Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

From ibiblio.  Toulouse-Lautrec

(For more art see also: Andrew Wyeth and More Wyeth)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in Albi, France. He was an aristocrat, the heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse and last in line of a family that dated back a thousand years. Henri’s father was handsome, and eccentric. His mother was devoted to her only child. Henri was weak and sick. By age 10 he had begun to draw and paint.

At 12 young Henri broke his left leg and at 14 his right leg. The bones failed to heal properly, and his legs stopped growing. He reached young adulthood with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs. He was only 1.5 meters tall.

Deprived of the life that a normal body would have permitted, Henri lived wholly for art. He stayed in the Montmartre section of Paris, the center of the cabaret entertainment and bohemian life that he loved to paint. Circuses, dance halls and nightclubs, racetracks–all were set down on canvas or made into lithographs.  Henri was very much a part of all this activity. He would sit at a crowded nightclub table, laughing and drinking, and at the same time he would make swift sketches. The next morning in his studio he would expand the sketches into bright-colored paintings.

In order to become a part of the Montmartre life–as well as to protect himself against the crowd’s ridicule of his appearance–Henri began to drink heavily. In the 1890s the drinking started to affect his health. He was confined to a sanatorium and to his mother’s care at home, but he could not stay away from alcohol. Henri died on Sept. 9, 1901, at the family chateau. Since then his paintings and posters–particularly the Moulin Rouge group–have been in great demand and bring high prices at auctions and art sales.

More Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth

July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009

Requiem in Pace

American artist

See also: Andrew Wyeth

enjoy

Braids (the "Helga" pictures)

Daydream

The Road to Friendship

Farm Road (the "Helga" pictures)

Helga (the "Helga" pictures)

Turkey Pond

Otherworld

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth is dead.  He was 91 at the time of death.  Wyeth was a prominent American Artist.  A lot of the Artsy-Fartsy said some really stupid and pretentious things about him during his life and no doubt will say a lot of stuff about him for a little while after they find he’s kicked the bucket.

I like to think I can appreciate good art without getting gas over it.  I like some styles more than others.  One person who was quoted in the article I read on Wyeth said,

. . . the weathered barns and bare-limbed trees in his starkly simple landscapes are more real than reality.

Read that quote again for me, please.

Did some pontificating, gas bag really say that?  ” . . . more real than reality.”  Someone please explain to me how that is possible.  Real is real.  Something can be LESS than real, but how the fuck can something be MORE real than reality?  Only an art ass could come up with nonsense like that.

Wyeth himself said,

Oftentimes people will like a picture I paint because it’s maybe the sun hitting on the side of a window and they can enjoy it purely for itself.  It reminds them of some afternoon. But for me, behind that picture could be a night of moonlight when I’ve been in some house in Maine, a night of some terrible tension, or I had this strange mood.  Maybe it was Halloween.  It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side.

And that’s how I look at it.  I don’t know why the artist creates a particular piece of art.  I don’t compare him to others in or out of his/her particular genre.  If I can enjoy a piece for the piece itself, if I can relate to it in some emotional way–be it great or small, intense or shallow, then I can enjoy it.  The more I enjoy it, the better the art is to me.

The key words in that last sentence are, “to me.”  Art is purely subjective–as it should be.

I enjoyed the art of Andrew Wyeth.

Goodbye Andy.  Rest in peace.

And now for your viewing enjoyment, here is “Christina’s World.”