see also:

Art Nouveau

1. Art Nouveau I: A New Style for a New Culture

 

One person who made a fundamental contribution to the establishment of the graphic design profession was the multi-faceted design theorist and practitioner William Morris (1834-1896). Born to a wealthy British family, Morris was one of the first to recognize that the flood of goods produced because of the advances of the Industrial Revolution all too often lacked artistic merit. From furniture to books, Morris decried the lowly state of the design arts, and con­tended that the urban environment need not be filled with such downright ugly objects. Propelled by his beliefs, Morris dedicated his life to bettering the quality of British design. Beginning in 1861, he founded the first of a series of firms that would engage a variety of different design problems over the ensuing decades.
An important influence on Morris's attitude toward the arts was the work of the English writer John Raskin (1819-1900). In two books, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853), Ruskin asserted that industrial society had squelched the independent creativity of workmen. He contrasted this impoverished state with an idealized vision of medieval society, which Ruskin believed had represented a golden age of creative work because skilled design was at that time an integral part of the handcraft production of goods.
 

The Arts and Crafts Movement

 

Ruskin also swayed Morris with his assertion that the decorative arts—the name given to objects that may be beautiful but whose primary function is utilitarian, such as furniture or wallpaper— were the most important expression of creative individuals because they affected the mundane visual environment more than the fine arts of painting and sculpture. In addition, Ruskin asserted that architecture was the supreme exemplar of artistic production because it combined many design skills and had an immense effect on the overall human landscape.

In this respect, the decorative arts were credited with not just the ability to "prettify" the urban world but also to lead to an actual transformation of modern society that benefited people's lives in all respects. Ruskin and Morris were especially concerned with the plight of the millions of industrial workers who toiled away their lives in the factories that William Blake famously referred to as "dark satanic mills." It is important to note that many of these ideas about the social utility of good design will be significant not just to an understanding of Morris and his time but to several generations of graphic designers who followed him. "I do not want ART for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few." With statements such as this, Morris indicated his belief that the design arts had an important role to play in improving the lives of everyday working people. However, this statement is also exemplary of the fundamental disjunction that existed between Morris's published beliefs, and the actual design work with which his firm was engaged for over thirty years. (This theme of the stark contrast between many designers' theories and their practice will reappear several times throughout this text.) While he espoused the beneficial effects of the decora­tive arts on the lives of working people, Morris almost exclusively made hand-crafted objects that could be afforded only by the very affluent. In the 1880s, his firm even designed interiors for the throne room of St James's Palace in London as well as wallpaper for Queen Victoria's Balmoral estate in Scotland. Morris never referred to as "dark satanic mills." It is important to note that many of these ideas about the social utility of good design will be significant not just to an understanding of Morris and his time but to several generations of graphic designers who followed him. "I do not want ART for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few." With statements such as this, Morris indicated his belief that the design arts had an important role to play in improving the lives of everyday working people. However, this statement is also exemplary of the fundamental disjunction that existed between Morris's published beliefs, and the actual design work with which his firm was engaged for over thirty years. (This theme of the stark contrast between many designers' theories and their practice will reappear several times throughout this text.) While he espoused the beneficial effects of the decorative arts on the lives of working people, Morris almost exclusively made hand-crafted objects that could be afforded only by the very affluent. In the 1880s, his firm even designed interiors for the throne room of St James's Palace in London as well as wallpaper for Queen Victoria's Balmoral estate in Scotland. Morris never really acknowledged the fundamental contradiction of his career, that he was advocating handmade goods as a solution to the ugli­ness of the design of mass-produced products in an industrial society. In a sense, Morris was the first person to recognize the problems caused by industry, but he was unable to offer a workable solution.

