International Art News

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, La Clownesse Assise, Mademoiselle Cha-U-Kao, 1896

From 17 September 2011 to 19 February 2012 – National Gallery of Denmark
In the autumn of 2011 you can meet the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901, at the gallery. He attended a range of art schools he embarked on the project of depicting the entertainment scene then flourishing in bohemian Montmartre in Paris.

The exhibition will present a wide range of works, focusing mainly on Toulouse-Lautrec’s prints housed at the Gallery’s Department of Graphic Arts. Pivotal points of the exhibition will include the urban space and how it stages gender and identity.

Toulouse-Lautrec comments on modern life in his depictions, often by means of striking effects. For example, he would utilise the mass media of the time, such as posters, for rapid dissemination of information.

Innovative and visually radical, Toulouse-Lautrec’s sharp voyeuristic gaze takes us into a wildly proliferating world of entertainment. Here we find theatres, circuses, brothels, cafés, and dancehalls – a world in which urbanites bring their desires into play, regardless of gender or class.

Museum Hours

From Saturday 05 February to Sunday, May 8, 2011 – Palais Lumière – Evian Les Bains
Honore Daumier, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, for the first time are gathered here in a confrontation around the representation of everyday life in Paris. The first was active in the 1820s, the third worked up to his death in 1923. Between the three of them they documented a century of Parisian life, the small trades and the political scandals, the Butte Montmartre and the grand boulevards, the humid closets and the Moulin Rouge. While both actors and spectators, they rub on this turmoil and translate these mutations into images of a society they are living witnesses. The exhibition is divided in two, very logical parts. « Le jour » (The day) presents the humor of the streets and cafes. « La nuit » (The night) digs into the atmosphere of the theatres and brothels. Aside from the nearly 200 oils and drawings, the exhibition shows a wide array of magazines from that time, from Charivari to L’Assiette au beurre: at a time when the written press became a true counter-power, its illustrators have the status of real stars.

Gallery Hours