Alphonse Mucha and Slav Epic

            Lastweek I discussed Alphonse Mucha’s rise to popularity.  This week we’ll look at what he considered his most important works, as well as the rest of his life and, briefly, his legacy after his death.

            Last week I briefly mentioned Mucha’s 1894 meeting of August Strindberg, and his introduction to occultism and mysticism, which he became increasingly interested in.  On December 20, 1899 he printed Le Pater, which he considered to be his printed masterpiece.  Le Pater examined occult themes in the Lord’s Prayer.  Only 510 copies were printed.  Le Pater was one of two pieces Mucha considered his masterpieces.  The other would start taking shape in in 1900.

            In 1900 the Exposition Universell took place in Paris (the 1900 World’s Fair).  This fair would celebrate the past century and its accomplishments, as well as the developments for the next century.  In 1899 Mucha was approached by the Austro-Hungarian government to create their decorations for the 1900 Exposition.  In preparation for creating these decorations, Mucha travelled to the Balkans and had the idea for what would become Slav Epic, what he considered his fine art masterpiece (more on it shortly).  Mucha ultimately decorated the Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion, and gave input on the Austrian Pavilion as well.

            For the Exposition, Mucha was also approached by Georges Fouquet, a jeweler, the son of the jeweler Alphonse Fouquet.  Fouquet wanted “to create a truly innovative collection” for the fair (1).  Fouquet loved the jewelry Mucha put in his artwork, and wanted to create the pieces.  The jewelry that Mucha and Fouquet created redefined jewelry at the time by choosing materials for “their aesthetic, rather than monetary, value” (2).  Mucha and Fouquet worked together for three years.

            Mucha’s work for the Exposition was award winning.  His decorations for the Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion won the silver prize at the Exposition, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire “made [Mucha] a Knight of the Order of Franz Josef I for his contributions to the empire” (3).  Mucha was also elected as a member to the Czech Academy of Sciences and Art.

            After the Exposition, Fouquet moved his shop.  He decided to have Mucha design everything for his new shop, inside and out, as well as all of the contents of the shop (“furniture, light fittings and showcases” (4)).  Mucha conceived of the shop as a “complete work of art” that was inspired by nature, with peacocks throughout.  In 1902, Mucha had work exhibited at the first International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin.  One of his pieces that was included was a snake bracelet that he had created with Fouquet, and owned by Sarah Bernhardt.

            In 1903, Mucha met his future wife Marie (Maruška) Chytilová.  Maruška was 22 years younger than Mucha, and had come to Paris with her relatives.  She was a student at the School of Applied Arts in Prague, and while in Paris wanted lessons with Mucha.  Luckily, her uncle was Dr. Karel Chytil, a Czech art historian; he approached Mucha, and Mucha agreed to teach Maruška, but also suggested she take classes at Académie Colarossi.  Mucha and Maruška would marry in 1906.

            In 1904 Mucha took his first trip to the United States with the help of Baroness Rothschild.  His arrival was front page news.  In attempts to raise money to create Slav Epic, Mucha tried to become a society portrait painter.  His first commission was Mrs. Wismann, a friend of Rothschild’s.  In 1905, Mucha returned to the U.S. and taught classes at the New York School of Applied Design for Women.  His classes were available to women and men and were incredibly popular.

            In 1906, after Mucha and Maruška married on June 10 in Prague, the couple travelled to Chicago where Mucha taught at the Art Institute of Chicago.  From 1906 to 1910, the Muchas visited to and travelled throughout the United States.  While Mucha was in the U.S., he was, again, trying to earn money for Slav Epic.  He began taking commissions, again, as a sort of society painter.  One of the people who hired him was Charles Richard Crane, the heir to R.T. Crane Brass and Bell Foundry.  In 1908, Crane hired Mucha to paint his two daughters.  The painting of Crane’s daughter, Josephine, depicted her as Slavia, a Slav goddess (the second painting was never finished).  Crane became very interested in Mucha’s Slav Epic idea.

            In 1908, Mucha was commissioned to decorate the interior of the newly renovated German Theater in New York.  This project consisted of five large decorative panels, the stage curtain, the foyer, the corridors, the staircase, and the auditorium.  The decorative panels included The Quest for Beauty, flanked by Comedy and Tragedy.  The theater was torn down in 1929, and only the preliminary sketches exist today.

