Amazon.com

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 ... Read more

Book Description

Debauched aristocrat, cabaret painter, accidental dwarf: JuliaFrey's definitive, superbly researched biography strips away the mythof Toulouse-Lautrec to reveal the tortured man beneath. A remarkableand compelling portrait, featuring 135 photos and illustrations. JuliaFrey earned her Ph.D. from Yale University. An expert on 19th-centuryFrench literature and culture, she has taught at Yale, Brown, SarahLawrence, and the University of Colorado; she currently divides hertime among New York, Boulder, and Paris. A Pen Award-winning writer,she is also the author of Writers and Puppets in Nineteenth-CenturyFrance. 600 pp 6 x 9 50 color & 85 b/w photos & illustrations ... Read more

Reviews (5)

I hate Freud when applied to people the author never met
I must agree with some of the other reviews that have appeared on this book. I got this book with the intention of learning something more about Toulouse Lautrec. I really like all aspects of his work and wanted to find something that would be more true to life than the the movie "Moulin Rouge." Usually in most biographies of artists there is a more than passing interest in the work. I did not find this aspect in this book. Instead the author focuses on rather facile Freudian looks at the paintings themselves. As Freud himself observed, "sometimes a cigar is only a cigar." Elements of composition are subjected to a desire to demonstrate some sort of unified field theory toward Toulouse Lautrec's art. I am still looking for a book that illuminate's Toulouse Lautrec's art and life for this clearly is not it.

Disapointing Psycho-babble
Julia Frey may be a French scholar and had some art training, but her attempts a psychological interpretation of Toulouse-Lautrec, his art, and his extended family were superficial, awkward, and in the end presumptuous. This biography would have been an informative work without all the attempts at interpretation and pseudo-psychoanalysis, which end up just being annoying. Frey can't resist the titillation of including all possible graphic details including voyeuristic repeated references to whether Toulouse-Lautrec really was a sexual being - in spite of his physical disabilities. In the end she reveals more about her own fixations than his, and treats us to a tiring display of her own ignorance regarding what was actually a pretty standard slide into chronic alcoholism by a talented artist.

Nothing New
I was excited with the prospect of reading a well written, well researched biography of one of the great artists. Well I was put off from the first. Referring to Henri's body as tiny, painfully deformed. I thought "Oh boy!" "Here we go again". It made me wonder how many people with disabilities she had ever met and that way of thinking that poor Henri could never find true love because of his size. Hmmm? What about Danny De Vito, Paul Williams, even throw in Truman Capote. All of these men are(were) small of height and ther lives were NOT dictated by the fact of not being six feet tall. Other than that their were no fresh insights, maybe just a tidbit here and there. Also did we really need those wonderful photos of Henri defecating on the beach?

Borrowing heavily from Perruchot
I read Frey's work on Lautrec and enjoyed it very much, but then read Henri Perruchot's work, published in 1962, and felt like I was rereading Frey's book. This leads me to believe that Frey used Perruchot's work as an outline and fleshed it out with the originally unpublished letters of Lautrec to his family.

If you want the definitive work on Lautrec, find an old copy of Henri Perruchot's work, which is more consise. If you can't find a copy, Frey's work is good, but more drawn out in unnecessary details.

I should comment that the great thing about Frey's book is the reprint of Lautrec's work, which I continually referred to while reading.

This book is probably the most authoritative work on TL yet
Julia Frey's book is so startlingly graphic of Lautrec and his Montmartre world that one wonders if some of the text uses poetic licence. Frey, however, backs up most of her statements with an exhausting archive of documents. While she modestly presents her work as a Colorado University paper, she has done a brilliant job. I, and a number of my friends, have used her book to enrich our travels to Europe and especially Paris. Julia, you should consider writing a book on the Montmartre, something which has not been authoritatively done as yet, in my and many people's opinion. ... Read more

Amazon.com

With this handsome book, David Sweetman, a biographer of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, brings together the dissolute lives of various artists who came to represent decadent fin-de-siècle Paris: Oscar Wilde, Félix Fénéon, Alfred Jarry, and, of course, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. As the author reminds us, imitations of the latter's work adorn the walls of French-themed bars worldwide and have become a shorthand for sanitized debauchery. Toulouse-Lautrec--absinthe drinker and brothel frequenter--was instrumental in the development of the poster, but what is his artistic legacy? Although Toulouse-Lautrec dominates the book's subtitle, Sweetman's sweep is much grander. In much the same way as his main subject was, Sweetman proves a sympathetic host to the women of Montmartre, tragic figures such as La Goulue, Jane Avril, and Suzanne Valadon, and he is particularly insightful on the singer Aristide Bruant's influence on the fledgling artist. However, the amount of tertiary detail, allied to an ambitious attempt to run a parallel life of Oscar Wilde, tends to be a little too much for the author to handle at times. Sweetman's demands for Toulouse-Lautrec's art to be taken more seriously--for people to look beyond the scenes of dancing and drinking--appear overstated, especially when the painter appears, at best, morally mercenary. Of course, Lautrec was more than a "deformed man who saw ugliness in everything." His work influenced Picasso, Seurat, and van Gogh and was part of a vanguard of realism in French art that swept it into the 20th century and helped establish graphic art as the people's art. It also had the dubious distinction of paving the way for popular culture as we now know it. Hamstrung by a lack of color plates, Sweetman's book is nonetheless a worthy and well-told account of a pivotal time. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk ... Read more

Reviews (9)

Warning
Great read, but it's the same book as another by the same author that is under a different title

patronizing and wrong
this book is simply wrong. not just details, but the big picture. the anarchists weren't like that. the artists weren't like that. these people lived in a ferment of intellectual and moral commitment. i didn't feel the author was 'sensitive' to them at all: very much the opposite. i felt he was dismissive and patronizing.

