Alphonse Marie Mucha, Nature, c. 1900
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Mucha rose above the ranks of anonymous illustrators with a series of posters he designed in Paris for the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. It has been suggested that this silver bust is also based on a portrait of the "Divine Sarah" (as Oscar Wilde first called the actress), but no direct evidence supports this. Several similar busts are known today. One, surrounded by flowers, was a centerpiece of the display of the French perfume company Houbigant at the Paris 1900 World's Fair. Another may have been intended for the jewelry store of Georges Fouquet. Mucha designed the jeweler's richly appointed shop and collaborated with Fouquet on jewelry designs, some worn by Bernhardt on stage.
A third bust appears in a photograph taken at the fair, where it is labeled La Nature, which suggests that the figure might have been intended as an allegorical representation of nature. Mucha was strongly influenced by symbolism and the occult. Perhaps the marble egg crowning her headdress refers to regeneration and continuity. A similar headdress appears on a woman surrounded by astrological signs that Mucha used for a calendar poster.
Like time and nature, this silver figure is constantly changing, responding to minute differences in light. Even the hair seems in motion. Swirling tresses wrap like tendrils around her neck and shoulders, actually becoming the base of the bust. Nature is eternal, but eternally in a state of transformation.
No one made this point more concretely than the innovative dancer Loïe Fuller, an American performing in Paris. Accompanied by the music of Chopin, Schubert, and Debussy, Fuller appeared on a stage lit from below and behind wearing a costume of diaphanous fabric attached to short wands. As she manipulated the fabric it took on the appearance of birds or flowers. Isadora Duncan, who was a protégé of Fuller, wrote about her performance: "Before our very eyes she turned to many-colored shining orchids, to a wavering sea-flower and at length to a spiral-like lily, all magic of Merlin, the sorcery of light, color, flowing form. What an extraordinary genius." The symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach called Fuller's dance a "miracle of endless metamorphoses." His description continued, "Woman, when she wants, becomes the universe; she [Fuller] was a flower, a tree in the wind, a changing cloud, a giant butterfly, a garden with paths of pleated fabric."
Learning Activities
Art
• Consider the effect of reflective and nonreflective materials in sculpture.
Social Science
• Research the position of women in the late nineteenth century and the history of women's suffrage in the United States and other countries.
• Learn more about the Paris 1900 World's Fair and compare its impact with more recent fairs.
Movement
• Improvise a dance like Loïe Fuller's to show a metamorphosis between a plant and an animal.