| Artist: | Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Moulin Rouge | |
| Date of Work: | 1895 | |
| Nationality: | French | |
| Context: | The Turn of the Century | |
| Movement: | Art Nouveau | |
| Medium: | Poster-Lithograph | |
| Subject: T-L makes an art out of the poster in this lithograph of a dance hall that is part of the demi-monde (the half-lit world of the Parisian nighlife); the scene is unnaturally lit through the highly abstract, artificial lights on the left, which signal a definite break with the plein-air (open air) painting of the Impressionists. The boldness of the flat surface design is effectively integrated with the 2-D text that accompanies it. The poetry of modern urban life in a newly industrialized world. Style: highly design conscious; works the flat surface with a boldness of design. Influenced greatly by Japanese woodcut prints in terms of the 2-D planar aspect, the absence of one-point persective, the linear rhythms, expressive contours, use of color for flat pattern effect, and the simplification of natural forms for the sake of the overall pictorial design. Context: turn of the century aestheticism or fin-de-siecle decadence; T-L was an aristocrat by birth, but a bohemian and aesthete by choice. Short in height, he nonetheless lived life to the fullest, making a brothel his home for awhile. He made a cultivated study of style and had an exhibitionist streak that shows up in the many photographs he posed for (today he probably would be a performance artist). T-L understood caricature: the telling gesture and the exaggerated detail. His art is one of heightened stylization and exteriorized drama. | ||
