Reviews (1)

Great read for biography lovers or fans of Toulouse-Lautrec
Excellent and engaging, though it covers a very wide scope. Be forewarned, though...it is the same as "Explosive Acts" by the same author...just a different title! ... Read more

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TOULOUSE-LAUTREC IN PARIS -a treasure to be ever enjoyed
This little book was created for the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington- Toulouse-Lautrec & Montmartre (March 20 - June 12, 2005)

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC IN PARIS consists of two parts, the first one, a short history of the era and of Toulouse-Lautrec's brief life, and the second half consisting of beautiful reproductions of his drawings, paintings and photographs.

The historical part bears witness to the fin de siècle Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec was glad to represent the decadence that was fashionable in his time. Suffering from "achon dorplasia", a congenital disease that left him crippled and short, he projected both his aristocratic background and the bitterness of his crippled body onto his bold drawings and his acidic interior colors.

Considered a lithographer-illustrator, his drawings and paintings transcend the myth of the easy prostitutes and bring his subjects to a higher aristocratic plateau. Zinc plate prints and posters, also new techniques for his times, allowed a wide distribution of his art- work. Photography allowed him to use unusual angles in his work, giving his drawings a dramatic perspective.

It was Toulouse-Lautrec's good friend Maurice Guibert, amateur photographer and salesman for Moet and Chandon Champagne, who introduced him to the brothels. There he found his favorite subject, the ladies with heart who always accepted him despite his terrible handicap.

Through his paintings, Toulouse-Lautrec created the myth of moral depravity with an aristocratic touch.

Look at the portraits of the "ladies". The artist has projected his refined background in their demure postures, his pretend "joie de vivre" in the movements and the actions of his subjects. But look closely at their expressions and you will find the bitterness of an insurmountable handicap that has soured the artist's life.

If one looks at "The Milliner" on p. 72 one can feel the sad inner feelings of the acid-green lady.... In "Two Friends" the expression of the seated model denotes her private sadness andacceptance of her fate. All his paintings and drawings have an unforgettable moving soul.

As the author explains, the work cannot be separated from his life. "The two are inseparably intertwined". You have to look at both TOULOUSE-LAUTREC'S works and learn about his debauchery to really appreciate this tremendous legacy.

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC IN PARIS is a little treasure to be enjoyed for generations to come.

Lily Azerad-Goldman, Artist and Book Reviewer For Bookpleasures.com
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Looking at the art in the mirror
In "Contre Sainte-Beuve," French novelist Marcel Proust separated art from private life. But Henri TOULOUSE-LAUTREC drew on what interested him in art and life, that is, personality through how the model looked and stood: Edgar Degas- and Edouard Manet-type young girl down in the dumps in "La gueule de bois"; his first large-scale dance scene figures in "Un coin du Moulin de la Galette"; model Suzanne Valadon in 3/4 profile with a Vincent Van Gogh-type turban and in the Camille Pissarro-type "Poudre de riz" front portrait; and Jean Antoine Watteau- and Degas-type popular entertainer Jane Avril, without facial details but immediately recognizable by her shoes with bows, stage stance, and tilting shoulders in an all-blue composition except for the yellow-splashed meeting between knees and skirt. With his Paul Gauguin- and Van Gogh-type expressive color areas, he was hard to beat: "L'anglais au Moulin Rouge" lithographing girlish brightness against black, blue, his favorite olive green, purple, red, and yellow; "Le dernier salut" in flat and narrowly ranged blue, purple and yellow, with a Chat Noir Chinese theater-type hearse driver and hired mourners profiled in black; his Moulin Rouge poster, dark violet from richly mixed black, blue, and red scatter sprayed over each other from a heavily charged brush through a sieve, with the foreground figure slightly sinister and the background dancer in gold, pink, and white; his rare landscapes, light in small-scaled and lively colored freshness, playing early Pissarro- and Alfred Sisley-type light and shade; "Routy" put together Frans Hals-style, with Manet-type expressive blacks and lightly sketchy brushwork; his stained glass window for Tiffany's, sketched and designed from Japanese-style ballet dancers around a water lily-covered lake; and "Un examen a la faculte de medecine de Paris," just over a month before he died, in sombre black and green brightened in the window light by a red academic gown and white writing paper and with Honore Daumier-type accurate draughtsmanship and confident brushwork. He applied his Manet-type dramatic profiles and simplified color areas to subjects from a Degas-type working woman's world: "A la toilette" linking the sitter's auburn hair to a mosaicized background and the pale blues of her dress to what was on her dressing table and her shelf, for a heavily downward brushstroked, overall melancholy; "Au Moulin Rouge," with Gustave Caillebotte-type diagonals for depth and with Degas-type cropped snapshot-style lighting from below to bring out a girl's masklike face; and "Au salon de la rue des Moulins," with one girl seen from the back cut off, Japanese- and snapshot-influenced Impressionist style, by the canvas edge. His post-Impressionist color and style lasted into the twentieth century, among others, in the accent diagonals on Edvard Munch's horizontally-shaped program for Jean Gabriel Borkman's acting a Henrik Ibsen play at Theatre de l'oeuvre; blue period color and form in Pablo Picasso's "Frugal meal," "Green stockings," and portrait of Joaquin Mir; color lithographic advertising, science fiction illustrations, and such strip cartoons as "Asterix"; Expressionism; and Auguste Rodin's watercolors. I like the way that author Bernard Denvir has placed the fifteen artistic years of this people's artist so well within what was and would be happening within the art world. His reader-friendly book of straightforward text and well-chosen illustrations sits nicely on the shelf with Linda Bolton's GAUGUIN, Pascal Bonafoux's VAN GOGH, Robert Gordon's DEGAS, Alan Krell's MANET AND THE PAINTERS OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE, Bruce Laughton's HONORE DAUMIER, Joachim Pissarro's MONET AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, Richard Shone's SISLEY, Richard Thomson's CAMILLE PISSARRO, and Richard Verdi's CEZANNE. ... Read more

Book Description

In 1886 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec established a studio in Montmartre, where the bohemian lifestyle was exactly suited to his personal temperament and his artistic needs. Coming into artistic maturity as the colored lithographic print was gaining credence and as posters were transforming the whole of Paris into an out-of-doors art exhibition, Lautrec regarded these more democratic art forms as seriously as he did his painting.

The posters and prints illustrated and discussed here offer a quintessential view of fin-de-si`ecle Montmartre at its height. In these works, Lautrecís own energies are revealed at their peak. As much as these prints and posters capture the spirit of Montmartre, they also describe Lautrec. Brilliant, witty, and acerbic, they mirror the man as well as the place ... Read more