Contextualising Jane Avril: the conflict between public and private identities

Toulouse Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge 

Courtauld Gallery: 16th June - 18th September 2011

“Alone, apart, one dancer watches
/….And, enigmatically smiling,/In the mysterious night,/ She dances for her own delight,
/A shadow smiling/Back to a shadow in the night.”  (Arthur Symons La Mélinite: Moulin Rouge)

Arthur Symons’s sentence: “she dances for her own delight” is a particularly pertinent reference to Jane Avril, a dancer renown for her distinctive style. This is a style, which as this current exhibition explains, Avril developed during her teenage years whilst a patient at the infamous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Nicknamed La Mélinite after a powerful form of explosive, Jane Avril (née Jeanne Beaudon) was already known for her innovative dance performances prior to the immortalization she received at the hands of her close friend, Toulouse Lautrec. Lautrec met Avril in the 1890s when they were both in their twenties and their friendship spawned a creative partnership that as a contemporary audience we are greatly indebted too. The stylized posters that Lautrec painted of Avril in motion have become iconic advertisements of the Moulin Rouge at the heyday of its popularity; as the complete embodiment of Bohemian Paris during the Belle Époque. This exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery seeks to explore the idea that alongside this very famous and much publicised relationship, there existed an important, private counterpoint that deserves recognition.

Jane Avril leaving the Moulin Rouge, 1892

A seminal work of this exhibition is Jane Avril leaving The Moulin Rouge, which depicts a pensive and somber lady, in direct contrast to her vibrant and exotic stage persona. Avril appears introverted, with her composed gaze directed towards the ground and her hands hidden in her pockets.  I would argue that the painting above is asking us to think about the role that the private individual has in relation to the public character that performs on stage. As an audience member, viewer or spectator, it is all to easy to forget the personality that exists behind the character on stage. Whilst we may think that we know Jane Avril, the 'person' we really know, is Jane Avril as she crucially chooses to present herself on stage: the self-taught, unconventional dancer, with her erratic kicking and easily identifiable auburn hair: the semi-fictionalized character that Nicole Kidman plays in Moulin Rouge (2001). However, as this new exhibition demonstrates, Lautrec was just as interested in the lady born Jeanne Beaudon, who inhabits a separate life away from the limelight, as he is, in the fictionalised persona of Jane Avril, the star.

                                                          Jane Avril: Back View, 1892-1893  

My favourite paintings of this exhibition are two almost cursory, oils on cardboard that depict Avril sitting with her back to the viewer. In Jane Avril: Back View, the artist’s subject is tense, her shoulders are raised and a delicate hand outstretched. Lautrec depicts Avril in so distinctive a fashion, that even without the caption we can guess who the subject is. This painting exudes a definite sense of understated elegance, a quality that is also present in Lautrec’s other, very similar painting: Seated woman from behind, 1892 (unfortunately I was unable to find a good image of this painting to display above). The vast expanses of cardboard that Lautrec leaves bare, contribute towards the appealing sense of mystery that pervades Seated woman from behind; whilst the white outline that surrounds the headdress and face, (a technique that Lautrec also employs in other works such as Jane Avril dancing) has a typically, Egon Schiele like, feel to it. The (likely) influence that Lautrec had over Schiele would definitely be a compelling avenue for exploration at another time!

Troupe de Mlle Églantine, 1896

Whilst I had seen most of the main body of this exhibition before; Jane Avril au jardin de paris, 1893, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892-5, Troupe de Mlle Églantine, 1896 and so on; nevertheless, re-visiting these works in a different context suggested that there must have existed a tremendous bond of trust between Lautrec and Avril. In order for Lautrec to simultaneously advertise the Moulin Rouge and promote Jane Avril, it was necessary for his posters to draw attention to Avril’s identifiable features so that she might in turn become synonymous with the great music hall, and vice versa. By emphasizing features such as her flamingly auburn hair, extremely thin figure and totally unconventional style of dancing, it would have been easy for Lautrec to stray into the territory of typecasting and possibly even caricature. However, as this exhibition clearly demonstrates, Lautrec continually resisted reducing Avril to a stereotype, by painting her in a variety of solitary, and frequently intimate settings; far removed from the excitement and whirling exuberance of her workplace.

 Lautrec produced work in a pre-Hollywood era, a long time before the cult of the celebrity became a widespread obsession. Yet the presentation of Lautrec's work in this fashion by the Courtauld Gallery; whereby the ‘celebrity’ images of Avril - the poster advertisements for the Moulin Rouge - are placed in direct contrast with depictions of a more private and personal Avril away from the arena of the stage; gives the exhibition in my opinion a thoroughly contemporary relevance. The depiction of Avril's life in this fashion, is not too dissimilar after all, to the format followed by the many celebrity gossip magazines that proliferate modern culture. Such magazines continually strive to present their readership with the so-called ‘normal’ person that co-exists alongside the recognizable public image of the celebrity.