Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life

I bought this biography because it was assigned in an art history course. But to my surprise, it's a great read. I like it that it's totally credible. I can see why it won a literary prize. It gives us a new take on the "alcoholic, dwarfed, aristocratic genius" -- I mean this artist is so well-known that his work is on ashtrays and dish towels. The book is really beautifully written and meticulously documented. Frey is focused on getting us to take a real look at Toulouse-Lautrec's life, the world he lived in, and his art. It reads like a novel, but it is based on hundreds of previously unpublished family letters. One of its strengths is that it straightens out the half-truths, invented "facts" and self-serving lies written by other biographers and art historians. Although the text isn't cluttered up with footnotes or little superscript numbers, at the end you find notes (by chapter and page) some of which are hilarious, an index that includes useful things like identities and dates for all the people mentioned in the book, and a complete bibliography. It's extremely useful if you're trying to any kind of serious research. Although it's over 300 p. long, it has three "quick start" features that I found very enjoyable. The book is written in short anecdotal sections, so it's easy to read just a few pages at a time. She tells you a story, then there's a break, then she tells you another one. I also liked it that at the top of each page, the year is printed, so you know where you are when you pick it up again. Actually, once I got into it, I read the whole thing at once, over a few days. And finally, the current edition has a great, short introduction telling how to "read" autobiographical references in Toulouse-Lautrec's art. It would be worth photocopying and taking to a museum or an exhibition.

Briefly, what Julia Frey manages to do is to bring the soul and genius of Henry Toulous-Lautrec to life. Compounding fact on fact, she slowly reveals the life and times of a complicated son, man, artist and genius, who lived in a major transitional time period as social classes were dissolving and artistic trends and beliefs were being wrenched from their moorings. This 'little man'-who evokes our pathos as well as love-broke down more walls than any army could have, and he did it with style, guts and humor. It's an intense journey which could easily bog down in the details, yet I came away feeling like I knew his soul, could feel his deepest despair and witness his drive, ambition and frustation. What a marvel! His art is illuminated by Frey in a fresh way as she helps explain how he almost single-handedly invented posters-as-art, but also why he was a brilliant painter who created a style that was bold and unique. What Frey manages to do is to humanize Toulous-Lautrec so that he's not a cartoon character, not the oddity that he's often reduced to. This is a brave man, an honorable man, a complictaed man who came from a complicated family. Bravo for them for sharing these letters, and for Julia Frey for putting the puzzle together afresh with such respectful illumination. It will break your heart but it will lift you higher. And you will feel like you lived in Paris in the late 1800s with the most phenomenal docent...one of the greatest artists of all time, Henry Toulouse-Lautrec!

What I loved about this book was how it seemed to capture the spirit of the Montmartre during the "gay nineties". For me it was the next best thing to actually having been there.

Julia Frey's book is so startlingly graphic of Lautrec and his Montmartre world that one wonders if some of the text uses poetic licence. Frey, however, backs up most of her statements with an exhausting archive of documents. While she modestly presents her work as a Colorado University paper, she has done a brilliant job. I, and a number of my friends, have used her book to enrich our travels to Europe and especially Paris. Julia, you should consider writing a book on the Montmartre, something which has not been authoritatively done as yet, in my and many people's opinion.