Last Look: Modern Life

Even the most casual observer of modern art is able to conjure up the image of famous French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—a markedly short, bespectacled man with a bowler hat and cane—and perhaps vaguely place him amid the bustling nightlife of fin-de-siècle Paris. But beyond the hyper-romantic, Baz Luhrmann-esque associations with cancan dancers and absinthe, Toulouse-Lautrec stood foremost as a member of the French modernist post-impressionist movement, an after-party of sorts that moved from Monet’s painstaking concern for capturing light and painting en plein air (think “Water Lilies”) to the dimly lit, cosmopolitan tableau of concert halls, circuses, and theaters. Subsequently, the artists, writers, businessmen, and benefactors that encircled Toulouse-Lautrec composed the overture to twentieth-century art with a flagrant disregard for traditional art forms and a full embrace of street life.

Through more than two hundred pieces of art, the current exhibition at the LSU Museum of Art Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne: Paris 1880—1910, on view until November 15, recreates the dynamic, excited atmosphere of turn-of-the-century France through the work of the artist, his peers, and that of contemporary artistic movements of his time. The exhibit boldly opens with a parade of singers, dancers, lovers, and performers that elicits the amorous and indulgent brand of bohemian life that came to define Paris—and arguably destroy its chief patrons: Toulouse-Lautrec would suffer from syphilis and die of alcoholism at age thirty-six—amid a backdrop of social upheaval and widespread anxiety over the looming end of the century. “Visitors get a sense of the experimentation and collaboration of this vibrant community of artists who worked together in the Montmartre district of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century,” said Fran Huber, assistant director for collections management and the project manager for the exhibition. “They get a sense of how important everyday life was as an influence in the artists’ work [and] an appreciation of the importance of this art in the development of twentieth-century and contemporary art.” 

The impact of modernity—here defined by the industrial revolution, the rise of a middle class, and the dissolution of aristocratic propriety—is immediately visible upon entering the exhibit. The display of graphic playbills and café-concert menus that line the first wall references the almost nightly revelry enjoyed by the burgeoning bourgeoisie. Opposite, an enclosed case of shadow theatre puppets by Henri Rivière ignite a mental image of an irreverent and enlivened crowd at the Chat Noir café, itself the namesake of the most iconic imagery from the period. Likewise, of the more notable aspects of Toulouse-Lautrec’s art on view, his work as printmaker rings most visually alluring: poster originals of famed cancan dancer Jane Avril; singer Aristide Bruant with his signature red scarf; and for the novel Reine de Joie, a story of the dubious romance between a beautiful courtesan and an old, rich banker. Made for commercial purposes and with commercial methods, and with total disregard for convention, these works serve as familiar touchstones for a much broader journey into la vie moderne.  

“This is a period where graphic design and fine art start to overlap,” said LSU art history professor Darius Spieth, who opened the exhibit with a lecture on modernism to a record-breaking crowd of over six hundred attendees. “Despite the desire to cast aside the conventions of traditional art—perfect use of perspective and depiction of human anatomy—most of the artists working at this time were classically trained.” 

The posters, journals, books, plays, sheet music, and paintings of Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Jules Chéret, and Théophile Steinlen among others, all trained in the academy, underscore this point. Paired with prints by Toulouse-Lautrec, who was an aristocrat by birth and studied under the well-respected painter Léon Bonnat, these works remain compelling because of the smart composition and prudent use of detail and color derived from formal study. This privileged background, however, did not limit the modernists’ preoccupation with what contemporary James Abbott McNeill Whistler (you’ll recall his sober-looking mother) called “hard-edged detail and verisimilitude” that reflected and appealed to the “uneducated masses.” 

Those masses, in fact of various pedigrees, found in the popular theatre, bars, and café-concert venues around Paris, were often themselves the subject of illustrations by Toulouse-Lautrec’s counterparts. Examples of this in the exhibit include a pointillist painting of an engaged audience in Léon Pourtau’s “Au Théâtre;” the informal, working-class couple sitting bar-side in Jacques Villon’s “From Other Bars;” and the delightful variety of amusement in the faces of André Devambez’s “A Premiere at Theatre Montmartre.”

“Going back to the French Revolution, the increasing importance of the liberty of opinion and freedom of the press allow for growth of popular theatre,” said Spieth. “This, combined with the architectural transformation of Paris at the time, allowed for spaces to host entertainment that was less inhibited and sometimes quite lewd.”

Indeed, singer Aristide Bruant, a repeated figure in the collection who was known to mercilessly insult his audience, and sensual dance forms, as depicted in Henry de Groux’s provocative “Löie Fuller,” pulled Parisians into a new realm of expression with both disgust and delight. Artists, notably Ibels, were also drawn to the circus as a setting for depicting the vitality of the proletariat and celebrating the lowbrow. These scenes and figures demonstrate yet another way in which the early Modernists tore down the expectations of the elite.

This assembly of work makes evident the proclivity for dancers, singers, and circus performers; but an underlying concern for the intimate life of women also emerges. In Toulouse-Lautrec’s soft and almost voyeuristic “Elles” series, Mary Cassatt’s loving illustration of “Children at Play,” Claude-Emile Schuffenecker’s “Study for the Square,” a pastel sketch of his wife and children, and Henri Gervex’s Degas-like ballerinas, among others, viewers have the opportunity to explore these artists’ meditations on women in solace, in play, as mothers, or as strikingly independent of a male counterpart. While several female figures in the exhibit exude sexuality, they seem to do so slightly more empowered. The femme fatale and virgin mother dichotomy are difficult to find in this selection but, alas, are quickly recovered in the work of the symbolist painters that physically conclude the exhibit. “Symbolism is another post-impressionist style that represents a reaction to living in an industrialized age,” Spieth said. “This style was a part of the work of the self-described Nabis. These artists looked to depict the irrational and emotional. This is before Freud, but their work is getting close to the dream iconography we’ll see in surrealism later on in the twentieth century.”

“Chastity” by Charles Maurin and Eugène Grasset’s “Abduction of a Woman by a Mounted Knight” are startling in their sentimentality next to the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. But much like the pastoral landscapes of their Symbolist peers, seen in works by Georges Lacombe and Charles Guilloux, which are well worth spending time with, this portion of the collection acts as a foil to the urban obsession found in the majority of preceding artwork. One important influence that is identifiable throughout it is that of Japanese art, as seen in the dark outlines of figures in several illustrations, in the hanging lanterns of “Eugènie Buffet Sur Scene” by Guillaume Dubufe, the headdress in Gasset’s aforementioned work, and in the shadow theatre puppetry on display.

The transcontinental influence evident in these works is yet another signal that Toulouse-Lautrec and his cohorts shepherded a critical transition in Western art, one in which artists began to look beyond their hemisphere for inspiration and subject matter. This broader world view will be employed by the subsequent generation of artists including Pablo Picasso, whose 1907 “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” is indebted to tribal African art and who would meet Toulouse-Lautrec in 1900. Spieth contends that Toulouse-Lautrec was also a “revelation” for Picasso who saw him as an artist that made it possible to depict street culture.

Toulouse-Lautrec did just that, and the resulting popularity of his work is exactly what pulls visitors into the exhibit. His familiar iconography does not disappoint, but be prepared to then quickly spin out onto the lively streets of Paris through less recognizable, but equally captivating, artwork. If taken in mindfully, the small Parisian district of Montmartre starts to expand and become a portal to multiple points in the art history of the last century. 

Details. Details. Details. 

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