Choice 评论

This well-illustrated exhibition catalog gives a thorough, if brief, overview of the life and work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Ives, curator of prints and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, utilizes recent scholarship (mainly the 1994 landmark study by Julia Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life) to reassess the strength of the Met's collection. In the introductory essay, good quality color illustrations are supplemented by many seldom seen photographs of Toulouse-Lautrec, members of his family, and turn-of-the century performers featured frequently in his posters: Jane Avril, La Goulue, Loie Fuller, Aristide Bruant, and Yvette Guilbert. General readers may find the explanations accompanying the works chosen from the exhibition less enlightening. The text seems flat despite juxtapositions of Toulouse-Lautrec's works in a variety of media, which allow examination of artistic changes as an expressive drawing became a poster advertisement (which of necessity demanded a bright abstract design). The influence of Japanese prints, as well as the effect of contact with Edgar Degas and Vincent van Gogh, is elucidated. Recommended to general and undergraduate readers searching for general knowledge and as a valuable source of visual imagery. E. K. Menon Mankato State University