Michael:

A week or so ago I was trying to get comfortable with the influences on Canada’s Group of Seven painters, so I spent some time looking at Post-Impressionist art on the web. I came across this little number by Toulouse-Lautrec which I hadn’t previously seen.

H. Toulouse-Lautrec, The Kiss, 1892

How's that for fin-de-siecle decadence? Or, if that doesn't get your motor running, how's that for quietly terrific draftsmanship?

Enjoy,

Friedrich

Hot stuff, thanks. And it has a kind of billowing lusciousness that I don't think I've often noticed in Toulouse-Lautrec. Why do you suppose he found himself having such a orgiastic time with that red?

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on October 4, 2003 12:44 AM

I assume that the red is intended to represent the heat from the stove and from the emotional action. What I find astonishing is the way the two figures are given such clarity and stability with a few firm lines, while the whole rest of the image is a sort of sea of red around them. The effect is both trippy and classical at the same time. Remarkable.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on October 4, 2003 1:59 AM






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