Alphonse Mucha’s graphic works were central to the establishment of the Art Nouveau style
Download 21.8 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Bibliography
 “Alphonse Mucha’s graphic works were central to the establishment of the Art Nouveau style.”
Bona Wang Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil, was a unique and complicated art style that flourished in most of Europe (with emphasis on Belgium and France) from the end of the 19th century, so large in scope and influence so that its ‘enduringly beautiful’ aesthetic still affects art and design today. As both a recalling of historic art styles and a fresh view on what we consider modern, the style played a big role in the shift in direction for art as one of the earlier transitional stages from 19th century historic revival styles to Modernism. It explored the concepts present in Modernism, including commercialization of art, technological advancement, and international culture, while retaining the romanticism and mysticism of historic aesthetics in its reflection of the thriving Belle Époque. Its elegant and indulgent aesthetic made it both ‘reviled as decadent and grotesque’ and ‘embraced as seductive and exquisite’ - regardless of opinion, it definitely pervaded the lifestyles of the elite and the plebeian alike in its thirty years as a ‘total’ art style. According to Stephen Escritt’s book on Art Nouveau, ‘nothing within architecture and the decorative arts escaped its influence’1, and for the time it was in style Art Nouveau pervaded mediums like graphics, jewelry, furniture, and silverware. The same book mentions the style extending to ‘door handles and chairs, chandeliers to apartment blocks, wallpapers to shop fronts’, so that it was even possible to live in an environment completely inspired by Art Nouveau. It could be called one of the first really international effort too, with a wide array of influences and products - being the first for many things, Art Nouveau was definitely a striking and influential style. A key figure of this fascinating style-movement was Alphonse Mucha, whose graphic works contained the central ideas and concepts of the style. Commonly associated to and celebrated as a key figure of Art Nouveau, Mucha was one of the first artists to create works in the Art Nouveau style, and played a big part in its development and popularization among mainstream audiences; though he dabbled in quite a few different mediums during this period, his most accomplished and influential works were his stylish two-dimensional graphic pieces in his distinct style, which were so closely linked to many of the key ideas and concepts of Art Nouveau that the movement was 'initially [known as] Style Mucha' in France. Mucha's influence begins from his choice of medium to produce his graphic works. He used lithography and was able to mass-produce his artwork - this choice was a showcase of the then-recent color printing technology, and the first step of sorts towards the highly Modernist concept of mass-producing and commercialization. Mucha's works reflect on the fact that Art Nouveau was essentially the first style-movement that benefitted from this new, highly advanced print technology and the mass-production of graphics, and that its direction was largely influenced by this new medium to put emphasis on bringing utilitarian art onto a similar level with fine art. Mucha captured this particular idea "by setting the same standards for his posters and decorative compositions as he would for [paintings]"2. “Champagne Printer Publisher”, 1897. Lithography. 72.7 x 55.2 cm. Private Collection. wikiart.org Among the many other artists who later took up the Art Nouveau style into their own graphics with this technology, Mucha’s own distinct style set an entire aesthetic within Art Nouveau, and made him particularly central to the graphic design of the movement. A particular work where the elements of his style are gathered is his 1897 Champagne Printer Publisher, which depicts a woman in the center of a stylized, almost symmetrical background, turning the page of a catalogue. An important visual effect is the flatness of the image as a whole, except for the woman’s face - this flat effect, directly inspired by Japanese woodblock as a part of the Oriental influence in Art Nouveau, is present in the majority of Art Nouveau graphics. The work has intricate, clear lines that stand out against the flat colors; this is the clearest on the woman's dress, where Mucha has expressed all the creases in its fabric with lines. Notably, the bottom part of the dress uses unnatural, curling lines, creating a contrast with the more ‘realistic’ creases in the upper parts of the dress - partial stylization of form can be frequently seen in both Mucha’s other works and the works of other Art Nouveau designers, and in Champagne Printer Publisher creates a fantastical, fluid quality. The strong composition of Mucha's works was also part of this influential style: Mucha’s ‘hallmark’ was essentially a graceful woman framed within an ‘ornamental system’ of both natural and ornamental elements. Champagne Printer Publisher follows this system with a halo of identical flowers that effectively directs focus towards the center, and dynamically curving, white lines at the top parts of the background called the whiplash motif (a ‘defining emblem’ of Art Nouveau) to add ornament to the work. These general aspects of Mucha’s powerful style influenced many artists such as Henri Privat-Livemont, whose works have a kind of similarity in execution. 
