Toulouse-Lautrec was active in the last decades of the 1900's and died very young 37 years old in 1901. His often painfully honest art touches me exactly because of its honesty. I have a pocket-philosophy about him, that he got away with such controversial art because he himself was a misfit and ridiculous in many ways and not taken too serious by contemporaries. He is not provocative like Picasso or the Dada movement, but he was still way ahead of the impressionists before him, who largely grew from a desire not to express, but instead be a medium of presenting reality's way of reflecting colours of light. Lautrec has been labelled post-impressionism, but I would much rather call him proto-expressionist. The "expressions" are not at all as strong as, say germans like Kirchner, but it is expressive none the less. A very good example of this, in my opinion, is the painting "At the Moulin Rouge, The Dance" from 1893.
He did numerous paintings from this location and the sexual undertones, if not graphic, are present everywhere. This was the place, where the bourgois men went to gawk at young women, dancing the can can and showing of their "stuff". It is clear that Lautrec was sympathetic to the women, but had a uncontrollable disgust for the men. He is a genuine beta male, who cannot possibly see anything wrong with women, who are presented as introvert "victims", while the volture-like men, prey on them for their unemotional, selfish sexual pleasure. It is a returning theme for many men, who project the mythology of their own mother's self-victimization, to avoid moral condemnation of the "immoral" choices they made, that affected the man.
The composition is clearly photographic in nature, in the way persons are cut in half at the edges and the livelyness and "snap-shot" feel it has. The focus immediately fixates on the red stockings of the dancer in the middle. Soon after we realize that we are just as much peeping Tom's as the other onlookers in the setting. The men are looking in preoccupied in various directions, the snapshot does not reveal much of their secretive voyeurism. The dancer seems to be in her own world or preoccupied with learning her steps, as if no one was looking at her. The red stockings starts to feel like an over the top advertisement, like a woman wearing too much makeup.
Finally we realize the center of expression may actually be the woman in the front and to the right. She seems to be frozen and stands there stearing at something to the left of the dancer. As if she pretends not to look, but are looking anyway, secretly, but with a smirky smile on her face. The aristocratic, beautiful woman in the pink dress, comes forth as someone who is either not supposed to be there, like if she was superimposed into the setting. Or as if she is feeling the stares of the other guests, while feeling embaressed being a starer herself. She is conforming completely on the outside, directly opposite to the red-stocking girl, and maybe she is secretly attracted to her or the potential sexual adventures she may be engaged in by the nature of her job.
Recently it was discovered (no one apparently had bothered to look) that the painter himself had written message on the back. "The instruction of the new ones by Valentine the Boneless." This refers to the man the dancer looks towards, and it has been confirmed that it is the instructor of the dancers at the venue. Look at the way his legs curls like they are made of devilish snakes, hence the reference to boneless. It expresses a clear player type man who can wiggle himself in any way to impress women or dupe them maybe. It feels manipulative compared to the naive and free style of the female dancer. The reflections in the floor lends itself to thinking about where there true self lies. Are they themselves a reflection of a stereotype personality or are they the real selves.
Toulouse-Lautrec in his atelier, painting "The Dance"