An album of the stars of Paris nightlife, as seen by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - who captured their performances in great works of art and helped make them famous This tour of the Parisian scene focuses on six performers who were depicted in and in some senses defined by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's renderings - Yvette Guilbert, Jane Avril, Aristide Bruant, Marcelle Lender, May Belfort and Loïe Fuller - and explores how the performers and the artist collaborated in exploiting new mass media to create a new stardom. Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of iconic images along with rarely seen sketches, and illuminated by insightful essays, this volume shines a spotlight on the stars of the Paris stage, the birth of celebrity culture and the brilliance of the artist who gave them enduring life.

A stunning collection of reproductions of some of the artist's major works sets the paintings of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec within the context of the art scene of Montmartre, from 1885 to 1901, featuring a selection of paintings, drawings, prints, and posters capturing Montmartre subjects, as well as incisive essays on the artist, his work, the members of his circle, and his influence.

The work, nothing but the work. That should be enough. But with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, how can one leave the man aside? How can you not combing his life and his very existence, with his work as an artist? The two are inseparably intertwined. To dwell on his paintings, drawings and lithographs--which are essential and ignore his unique, colorful character would be a mistake, even if we know everything--or almost everything--about the painters daily life and debauchery.

Though deeply engaged with painting and drawing, Toulouse-Lautrec's lasting contribution to artistic practice was as a graphic artist. Through his prints and posters, advertisements, and contributions in reviews and magazines, he brought the language of the late-nineteenth-century French avant-garde to a broad public. He ushered in the first print boom of the modern era; taking advantage of lithography's new potential for colour and scale, he made both posters for the streets of Paris and prints for the new bourgeois collector's living room. During his short career, he created more than 350 prints and 30 posters, as well as lithographed theatre programmes and covers for books and sheet music. The Museum of Modern Art's collection of this material is stellar, encompassing over 100 prints and posters, his most important book projects, and many magazines, journals and other examples of printed ephemera. Featuring an overview essay by Sarah Suzuki, Associate Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at MoMA, this publication presents thematically organized groupings of Toulouse-Lautrec's prints from the Museum's collection, each accompanied by an illuminating essay on the theme.