            While the Mucha’s were in New York, their daughter, Jaroslava, was born on March 15, 1909.  Their son Jiří was born in Prague on March 12, 1915 (Jiří would become a future novelist, as well as his father’s biographer.)  That same year, Mucha worked with the actress Maude Adams.  Adams was playing Joan of Arc in Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans in a one night gala event at Harvard.  Mucha did the poster for the event, featuring Adams, and also designed the costumes and the set.  In 1909, the Muchas also vacationed in Rosice, South Moravia.  Mucha began sketching for Slav Epic while on this vacation.  Crane had decided to fund Mucha’s work for Slav Epic because he was so interested in the project.

            In late 1909, Mucha was asked by the city of Prague to do the decorations for their new municipal building.  So in 1910, Mucha returned to Prague.  The work he did at the municipal building included small panels, murals, and even the ceilings.  While in Prague, Mucha also worked on the decorations at the Theater of Fine Arts and the murals in the Mayor’s office, as well as other landmarks in the city.  The work at the Mayor’s Hall “celebrate[d] the heroic past of the Czech people and the unity of the Slav nations” (5).

            While in Prague, Mucha started working on Slav Epic.  He was meeting with specialists, and reading everything he could about Slavic history and people.  By 1912, the first three panels - The Slavs in Their Original Homeland, The Celebration of Svantovít Festival, The Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy - were completed and presented to the city of Prague at the end of the year.  The first panel, The Slavs in Their Original Homeland, shows the persecution of the Slavic tribes by the Germanic peoples, and a promise of peace and freedom (6).

            (Mucha was immensely patriotic.  He wanted to help preserve the Czech language and culture against Germanic influences from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in any way he could.  He even helped design posters for a lottery that would raise money for Czech schools.  In 1922, Mucha would also do a poster asking “Western countries to send shipments of food and grain” to Russia after its collapse after the Revolution (7).)

            Slav Epic is a huge piece, and each panel itself is enormous.  In 1913, Mucha travelled to Paris to learn how to properly hang and light such large paintings.  In 1913 he also travelled to Russia to do research for the fourth panel, The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia.  In 1914, he presented this panel, as well as The Defence of Sziget, and The Printing of the Bible of Kralice, to Prague.  In 1916, three more canvases were presented to Prague: Milič of Kroměříž, Master Jan Hus Preaching at the Bethlehem Chapel, and The Meeting at Křížky which created the triptych, Magic of the Word.

            At the end of World War One, Czechoslovakia was founded as an independent nation, and was officially recognized in 1919.  Mucha was such a big part of Czechoslovakia and such an advocate for the Czech peoples, he was commissioned to design the new stamps, money, and other governmental documents.  In 1919, he designed the 100 crown note, followed by the 1,000, 500, 50, 20, 10, and 5, all between 1919 and 1931.

Mucha continued working on Slav Epic, and two more panels were completed in 1918 and presented to the city: Petr Chelčický at Vodńany and Jan Amos Komenský.  In 1919, the first exhibition of Slav Epic took place in the Klementinum in Prague.  Five of the completed canvases were shown: the Magic of the Word triptych, Celebration of Svantovít Festival, and The Abolition of Serfdom in Russia.  These five went on tour to the United States.  In one week in 1920 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 53,000 visitors went to see the paintings.  In 1921, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited the five canvases, as well as fifteen oil paintings, one hundred-thirty drawings, and some of Mucha’s best known posters; 600,000 visitors came to see this exhibit.

In 1923, Mucha gave three more canvases to Prague: Tsar Simeon of Bulgaria, After the Battle of Vítkor, and The Hussite King Jiří of Poděbrady.  The following year Mucha took trips to the Balkans and to Greece to do research for the remaining pieces for Slav Epic.  Three more canvases were completed that year: The Bohemian King Přemysl Otakar II, The Coronation of the Serbian Tsar Štěpán Dušan as East Roman Emperor, and After the Battle of Grünwald.  The last three pieces of Slav Epic were painted in a school auditorium in Prague: The Holy Mount, The Oath of Omladina under the Slavonic Linden Tree, and The Apotheosis of the Slavs.  The Apotheosis of the Slavs combines the themes of the other nineteen canvases; it has four sections, each a different color, each showing a different period in Slav history.

In 1928, Mucha and Crane officially give Slav Epic to Prague in celebration of Czechoslovakia’s tenth anniversary.  The completed pieces were shown during Prague’s tenth anniversary celebrations (Omladina was not yet complete).

