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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Art nouveau.

Factory of Olivier de Sorra

Vase with peacock feathers

Auguste Delaherche

"Ombellifères" (cow parsley) Cabinet

Emile Gallé

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Designed by Louis C. Tiffany

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

Edvard Munch

Designed by Philippe Wolfers

Monumental vase

Georges Hoentschel

Edward Colonna

Alexandre Bigot

Cabinet-vitrine

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy

Dress panel

Hector Guimard

Georges Fouquet

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat

Coffeepot (part of a service)

• Sèvres Manufactory

René-Jules Lalique

Henry van de Velde

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Designed by Henri-Jules-Ferdinand Bellery-Desfontaines

Maude Adams (1872–1953) as Joan of Arc

Alphonse Mucha

Tea service

Josef Hoffmann

Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000)

Gustav Klimt

Cybele Gontar Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2006

From the 1880s until the First World War, western Europe and the United States witnessed the development of Art Nouveau (“New Art”). Taking inspiration from the unruly aspects of the natural world , Art Nouveau influenced art and architecture especially in the applied arts, graphic work, and illustration. Sinuous lines and “whiplash” curves were derived, in part, from botanical studies and illustrations of deep-sea organisms such as those by German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919) in Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature, 1899). Other publications, including Floriated Ornament (1849) by Gothic Revivalist Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852) and The Grammar of Ornament (1856) by British architect and theorist Owen Jones (1809–1874), advocated nature as the primary source of inspiration for a generation of artists seeking to break away from past styles. The unfolding of Art Nouveau’s flowing line may be understood as a metaphor for the freedom and release sought by its practitioners and admirers from the weight of artistic tradition and critical expectations.

Additionally, the new style was an outgrowth of two nineteenth-century English developments for which design reform (a reaction to prevailing art education, industrialized mass production, and the debasement of historic styles) was a leitmotif—the Arts and Crafts movement and the Aesthetic movement. The former emphasized a return to handcraftsmanship and traditional techniques. The latter promoted a similar credo of “art for art’s sake” that provided the foundation for non-narrative paintings, for instance, Whistler ‘s  Nocturnes . It further drew upon elements of Japanese art (“ japonisme “), which flooded Western markets , mainly in the form of prints, after trading rights were established with Japan in the 1860s. Indeed, the gamut of late nineteenth-century artistic trends prior to World War I, including those in painting and the early designs of the Wiener Werkstätte, may be defined loosely under the rubric of Art Nouveau.

The term art nouveau first appeared in the 1880s in the Belgian journal L’Art Moderne to describe the work of Les Vingt, twenty painters and sculptors seeking reform through art. Les Vingt, like much of the artistic community throughout Europe and America, responded to leading nineteenth-century theoreticians such as French Gothic Revival architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) and British art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who advocated the unity of all the arts, arguing against segregation between the fine arts of painting and sculpture and the so-called lesser decorative arts. Deeply influenced by the socially aware teachings of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement , Art Nouveau designers endeavored to achieve the synthesis of art and craft, and further, the creation of the spiritually uplifting Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) encompassing a variety of media. The successful unification of the fine and applied arts was achieved in many such complete designed environments as Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde’s Hôtel Tassel and Hôtel Van Eetvelde (Brussels, 1893–95), Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald’s design of the Hill House (Helensburgh, near Glasgow, 1902–4), and Josef Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt’s Palais Stoclet dining room (Brussels, 1905–11) ( 2000.350 ; 1994.120 ; 2000.278.1–.9 ).

Painting styles such as Post-Impressionism and Symbolism (the “Nabis” ) shared close ties with Art Nouveau, and each was practiced by designers who adapted them for the applied arts, architecture, interior designs, furnishings, and patterns. They contributed to an overall expressiveness and the formation of a cohesive style ( 64.148 ).

