Thesis
Tracing memetics and Benjaminian aura in Alphonse Mucha pastiche art
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2015
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102966
Abstract
The lithographic prints created by Alphonse Mucha during the fin de siècle period came to define the legacy of Art Nouveau. Mucha's prints, which include some of the most memorable stylistic features of the period, immediately convey an idealized vision of human and natural forms. Though designed for technological reproducibility, each image maintains the illusion of uniqueness, preserving some portion of what Walter Benjamin defined as the aura of a work of art. Psychedelic rock poster artists in the 1960's selectively reintroduced Art Nouveau designs into their posters, Mucha's among them, sensing a resonance between their ideology of altered consciousness and the Art Nouveau quest to express modernity through embellished forms. Twenty-first century fan artists who participate in online communities also utilize this art of the pastiche, or art made in an antique style. Fan artists embrace "Mucha style" as an infallibly attractive framework for use in interpreting favored pop cultural figures. Members of fandoms, like the countercultural poster artists, treat Mucha's style as a meme, or as an idea which is appealing enough to be transmitted from artist to artist. Though online fan artists in particular refer to "Mucha style" as a single entity, they recognize it as made up of distinct characteristics and qualities which combine to create, overall, the illusion of an authentic Mucha color lithograph. The Art Nouveau aesthetic developed by Alphonse Mucha continues to be drawn upon because of how it communicates a sensibility which approaches verbal signification. Artists who draw upon his style do so because the formal features of Mucha prints indicate an antiquated, but transcendent beauty, evoking spirituality and perfecting earthly inhabitants. Imitative artists adapt the style and in the process contribute new meanings, varying with subject matter and the artist's personal hand in the work's execution. At the same time, "Mucha style" images maintain the aesthetic's original appeal, and the aura associated with an original work of art resurfaces.
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Details
- Title
- Tracing memetics and Benjaminian aura in Alphonse Mucha pastiche art
- Creators
- Scarlett Octavia Xochiquetzal Anguiano
- Contributors
- Roger Whitson (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900525076501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis