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The photographic archive of Lautrec joins the practices of the aristocratic game on appearances and identities exchanged at pleasure, proof that life and painting do not have to bend to the ordinary limits, nor to those of the avant-garde, which summed up Thadée Natanson by «everything enchants him».
Often reduced to the status of chronicler and contemplator of the «culture of Montmartre», Toulouse Lautrec is limited to a sociological approach of his time.
Yet, if we believe his correspondence with Manet, Degas and Forain, his aesthetic ambitions go far beyond powerful naturalism. His style is marked by incisive and caustic poetry. Throughout his career, he did not abandon this narrative component and this powerful desire to represent time, to deploy it in its duration instead of freezing its momentum on the canvas.
Galvanized by this electric energy of the world of modern dancers and inventions, Lautrec transcribed space-time in images.
His deliberate choice of large formats allowed him to explore the history of this modern society with many faces without concern for propriety.The brothels were an opportunity for him to meet women at the heart of a paradox of independence and authority unique to their marginal condition as slaves of male vices.
He celebrated as Baudelaire their role as priestesses of pleasure and aristocrats of lust. Insatiable viveur, Lautrec knew how to make palpable these modern lightings through the electricity of the cancan and this furious fever of a crowd delivered to its excesses.
This madness of pre-futuristic speed makes his work vibrate at the gallop of the horse, in the heckling of cabarets and the rhythm of cars. Yet even machines fail to dehumanize his painting and his prints remain forever living incarnations.
Through the subjective fragmentation of his images, Toulouse Lautrec has shown his desire to bring modern life to its new myths.
The exhibition reveals the essence of this twentieth century precursor in its vortex of images, offering Toulouse Lautrec a space of perfect freedom.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Conquest of passage (Study for Elles) 1896
blue and black chalk, and oil on paper, marouflé
on canvas; splash with a material of dark color lower right 105.5 x 67.5 cm Toulouse, Augustins museum
© Photo Daniel Martin