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The Artisan Moderne. 1896, Lautrec was asked to advertise a jeweler/home goods designer He manages to add some of his own thoughts and observations about human nature.  This is the last weekend of Phillips Collection's exhibition, Toulouse-Lautrec Illustrates the 'Belle Epoque.'   The Phillips organized the show with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, its only other venue North America. This exhibition is different and distinguished from other exhibitions of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (and I've seen a few of them), because it's primarily graphic art and contains some works that we don't normally see. There are trial proofs alongside the finished prints, and a few very rare prints. The entire show comes from one private collector in France and we're very lucky to have it for a short time in Washington.  Mademoiselle Eglantine's Troupe, 1895- 1896  Brush, spatter and crayon lithograph in three colors.  The dance troup included Jane Avril, seen below Toulouse...

Detail of " Olympia " by Edouard Manet, 1863, in Musée d'Orsay Victorine Meurent is Manet’s most frequent model of his early career.  She shocked audiences as the indifferent courtesan in Olympia (above), exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1864.   A year earlier, Victorine had scandalized Parisians, playing the part of a shameless woman who disrobed during a midday picnic. That was her role in Manet's rev olutionary p ainting, Le d éj e uner sur l ' herbe ( The Luncheon on the Grass-- see on bottom) exhibit ed at the Salon des Refusées for the officially rejected paintings of that year.   She is just the matter-of-fact figur e that Manet wanted, and there is nothing beautiful, sexual or erotic in either image. In both paintings, she is not an individual but the object, the sexual object. Manet also painted Victorine as Young Lady ( also c alled Woman with a Parrot ), in 1866. She looks taller in her long pink gown. There's a magnificent unpeeled ...

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654 "We have art in order to not die for the truth."  Donna Tartt quotes Nietzche in the opening of one of her chapters in The Goldfinch , an epic journey of life novel.  It's taken me all year, but finally, I've finished reading The Goldfinch ( need a long plane trip to do that ).   The entire drama is centered around a missing painting, or, shall we say, a stolen painting in the hands of the narrator. It's interesting that Donna Tartt chose a painting to be the symbol of her protagonist. I always enjoy reading books that center around a painting.  Usually these books imagine the fictions that influenced the creation of the paintings, books by Sarah Dunant ( In the Company of the Courtesan ) and Tracy Chevalier ( Girl with a Pearl Earring ). But this novel is not about how or why the painting was made.  It is about the journey of the painting and it's presumed caretaker, what it does for him through his growing years and into ...