Pin-Ups: Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art of Celebrity

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s brief career coincided with one of the most exciting periods in the history of western printmaking. In Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, a new generation of avant-garde artists made techniques such as lithography, etching and woodcut central to their creative process, sparking a printmaking and collecting boom. Vibrant images of the celebrities of the day - performers, singers and dancers from Paris’s most famous nightclubs such as the Moulin Rouge and the Chat Noir - Lautrec’s work was a huge commercial success and is still widely admired to this day, with reproductions popular the world over. The prints and posters of this time are colourful, evocative and iconic. Toulouse-Lautrec’s ground-breaking achievements in lithography, his technical and artistic virtuosity and modern outlook and approach, transgressed traditional boundaries by mixing popular culture, commerce and art and led the way to modern visual culture. AUTHOR: Frances Fowle is Edinburgh College of Art International Director, Reader in History of Art and Senior Curator of French art at the Scottish National Gallery. Hannah Brocklehurst is Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Scottish National Gallery. SELLING POINTS: . Explores Toulouse-Lautrec’s art as a printmaker . Unique perspective on the role of the poster and wider print distribution as a tool for communication and marketing . How Toulouse-Lautrec’s art helped to define and promote specific Paris hotspots of the belle epoque and created the concept of celebrity status across Paris . Accompanies an exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland in October 2018 100 colour images