Montmartre Revisited National Gallery Puts Toulouse-Lautrec Exhibit in Context for Viewer by Carolyn Cosmos ìItís very cool that these celebrity portraits are now high art,î said Corcoran College of Art and Design student Jaime Jones, looking around the National Gallery of Art exhibit ìToulouse-Lautrec and Montmartreî with two of his fellow students, Alex Diaz, 19, and Marissa Valko, 17. The trio was taking in the famous French posters and drawings of cabaret stars created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)ódepictions of somewhat disreputable and anti-establishment writers, singers, dancers and courtesans such as Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril and Yvette Guilbert. The stars were part of a Bohemian enclave of artists and intellectuals among whom the aristocratic Toulouse-Lautrec took up residence, created his oeuvre, and ultimately died of drink and syphilis at the tender age of 36. ìI think it will be a long time before you see a portrait of a Tom Cruise in a multimillion-dollar gallery like this, but these were the movie stars of their era,î 19-year-old Jones commented. ìItís bizarre but also reassuring because this is very much the kind of workódesign, advertisingóthat I like. But itís not seen as wort hy, as high art.î Jones, Diaz and Valko all found inspiration for their own creativity and career interests in the exhibit of late 19th-century Montmartre art. Jones has done ìcolor work for comic books and science fiction book covers,î working in fantasy and cyber-punk art, the latter a genre set in the near future. ìItís looked down on,î he said of his and his companionsí work. Diaz mixes popular music, film and fine art, performs as a singer, and is ìdoing graphic design for local bands.î Valko is involved in fine art and writing as well as ìillustration and tattoo art.î She also creates cartoons and sketches caricatures. Pointing to a charcoal sketch of Toulouse-Lautrec in the exhibit, her companions joked, ìMarissa, maybe one of your caricatures will be hanging here one day.î The parallels fascinated the students. Pointing to the posters by Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries and to nearby Japanese-influenced imagery, Diaz said he could relate his own design work to their ìelementary outlines, the deep colors and contrast.î Added Jones: ìThese guys in Montmartre were influenced by Japanese block printingóand Japanese block printing is the grandfather of the current comic book style.î This exhibit invites such viewer involvement, plunging Toulouse-Lautrecís familiar pieces into their artistic and social milieu and providing 10 thematically arranged rooms that offer work by his predecessors and colleagues. On view, for example, is the work of obscure poster developer Jules ChÈret as well as the work of luminaries such as Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso. The rooms in the galleryís East Building take viewers right into Montmartre via photographs taken at the time, silhouettes from the shadow plays that influenced the artists, film footage of a dancer depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec, and Toulouse-Lautrecís relatively private paintings of sex workers in the Montmartre brothels, otherwise known as ìmaisons closes.î The Corcoran students termed the maisons closes paintings ìgruesome,î but admired their ìgrit and honesty,î as well as their ability to depict the sex workers as ìindividuals, as human beings.î Further putting the Toulouse-Lautrec art in context, the National Gallery offered three related concerts in the West Buildingís Garden Court on Sunday nights. Part of a gallery tradition of linking the visual arts to music, a notable April cabaret concert featured soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, pianist and arranger Betty Bullock, and songs written and performed by people whom Toulouse-Lautrec knew personally or whose work he depicted. Lamoreauxís opening piece was a saucy tribute to a famous Montmartre nightclub that was originally written and performed by Aristide Bruant, who is featured in some of Toulouse-Lautrecís most celebrated posters. To realize her contemporary incarnation of the cabaret scenes and dance halls of the time, soprano Lamoreaux, who is artistic director of the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble, flew to Paris with Bullock last fall to collect songs from the periodómany of them as risquÈ and anti-establishment as the Montmartre visual outpourings on display in the East Building. They went to five music stores and searched through dusty bins, uncovering a wealth of period music, including a collection of songs by Bruant, Lamoreaux explained. She designed her own gowns for the concert, adorning them with feathers she purchased in Montmartre to suggest the glamour and liveliness of the cabaret scene. ìMany of the songs are fairly funny,î she said. They feature, for example, ìMadame Arthur,î a Montmartre dancer who could touch her nose with her foot, had ìcrowds of lovers,î and could get her rent paid by allowing the landlord to admire ìher ëlittle something.íî Explained Christian Thorin, a French-American businessman who helped to translate the songs for Lamoreaux, the language used in the pieces was a street slang of the time, the previously unaccepted argot of ìthe thief, the murderer, the lowlifeîóin other words the language of the Paris underworld. The songs sung by Lamoreaux were full of racy references, but according to Thorin, Bruant and others were using the lyrics in part to make political points and underscore the injustices of the time and the plight of the poor, echoing themes in some of Toulouse-Lautrecís paintings. ìI really like the effort put forth by Ms. Lamoreaux to evoke the spirit of the cabaret and put it in context,î said Stephen Ackert, head of the National Gallery of Artís Music Department, who develops ongoing concert series to complement gallery exhibits. This concert had its genesis three years ago, he explained, when it was conceived as a ìcabaret samplerî that would take its inspiration from the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, which was then in the planning stages. Ackert is a performing artist as well as an administrator, and, similar to the Corcoran students, he found unexpected insights courtesy of the ìToulouse-Lautrec and Montmartreî exhibit. A noted concert pianist and advocate of using period instruments to educate the public, Ackert said he initially regarded many of the cabaret songs as ìrather frivolous, just entertainment.î However, he came to realize the songs have an underlying malaise to them. ìThereís a pathetic element, despair, disgust,î along with commentaries about sexual politics and double standards in both the music as well as in the visual counterparts created by Toulouse-Lautrec. ìSo,î he concluded, ìI have a new respect for them.î ìToulouse-Lautrec and Montmartreî runs through June 12 at the National Gallery of Art, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue, NW. For more information, please call (202) 737-4215 or visit www.nga.gov. Carolyn Cosmos is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.