By Tim Gihring //
The Moulin Rouge opened in Paris on October 6, 1889—the same year as the Eiffel Tower and the same day that Thomas Edison debuted the first motion picture (Monkeyshines). Things were changing, and quickly, in fin-de-siecle Paris, a great lurch forward that was as unsettling as it was exciting. The Moulin Rouge would be at the center of it all.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting “At the Moulin Rouge,” 1892-1895. Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, Art Institute of Chicago
This month, as the iconic cabaret marks its 135th anniversary, Mia has opened “At The Moulin Rouge,” an exhibition built around Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting of the same name. On loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, the work is complemented by Toulouse-Lautrec posters and other pieces of the period, drawn from Mia’s collection. Together, they form a kind of “portal,” as curator Galina Olmsted describes it, to a time and place that remains “at the center of our cultural imagination about Paris” and still resonates with romance and freedom.
Here, Olmsted explains the era’s staying power and how Toulouse-Lautrec helped make the magic happen.
What inspired you to create this show?
Many of our visitors from the Twin Cities area know the strength of our collection, but this is an opportunity to remind them that Mia is also a destination to see extraordinary works of art from other places. To have this painting on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago is really remarkable. And it’s made all the better by being able to contextualize the painting with works from Mia’s collection, most of which are works on paper—objects too light-sensitive to be on permanent view. Also, while Toulouse-Lautrec is the primary artist in the exhibition, he’s not the only one, so I hope visitors will find some new artists to explore in the collection.
At the entrance to the exhibition is a short film showing the exterior of the Moulin Rouge in the 1900s—this really is the first era to be captured in movies, which adds to the liveliness.
I love that we were able to include this film. You feel like you’re on the street when you’re watching it, and then you walk in and see the painting. The lights come down, there’s a spotlight on the painting. I hope people feel like they’re stepping into the picture and into that world.
It’s interesting that while we believe the film is from around 1905, it doesn’t have a precise date, and it can be hard to tell from looking at it. There were horse-drawn trams at the time, then electric trams for a bit, cars were popping up—it’s this exciting moment of a lot of change.
How does the Moulin Rouge end up in the middle of this moment?
It represents a new kind of entertainment for the masses, where people can go and be together yet also be anonymous while enjoying an evening out in Paris’s most bohemian neighborhood.
It also coincides with the onset of a new kind of celebrity in France. Nightlife was previously centered around a particular venue—the destination drove your decision of where to go. But around the time that Toulouse-Lautrec falls in with the bohemian crowd in Montmartre, you start to see the rise of celebrities whom you would follow to different venues. Performers like Aristide Bruant would have residencies in different clubs throughout the city, so just like you would go see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, you would go see Bruant at the Eldorado.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s well-known poster advertising a performance by Aristide Bruant. Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art
This is what Toulouse-Lautrec captures so well, right? Certainly, the clubs take notice.
Yes, he’s commissioned to make paintings that decorate the lobby of the Moulin Rouge. And in the exhibition, you’ll see three posters of Bruant, who is recognizable because Toulouse-Lautrec distills his persona into a few salient visual details: the red scarf, the hat, the walking stick, the cape, the scowl. From a block away, all you would need to see on these posters is the name of the club and that iconic image of the performer to know where you want to go that Saturday.
In the exhibition, there’s also a pastel image of a performer named Yvette Guilbert. You see her lit from below and you see her long black gloves, which is what she became known for. The picture is not by Toulouse-Lautrec, but he does publish a book of portraits of her and the image on the cover is just an image of those gloves. Artists and performers are working together to develop these identities that help propel their celebrity.
Toulouse-Lautrec is not a bohemian by birth—he comes from an aristocratic family. But he has a disability that stops his legs from growing, and there’s a sense that he finds his place among the performers and others at the fringes of society?
It’s true that the Moulin Rouge becomes a refuge for outsiders, but also I think he’s a pleasure-seeker who enjoys the nightlife and he finds his place in that way. He enjoys that scene and it allows him to distinguish himself artistically. So when you see him putting himself in his pictures, he’s not just doing this out of vanity—this is his friend group, the people he would see on any given night.
Toulouse-Lautrec ends up dying in 1901 at 36. What happens?
He has a fairly complicated and sad end to his life, as the effects of his disability are accelerated by the effects of pleasure-seeking. He’s institutionalized for a period, which gets sensationalized. His friend and agent Maurice Guibert actually tries to sanitize his death after the fact, thinking it will make his art more palatable. There’s a story in the exhibition about Guibert cutting At the Moulin Rouge down to remove the most provocative figure in the painting, though I think it’s telling that not many years later the pieces are reunited and the painting enters the Art Institute of Chicago in 1928.
There is a flip side to all this fun and frivolity.
The life of glamour burns out fast. Being a dancer at the Moulin Rouge is not something you can do forever. You could be a celebrity performer in this era and not necessarily build the kind of wealth that could sustain you into retirement. A lot of these stories are tragic.
How does this era end? Certainly, by the early 1900s there’s pushback with laws invoking morality, clamping down on same-sex relationships, and the like.
Well, the Moulin Rouge itself doesn’t end—it burns down in 1915 but is rebuilt on the same spot and is still going today. But I think this is an ever-perpetuating cycle, between pushing boundaries and pushing back, and the backlash against the excesses of fin-de-siècle Paris is why its imagery endures in our cultural memory. If that moment had become permanent, it wouldn’t be so evocative for us now.