Art Nouveau in France

Grasset and Cheret only initiated art nouveau in France. During the 1880’s Eugene Grasset was a regular at a nightclub in France, which became a gathering place for artists and writers. This is where he met and shared his enthusiasm for color printing with young artists such as Georges Auriol, Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec and fellow Swiss artist Theophile- Alexandre Steinlen. Even the father of poster design, Cheret, admitted that Lautrec’s 1891 poster of Moulin Rouge broke new ground in poster designs .It had a dynamic pattern of flat plains, black spectator silhouettes, yellow ovals for lamps and stark white undergarments of the notorious cancan dancers. All of this moved horizontally across the center of the poster. In front of this is a profile of a dancer called “the boneless one” because of his amazing flexibility. During this milestone of poster design, simplified dynamic shapes and dynamic spatial relationships form expressive and communicative images.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, poster for La Goulue at Moulin Rouge, 1891.

Shapes become symbols; in combination, these signify a place and an event.    

Lautrec broke his hips at the age of 13 due to an accident. This drove him to his obsession with drawing and painting. The growing in his legs were stunted, so Lautrec was left crippled but nevertheless he became a master draftsman in the academic tradition after moving to Paris two years later. Japanese art, impressionism, and Degas’s design and contour excited him. He haunted Paris cabarets and bordellos, where he developed a journalistic illustrative style that captured the nightlife of “The Beautiful Era”, which was a term used to describe the glittering late 19^th century Paris. Primarily a print maker, draftsman and painter, Lautrec produced only 31 posters and a modest number of music and book jacket designs. He also drew directly on the lithographic stone, often worked from memory with no sketches and used an old toothbrush that he always carried with him to achieve tonal effects through a splatter technique. The latter was a technique also used by Cheret.

There was an affinity in the reportorial and flat color used in the posters and prints of Steinlen and those of his friend, and sometime rival for commissions, Toulouise- Lautrec. The debate over which one influenced each other is irrelevant, because Steinlen and Lautrec drew inspiration from similar sources or each other.

Alexandra Steinlen was a prolific illustrator during the 1880’s and 1890’s. His radical political views, socialist affiliations and anticlerical stance led him toward a social realism depicting poverty, exploitation and the working class. His black and white lithographs often had color added by using a stencil process. His vast oeuvre included over 2000 magazine covers and interior illustrations, nearly 200 sheet-music covers, over 100 book illustration assignments, and three dozen large posters. Although his first color poster was designed in 1885, his legacy is based on masterworks of the 1890s. His 305x228 cm multi-panel poster for the printer Charles Verneau, mirrored the pedestrians on adjacent sidewalks on nearly full sized environmental scale. This was a monumental moment in his career. 

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, poster for Charles Verneau’s printing firm, 1896.

A cross section of Parisian society--a mother and baby, a washerwoman, two workers,
Steinlen’s daughter Colette with her nanny, a businessman, and sophisticated shoppers--promenades
in a nearly life-sized echo of the adjacent sidewalks.

Alphonse Mucha, Young Czech artist, worked at Lemercier’s printing company on Christmas Eve of 1894, dutifully correcting proofs for a friend who had taken a holiday. On that night was commissioned a poster for the famous Sarah Bernard who was demanding a new poster for the play Gismondaby New Year’s Day. He was the only artist available, so he accepted the commission. He used the basic pose from Grasset’s earlier poster for Bernhardt in Joan of Arc and sketches of Bernhardt made at the theater.  Mucha elongated Grasset’s format, used Byzantine-inspired mosaics as background motifs, and produced a poster very distinctly different from any of his prior work. The bottom portion of his poster was never finished due to the little amount of time he had. Because of its complexity and muted colors, Mucha’s work lacked Cheret's impact from afar. However, once they stepped closer, Parisians were astounded. On News year day, Mucha began his meteoric rise of his career.

Alphonse Mucha, Gismondaposter, 1894.

The life-size figure, mosaic pattern, and elongated
shape created an overnight sensation    

A number of influences throughout Europe were converging into what would be labeled art nouveau. Although Mucha resisted this label, maintaining that art was eternal and could never be new. The further development of his work and the visual poster are inseparably linked to this diffuse international movement and must be considered part of its development.

Just as the English Arts and Crafts movement was a special influence on that country’s art nouveau, France was influenced by the light and fanciful flowing curves of the 18^thcentury Rococo. The new art was hailed as le style modern until December 1895. Samuel Bing was a dealer of art and artifacts and fostered the growing awareness of Japanese work and so he opened his gallery Salon de l’ Art Nouveau, to exhibit art and crafts by young artists working in new directions. Henri Clemens van de Velde was a Belgium architect who was commission to design the interiors of the gallery, which exhibited painting, sculptures, glasswork, jewelry and posters by an international group of artists and designers.

Graphic design became to move rapidly towards the floral phase of art nouveau as Cheret, Grasset, Lautrec and especially Mucha developed its graphic motifs. In 1895 -1900 Art Nouveau found its most comprehensive statement in Mucha’s work. His dominant theme was a central female figure surrounded by stylized forms derived from plants and flowers, Moravian folk art, Byzantine mosaics and even magic and the occult. His work was so persuasive that le Style Mucha sometimes used to replace the term Art Nouveau.

Mucha’s women project an archetypal sense of unreality. Exotic, sensuous, and yet maiden like, they express no specific age, nationality, or historical period. His stylized hair patterns became a hallmark of the era in spite of critics who dismissed this aspect of his work as “noodles and spaghetti”. Sarah Bernhardt, who had not been pleased with Grasset’s Joan of Arc poster or many other posters for her performances, felt that Mucha’s Gismondaposter expressed her so well graphically that she signed him for a six-year contract.

Alphonse Mucha, poster for Job cigarette papers, 1898.

Mucha delighted in filling the total space with animated form and ornament.    

 The volume of Mucha’s output was outstanding. In addition to graphics, he designed furniture, carpets, stained-glass windows and manufactured objects. His pattern books, including Combinations Ornementales (Ornamental Combinations) spread art nouveau. His last major art nouveau work was done in 1909 after Czechoslovakia became independent in 1917, when he moved back and centered most of his work there. A series of twenty large murals depicted the history of his people.

Emmanuel Orazi came to prominence as a poster design in 1884 when he designed a poster for Sarah Bernhardt. It was not until his static style yielded to the influences of Grasset and Mucha a decade later that he produced his best work that was the La Maison Moderne poster, which was designed for a gallery competing with Bings Salon de l’Art Nouveau. The poster depicted a sophisticated young lady presented in an Egyptian profile, which was posed before a counter bearing objects from the gallery. The logo on the window typifies the many applications of art nouveau letterforms to trademark design.

Emmanuel Orazi, poster for La Maison Moderne (The Modern House),1905.

Furniture, objects, clothing, jewelry, and even the woman’s hair evidence the totality of the movement.