Sensational Line: Toulouse-Lautrec's Graphic Art

The Artisan Moderne. 1896, Lautrec was asked to advertise a jeweler/home goods designer
He manages to add some of his own thoughts and observations about human nature. 

This is the last weekend of Phillips Collection's exhibition,Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the 'Belle Epoque.'  The Phillips organized the show with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, its only other venue North America. This exhibition is different and distinguished from other exhibitions of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (and I've seen a few of them), because it's primarily graphic art and contains some works that we don't normally see. There are trial proofs alongside the finished prints, and a few very rare prints. The entire show comes from one private collector in France and we're very lucky to have it for a short time in Washington. 

Mademoiselle Eglantine's Troupe, 1895- 1896  Brush, spatter and crayon
lithograph in three colors.  The dance troup included Jane Avril, seen below

Toulouse-Lautrec's color is magical but it's really his sensational line that was his greatest gift.  He follows a string of other great 19th century line artists: Ingres, Daumier, Degas and Hokusai, but he broke entirely new ground in the world of graphic art.  In this exhibition, some of the familiar posters are shown in different stages, and it's a great starting point to understand something of the lithographic process.   Lautrec mastered the medium of color lithography, using multiple stones for the different colors of ink.  

He's best known for creating poster advertisement for entertainers and other highlights of Paris night life. Certainly he did a lot to bolster the careers of certain singers and performers such "La Goulue," Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant. His posters were all over the kiosks of Paris and his work began a new trend.  Although Lautrec was from an aristocratic background, he reveled in the demimonde and the bohemian lifestyle.  He captured the people, places and events with so much vitality that the viewer almost wishes he or she could be there.  The "Belle Epoque" is the beautiful era and in the USA it reflects the time of "The Gilded Age or "The Gay Nineties."

Jane Avril, 1899

Depicting the subjects with wit and whimsy, and it's clear that Lautrec's art always captured much more than a photograph could.  Sometimes his faces seem to be sneering at us.  His expressive, calligraphic line is pure magic in how it captures a quick impression.   He also masters the integration of letters into design, an essential for good graphic art.  He portrayed Jane Avril several different times -- in 1893, in the Divan Japonais, with Mademoiselle Eglantine's Troupe and again in 1899.   The poster of Jane Avril from 1899 is particularly effective in design.  Her undulating lines take up the entire picture from top to bottom, twisting to the right and then off the page on the left.  It's utterly simple, but effective design

Furthermore, it's not only performers and night clubs that he enjoys. One of his friends, Sescau asked him to advertise his photography studio.  He sets the fashionable lady in the foreground, running away from the photographer.  With his sly humor, he makes suggests that photographer friend is looking at her in other ways, too.  In a brilliant display of his design talent, the frills of this woman's flowing cape match the rhythms of design in her fan, flowing in the opposite direction off the edge of the page.

Photographer Sescau, 189 Brush, crayon and spatter lithograph, printed in five
colors.  Key stone printed in blue; color stones in red, yellow and green

Like other artists of his time -- Van Gogh and Munch -- he used jumps in space to heighten the meaning.  It works well with the poster; the graphic artist's challenge is to say a great deal with a minimal amount of detail and definition.   In one of his most famous works, La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge, the master of ceremonies is at the picture plane.  He's merely a silhouette with pointed fingers, pointing to the artist's signature put also to the celebrity whose dancing a can-can.  Le Moulin Rouge was a 1890s version of "Dancing with the Stars."   Guests were able to mix and mingle with their favorite celebrities, and to dance alongside them.

La Goulue (Louise Weber)

Of course the Moulin Rouge was also memorialized with a fictional character played by Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's 2001 movie, Moulin Rouge. The story, but not the aesthetics in the move, fit with the time and place.  John Leguizamo played Toulouse-Lautrec as an affable, good-natured character.   Since childhood accidents and perhaps a genetic disease kept him from growing to normal adult height, he felt comfortable with other outsiders.

In actuality, La Goulue was Louise Weber, who had moved from the country (Alsace) into the city as a teen. She was approximately 24 at the time of her stardom as one of the most popular dancers in Paris.  Her nickname, "the glutton" probably refers to how she took from others -- food and drink.By the time she was 30, she was tired, wasted, impoverished and alcoholic. (In his prints, and paintings, she's always recognized by her topknot. ) Unfortunately, there's similar sad tales played out by some young stars today.

La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge, Brush and Spatter lithograph, printed
on two sheets of wove paper.  Final print

Many other famous posters are on view in full splendor, including images of Aristide Bruant and Marcelle Lender.  This must-see exhibition is pure visual delight. It also offers a great deal of technical information about Lautrec's astounding graphic techniques.  This is just a small sampling of the many fantastic posters, paintings and graphics that are part of the exhibition.