Morris's firm, Morris & Co., first advertised itself in the 1860s as "Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving, Furniture and the Metals," and found its greatest success in the manufacture of stained glass, a product that was enjoying newfound popularity partly because of Ruskin's embrace of the medieval period. Morris's Minstrel with Clarinet stained glass (1870; fig. 1.2) was designed for the home of his friend the painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898). The style of the glass is one that can be termed "historicist," in that it revives a style from the past—in this case, the clear colors, attenuated proportions, and abstract, mannered grace of the medieval period. By using the style of a pre-industrial age, Morris was essentially sidestepping contemporary design problems, and thus had less of a direct stylistic influence on the future.

    Morris's design for the Sussex Chair (1875; fig. 1.1) exemplifies the focus on a simple, elegant aesthetic, featuring clean lines and well-balanced proportions without indulging in an excess of orna­ment. This simplicity was a direct response to the contemporary fashion for elaborate ornament in otherwise shoddy mass-produced goods. While some versions of the chair were quite expensive and made of mahogany and other rare and precious woods, other versions were available in a less expensive design, representing the closest that Morris came to a mass-reproduced object. However, it was a design fit for skilled craftsmen, not steam-driven machines, to make. The Sussex chair features uncomplicated shapes and a woven rush seat, which is indicative of its inspiration in country furniture. Around 1890, Morris's type of subdued, harmonious design was termed the "Arts and Crafts" style, a term still used broadly to describe a variety of unadorned, often geometrically structured, decorative an objects and architecture from the late nineteenth century. The term also refers to Ruskin and Morris's idealization of a medieval system of small-scale production whereby the designer of the work was also skilled in its production. Ironically, however, the future of graphic design lay in the exact opposite direction from the one Morris anticipated, as the design process was soon to be separated from the production of printed materials.

see collection:

William Morris

William Morris 's Kelmscott Press

In 1891, Morris expanded his firm's business to include book design, founding the Kelmscott Press, named after the family estate in Gloucestershire where the business was located. In a parallel to his work in other decorative arts, Morris reacted to the poor design of contemporary mass-produced books by establishing a press that produced limited-run editions featuring handmade paper and expertly tooled leather covers. Morris sought a return to the fifteenth-century book form, which he felt perfectly balanced aesthetic elements with the book's primary functional element: its legibility. In reprinting a chapter from The Stones of Venice as The Nature of Gothic (1892; fig. 1.3), Morris chose a text that he admired, and then produced a few hundred copies of a book that features a stunning historicist design, intertwining its ornate, sinuous "dropped capitals," or large capital letters that start a new section or chapter, with the rectangular block of text. At Kelmscott, Morris also worked in the related field of typography, creating a number of historicist typefaces, including Golden (fig. 1.4), a roman face based on the Old Style type of Nicolas Jenson.

Predictably, in terms of the fields of typography and book design, Morris's greatest influence lay in his analysis of the con­temporary scene, rather than in his reverence for the past, particularly the medieval period. In his preface to The Nature of Gothic, Morris reiterated his disdain for industrial mass produc­tion: "For the lesson which Ruskin here teaches us is that art is the expression of man's pleasure in labour; that it is possible for man to rejoice in his work, for, strange as it may seem to us today, there have been times when he did rejoice in it; and lastly, that unless man's work once again becomes a pleasure to him, the token of which change will be that beauty is once again a natural and necessary accompaniment of productive labour, all but the worthless must toil in pain, and therefore live in pain." As early as 1893, the Arts and Crafts movement that he helped form was criticized as "the work of a few for the few," because it failed to address the problems of mass production. In the future, designers would not just reject the historical model that Morris embraced, but they would also contend that Morris's use of historicist styles was inappropriate for a new, modern urban society.
 

French Art Nouveau
 

see also:

Art Nouveau

Like William Morris, an entire generation of designers in Europe believed that the urban world fostered by the Industrial Revolution lacked beauty. These artists shared Morris's stated desire to make the mundane everyday world a place of aesthetic accomplishment and to unify the different design arts, including graphic design, using a set of basic stylistic principles. However, while Morris looked to the past in his embrace of historicist styles, it was the consensus of other artists that they could, and should, create new styles for the new, industrial world in which they lived. Hence, Art Nouveau, or "New Art," became an umbrella term to designate the various design movements of the late nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. Curiously, the French term Art Nouveau, which came into general use around 1885, was most popular with English-speakers, while the French often tended toward the exotic-sounding English translation, "New Art."

