Artist vs. voyeur: Toulous-Lautrec's tour of Paris

COURTESY MUSEUM OF MODERN ART Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Divan Japonais,' 1892

Context is an important consideration when looking at art. At The Pleasures of Paris: Prints by Toulouse-Lautrec, which opened this week at the Yale University Art Gallery, the lithographs, especially those of the Elles series, are fresh and audacious. I 'd remembered Toulouse-Lau-trec's pictures more for striking compositions and deft line quality than content. At this show, however, I found myself getting caught up in his subject matter.

It's easy to get caught up. Curator Richard S. Field focuses largely on the importance of the female dancers and singers to Toulouse-Lautrec, immediately presenting photographs of these individuals and the places they frequent. The wall descriptions are nicely rhetorical, opting to suggest rather than dictate; the walls themselves are painted in intimate burgundy. With the addition of the silent video projection evoking the atmosphere of the Moulin Rouge--the famous Parisian club in which Toulouse-Lautrec was often to be found--one becomes comfortably attuned to the importance of reading his works in context.

From a curatorial stance, trying to recreate the context of an artist's work is tough. Anyone who saw the Keith Haring retrospective at the Whitney Museum last year witnessed the problems that overproduction can cause; the experience of the work can be hurt by ambitious curators. I enjoyed how the velvet curtain, pulled beside the title of The Pleasures of Paris, introduced the theme of voyeurism that would become so central to the exhibit.

One realizes here a personal purpose for art: to allow the artist to live a certain way, with certain pleasures--in particular, those of the voyeur. The late 19th century saw the debut of leisure as a mass phenomenon, not merely a luxury to be savored by the upper classes alone. The bourgeoisie took to the parks, races, and café-concerts.

Though born of wealth, Toulouse-Lautrec could not find acceptance even among the entertainers. A man of physical handicaps and social difficulties, he became obsessed with the denigrated women of low-class Parisian haunts. Though often ignored and forgotten by these women, the artist used his vocation in the service of and as an excuse for his fetishes. And The Pleasures of Paris offers us access into the world he cultivated.

The Elles portfolio, which includes a number of the artist's best known and most controversial works, occupies much of the second room of the exhibition. Though Toulouse-Lau-trec's print works often appeared in a commercial context as advertisements for shows or cafés, this series is strikingly more intimate, focusing on a number of women, possibly drawn from the interiors of a brothel.

The Elles portraits lack the indulgence of the café-concert posters. These women have an odd confidence, and Toulouse-Lautrec portrays them with a degree of respect that must have raised the socio-artistic stakes of the time: not only is he painting prostitutes, he is painting them thoughtfully.

Toulouse-Lautrec constantly played with the tension between appearance and truth, between social persona and private life. This is most evident in his use of decorative, flat planes and almost floating lines as a means to convey more personal preoccupations. Once you've delved into his symbolism, perhaps, on the way out, it is easier to respond to his drawing and Japanese-influenced compositions. His calligraphic line becomes particularly interesting against the more formulated text in many of his posters.

In addition, Field has included preparatory drawings for a number of the prints that provide further insight into Toulouse-Lautrec's meticulous methods.

A few weeks back, Michael Kimmelman suggested in The New York Times that in the current climate, when everything is meant to shock the viewer, only something subtle can carry a charge. He was speaking of the strength of Pierre Bonnard's strange color and pictoral choices, but I cannot help but think of Toulouse-Lautrec's use of bare ankles and phallic walking canes.

In the context of fin-de-siècle Paris, such "unmistakable emblems of sexual lubricity" were clearly shocking. These lithographs may seem tame by contemporary standards. In this well-focused exhibition, however, where the importance of contextual readings is strongly emphasized, it is easy to step back into the atmosphere where these pieces of such subtle composition are able to retain their shock value.

In this atmosphere, a naked female leg provides for not only the entertainment of the city's elite, but also the obsession of an outcast.

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