It happens sometimes that someone achieves success suddenly, almost overnight, and from a complete unknown becomes a celebrity surrounded by the admiration of those who yesterday knew neither the face nor the name of the new star. Such was the case of Alphonse Mucha, who by a fortunate coincidence, within a few days gained fame, money, and prestige, leaving behind the past of an anonymous cartoonist.
His story can be traced through the exhibition ALPHONSE MUCHA. ART NOUVEAU IN PARIS, presented by the Kunstmuseum in The Hague. https://www.kunstmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/alphonse-mucha .The exhibition will be open until 3 July 2022 and is curated by Jan de Bruijn and Tomoko Sato in collaboration with Jan de Bruijn and Madelief Hohe.
The artist is most often associated with beautifully designed posters that are quintessentially Art Nouveau. However, the curators of the exhibition did not limit themselves to showing this best-known part of the artist’s oeuvre, presenting it in a much broader historical and social context.
Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was born in Moravia (today’s Czech Republic), and it may surprise that he did not pass the entrance exams to the Prague Academy of Fine Arts! The introduction to the exhibition also includes a description of what Paris was like 150 years ago, which, as the authors emphasize, was the first western metropolis as we know it today. At that time the Eiffel Tower was under construction, narrow medieval streets disappeared giving way to wide boulevards and vast squares. Carriages and horses were slowly being replaced by bicycles and the first automobiles, and in 1900 the first line of the Paris metro was opened. Bars, casinos, clubs, and theatres lined every corner, and at 9, Rue de Monnaie, just near the Pont Neuf, the Samaritaine department store opened. It still exists today.
Why is this important? Because Mucha’s work from this period is a response to the then completely new lifestyle that the modern metropolis offered or, if you prefer, imposed.
A happy coincidence, mentioned at the beginning, was a poster design commission for the 100th performance of the play GISMONDA, with the great Sarah Bernhardt. The order came at Christmas 1894, when an unknown draftsman was working the Christmas shift at the Lemercier printing house in Paris. Posters were needed right away, and with only him left in the workshop, the young artist took on the task, designed a beautiful poster that was admired by all of Paris, and the delighted Star of the Theatre offered him a permanent contract. This collaboration led to Mucha’s unique poster design – a vertical panel, with a life-size figure of a young woman surrounded by decorative architectural and floral motifs. Following this pattern, many theatrical posters with Bernhardt in the lead role were created, but also posters advertising luxury goods, elegant resorts, and metropolitan entertainment. Many of these prints on show in the Kunstmusem.
Mucha’s work from this period is therefore closely related to the new, consumerist lifestyle. And although it does not sound good today, this fact does not diminish the quality of his work, which always represents a very high artistic level. Perhaps because he creatively refers to the tradition of European and Oriental art. The prints presented at the exhibition are clearly syncretic. They borrow ideas from medieval sculptures and manuscripts to present a series of allegorical figures, e.g., four seasons of the year, four times of the day, four branches of art or four elements. The costumes of the figures are timeless, sometimes Gothic, sometimes oriental, perhaps inspired by Pre-Raphaelite painting. The stylized floral elements evoke associations with Japanese graphics by Hokusai.
We further learn that Mucha was one of the first artists to use photography in his work. In a separate room you can see a dozen or so photographs of his models, capturing spontaneous poses that he later reproduced or treated as loose inspiration.
Art Nouveau was meant to be a total style, which was to be represented in all fields of visual art, from architecture, through furniture, stained glass, clothes, jewellery to everyday objects, including an ashtray. Mucha himself tried to stay distanced from the Art Nouveau trend, saying that he follows his own path, but there is no denying that his projects are very much rooted in these stylistics, so much so that they have become almost synonymous with it. The exhibition features drawings of the artist’s designs, mostly from his collection DOCUMENTS DECORATIFS, published in 1910.
Additional Illustration of the design fashionable in the early 20th century, included in the exhibition is a beautiful collection of functional glassware, from the Emile Galle factory in Nancy. Art Nouveau objects were supposed to be inexpensive, mass produced to please the eye, improve the quality and aesthetics of life for the less affluent clientele. Today we would say – the mass customer.
Another stage in the career of Alphonse Mucha is explored in the part of the exhibition entitled BIZANCJUM. Based on the conviction that commercial success alone would not provide him with artistic fulfilment, Mucha became interested in spiritual values and meanings, searching for them in Byzantine art. He believed, not unreasonably, that it was there that East meets West. This interest explains to a large extent the syncretism of his work and his references to the influence of various cultures – Chinese, Japanese, Celtic and Arabic. At that time there were also more and more native Slavic elements in his works, especially in costumes and floral decorations. According to some, his models from this period also represented the so-called Slavic type of beauty.
These interests continued with the publication of LE PATER (OUR FATHER) in 1899, a spiritualistic interpretation of one of the most important Christian prayers. These works were considered by Mucha himself to be his Opus Magnum. In the Kunstmuseum, prints from LE PATER occupy a separate space. The black and white drawings are very expressive and mystical, and the fonts of the verses, written in French and Latin, combine Art Nouveau lines with stylizations of the Hebrew alphabet.
HIGHER IDEALS – is the title of the one before last rooms of the exhibition and it features Mucha’s works after 1899 when he was commissioned to design Bosnia and Herzegovina’s pavilion for 1900 World’s Fair. In preparation for the task, he travelled to the Balkans developing more interest in Slavic history, traditions, and people. This trip inspired him to come up with the project SLAV EPIC which was to include 20 monumental paintings. He devoted a lot of time and money towards the project. After a few years in the United States, he finally settled in Czechoslovakia in 1910. Regardless his international success he worked for the rest of his years locally in his home country – by choice, not by economic necessity.
The very last part of the exhibition is about Mucha’s legacy and impact on modern art and design which is quite considerable but not always realized.
Art Nouveau fell out fashion with the outbreak of WWI and was disregarded till 1960s. In 1963 Victoria & Albert Museum in London presented and exhibition ART NOUVEAU AND ALPHONSE MUCHA bringing the forgotten Czech artist back to the spotlight. That coincided or maybe triggered the rise of interest in the Belle Epoque style, the prices of artefacts from that era started zooming up and respected auction houses were happy to trade them.
On the other hand, the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic threads interwoven in Mucha’s works attracted the attention of hippie culture. Floral motifs, dreamy semi negligée women and curly lines appeared on concert posters and vinyl record covers, including those of GRATEFUL DEAD, THE ROLLING STONES and PINK FLOYD.
Alphonse Mucha exhibition in the Kunstmuseum is rewarding to see not only for those seeking beautiful things to look at. It reveals how art and artists responded to rapid social and economic changes. And that we are not the only ones experiencing very fast technological progress affecting our lives and way of thinking – it did happen before. My only wish would be: may our times be given a beautiful, ear pleasing name like that of Belle Epoque some day?