Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge at Courtauld Institute of Art on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Jun 16 2011
until Sep 18 2011
Organised around The Courtauld Gallery’s painting Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge, this exhibition explores the different public and private images of Jane Avril. It brings together a rich group of paintings, posters and prints from international collections to celebrate a remarkable creative partnership which captured the excitement and spectacle of bohemian Paris. Nicknamed La Mélinite after a powerful form of explosive, the dancer Jane Avril was one of the stars of the Moulin Rouge in the 1890s. Known for her alluring style and exotic persona, her fame was assured by a series of dazzlingly inventive posters designed by the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . Jane Avril became an emblematic figure in Lautrec’s world of dancers, cabaret singers, musicians and prostitutes. However, she was also a close friend of the artist and he painted a series of striking portraits of her which contrast starkly with his exuberant posters. The epicentre of this world was the famous Moulin Rouge. Opened in 1889, it offered customers a nightly programme of performances by its roster of stars. At the Moulin Rouge , an exceptional loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s most celebrated paintings and a highlight of the exhibition. It serves as the artist’s homage to this venue as well as a monumental group portrait of his circle. Shown from the rear, Jane Avril is instantly recognizable by her red hair. Jane Avril became the subject of some of Lautrec’s greatest posters, landmarks in the history of both art and advertising. One of the first was made to promote Avril’s appearance at the Jardin de Paris, to which a special bus ran every night after the Moulin Rouge closed at eleven. This large and dramatic poster shows Jane Avril in the provocative high kick of the cancan, framed by the hand of a musician grasping the neck of a double-bass. The radical composition reflects Lautrec’s admiration for Japanese prints. The poster was an instant hit and Avril credited it with launching her career. No less striking is the image of Jane Avril seen in profile as a member of the audience at the venue known as the Divan Japonais . As in all his publicity posters, Lautrec focuses on enhancing the uniquely recognisable aspects of his subject’s appearance. Referring to this image of Avril, the critic Frantz Jourdain praised ‘the svelte spectator with her sharp eye, her provocative lips, her tall slender, adorably vicious body’. One of Lautrec’s last posters of Avril shows her full length, a snake coils up her dress, animating her wild dance. Toulouse-Lautrec’s death in 1901 marked the end of the golden age of Montmartre. Jane Avril went on to perform briefly as a stage actress before marrying and settling into bourgeois obscurity. Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril examines a friendship which has come to define the world of the Moulin Rouge. However, it also looks beyond Avril’s identity as a star of Lautrec’s posters to consider the complex personal histories and the cultural changes which lay behind this remarkable creative partnership. OPENING HOURS: Daily 10.00 – 18.00 Image Credits: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, 1899, Colour lithograph, 56 x 38 cm Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril at the Jardin de Paris, 1893, Colour lithograph, 125 x 90 cm Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril in the entrance to the, Moulin Rouge, c.1892, Oil and pastel on cardboard, 102 x 55.1 cm, The Courtauld Gallery, London  |
