How many phallic symbols can you cram into one painting??

 

I just don't want to let go of my little friend, just yet. Maybe it's just a distraction from the myriad ongoing health "issues"  that may yet do  me in. The shadow of mortality is never far away, and I honestly wonder how much time I have left. And reading about the man's untimely demise wasn't exactly uplifting. BUT! I still uncover surprises, like this famous poster of Jane Avril sitting ringside in a cabaret with a withered-up old geezer beside her.

Freud could have used this to prove his most notorious theory. There are the obvious ones - the heads of the cellos and bass fiddles in the background;  the arms of the orchestra conductor; his "erect" stick;  the odd little thing like a whale on the left (one of  those inexplicable little figures he always draws in the corners); the old man's cane; the back of Jane's chair; whatever she is holding in her hand - a fan, perhaps? The black gloves of the lady in the background; the riotous "thing" on top of Jane's hat, like a phallus exploding. . . and there are probably more.  Lautrec had a devilish sense of humor, and was not averse to drawing penises all over the place, especially in the sexually-charged atmosphere of the Belle Epoque (also known as the fin de siecle, a darker, more shadowy title revealing the not-so-Belle Epoque's underside). 

I'm still finding more. What is that thing in the bottom right corner? The old man's leg or something? And what's going on with his beard? It seems to blend into some sort of foamy-looking thing. a cravat of some kind. The man's hand on the cane might qualify, though here we risk seeing the entire painting (actually it was a poster, one of his more famous ones) as one big weenie-fest. 

In fact, Jane Avril herself, all decked out in black, her sinuous figure curving upward in a familiar pattern - maybe she's the ultimate phallic symbol. There was lots of sex going on in those days, but I  doubt if there was very much intimacy. It's implied in the  biographies that the sex workers he hired were treating him like social work, an act of mercy for a man who likely would have had a problem attracting a civilian mate. And it was virtually a certainty that he would never marry, a terrible crisis in an aristocratic family like the Lautrecs, where marriages were ways of consolidating wealth and spewing out the next generation of grossly-inbred male heirs. Disabilities were seen very differently then, and his truncated stature and strange, Habsburg-looking facial features might have made fine ladies not want to be seen with him.

But those eyes. Those eyes. I don't even need to say it.

The truth is, they lost out. Imagine knowing a genius like Lautrec! What a mind, and beyond his incandescent talent, something almost supernatural in the energy, the supercharged sexuality, but at the same time, the curious detachment of the world he created and reflected. As his biographer Julia Frey put it: "Everything was for sale." Not just  the women, but the paintings, the posters, the lithographs, all the brilliant work he did in 36 years - all of it had a price on it. HE was for sale, and he knew it, which is partly why he posed for all those droll photographs, purposely making himself look  silly and even trite. He seemed to be saying: I don't take this life seriously, no, not at all! Come to the Cabaret, old chum. Step right up. Step inside, breathe the air, the smoke, the opium, the absinthe, the greasepaint and sweat and cheap  perfume, and even darker things. He painted the air and the anxiety and the drenching, self-annihilating pleasures that were all too brief in their analgesic effect.  

All of it cost him. All of it was for sale.

POSTSCRIPT! I don' t know if I dare post this to Facebook, as it's a family show, after all, and those terrible weenie references may corrupt the youth of this country, if not the world. But I had to include a cute little detail that is also relevant:

Toulouse-Lautrec was nicknamed "The Coffee Pot" by his friends, particularly the women of Montmartre, due to his short stature and the disproportionately small size of his legs compared to the rest of his body. He himself reportedly referred to himself as "a small coffee pot with a big spout," embracing the nickname with his characteristic irony and humor. The nickname also reflected his lively personality and popularity as a lover. 

Strangely enough, as detailed as the Julia Frey bio was (sometimes excruciatingly so), no mention was ever made of his famous/infamous nickname. Could it be that those ladies of the night did not feel sorry for him at all, but really DID celebrate him, not as an oddity or a random genius, but as a well-endowed lover? He could be surprisingly earthy, preferring red-haired women because he claimed their natural scent attracted him. And I don't mean Chanel No. 5, folks.