All About Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau Simplified

Art Nouveau sought to modernise design by eschewing the previously fashionable eclectic mix of historical styles. Organic and geometric patterns inspired artists, who created attractive designs that combined flowing, natural shapes reminiscent of plant branches and petals.

Arts and crafts, particularly ornamental arts, were popular during the years 1890–1910 under the influence of the Art Nouveau philosophy and aesthetic. Art nouveau translates as “new art” in French.

Summary of Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau sparked a passion for ornamental and graphic arts, architecture, and design throughout Europe and beyond. Because of this, it has many different names, such as the Glasgow Style, or Jugendstil in German-speaking countries. Art Nouveau sought to modernise design by eschewing the previously fashionable eclectic mix of historical styles. Organic and geometric patterns inspired artists, who created attractive designs that combined flowing, natural shapes reminiscent of plant branches and petals. Because of this, linear contours gained priority over vibrant colours like vibrant reds, oranges, and yellow-orange. Traditional art hierarchies, such as painting and sculpture being more important than craft-based ornamental arts, were aimed at being abolished by the movement. After falling out of favour well before World War I, this style paved the way for art deco’s resurgence in the 1920s. However, it was revived in the 1960s and is now seen as a crucial precursor to modernism, if not a fundamental element of it.

Art Nouveau’s ambition to break away from the historical styles of the 19th century was a major driving force behind the movement’s modernity. In spite of the fact that industrial manufacturing had become ubiquitous, imitations of past times progressively predominated in ornamental arts. Those who practised Art Nouveau aimed to bring back excellent craftsmanship, elevate craft, and create really contemporary designs that spoke to the practicality of the objects they were designing and manufacturing.

Painting and sculpture were considered superior to crafts like furniture design and ironwork because of the academic system that dominated art instruction from the 17th through the 19th centuries. This, according to many, led to a disregard for quality workmanship. When it came to buildings and interiors, Art Nouveau architects and designers aimed to challenge the status quo by creating “total works of the arts,” or the famed Gesamtkunstwerk, where all of the elements functioned in harmony within a shared visual language. Art Nouveau was essential in bridging the fine and practical arts divide, however it’s unclear whether that gap has ever been fully bridged.

To avoid what they saw as frivolous adornment, a lot of Art Nouveau designers thought that prior designs had been too decorative. This led them to believe that an object’s function should influence its form, rather than the other way around. However, in actuality, this was an open-ended mentality that would go on to influence other modernist groups, most notably the Bauhaus.

Why is it Called Art Nouveau?

Everything About Art Nouveau

The Beginnings

Art Nouveau, which translates as “New Art” emerged as a response against Victorian-era decorative art’s crowded patterns and compositions about 1880. The second impact was the British Arts and Crafts movement, which, like Art Nouveau, was a protest against Victorian-era decorative art. As a result, many European painters of the 1880s and 1890s were drawn to Japanese art, especially woodblock prints, such as Gustav Klimt, Emile Gallé, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Japanese woodblock prints, in particular, featured flowery and bulbous shapes as well as “whiplash” curves, all of which would later become associated with Art Nouveau.

It’s hard to say which piece or works of art inaugurated Art Nouveau in earnest. While some claim Vincent van Gogh’s patterned, flowing lines, and floral backdrops symbolise the start of Art Nouveau, others say Henri de Toulouse-ornate Lautrec’s lithographs, such as Moulin Rouge: La Goulue show Art Nouveau’s maturity (1891). Most, however, credit English architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, who designed the book cover for Sir Christopher Wren’s City Churches in 1883. The design has flower stalks that snake out from a flattened pad at the bottom of the page, giving it a distinct Japanese woodblock print look.

During its peak, Art Nouveau was most visible at international expositions. Five fairs featured it prominently: the Paris Universelles of 1889 and 1900, the Tervueren Exposition of 1897 in Brussels, the Turin International Exposition of Modern Decorative Arts in 1902, and the Nancy International Exposition of 1909 (where Art Nouveau was largely employed to show off the possibilities of craftsmanship with exotic woods from the Belgian Congo). Decorative arts and architecture dominated each of these fairs, and in Turin in 1902, Art Nouveau was genuinely the style of choice for practically every designer and every country represented, with no other styles competing for attention or sales.

