Several years ago I found a set of Alphonse Mucha posters that I remember seeing tucked away but have no memory of where they came from. The posters were beautiful, clean reproductions on nice card stock. While they were clearly mass produced and sold in sets of twelve, they were not the digitally printed versions that fill stores today. I framed two, an advertisement for ‘Job’ cigarette paper and Fruit, and started on a quest to find out more about the artist.
Fast forward to August 2012 and I was standing in front of original Mucha prints. Beautiful designs on delicate pieces of paper were you could see the inks overlapping and the publishing house marks. They were even more remarkable than I could have ever imagined. At that point, already having driven from Seattle to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to see Alphonse Mucha: Inspirations of Art Nouveau at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. To experience his work in person was more jaw dropping than looking at Mount Rushmore had been a few days before.
Many years of on-and-off research had brought me to Iowa. Then last year I noticed on the foundation’s web site that an exhibit would be in the United States, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Not only was this the first exhibit in the United States in over twelve years, at the end the objects were to be divided up again. Many of the pieces will return to their homes in London or Prague, the rest traveling to Japan for a smaller exhibit.
The exhibit in Cedar Rapids included a total of 230 pieces including; a childhood drawing, family portraits, a large sample of his photography, well known posters and paintings, and even a few pieces of jewelry. What struck me looking at his posters was how he used inks.
These prints are beautiful in exhibit catalogs and “coffee table books,” but none have ever done them justice. It is amazing the amount of metallic inks. The prints pop with silver and gold in a way reproductions have never fully captured. Mucha clearly understood the printing process. He was able to create colors and gradations perfectly in a time before digital printing, when most press runs only used four inks.
Mucha was also a master of creating light. It can be seen in his decorative panels The Moon and Stars where the light appears to radiate from the paper. The stars burst against navy backgrounds lighting the figures. In other panels the light escapes from the figure's cupped hands glowing across their faces. This creation of light appears in the painting The Light of Hope, a painting which looks completely washed out online or in books. In person the light glowed from the woman’s hands.
The exhibit did touch on the period at the beginning of the 20th century when Mucha worked in the United States as the Art Nouveau style came to an end in Paris. Mucha himself was losing interest in the style and spent his time in the U.S. trying to find a balance between the marketability of the “Mucha” style and moving on stylistically. From this period the exhibit displayed samples of product packaging designed by Mucha and the press which surrounded his arrival to the country.
Many of the photographs on display had acted as studies for his posters and paintings. A practice that many of his contemporary artists had begun to experimenting with. Of these preparatory photographs some included Mucha himself posing. Not all the photography in the exhibit had been used as studies. Several captured his friends (including a famous image of Paul Gauguin at a piano) and family. Not as well represented were Mucha’s photographs of cities which have been important to modern scholars in their representation of pre-revolutionary Russia.
As can be expected, the scale and ownership issues of his master work the Slav Epic did not allow for its inclusion. The museum did an incredible job in representing these canvases through the use of large video displays. They not only illustrate the scale of these canvases,he viewer to stand next to the images in scale. but allowed the visitor to see several of canvases which make up the series. This was enhanced with photographs of the canvases on display, sketches and preliminary drawings.
I know that his ability as a “fine artist” was often questioned. He was seen only as a poster designer or decorative artist by many of his contemporaries.
“His (poster) style is very distinctive, with sinuous forms, elegance, sense of flowing and organic line,” says Sean Ulmer, curator at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. “If people saw these images, they’d say ‘yes, I know who that is.’ He’s simply not a household name.” The artist actually considered the posters a minor part of his work, grandson John Mucha, 64, says by phone from his home in Weymouth, on the southern coast of England. “He really didn’t want to be limited to any particular style,” Mucha says, adding that during an exhibition in Helsinki years ago, visitors thought the posters, drawings, pastels, oils or photographs, grouped individually in five rooms, were created by five different artists. - The Gazette newspaper, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
As I have said, I do believe he was a master poster artist, however after having looked at his paintings and preparatory sketches I find this idea that he was only a poster artist even more foolish than before. I can see how his painting style was not forward looking when compared to other artists of the period. At the beginning of the twentieth century is where we see artists like Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky and Gauguin were pushing painting in a very different direction than Mucha worked.
I am hopeful that this will not be the last of Mucha’s work to visit the United States. A huge amount of respect goes to everyone involved in bringing this exhibit together and personal thanks to the Mucha Foundation for lending the pieces, particularly such valuable pieces, so that I was able to see them.
