Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size It’s sheer coincidence the Art Gallery of NSW is hosting Alphonse Mucha: Spirit of Art Nouveau while the National Gallery of Australia is showing Gauguin’s World: Tona Iho, Tona Ao .
Mucha and Gauguin were friends in Paris during that period we call the Belle Epoque, but it would be difficult to imagine two more different artists. One thinks of Claude Levi-Strauss’s famous work of anthropology, The Raw and the Cooked . Gauguin (1848-1903) is as raw as a mango plucked from a tree, but Mucha (1860-1939) is the greatest cake decorator in the history of art.
As an aspiring artist in Paris, the young Czech was among those who gathered in Madame Charlotte’s Cremerie to eat cheaply and listen to Gauguin hold forth. They met again in 1893, when Gauguin had returned, penniless, from his first trip to Tahiti. Self-portrait with posters for Sarah Bernhardt at Mucha’s studio in rue du Val-de-Grâce, Paris, c1901.
Mucha, who had begun to make money as an illustrator, invited the older artist to share his studio. Gauguin, never one to turn down a freebie, took up the invitation. Unlike many of Gauguin’s acquaintances, Mucha would remain a friend, even though he has been described as prudish, whereas Gauguin was notoriously uninhibited.
Where Mucha was idealistic and .