In this essay, I will be exploring how Alphonse Mucha’s lithograph poster ‘Job’, an advertisement for cigarette papers, relates to it’s context, largely in relation to Paris’ urban development of Haussmanisation (the modernization by Baron Haussmann, starting in the mid 19th century). I chose to investigate this piece mainly because it exhibits the effects of Haussmannisation, how it both literally and metaphorically ‘opened up the whole of the city’ (Bermann, 2010, p. 150-1), creating an entirely new urban climate; leading to major changes in considerations of gender and altering the way Parisians consumed media in an era ‘when the posters [drew] the crowds’ (Cohen, 2012). In relation to my own practice, I embrace using tactile techniques in Illustration, such as print, and like Mucha did himself, am drawn to the ‘Art Noueveau’ ethos of both a celebration of truth rather than ornament as well as it’s commitment to distributing art to all.
Haussmannisation, beginning in 1853, had a profound impact on the modern poster, Paris ‘witnessed a crucial turning point in the history of the public space and aesthetics of posters’ (Carter, 2012, p.24) as the inside and outside layers of the city began to merge, and the streets of Paris became galleries in themselves. The creation of illustrative posters in Paris, occurred ‘at the dawn of the consumer age’ and merged with a newly found ‘particular type of spectatorship imagined within the newly renovated city of Paris’ (Carter, 2012, p.12). Work such as ‘Job’ expertly utilised the poster format, working perfectly in accordance with the new rhythm of Paris and its’ ‘sense of flux’ (Carter, 2012, p.16). From formatting choices of shape, size and lithography technique to specifics such as typography, ‘Job’ perfectly demonstrated the ethos of late 1800s Paris society and the consumerism it created. The process of lithography, used in ‘Job’, works on the basis of oil and water repelling one another to form a print; lithography, as a medium, allowed Mucha to apply colour, in a way that would scream out to the streets of Paris, contextually ‘nothing more than an immense wall of posters’ (cited in Carter, 2012, p.19) and could be produced relatively cheaply, at different sizes. ‘Job’ artfully uses the lithograph format, Mucha layers the portrait of the famous actress of the time, Sara Bernhardt, above intense patterning of contrasting greens and purples, complemented by a golden shade of yellow. The ‘O’ of ‘Job’ aligns with the profile of Bernhardt ‘as a nimbus’ and accentuates ‘the decorative effect of her hair and profile’ (Madsen, 1967, p.95).
A further key contextual feature that shapes my exploration of ‘Job’, is how it’s ‘delicately sensual style’ embodied ‘the urbane grace of French Art Nouveau’ (Mucha and Henderson, 1973, p.7). The nature of the piece as intensely decorated, crammed with neo classical imagery such as Bernhardt’s hair ‘styled in ‘macaroni’ or ‘noodle’ waves’ that are ‘intricately woven into the decorative pattern of the image’ (Ormiston and Robinson, 2009, p. 21) is resonant of Art Noueveau visuals. Whilst I appreciate this intricacy, the factor I find interesting about Mucha’s championing of Art Nouveau is the conceptual side, how work is distributed and produced with the intent of it being ‘for the people’ and how the layering of this inner and outer urban environment due to Haussmanisation, provided the means for this; the plastering of advertisements across new boulevards and public spaces offered themselves to all of Paris to view. This part of Mucha’s work feeds back to his application of lithography; as Henderson writes in ‘The Graphic Work of Alphonse Mucha’, he ‘welcomed the comparative cheapness of his lithographic work’ as a result of the ‘gospel of William Morris’ whom, among other artists, ‘influenced him in his youth and persisted [to] all his life […] Not for him the creed of art for art’s sake, art was for the people’ (Mucha and Henderson, 1973, p.11). Art Nouveau is of further importance as a strand of this exploration as it recognises a synchronicity of the past and modernity, a ‘dualism’ of ‘the weighty pressure’ faced by illustrators to this day ‘of the materialistic and the technical development on one hand, and on the other, the artist’s aesthetic approach’ (Madsen, 1967, p.9) ‘Job’, for example, recognises and slots perfectly into this new Paris, it’s consumerism and need for quick visual communication. As a poster, it had to ‘transform itself according to the demands of the environment’ (cited in Carter, 2012, p. 21) yet it also puts an intense value on aestheticism and beauty, the quickened pace of life created by Haussmannisation didn’t prevent Mucha from articulating works of immense beauty and intricacy that harped back to classicist art.
A further way in which ‘Job’ is contextually linked is its engagement with femininity; Mucha’s depiction of Bernhardt fuses female archetypes of the time to form ‘a sexual amalgam of virgin, temptress, goddess and peasant’ (Ormiston and Robinson, 2009, p. 95). This epitomises the contradictory position held by women during this era. Plott (2002, 2011), when discussing the ‘Femme Modaine’, describes a shift during 1860-1900, whereby ‘to a far greater extent, upper-middle-class women could construct a sexual sense of self while remaining respectable’, yet still suffered the expectation to formulate ‘a public, social persona to complement their domestic role’. ‘Job’ accurately represents this dichotomy; demonstrating that women were being marketed to in the wake of growing emancipation, yet simultaneously, the overtly sexualised image of Bernhardt, the fleshy tones of her figure and dress paired with the blissful facial expression and arch of her form, infer an eroticism that appeals to a heterosexual, male viewer.
In summary, Mucha’s ‘Job’ was entirely intertwined with its context, mainly through the three areas of change I’ve discussed; of the city itself, of advertisement and considerations of femininity. Upon researching this piece, I found a satisfying web of links throughout, how these things, more often than not, interweaved into one another and shaped how Mucha related to the context in which he was creating his work.