Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne celebrates the work of a generation of avant-garde artists at the turn of the nineteenth century who fought for artistic liberation against the strict codes of the Academy. Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who preceded them, the Nabis, Incohérents, Symbolists, and Naturalists sought to reinterpret a complex and rapidly changingsociety. By extending their creative vision beyond painting to various performative media, these artists broadened the definition of the visual arts for movements to come. The work of Toulouse-Lautrec especially encapsulates--in subject, style, and the use of new technology--the reinterpretation of modern Parisian life and its popular themes of café-concerts, cabarets, circuses,street scenes, domestic interiors, and the theater. Rendered with a concern for naturalism and vivacity, artists such as Toulouse- Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, and Felix Vallatton, among others, strove to express their art in visual terms that surpassed rational comprehension.This kaleidoscopic presentation is comprised of paintings, watercolors, drawings, rare zinc shadow puppet silhouettes, caricature, illustrated programs for the famous Chat Noir cabaret, and key ephemera for Parisian theaters, circuses, cabarets, and café-concerts, by avant-garde artists from the 1880s to the turn of the nineteenth century who celebrated the liberated spirit. Essays by an international group of curators and scholars discuss topics such as the rebellious French spirit and entertainment and performance in fin-de-siècle Paris. A timeline of historical events and iconic paintings, a map of Paris at the time, and a select bibliography complete this beautifully conceived volume.