JOB

Why it works

A cigarette-paper advert that fixed the look of Art Nouveau glamour. For JOB, the trademark of the Joseph Bardou company, Alphonse Mucha drew a woman with her head thrown back and a lit cigarette in her fingers, letting the smoke curl into an arabesque that tangles with her vast, swirling hair and the brand's monogram, which also tiles the background. A mosaic-like Byzantine border, as in his Gismonda poster, lends a humble consumer product an air of dignity. It is studied as the poster treated as a canvas rather than a throwaway, with figure, ornament and brand name fused into one decorative system, and as a quiet provocation: the Minneapolis Institute of Art points out that respectable women of the period did not smoke. The Mucha Foundation calls it one of his best-known advertising posters and the image that established the "Mucha woman"; it was reissued in many formats for foreign markets, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and Mia both hold copies.