After the completion of Slav Epic, Mucha continued taking commissions for work.  He did a stained glass in the newly restored north nave in St. Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague, and a mural for the Nymburk City Savings Bank.  In 1932, Mucha and his family moved to Nice for two years.  In 1934, France made Mucha an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur on the recommendation of President Poincaré.  In 1936, back in Czechoslovakia, Mucha began a new triptych - The Age of Love, The Age of Wisdom, The Age of Reason - which was to be for all mankind, not just Slavs.  Mucha’s health was beginning to fail and he was worried about the possibility of war, and the piece was never finished.

With the rise of fascism in the 1930s, some began to view Mucha’s works and his nationalism as “reactionary”.  Mucha was one of the first people arrested by the Gestapo when they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939.  Mucha caught pneumonia during his interrogation and, while he was released, he was weakened.  His health continued to deteriorate and on July 14, 1939, Mucha died, just shy of his 79^th birthday.  He was buried in Slavín Cemetery in Vyšehrad, Prague.  The Germans had banned gatherings and speeches, but the Czech art scholar Max Svabinský “deliver[ed] a funeral speech to a large crowd of mourners” (8).

            This is already longer than I’d intended so I’m going to go through his legacy pretty quickly.

            When Mucha died, his style was beginning to be seen as outdated.  Because of this and the war, Slav Epic was put into storage for twenty-five years, becoming water damaged as a result.  In 1961, Jiří Mucha’s biography of his father was published and interest in Mucha began anew.  In 1962, Prague commissioned the first nine panels of Slav Epic to be restored at their new location in Moravský Krumlov’s castle (where they were stored during the war), and by 1963 those panels were displayed.  Moravský Krumlov funded the restoration of the remaining canvases.

            In the twenty-one years from 1963 to 1984, worldwide exhibitions of Mucha’s art took place, starting in London and continuing in Paris, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York, Brussels, Tokyo, and Uppsala.  These exhibits include illustrations, posters, and photography.  In 1968, Moravský Krumlov exhibited all twenty pieces of the Slav Epic at the castle, where they would be on continuous display until 2011.

            In 1991, Jiří Mucha died, and the following year, his wife Geraldine and their son John set up the Mucha Trust and the Mucha Foundation.  The Trust and Foundation help to control copyright issues, as well as setting up exhibits and tours.  Beginning in 1993, the Foundation worked on exhibits in London, Prague, Tokyo, Lisbon, Hamburg, and Brussels.  In 1998 the Foundation opened the Mucha Museum in Prague.  Exhibitions and retrospectives continued.  There were exhibits in London and Washington, D.C., Edinburgh, China, Taiwan, Japan, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Spain, Austria.

            In 2010, Prague requested the return of Slav Epic from Moravský Krumlov.  When the move was proposed, there was a protest in Moravský Krumlov against it with more than one thousand people showing up.  In 2011, the City of Prague Gallery forcefully removed Slav Epic for return to Prague.

            So that’s Mucha.  There was a lot more to talk about than I would have guessed.  I never knew he was so politically involved or that he had created something like Slav Epic.  I only knew of Mucha from his Art Nouveau works, all pastels, pretty women, and swirling designs; that’s not bad, but there’s so much more!  I wasn’t sure where to put it in above, but Mucha was also responsible for the bringing freemasonry back to Czechoslovakia.  Mucha’s artistic influence is still seen today.  In the 1980s he influenced artists and musicians, the band Soilent Green even using one of his pieces as an album cover.  One of my favorite internet-y, pop culture-y artists, Megan Lara, does gorgeous Art Nouveau works in the style of Mucha (the tall, narrow forms).  He’s so influential and so much more interesting than I ever knew.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – Mucha Foundation Timeline

Art Nouveau

            I was helping my sister try to find a particular painting late last night (still haven’t found it; I told her to let me know if she does), and I was looking at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website on Art Nouveau (this was for me, what she was looking for doesn’t sound like it is Art Nouveau).  In reading through their page quick, I had a moment of “Oh crap, did I give bad information on Monday?”  The Met’s page discusses how Art Nouveau was first discussed in the 1880s, and I said that it really grew up around Mucha.  Was I wrong?  So, I decided to look a bit better this morning, when I’m not so tired, and so here’s a brief little article before we get to part two of Mucha next Monday.

            Like I mentioned, Art Nouveau just means “new art”.  I think this is where a little bit of the confusion comes in, at least for me.  The Met’s page on Art Nouveau says that the term first appeared in the 1880s in the “Belgian journal L’Art Moderne to describe the work of Les Vingt, twenty painters and sculptors seeking reform through art” (1).  At this time a lot of the European art community was coming together under the idea that all art should be unified; there shouldn’t be a division between fine arts and decorative arts anymore.  A lot of the artists were influenced by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement.

