CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/1/2025

From Mucha to Manga

Featured spreads are from eye-popping new release Timeless Mucha, published to accompany the exhibition on view now at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, en route to Santa Fe, Boca Raton, Kansas City (MO) and Mexico City through 2027. Gathering works by the undisputed master of Art Nouveau illustration alongside generations of cool-as-hell graphic works made under his influence—from Grateful Dead posters and album covers to Japanese manga and street murals—this 240-page, STUDIO LHOOQ-designed, clothbound hardcover with tipped on front and back cover images, gorgeous stamping and pattern-printed paper edges is a sensual delight that is, to some extent, about sensual delight itself. In her essay on “Locks of Liberation” and Mucha’s “new” New Woman, Aimee Marcereau DeGalan invokes renowned psychedelic poster artist Bob Masse. “Art Nouveau was a bohemian revolution against the uptight previous art world. When the hippies started doing it [psychedelic art], they started using the style that they did at the turn of the century in Paris. … This was like a second bohemian revolution.” DeGalan concludes, “And it was groovy.”