In class, Professor Jagers spoke about "rules" of style as a mechanism towards creating unity among the art team on the Extinction project-- things like no-gradients, particular color schemes, consistent sets of proportions. Shortly thereafter, I somehow got sucked down the rabbit hole and absolutely consumed by art nouveau.
I've always kind of preferred Deco, which has the curvilinearity shorn of ornamentation-- but I've discovered Alfonse Mucha, and I'm really digging his style. I've always liked the period-- this beautiful, doomed moment before World-War-One when the towering edifice of centuries of European culture teetered before the fall, but when the fin de seicle energy promised the hope of renewal. Nouveau tied into this: its baroque complexity belonged very much to the aristocratic, ornamented "old" world (in England, I suppose, it would largely be Victoriana)-- and its emphasis on hand-craftsmanship demanded the socio-financial structure of the age-- but its spirit was of everything being new. The Germans called it Jurgenstile (litterally: the style of the young-- but this also referred to an art journal that strongly promoted it), and the Austria-Hungarians called it "The Style of the Secession"-- meaning that they rejected the history of Art entirely and sought to create something wholly new. An art nouveau, if you would.
In this regard, it links up with other art movements historically. The key was the impressionists (and the photograph) shattering the monopoly of the classical French style-- an end to the primacy of realism and dark, classical subjects. Building off of that moment, art diverges in a couple of different directions. Where the Expressionists would diverge further and become modernism, the new "high" art, Nouveau rejected the distinction between "high" and "low" entirely. It was seen as being a "total" art that would encompass painting, architecture, sculpture, furnature, decoration, and jewelry. Some of the more famous icon of the style still widely used is the ironwork and lettering of the Paris Metro, Tiffany lamps and the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was born in part of the industrial revolution and the availability of new materials to artists-- while at the same time eschewing mass-produced goods as soulless and inartistic. This latter quality played some role in dooming the movement as a whole, which abruptly ended in 1914.
Mucha, ironically, believed that art was eternal and could never be "new." He was also a Slavic nationalist who didn't look kindly on the internationalism of the movement. I think he was pretty down on artistic movements generally, and became very bitter that the art for which he was in demand became pigeonholed in one particular form, and a commercial one at that (shades of NC Wyeth?). Nevertheless, he, rather than, say, Klimt, is the painter whose work I conceptually associate with "art nouveau" because of the deeply commercial nature of his work.
So, what I'm going to do today is this:
I'm going to stick up some Muchas, courtesy of Olga's Gallery http://www.abcgallery.com/M/mucha/mucha67.html (copyright has expired on all works before 1923). I'm then going to take a look at them and see if I can't identify some of the common "rules" of le stile Mucha.
He was basically Sarah Bernhardt's personal artist, and became famous for doing posters of her. His range, in that style, was regrettably limited. He did lots and lots of poster-bills with pretty girls set against surrealistic backgrounds (indeed, the dream-like quality and the use of color remind me of Windsor McCay, who was a cartoonist contemporary to Mucha). My favorite is the last one, Lotery of National Unity-- but it's much darker and less ornamental than his other work. I think its absence of some of the motifs underscores their presence in the other works.
1) Frames -- All these works have them. Except for Lotery, all of them are extremely ornate. Some of them are square, like a Tarot Card, but he also seems very fond of an arch shape. Actually, the Monte Carlo frame is pretty simple too, but there is an implicit floral frame around the main figure. Note that in most of the peices the frame is symmetrical-- I've read a lot about the importance of asymmetry in nouveau art, but Mucha doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.
2) Subject -- The foreground is a pretty girl, usually not too excitingly posed, generally not interacting heavily with the environment.
3) Backgrounds -- The background is similar to what I have come to think of as an "anima banner" (borrowing the term from the Exalted RPG). Surrelistic auras comprised of symbolist objects arranged in a flowing pattern. These can stand on their own in clumps, snake around in lines (I've read that nouveau was sometimes called, perhaps derisively, "eel style"), or be woven together into wheels. The intricacy is astounding.
4) Plant Imagery -- One thing to note about the composition of these is that they are symbol-dense and heavily feature repeated plant imagery in a motif that is heavily associated with Art Nouveau., or be arranged in wheels. In any event, they contribute to the intense business of the scene. Notice the contrast in Lotery where the bare and withered tree, devoid of leaves symbolizes despair and fruitlessness (and also suggests roots-- Slavic roots at that). Part of the reason it that image is so powerful is the context of phantasmagorical foliage which features so heavily in his other work.
5) Lines -- It has 'em. It's almost a comic-book style, to an extent. Most shapes have a thick outer border-- usually (but not always) black. Interior lines are thinner and suggest contours rather than texture. Sometimes they are of the same hue as the material which they are being drawn upon, rather than the black of the exterior line.
6) Colors -- I don't quite know how to describe them. They're intense and yet desaturated? They have a washed-out, watercolor, dream-like quality to them-- they're usually not solid. They do form color-blocks that strongly resemble flat color, but within them there are these undulating, uneven tones that suggest shape.
7) Hair -- Hair flows like its underwater and spirals into elaborate whorls or ripples like a single shape (see the Joan of Arc picture particularly). One thing it emphatically is NOT is whispy or pointed-- there are no single strands, and even in the first picture here where it spirals off, the shapes end in flat caps.
8) Cloth --There is a lot of it, and it wrinkles and drapes and flows. The contour lines of the cloth are often the only thing that breaks up these large flat colored ares-- and he uses Notice that they're all wearing strange neo-classical outfits.
9) Text -- No soulless machine fonts for the Nouveau artist! Only curvy, warped hand-lettering will do.
10) Shading -- Note that shadows are discrete shapes, but highlights are generally areas that flow smoothly out of a base color. One important feature-- and actually what inspired me to write this post to begin with-- is the realization that his images feature an almost total absence of specularity. It's all diffuse-- no glow, no shine, soft highlights. This is almost certainly the product of the technical limitations of printing in his era but it is nevertheless an important facet of the overall look.
Here's a piece of mine from some time back that I suspect may have been inadvertantly influenced by Mucha:
I think there are some obvious similarities in subject and composition, but after doing this analysis, I am much more keenly aware of the differences in style. There is no frame. I did some fabric flowing, but not as much as Mucha would-- and it's a bit simple. My color scheme is too saturated. There is no border and no sense of flow. The anima-banner is nice, but it lacks the complexity than he would have put in. There is no text. The coloring evokes cut+grad comic shading rather than his watercolor tone. Specularity abounds, but shadows are very limited and rounded.
Up next, I'm tinkering with the notion of trying to do a piece in Mucha's style and illustrate the process step-by-step.
OK, I'm doing more than tinkering-- but I make no promises of success.
Till next time,
-ALD
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