#lithpgraphy
Caudieux. 1893. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
36 ¼ x 50 5/8 in./92.2 x 128.5 cm
A well-loved cabaret personality in Montmartre, Caudieux was a large, floppy ball of a man, shown here with coattails billowing behind him as he exits, stage right. As the actor purses his lips in self-satisfaction after what we can imagine to be a fine performance, a hollow-cheeked audience member gawks curiously up from the orchestra pit. Feinblatt calls this “a study in dynamic motion and concentrated energy… and his bustling sweep across the boards is an unparalleled rendering of movement among Lautrec’s posters” (Wagner, p. 20).
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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Grand Sport. 1925. A. M. Cassandre.
23 ¾ x 31 ½ in./60.3 x 80 cm
“Clothes make the man.” Cassandre might have been meditating on this old adage while formulating his approach for this Grand Sport poster. The cap, “the champion’s choice” on offer, is detailed with loving realism, every fold and curve supple and tactile. It sits on the head of a Cubist abstraction: one that faces both straight-on and “cocked-to-the-right,” redolent of Oskar Schlemmer and Picasso (Brown & Reinhold, p. 13). As such, it stands with the best works of Cassandre, which find the most elegant and efficient way of communicating two or more (sometimes subversive) ideas in a single image.
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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