In December 1895, German-born Paris art dealer Siegfried Bing opened a gallery called L’Art Nouveau for the contemporary décor he exhibited and sold there ( 1999.398.3 ). Though Bing’s gallery is credited with the popularization of the movement and its name, Art Nouveau style reached an international audience through the vibrant graphic arts printed in such periodicals as The Savoy, La Plume, Die Jugend, Dekorative Kunst, The Yellow Book , and The Studio . The Studio featured the bold, Symbolist-inspired linear drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898). Beardsley’s flamboyant black and white block print J’ai baisé ta bouche lokanaan for Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1894), with its brilliant incorporation of Japanese two-dimensional composition, may be regarded as a highlight of the Aesthetic movement and an early manifestation of Art Nouveau taste in England. Other influential graphic artists included Alphonse Mucha, Jules Chéret, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , whose vibrant poster art often expressed the variety of roles of women in Belle Époque society—from femme nouvelle (a “new woman” who rejected the conventional ideals of femininity, domesticity, and subservience) to demimonde ( 20.33 ; 32.88.12 ). Female figures were often incorporated as fairies or sirens in the jewelry of René Lalique, Georges Fouquet, and Philippe Wolfers ( 1991.164 ; 2003.560 ; 2003.236 ).

Art Nouveau style was particularly associated with France, where it was called variously Style Jules Verne, Le Style Métro (after Hector Guimard’s iron and glass subway entrances), Art belle époque , and Art fin de siècle ( 49.85.11 ). In Paris, it captured the imagination of the public at large at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the last and grandest of a series of fairs organized every eleven years from 1798. Various structures showcased the innovative style, including the Porte Monumentale entrance, an elaborate polychromatic dome with electronic lights designed by René Binet (1866–1911); the Pavillon Bleu, a restaurant alongside the Pont d’Iena at the foot of the Eiffel Tower featuring the work of Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858–1910) ( 1981.512.4 ); Art Nouveau Bing, a series of six domestic interiors that included Symbolist art ( 26.228.5 ); and the pavilion of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, an organization dedicated to the revival and modernization of the decorative arts as an economic stimulus and expression of national identity that offered an important display of decorative objects ( 1991.182.2 ; 26.228.7 ; 1988.287.1a,b ). Sharing elements of the French Rococo (and its nineteenth-century revivals ), including stylized motifs derived from nature, fantasy, and Japanese art, the furnishings exhibited were produced in the new taste and yet perpetuated an acclaimed tradition of French craftsmanship. The use of luxury veneers and finely cast gilt mounts in the furniture of leading cabinetmakers Georges de Feure (1868–1943), Louis Majorelle (1859–1926), Edward Colonna (1862–1948), and Eugène Gaillard (1862–1933) indicated the Neo-Rococo influence of François Linke (1855–1946) ( 26.228.5 ).

The Exposition Universelle was followed by two shows at which many luminaries of European Art Nouveau exhibited. They included the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1901 that featured the fantastical Russian pavilions of Fyodor Shekhtel’ (1859–1926) and the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna at Turin in 1902 that showcased the work of furniture designer Carlo Bugatti of Milan ( 69.69 ).

As in France, the “new art” was called by different names in the various style centers where it developed throughout Europe. In Belgium, it was called Style nouille or Style coup de fouet . In Germany, it was Jugendstil or “young style,” after the popular journal Die Jugend ( 1991.182.2 ). Part of the broader Modernista movement in Barcelona, its chief exponent was the architect and redesigner of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) cathedral (Barcelona, begun 1882), Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). In Italy, it was named Arte nuova, Stile floreale , or Lo stile Liberty after the London firm of Liberty & Co., which supplied Oriental ceramics and textiles to aesthetically aware Londoners in the 1870s and produced English Art Nouveau objects such as the Celtic Revival “Cymric” and “Tudric” ranges of silver by Archibald Knox (1864–1933). Other style centers included Austria and Hungary, where Art Nouveau was called the Sezessionstil . In Russia, Saint Petersburg and Moscow were the two centers of production for Stil’ modern . “Tiffany Style” in the United States was named for the legendary Favrile glass designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany .

Although international in scope, Art Nouveau was a short-lived movement whose brief incandescence was a precursor of modernism, which emphasized function over form and the elimination of superfluous ornament. Although a reaction to historic revivalism, it brought Victorian excesses to a dramatic fin-de-siècle crescendo. Its influence has been far reaching and is evident in Art Deco furniture designs, whose sleek surfaces are enriched by exotic wood veneers and ornamental inlays. Dramatic Art Nouveau—inspired graphics became popular in the turbulent social and political milieu of the 1960s, among a new generation challenging conventional taste and ideas.

