Chwast was among the major graphic designers from 24 countries around the world commissioned to produce posters for the Nouveau Salon des Cent, held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2001. The organizers stated that the aims of the exhibition were to ensure that those in museums, universities, institutes, and schools of graphic design around the world were aware of these posters, to demonstrate the vitality of the poster and its importance among the arts, and to encourage future generations of graphic designers to be inspired by the example of Toulouse-Lautrec. The original Salon des Cent, a commercial art exhibition offering posters and prints for sale, had been founded in Paris in 1894 by the avant-garde journal La Plume; Toulouse-Lautrec had been involved in many of the exhibitions and had designed a poster promoting one of them in 1895. Chwast’s characteristically clever and humorous design is based on his sketchy illustration of the bespectacled face of the great French artist. His beard forms the full skirt of a woman who evokes one of the cabaret singers so frequently depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec in his famous posters of the 1890s.