Word: lautrecs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nothing was safe from it, for art and craftsmanship had been declared equal. Architects designed chinaware and brooches; some painters even gave up their canvases ("Down with these useless objects") to potter around with posters and fancy screens. When Toulouse-Lautrec dined at the home of the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde, he found that the food had been chosen for its color. It was characteristic of the age that Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray had one favorite novel bound in nine different ways to suit his changing moods...
Lyrical Lassitude. The Frankfurt production is properly corrosive. Designer Teo Otto uses a garish circus scene throughout the opera, changes scenes merely by changing the props. In the Paris sequence, Otto projects Lulu's progress on a huge screen, in drawings recalling Toulouse-Lautrec; the last one shows Lulu standing naked with black handprints all over her body. Conductor Georg Solti leads his cast and huge orchestra with deft skill, and at each performance Soprano Helga Pilarczyk scores triumphs in the fiendishly difficult title role...
Elsewhere in Gallery XVII is a wall of three Soutines, a Modigliani and an unusual Toulouse-Lautrec. Of the Soutines, the Gorge du Loup is least noteworthy: I find most Soutine landscapes pretty dreary matters and this essay in murky tones and crude distortions is no exception to the rule. Neither, more or less, is his rather unflattering-to-one Self Portrait. There is more of an attempt to show structural and coloristic harmony, but the colors tend to get rather high in range and the structure collapses in places. The last Soutine is an excellent Portrait of a Lady...
...Toulouse-Lautrec, finally, is amazing. Its title, Messaline, suggests its romantic aspect, and a far cry indeed from the realism of the Moulin Rouge is its rather Redonesque treatment of lighting, color and brush-work. Its monumental figures (note the left foreground personage or Messaline herself) and themes are straight out of the Golden Age, giving Lautrec a new dignity as a creator of significant content which I, for one, would never have thought possible...
...focal point, are used to great effect. A magnificent Renoir Bagneuse is next, with blended brushwork, brilliant light and shimmering color creating a rich canvas. Other notable works in this gallery are a first rate Cezanne still-life, an excellent Degas (ballet dancers), a good Gauguin, a fine Lautrec and two good Monets--one of these latter being a rendering of the familiar Gare St. Lazare...