Running head the life and work of alphonse mucha 1 The Life and Work of Alphonse Mucha

Gregory Doms

King’s College

The Life and Work of Alphonse Mucha

In 1860 Alphonse Mucha was born in Ivancice, Moravia (present day Czechoslovakia) with amazing singing and artistic abilities. His singing abilities allowed him to get an education through high school even though drawing had always been his love. He started off doing decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly theatrical scenery. He later started to work for a theatrical design company. He is a prime example of a successful artist who did not succeed at first. “Although his application to study at the Prague Academy of Fine Art was turned down, he has become synonymous with the Art Nouveau movement owing to the enormous popularity of an early theatrical poster for Sarah Bernhardt. His subsequent work continued with the theme of the graceful female form sensuously entwined with nature” (Husslein-Arco, 2010, 33).

His first lithograph for Sarah Bernhardt and her Theatre de la Renaissance truly was his breakthrough. “The poster in question, advertising Victorien Sardou’s Gismonda, appeared on the streets of Paris in the first week of January, 1895, and caused a sensation. The novel format – narrow and upright – with its almost lifesize likeness of the celebrated tragic actress, produced a singularly dramatic effect and impressed all who saw it with its wealth of well-chosen colour. The basis of the motif was the solemn procession scene from the final act of the play, which also determined the stylistic conception of the poster: the sumptuous, priestly-vestment-like costume, the symbolic palmfrond and the mosaic-like background with its hint of a halo all suggest a sacred atmosphere, reflecting not least the veneratioin of the actress as a cult figure, the muse of the belle époque” (Ulmer, 1994, 7).

So clearly Mucha’s style was the art nouveau movement. Art nouveau was “decorative-art movement centered in Western Europe. It began in the 1880s as a reaction against the historical emphasis of mid-19th-century art, but did not survive World War I. Art nouveau originated in London and was variously called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria, and Modernismo in Spain. In general it was most successfully practiced in the decorative arts: furniture, jewelry, and book design and illustration. The style was richly ornamental and asymmetrical, characterized by a whiplash linearity reminiscent of twining plant tendrils. Its exponents chose themes fraught with symbolism, frequently of an erotic nature. They imbued their designs with dreamlike and exotic forms” (Columbia University, 2013).

Decorative posters were not a common thing back then, it was more of big block letters proclaiming to the average passer byer on the street to purchase their product or attend their event. Mucha was one of those people who truly perfected this type of art by starting off with Sarah Bernhardt’s poster. “advertising posters were no longer satisfied with the hitherto standard ‘plain and simple’ proclamation of their message in large letters, but tried rather to awaken the interest of the public by means of artistically up-market designs, which is what Mucha produced” (Ulmer, 1994, 10).

Alphonse Mucha had the ability to create not only his own style but a variety of forms and motifs. “At the zenith of his creativity, in the years between1895 and 1898, Mucha had developed not only his own style, but also a vocabulary of forms and motifs which, capable of variation though it was, and highly adaptable in point of purpose and content, nevertheless imposed his unique signature on all his works. Thus his advertisements for industrial and commercial customers also have as their central pictorial motif the stylized figure of the female beauty” (Ulmer, 1994, 10). To this day a boring advertisement would be laughed at. Every advertisement I see whether it be a poster, billboard, or magazine advertisement it is well designed by a professional and usually sticks out so you notice it, well atleast the good ones do. A large thank you, you might say, could go to Alphonse Mucha for that.

References

Husslein-Arco, A. (2010) Exhibitions Museums and Galleries (Alphonse Mucha) The Authors. Journal Compilation 17(3), 33

Ulmer, R. (1994) Mucha Benedikt Taschen Verlag, 7, 10

Columbia University Press (2013) Art Nouveau Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 6th Edition, 1Appendix

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