THEME: VINTAGE POSTERS
ALPHONSE MUCHA
Art Nouveau posters and graphic arts flourished and became an important vehicle of the style, thanks to the new technologies of color lithography and color printing which allowed the creation of and distribution of the style to a vast audience in Europe, the United States and beyond. Art was no longer confined to art galleries but could be seen on walls and illustrated magazines.
The Art Nouveau posters and illustrations almost always feature women, representing glamor, beauty and modernity. Images of men are extremely rare. Posters and illustrations are highly stylized. approaching two dimensions, and frequently are filled with flowers and other vegetal decoration.
Mucha was asked to produce posters for a variety of clients, from travel resorts to winemakers. The female figure were always highly stylized, and embellished with floral decoration and curling whiplash lines or the backgrounds were two-dimensional, filled with ornament but no depth. Mucha himself rejected the term Art Nouveau for his work, saying that "art cannot be new".
His posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame. His poster for the railway line between Paris and Monaco-Monte-Carlo (1897) did not show a train or any identifiable scene of Monaco or Monte-Carlo; it showed a beautiful young woman in a kind of reverie, surrounded by swirling floral images, which suggested the turning wheels of a train.
The fame of his posters led to success in the art world; he was invited by Deschamps to show his work in the Salon des Cent exhibition in 1896, and then, in 1897, to have a major retrospective in the same gallery showing 448 works. The magazine La Plume made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition traveled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation.
He was quoted as saying, "Art exists only to communicate a spiritual message".
Oooooh, such beauty! Mucha really is one of my fav' always.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, I didn't know any of this! Except that it's Art Nouveau, but not the background and history. These are gorgeous! I noticed this afternoon that most of my creations for Digital Whisper have beautiful woman in them, I guess women just work in endless types of art projects.
ReplyDeleteLove your vintage posters Kym! Thanks for playing in my challenge.
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