Toujours Lautrec!

September 2011

Toulouse-Lautrec was a master of design, an architect of celebrity, a dazzling image-maker. Was there ever an artist so tender or so trenchant? He may have been enthralled by women, by sex and by the bohemian life of Montmartre but he never lost his coolly appraising eye. Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril, Beyond the Moulin Rouge at the Courtauld in London explores his relationship with the dancer Jane Avril. The iconic works are there; Avril high kicking amid a swirl of orange and yellow skirts, Avril in the audience of the Divan Japonais, an inky, sinuous silhouette, Avril apparently succumbing to a serpent that coils around her dress as she sings. Nor does Lautrec shy away from the flip side of celebrity. Off stage he depicts her as distracted, isolated and more than a little careworn, especially considering she was only in her twenties during their collaboration. The exhibition reminds us not only of the artist’s sublime skill, but also of the debt that every fashion illustrator owes him, from the great mid-century glamourist René Gruau, to today’s pre-eminent observer of the scene, Gladys Perint Palmer. Go and see it.