Ian Courtenay Johnston

“ The style, in fact, has a tendency to engulf and transform the object and its material, until this material becomes an obedient mass in the thrall of linear rhythm. . . . The ornamentation is always alive, restless, and at the same time balanced. . . . Unlike the static ornamentation of nearly all other stylistic periods, in Art Nouveau it is always at one and the same time moving and in a state of equilibrium. Deep down there is a striving to subdue movement by means of well balanced harmony. ”

“ The first important principle of the Art Nouveau movement was a desire to get rid of the distinctions between high and low art or major and minor arts. For many artists the essential thing was for art to affect and unify the lives of the people, not just in expensive oil paintings on rich people’s walls or in institutional salons, but in the essential objects of their daily lives—their homes, furnishings, cups and saucers, advertisements, wall hangings—everything from door handles to lamp posts and sewer gratings and toilet seats. ”

“ What sets Mucha apart from almost all other artists in the “movement,” however, is another passion which increasingly dominated his personal and working life—his commitment to Slavic culture. He was deeply convinced, no doubt on the basis of his own experience, that art should not concern itself with what was merely new but should develop itself out of old ethnic and national traditions: “The Ecole Estienne,” he wrote (in his reform proposals for Paris art schools) “is standing guard over a corpse . . . It is good to cultivate tradition in art, but at the same time . ”

“ As Henderson points out, he disliked the name of the “movement,” arguing that art was eternal and therefore could never be merely “noveau.” And he always insisted he followed his own sense of the important spiritual purposes of art, deriving his main inspiration from Czech traditions, rather than subscribing to the doctrines of any particular school. So even though many others associated his work so closely with Art Nouveau that they sometimes called it le style Mucha, that was not something which Mucha himself ever strove for or admitted. ”

“ That “war for the soul of the nation” is not over, of course, and, judging from the many unexpected turns of Czech history, it would be unwise to declare any cultural door permanently closed. Mucha’s work is still extremely popular in the West (especially with the renewed interest in Art Nouveau) , and there is now a modest Mucha Museum in Prague itself (operated by the artist’s grandson) . His dream of Slav nationalism is long out of date, of course (as it was at the time he donated his mythical re-interpretation of Czech history to his countrymen) . ”

“ The term ‘flowering’ aptly describes an art that was fundamentally inspired by nature. Hence, the cultivation of a sense of intimacy in the second half of the nineteenth century by means of sombre wall-hangings, curtains overladen with trimmings, heavy upholstery and indoor gardens full of green plants, finally gave way to the need to observe the outside world. ”

“ Dark autumn clouds will scud above your head and winter will cover Slavin with ermine snow, but spring will come again, the meadows and woods will flower in the Czech land, in Vysehrad the lilac will bloom and the honeysuckle will bloom on Ales’s grave. ”

“ Given such a nationalistic view of art, Mucha had little time for the notion of an art which sought to transcend ethnic and national boundaries, “There is therefore no such thing as international art. Such art can always only be the victory of the stronger and the absorption of the weaker.”
In 1900, at the height of his fame as an internationally known artist, Mucha decided to prepare for his commission to create the Bosnia-Herzegovina pavilion for the World Exhibition in Paris by touring the Balkans. On this trip Mucha was inspired to commit himself and his art to his Slav heritage. ”

“ Mucha’s portraits of women and girls typically locate them in a design strongly evocative of nature or natural patterning, and there is nothing about them of the high-society decadence which we see, for example, in the work of his contemporary Gustav Klimt. Most of them seem, by contrast, robust country girls, brimming with health and natural vigour and conveying an inborn selfconfidence and directness which has no malicious intent. ”

“ The horizontal line is a lying woman, the vertical one, a man penetrating her . . . (Adolf Loos, quoted Mucha 128) .
Madsen lists some other important features of Art Nouveau architecture, as follows (in brief) : an emphasis on asymmetry and flattened arches, a tendency to merge one room into another, so as to create a more organic sense of the division of space (which was accompanied by an organic principle in the ground plan—the attempt to make the building seem to rise from the ground) , and the use of the façade as a decorative surface to celebrate the “symbolic value of ornament.” ”

“ The popularity of these designs led to the production of postcards and calendars. And he continued to create advertising posters which have become famous and which remain today very popular works of art (at least to judge from the number of internet sites devoted to selling them) . An important part of this remarkable achievement is Mucha’s work with lavishly illustrated books, Ilsée (1897) and Le Pater (1899) , in which every page is a carefully worked out artistic totality, there is virtually no empty space, and everything has been brought into a dynamic linear harmony. ”

“ And, of course, for those experimenting in new styles in art in a new cosmopolitan and international spirit, the Slav Epic was a useful example of everything they considered wrong with traditional art, not merely in terms of aesthetic style but also in its inspiring idea, Slav nationalism, which for many was by now a sentimental illusion. ”