            In the late 19^th century, in Germany the magazine, Jugend, was being published; this gave name to the Jugendstil movement.  In December 1895, Siegfried Bing opened his gallery, Maison de l’Art Nouveau, in Paris, increasing the use of the name Art Nouveau.  Bing only showed modern art at his gallery.  In 1900 Paris hosted the Exposition Universell (this will be discussed in next Monday’s Mucha article).  Bing exhibited at the show, presenting “coordinated – in design and color – installations of modern furniture, tapestries and objets d’art” (2).  The popularity of the Exposition and Bing’s display were so popular, that it further tied Bing’s gallery name to the art he was showing.

            The Paris Exposition was the second where the new art style was being seen.  In 1888 at the Barcelona Universal Exposition, Modernisme grew in popularity.  These were mainly just in buildings though.  The Paris Exposition, as mentioned, brought the new style in to every facet of art and décor.  Then, in 1902 in Turin, all the countries that now had an Art Nouveau-type movement were showing their pieces.  These countries all had their own names for it too.  In Germany it was Jugendstil; Russia was Modern; Catalonia (Spain) was Modernisme; Austria-Hungary was Secession; Italy was Stile Liberty; and France, of course, was Art Nouveau.  The new art form was most popular in Europe, but had worldwide influence.

            All of these names for the new type of art showed just that; the names mostly either meant “new art”, “modern”, “contemporary”.  Some of the names were taken from artists in the style, like The Mucha Style; others were from where the art was done, “Metro Style”; others were from the company, “Stile Liberty” from the company Liberty & Co., and in the U.S. Tiffany Style; others still were location based, “Glasgow Style”.

            What all these styles had in common was the tying together fine arts and decorative arts.  Posters were being taken seriously as art; there was glass work, sculpture, jewelry, ceramics.  All this was being considered art now.  The other thing that the art had in common was the natural style of the art.  The architectural works looked like they were literally growing from their base.  A lot of artists took their cues from botanical and sea-life.  Some of the styles even became known this way, meaning “floral style”, “lily style”, or “wave style”.  The art was all about “freedom and release … from the weight of artistic tradition and critical expectations” (3). 

            In addition to William Morris’s influence, “Arthur Mackmurdo’s book-cover for Wren’s City Churches (1883), with its rhythmic floral patterns” (4) influenced the early proponents of Art Nouveau.  There was also a new popularity of Japanese works (Japan had recently opened to the West).  The Japanese wood block prints were popular at the time, and had the natural rhythms to them that Art Nouveau too would have.  Bing was one of the early proponents of Japanese style art, along with Arthur Lasenby Liberty.

            After World War I, people didn’t want Art Nouveau anymore, and it was also just too expensive to make.  The more streamlined Art Deco took over.  Art Nouveau didn’t go away though.  Artists in Denmark and Poland modified Art Nouveau and used it to create their own, new styles.  And down the line, in the 1960s Art Nouveau had a resurgence in popularity, which really hasn’t stopped (which I’ll talk about next week).

            So, back to Mucha and where he fits in with all of this.  As seen above Mucha didn’t really create Art Nouveau.  There were artists, magazines, and galleries in this style before he really hit it big.  But.  Mucha’s Gismonda poster, the one created for the Sarah Bernhardt show, really popularized Art Nouveau for everyone.  It wasn’t just an artist’s movement anymore, it was something that was everywhere.  Art Nouveau’s popularity grew throughout Paris and France directly because of the Gismonda poster.  Again though, Mucha didn’t like being associated with the term.  He believed “art was eternal and therefore could never be merely ‘nouveau’” (5).  He followed what he wanted to do, his own sense of the purpose of art, not any school of art.

1, 3 – Art Nouveau (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

2, 4 – Art Nouveau

5 – Alfons Mucha and Art Nouveau

Alphonse Mucha

         This week, someone I’ve been interested in for a long time.  And someone so much more interesting than I ever knew.  Alphonse (originally Alfons, but I’m going with the westernized spelling) Mucha was the creator of Art Nouveau, but was also extremely interested in restoring the history of the Czech/Slovakian peoples.  His biggest, and what he considered his most important, piece is something I’d never heard of before.  But, to start at the beginning.

