Introduction

Allure, seduction, and hypnotic transportation to a mythical garden, describe the experience of viewing a work from the French Art Nouveau Movement. Each individual piece seems to encapsulate a fantastic story. The lines in the illustrations seem to have a slow, easy dance. The architectural elements seem to grow out of the ground like plants in an enchanted forest.

The French Art Nouveau movement experienced a brief popularity from the 1890s to the early 1910s. A wide range of mediums utilized its aesthetic style like architecture, jewelry, sculpture, and printed graphic design. The printed poster designs of Alphonse Mucha epitomized French Art Nouveau style. This paper will relay how Mucha established the role of a professional graphic designer in both commercial and fine art dring the popularity of this art movement. Also it will describe the historical context of the art movement and offer some background on the international art forms that influenced it.

Historical Context

Art Nouveau was mostly seen in urban areas in Europe and North America. It was a style that emerged from among the people of the cities perhaps looking for an escape from the rapidly oncoming Industrial Revolution. In 1879, Thomas Edison introduced the first commonly affordable electric light bulb. And in 1889, the first electrically powered elevators made way for a new form of architecture that appealed to crowded cities, the skyscraper. Among the fast paced machine powered changes, the people of the cities found them selves drawn to a new art form that looked to nature as the "true source of all good design" (Charlotte, 2010).

In the year 1900, the French government decided to build the Parisian Metro, a modern train transportation system. A countrywide design competition was held for the entryway kiosks (DT & G Magazine, 2010). A 32-year-old architect named Hector Guidmard won the contest with his Art Nouveau stylized concept for the entryways. These entryways are still being used in Paris today. His motivation was as DT & G Magazine put it, "to brighten up a little bit the daily monotony of the crowds going to work, jammed in public transports."

The Art Nouveau emerged at the end of the more restrained and conservative Victorian era. The female form was widely used in art nouveau. The moral Victorian ideal of a woman's body was not to be adorned with lavish jewelry nor was her skin to be bared. Her hair was to be tied up and pinned back. We can see an escape from that ideal in the way Alphonse Mucha illustrated women. The women in his work literally let their hair down and fly free. They wore ornate costumes that bared their shoulders and legs and at times even a breast or two. Though the female characters of the Art Nouveu works were slightly more liberated than their Victorian predecessors, they never seemed to take on an authoritative role, but rather posed as symbols of nature's wealth of beauty.

One notable historical fact, in 1893 the country of New Zealand officially permitted women the right to vote. In that same year, Belgium just began to allow its entire population of male citizen's the right to vote, but not yet the Belgium women. So at the time and location, where the Art Nouveau Movement was gaining popularity women were not yet regarded as equal to men.

The fairy-tale-telling design style of Art Nouveau dwindled in popularity with the arrival of World War I. Perhaps it signified a shift in the urban people's focus from the decadent and ornate to the practical and utilitarian. It did however pave the way for the next popular style, Art Deco. And it is regarded as, "the first stage of modern architecture" by The Glossary of Art Movements.

The Art Nouveau (or in English translation, New Art) did not attempt to pay tribute to any art forms of the past, but aspired to be a fresh eclectic style of its own, that drew inspiration from the organic forms of plants and animals. The artists of the movement seemed to be particularly fond of vines, grasses, and lilies. They also presented the forms of peacock feathers, butterflies, snakes, and insects.

International Art Forms of Influence

Though the artists did not purposely attribute their style to an art movement of the past it is easy to observe some of their influences. The symmetry and flowing lines first used in Javanese art are recognizable. The typography has some visual similarities to hand-painted Celtic manuscripts. But the strongest influences can be seen in the Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. These prints were a popular import in Paris around the same time as the Art Nouveau Movement. The Japanese prints also studied the aesthetics of nature. As the writer of Retrokat.com put it, "They were mass-produced as woodcuts, cheap enough for the average Japanese person to afford." These art prints ushered in the use of the commercial printed art poster and packaging designs of Alphonse Mucha.

The Beginning of Alphonse Mucha's Career

Mucha lived from 1860-1939 and was originally from Czechoslovakia, but became famous for his work in Paris. He received most of his training while painting scenery in various theaters throughout Europe after being rejected by the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. The Mucha Foundation quotes the letter the school sent him,"Find yourself another profession where you'll be more useful." He went onto become one of the forerunners of commercial graphic design who created various original and useful items.

He did eventually study at the Munich Academy of Art in 1885 and also later in Paris at Academie Julian in 1887. He met the popular Parisian actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1890 while illustrating for a theater magazine called "Le Costume au theatre". The actress hired him to create posters, playbills and party invitations for her on a 5-year contract. The design work he did for Bernhardt gave him the kind of exposure needed to catapult his career.

The Commercial Success of Alphonse Mucha's Career

From then on he was commissioned to design commercial artwork for various businesses and individuals throughout Europe and the United States. Alphonse created advertisement posters and packaging for all sort of companies such as Job cigarette papers, Moet & Chandon's 'Dry Imperial' and Armour of Chicago soap. He also produced some travel posters for Monaco and Monte Carlo.

Alphonse worked with a diverse range of mediums. He decorated the interior of his studio to look like a Czech Baroque church and it became a fashionable attraction in Paris. He wrote a book on interior design entitled Documents Decoratifs in 1902. Using his studio as a backdrop he also created photographic portraits of women that seemed to emulate his illustrations. His work continued to stay very involved with theater while he produced costume, set, and poster design for a play called Kassa in 1908 staring Leslie Carter. He also did a total decorating of the German Theater in New York City in 1909, which was later demolished in 1929.

Many of his poster illustrations were reproduced with less expensive materials by the commissioners of his work which became a collecto's item in his own time. These works were also reproduced in the form of postcards and calendars. Around 1912, he began to feel commercially exploited by his Parisian and American audience. He was against the widely known label that his work had taken on. According to Marina Henderson in The Graphic Work of Alphonse Mucha, "Mucha repudiated any such description and classification of his work as Art Nouveau, protesting that, as art was eternal, it could never be new."

The Close of Alphonse Mucha's Career

He left Paris for his home country of Czechoslovakia where he spent the rest of his life with his family. There he felt he was better serving his country. He designed stamps, bank notes, and even police uniforms without accepting payment. It was at this time he took on what he considered to be his most important work The Slav Epic.

The Slave Epic was a twenty-panel fresco painted on the walls of the Mayor's Parlour in the Prague municipal buildings. These tempera and oil paintings rendered various important moments in Slav history. He worked on these paintings from 1912 to 1928 and focused on capturing "the spirit of the Czech people" (Henderson, 1973).

Closing

Alphonse Mucha's commercial and fine art works were a powerful contribution to the French Art Nouveau Movement and he experienced a successful career as a designer. After reviewing in this paper the historical contexts of this art movement and its various international influences, Mucha's numerous and diverse works seem to stand out with a unique style. Those hypnotic and sinuous dancing lines continue to captivate viewers still to this day and affirm the French Art Nouveau's place in the history of design movements.

Works Cited

"Biography." The Official Website of Alphonse Mucha. The Mucha Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2010. .

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Henderson, Marina. The Graphic Work of Alphonse Mucha. Ed. Jiri Mucha. New York: St. Martin's, 1973. Print.