Who is That Woman? Manet & Meurent

Detail of "Olympia" by Edouard Manet, 1863, in Musée d'Orsay

Victorine Meurent is Manet’s most frequent model of his early career.  She shocked audiences as the indifferent courtesan in Olympia (above), exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1864.  A year earlier, Victorine had scandalized Parisians, playing the part of a shameless woman who disrobed during a midday picnic. That was her role in Manet's revolutionary painting, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass-- see on bottom) exhibited at the Salon des Refusées for the officially rejected paintings of that year.  She is just the matter-of-fact figure that Manet wanted, and there is nothing beautiful, sexual or erotic in either image. In both paintings, she is not an individual but the object, the sexual object.

Manet also painted Victorine as Young Lady (also called Woman with a Parrot), in 1866. She looks taller in her long pink gown. There's a magnificent unpeeled lemon on the ground. The symbols in the painting may allude to the five senses and suggest that she is a mistress.  But she is a sympathetic one, one who even seems satisfied with her status as a mistress.  However, it’s hard to see each of these paintings as representative of the same woman. One supposes that Victorine refused to model naked again, after all the attention of Olympia and Le déjeuner...  had received.

Manet, Young Lady, 1866, Metropolitan

What was Manet’s relationship to Victorine?  They could have met in the studio of Thomas Couture, Manet’s painting teacher.   Born in 1844, Meurent started modelling there at age 16 and even may have taken lessons with Couture.  According to her wikipedia biography, Victorine also played guitar and violin, and sang occasionally.  She came from a family of minor artisans, and was probably not as poor as many painters’ models at that time.  

Manet, The Street Singer, 1862, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Manet’s first painting of her was The Street Singer.  She looks shy, hurried and slightly guarded.   Her brown dress is rumpled as she carried a guitar coming out of a building.  She quickly grabs a bite to eat from the cherries in her napkin.   Of all the paintings he did of her, this is perhaps the most revealing of Victorine, of who she was and what her life was to become.  Artistic and musical, she worked hard.

Shortly after The Street Singer, he painted her portrait, Portrait of Victorine Meurent.  She is pretty, resembling the photograph of her that Manet kept in his studio. She looks older than her 18 years in this painting, and she has an air of sophistication.   Again she doesn’t resemble women modeled in Manet’s two early masterpieces of 1863, Olympia and Le déjeuner sur l’herbe.  

Manet, Portrait of Victorine Meurent, 1862, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Manet must have loved her for her versatility, the fact she could appear quite differently from painting to painting.   Her nickname was La Crevette, meaning “shrimp.”  She was quite short and had red or auburn hair.  Her eyes appear brown or hazel, while her hair can appear brown, red or of indeterminate color. In the portrait, he brought out all those qualities he saw in her as “beautiful.”   Here, she also seems to be the real woman, the woman we see in the photograph collected by Manet.  With Victorine as the subject, Manet did not objectify her at all!

Manet, Mlle Victorine in the Costume of an Espada, 1862

However, most of the time, Manet pursued Victorine’s image for special effects.  She is a prop, much like the fabrics, costumes and materials he kept in his studio.  Mademoiselle Victorine in the Costume of the Espada is one of many paintings Manet did in a Spanish theme.  Victorine is recognizable as the same woman as in Le déjeuner. (He painted this image a year earlier than Le dejeuner...) She is dressed like a bullfighter, and for the background Manet borrows from bullfighting prints by Goya.  Manet was experimenting with raised perspective and compositional space, years before Van Gogh and Munch did the same.  The pink cape she holds is study in painting fabric and color.  

Was Manet being ironic by turning her into a bullfighter?  Perhaps, but he also knew Victorine as a patient and willing model.   He’s experimenting dramatically with both color and space here, and perhaps he didn’t have a male model up to task.  Perhaps her small body best served his purpose.

It’s the arms and the hands and the eyes which say the most about Victorine in all the paintings.  On the other hand, when Manet painted Berthe Morisot, he also used the tilt of the head to convey the depth of his sentiment for her.

My thoughts about Manet and Meurent’s relationship is that it was a strong, professional relationship.   Was she his mistress?  No.  Like a good film director, Manet treated Victorine as the woman who could be cast in many roles.  Victorine was to Manet as Diane Keaton was to Woody Allen’s early film career. Victorine was to Manet as Penelope Cruz was to Pedro Almodóvar.   Later on, these film directors found other muses.

Manet, The Railway (also called Gare Saint-Lazare), 1872, National Gallery of Art, Washington

After a pronounced lull in painting Victorine after 1866, Manet painted her again in The Railway of 1872.  At this time Victorine was 29, but she looked remarkably younger than she appeared in Olympia and Le Dejeuner.   She is a woman who is nostalgic, a woman who looks to the past, while the girl beside her is all excited about the future. She is blasé about the train and wishes the future would not intrude so much into the present.  Again, Victorine showed herself to be an actress who could play different roles -- in her own standoffish way.

Victorine took up painting in the 1870s and she was accepted into the Salon at least 6 times.  The only surviving painting is a portrait called Palm Sunday.  It is quite good as a painting, but her style was far more traditional than Manet’s. She models the sitter with traditional, nuanced light and shade to make the face three-dimensional.  The sitter turns to the side, which doesn’t really convey the personality. She even projects the plant closer to the picture plane and edge of the painting, giving it significant attention, too  While Meurent frequently posed as prostitute, her only painting known today is of a young participant in a religious procession. Victorine was in her 40s by that time, but her choice of subject is ironic if we know of the types of paintings for which she posed.

Victorine Meurent, Palm Sunday, 1885, Musée de l'art et l'histoire, Colombes

After Manet died in 1884, Victorine went to Suzanne Leenhoff, Manet’s widow, and told her she had been promised more income from Manet as some of the paintings for which she modeled sold. Suzanne coldly refused her request.  

Who was Victorine?  She was essentially an honest woman, who made an honest living as a model.  She worked hard in art and in music. She had minor successes from time to time, but fought back well when she hit hard times. Victorine sought artistic expression, but not fame or notoriety.  Manet definitely wanted public affirmation, not the angry outcry that he was receiving while she was his muse.  She modeled for other artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec, who teased her by calling her out as Olympia.

Manet, Olympia, 1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Victorine may have been very interested in projecting Manet’s artistic objectives, but later pursued her own artistic objectives along different lines.   (In Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia, Manet sought to modernize the themes of Giorgione and Titian of the Renaissance. He remakes them to be of his time, in the style we call Realism.) The audiences who saw these masterpieces probably didn't know the model's identity. They thought nudity portraying mythological themes of the Renaissance or in the guise of goddesses and muses was absolutely fine.  Even portraying the prostitute could have been ok, if it had been done tastefully as in Goya's Nude Maya.   However, Victorine played the part too well, conveying the distasteful side of the world's oldest profession--that she is treated as object, not person.  She, herself, probably did not engage in sex for money, but she acted the part so well.

Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1862-1863, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Victorine is the symbol of a time and place. Although interwoven with the men, her frank stare seems to say to the audience, "I don't give a damn what you think." Is Manet judging like the 19th century audience did?  More likely he recognizes the good and the bad. The advantage is that prostitution is a way to rise above one's class and make a living. (Like the Valtesse de la Bigne, some women rose from abject poverty to the top of the social world this way.)  The bad is the de-personalization that comes with it.  My opinion is that Manet often found her to be the best model to make a statement of the ambiguities of modern life that he wished to express.

Throughout his career, Manet sought ways to reconcile the ambiguities of his time. Tomorrow will be Manet's 185th birthday, and we're still discussing the treatment of women. So today we witness the women's march on Washington against the backdrop of Donald Trump's Inauguration. 

(There's a 19th century French expression: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"  The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.)  Please don't get angry at me for saying it again.

Certainly other models, the actresses and actors of Manet's oeuvre, also have the detached gaze. Such impersonal expressions went along with the modern, urban life.   (Suzon, the barmaid in The Bar at the Folies-Bergère, says it just as well, or even better.  But she came later.)  Meurent channeled the expression better than almost anyone over time. As Manet’s first important muse, her soul lives on for posterity.

There are novels about Victorine Meurent, none of which I've read: Paris Red, by Maureen Gibbon, Mademoiselle Victorine: A Novel, by Debra Finerman and A Woman with No Clothes, by V.R. Main.  She has stirred the imagination of writers more than Manet and his relationship to Berthe Morisot, with whom he was in love.  Manet even portrayed Berthe Morisot more often, and in more guises.  I think it's because Victorine took part in two of his three most famous paintings.   

Here are three more blogs about Victorine Meurent and Manet.

https://bonjourparis.com/art/victorine-meurent-the-unvarnished-story-of-manets-muse/
 http://wildbeautyworld.com/2014/09/09/painted-ladies-victorine-meurent-manets-modern-muse/
 https://mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/victorine-meurent/

The Goldfinch: Truth in Art and Life

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654

"We have art in order to not die for the truth."  Donna Tartt quotes Nietzche in the opening of one of her chapters in The Goldfinch, an epic journey of life novel.  It's taken me all year, but finally, I've finished reading The Goldfinch (need a long plane trip to do that).  The entire drama is centered around a missing painting, or, shall we say, a stolen painting in the hands of the narrator. It's interesting that Donna Tartt chose a painting to be the symbol of her protagonist. I always enjoy reading books that center around a painting.  Usually these books imagine the fictions that influenced the creation of the paintings, books by Sarah Dunant (In the Company of the Courtesan) and Tracy Chevalier (Girl with a Pearl Earring).

