Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; "The Two Girlfriends"

Clearly in this painting there are two controversial issues for the time in which it was painted. This painting is from the late eighteen hundreds, therefore homosexuality and sex are things that are not discussed.  The audience for this painting is to the older, more conservative crowd.  With these people being the audience, it is kind of a message to lighten up and open society’s eyes to things that are real.  The purpose of this piece is to get a point across that sexual feelings and sexual orientation should be freely expressed.  Clearly the artist feels like a change needs to take place with how accepting people are of others.  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec probably got much grief and disrespect from society for his racy paintings.  The stance of this painting is punk in a way.  This painting is frowned upon by most people, but the artist has an attitude of “I don’t care; I do things the way I want.”  I say this because most of the people who would see this would be appalled. Besides the artist painting with this attitude, the painting speaks different than that.  The painting is like a cry out for understanding from society.  The painting is very serious, not a whole lot of bright color or happy images.  It clearly expresses intimate love between two people.  The stance is clear that he accepts the lifestyles people choose and that he doesn’t care what people think about how he expresses it.  This is how art and any other creative property should be.  The genre of the piece is persuasive art.  This piece is persuading people to not agree with what is in the painting, but to at least accept it. It has a tone to it that its almost begging for people to see what it is portraying.  Clearly the design of this piece is a painting.  It doesn’t take any intellectual reading skills to interpret what this painting portrays.  This is a great piece and I enjoy much of the artwork this man makes because it has a certain attitude that some artists wouldn’t tread on.