In December 1895, German trader Siegfried Bing, who was also a lover of Japanese art, founded a boutique in Paris called L’Art Nouveau, which went on to become a major supplier of the style’s furniture and decorative arts. Once the store’s reputation spread across Europe and the US, it became a household word. Because of its widespread appeal in Western and Central Europe, Art Nouveau has been referred to by a variety of names. It was promoted by a Munich magazine named Jugend, and became known as Jugendstil in German-speaking areas. The term “Sezessionsstil” originated in Vienna, the birthplace of artists like Gustav Klimt, Otto Wagner, and Josef Hoffmann, all of whom were part of the Vienna Secession movement (Secession Style). Other names for this style include: modernisme, modernismo, and stile florale (floral style), as well as Stile Liberty in Italy (after the fabric business in London owned by artist Arthur Liberty, who helped promote the style). It was known as Modern(e)-Style in France and Style Guimard after its most well-known practitioner, the architect Hector Guimard, while Nieuwe Kunst was used more widely in the Netherlands and Belgium (New Art). Aside from its many detractors, Art Nouveau was also known as noodle style in France, eel style in Belgium, and tapeworm style in Germany, all of which made playful reference to Art Nouveau’s tendency to use sinuous and flowing lines. Style Nouille, Paling Stijl, and Bandwurmstil are examples of these derogatory names.

Concepts in Art Nouveau

In the late 19th century, Art Nouveau’s widespread popularity may be attributed in part to the adoption by numerous artists of readily reproducible graphic art forms. Print media like as book jackets and exhibition catalogue covers, magazine adverts, playbills, and posters were popular in Germany during the Jugendstil era. However, this development was not confined to the German-speaking world. Aubrey Beardsley, an English artist known for combining the sexual and macabre in his work, made a series of posters in his short career that used flowing, rhythmic lines. He was one of the most controversial figures in Art Nouveau because of his work. Art Nouveau and Japonism/Ukiyo-e prints have a lot in common, as seen by Beardsley’s lavishly decorated works like The Peacock Skirt (1894). With the help of Jules Chéret’s posters and graphic production, Henri de Toulouse-paintings Lautrec’s and drawings, Pierre Bonnard’s sculptures, Victor Prouvé’s photographs and illustrations, and others, the belle époque (roughly 1890-1914) and its seedy cabaret district of Montmartre in northern Paris were popularised throughout France. New chromolithographic methods were utilised to advertise new technology like telephones and electric lights, as well as nightlife establishments like pubs and restaurants, and even solo performers, conveying the excitement and energy of contemporary living. Thus, the poster was swiftly elevated from the status of a commonplace form of advertising to one of fine art.

Architecture and its enormous effect on European culture must be included in any serious understanding of Art Nouveau. Architecturally, Art Nouveau flourished on a grand scale in major cities like Paris and Brussels as well as smaller towns like Nancy and Darmstadt and Eastern European locales like Riga, Prague and Budapest. It can still be seen today in everything from small row houses to massive institutional and commercial buildings. Art Nouveau appeared in a broad range of idioms in architecture, notably. Terracotta and colourful tilework are used extensively in many constructions. For example, the French ceramicist Alexandre Bigot became well-known for his terracotta ornaments for the facades and fireplaces of Parisian homes and apartment buildings in the late 19th century. Iron constructions connected by glass panels may be seen in other Art Nouveau buildings, notably in France or Belgium (where Hector Guimard and Victor Horta were prominent practitioners).

Architecture of the Art Nouveau style was popular in many parts of Europe where native materials like yellow limestone and random-coursed rocks combined with wood trim. Sculptural white stucco skins were also utilised in many instances, especially on Art Nouveau show pavilions at the 1900 Paris Universelle Exposition and the Secession Building in Vienna. Many of Louis Sullivan’s skyscrapers, such as the Wainwright Building and the Chicago Stock Exchange, are considered among the greatest examples of Art Nouveau architecture in the United States.

