Moulin Rouge – La Goulue

Why it works

The poster that turned a dance hall's season launch into a street sensation. Commissioned by the Moulin Rouge's director, Zidler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's first poster puts the cancan star La Goulue mid-kick at the centre of the floor, with her partner Valentin le Désossé cut off at the waist in grey shadow and the watching crowd flattened into silhouettes. Its most daring move is an absence: La Goulue's swirling petticoats are simply bare, unprinted paper. The sheet was so big it had to be printed in three pieces, and some 3,000 copies went up on Paris streets in December 1891. It is studied as a founding moment of the modern poster, in which cropping, flat colour and radical simplification sell a night out at a glance. It made Lautrec famous almost overnight and brought commissions from other performers and cabaret owners; copies are now held by MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Van Gogh Museum and the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi.