By Taylor Bye //
When I was 14, I was invited to a sleepover birthday party. The birthday girl decided we should watch Moulin Rouge!, the Baz Luhrman movie musical from 2001, starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. Settled on the floor in our pajamas, we entered a world of campy decadence—Paris in 1899—set to pop hits from the late 1980s and ’90s.
Still from Moulin Rouge! (2001). Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.
I was captivated. The plot has its twists and turns: a young poet (McGregor) falls in with a crowd of bohemian artists—including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—who find both a star (Kidman) and a venue for their play at the Moulin Rouge. But the message is simple enough: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn,” sings Toulouse-Lautrec, “is just to love and be loved in return.”
Fast forward a decade and change, and I now work at Mia, where the real Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1895 painting At the Moulin Rouge is on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago through March 9. Surrounding the painting are pieces from our own collection depicting this moment in time, when everything seemed to be changing and anything seemed possible.
Toulouse-Lautrec reflected this period in both his life and work, having moved to Paris at eighteen from comfortable surroundings and settled in Montmartre, the artistic enclave that is home to the Moulin Rouge. Frequently commissioned by the club to create advertising posters and paintings, he often painted sitting down, due to a disability—a perspective that invites viewers to join him in observing the nightlife and changing landscape of Paris.
The moment didn’t last long. Toulouse-Lautrec died at 36, in 1901, and the Moulin Rouge burned down in 1915. But nostalgia for this era of freedom and romance blossomed almost as soon as it was over. The first major movie about the Moulin Rouge came out in 1934, followed by others in 1941 and 1945 and 1952 and 1957 and, of course, 2001.
In 2018, another stage welcomed the influence of the Moulin Rouge: Broadway. I had the pleasure of seeing the show, which was adapted from the Luhrman film, when it came to Minneapolis in 2022. The music was updated, trading hits from Madonna for ones by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. And the set was among the most incredible I had ever seen, including a diamond-studded Paris sky for the showstopper Elephant Love Medley.
Publicity image of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Photo by Matthew Murphy.
Of course, the club itself is still in operation, having rebuilt ten years after the fire and hosted the likes of Edith Piaf, Ginger Rogers, Liza Minelli, Frank Sinatra, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. More recently, it’s become a popular tourist destination, with live dance performances on most evenings. Moulin Rouge dancers were even part of the opening ceremonies for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
It’s hard now to separate nostalgia for the club’s heyday from nostalgia for its various depictions. But running through all of it are the bohemian ideals of truth, beauty, freedom, love. The truth of being a dancehall that welcomed all sorts through its doors. The beauty of the art created inside its walls. The freedom of indulgence it invited. The love for vibrant and passionate storytelling for many decades to come.
Taylor Bye is the project coordinator for Design and Editorial at Mia.
“At the Moulin Rouge” is on view at Mia in the Bell Family Decorative Arts Court through March 9.