Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne

Book excerpt: Accompanying a major traveling exhibition, this catalogue celebrates the groundbreaking avant-garde artists whose works embody the spirit and decadence of fin de siècle and Belle Époque Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne is a celebration of the work of a generation of avant-garde artists at the turn of the nineteenth century in Paris who fought for artistic liberation against the strict codes of the Academy. Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who preceded them, the Nabis, Incohérents, Symbolists, and Naturalists sought to reinterpret a rapidly changing society that was no longer easily definable. Artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, and Félix Vallotton, among others, render with naturalism and vivacity modern Parisian life and its café-concerts, cabarets, and brothels; street scenes and landscapes; and intimate domestic interiors. Exhibition: Travelling exhibition in the US.