Mucha: 'Beauty is the Communication of Emotion'

Alphonse Mucha's ideas about beauty come across as strongly in his oil paintings as it does in his better known Art Nouveau posters.

In his lectures on art, he said: "The expression of beauty is by emotion. The person who can communicate his emotions to the souls of others is the artist."

"To communicate with the souls of man the artist must address himself to the senses of the body."

"This harmony between the suggestion of the artist and the senses is memory, the first condition of beauty."

The goal of the artist, Mucha said, is to communicate "the emotions of his own soul to the souls of others, even at the price of laborious work, and his greatest joy will be that of seeing other souls also vibrating with the happiness of his emotions."

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Lectures on art: A supplement to The graphic work of Alphonse Mucha