Mucha’s stylized use of natural and symbolic motifs also ties in very closely with the general stylistic direction of Art Nouveau. Other than being aesthetically pleasant, nature was important as a very strong source of inspiration for Art Nouveau artists, possibly as a balancing element for the new industrial techniques used. Motifs and forms from it were used to depict many different concepts - Mucha, an anti-rationalist who ‘dabbled in the occult [and] was fascinated by spirituality and mysticism’3, used natural motifs to produce imagery of a ‘beautiful, spiritual life’. An example of this is the Champagne Printer Publisher above, an alternative print of which was used to sell chocolate: the swirling forms of the flower-vines on either side of the woman evokes a feel of life and dynamism, and the flowers arranged naturally, but artfully in her hair conveys ideal beauty and, combined with the graceful look of the woman herself, peace. The halo of flowers at the back is another sign of thriving life, with the flowers branching up from the center outwards representing this spread of life. In Champagne Printer Publisher, this works in tandem with the connotations of the circle (the halo): the lack of edge and completely curved shape represents perfection, stability, and holiness, implying spiritual concepts within the work. This also points to Mucha’s Symbolist (a slightly earlier reactionary movement against Realism) influence. Mucha used symbols in a way that prompted advertisement and commercial design in a new direction during the Art Nouveau ‘movement’: as he associated with the Symbolists, he likely encountered works of literature relating to spiritual elements and symbolism with flowers, as well as an ever-changing image of woman between ‘femme fatale and dreamy princess’4, which he subordinated in his work for a strongly decorative effect. The combined successes of Mucha himself and the poster as a medium of art then gave way to the revaluation of the poster advertisement and its contents, so that the simple, standard ‘proclamation’ method was replaced by a more sophisticated, modern approach to marketing: posters began to evoke public interest with ‘artistically up-market designs’5 like Mucha’s. In this way, Mucha’s specific decorative influences in his works, in turn, affected the ornamentation and imagery in Art Nouveau. “Poster for Victorien Sardou`s Gismonda starring Sarah Bernhardt at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris”, 1894. Poster. 216 x 74.2 cm. Private Collection. wikiart.org Another crucial element in Mucha’s work that reflected on the Art Nouveau style was the image of women. Possibly as part of his Symbolist influence, Mucha depicted the women (main subject) in his work as beautiful, but also dangerous. This presentation is definitely related to the ambiguity of the role of women at the end of the 19th century, as they took increasing independence for themselves. The Art Nouveau treatment of women was quite odd; in works from this style, women became stylized objects of beauty. Their heads, as busts or two-dimensional profile portraits, became part of ornaments in architecture. They were portrayed as ‘nymph-like’ and fair, and often had long and curling tresses of hair that curled unnaturally, rather like the tendrils of plants. This is visible in Mucha’s poster for Job cigarette papers (1896), where the subject woman’s hair is loose and tumbling down in stylized, fluid curls, which creates a similar fantastical effect to the whiplashes and arabesques in Champagne Printer Publisher. The establishment of women as such may be partly due to the overall feminine image of the Art Nouveau style in general, as artists and designers used curving forms and ‘gentle’ images of foliage and flowers that are commonly associated with the feminine than the masculine. Also, even here a big part of the women’s image was associated with Mucha, who mostly drew women in his distinct style during his time working on Art Nouveau pieces - it would not be wrong to say Mucha popularized the image of stylized hair, as it was part of the style he had developed before it became a characteristic of the more mainstream Art Nouveau. One of the real models behind a series of Mucha’s commissioned posters, Sarah Bernhardt, was a central figure in Art Nouveau on her own - the posters Mucha made for her, like the first one he made for the melodrama Gismonda (1894) on the upper right, made her name synonymous with the ‘exotic and erotic excesses of Parisian Art Nouveau’, though interestingly she was far from the simply passive and erotic impression of the idealized fin de siècle woman she was portrayed as in Mucha’s posters and was in fact rather in control during their six-year partnership, having the power of veto between the two. Still, there is no denying that Mucha’s works were quite important to the stylistic direction for depiction of women in Art Nouveau. 
