Women in Art Nouveau

From the 1890s to the 1910s, an artistic trend was created and developed that claimed to be a total break with the past. This came at the height of the Belle Époque, a period that encouraged modernity. The trend is known as Art Nouveau. Artists invented a style where the curve was dominant and symmetry no longer existed, instead replaced by a prolific movement that drew inspiration from the world of plants and nature.

Everyone's daily lives should be touched by Beauty, through decoration and color. Total art, this sudden trend, powerful yet brief, affects all means of expression in the decorative arts (including furniture, jewelry, everyday objects…) and architecture.
Many similar movements follow around the world. In America there was Tiffany & Co., in Germany Jugendstil, in Austria Sezessionstil, etc.

In France, Art Nouveau took on an international dimension at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900.
The attending countries put up incredible pavilions and competed with each other for creativity.
It was also a place for illustrators who expressed the motif of the Woman, who is both muse and subject, on the small printed picture that is the postcard.

Whether they were geishas or odalisques, these beautiful oriental women, muses of a new genre, incited desire more than love.
From 1860, Japanese prints influenced western artists who were seduced by the flat colors, the displaced composition of the subject, and the clear line of the drawing.
Art Nouveau could not escape the influence of this source of graphical and technical inspiration, leading to the mass production of high-quality engravings and lithographs.

Byzantine goddesses and scenes of ancient Greece or Rome populated by young women draped in white were discovered.
The result was a timeless and pure figure often wearing a laurel wreath, added as a finishing touch. Musicians, dancers, and sculptors were an ever recurrent theme from both famous and unknown talented illustrators. Many such postcards were not signed but were produced in very large quantities by Viennese publishers.

Some elements, such as these simple medallion profiles, were also available in many variants and used as needed by the publishers.
Here, an antique motif featuring the same young woman could be integrated into many different postcard templates that again use decorative elements from the purest form of Art Nouveau.

The "Divine" Sarah Bernhardt was so seduced by the designs of an unknown young Czech illustrator for instance that she hired him on a six-year contract. This illustrator was Alphonse Mucha, who went on to produce the posters for numerous plays, such as Gismonda, La Dame aux Camélias, La Princesse Lointaine, etc. Through this, he played his part in constructing the myth that surrounded the actress.

In order to become known, these fame-hungry women also had their portraits taken by well-established photographers such as Leopold Reutlinger.
These extremely popular shots were published in magazines and, of course, in the form of postcards, making Liane de Pougy, Cléo de Mérode, and Polaire household names.

Advertising by the "poster masters" was also available on postcards. No matter the product or subject being advertised, women were central. Whether portrayed as flighty and carefree or as a person to be glorified, the image of the woman encouraged housewives to spend their money.

Competitions were organized by the JOB cigarette paper factory from 1895 and by the alcohol brand Byrrh from 1903.
Many famous painters and poster illustrators took up the challenge and the winners saw their works published in the form of posters, of course, as well as on calendars, and in series of postcards.

The abundance of lush hair is enhanced by the dramatic patterns simplified as flexible lines, characteristic of the flicked hairstyle.
Famous names developed theories about these decorative images, including decorative artist Eugène Grasset who offered courses on decorative composition before publishing "La Plante et ses applications ornementales" (The plant and its decorative uses). This was aimed at combating "The anemia which reigns over the ruins of the imitation of the past," and offered more than 150 designs to be used and reinterpreted.

The diktats of the female press resulted in the appearance of the figure of the seductive and charming Parisian female.
Love is never far away, nor is money…Illustrators depicted the sweet creatures as young hens while men became sheep, roosters, or pigs.

The caricaturists loved reproducing the changes in fashion that eventually ditched the curved line in favor of the straight line of Art Deco, without the constraint on female bodies disappearing.
Although the waistlines became higher and corsets disappeared, skirts became tighter, hindering walking, while hats increased in size, providing a subject that was gold to illustrators.

The subjects presented vary considerably and weren't just original designs. Pre-existing posters and menus were also reproduced in postcard format.
Many artists featured in the "Collection des Cent" also took part in the "Salon des Cent" exhibition. This was an innovative art exhibition venue created in 1894 where people could purchase prints and drawings. That is possible where the collection name originates.

For many young artists, the democratization of the Art Nouveau movement was ushered in with the revival of printmaking as a means of expression, combined with technical innovations. That meant high-quality items at low cost, providing much more than the production of works destined for bourgeois interiors.

This fashion, supported by posters placed on walls along streets, also found a welcome place of expression in the postcard.
The father of modern poster making Leonetto Cappiello is certain of one thing: "Not only do I find this fashion of image matching attractive, I also find it interesting because it can be a very useful way of depicting art if we know how to take advantage of it. "
From this point of view, it was quite natural to see many illustrators and poster makers reproducing the image of the archetypal women on postcards.

As an object and muse, the Art Nouveau woman existed only in the eyes of the artists and not through herself. Even following emancipation, the illustrators placed her in a series of highly aesthetic representations that said nothing about the change in women's status at the dawn of the new century.

Even with a certain simplification of style that lead to the use of stripped back designs and geometric lines, it was only the decline of the "Noodle Style" and its replacement by Art Deco that saw the emergence of a more autonomous and free female figure. Here too, postcards helped promote social evolution and modernization.