But this novel is not about how or why the painting was made.  It is about the journey of the painting and it's presumed caretaker, what it does for him through his growing years and into several years of adulthood.  It is a symbol of his life, his hopes and the man he became.

The Goldfinch -- the painting -- somehow made me think of my mother when I gave her a reproduction of the painting as a birthday gift about 12 years ago. (She loved it.) While I've used BIRDS and images of birds in Art Appreciation classes, I've never used this tiny painting by Carel Fabritius. The birds I show in class -- by Brancusi, Wyeth, Homer, Ma Fen, Klee -- are in flight or in action--eating, chirping.  Fabritius' Goldfinch is a bird chained on a pedestal. He's stationary--as if saying "I am."

At one point, the author gives a hint of original purpose for the painting, that it was a signpost for a tavern.  (I haven't verified this history. That's the type of things art historians write about, but Tartt writes about the painting in a much more interesting way.)

Because I'm not a literary scholar, I can't comment on Tartt's writing. But as an art critic, she understands why we need art in our lives.  The quotes in the book are full of wisdom about the intersection of art and humankind, art and life, truth and life.  She understands art as well as any art historian.  Here are some quotes from the book:

"If our secrets define us as opposed to the face we show the world: then painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am."

The voice in the book, Theo Decker, starts when he's a 13-year old.  His life is a traumatic one, and he soon becomes an orphan.

"If every great painting is really a self-portrait what if anything is Fabritius saying about himself?"  (Here's the other blog I wrote about birds by multiple artists.)

She describes qualities the goldfinch has that are like human qualities: "It's hard not to see the human in the finch. Dignified, vulnerable. One prisoner looking at another." Later on Tartt writes: "... even a child can see its dignity: thimble of bravery, all fluff and brittle bone.  Not timid, not even hopeless, but steady and holding it's place. Refusing to pull back from the world."

Before coming to this conclusion, the protagonist makes these smart observations about life:

"Can't good sometimes come from strange back doors?"

"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."

As Theo goes through so many trials and tribulations, we think that it'll end in tragedy and that he'll be doomed.  Of Theo's relationship to Pippa, the narrator says: "Since our flaws and weaknesses were so much the same, and one of us could bring the other one down way too quick."  It seems this truth is often the case in many relationships. Kitsey, to whom Theo is engaged, seems quite the opposite of Theo in so many ways, shallow and disengaged.  Do such opposites anchor each other and keep them from going to deeply in the wrong direction?   (The answer, well, is that his transformation comes without her in the picture)

Tartt also makes us think about beauty and truth.

"Beauty alters the grain of reality."

"It's not about outward appearances but inward significance."  The narrator explains at the end that the "only truths that matter are the ones I don't, and I can't, understand." So what does the painting mean for him?  "Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separate every living creature from every other living creature,"  This description can be applied to the goldfinch, and how Theo sees his life.

"There's no truth beyond illusion.  Because between reality on the one hand, the where the mind strikes reality, there's a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not; and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic."

On p. 569, Horst describes the Fabritius painting: "It's a joke....and that's what all the very greatest masters do. Rembrandt, Velazquez. Late Titian.....They build up the illusion, the trick--but step closer? it falls apart into brushstrokes. Abstract, unearthly.  A different and much deeper sort of beauty altogether.  The thing and yet not the thing."  "There's a doubleness.  You see the mark, you see the paint for the paint, and also the living bird."  "He takes the image apart very deliberately to show us how he painted it. Daubs and patches, very shaped and handworked, the neckline especially, a solid piece of paint, very abstract."   What lovely descriptions of the intersection of realism and abstraction.

Why is The Goldfinch so touching to so many people, both the book and the painting?  Theo and Tartt express deep appreciation for the restoration specialists, like Hobie, Theo's caretaker and business partner.  Hobie lovingly bring works back to their original state. In the book, there's an intersection between truth and illusion, but there's also the understanding that great art is at once realistic and abstract.

The Goldfinch is a trompe l'oiel painting, but it is so much more.

"Its the slide of transubstantiation where paint is paint and yet also feather and bone.  It's the place where reality becomes serious and anything serious is a joke.  The magic point where every idea and it's opposite are equally true."   As I often say, art is about the reconciliation of opposites, and Theo and Tartt achieve this in The Goldfinch.    I'm also wanting and waiting for a sequel.

Another blogger, Gerry in Great Britain, did a tremendous job of explaining Fabritius and his painting.  Fabritius, a pupil of Rembrandt stands in between his teacher and the master of Delft, Vermeer.    Vermeer's simplicity could not be imagined without The Goldfinch, and one wonders if he was in fact Vermeer's teacher.  Fabritius lived in Delft at the time of his death in in 1654.  He died in a gunpowder explosion when he was only 32.