

The Moulin Rouge: The Dance (or La Danse au Moulin-Rouge) is Henri de Toulouse-Lautre famous oil painting art piece that was produced in 1890 in Paris, France. The artist’s painting was created to show a moment during which a man was teaching a young lady the cancan dance. At the same moment on the right side of the picture one can see a mysterious female figure dressed all in pink who has quite an aristocratic appearance.

The Author and His Inferiority Complex

As it has been already mentioned, the visual text was produced by is Henri de Toulouse-Lautre, a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator. Henri de Toulouse-Lautre is a brilliant representative of the Post-Impressionist period. In almost all of his picture he tries to fully depict his experience of immersion in the life of Paris high society of the late 19th century. In a result, the painter created a large collection of enticing, elegant and provocative images of the modern life. The Moulin Rouge: The Dance is one of the remarkable examples of this collection.  In this visual text, the artist shows Moulin Rouge as a place where bourgeois and aristocrats could experience anti-bourgeois and anti-aristocratic plebian entertainment. Moulin Rouge seems to have been painted by him to memorialize this world, which had embraced him. As one knows, Henri de Toulouse-Lautre was of small height and had some psychological issues about that, including self-image issues and even inferiority complex. All these problems led the painter to drown his sorrows about his appearance in alcohol. In addition, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec also very often frequented prostitutes. He consciously entered this "inferno" in rejection of his aristocratic background and values, but his entry was made possible only by his social status and his continuing reliance on it. This painting is addressed to the modern society of these days and depicts a gap between different layers of this society. 

The Message of the Written Text

It is necessary to mention that not so long ago a secret message left by the artist was found on the back of the painting. This message says “le dressage des nouvelles par Valentin-le-Désossé” which can be translated as “the instruction of the new ones by Valentine and the Boneless”. The message specifies what Toulouse-Lautre wanted to say by creating this picture. This text explains to us that the man who is situated on the left of the woman dancing, is Valentin le Désossé, a very well-known dancer at the Moulin Rouge, and in Paris in general. At that particular moment depicted by Toulouse-Lautre Valentine is teaching the newest addition to the cabaret.  

The Overall Design

This painting depicts a dance hall where many Parisian men and women gathered around. The background consists of mainly men who are wearing long dark coats and tall black hats. In the foreground one can see a woman dressed in an elegant pink dress next to a woman in a black hat. It is evident that this woman comes from the aristocratic family. It can bee see not only from the elegant dress that she wears, but also her expansive and glamorous yellow hat.  In the middle, there is a young lady who is learning to dance cancan, a popular French dance, from a man in a suit, Valentin - le- Désossé. The background also includes a great deal of aristocratic people, for example, as a famous poet Edward Yeats, the Moulin Rouge’s owner and even Toulouse-Lautrec's father. In general, the composition of this painting is like a spinning top with the female dancer at its center. The attention is focused on a particular space: the center of the picture, if to be more precise, on the two women: the one that is dancing and the one, a lady in pink, who is watching this strange scene for but totally common for such sort of places as Moulin Rouge. With the help of simplified silhouettes, and flat areas of pure color and also the accent of color on particular figures, he created bold and vivid image of the society of that time.

Emotions

In this art piece, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec tried to capture the exuberant energy and irrepressible passion of Paris night life of those days. The picture depicts the sexual freedom and decreasing of the importance of the moral rules of the society. As it can be seen, the young lady dancing in the center of the busy dance hall of Monmarte, Moulin-Rouge. The viewer of the painting sees that the dancer in mid-kick lifts her skirt too high above her knees, and that reveals much more leg than it was considered morally acceptable or even ladylike for those days), at the same time we see a much more modestly dressed and more likely well-heeled young woman who with an upturned nose looks on this scene, has undoubtedly a small hint of disapproval in her face expression. Such irrepressibly passionate and sexually suggestive image of the dancing girl and of   the Parisian nightlife in general, is a possible direct result of the loosening of censorship laws that happened in 1881. It was quite shocking to the Parisian public of that time. As the matter of fact, it both assaulted bourgeois morals and transformed Montmartre's working-class performers into overnight celebrities.

 In the art piece the artist also depicts a very dynamic interaction between the pair of dancers at the center of the picture that contrasts with the relatively static figures in the rest of the crowd. The ubiquitous top hat that the large part of males in the crowd are wearing indicates that they are the representatives of the middle class citizens that spend almost all their nights and evening in Moulin Rouge or other clubs and places like it.

Toulouse-Lautrec has a large interest in Montmartre culture and it was not limited to making the advertisements. In fact, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec became the first artist who dedicated the great number of the large-scale canvases to the various seedier aspects of nightlife that turn around such famous cradle of freedom as Montmartre.  

The Symbolism of the Colors

It is necessary to admit that the artist used the most intensified colors in the image. It emphasizes a difference in the behavior of those two women, the cultural and moral gap between them. One should pay a special attention to the combination of colors that the author of this visual decided to use in his art piece. It is aggressive red and tender pink. 

 As one knows, the color is strongly associated with fire, passion and even lust. It could describe an inner desire, heat, longing or lust. It is a color of sexuality, and romance. It is the most courageous color of the specter. It also symbolizes action, confidence, and courage.  Red is quite daring and assertive. In this case it truly represents physical energy, lust and passion. The color red is linked to the most primitive physical and emotional needs of survival and self-preservation. In fact, the lust or physical passion can be named as one of these needs. In comparison to red color, the pink one is more gentle considerate and tender.  In general, it inspires warm and incredibly comforting feelings. Pink is mature, feminine and intuitive color. Thus, the passion of the dancing girl who wears the red stocking is contrasted by the judiciousness, calmness and reasonableness of the aristocratic woman on the right dressed all in pink.

All things considered, Henri de Toulouse-Lautre in his art pieces describes the Parisian nightlife and, of course, the Parisian society of the end of the19th century that can be characterized by its the artificiality, anxiety, and social tension between different layers of this society. In this painting one can see such emotion as joy and passion and also a disapproval. The artist uses the contrast of shade and a light and also the contrast of colors in a very masterly way to make the viewer pay his attention on the center of the composition with the dancing girl that can be also shifted to the pink female figure on the right side of the painting. Nowadays, one can find this brilliant art piece on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.