Upon printing Moulin Rouge - La Goulue in 1891, Toulouse-Lautrec could not have known that he would eventually feel compelled to justify his wild art and wilder lifestyle to an unimpressed family. Then, he spent significant amounts of time under the famous nightclub’s red windmill, sketching his favorite dancers and visiting his favorite prostitutes, savoring a world he could pay, sleep with, and then paint in shades of red. But red represents many different things: anger, frustration, poison, and illness, among others. Initially, Toulouse-Lautrec’s affinity for Montmartre enabled him to disregard such negative connotations, but his exuberant associations with the color darkened as his entanglement with his family dampened his earlier enthusiasm for the artists’ neighborhood. Red still meant sex, but it was tinged with anger toward his friends for having corrupted him, with frustration that his Montmartre companions could indulge their sexual whims with impunity, with the poison that alcoholism and syphilis slowly inflicted on his mind (Murray 16), and with the dangerously widening rift between him and his family. Red’s other, more powerful cultural associations reemerged for Toulouse-Lautrec, subtly revealing the dissatisfaction he felt in Montmartre. But in 1891, red still meant something simple and joyous. The young artist still adored his home in la ceinture rouge, adored the scarlet haven that glimmered redly behind the doors of its brothels and nightclubs. Toulouse-Lautrec’s love for that twenty-something life is immortalized in Moulin Rouge - La Goulue; on several six-foot sheets of lithographic paper, La Goulue will eternally kick, the crowds will eternally gasp, and the red windmill of the Moulin Rouge will eternally turn above the hill of Montmartre.
IMAGE
Photograph of Toulouse-Lautrec. 1892. Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi.