European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 16, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Above one of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec s caricatures of Yvette Guilbert. A Moulin Rouge showing a bit of Paris nightlife is considered his masterpiece. File file Toulouse Lautrec not quite what he appears to be by Michael Kimmelman the new York times Henri tie Toulouse Lautrec has one of the most familiar biographies in the history of Art. He was born in 1864 into an aristocratic family that could Trace its ancestry to the crusades and whose tendency to intermarry probably caused the congenital disease that turned him into a dwarfish misshapen figure. From his father who enjoyed lunching in a Tutu and having himself photographed in exotic costumes he May also have inherited a taste for the bizarre theatrical and socially marginal. The syphilis and alcoholism that hastened his death at the age of 36 were byproducts of a career spent largely among the prostitutes nightclub performers and hangers on in the Seamer quarters of Belle Poque Paris. The stories surrounding Toulouse Lautrec combined with the sardonic posters he designed to advertise the cabarets of Montmartre and the champs ulysees have helped give him a High enough level of Fame to draw More than 20,000 visitors weekly to London s Hayward gallery to View the latest retrospective of his work. The show which runs through sunday is the largest presentation of Toulouse Lautrec s Art since the 1064 exhibition in Paris celebrating the Centenary of his birth. Despite the melodrama of the artist s ill fated life and the1 salacious character of his paintings of dam ing girls lesbians and prostitutes Toulouse Lautrec s popularity is curious considering the fact that to left behind dozens of the cold pitiless acerbic image s that dominate1 the current show. Those posters extolling Aristide Bruant Lane Avril and other stars of the cafe concert Are mostly something else a masterpieces of marketing rec Asting fashionable but dangerous Montmartre As a District at once titillating and Safe for Middle class tourists. Everything about the design of Suc h classic posters As l is amass aders and divan Arona Sianii Moulin Rouge to Gould exuded modernity from the radically simplified forms and acute caricatures to the bold Flat areas of Brilliant color which owed so much to the japanese Woodblock prints fashionable at the time1. Ycu to Over and Over again Toulouse Lautrec turned out image s of alienation Jules Ness and ennui. These t mild be As modest in Conception As his Stark illustration in an 1887 cover of the journal 1 e Milliton with its Depie lion 4 an old Bourgeois soliciting a 1 .5-year-old working class girl,.or As ambitious As his masterpiece a Moulin Rouge with its sickly colors cropping a la Degas and its ravaged ensemble of leering top Hattei Flaners and Gaudy Dames. His portraits of the Singer Yvette Guilbert Render her As a Pinch faced sizzled has been clinging to the curtain As she takes a Bow although photographs from the period reveal that she was an attractive Young woman. The lesbian couples he painted for the most part do not Caress but Eye each other cautiously. There is none of the sensuality of Courbet s Fleshy women in Toulouse Lautrec s paintings. How typical of Toulouse Lautrec that when designing a poster of Lane Avril dancing at the Jardin de Paris he would eradicate the smile on her face in the photograph on which he based her image. It was not that he looked on music Hall denizens with moral disapproval. As an aristocrat in Bohemian surroundings Toulouse Lautrec was an outsider one with no stated political motivations who could View his lowlife surroundings from a certain distance. He was in other words a More Complex if a less likable artist than popular myth has it. Far from being a Drunken poster Painter he was a consummate professional who produced some 735 paintings 27.5 Watercolours .350 graphic works and 5,000 drawings and sculptures during a career that lasted less than two decades. The goal of the 1 Hayward show is to go beyond the cliche of the charming self loathing absinthe besotted chronicler of Paris nightlife and to demonstrate the Range of Toulouse Lautrec s accomplishments. The exhibition and its excellent 5 50-Page Lala log comes amid a spate of publications about Toulouse Lautrec including a volume of More than 600 of his letters and two books about his life. The books follow Cata logs for major Toulouse Lautrec exhibitions in the United states and at the Royal Academy in London during the last dozen years. Toulouse Lautrec May Well surpass Box office rivals like Rembrandt and Van Gogh on the list of the most frequently exhibited and written Ghoul painters. The i current show Whit h goes from the t Lay Ward to the grand palais in pans where it will to trom Teh. 2 t through Une 1, has been organized by re hard i  of the University of main Hosier and Claire tre it Hes flurry and Anne Roquevert of the Musee d orsay in Paris hey have Selea Ted i 7t of ins most significant paintings drawings graphic works and a stained Glass window which describe the entire course of his development from the unprepossessing images of horses and High born country living that he painted As a Hoy on his family estate through the dark fumbling compositions of his declining Days. His work does not fall into Many phases the earliest paintings Are epitomized by the portrait of his first Mentor Rene Prince eau an animal Painter and Friend of Toulouse Lautrec s father. As a student in Paris during the mid-1880s, he aspired to become an academic Painter but even one of his teachers encouraged his gifts As a caricaturist. The show includes several academic nudes from those student years including one of a Young woman in Black stockings that hints at the sexual flavor of the later work. His later works Are divided in the exhibition according to subject matter. In a Section on portraiture is the marvelous depiction of his Friend Monsieur Boileau whom Toulouse Lautrec situates at a cafe table As if opposite the viewer. It is this same approach of placing the viewer squarely in the scene giving the image its immediacy that the artist adopts in his rendition of la Toulue sweeping into the Moulin Rouge on the arms of two minions. A Section on cabaret stars includes the co logistically Subtle and abstracted 1893 lithographic series depicting a High kicking Loie Fuller. And a Section on brothels and prostitution includes the 1896 series called the Elies album with its wide ranging lithographic technique anti its repertory of mildly erotic motifs whose commercial failure May have seeded along Toulouse Lautrec s imminent decline. He suffered a number of mental and physical break Lowns beginning in 1 897 and culminating in 1899 when he was committed for several weeks to a clinic. The Art that he produced when he emerged and once he began drinking again marked Back to the somber Rembrandt esque palette of his earliest Days. I he show tries to argue for the ambition and innovation of canvases like an examination at the faculty of Metlin me and Admiral a Iauco the painting on which in was working when he died. The argument is not i on int my the works speak of nothing so much As Toulouse Lautrec s final enfeebled depressed state and it is Mitiu lit not to cast the same cold Eye on them that he cast on promiscuous Paris. 24 stripes Magazine january 16, 1992 a