The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters: Museum of Modern Art, New York

Toulouse-Lautrec’s prints and posters are almost one and the same with what we imagine of fin-de-siècle Paris, and I don’t think it would be overstating it to say that some of his images have been reproduced ad nauseum.  I thought that this exhibition did a good job of acknowledging our collective image of the Paris underworld while also putting the works back into context, and recognising Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographs as an artistic output as valid as his paintings.

The exhibition starts with information both on Toulouse-Lautrec’s biography and on the technological advances as he was introduced to lithography which led to the growth of distribution, dealers and buyers from which he benefitted.  His adoption of the medium and output was rapid, producing over 300 works in the decade before his death in 1901.  The curator has also included information on the expansion of all genres of entertainment in the late 19th Century, which provided both freedom and inspiration for the artist, and also on some of the café-concert performers and venues he made famous, at the same time as his images of them brought him acclaim.

The central series in the exhibition is ‘Elles’, a portfolio of twelve lithographs depicting scenes of everyday life in Parisian brothels.  It is the (somewhat) more respectable world of revues, dance halls and concerts, however, which infuses the viewer’s senses, with video and audio resources judiciously used to contextualise the artworks and bring them to life.  Hearing Yvette Guilbert perform songs in her idiosyncratic way while looking at Toulouse-Lautrec’s images of her and other performers is quite an effective way of breaking the link between the viewer and picture postcards views of the era, and reminding one instead that he was not depicting ideals of beauty, but was interested in putting real women of all kinds at the forefront.

It isn’t a ground-breaking or blockbuster exhibition, then, but a nice quiet reflective one which makes fin-de-siècle Paris a bit more tangible, and puts Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithographs up for serious artistic consideration.  I enjoyed he thought put into it, including the area under the stairs as you exit which has been set up with chairs and tables like a café, with cards prompting thought not about the prints themselves, but about the world they depict.  Maybe I will look at the ubiquitous postcards of Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant a little differently when I am next in Montmartre.