Assuming all you want to do is make some graphs, almost every alternative is better. Matplotlib is like the opengl of plotting libraries, there's almost no abstraction, you have to create plots in an imperative way and it's extremely verbose.
A plotting library focused on useability should let you specify what you want in a declarative manner, then get out of your way. Ggplot2 being the prime example.
It seems to be somewhat inspired by Matlab, which isn't an elegant system by any stretch. And for the people who hasn't had exposure to matlab, matplotlib seems overly convoluted.
Do you have any concrete examples for Python? As far as I know, ggplot2 is only for R. I would be interested to try out some alternatives to Matplotlib.
A plotting library focused on useability should let you specify what you want in a declarative manner, then get out of your way. Ggplot2 being the prime example.