"Car le monde est à créer": Disability's Worldmaking, Pasts and Futures

Abstract

THE CARICATURE ON THE COVER of this issue of L’Esprit Créateur figures in a letter that painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec wrote to his uncle, Charles, in 1881, when he was about seventeen. By this time, salon painter René Princeteau had been training Toulouse-Lautrec for a decade and had helped him gain entrance to Léon Bonnat’s studio, which he would join the following year. Contributor Alexandra Courtois de Viçose notes that, at this point, Toulouse-Lautrec still aspired to be a salon painter and figures himself here learning through the relentless copying of ideal proportions, forms, and poses. In the sketch, Princeteau works on one of his chasse à courre (hunting) paintings, while in front of him Toulouse-Lautrec sketches the statue looming over him, its angle and positioning arguably signaling Toulouse-Lautrec’s internalized sense that he couldn’t live up to these standards, either in terms of his artistic skill or his own physique. The artists’ stances are virtually identical and their attire strikingly similar, while salient features of each are exaggerated: Princeteau is comically tall and angled while Toulouse-Lautrec is comically short and stout. Both are stylish, even jaunty, and absorbed in their work. As figured here, neither reflects the ideals and harmony inherent in the statue. Although less obvious, both are disabled. Princeteau, deaf since birth, communicated primarily through sign language. As a result of genetic disease, Toulouse-Lautrec experienced leg fractures that resulted in stunted growth, chronic pain, and a marked limp, prompting him to use a cane. Courtois de Viçose characterizes their relationship and the mutual influence that Toulouse-Lautrec captures here in their mirrored stance. “Such osmosis occurred between teacher and apprentice that, to this day, curators at the Princeteau museum occasionally hesitate in their attributions.”1 The sketch thus tacitly and explicitly inserts disability between us, the viewers, and the statue. Poking fun at these ideals, the sketch includes a dog’s wagging tail in the bottom right corner of Princeteau’s canvas; the statue itself better resembles a diver poised to jump in the water than any sort of classical ideal. Paying homage to his beloved teacher, Toulouse-Lautrec represents him here exactly as Princeteau most often represented himself. Joy and delight dapple the landscape of their shared workspace, highlighting the sympathies that existed between the two artists and challenging directly the other charge