The Chrysler Museum of Art

March 10–June 18, 2017

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's radical, bold, and often outrageous posters and illustrations are in the spotlight for the Chrysler's spring keynote exhibition.

One of Paris' key post-Impressionist artists, Toulouse-Lautrec frequented the city's many entertainment establishments, including the popular Moulin Rouge.

He was commissioned to produce posters promoting new Cafe-Concerts, groundbreaking performers like Jane Avril, audacious impresarios like Aristide Bruant, and everyday denizens. Like many Parisian artists Toulouse-Lautrec drew inspiration from the Japanese prints being exported to Europe, which offered new ways of looking at the world.

Explore belle epoque Paris through the eyes of this keen observer and his extraordinary works on loan from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Meet the legends of 19th-century Parisian nightlife in The Chrysler Museum of Art's spring keynote exhibition, The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters from The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition is on view from March 10 to June 18, 2017.
].
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is synonymous with the Belle Epoque, or Beautiful Era, in Paris. He created iconic works of the hedonistic nightlife that still define the ideal of bohemian urban life today. His brief 10-year career, from 1891 until his death in 1901, was a manic celebration of the freedom Paris offered and his work gave enduring renown to many of its star performers. The electric color, bold shapes and restless energy of his designs beckoned workers, aristocrats and foreign tourists into the new cafe-concerts, cabarets and other haunts of Montmartre.


The exhibition follows different themes of Toulouse-Lautrec's life in Paris: the new café-concert culture, entertainment on stage and the daily life of the women performers onstage and off. He was commissioned to produce promotional posters of groundbreaking performers like dancers

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(French, 1864–1901)
Jane Avril, 1899
Lithograph, sheet: 22 1/16 x 15 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1946
© The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photograph by Peter Butler

 Jane Avril



and La Goulue (stage name of Louise Weber),

 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, (French, 1864–1901), Aristide Bruant dans son cabaret (Aristide Bruant in His Cabaret), 1893. Lithograph, sheet: 53 9/16 x 37 15/16 in., The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Emilio Sanchez, 1961. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photograph by Thomas Griesel.

along with audacious impresarios like Aristide Bruant.

In addition, he depicted everyday denizens of the city, including the private lives of prostitutes captured in his lithographic portfolio, Elles (1896).

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
  Frontispiece from Elles, 1896
  Lithograph printed in olive green, blue, and orange on cream wove paper
  20 11/16 x 15 13/16 in. (52.5 x 40.2 cm) Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1962.107

  A monument in modern printmaking, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Elles portfolio has been interpreted as a chronicle of the daily lives of lesbians involved in the worlds of prostitution and entertainment. The evocative image of a woman in nightdress letting down her hair, seen from behind, in combination with the presence of a man’s top hat introduces one of the themes.
  
  
• 
  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
  Woman Reclining — Waking Up, from Elles, 1896
  Lithograph printed in gray on cream wove paper
  15 13/16 x 20 5/8 in. (40.2 x 52.4 cm)
  Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1962.110

  
  
  Here the rectangle of the sheet serves as the shape of a bed. From underneath a heap of disheveled bedclothes suggested by a nearly abstract pattern of undulating lines, the shaded, profiled head of a woman and a lax arm emerge. Through a half-opened eye, she regards the viewer/artist and presumed client with an air of familiarity.
  
  

  
  

• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901)
  The Seated Clowness (Miss Cha-U-Kao), from Elles, 1896
  Lithograph printed in green-black, black-brown, yellow, red, and blue on cream wove paper
  20 11/16 x 15 13/16 in. (52.5 x 40.2 cm)
  Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1962.108

  This sheet features the contortionist dancer Miss Cha-U-Kao (a phonetic play on chahut-chaos or chaotic can-can). She is shown at rest, her outlandish costume, provocative pose, and brazen stare conveying her strong personality. Sharp outlines are set off against soft atmospheric effects achieved through a technique of blowing fine dots of ink on a lithographic stone.
  

The portfolio of 12 prints shows the women not at work, but in scenes of daily life — sipping coffee in the morning or washing before a mirror.

Toulouse-Lautrec mastered the relatively new art of lithography, an intricate printmaking process based on the principle that grease and water are repellent. Like many Parisian artists, his printmaking style was heavily influenced by Japanese woodcut prints being exported to Europe for the first time.

The Japanese influence on Toulouse-Lautrec will be explored in Inspiring Impressionism, a complementary exhibition of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut prints from the Chrysler Museum collection. Named Ukiyo-e or "floating world pictures" after the pleasure district of Tokyo, they first showed celebrity actors and courtesans, and later branched into landscapes and historical subjects.

The prints became wildly popular in Paris after Commodore Matthew Perry's 1853 voyage to open Japan to foreign trade—a mission that began in Hampton Roads, forever changing the worlds of commerce and art. Japanese artist Hibata Ossuke documented this visit, and the Chrysler owns a rare copy of his images of Perry and his squadron, showing probably the first foreigners seen in Edo in more than 200 years. The Museum will also exhibit famed prints from Utagawa Hiroshige's remarkable series, 53 Stations of the Tokaido.

Toulouse-Lautrec was just 36 when he succumbed to a stroke in 1901, leaving behind 368 prints and posters pushing the boundaries of design. Explore his genius in The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec at the Chrysler Museum from March 10–June 18, 2017.

The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters from The Museum of Modern Art was organized by Sarah Suzuki, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(French, 1864–1901)
Divan Japonais,1893
Lithograph, sheet: 31 15/16 x 24 1/2 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, 1949
© The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photograph by Thomas Griesel