Awareness #8 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec5/28/2018 This post has been a long time coming. Toulouse-Lautrec is, in my eyes, one of the best artists to ever exist. You could call him my favorite artist. Toulouse-Laturec lived from 1864 - 1901 and worked as a painter, printmaker, draftsman, and illustrator of the vibrant yet sad theatrical life in Paris. He documented the rise of nightlife culture in the City of Lights in a personal manner, showing the lives of performers and prostitutes from a humanistic perspective. One of my favorite works by Lautrec is "The Englishman at the Moulin Rouge." There are many versions of this work but my absolute favorites are the prints. I love the vibrant colors that Lautrec used and the way he depicted the Englishman as a blocked out gray form. The primary color scheme is one of my favorites and Toulouse employs it excellently in the background of this piece. Toulouse relies heavily on contour lines which I am definitely a fan of and the way he was able to break down the form of the people in the print with just a few strokes is absolutely phenomenal in my opinion. My personal favorite is the eyes of the first woman to the left of the Englishman with the small eyes. Her expression is so expressive, and, when I saw it in person, I thought it was very amusing. The work depicts an Englishman seemingly coming on to a couple Moulin Rouge girls. He has an almost lecherous expression and the women seem slightly abhorred and uncomfortable. Probably the only things I dislike about this peace is the colors used on the dress of the woman to the far left. The spotty green and black accents, although potentially accurate to real life, just do not vibe with the overall colors of this peace. I understand that making her dress a vibrant color would have overpowered the other colors, but I feel that the semi-vomit color green was not the best choice. Similarly, I dislike the way Toulouse tried to capture the fluffy headband that the orange-haired lady was wearing. It seems very out of place in the way it is placed on her head and how he tried to make it seem fluffy and amorphous. I hope to one day achieve Toulouse's mastery in contour lines and color usage. The way he is able to capture forms so quickly and easily is something that I greatly admire. I want to use more of the primary color scheme in my work as I absolutely adore the look of it. Furthermore, coloring a person all one color is such a bold move and simultaneously a move that I want to master. It simplified the Englishman's role in the print, and I will definitely keep this method in mind in my future works. To conclude, I want to experiment more with printmaking as many of my favorite artists were printmakers and mass producing an artwork and being able to change the colors as one pleases greatly pleases me.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.author.jacqueline. she/her. senior. virginia, usa. art v. archives.
March 2020
categories.
All
|