Art Nouveau, like the Victorian and Arts and Crafts movements before it, was as much about interior design as it was about the outside. Art Nouveau interiors, like other 19th-century designs, aimed to create a unified space that used every inch of available space. A lot of focus was placed on furniture design in this regard, notably in the fabrication of hand-carved wood with sharp, irregular curves, typically made by artisans but sometimes occasionally by machines. Beds, chaises, dining room tables and chairs, armoires, sideboards, and lamp stands were all produced by furniture manufacturers. As wall panelling and crown moulding, the designs’ flowing curves drew inspiration from the wood’s inherent grain.

As for French Art Nouveau designers, the most well-known were Louis Majorelle in Nancy; Emile Gallé and Eugène Vallin both worked for Siegfried Bing’s L’Art Nouveau store; and Tony Selmersheim in Paris; Édouard Colonna and Eugène Gaillard, the latter two exclusively for Siegfried Bing (later giving the whole movement its most common name). Gustave Serrurier-Bovy and Henry van de Velde, two Belgian designers who were inspired by the English Arts & Crafts movement, used the whiplash line and restrained, more angular forms in their creations. Among the most well-known visitors to the country were the Italians Alberto Bugatti and Augustino Lauro. Designers like Majorelle, who worked in a variety of media, were notoriously difficult to classify. For example, he designed and built his own wooden furniture, then founded an ironworking foundry, where he made metal fittings for the Daum Brothers’ glassworks’ output.

Art Nouveau is one of the only genres whose work can be found in practically every kind of visual and material medium. Art Nouveau also includes notable painters like Vienna Secessionist Gustav Klimt, well known for Hope II and The Kiss (1907-08), and Victor Prouvé in France, who worked mostly in graphics, architecture, and design. Paintings from the period are hard to come by because of the lack of Art Nouveau masters like Klimt (Egon Schiele followed the path of Expressionism) and Prouvé, who was both an artist and an architect. Art Nouveau, on the other hand, may have done more than any other period in history to close the gap between decorative and applied arts (such as painting, sculpture, and architecture), which had traditionally been regarded as more important and more pure expressions of artistic talent and skill, by bringing them closer together. But whether or not that gap has ever been bridged is disputed.)

Some of the most well-known glass artisans in history took advantage of Art Nouveau’s reputation for luxury. Emile Gallé, the Daum Brothers, Tiffany, and Jacques Gruber were all originally known for their Art Nouveau glass, which was used in a wide range of practical objects throughout their respective careers. These enterprises, which pioneered innovative methods in acid-etched works with sinuously curved, shapely surfaces that appeared to flow between transparent colours with ease, built their names in vase design and art glass, respectively. Additionally, glass artists like the Daum Brothers and Tiffany used its creative potential to create functional items like lampshades and desk accessories. Tiffany and Jacques Gruber, both of whom had studied with the Daum Brothers in Nancy, were experts in large-scale luminant panels that included stained glass depicting the beauty of the natural world.

There were many famous jewellers of the time, including René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Marcel Wolfers. They created everything from earrings and necklaces to bracelets and brooches, ensuring that Art Nouveau would remain synonymous with fin-de-siècle luxury despite the hope that its ubiquity would make it more widely available.

During the same time period as Art Nouveau was gaining popularity, shopping was also expanding to reach a broader demographic. The Magasins Reunis in Nancy, as well as La Samaritaine in Paris, Wertheim’s in Berlin, and Wertheim’s in Berlin, all carried it prominently in the late nineteenth century. There were several prominent design stores that promoted the style, like Siegfried Bing’s boutique L’Art Nouveau in Paris, which remained a stronghold of the movement until it closed its doors in 1905, only a few years after Bing’s death. Art Nouveau interiors and furnishings were sold at a variety of shops around the city, not only his.

Liberty & Co., on the other hand, was the principal British and Italian distributor of the style’s products, and Liberty’s name therefore became practically synonymous with the style. There are several Art Nouveau designers who became well-known after working only for these stores. Designers like Peter Behrens created everything from tea kettles to book covers, exhibition pavilion interiors, kitchenware and furniture, finally becoming the first industrial designer when AEG placed him in charge of all design work in 1907. (Allgemeine Elektrisitats-Gesellschaft, the German General Electric).

