DATE: Wednesday, October 22, 1997           TAG: 9710220038

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  194 lines

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC: A SPECIAL EXHIBIT AT THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC was a homely, crippled dwarf with an absent father, clinging mother and no prospects for marriage. Yet his art - witty, effervescent and revealing of the human condition - suggests a rare joie de vivre.

The aristocratic Frenchman portrayed turn-of-the-century Paris, particularly the lowlife Montmarte section, which came alive after dark with dance halls, cabarets and small clubs called cafes concerts. A well-known character at these nightspots, notably the Moulin Rouge, Lautrec spent most evenings drawing at a ringside table, rendering cancan dancers, singers and comedians in sketches he would later translate into prints and posters.

Sometimes, as he drunkenly stumbled down the block to the next club, he'd leave his sketchbook behind.

In the 1890s, he actually moved into brothels to capture the poignant lives of off-duty prostitutes.

``We've sanitized him an awful lot,'' said William Hennessey, director of The Chrysler Museum of Art, where a major show of Lautrec's drawings, paintings and lithographs goes on view Thursday. The 108-piece collection, mostly lithographic prints and posters, is on loan from the San Diego Museum of Art in California.

``We've made him into a kind of sunny, jolly figure,'' Hennessey said. ``But this is a guy who wrestled with demons.''

He was born into one of southern France's most prestigious clans, the Toulouse dynasty. His eccentric father, Alphonse, was a count. If Henri had outlived his father, he would have been a count, too.

But Lautrec died a shrivelled and sickly alcoholic, at age 36 in 1901.

A century later, his work still looks almost current in its exuberance and psychological penetration.

``What a wonderful sense of motion,'' said Hennessey, indicating a poster depicting the comedian Caudieux dashing onto the stage at the Petit Casino. ``See how he chopped off his legs and hands? It gives him a sense of dynamism, of music, of moving through time.''

Lautrec's idea to lop his figures probably came from his study of Japanese printmaking, Hennessey said. Japanese art was a major influence among the Impressionists and the artists of Lautrec's era, dubbed Post-Impressionists.

Likewise, the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas also made a big impact on him. Like Degas, 30 years his senior, Lautrec favored horses and dancers.

In the Caudieux poster and others, Lautrec created several vantage points in one image. The comedian is seen from below, but the stage is portrayed as though seen from the balcony. A disregard for a consistent viewpoint also is seen in Japanese printmaking.

Lautrec portrayed performers who existed outside of genteel society. He identified with them, Hennessey said. He embodied ``that whole romantic 19th century idea of the artist as tormented outsider who could, in fact, see things a lot more clearly. His physical and psychological pain made him fundamentally unsentimental.''

To convey such an unflinching vision in his art, ``there must be a little rage in there, too.''

Lautrec reveals himself in his art, said Julia Frey, the artist's most significant recent biographer.

Most obviously, the artist's daily life is chronicled in his art. He always painted people he knew, said Frey, who lectures at tonight's members' preview. Her book, ``Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life,'' was published in 1994 by Viking Penguin press.

Lautrec tended to fixate on certain performers, whether singer Jane Avril or the taunting comedian Aristide Bruant.

Besides telling us with whom and where Lautrec was hanging out, Frey said, ``in many cases, you can also see his feelings in the way he portrayed them.''

Often, Lautrec's figures have turned their back on the painter.

Throughout his work, ``the number of people who turn their back on him, on us, is phenomenal. And often, the people who are looking toward us are not looking at us, or they're looking hostile or aggressive,'' Frey said.

The artist generally portrays attractive people, but catches them revealing an unflattering aspect of their inner selves. They may be showing fatigue, envy, vanity, boredom or even hostility, she said.

``I think he's saying, `Everybody's looking at me. And anyone who looks at me can see I am physically flawed.' What he likes is showing in his work that other people are flawed, too.''

He also seemed preoccupied with aging. ``For him, it symbolized how fleeting beauty is.''

The artist's life story is full of legend and anecdote. Deciphering the truth isn't so easy, wrote Frey in a catalog essay for the show. Lautrec appeared to provoke his own legend at times.

His friends recalled one of his eccentric jokes: He would lead a group along dingy back streets to a sad address. When a very old, nearly bald woman opened the door, he would offer her candy or flowers and introduce her as the model for Manet's ``Olympia,'' an 1863 painting of a lovely young woman.

Of course, the model would not have been nearly so decrepit by the mid-1890s, when Lautrec repeatedly pulled this prank - with the presumed message that youth and beauty never last.

He seemed keenly aware that his own life would be cut short, a likely reason he was so prolific and worked on non-archival materials, Frey said. He did not prime his canvases. He printed posters on newsprint.

He reveled in modernity, and such an impermanent approach was a thoroughly modern notion. Yet with Lautrec it seemed personal, too.

``He was living now,'' Frey said. ``He wanted recognition now. He wanted to be widely known and a great artist now. He didn't care if it lived beyond him or not.''

That may partly explain Lautrec's attraction to the commercial lithographic poster, which he revolutionized. He made a fine art of advertising for clubs and performers and for such products as bicycle chains and confetti. It was a public art, successful for his unprecedented ``fist-in-the-face'' pictorial style and technical innovations, such as his spatter method for creating tone and texture.

His was an art for its time that, so far, has lasted a century.

The artist hated hypocrisy - among his many reactions against his family. ``One of the marks of serious good breeding is perfect hypocrisy,'' Frey said.

Growing up awkward, dwarfed and unsightly - she described him in her book as having oversized nostrils, a thick tongue and bulbous lips as well as a lisp, perpetual sniffle and a tendency to drool - ``he probably grew very tired of people being phony nice with him. He learned to read quickly how people really felt about him.''

His ability to size up people, and peg their psychological state, is a hallmark of his art.

Though he disdained his family's world, Lautrec never entirely left it. Once moved into the rough realm of Montmartre, he still maintained frequent contact with his mother, who eventually rented a Paris apartment to be near him.

From then on, he spent afternoons working at his art, followed by a few drinks in a bar, dinner with maman, then a late night carousing among the cabaret denizens.

His father was not around, never had been since his birth. Frey explained it as the reaction of a macho, athletic father repulsed by his offspring's deformity.

But the dwarfism might have been partly expected. The family had a habit of inbreeding - to maintain a noble lineage and preserve the family fortune - and his parents were first cousins. Frey determined that in Lautrec's generation, four of 15 cousins were dwarfed.

At 4-foot-11-inches, Lautrec was medically, not legally, a dwarf. A series of accidents had broken both femur bones, stopping further leg growth by his early teens. One femur was broken when he simply fell out of a chair.

Though mostly away, Alphonse passed along many of his eccentricities to his only surviving child. To flabbergasting extremes, Alphonse loved animals, costumes and womanizing, as did the artist.

Alphonse was a strange one, taken to odd gestures like ``airing out'' his hunting birds by attaching their cages to his carriage and taking a ride.

At Lautrec's deathbed, Alphonse didn't know what to do with himself, except swat the flies nipping at his son. Watching this, Lautrec uttered his last words: ``The old fool!''

``God knows, I wouldn't have wanted his life,'' Frey said, ``an alcoholic, syphilitic guy who dies at 36. But he still was a genius.

``And his art remains among the most significant art of his time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

[by Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec]

Photo

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

Photo

SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART

The 1891 lithograph ``Moulin Rouge - La Goulue'' is part of the

Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition.

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

What: ``Toulouse-Lautrec: The Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection,''

including paintings, drawings and lithographs

Where: The Chrysler Museum of Art, 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk

When: opens Thursday; continues through Dec. 31

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m.

Sunday.

How much: Free with museum admission: $4 adults, $2 students and

seniors, and free to ages 5 and younger. Wednesday is free day.

Call: 664-6200

Members preview: Tonight at 6:30, biographer Julia Frey will give

a slide lecture on the artist, followed by a preview of the show.

For museum members and their guests.

Family programs

``Chrysler to Chrysler: La journee en famille.'' On Sunday from 1

to 4 p.m., the museum will re-create Lautrec's Paris with music,

food, puppets, cancan dancers and more. At 1:15 p.m., art historian

George Tussing will lecture. A poster parade with cancan dancers at

3:15 p.m., after which a 1998 Chrysler Sebring Jxi convertible will

be raffled. Admission is free for this special day.

``A Celebration of Movement.'' At 2 p.m. Nov. 16, young people

can create their own dynamic compositions inspired by Lautrec's art.

Free with museum admission.

Adult programs

``Moulin Rouge.'' A showing of the 1952 John Huston film,

followed by discussion led by film critic Tim Cooper. Fee: $5, $3

members.

``Toulouse-Lautrec and the Demimonde.'' At 8 p.m. Dec. 9, art

historian Linda McGreevy will talk on Montmartre in Lautrec's time.

Free. Call 664-6268 for reservations.

``Stroking the Stone: The Lithography of Toulouse-Lautrec.'' A

two-part study of Lautrec's lithography. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Nov. 22, tour the show and see a slide talk that places his

printmaking in context. From 2 to 4 p.m. Nov. 23, see lithography

demonstrated by printmaker Ken Daley. Fee: $15, $10 members. Call

664-6268. KEYWORDS: PROFILE

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