Art Nouveau designers sought to devise a range of styles that were not directly based on historical revivals, but rather created a fresh visual vocabulary that celebrated the vibrant pulse of urban life. As we will see, the term An Nouveau is used to refer broadly to a number of disparate design movements from this era, as well as in a more narrow sense to delineate a specific set of stylistic criteria—meaning that not all Art Nouveau artists, in a chronological sense, display an Art Nouveau style.

see collection:

Jules Cheret

Jules Cheret

The most influential poster designer of the later nineteenth century was Jules Cheret (1836-1933). A French artist, the son of a typesetter, Cheret studied in London as a young man before returning to settle in Paris in the 1850s. Technically innovative as well as artistically gifted, he is credited with successfully pro­moting the art of color lithography. Chromolithography, through which a color image is produced using the principle that oil and water resist one another, had been an established, if underused, printing process since mid-century. After establishing a firm in 1866 through which to pursue lithographic printing (he was convinced that color lithography would soon replace letterpress printing), Cheret worked out a process that allowed him to create brightly colorful posters with a wide range of hue, value, and intensity. The secret to his success was what he called the fond gradue ("graduated stone") that he added to the traditional black and red impressions. Eventually, dramatically colorful images would be produced by combining as many as fifteen different colored lithography stones.

    There are two major stylistic streams in the poster art of Cheret; one is the influence of Japanese art, while the other is the French eighteenth-century style called Rococo. Cheret's use of the Rococo style is quite specific to the condition of French society in the 1870s. Having suffered a stinging defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, followed by a precipitous decline in industrial production relative to other European powers, the French people felt strongly that their traditional leadership in the design arts had to be maintained. Cheret accordingly called attention to a style that was uniquely French, and celebrated the national achievements of a society that was experi­encing a wave of self-doubt and introspection. The Rococo style was famous as the first modern design movement that had unified all of the decorative as well as the fine arts in dynamic composi­tions that featured brilliant colorist atmospheres. For example, the painting The Rising of the Sun (1753; fig. 1.5), by Francois Boucher (1703-1770), shows the French King Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, amid a swirling atmosphere of color and light. In addition, Rococo subject matter relied on the same sort of playful sensuality that was a popular part of the new cabaret culture in Paris. As Boucher's picture had shocked many people in 1753 with its nudity, so the frank sexuality of many Art Nouveau posters scandalized the modern Parisian public. Cheret's poster Folies Bergere—Fleur de Lotus (1893; fig. 1.6) perfectly captures, while updating, the sexual energy of Rococo art. This poster advertised a ballet and pantomime—popular entertainment at the Folies Bergere, Paris's most famous cabaret, founded in 1869. Cheret's use of the Rococo is not historicist in the manner of William Morris; rather, he has remade the style by combining it with his own innovations. In addition, Cheret employed an ephemeral, industrial medium, the mass-produced chromolithograph—a far cry from Morris's handcrafted use of age-old materials.

Cheret's poster art rose in prominence at the same time as the popular theater, which was a source of many designers' commis­sions. Many of his most famous images feature star performers from the world of dance, music, and theatrical productions. In a poster that displays Cheret's dramatic Rococo style, the popular American dancer Lo'ie Fuller (1862-1928) spins on the stage as her silk garments shimmer in a rainbow of color (1893; fig. 1.7). Born in Chicago, Fuller became a dance sensation in Paris in the 1890s through a combination of innovative techniques, such as the integration of natural movements and improvisation with more formal dance, as well as her startlingly innovative use of colorful stage lighting. Here, Cheret has found the performer whose aesthetic perfectly matches his own dynamic compositions and profuse colorism.

