Alphonse Mucha - "Maude Adams as Joan of Arc" (1909)

A good friend of mine has a fantasy art gallery scenario that she often replays in her head:

Woman (staring at a painting): "Why?"
Handsome stranger (standing beside her): "Because."

We tried acting out the scenario in an art gallery and it turned out more amusing than sophisticated. Humor emerges because we commonly see art galleries as centers of pretension. And this used to be my predominant view of gallery paintings, before I encountered this fantastic piece in The Met in NY two years ago.

I can discuss how Mucha's paintings all share the same style: bold lines, crisp pastel colors, and perfectly-captured facial expressions. But beyond a few cursory art appreciation classes I had in high school, I cannot speak technically of Mucha's skill.

Yet of all paintings I encountered in The Met that day, this one struck me the most. This is when I realized that the painting's title -- "Maude Adams as Joan of Arc" -- perfectly explains why. This painting is a movie poster. And it trumps the grotesque humanoids seen on perfunctorily painted movie posters in Ever Gotesco.

I encountered more Mucha paintings in Prague last year, where I learned more about his perspective on art. Surprisingly, the reason why I laud him is the same albatross he attempted to shed in his later years. He declared that art must communicate a "spiritual message, and nothing more" - denying the commercial background of his paintings.

Mucha is thus an enigma. That factor which made his paintings unique, that which grants him acclaim seventy years after his death, was the same idea he consciously rejected. To no avail, however: his legacy had outgrown his person.

A commonly discussed motion in high school and college debating circles is the banning of billboards. Opposition teams often argue that aesthetically, billboards are nothing more than eyesores. Mucha's painting defies this pigeonhole. Society, sadly, sees art-as-art as serving no function, and places higher premium on function and pragmatism. In doing this, society creates a false dichotomy between aesthetics and function.

Mucha's paintings thus serve as a refreshing reminder that the functional need not shed itself of beauty.