“Job”, 1896. Lithography. 59 x 173 cm. wikiart.org Arguably, despite the close connections tying Mucha’s graphic art to the root of Art Nouveau, there are other artists and works that also contributed greatly to the development of Art Nouveau as a style-movement. To repeat a point from earlier, Art Nouveau was a byword for contemporary developments in the decorative arts and architecture, or a ‘total’ art style that essentially permeated the lifestyle of the European fin de siècle (end of the century), including jewelry, furniture, interiors, and silverware, etc. One notable pivotal figure to the style was Siegfried Bing, who opened a gallery devoted to the new style coming to life in around the late 1880s, L’Art Nouveau (which gave its name to the style). In L’Art Nouveau, Bing worked with furniture designers such as Charles Plumet, Eugene Gaillard and others to develop works in the new style. Another was René Lalique, who focused greatly on creating innovative, quality works such as the iconic Dragonfly Lady brooch with enamel and other new materials such as opal or semi-precious stones, and popularized the radical transformation of jewelry, particularly in France. Even Mucha himself made notable works that weren’t exclusively graphic; he was also known for his extremely stylized interiors and fancy jewelry inspired from Moorish and Celtic design, as well as others, for which he collaborated with Georges Fouquet. To put it simply, the totality of Art Nouveau meant so many more aspects in art other than Mucha’s graphic design.  
“Dragonfly corsage ornament”, 1897-98. Gold, enamel, chrysophrase, moonstone, diamond. Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon. britannica.com. However, to partly refute this point, it must be mentioned that print and poster art was the pinnacle of new media introduced at the turn of the century, revered for its freshness and feared for the moral depravity in them; as a whole, the medium was quite similar to the Art Nouveau movement itself. And it was the use of printed media that managed to sell and popularize the style to its initial, more wealthy audience at the height of Art Nouveau, the 1900 Paris Exposition; in this sense, it is right to say that Mucha’s graphic works, which could be exposed further to a wider audience, were more crucial to the establishment and development of the movement. By the time Art Nouveau became outdated and overheated, and Art Deco took its place as the next step into Modernism, Mucha’s works in the style had become ‘obsolete’ too. However, there is no denying the strong visual impact of Mucha’s work and its powerful effect on the establishment of the Art Nouveau style, and both during the movement and after it, Mucha’s two-dimensional graphics continued to inspire and affect others. Its strong composition and aesthetic made it part of the Art Nouveau revival phase in the 1960s, especially with the woman in the Job poster who evoked imagery of a free, rebellious persona with her free-flowing tresses. Ultimately, yes, Alphonse Mucha’s graphic works were central to the establishment of the Art Nouveau style. Bibliography “Art Nouveau 1890-1914”. London: V&A Publications, 2000. De la Bedoyere, Camilla. “Art Nouveau (The World’s Greatest Art)”. London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2005. Hardy, William. “Introduction to Art Nouveau Style”. London: Quintet Publishing Ltd., 2002. Escritt, Stephen. “Art Nouveau”. New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2005. Ulmer, Renate. “Alfons Mucha”. Köln: Taschen GmbH, 1994. <http://thetextileblog.blogspot.hk/2009/05/art-nouveau-whiplash.html> Hopper, John. “The Art Nouveau Whiplash”. thetextileblog.blogspot.hk. Uploaded May 6, 2009. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau> Multiple editors. “Wikipedia: Art Nouveau”. wikipedia.org. Last modified 11 March, 2016. <http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/quick-history-art-nouveau-142976> Hoffman, Anna. “Quick History: Art Nouveau”. apartmenttherapy.com. Uploaded March 31, 2011. “Champagne Printer Publisher”, 1897. Lithography. 72.7 x 55.2 cm. Private Collection. wikiart.org “Poster for Victorien Sardou`s Gismonda starring Sarah Bernhardt at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris”, 1894. Poster. 216 x 74.2 cm. Private Collection. wikiart.org “Job”, 1896. Lithography. 59 x 173 cm. wikiart.org “Dragonfly corsage ornament”, 1897-98. Gold, enamel, chrysophrase (gem), moonstone, diamond. Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon. britannica.com. 1 S. Escritt, Art Nouveau. Phaidon Press Inc., New York, US. 2005, p.5. 2 R. Ulmer. Alfons Mucha. Taschen, Koln, Germany. 1994, p.17. 3 C. De la Bedoyere, Art Nouveau (The World’s Greatest Art). Flame Tree Publishing, London, UK. 2005, p.38. 4 R. Ulmer. Alfons Mucha. Taschen, Koln, Germany. 1994, p.10. 5 R. Ulmer. Alfons Mucha. Taschen, Koln, Germany. 1994, p.10. Directory: 2016 2016 -> Senate, No. 627 State of new jersey 217th legislature 2016 -> 2017 afoCo Landmark Scholarship Program 2016 -> Instructions for the Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to the Conference Proceedings 2016 -> Strategic Plan South Sudan Country Office Context 2016 -> Original: English 2016 -> Step student Scholarships for Year 10-13 2016 -> Resolution 2016 -> American bar association adopted by the house of delegates Download 21.8 Kb. Share with your friends:
|