Art Nouveau [aʁ nuvo] is an artistic movement proliferated during the last decade of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. Flourishing in France, but with a strong presence in Belgium, Germany (Jugendstil), Italy (Stile Liberty or Stile Floreale), Spain (Modernismo), Holland (Nieuwe Kunst), and other European countries, as well as further afield as in the United States of America, the term itself pointed emphatically to a rejection of historicism and tradition in favour of a new aesthetic appropriate for a new century.
The movement was born in January of 1995, when a Czech artist working in Paris, Alphonse Mucha, produced a lithographed poster which appeared in the streets of Paris as an advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou, starring Sarah Bernhardt. It was an overnight sensation, and announced the new artistic style to the citizens of Paris.
There are very interesting stories behing many posters of this period, here are a few examples:
Le Chat Noir
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1896)
This lithograph was actually an advertisement poster for “Le Chat Noir”, a 19th-century cabaret in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris, opened by the artist Rodolphe Salis.
It this cabaret, Salis most often played, with exaggerated, ironic politeness, the role of conférencier. It was this attitude from the cabaret scene that originated the “les arts incohérents” movement (later associated to the “avant-garde”) and the comic monologues.
This is how Salis describet his cavaret:
“The Chat Noir is the most extraordinary cabaret in the world. You rub shoulders with the most famous men of Paris, meeting there with foreigners from every corner of the world.”
Ambassadeurs
Toulouse-Lautrec (1892)
This lithograph publicized the singer Aristide Bruant’s debut at the Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Elysées, an altogether up-market venue for this popular entertainer who usually performed at his own café in Montmartre, the Mirliton (Reed Pipe). Source
Moulin Rouge – La Goulue
Toulouse-Lautrec (1891)
The poster advertises the Moulin Rouge dance hall and its featured performer La Goulue (the Greedy One or the Glutton), so named for her voracious appetite for all things sensual. By advertising a specific celebrity rather than anonymous beauties, Lautrec infused his poster with star power. The poster created a sensation, and fueled the popularity of both La Goulue and Lautrec. Source
Jane Avril
Toulouse-Lautrec (1899)
Toulouse-Lautrec’s penultimate poster, implicates one of the artist’s closest friends and favorite models in the sexual goings-on of Montmartre, the famous dancer Jane Avril (1868-1943). Jane was the daughter of a demi-mondaine known as La Belle Elise and the Marchese Luigi de Font, an Italian aristocrat from whom Jane’s mother extracted minimal support after he left her. Beaten by her mother, she ran away from home at the age of sixteen and was confined in a lunatic asylum… There she was a favorite of the nuns who cared for her. It was at a party they gave in her honor that Jane first displayed her joy in music and dancing. The performance convinced her caretakers that the girl might not be as mad as her mother insisted. Upon her release, she refused to return to her mother’s home, finding her way instead into the dance halls of Paris. Source
The Art Nouveau Posters by Red Mezzanine, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
English
No Comments on “Art Nouveau Posters”
You can track this conversation through its atom feed.