Alphonse Mucha Masterworks
(2007 - Flame Tree Publishing) 
(by Rosalind Ormiston) While this is the highest scoring Mucha collection on The List, so far, I look forward to finding better books than this one in which to peruse Mucha's work. Though this 200-page book has plenty of his art, there seems to be a lot of repetitiveness, as so much of it is then shown again in its original published form, advertising something, and then excerpted again in a different place to show some decorative element, and finally, in my edition, a significant number of the works seem to have gotten shifted to a much redder & darker spectrum. The text runs throughout, many times sharing a place on the pages with large reproductions. The writing is two large sections, "Life & Work" and "Le Style Mucha", the first being more the biography, while the latter purports to be an examination of the seminal works within the context of his continuing career. A lot of the same information seems to appear in both. Another odd phenomenon is that comments on any particular piece of art may be found in either of the sections, but the reproduction of that piece is nearly guaranteed *not* to be close to that passage. Three other prominent poster artists of the period get illustrative large reproductions as well, Jules Cherét, Privat Livemont and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec (2). In all, 170 pages can be said to have the art dominating the text or designs of decorative art. 46 of those have multiple images or are cluttered with other ephemera, leaving the bulk to sport some kind of large dominant image. Ten of the larger images flow over the book's gutter and, while all have their decorative design suffer because of that, only two have the pieces' central item broken up as well. As intimated above, a handful of pages are given over to large displays of his decorative art.
Related Books
Alphonse Maria Mucha [BELOW THE LINE]
Alphonse Mucha - Posters And Photographs [BELOW THE LINE]
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