            Alphonse Maria Mucha was born July 24, 1860 in Ivančice, Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in what is now the Czech Republic.  Mucha’s father was a court usher and his mother had been a governess in Vienna.  Mucha had two older half-sisters from his father’s previous marriage, and would have two younger sisters as well.

            From an early age, art was Mucha’s main hobby.  In 1868 he produced one of his first pieces, a Crucifixion, showing the heavy influence of the Catholic Church on him.  Art wasn’t going to allow him to do much though, and at age twelve he received a “choral scholarship from the Petrov Church to board at the Gymnázium Slovanské secondary school in Brno” (1).  However, just five years later, Mucha was “expelled from school due to poor academic performance” (2).  His father found him a job back in Ivančice after his expulsion, and on his way there Mucha visited a friend in Ústí nad Orlicí.  At a local church he saw a fresco by the current, local artist Jan Umlauf.  Once he saw that artists currently working in the area could earn a living, Mucha “resolve[d] to become a professional artist” (3).

            So the next year Mucha applied to the Prague Academy of Art, but didn’t get in.  Instead, he worked at administrative jobs while pursuing “decorative design work for local magazines and theatres” (4).  Two years later, Mucha applied and was accepted to “become an apprentice scenery painter at Vienna’s Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt theatre design company” (5).  Mucha began taking evening classes as well, and visiting galleries and art exhibits as well, taking an interest in Hans Makart.  Makart was a current Austrian painter, designer, and decorator; he was a celebrity in Vienna at the time and influenced other artists as well, such as Gustav Klimt.

            Mucha’s success with Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt was short-lived though, due to the Ring Theatre burning down.  The Ring Theatre was one of Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt’s biggest and most important clients at the time.  A lot of Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt’s staff was laid off due to the decrease in the amount of work needed; Mucha was one of those laid off.  He didn’t let this get him down; he moved back to Moravia and tried his hand at freelance work, focusing on portraiture and decorative painting.

            In 1882 Mucha received his first real commission.  He had travelled to Mikulov in southern Moravia where he was “painting portraits of local society figures” (6), when he was noticed by Count Karl Khuen-Belasi.  The Count commissioned Mucha to paint a scene in Emmahof Castle, his main home.  The Count’s brother, Egon, also commissioned Mucha to paint a scene in his castle, Gandegg.  These early, large scale projects would lay the groundwork for much of Mucha’s work in the future.  The Count also gave Mucha continued financial support, allowing him to “receive formal art training in Munich and Paris” (7).

            From 1885 to 1887, Mucha studied at the Munich Academy of Arts.  While there he became active with the Škréta group, “a community of Central and Eastern European art students living in Munich” (8).  This is a theme that would continue to pop up in Mucha’s life: the importance of the Central and Eastern European countries own history and mythologies.

            While at the Munich Academy of Arts, Mucha continued to do work for publications back in Ivančice, creating illustrations for the magazines Fantaz and Krokodil, run by his brother-in-law and friend.  This is when Mucha’s approach to lettering and calligraphy really begins.  (If you’ve ever seen anything written in an Art Nouveau style, it’s probably going to look like Mucha’s lettering style.)

            Also while still at the Munich Academy of Arts, Mucha’s family contacts secured him a commission in the United States, to create an alterpiece for the Church of St. John of Nepomuk in the Czech community, Pisek, in North Dakota (9).  Mucha decided to portray two of the Czech’s best loved Saints, Saints Cyril and Methodius.

            After completing his two years in Munich, Mucha moved to Paris in the fall of 1887.  Mucha entered the Académie Julian, where he studied under Lefèbvre, Boulanger, and Laurens.  While at the Académie Julian, Mucha was introduced to the Nabis.  The Nabis were a group that “believe[d] that art [stood] on an equal footing with design” and worked “with designers and publishers to produce set designs, wallpaper, textiles, ceramics and stained glass” (10).  This would influence a lot of Mucha’s design sensibilities.

            In 1888, Mucha moved on from the Académie Julian to the Académie Colarossi, but his education there was cut short.  In 1889, the Count decided to stop funding Mucha’s education and so Mucha had to leave the Académie Colarossi.  He stayed in Paris though, getting commissions for illustrations from French and Czech publishers (11).  In 1890, Mucha became a contributor to Le Costume au théâtre et a la Ville, a magazine of theatre costumes.  For this magazine, Mucha created his first drawing of Sarah Bernhardt, showing her as Cleopatra.

            Mucha worked steadily at this point.  In 1891 he worked for Armand Colin, illustrating high quality school books in Paris.  In 1892 he began teaching drawing, eventually being asked to teach at Académie Colarossi, and at Whistler’s Académie Carmen.

            Also in 1892, Mucha exhibited his work for the first time at the Paris Salon at Palais des Champs Elysées.  He won an honorable mention for his piece which was a “selection of works illustrating Xavier Marmier’s Les Contes des Grand-Mères” (12).  In 1893 Mucha purchased his first camera; this allowed him to better compose his works, but also allowed him to explore photography as an art in itself.

            In 1894 Mucha met August Strindberg, who introduced him to occultism and mysticism, themes which would influence both his life and his work.  Also in 1894 Mucha was commissioned by the publisher Lemercier to do a special edition of a supplement to their magazine Le Gaulois.  This commission was to be a feature on Sarah Bernhardt’s Gismonda at the Théâtre de la Renaissance.  At Christmas that year, Gismonda needed a new poster at the last minute.  Mucha volunteered to do the poster within two weeks.  This poster was long and narrow, with “subtle pastel colors and the ‘halo’ effect around the subject’s head” (13).  Mucha’s poster was completely different from all other posters at the time, and it was hugely popular.  Collectors would bribe poster hangers for a copy, or would quickly cut down the newly hung posters.  Sarah Bernhardt was “so satisfied with the success of this first poster that she began a six-year contract with Mucha”, having him design posters, sets, and costumes for her (14).

            In 1896 Mucha began contributing to La Plume, a monthly publication of poems, stories, art reviews, and avant-garde illustrations.  La Plume put on exhibitions of its artists work called Salon des Cents.  Mucha was asked to create the poster for the 20^th Salon.  The exhibitions and the magazine were interested in posters as art, so they took their posters seriously.  At this same time Mucha entered into a contract with Champenois, “one of the most important printers of the period” (15).  Champenois’s posters ranged from affordable ones on cardstock, to expensive ones on satin and vellum.

            In 1896, Mucha moved to a new studio that had large, open windows and a glass ceiling.  His interest in photography grew at this point due to the improved lighting; he also began experimenting with sculpture due to the influence of August Seysses, who worked in the same building as Mucha.

            Mucha continued to work with Champenois, and in 1896 Champenois commission him to do a series of panels based around the four seasons.  Decorative panels were increasingly popular at the time, and Mucha’s art on a decorative panel would be a sure success.  The four season panels were so popular, that Champenois commissioned two more sets based on the seasons in 1897 and 1900.  In 1897, in addition to the decorative panels, Champenois was putting Mucha’s work on whatever it could: “calendars, postcards, theatre programs and menus” (16).  Champenois also licensed Mucha’s work throughout Europe and North America.

            In 1896, Job cigarette papers commissioned Mucha to create a poster for them.  At this time smoking was a male activity and so putting a “sensual woman” on the poster gave “the product a sense of illicit glamour” (17).  The following year Mucha had his first solo exhibition; he showed 107 works at the Galerie de la Bodinière, and the introduction in the exhibition’s program was by Sarah Bernhardt.  Mucha had his second solo exhibition that year at one of the Salon des Cents that was held at the offices of La Plume; this exhibition had 448 pieces.  Over the next two years he had exhibits in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Munich, Brussels, London, New York, and more.

            Mucha was increasingly popular and was making pretty much everything at this time (in addition to Champenois putting his work on even more).  He was painting, creating posters, advertisements, illustrations for books.  He was beginning to design jewelry (which we will touch on next week), carpets, wallpaper, and theater sets.  He also had a completely new style, “frequently featur[ing] beautiful young women in flowing, vaguely Neoclassical-looking robes, often surrounded by flowers which sometimes formed halos behind their heads” (18).  He also used pastels when most people did not.  This new style was called, simply, The Mucha Style, but became known as Art Nouveau, “new art”.

            Mucha, however, didn’t really want to be associated with Art Nouveau.  The style he’d created was so often copied and was so far from what he was trying to do.  Mucha said that his paintings were “entirely a product of himself and Czech art” and that “art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more” (19).  The art he became so known for was his commercial work; he wanted to concentrate on artistic, important works.

            And that’s where we’ll leave it for today.  We’re at roughly the halfway point of Mucha’s life.  He’s become world-known for the new style he created.  His popularity is only growing.  Next week will be the rest of Mucha’s life, the big projects he did and, really, his life’s work, that artistic, important work.  I’ll also talk about what happened to Mucha’s work and popularity after his death.  So.  Till next time.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 – Mucha Foundation Timeline

18, 19 - Alphonse Mucha