Toulouse-Lautrec (Big Art)

by Gilles Neret

Ingo F. Walther (Editor)

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Book cover for Toulouse-Lautrec

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This is TASCHEN's 25th anniversary - special edition! This is a large-format hardcover edition at a new low price. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), scion of an ancient aristocratic family, was a crippled dwarf. His family's wealth gave him financial security, and he chose to become an artist. In Paris he was drawn to the world of the red-light district around Montmartre. In the cafes, cabarets, dance halls and brothels he observed 'the theatre of life', viewing this world not from the moralising standpoint of the 19th-century bourgeoisie, but with the eyes of one for whom all inhibitions had long since vanished. Lautrec recorded what he saw without the arrogance of a social superior, but also without "spurious pity - like a reporter with a 'photographic paintbrush'. He transferred his observations to paper and canvas with sensitive understanding and a sharp eye, creating the real atmosphere and live character studies of a world where middle-class morals do not count, in which elegance and baseness mix, as do the ingenuous and the sinful. Lautrec had the gift of painting life as it is.
No one else has captured the entertainment world of the belle epoque in so unadulterated, so masterful and so timelessly true a manner as did Lautrec in his paintings, lithographs and posters. This monograph sets out to examine the close relations between Lautrec's work and life. It thereby offers the reader a lively impression of Lautrec's art, and at the same time provides an understanding of his private life and of the magnificent Paris of the belle epoque.
  • ISBN10 3836510057
  • ISBN13 9783836510059
  • Publish Date 25 May 2009 (first published 29 October 1999)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 23 March 2012
  • Publish Country DE
  • Imprint Taschen GmbH
  • Edition Taschen's 25th anniversary ed
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 200
  • Language English