Gontar, Cybele. “Art Nouveau.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm (October 2006)

Further Reading

Arwas, Victor. Art Nouveau: The French Aesthetic . London: Andreas Papadakis, 2002.

Escritt, Stephen. Art Nouveau . London: Phaidon, 2000.

Fahr-Becker, Gabriele. Art Nouveau . Cologne: Könemann, 1997.

Greenhalgh, Paul, ed. Art Nouveau, 1890–1914 . Exhibition catalogue. London: V&A Publications; Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2000.

Weisberg, Gabriel P. Art Nouveau Bing: Paris Style 1900 . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Abrams, 1986.

Weisberg, Gabriel P., Edwin Becker, and Évelyne Possémé, eds. The Origins of L'Art Nouveau: The Bing Empire . Exhibition catalogue. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 2004.

Additional Essays by Cybele Gontar

• Gontar, Cybele. “ Empire Style, 1800–1815 .” (October 2004)
• Gontar, Cybele. “ Neoclassicism .” (October 2003)
• Gontar, Cybele. “ Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827–1875) .” (October 2004)
• Gontar, Cybele. “ The Neoclassical Temple .” (October 2003)

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Art Nouveau

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Art Nouveau , ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States . Art Nouveau is characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed most often in architecture , interior design , jewelry and glass design, posters , and illustration. It was a deliberate attempt to create a new style, free of the imitative historicism that dominated much of 19th-century art and design. About this time the term Art Nouveau was coined, in Belgium by the periodical L’Art Moderne to describe the work of the artist group Les Vingt and in Paris by S. Bing, who named his gallery L’Art Nouveau. The style was called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria , Stile Floreale (or Stile Liberty) in Italy , and Modernismo (or Modernista) in Spain .

In England the style’s immediate precursors were the Aestheticism of the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley , who depended heavily on the expressive quality of organic line, and the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris , who established the importance of a vital style in the applied arts. On the European continent, Art Nouveau was influenced by experiments with expressive line by the painters Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . The movement was also partly inspired by a vogue for the linear patterns of Japanese prints ( ukiyo-e ).

The distinguishing ornamental characteristic of Art Nouveau is its undulating asymmetrical line, often taking the form of flower stalks and buds, vine tendrils, insect wings, and other delicate and sinuous natural objects; the line may be elegant and graceful or infused with a powerfully rhythmic and whiplike force. In the graphic arts the line subordinates all other pictorial elements—form, texture, space, and colour—to its own decorative effect. In architecture and the other plastic arts, the whole of the three-dimensional form becomes engulfed in the organic, linear rhythm, creating a fusion between structure and ornament. Architecture particularly shows this synthesis of ornament and structure; a liberal combination of materials—ironwork, glass, ceramic, and brickwork—was employed, for example, in the creation of unified interiors in which columns and beams became thick vines with spreading tendrils and windows became both openings for light and air and membranous outgrowths of the organic whole. This approach was directly opposed to the traditional architectural values of reason and clarity of structure.

There were a great number of artists and designers who worked in the Art Nouveau style. Some of the more prominent were the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh , who specialized in a predominantly geometric line and particularly influenced the Austrian Sezessionstil; the Belgian architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta , whose extremely sinuous and delicate structures influenced the French architect Hector Guimard , another important figure; the American glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany ; the French furniture and ironwork designer Louis Majorelle ; the Czechoslovakian graphic designer-artist Alphonse Mucha ; the French glass and jewelry designer René Lalique ; the American architect Louis Henry Sullivan , who used plantlike Art Nouveau ironwork to decorate his traditionally structured buildings; and the Spanish architect and sculptor Antonio Gaudí , perhaps the most original artist of the movement, who went beyond dependence on line to transform buildings into curving, bulbous, brightly coloured, organic constructions.

After 1910 Art Nouveau appeared old-fashioned and limited and was generally abandoned as a distinct decorative style. In the 1960s, however, the style was rehabilitated, in part, by major exhibitions organized at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1959) and at the Musée National d’Art Moderne (1960), as well as by a large-scale retrospective on Beardsley held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1966. The exhibitions elevated the status of the movement, which had often been viewed by critics as a passing trend, to the level of other major Modern art movements of the late 19th century. Currents of the movement were then revitalized in Pop and Op art . In the popular domain, the flowery organic lines of Art Nouveau were revived as a new psychedelic style in fashion and in the typography used on rock and pop album covers and in commercial advertising .