The End of Art Nouveau

Artists, designers, and architects turned their backs on Art Nouveau in the final five years of the nineteenth century, just as they did in the first decade of the twentieth. There were designers who believed that “form should follow function” but some went far with their use of ornamentation, and the style came under fire for being unnecessarily ornate. A rising number of critics said that rather than refreshing design, the new style just changed out the old with something that seemed to be new as the era progressed. Even with new mass-production techniques, the high level of skill required by most Art Nouveau design meant that it would never be as widely available to the general public as its proponents had anticipated. Artists in Darmstadt were unable to profit financially from their creations because of weak international copyright regulations.

The Art Nouveau movement’s connection to exhibits was doomed from the start. To begin, the majority of the fair’s structures were only meant to be temporary and were subsequently demolished as soon as the festival concluded. The expositions themselves, while well-intentioned, tended to generate rivalry and competitiveness among countries owing to the intrinsically comparative nature of exhibition, rather than promote education, international understanding, and peace. A number of countries, such as France and Belgium, looked to Art Nouveau as a contender for the title of “national style,” before accusations of Art Nouveau’s foreign origins or subversive political undertones (in France, it was associated with Belgian designers and German merchants, and was sometimes the style used in Socialist buildings) turned public opinion against it. Art Nouveau had all but disappeared from Europe’s design environment by 1910, with just a few noteworthy outliers where it had a loyal local following.

Design giants like Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman Moser started to move away from Art Nouveau’s softer, more naturalistic approach as early as 1903. Some members of the Vienna Secession left to join a new design collaborative called Wiener Werkstätte, which favoured sharp angles and straight lines, recalling a more precise, industrial style that shunned overt allusions to nature. Both the installation of Behrens as AEG’s chief designer of all corporate design, from buildings to products to advertising, making him the first industrial designer in the world, and the founding of the German Werkbund in 1907, which increasingly attempted to define a product type system through standardisation, emphasised this reification of the machine-made qualities of design. In the aftermath of World War I, this machine-inspired aesthetic would develop into the style that we now belatedly call Art Deco thanks to a newfound respect for classicism, inspired in part by Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and officially endorsed by the City Beautiful movement in the United States. At the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs and Industriels Modernes de Paris en 1925, the style’s strong commercial aspect was best emphasised, giving Art Deco its moniker in the 1960s.

However, despite its short lifespan, Art Nouveau had a significant impact on graphic designers in the 1960s and 1970s who wanted to break free of the austere, impersonal, and more minimal style that had previously reigned in the industry. Because of its free-flowing and uncontrolled linear properties, Art Nouveau inspired artists like Peter Max to create work that reflects the inventive, fleeting and free-flowing aesthetic world of the early twentieth century in its dreamy, psychedelic alternative experience.

From the beginning, Art Nouveau was acknowledged as a significant step toward modernity in architecture and art. Today, it is seen more as an expression of the style, mood, and intellectual thinking of a certain historical period, focused around 1900. For a brief while, it became the visual language that defined the modern era’s quest for a fully contemporary style.

Key Art in Art Nouveau

Cover design for Wren’s City Churches

Artist: Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo

1883

The Arts and Crafts movement in England, namely the Mackmurdo woodcut, had a significant impact on Art Nouveau. There are two things that contribute to this association: the handmade nature of the work that distinguishes a woodcut, and the simplicity with which Mackmurdo uses positive and negative space. The abstract-naturalistic shapes of Mackmurdo, as well as his hallmark whiplash curves, typify the visual feeling of movement and energy that would characterise Art Nouveau in the years to come. With the focus on floral and vegetal images decorating the cover, the book’s purported subject matter is obscured, highlighting the book’s purposely ornamental appearance and suggesting that Mackmurdo’s work is experimental rather than a fully developed example of Art Nouveau. There is significantly more value in the woodcut than in the text, which is an unfocused exposition of Sir Christopher Wren’s Baroque London church architecture.

La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge

Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1891

In the 1890s, one of Art Nouveau’s most famous graphic designers, Toulouse-Lautrec, transformed the poster from a piece of commercial detritus to a work of fine art by elevating it to this level of artistic status (the same decade that saw the establishment of artistic magazines solely dedicated to this medium). The graphic designers who worked with Lautrec recognised their own ingenuity, even though the term “Art Nouveau” wasn’t coined until after Lautrec’s death in 1901.

