Postermania set the stage for the celebrity of a singular French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a quirky and artistically talented aristocrat who prospered in the city’s entertainment cultures situated at the edges of respectable society. Already emerging as a specialist in the representation of the marginal pleasures of Paris starting in 1886 in his paintings and drawings, he struck gold in 1891 with his first lithographic poster. It was a five foot high multi-color advertisement for Le Moulin Rouge, a nightclub in the city’s brash entertainment district of Montmartre. Le Moulin Rouge was the first Parisian club built to explicitly feature tawdry performances with a bourgeois audience in mind. By 1891, the culture of celebrity was a well-established phenomenon embracing many of the entertainers portrayed by Lautrec.

Toulouse-Lautrec Prints: Art at the Edges of Modernity is a focused exhibition exploring the scope of Lautrec’s work in print media in the final decade of his life. From public works such as posters, illustrated books, and theater programs, to privately circulated portfolios, this selection of works reveals a wide range of lithographs by one of the best known artists of the modern era.

This exhibition has been curated by students in Professor S. Hollis Clayson’s undergraduate art history course Museums: The Fin de Siécle Poster.

- See more at: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/view/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibi...