Alphonse Mucha Helped Define Art Nouveau. A New Show Explores His Lasting Influence

In 1894, the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923) tapped the Parisian studio Lemercier to create a last-minute poster for her production of . The assignment fell to Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), and it not only jump-started his career and a six-year partnership between the two—it helped establish him as one of the leading lights of the Art Nouveau style movement, creating a signature style that continues to inspire artists, illustrators, and designers to the present day.

That lasting influence is the jumping off point for “Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line,” which opened last month at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Organized by the Mucha Foundation, which is run by the artist’s descendants, the show features not only their extensive holdings of the artist’s posters, drawings, paintings, and other works, but also a wide selection of album covers, manga illustrations, comic book covers, and other 20th- and 21st-century artworks inspired by Mucha.

So a classic 1896 Mucha poster for Job cigarettes—one of his first and best-known advertisements—featuring a woman with long hair that curls into exaggeratedly stylized decorative swirls, is shown alongside a Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley poster for a 1966 concert featuring Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

The duo repurposed Mucha’s female figure, but transformed her with electric green hair set against bold shades of red and magenta and their own curving lettering.

“They are really identifying with this work’s graphic potency,” Phillips associate curator Renée Maurer told me. “They are relocating it to another time period by using a psychedelic color palette to promote the event.”

Mucha was undeniably revered in his day, when his posters and advertisements were widely disseminated. His posters lined the streets, and his illustrations graced the covers of major magazines.

And to feed the public demand for his work, Mucha even produced smaller posters printed in publications, allowing people to bring his ornately detailed lithographs home without having to rely the luck of finding one in the wild.

“This moment in history is really a wonderful time because there are less restrictions on printed materials, so more and more artists are creating posters and prints,” Maurer said. “Posters are everywhere, creating that open air exhibition space for everyone.”

“Everyone wanted to live with it,” Maurer added, citing the artist’s “sinuous line and curving form.”

His flowing compositions with their intricate line work are a timeless celebration of female beauty, as evidenced by the comparison between Mucha’s  from his 1898 series “The Flowers,” and the cover for the 1969 Diana Ross and the Supremes album designed by Dean Torrence (of the band Jan and Dean) for his company Kittyhawk Graphics. In both, the woman’s face is framed by a profusion of white flowers growing all around her.

In addition to some framed versions of mid-20th-century album art on display, the museum also has a retro-looking listening station featuring these records. Just put on the supplied headphones and place the album sleeve down next to the record player to listen to the music from Mucha-inspired artists including the Grateful Dead, Thin Lizzy, and King Crimson.

“Seeing these connections, having lived with or grown up with these posters, to see what inspired them is really fascinating,” Maurer said.

The Phillips is the first stop of the exhibition’s five-city North American tour, although the foundation has staged versions of the show in Japan and China. Mucha Foundation shows at U.S. museums are relatively rare; a 2021–23 show that only  traveled to the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky and the North Carolina Museum of Art, was the country’s first in 20 years. (In Prague, the foundation opened the first official Mucha Museum at the Savarin Palace just last week.)

The current retrospective, curated by Tomoko Sato, also includes some of Mucha’s childhood drawings, as well as items from his home and personal collection, such as Japanese prints that influenced his compositions.

It’s only fitting, therefore, that such cross-cultural exchange goes both ways—the show includes a number of contemporary manga illustrations from artists such as Hideko Mizuno, Ryoko Yamagishi, and Yoshitaka Amano that undeniably bear Mucha’s influence. That includes works mimicking Mucha’s signature “Q-formula,” in which a woman is seated within a circular halo shape, with drapery trailing off below her to form the tail of a capital “Q.”

Mucha’s style has become so famous and influential the world over that some of these artists weren’t even aware of who they had to thank for the elegant line, ornate framing devices, and gentle, organic beauty of the flowers and drapery that they were incorporating into their own work.

This embrace of the Mucha style—even unknowingly—speaks to an artistic connection across countries, from generation to generation, underscoring the lasting power of his art.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com