F for False
There's a difference between nitpicking over minor historical innacuracies and making up nonsense out of whole cloth. This unfortunate book is of the latter sort. It's distorted by what the late Hal Draper called "falsifictions": self-invented statements uttered with an air of scholarly objectivity. The work will indeed transport one to another world: naturally so, because it isn't real.

Fortunately there are alternatives which are vivid, entertaining, and careful with the facts. Richard Ellmann and Barbara Belford have excellent, colorful biographies of Wilde. June Rose has a very fine biography of the fascinating Suzanne Valadon. Alexander Varias has a good account of the fin-de-siecle anarchists. Roger Shattuck has a truly superb book on the rich artistic ferment of la belle epoque, the 30 years or so before the first world war: "The Banquet Years". Shattuck's book is at once a definitive work of scholarship and a hugely fun read. Sweetman's is neither.

Incidentally Sweetman's bio of Gauguin suffers from the same tendency toward posturing. Whoops!, suddenly we're in the midst of detailed technical excursus into problems of large-scale engineering, or of epidemiology. (Gauguin tried to live in Panama at the time of the digging of the canal.) Is the author expert in these subjects? He certainly seems to want us to believe that he is. Nevertheless one doubts and, in doubting, questions his expertise on the subjects of art, literature and politics as well.

If you're looking for an entertaining experience from the pen of an expert, read Ellmann or Rose or especially Shattuck. Give Sweetman a rest.

A+ For Ambition
Sweetman's book may very well contain factual inaccuracies (try to find another work of history that doesn't), and maybe the author has bitten off a teensy bit more than he could chew. However, I assure most readers that when they actually sit down and immerse themselves in its pages, these criticisms are going to seem nitpicking and petty. Fact is, to read Sweetman's book is to be transported to another world, and by the time you finish you very well might feel as if you've lived there for a short while, too (a glass or two Pernod might help this illusion along).

For me, in some respects Sweetman's book in analogous to Luc Sante's "Low Life," both which are so lovingly evocative of already half-forgotten social milieus and which show such compassionate understanding for the people who populated them; and both of which, finally, can be seen as the red-blooded antitheses of all the cold pedantic tomes which in our times have glutted the market under the auspices of academia. I say let Mr. Sweetman amend the factual inaccuracies in future editions of his fantastically ambitious book, as is the prerogative of every author to do. But I hope he won't change anything else. Bravo, Mr. Sweetman! I absolutely love your book!

By the way, Sweetman's biographies of Van Gogh and Gauguin are very fine, also. But "Explosive Acts" is in a class by itself.

the conventional smugness of david sweetman
I was able to read through chapter six before I lost all confidence in what the author was saying. his smug and shoddy treatment and inaccurate descriptions of suzanne valadon are mean-spirited enough to think the author carries some kind of personal agenda against tough and talented women. apparently, poor mr.sweetman became so distracted he got her maiden name wrong calling her marie-christine when her certified birth name is marie-clementine. this was irratating, but when I read page 166 I found it impossible to continue reading and trusting sweetman. sweetman has valadon's son, maurice utrillo, dying an early death on his "bad" mother's door step. maurice utrillo died in 1955. suzanne valadon died 1938. david sweetman must be the british version of america's [late] albert goldman. john e. nordin. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

TOULOUSE WHOSE MOTHER WAS A CONTESS
Even those who are not interested in art know TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, he has become universal.Yes he is the guy who used to hang around bordellos and the MOULIN-ROUGE will always be associated to him.ARISTIDE BRUANT and YVETTE GUILBERT two popular FRENCH singers were immortalize by him.TOULOUSE-LAUTREC was never interested in doing landscapes, he was mostly a portraitist who had fun as a caricaturist of his society LA BELLE EPOQUE.The book summarize his life the way it should be and has some useful documents that makes it interesting.