The Peacock Skirt

Artist: Aubrey Beardsley

1894

The Peacock Skirt by Beardsley was created as an image for Oscar Wilde’s 1892 drama Salome, based on the Biblical storey of Salome ordering John the Baptist’s head to be beheaded and served on a platter. Many other Art Nouveau painters, such as Victor Prouvé, used Salome as a subject. When compared to some of Beardsley’s other more sexual and almost pornographic works, his Salome is a mild-mannered affair. You can see how many of the Art Nouveau-influenced painters put a focus on line, and how they frequently abstracted their figures in order to achieve the Art Nouveau-inspired flowing curves. There’s also the possibility that it serves as a model for how enthusiastic use of the style’s formal language might lead to criticism. The flattened representation of form in Beardsley’s work shows the impact of Japanese prints on Art Nouveau. It’s also possible to look at this picture as a representation of the contemporary Aesthetic movement, which shows how Art Nouveau was influenced by different time periods and styles.

The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts

Artist: Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos

1893-1896

Built by dön Lechner, the “Hungarian Gaudi,” and his partner Gyula Pártos, the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts shows how the Hungarian “national” strand of Art Nouveau, known as the Hungarian Secession because of its proximity to Vienna, was more of an amalgamation of historical styles rather than a search for new ones.. Located on a trapezoidal lot, this building has an atrium at the back of the main façade that fills with natural light. Islamic and Persian influences may be observed in the complex multi-lobed arches, as well as the baroque bell-shaped domes and spires with onion-shaped carved finials that adorn the structure’s exterior. Gaudi’s very ornate edifice is articulated all over by tilework, stained glass and stone, giving a vibrant polychrome look that keeps the viewer’s eye moving and remind one of the harmonic unification of applied arts here in creating a “total work of art.”

Model #342, “Wisteria” Lamp

Artist: Clara Driscoll for Tiffany Studios, New York

1901-1905

Louis Comfort Tiffany’s company is famous for its Art Nouveau table lamps. One of the most sought-after models is the #342, dubbed “Wisteria,” When lit, the lamp’s leaded glass shade seems to be the wisteria branches at its summit. The bronze base and shade combine to create an organic look. A warm, but gentle glow emanates from the screens of approximately 2,000 meticulously picked pieces of glass, giving the blossoming petals the appearance of water droplets dripping. This suggests sunlight has been filtered through the screen. Naturalism and Japonism are echoed in this design, which has an irregularly-shaped armature at the crown and a bottom border, since wisteria is native to the eastern United States (where Tiffany’s headquarters were located) as well as China, Japan, and Korea.

Hope II

Artist: Gustav Klimt

1907-1908

Klimt’s art, like that of Aubrey Beardsley’s, is characterised by the distortion and exaggeration of forms, as well as sexually explicit content. Klimt, in contrast to Beardsley, is well-known for his frequent use of gold leaf, typically in conjunction with a kaleidoscope of other vibrant colours, notably in his post-1900 works. As a result of this combination, Klimt developed his distinctive mature style, which can be summed up as an array of dreamy paintings of women that are visually luscious (as well as materially lavish), sometimes depicting real people but more often depicting imagined or allegorical personifications, such as his painting Hope II. By using exaggerated and flattened body shapes, as well as an emphasis on pattern and a lack of depth, Klimt achieved his goal of creating a “new art” that was devoid of established norms or principles. Secessionists such as Klimt opposed academic painting’s precepts as founding members of the group. Klimt’s work has elicited a wide range of emotions throughout his lifetime and even today, which has contributed to his recognition as the most forward-thinking artist of the Art Nouveau movement and a master of modernism.

Park Guell

Artist: Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol

1900-1914

Architect Antoni Gaudi, most renowned for his work on Barcelona’s incomplete Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia, also designed dozens of other structures in Catalonia’s capital. Preparing a hillside residential neighbourhood for textile mogul Eusebi Guell was one of Antoni Gaudi’s last undertakings before committing himself totally to the Sagrada Familia in 1914. Despite the fact that only Gaudi’s house and one other property were constructed, and the project was a financial disaster, this construction showcases Gaudi’s inventive architectural ability.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.