Moulin Rouge Review

 

Review on Moulin Rouge

Without searching about the storyline of the movie, Moulin Rouge, I chose this movie because of an attractive movie poster. And the movie was quite interesting, too.

                    Moulin Rouge is the movie about the life time of a French artist, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In the movie, he breaks his leg as he falls down from the staircase. In order to fix his broken leg, he even take a surgery, but the bones do not knit together. So he spends his life with crippled legs which does not grow anymore. This gives a huge impact on his life and painting. Instead of spending his day in the bed, he decides to go to Paris to pursue his dream of being an artist. Living alone in Paris, he goes to the bar, Moulin Rouge, almost everyday. At the Moulin Rouge, he draws dancers and the owner of the place, who saw his drawings, asks him to paint a poster for the place promising him to give free alcohol for a month as a return. While returning home, he helps the girl named Marie Charlet from a quarrel between her and a policeman. She stays at his house spending his money. But he becomes upset about her behavior of not telling him anything when she stays outside and not hanging out with him anywhere. He accepts her several times but eventually kicks her out from the house. After then, he stops drawing and become more alcoholic. His mother sees him in a terrible condition and tells him to search for the girl. He finds Marie who is seriously drunk, but he fails to bring her back. When he comes back home, he suddenly starts painting of the requested poster in the dark under the light of stars and the moon. The light of the house gradually lightens up as he finishes his poster. The poster become immensely popular all over Paris. By then, he meets Myriamme Hyam who was standing at the edge of the bridge over the Seine River. They later meet again by a friend of her, Jane. Telling that Myriamme is a great fan of him, Myriamme and Toulouse-Lautrec begin to hang out together, exhibiting the Louvre Museum for example. But after hearing the marriage of Myriamme, he becomes a terrible alcoholic. He passes away as he again falls down from the staircase when he is drunk. At the end, he sees the image of the dance at the Moulin Rouge.

        Toulouse-Lautrec and Marie Charlet

 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in
the movie










Moulin Rouge(1890) painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ->

                                 Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891)


                    Before watching the movie Moulin Rouge, I did not expect anything from it. I thought I was going to be boring like a documentary movie. But, I realized that I was wrong while watching it. It showed how far an artist's life can be miserable but can be astonishingly creative and artistic. Even though Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had lots of unfortunate accidents since he was young, I think that all of those affected himself and his artwork. If he did not break his leg, he wouldn't have decided to go to Paris suddenly. And if he did not go to the Moulin Rouge, he wouldn't become renowned.

In the movie, his mother asked him to go back to the previous home where is in rural. So he told her:

" I have a friend, Maman (His mother). He is a painter too. His name is Vincent van Gogh. He paints wheat fields hot with the sun of Provence. A man can stare at one of his canvases and go blind with the light. I cannot paint his hills... but he cannot paint my girls of the Moulin Rouge. I am a painter of the streets and of the glitter."

I found from the movie that one who has a great will of doing something till the one's death is a lucky person, though the one might spend a hard life. Even Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had such a miserable life, he could stand up again and bear in the middle because he had his painting and art. He was a fortunate person who could see what he admired until he died, the Moulin Rouge.

Toolkit

The Art Institute of Chicago Review

 

 The Art Institute of Chicago Review

 

                    The most recognized landmark of Chicago is the Art Institute of Chicago(AIC). Whoever sees this museum for the first time, the person will be fascinated by the shape of it and will not be able to stop pressing the shutter of a camera. The building seems like an antique structure with two lion statuses on each side of it.

 

 

 

                    From Gallery 201 to 246, there were many paintings from Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and so on. The first painting I saw, as soon as I entered Gallery 201, was Paris Street: Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. As it was representing a rainy day, the atmosphere of it was tranquil. The green street-light in the painting was outstanding in it because it was positioned in the middle which seemed like dividing it as half and half. Gallery 241 was Vincent Van Gogh's section. There were about 9 paintings of his but all of them showed the same technique of painting. Normally, oil painting and other types of painting produce two-dimensional artworks. However,  his works were painted so thick that those looked as if they were three-dimensional. In Gallery 243, it was full of Claude Monet's work. I was surprised by how he presented the same material, wheat stacks, in different mood. They all showed each distinctive atmosphere. But all of those, I especially got attracted to Water Lily Pond. Its bright colors and uneven thickness of oil painting created a real water lily pond in front of me.

 

                                   

                    After exhibiting the Modern Art Galleries, I had to present one painting with my partner, Han. Although we had difficulty on choosing an artwork, at last, we decided to have a presentation on Time Transfixed by René Magritte. It was not easy to describe and interpret it with our perspective and idea. But, at the end, I realized that the presentation actually provided an opportunity to look at the painting more carefully and deeply using our thoughts. Even though the presentation was a mess, it gave me a good lesson.

 

 

                    Overall, it was a very short exhibition as we explored only few galleries. So I will definitely go to the AIC again to see more artworks to broaden my experience and to make my life living with art.

 



Exploring the Art Institute of Chicago

                    Before exploring the Art Institute of Chicago(AIC) website, I did not expect about it much. I thought it will have no difference from other museum websites. But when I first entered into the website, the slideshows of the current exhibitions and the picture of the museum were used as the whole background of the webpage. And this made it look more interesting and made me read through more about the museum. 

 

                    Unlike the AIC website, the Louvre Museum website has the picture of the museum from viewing its below as a background. It used black as a main color while the AIC website used red. What I like more in the AIC website than the another is that showing its artworks as a major so that people will get more attracted and fascinated by the artworks it has. 

                    Making up 'My Collections' in the AIC webpage allow us to gather all the artworks that individuals are interested in. And we can even share those via facebook, twitter and e-mail. The most fascinating part is how the numerous artworks are classified in it. Although there is some difficulties like one cannot look through all of them as a slide in a magnified image, every artwork include sufficient information and their details. 

 ↓The Art Institute of Chicago website

↓The Louvre Museum website