    Cheret's Les Girard (1879; fig. 1.8), a poster advertising yet another dance performance at the Folies Bergere, is an excellent example of his embrace of the Japanese style that had swept through France. The planes of even color, set apart by crisp con­tour lines, as well as the two-dimensional character of the overall work, are all elements derived from the style of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. In addition to the Japanese influence, Les Girard also demonstrates other stylistic attributes of the new art of graphic design. Cheret has expertly intertwined the legs of the dancers with the lettering on the poster. Not only are the text and image integrated in this spatial sense, but because there is no need to use predesigned type in a chromolithograph, Cheret was free to design his own lettering by hand. Therefore, the exuberant forms of the letters mimic the frenetic movement of the dancing figures. The integration of text and image produces a key contrast with the older letterpress style, as in figure, where the lettering and the picture of the horse occupy different zones in the poster and share little in the way of shape or structure. It is also significant to note how Cheret minimizes the amount of text in his posters, creating in its place an overall feeling of puissance, or joyfulness, which captures the excitement of a live performance.

The high-profile success of Cheret, a designer who created over 1,000 original compositions during his career, accounting for literally millions of mass-produced posters, helped to elevate the status of the poster designer during the last two decades of the century. In 1890, Cheret was granted two tributes: first, a solo exhibition of his posters was arranged in Paris; and second, he was offered the highest award of the French state, membership in the Legion of Honor. Coming on the heels of the first group exhibition of modern posters (in 1884), and the first French book on poster art (in 1886), Cheret's recognition announced to Europe that the art of the poster had arrived.

Cheret's entrepreneurial skills were almost as important as his artistic ones in igniting and feeding the public's appetite for posters. One of his most significant projects in terms of populariz­ing the art of the poster was the series of lithographs called Les Maitres de I'Affiche ("masters of the poster"), which was published in Paris between 1895 and 1900. Les Maitres de I'Affiche featured some new work but was focused mainly on small-format reprints of notable posters designed by ninety-seven artists, for a total of 256 plates. The plates were published by the printing house Imprimerie Chaix, which had been allied with Cheret's workshop since 1881. Each plate bore a special seal based on a design by Cheret, indicating his central role in the series.

Each month for the five years that the series was in production, subscribers received a set of four reprints, plus an additional sixteen special plates, made up of brand new images. Cheret, as director of the project, featured his own work sixty-seven times in the series, including seven of the sixteen new commissions. Other artists in the series included Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Theodore Steinlen, the Beggarstaffs, and Eugene Grasset—a veritable pantheon of top poster designers. Les Maitres de I'Affiche had definite advantages for collectors at the height of the "poster craze" of the 1890s because they measured 29 x 40cm, a format that was much more easily displayed in a home than the massive posters used on outdoor hoardings. Also the series made use of high-quality inks and papers, in contrast to the cheap newsprint and inferior inks used for the ephemeral products posted out on the street.

Imprimerie Chaix also published another set of eighty-four lithographic reprints in a slightly smaller format that was called Les Affickes Illustrees ("illustrated posters"). Published in two bound volumes, Les Affiches Hlustre'es featured many of the same posters from the larger series. Aimed at poster collectors, Les Afficbes Illustrees and Les Maitres de I'Affiche also played important roles in spreading the Art Nouveau style among artists in that these easily portable plates made their way across Europe and to the United States. Still, some collectors sought out the large-scale originals, and for that market dealers such as Edmond Sagot would produce overruns by popular artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec so that they could sell them direct to the collecting public.

