Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, this catalogue celebrates the groundbreaking avant-garde artists whose works embody the spirit and decadence of fin de siecle and Belle Epoque Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne is a celebration of the work of a generation of avant-garde artists at the turn of the nineteenth century in Paris who fought for artistic liberation against the strict codes of the Academy. Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who preceded them, the Nabis, Incoherents, Symbolists, and Naturalists sought to reinterpret a rapidly changing society that was no longer easily definable. Artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, and Felix Vallotton, among others, render with naturalism and vivacity modern Parisian life and its cafe-concerts, cabarets, and brothels; street scenes and landscapes; and intimate domestic interiors. This rich presentation of paintings, watercolors, drawings, rare zinc shadow-puppet silhouettes, Chat Noir cabaret programs, and key ephemera for Parisian theaters, circuses, cabarets, and cafe-concerts, are accompanied by essays by internationally known scholars, catalogue entries, artist biographies, a timeline of historical events and iconic works, a map of Paris, and a select bibliography.
