evokes a colorful, chaotic era, and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the art of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Amazon.com Review
The arts community of Paris in the late 19th century has been gutted, stuffed, studied, and fetishized for so many years now that one could easily think there are no mysteries left to wring from this era, as exceptional as it was. This handsome title focuses on the relationship between the ribald, booming, bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's work(1864-1901). It places his art so squarely in context that it rushes back to life and relevance. This is no mean feat, and the picture depicted in these four scholarly and engrossing essays is much clearer, stranger, and more sordid than Hollywood’s botched tribute. As discussed in Phillip Dennis Cate's essay, all manner of artists commingled in Lautrec’s dens of exploitation (circuses, dancing halls and whorehouses): Nabis, Symbolist, and post-Impressionist painters, absurdist humorists, caricaturists, anarchists, musicians, scene painters, and even proto-conceptual artists. As Mary Weaver Chapin explains, Lautrec was a pop artist before pop, with his appropriations of handbill imagery, his affinity for famous performers, his elevation of the "low" poster medium to "high" art, and his interest in perpetuating his own fame. It's easy to understand the attraction of this era; after all, so many of the cultural seeds of the 20th century were sewn in such a brief time in Paris' 18th arrondissement by (let's face it) a bunch of horny drunk dudes messed up on absinthe. --Mike McGonigal
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 Fin de siècle Montmartre through the eyes of Toulouse-Lautrec. , 2008-12-01
French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) immersed himself in the decadent fin de siècle lifestyle of Paris. As an artist, bohemian Montmartre was Toulouse-Lautrec's favorite subject. It was there that he painted models in the garden of Monsieur Pere Foret, and where he painted a series of posters for the now-famous Montmartre cabaret, Moulin Rouge. In fact, he had his own reserved table at the Moulin Rouge, from which he painted French Can-Can girls, while consuming "Tremblement de Terre" (a concoction of absinthe and cognac). Toulouse-Lautrec loved spirited French women as much as he loved his spirited absinthe. Influenced by the work of Manet and Degas, throughout his prolific career as a painter, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolors, 363 prints and posters, and 5,084 drawings.
His paintings offer a rare experience in truly seeing Paris and Montmartre in particular, its theatrical night-life, and its bohemian crowds. In his work, Toulouse-Lautrec mastered the art of capturing the significance of his subject. He was nothing short of a genius in his rare ability to capture the beauty of Paris and the charm of its inhabitants in Parisian streets and cabarets. His artwork is poetic, iconic, and indelible. This collection offers a rare experience in seeing Paris through the eyes of someone who loved his subject well, Toulouse-Lautrec. The collection includes four insightful essays. I have this beautiful book on my coffee table.
G. Merritt
Exhibit Memories, 2005-07-19
Fantastic representation of the exhibit that I toured in Washington DC. They prohibited any photography within the exhibit, so this was just the thing! Beautiful and thorough. If you are interested in the old absinthe addled Montmartre, this is must reading.
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