My Man Mucha

It's kinda scary but awesome the way I make connections almost unconsciously that make a lot of sense when I really look at it. In particular, my fascination with Art Nouveau has been there for awhile as inspiration in some of my design work (as it was a precursor to graphic design) and in my tattoos and now for my thesis work. But I started reading this book about Alphonse Mucha and this section on his influences and well it super works for my thesis ideas....

..But Decorative Art was conceived by its creators as the most profound means of artistic expression, by which ideals were to be intuitively conveyed to the viewer through symbolic and synthetic forms. And not just any ideas for the values of Decorative Art were highly mystical ones. The New Art was to be 'the first step in the journey to the true expressive synthesis' whose object was 'not only a particular idea, but also a universal idea, sublimated into the highest point of harmony, intensity and subtlety.'
Thus, Decorative Art was intended to be nothing less than the expression in symbolic form of the highest and most abstract values of human life.
The centrality of idealism and mysticism to symbolist thinking and Decorative Art was linked to another trend in fin-de-siecle French culture: fascination with spiritualism and the occult. The fin-de-siecle was deeply preoccupied with a wide range of theosophies which expanded or supplemented christian mysticism with spiritual messages thought to originate in Buddhism, Brahmanism, the Jewish Kabala and Egyptian, Greek and other ancient faith. Spiritualist, mediums and psychics gained wide followings.

Aha! connections with spirituality and symbolism and integration of cultures... and here is a bit on Mucha's use of the female...

...there in contrast stood Mucha with his irrepressible optimism and vitality and the Mucha Woman who, nearly alone among the representations of female figures of the period, is neither demonic nor dissipated. Her glow of happiness and the hint of some hidden message, her suspension between this world and another, the integration in her person of Madonna and Venus, express a unique and joyous intuition.

and more good stuff about spiritualism...

the artistry represents Mucha at his best -- finely wrought, detailed images and complex, sometimes hidden, geometric systems of symbolism. What is especially striking is how far his commentary and illustrations deviate from orthodox Christianity in favour of a neo-platonic spiritualism. The illustrations on the text clearly depict the striving of man toward the inspiration of divine light and the presence of idealised intermediating forms that are surely nothing less than the 'great soul of the world.'

and he seemed to do a lot of.... (what do you call a series of 4? like a series of 2 is a diptych, 3=triptych, 4=...quadtych?) anyway, like his 4 seasons, the Arts(music, poetry, painting, dance)... It's just kinda funny that without thinking about that before I had decided to do a series of 4 women(angels) as the 4 elements(fire, water, wind, earth). I can also think about them as the four realms...Heaven, hell, earth and limbo. I mean, there is so much symbolism and metaphors within religion and spiritual culture that i can dig into. I might only touch on a few important ones for the paper and leave a few more juicy bits for people to discover on their own while looking at the work. ...Oh man...there's so much to do!