1.5 Francois Boucher, The Rising of the Sun, 1753.
 

1.6 Jules Cheret, Folies Bergere - Fleur de Lotus, 1893. Colored lithograph.
Les Arts Decoratifs, Musee de Publicity Paris.

see collection: Japanese Prints

Japanese Prints

During the late nineteenth century, the art of Japanese woodblock prints had an enormous impact on European artists, including graphic designers. After Japanese trade with the West increased in the 1850s because of American military threats, an influx of Japanese art, especially a type of mass-produced commercial woodblock print called Ukiyo-e, or "floating world" caught the attention of the French art world. The name "floating world" was a euphemism for scenes set in the Yoshiwara district of Tokyo, where many commercial entertain­ments, including popular theater and dance, as well as prostitution, were allowed to flourish by the authorities.

Stylistically speaking, the bold passages of flat color arranged in asymmetrical compositions, which lack  any three-dimensional perspec­tive spaces, combined with fresh, crisp linear elements, were all adopted by European graphic designers. The manner in which Japanese artists rendered the figure—relying on black contour lines which they com­bined with short, fluid strokes to produce details in the face—was also widely copied in France. This Asian influence led many European artists to reject the three-dimensional shading with light and dark, called modeling, which had been a fundamental part of European draughtsmanship since the Renaissance.
The print illustrated here of a woman (fig. 1.9) displays many of the attributes of Japanese style, creating an overall sense of flat, decora­tive beauty. It is important to recognize Japanese influences not just in the style but also in the subject matter of Art Nouveau graphic design.

Many Ukiyo-e prints highlighted the intoxicating atmosphere of Tokyo's Yoshiwara district and the glamorous women who worked there. The print shown here is an example of Bijin-ga, a specialty of Utamaro (1753-1806) that featured idealized pictures of beautiful women. The young beauty here (from the series "Ten Facial Types of Women") is admiring her dyed black teeth; this was a Japanese fashion that had its roots in aristocratic culture and that had become popular among the general population. Posters such as Fleur de Lotus or Loie Fuller (see figs. 1.6 and 1.7), which advertise the events held in the pleasure-seeking quarters of Paris, often attempt to emulate the sensual tone of Bijin-ga prints.

Japanese art was widely recognized in France because of its prominent place at three Paris world's fairs—in 1867, 1878, and 1900—and through the efforts of private art dealers such as Siegfried Bing (1836-1905). Beginning in 1875, Bing's succession of decorative arts galleries became an intrinsic part of the frenzied collection of Japanese art, a phenomenon called Japonisme, as well as the Art Nouveau design movement that arose under its influence. In 1895, Bing named his new Parisian gallery the Maison de L'Art Nouveau, creating a sbowplace where his name became synonymous with the phrase Art Nouveau (fig. 1.10). Bing held a number of exhibitions of Japanese prints during this period, the most notable in 1889 and 1893. The name of Bing's gallery makes it clear that the Japanese influence was one of the fundamental stylistic elements of the Art Nouveau movement.

1.9 Kitagawa Utamaro,  Young Woman with Black
Teeth Examining her Features in a Mirror,
from the series Ten Facial Types of Women, c. 1792-3.
Woodblock print. British Museum, London.

1.10 Siegfried Bing. Maison de L'Art Nouveau, Main Entrance, Paris, 1895.
V&A Picture Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Leonetto Cappiello

Popular magazines also served a significant role in bringing new graphic art to the attention of the public. One of the most famous, Le Rire ("the laugh") was a satirical journal with strong political views, established by Felix Juven in 1894. It also featured thousands of works by key poster designers. The front and back covers as well as an occasional centerpiece, which were printed in color, became important sites for progressive designers to display their work. In its early years, prominent artists including Toulouse-Lautrec contributed several lithographs to the publica­tion. Le Rire was also responsible for igniting the careers of young artists, as was the case with the Italian caricaturist Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942), who moved to Paris from Italy in 1898. Noticing the steady demand for caricatures of famous people at Le Rire, Cappiello appealed to a fellow Italian, the celebrity composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), to model for him. The drawing was a success and Cappiello soon found steady work at a variety of publications. He made some of his most popular caricatures tor Alexandrc Natanson, publisher of the edgy literary journal La Revue Blanche, who commissioned Cappiello to draw a series of images of actresses, including the most famous actress in Europe, Sarah  Bernhardt (1844-1923). Called Nos Actrices ("our actresses") this enterprising series consolidated the artist's career. Cappiello's work as a caricaturist incidentally led to a request for an advertise­ment, whereupon he embarked on a new and extremely lucrative career as a designer of commercial posters.

    Over four decades, Cappiello produced over a thousand indi­vidual designs, rivaling even Cheret in his combination of commercial savvy and memorable aesthetic invention. Cappiello's mature style mixed his own gift for caricature, the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec's love of the bizarre, Japonisme, and a dash of Cheret's kinetic colorism into a striking new synthesis, seen in his 1903 lithograph for a Swiss product, Chocolat Klaus (fig. 1.11). The horse and rider are radically simplified, built up only of black contour line and flat fields of color. The palette also shows the influence of Japanese aesthetics, as it is dominated by a juxtaposi­tion of the complementary colors red and green. The dash of yellow in the woman's blond hair ties the image to the name of the company printed below it. Notably, the fact that there is little to tie this equestrian to the product at hand does little to diminish the visual impact of the poster. The relationship, or lack thereof, becomes immaterial in the face of such stunning graphic power.

    In 1906, Cappiello produced a lithograph for Maurin absinthe that would soon become iconic of his achievement in the art of the poster (fig. 1.12). The image features a dynamically moving green devil, which serves as a complement to, or even sardonic commentary on, the ubiquitous, luscious young women posing as "green fairies" that dominated the absinthe poster market. Maurin Quina also displays Cappiello's ahead-of-its-time Technique of simplifying the commercial message down to its essentials—a single,
irresistible image matched only with the name of the product.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

Leonetto Cappiello. Posters.

see also

Mucha
 Alphonse
(Master of Art Nouveau)








 

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), another expatriate, moved to Paris from Czechoslovakia in 1887, and built his career in posters because of a bit of luck that tied him to a celebrity, Sarah Bernhardt. "The Divine Sarah," as she was called, was renowned for her "golden bell" of a voice, as well as her perfect diction, charisma, and patriotism. By 1880, she had developed an unparal-leled international reputation, and she eventually toured the world as a theatrical superstar. On Christmas Eve 1894, Mucha found himself alone as the junior employee of a French print shop, when Bernhardt submitted a rush order for a new poster of herself in the guise of Gismonda, a title role written for her by the dramatist Victorien Sardou (1831-1908). With this first acclaimed poster (fig. 1.15), Mucha developed his signature style, that of the elongated figure amid a mesmerizing field of decora­tive flat patterns. With more muted color than that used by Cheret, Mucha concentrated on the curvilinear rhythm of contour lines, particularly where they appear in the figure's hair and in the rich floral decoration that fills in Bernhardt's opulent costume as well as any empty space in the composition. The often geomet­ric, repetitive patterns used in posters during the Art Nouveau movement are known as "arabesques," although these patterns usually have at best only a distant relationship to the art works of the Arab culture that inspired the term. Bernhardt admired this first poster, and, always aware of the importance of self-pro­motion, recognized that Mucha's grasp of Art Nouveau decorative glamour, as well as his ability to draw attention to her luxuriant reddish hair, was a perfect vehicle for her public image. After several more successful posters, in 1895 she hired Mucha to design not only more posters but also sets, costumes, and jewelry for her shows.

Mucha's advertisement for Bieres de la Meuse (1897; fig.1.13) shows a young woman displaying the idealized beauty and open sexuality that became the artist's trademark. An icon of jouissance, her image is one of the earliest examples of a favorite theme of advertising: the implicit promise of sexual availability that will be awarded to the male purchaser of a product. As she grasps a frothy glass of beer, the dense floral elements around her are made up of barley and hops. Here Mucha has designed hand-drawn letters whose curving rhythm matches the lines of the figure as well as the overall composition. The young woman's hair depicted in the lower right quadrant has the undulating form that became known as a basic building block of Le style Mucha, a synonym for Art Nouveau.

