Cover composed by Mucha for the french literary and artistic Review La Plume 1898

Editor: This lithograph is a cover Alphonse Mucha designed in 1898 for "La Plume", a French artistic review. The flowing lines and muted colors give it a dreamy, ethereal feel. What draws your eye when you look at this piece? Curator: The composition immediately strikes me. Observe the contrasting hard lines of the stylized "plumes," for example, arrayed asymmetrically against the organic, curvilinear rendering of the central female figure, which themselves stand in tension to the geometric framing and decorative background. Editor: The lines are fascinating. Are they supposed to be feathers or something else? Curator: That is where semiotics comes in. One can speculate based on its association with "La Plume"—French for "the pen"—or by decoding visual elements of Art Nouveau. The structure echoes the written word; and one might even consider them as symbols relating to the aesthetic or literary ambitions of the journal. Note how the lines radiate out from the figure, intersecting and fragmenting her form. Editor: So it’s about how all these visual elements are working together? Curator: Precisely. Think of structuralism's binary oppositions. The geometric versus the organic, the textual versus the figurative, create a compelling dynamic on the surface of the lithograph itself. Mucha creates visual interest by layering forms within the flat space. Editor: That makes sense. I see so many details now that I hadn't noticed before. Thanks! Curator: And consider the application of that analysis to understanding the period: the advent of mass culture and mass literacy. We are always refining our understandings by looking more closely.