“ And it enables one to understand how the reactions against Art Nouveau, particularly the emphasis on certain forms of ornamentation, could arise from the within the most cherished ideas of the “movement.” For some of the harshest attacks on Art Nouveau were inspired by a strong reaction against the way some forms of it promoted excessive ornamentation (which, in turn, was often associated with sexual decadence) . ”

“ Even purely functional objects now largely machine made and mass produced should be shaped by the decorative powers of art. Hence we see many Art Nouveau artists, and Mucha in particular, demonstrating an astonishingly wide range of artistic interests (in his case from posters and paintings to lottery tickets, jewellery, police uniforms, designs for money, stamps, wall hangings, and so on) . ”

“ Here again, there is a wide range of treatment, but one common image in Art Nouveau is a single woman as the focus of the patterned lines, so that the figure or the face is an integral part of the pattern and derives from it a particular focus, strength, and intensity. Many of the best known paintings from Art Nouveau (including Mucha’s work) feature portraits of women
There is a often a powerful sense of sexuality in these pictures—from Beardsley’s decadence in the illustrations for Salome to the robust health and charm of Mucha’s country girls to Klimt’s open eroticism. ”

“ Sculptors responded joyfully by intermingling the female body with forms of plant life and only tolerating a flat surface it if could be decorated with marquetry, depicting a landscape or flowers with the vividness of a painting. ”

“ However much we might want to delve into the psychological pressures promoting some of these visions of women, what I find particularly interesting about many of these portraits is the directness of the gaze and the confidence in the posture—these women are indeed sexual, but they don’t strike me as mere playthings or objects, nor do they offer us demure Victorian rectitude. They have about them a sense of themselves, of their own passionate natures and their own power. The energy latent in the patterning serves to charge them with a sometimes disturbing power and independence. ”

“ There is a certain irony here in the fact that an artist so committed to spiritual and nationalistic goals should have become internationally famous largely on the basis of his advertisements, posters, and decorative designs in the service of the market place. His inspiration may have been, as he constantly asserted, themes and designs from the folk lore of his Czech past, but that is not how all of his countrymen viewed his work. ”

“ Fabrics and wll-papers brought the colour and gaiety of flowers into the interior of the house, newly opened to the light of day. Such was the infatuation with nature that fashionable ladies were seen to appear sporting complete gardens on their heads. ”

“ A transition away from Art Nouveau was realized in the work of Jan Kotera, who became Prague’s most famous Art Nouveau architect and, at the same time, shifted the emphasis from the natural lyricism most closely associated with the new style into something that more obviously anticipated future directions in modernism. ”

“ It’s important to remember the charged political climate of the time, with Fascists, Communists, Social-Democrats, Slav Nationalists, ethnic Germans and Czechs, among others, all competing for the political soul of the new Czechoslovakia. ”

“ The movement was kept alive by a few artists, at least until the outbreak of war in 1914, but that ended it. Given its significant popularity in all sorts of artistic fields, one might well wonder why Art Nouveau disappeared so quickly.
Because Art Nouveau was highly individualist, based above all on the artist, its practitioners could not solve the problem of machines and the mass production of common consumer objects. Hence, Art Nouveau style “never became a style for the masses, but remained an ‘artist’s’ style for the select few . ”

“ It may be true also that Art Nouveau never really resolved the central dilemma of form and content in its art and hence was overtaken by the inevitable developments of artistic modernism, the trend towards increasing abstraction in art and purism in architecture. ”

“ With children it is a natural phenomenon, their first artistic expressions are erotic symbols scribbled on a wall. But what is . . . normal with a child becomes a manifestation of degeneracy in modern man. I have come to the following conclusion which I am donating to mankind as a present: the development of culture is concurrent with the removal of ornaments from objects of daily use. ”

“ Parenthetically, one might note here the importance of these female illustrations in advertisements (a particularly marked element in Mucha’s posters) . Here, for almost the first time we have major artists creating, as part of their most lucrative and famous work, sexually charged portraits of women to sell market commodities (from cigarettes and liquor to train tickets and bicycles) . ”

“ In addition to this extraordinary gift to the Czech people, Mucha worked tirelessly and without commission on a large number of special projects for the newly created government, designing everything from bank notes and stamps to the national emblem and the police uniforms. One interesting tale from these projects concerns the design of the new Czech money in 1918. The demand for a design was so urgent that an earlier portrait of Mrs Josephine Crane Bradley, representing the traditional figure Slavia, was the main symbol on the 100 crown note (Mucha 236) . ”

“ The two mutually complementary poles are connected with specific human destinies. Another aspect of this characteristic is Art Nouveau’s relationship with music which acts as a catalyst of human experience. ”

“ The similarities between the new style and some elements of the Gothic and the baroque made such combinations attractive to those promoting developments in the prevailing historical styles, projects designed to meet the demand for new buildings that would contribute to the rich architectural traditions of the city. ”

“ However, his art was certainly influenced by the spirit of the time, a force that fed his naturally passionate convictions about the vital spiritual purpose of art, a belief that led him to devote considerable energy attempting to promote reforms in the teaching of art in France and to publish books illustrating his design principles. ”