By Jeff Britton
SDUN Reporter
A gorgeous new exhibit of the artist’s work is currently on view at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park from the museum’s impressive and extensive Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection. All the riotous reds, ochres and yellows associated with Lautrec are in abundance, most notably on the walls of the exhibit, which provide an eye-popping ambience. More on that later.
As for the recklessly-lived life that created these masterpieces, Lautrec had a heavy cross to bear, despite the affluent aristocratic family into which he was born. Indeed, art historians speculate that it may have been the inbreeding within the Toulouse and Lautrec clans that cursed him with a variety of ailments.
To begin with, he suffered from a genetic condition that prevented his bones from healing properly. Fatefully, at age 12, he broke his left leg, and at 14 broke his right leg. Both ceased to grow, while the rest of his body continued to grow normally. Everything, that is, except his genitals, which were abnormally small. At maturity, he was a mere 4½ feet tall.
This misfortune led him to a fascination with the bohemian life in Paris’ bawdy Montmartre quarter, though even there his stunted physique earned him laughs and scorn. It kept him from experiencing many of the physical pleasures offered except in its houses of prostitution, a sorrow he drowned in alcohol.
He started with beer and wine, then brandy, whiskey and the infamous absinthe. Art and alcohol were his only mistresses, and they were mistresses to which he devoted all of his time and energy. He was doing one or both almost every day of his life until he died at 36.
Yet what a glorious oeuvre of work he accomplished. A map of Paris greets you at the museum as each gallery is a stroll along its famous boulevards, starting with the Champs-Elysees. His horses, some of the most difficult creatures for an artist to draw, are rendered stately. One is being exercised around a paddock, another shows a posse at the races and one brilliant lithograph shows them with their jockeys in full stride.
A somber-hued oil of thick undergrowth near the village of Albi was completed during a long convalescence after his accident.
But it was the bars, bistros and cabarets of Montmartre that elicited some of his most exciting work, an enticing blend of technical skill and wry wit.
One pastel-hued lithograph depicts a bartender shaking up an American-style cocktail at the Irish and American Bar on the Rue Royale. Considered risqué in a nation of wine drinkers, it graced the cover of the Anglo-American journal “The Chap Book.”
Many others became the trademark posters for singer and impresario Aristide Bruant’s Ambassadeurs nightclub. With an amiable sarcasm, Lautrec has the pompous Bruant in his dandy attire of red scarf, cloak, hat and walking stick. For “El Dorado” he simply reversed the pose for another of Bruant’s clubs.
The lithographs of political parody, a mainstay of cabaret culture, reveal his wicked sense of humor and are irresistibly engaging, even though most of us are unfamiliar with the characters he’s sending up.
The splatter technique he used in many works is most dramatic in “Shooting Stars,” a cover for sheet music, while another displays a bright corpse on the gallows
as everything in the background is appropriately dark.
His many travels took him to London three times and inspired a host of posters for the popular can-can revues that crossed the English Channel. A crayon lithograph of an English aristocrat cleverly suggests her haughty porcine bearing.
Yet nothing got his creative juices flowing more than the prostitutes and nudes he so admired. My favorite is “Red-Headed Nude Crouching,” an oil with a seemingly endless array of muted colors. Reclining women, sleeping women awakening, and those with breakfast trays in bed all suggest his fascination with the brothel culture.
Covers of literary journals, including the famous “Enraged Cow,” an homage to a cyclist friend, and a poster for a fancy housewares and jewelry designer are each executed with elegance and a touch of whimsy.
A tribute to Yvette Guilbert is simple yet exquisite. And the tall, willowy dancer Jane Avril at the Moulin Rouge, her dress adorned with a multi-colored serpent, is a pure masterpiece.
As he lay dying, Lautrec’s mother and a few friends held vigil. When his father, the rarely seen Count Alphonse, showed up, everyone was astonished except Henri. He said, “Good, Papa. I knew you wouldn’t miss the kill.”
You don’t want to miss this exhibit either.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris
Through December 12
San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park
Adult tickets, $12; children 7-17, $4.50
Discounts for seniors, college students and active military
See website for museum hours: sdmart.org
