Art: Gaslight and Fallen Souls

In Chicago, a fresh view of Toulouse-Lautrec's art

A dwarfish cripple of exalted birth, absinthe-sodden and dead at 37, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was perhaps the most spectacular peintre maudit of the late 19th century: a doomed dog of modernism, fit for Hollywood. No reputation can quite survive a movie like Moulin Rouge, and ever since its release in 1953 the popular image of Toulouse-Lautrec has been shaped by the sight of Jose Ferrer, legs bound, peering with lugubriously feigned interest up at the boiler-plated buttocks of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Thus Toulouse-Lautrec became one of the few artists most everyone has heard of, a guarantee perhaps that the retrospective of 109 of his paintings, along with a group of his drawings and prints, which opened last week at the Art Institute of Chicago, will be so crammed that the work may be invisible.

If so, a pity: this is an admirable show, finely curated with an exemplary catalogue by Art Historian Charles Stuckey and his assistant Naomi Maurer. It puts one's attention where it should go—to the work, not the myth.