Really interesting (even if you don't like his art)
I prefer the smaller size of this book (compared to "coffee table" editions). Even though it is a practical size, the reprinted art is vivid and does not suffer from the smaller pages. Also this book is really informative (not alot of meaningless art jargon and expert opinions) like so many of those coffee table books suffer from. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Good Reproductions and Great Wit
"Toulouse-Lautrec" by Edward Lucie-Smith is a great book on Lautrec, mostly from the biographic standpoint. Lucie-Smith is also very amusing when examining plates of Lautrec, for the most part he points out the style--then procedes to tell the reader who is in the plate, and their relationship to Lautrec. One of whom was Emile Bernard's obessed mistress, who added Bernard as her last name. For the most part this book was really interesting because of the funny tidbits that Smith throws in. The plates are decent, they are on adverage a little more than a a half a page, with really good color, and you can see most of the brush strokes. ... Read more

Book Description

The Van Gogh and Friends Art Game combines play and learning with a deck of 36 museum-quality cards and an art book full of fun and fascinating facts about the artists, packaged in a treasure box. With 90 color photos, the Post-Impressionist era comes alive in this lavishly produced game and book set. Anyone who plays these classic card games will be introduced to over 100 great works of art. "Smart and beautiful ... if you missed Art History 101, this is a sneaky, fun way to catch up." — San Francisco Chronicle ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Through the eyes of Toulouse-Lautrec
This book collects art created by Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1890s. Among the pieces in the book are commercial poster and song-sheet covers. Toulouse-Lautrec captured memorable images: dancers, women wearing fashionable clothes of the era, a clown, a carriage ride in the country, and more. This book is a great resource for those interested in art history. ... Read more

Book Description

These richly illustrated art books cover several centuries of great artists and their masterworks. From Rubens to Dali, each artist's life and times, influences, legacy, and style are explored in depth. Each book analyzes a particular painting with regard to the history surrounding it, the techniques used to create it, and the hidden details that make up the whole, providing a thorough look at each artist's career. Included is a bibliography, a chronological reading of principle works, a brief life history, and listings of public collections featuring each artist. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a crippled genius
Toulouse-Lautrec is my favorite artist. He has always fascinated me the most, both his life and his work. He had one or two accidents as a child where his legs were broken and they stopped growing. As a result, he became a dwarf. This must have created a deep-seated inferiority complex in him that caused him, consciously or unconsciously, to draw unflattering caricatures of his contemporaries. But the drawing style was completely original and his own. He soon became famous for his lithographs or posters depicting entertainers at the Moulin Rouge, etc. He was highly productive but always a heavy drinker and inexhaustible party animal. In fact, it was his frequenting of brothels and romantic friendships with prostitutes that eventually did him in. He caught syphilis, a deadly 19th century venereal disease for which there was no cure in those days. However, he left behind some of the most unique Impressionist paintings of Parisian night-life ever painted.

David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness" ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Beautiful reproductions
The strongest point of this book is the quality of its color plates--which of course makes or breaks an art book. Fortunately, the prints in this book are very rich and most images are full page. The accompanying text is also very thorough, informative, and interesting. My only complaint is that this book doesn't present much of the posters for which Toulouse-Lautrec is perhaps most famous; however, it does cover much of his other work. In that sense, I got to learn a lot about the body of this artist's work outside of the usual cliche of Toulouse-Lautrec. I would recommend this book for any art library.

He captured vivid scenes & will capture the young's interest
"Being able to show people in simple, real moments of their lives was one of Henri's greatest talents", p 18

The young reader will learn about Henri's being born into a rich family, his having broken both of his legs in his early teenage years resulting in his small stature, and his years in Paris painting the life with which he came in contact.

Toulouse-Lautrec's painting of lively scenes of the theaters, dance halls and circuses makes this a perfect choice for young children. His Moulin Rouge advertisement prints are easy to read, uncluttered and therefore grab the young reader's attention. The young are frequently in motion. As a result they will appreciate Toulouse-Lautrec's ability to capture a scene in mid motion. The young reader will be drawn in by Henri's choice of brilliant colors and will have fun finding Henri in some of his paintings.

Henri's portrait of van Gogh is breathtaking. He van Gogh'd van Gogh. He does honor to the painter by mimicking van Gogh's style.

Venezia's illustrations are humorous. His narrative is delightfully entertaining. His approach brings the artist within reach of the young. His illustration of the Parisian friends that Henri may have introduced to his parent's is jokingly exaggerated.

The size of the book is perfect for smaller hands. It enables the young to have art within their grasp. Venezia gives the locations of the paintings and as result if the child lives near one of the museums or will be near one on vacation, she/he would be able to see the original.

This is the 18th in Venezia's "Getting to know the World's Greatest Artist" series. He also has similar series on composers. Venezia's back cover illustrations tie back to the subject. "Greatly influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mike also tries to capture the private moments ...".

The price of the book is well worth paying. The book contains the following: Toulouse-Lautrec's Paintings (13) and Prints (4), Photos of Toulouse-Lautrec - 2, Venezia's Illustrations - 6, Others' paintings/prints - 3. ... Read more

Book Description

Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings. ... Read more

Book Description

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) is considered one of the most inspired portrayers of human figures. He was fascinated by life around Montmartre, whose cafés, cabarets, dance halls, and bordellos he captured vividly but without flattery. His paintings, lithographs, and posters offer a masterly and timeless image of the age. ... Read more

Book Description

This book will appeal to both children and adults as it presents the work of Post-Impressionist luminaries. Providing fun facts about the artists, how they lived, and what life was like in France during the industrial revolution of the 1800s, Van Gogh and Friends includes full-color reproductions throughout. It is a great way for readers of all ages to familiarize themselves with this momentous period in art history. ... Read more