Art Nouveau

Summary of Art Nouveau

Generating enthusiasts in the decorative and graphic arts and architecture throughout Europe and beyond, Art Nouveau appeared in a wide variety of strands, and, consequently, it is known by various names, such as the Glasgow Style, or, in the German-speaking world, Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was aimed at modernizing design, seeking to escape the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants. The emphasis on linear contours took precedence over color, which was usually represented with hues such as muted greens, browns, yellows, and blues. The movement was committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed the so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts. The style went out of fashion for the most part long before the First World War, paving the way for the development of Art Deco in the 1920s, but it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s, and it is now seen as an important predecessor - if not an integral component - of modernism .

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• The desire to abandon the historical styles of the 19 th century was an important impetus behind Art Nouveau and one that establishes the movement's modernism. Industrial production was, at that point, widespread, and yet the decorative arts were increasingly dominated by poorly-made objects imitating earlier periods. The practitioners of Art Nouveau sought to revive good workmanship, raise the status of craft, and produce genuinely modern design that reflected the utility of the items they were creating.
• The academic system, which dominated art education from the 17 th to the 19 th century, underpinned the widespread belief that media such as painting and sculpture were superior to crafts such as furniture design and ironwork. The consequence, many believed, was the neglect of good craftsmanship. Art Nouveau artists sought to overturn that belief, aspiring instead to "total works of the arts," the famous Gesamtkunstwerk , that inspired buildings and interiors in which every element worked harmoniously within a related visual vocabulary. In the process, Art Nouveau helped to narrow the gap between the fine and the applied arts, though it is debatable whether this gap has ever been completely closed.
• Many Art Nouveau practitioners felt that earlier design had been excessively ornamental, and in wishing to avoid what they perceived as frivolous decoration, they evolved a belief that the function of an object should dictate its form. In practice this was a somewhat flexible ethos, yet it would be an important part of the style's legacy to later modernist movements, most famously the Bauhaus .

Key Artists

Overview of Art Nouveau

Gustav Klimt famously said, “Enough of censorship…I refuse every form of support from the state, I’ll do without all of it,” – because he was attacked for his work’s swirling erotic forms, he went on pioneer his Gold Period – one of the highlights of Art Nouveau.

Artworks and Artists of Art Nouveau

Cover design for Wren's City Churches

Artist: Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo

Mackmurdo's woodcut is an example of the influence of English design, particularly the Arts and Crafts movement, on Art Nouveau. The woodcut as a genre points to the handcrafted, unique quality of the work and the simplicity of Mackmurdo's use of positive and negative space both contribute to this association. Meanwhile, Mackmurdo's abstract-cum-naturalistic forms and the trademark whiplash curves are characteristic of the visual sense of free movement and energy that would eventually define Art Nouveau. The emphasis on the floral and vegetal imagery adorning the cover which refuses any real consonance with the professed subject matter of the book also highlights its purposefully decorative quality, hinting at how Mackmurdo's work is of an experimental nature rather than a definitive, mature example of Art Nouveau. The woodcut proves far more valuable than the actual content, which consists of a rambling, loose description of the architecture of the Baroque London churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

Woodcut on handmade paper

La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge

Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec is one of Art Nouveau's most important graphic artists who were responsible for raising the poster from the realm of advertising ephemera to high art during the 1890s (the same decade that saw the establishment of artistic magazines solely dedicated to this medium). Lautrec and his fellow graphic artists understood that they were innovative, though the stylistic label "Art Nouveau" was probably never applied to them until after Lautrec's death in 1901. La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge takes the flourish and messiness of a French can-can dancer's dress and breaks it down to a few simple, rhythmic lines, thereby suggesting the sense of movement and space. The flattening of forms to mere outlines with the flat infill of color recalls Art Nouveau's debt to Japanese prints as well as the lighting in such nightclubs that naturally would render the surface details of figures and other objects indistinct. Likewise, the repetitive red lettering of the cabaret's name suggests the pulsating energy of the performances for which dancers like La Goulue (stage name of Louise Weber, one of Lautrec's friends) took center stage.

