Toulouse-Lautrec: zoom in

 

Zoom in, zoom out. Of course nothing like this could be accomplished in the era in which this was painted. But perhaps with our painterly eye (borrowed, of course, because we really don't have one), we can see it, the way we're sucked in, drawn in by the vacuum of her eyes (as Dylan would put it), so that we perceive what is truly at the heart of this painting.

The first thing I noticed were those fierce, angry eyes, dark-ringed, with arched, almost Satanic eyebrows and a curving mouth that seems almost an inversion of the brows. This was a tough, harsh lady of the night (and it might even be La Goulue, the Glutton, though I haven't researched it enough to know for sure). 

Then as you zoom in, you see more. In the head-and-shoulders shot, she suddenly looks different, more elegant, even graceful. The white skin contrasted with the black ruff is startling. The tendrils of her hair, the delicate feathers surrounding her neck, somehow bring out another quality altogether. She is not so armor-plated now, and the fierce, angry eyes seem just a bit sadder. She is tired, perhaps hung over, but needs to get it together for one more night of business.

Then when her face fills the frame, we see the vulnerability. She is weary under the hard mask, that mask which Toulouse has stripped away, ruthlessly, yet somehow compassionately. Softened, she looks almost embarrassed, as if she really would rather be somewhere else - or just maybe, someone else. You can also see a younger version of herself, a softer face, a little girl who went the wrong  way and now is lost.

And then in the final shot, you can see the despair, the grief, the trapped feeling. Though the upward pencil-strokes of her brows and lower lids are more masklike than before, the ruse has become transparent through Lautrec's magic x-ray. She is jaded, exhausted, but also - afraid? Yes, it's there somehow, impossible, a multilayered effect which only a genius could accomplish. Her right eye stares at us, a glazed bullseye, but the left eye  looks as if she is ready to cry. The hard line of her brow is parallel to the drawn-on half-circle which almost looks like a black eye.

We were never meant to see it like this, but if you flip it over, the eyes look terrified, like someone who is about to scream in horror. It's ghoulish, but brilliant, like a clown burning in hell. Is this somehow there even though it's not there, unseeable except through an artificial trick, a zooming in which just reveals more and more with every shot?

 Quelle horreure!

AFTERNOTE. This isn't La Goulue, not specifically anyway, though he may have had her pose for it. It's called Woman in Black Boa, and in the first shot her long, thick feather boa gives her a shaggy, animalistic look, as if she has fur. The pointed, straight-down black strokes give the whole painting a downward pull, and look kind of like furious rain on a dark night. There is a curious circular stroke around her right arm, as if she has just brought her hand sharply down, or perhaps whirled around to face us, and not very happily: "What do you want?"  Lautrec captured that element of surprise like nobody else. 

Lautrec, Lautrec - I know you too well

  

One of my favorite images of Lautrec. Labelled as a "trick photo", I actually think he was magical enough to split himself in two and portray himself. the Two Henris. both spectator and subject. 

I love the intent way he studies himself, pencil poised, and the slightly aw-shucks fake modesty of his subject. probably imitating every falsely coy nude model he ever paid to pose. As usual, his face is full of elegance and sly wit, but  still, essentially, unreadable.

What's coming across in the Julia Frey bio is his humor, which has been downplayed in favor of the tortured artist in just about every book, movie or bio I've ever seen. Of course he suffered - Frey does say his close friends felt they were helplessly watching as he drank himself to death. unable to do anything to stop him. 

He was in constant physical pain from the bone disease that caused his legs to crumble, and the host of other internal ailments brought on by generations of inbreeding (the noble Toulouse-Lautrec family tree twisted inward rather than branching out, kind of like the Hapsburgs), and the only way he ever found to cope with the pain was to drink. And that's not even to mention the psychic pain of knowing that he was a constant disappointment to his snobbish family, who didn't have to hustle artwork (and such artwork!) to make a living. 

So he WAS two Lautrecs, at least - the wealthy aristocrat, who never needed to work and who only visited those dives as a form of slightly contemptuous recreation, and the almost skinless artist melding into those heartbreaking brothel scenes, becoming one with the cabaret acts (the little man in the corner scribbling on a napkin, which is actualy what he did, not just something in the movie), stripping off the masks, holding up what seems like an actual camera lens to capture the swish of skirts and the bloodthirsty screams of the dancers as they fell violently into a row of splits.

I'm not trying to make this "good", in fact I can barely write it at all, and though I have posted the last few entries on Facebook, I  really don't know why. No one reads this blog any more and I know it, so why do I even do it? And I am even more certain that nobody bothers with my Facebook entries, except for the odd one that is utterly trivial. It says more about them than me, and I know it, but it still hurts. Has this all been in vain?

I  suppose I do this as a distraction. The writing game has revealed itself to be even more mercenary and heartless than I thought. Everybody's hustling. Everything is for sale. If it's no sale, you don't exist any more, as it is almost entirely a popularity contest, even worse than the living hell I went through in high school.

And I've had enough of that.  

I don't know what the future will bring, and maybe it's nothing  -  I am contemplating, literally, not existing any more. Oh, I want to be optimistic, but I'm not. Like Henri, I know my time is  short and  growing shorter (and oh, those awful puns  - but I still think, with his sardonic wit, he'd appreciate it). And oh yes, with each day we live, all of us, our  tally of days grows shorter and shorter (and why should I become more patient as I  grow older? Wouldn't the opposite make more sense?) 

But who wants to know? As the song says, the game of life is hard to play -  I'm going to lose it anyway. So if writing is communication, I'm not sure I'm communicating at all any more. Henri never needed to worry about selling his work - his magnificent posters were the  kind of advertising no other painter had ever known before, and people tore them off doorways and walls, perhaps knowing they had something of real value. 

But here he is, Lautrec painting Lautrec, as if nobody else notices him, so he must portray himself. 

It could be argued that every  painter paints themselves - just look  at our old buddy Vincent, and the more modern Frida Kahlo - but few were actually able to photograph themselves doing it. Oh, you want a self-portrait? Well, here I am painting myself! Will I get the details right?  No doubt someone will say he does not. The more some people talk, the less they say. But did he give a shit? Yes and no. The bon vivant surface (usually drunk) hid a desperately broken heart which peeps through in some of his photos.

In my Facebook post, I  compared Lautrec to Chaplin's Little Tramp. Though no doubt someone will say it's an absurd comparison and that Chaplin knew nothing about Lautrec, I still think it's a worthy insight. (And I'm glad somebody does, because let's face it, nobody else will care enough to find out.)

They were both portraying little men, marginalized, slightly shabby and down-at-heels, but still somehow elegant, with the bowler hat, the cane, the natty suitcoat which had seen better days. Even the waddly, awkward, ducklike walk. Chaplin was feisty and unquenchable, and though Toulouse could not manage the physical feats, his wit and playfulness and practical jokes were incredibly courageous, as he was finding a way to  defend himself, to take a stand, even to have adventures among the avant-garde who adopted him as a sort of mascot. 

It was hard for him, not so much to love as to be loved, and as I lay there on the pullout bed in more pain than I thought I would  ever experience, I truly believed in my soul that no one had ever cared about me at all. In all my days, I had never once been truly loved, though I had lavished love on everyone around me for decades.

 Worse, no one even noticed. 

That wounded, devastated child who never should have been born, the late-in-life embarrassment (for they truly did NOT want another baby, and my mother even told me straight-out that she wanted an abortion but her doctor talked her out of it), the disappointment, the one who did not add anything to the family's prestige, who didn't even have a university degree and wrote novels that nobody read - . Oh yes. At the core, we are one.