Monaco monte carlo 1896

This is a lithographic poster advertising travel to Monaco, made by Alphonse Mucha, a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist. Lithography is a printmaking technique that uses a flat stone or metal plate, on which the image areas are worked using a greasy substance so that the ink will adhere to them, while the non-image areas are made ink-repellent. Mucha would have drawn his design on the stone, and then multiple impressions would have been printed. The success of such a poster depended on the division of labor. Mucha would have made his design, but then skilled tradespeople would have been involved in the actual printing. The poster's artistic value has to be understood in relation to this means of production, and of consumption: the world of advertising, with its own economic structure. With its sinuous lines and idealized figures, the style is so seductive that it disguises all that work. It encourages us to dream of a life of leisure, without thinking too much about the labor that makes it all possible.