This Girl is On Fire: At The Moulin Rouge, The Dance

1890
This Girl is on Fire
Woman as Goddess
Curated by Emma Krasnopoler

Henri Toulouse-Latrec, At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance, 1890


You see her from across the room, there, on the dance floor. She dances with passion, each movement as energetic and animated as the last. She does not stop, does not falter. Men come up to dance alongside her, only to discover that they cannot keep up. She is electric.

It’s no wonder why Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was so captivated by the dancing, music, and excitement of the Moulin Rouge. The cabaret music was like nothing found anywhere else in the city. It was a circus of dancers and singers and entertainers. This scene portrays a crowded dance floor where couples mingle and the hustle of bodies overwhelms. Yet, amid it all, one dancer is the most prominent. It is this woman, adorned in scarlet, who catches Lautrec’s eye. She is bright and energetic, from her fiery hair to her stockings. She is in motion, twirling and jumping and sliding around the floor, unlike the other women who stand still, without emotion or animation. Her face is hidden, allowing her body to tell us her story. She moves with passion, a fury of tapping and bucking and twisting. Her movements are unrestrained and spontaneous; she is the living definition of “Dance like nobody’s watching.”

There is something about her that hypnotizes me. Perhaps it is the way I can sense her energy emanating from the painting, or how I can feel the rhythm of her body. I feel privileged to be able to watch her, as if by doing so I may take away a portion of her intensity and immersion. She is absorbed in her dance, yet I, like Lautrec, cannot take my eyes off of her.


  • 7:00 AM

The Night

1890

Ferdinand Hodler, The Night, 1890

Hodler’s painting is creepy. The setting is unclear. A group of men and women lie sleeping together. In their midst is a terrible figure who crouches on top of the artist, seemingly preying on him. The figure is obviously anthropomorphic, but it is unclear exactly what it is. Of course, its position on the man undoubtedly brings a question of sexual anxiety into play.

Does the figure represent death, a nightmare, or something far different? This painting immediately brings to mind Fuselli’s Nightmare. However, there is of course one key difference. Fuselli’s piece was born of a jealous rage; the painting was created in revenge against a love who had spurned his advances. In that work, the monster is Fuselli, and he crouches on top of the woman’s sleeping form. In this one, the identity of the monster is unclear. The only certainty is that Hodler himself is the victim.

Every bit as disturbing as the black shrouded creep is the way in which Hodler paints his subjects. The bodies seem at first glance accurate. They are also in unbelievably good shape. However, whenever I look at them I feel uncomfortable. There is something about the way in which the man in the back is contorted, or the way the flesh lumps in certain places on the sleeping figures—particularly the women—that creates in me a feeling of malaise. The men and women may on the surface appear to be the image of health, but their interesting sleeping arrangement and creepy bodies hint at something a little darker lying just beneath the surface.

I think that’s why this painting has stuck with me since I first saw it. I think it puts Fuselli to shame—it’s pretty much the most frightening painting I’ve ever seen. The French certainly thought so—to no one’s surprise, this painting was blackballed and Hodler was forced to exhibit it privately—even some of the radical painters at the avant-garde of the late 1800s lambasted the work. It would be another decade before Hodler was accepted into the fold of Parisian painters by his contemporaries.

  • 7:00 AM

The Card Players

1890
The Card Players, Paul Cezanne, 1890-92 (The First)
Things are not always as they appear – a fact, which is evident in Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players. The painting is simple and beautiful, the colors are captivating, and the composition uses simple lines to create shapes and order in the painting. There are two different versions of The Card Players. The first and simpler version lacks the detail that the second does. It lacks the painting on the wall and the shelf with the vase. There is a young boy present in the second painting that is not in the first.

The Card Playrers, Paul Cezanne, 1890-92, (The Second)
The second painting is better. The colors are far more inviting and the wall makes the painting seem more full. This feeling of fullness contrasts with the child’s empty look. In the second painting the curtain takes on a larger compositional role. The first painting is clearly an unfinished work. Not only are there compositionally necessary parts missing, but also the young man who completes the story that the painting is telling is not present.

This young boy looks substantially different from the other three men in the painting. His skin is far more pale, and his clothes are not as worn. Cezanne included this boy to create a full circle. Compositionally the boy sits outside the group of men playing, his skin is less worn than the others and he stands out from the background.
He is the predecessor to the lives that these men lead, much like the painting
 without the background and without the wear is the predecessor to the one
with the background and wear.
  • 12:00 AM