In the manner of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French, 1864–1901
Karaoke, Tuesday, 2026
Colour lithograph
120 × 80 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.14.5
A middle-aged man in a loosened red tie sings into the microphone with his eyes shut, meaning every word. Two friends in the foreground film him, and their screens show him back to us, small and red. A waitress with a tray of glasses is cut off by the top edge. Lautrec loved an entertainer who was not quite good enough. He would have made this man a poster.
The brief
A middle-aged man singing at a karaoke machine in an almost empty bar, two friends filming him with phones, a waitress carrying glasses past cropped at the edge. Belle Époque colour lithograph poster, flat bold areas of red, black, mustard and cream, sinuous confident contour lines drawn in crayon, figures cropped sharply at the edges and seen from low tables, spattered tone, faces caricatured with tenderness and fatigue, large empty areas left as paper, gritty printed texture. Flat frontal reproduction of the poster on paper, the sheet fills the frame edge to edge, even lighting, no frame, no wall, no lettering, no text.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