An essential principle of the Art Nouveau movement was the belief that the "new art" must consist of a style that could be applied in all situations, and would not be unique to any one type of art. It was hoped that this type of unifying stylistic coherence would serve to tie together visually an otherwise chaotic urban environment. For this reason, it is important to recognize the ties between Art Nouveau graphics and other art forms, for it is only in this broader context that the aims of the artists involved can be made manifest. Outside the graphic design field, the work of architects provides some of the finest examples of the An Nouveau movement. Analogous to the lithographic poster in that they were designed as part of a mass-produced series of works that beautified the streets of Paris, the Metro stations created by Hector Guimard (1867-1942) circa 1899 provide a stunning example of how the stylistic principles of Art Nouveau could thrive in different media (fig. 1.14). The undulating forms, whiplash curves, and exuberant floral motifs of Guimard's underground station entrances exude the same sort of sensuous elegance that Mucha had captured in the medium of the poster. The tendrils of the plants seem to have a life of their own as they wrap themselves around the iron framework, enveloping it in a dense web of abstract design.

1.14 Hector Guimard, Metro Entrance, 1899.

see also
Symbolism

Sensuality and Symbolism
 

An advertisement for an alcoholic drink, the poster Absinthe Robette (1896; fig. 1.16), by the Belgian artist Privat Livemont (1861-1936), displays the expressive organic form, curvilinear intim, and sensual atmosphere that are synonymous with Art Nouveau. Note that Livemont's use of what is essentially an allegorical figure is quite traditional, tying the art of commercial graphic design to the rarefied world of the fine arts while at the same time proffering a powerful sexual fantasy. The color in the poster, a subtle element with slight gradations for which Livemont became justly famous, is derived from the color of the absinthe that it serves to ennoble.

The evocative sensuality and ethereal atmosphere that per­vade Absinthe Robette show the influence of the French Symbolist movement. Centered on a group of poets that included Stephane Mallarme (1842-1989), the Symbolists advocated art forms that tantalized the mind and tempted the senses. One of Mallarme's most famous experimental works, A Faun's Afternoon, is loosely based on the amorous adventures of the Greek god Pan. Mallarme produced a dreamlike work in which it is never quite clear whether events that take place are real or imagined. At one point the lustful god questions, "Was it a dream I loved?" Pan's pursuit of desirable nymphs, minor forest deities, serves as an ambiguous framework for the poem. The many young beauties that appear in contemporary posters wearing revealing, diaphanous drapery are suggestive of the Symbolists' influence on visual culture. These poets theorized an "art for art's sake," in which the aesthetic pleas­ure of the work is an end in itself, irrespective of any moral lesson or uplifting message. Symbolists also sought inspiration in a veri­table smorgasbord of esoteric religious thought, including Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and other nascent mystical beliefs. In contrast to many artists and designers who found much to celebrate in the new urban spaces of Europe, the Symbolists are seen by scholars as an example of a flight from modern life, an escape into a dreamy world of visionary nuances.

The Symbolists decried the use of literal description in poetry and, by extension, all of the arts. Mallarme famously wrote, "To name an object, that is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoy­ment of the poem ... to suggest it, that is the dream." In place of exposition, the Symbolists advocated art works that evoked with­out describing, replacing clear narrative with subjective feeling and imaginative flights of fancy. It is clear that the unfocused, atmospheric imagery typical of Symbolist poetry has influenced Livemont's poster, in which a fantasy beauty inhabits an unde­fined space.

Despite the strong currents of nationalism that racked Europe during the Belle Epoque, one of the French Symbolists' great heroes was the German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), and in 1885 the Symbolists inaugurated a journal in Paris devoted to his work called the Revue Wagnerienne. The Symbolists admired Wagner's musical dramatizations of past worlds full of mythic