Lithograph - The Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Peacock Skirt

Artist: Aubrey Beardsley

Beardsley's The Peacock Skirt is an illustration made for Oscar Wilde's 1892 play Salome , based on the Biblical narrative centered on Salome's order to behead and serve on a platter the head of John the Baptist. (Salome was a popular subject for many other Art Nouveau artists, including Victor Prouvé.) Beardsley's Salome is comparatively tame in comparison with some of the illustrator's more erotic and nearly pornographic works. It is a fine example of how many artists influenced by Art Nouveau laid great emphasis on line, often abstracting their figures to produce the fashionable sinuous curves so characteristic of the style. One might also take it as an example of how the formal vocabulary of the style could be used with exuberant excess, a quality that would later attract criticism. The influence of Japonese prints on Art Nouveau is also evident in Beardsley's work in its flattened rendition of form. But this illustration might also be taken as an example of the contemporaneous Aesthetic movement, and in that respect it demonstrates how Art Nouveau overlapped and interacted with various other period styles.

Ink illustration

The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts

Artist: Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos

Designed by Ödön Lechner, sometimes known as the "Hungarian Gaudi," with his partner Gyula Pártos, the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts is an example of the way that the Hungarian "national" strand of Art Nouveau (often called the Hungarian Secession because of its closeness to Vienna) consisted more of an amalgamation of various historical styles than a precise search for new ones. This building, on a trapezoidal site, encircles a courtyard that is largely filled by a glass atrium to the rear of the main facade. The forms used inside and out derive from a mixture of Islamic and Persian architecture, as seen in its elaborate multi-lobed arches, as well as Central European-derived baroque, bell-shaped domes and spires with onion-shaped carved finials. As with Gaudi's work, the highly ornamental building, articulated everywhere by tilework, stained glass and stone produces a lively, polychromed effect that keeps the viewer's eye moving and reminds one of the harmonious unity of the applied arts here in creating a "total work of art."

Budapest, Hungary

Entrances to Paris Subway Stations

Artist: Hector Guimard

When Hector Guimard was commissioned to design these famous subway station entrances, Paris was only the second city in the world (after London) to have constructed an underground railway. Guimard's design answered the desire to celebrate and promote this new infrastructure with a bold structure that would be clearly visible on the Paris streetscape. The entrances use the twisted, organic forms typical of Art Nouveau that appear at first to be nearly seamless, yet they are constructed out of several cast iron parts that were easily mass produced, at Osne-le-Val to the east of Paris. In effect, Guimard had concealed an aspect of the object's modernity beneath its sinuous continuity, a strategy that is symptomatic of Art Nouveau's ambivalent attitude to the modern age. Guimard's design was thus instrumental in bringing Art Nouveau's otherwise complex, labor-intensive designs to a mass audience for whom the style seemed like a symbol of unattainable luxury.

Paris, France

Ernst-Ludwig-Haus, Darmstadt

Artist: Joseph Maria Olbrich

This is the centerpiece of the new Darmstadt Artists Colony (Kunstlerkolonie), formed in 1899 under the patronage of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, an admirer of the Arts & Crafts movement. It was designed by J.M. Olbrich, one of the Colony's founding artists, whom the Duke poached from the Vienna Secession. (Olbrich had designed the Secession's exhibition building three years before.) Like the Secession building, the Ernst-Ludwig-Haus is highly rectilinear, with a gleaming white exterior capped by a gently sloping roof, set on the brow of a hill. This is offset by the arched, centrally-located main entrance, delineated by its gold-plated, cloudlike geometric pattern surrounding the doorway, which is fronted by Ludwig Habisch's twin male and female sculptures personifying Strength and Beauty. The sloping skylights stretching the length of the rear of the structure disclose its function as one of the rare Art Nouveau buildings designed solely as studio space, and it served as the centerpiece of the opening exhibition of the Darmstadt group in 1901. Although the Colony only lasted until the outbreak of war in 1914, today the structure serves as a museum of their artistic endeavors.

Darmstadt, Germany

Model #342, “Wisteria” Lamp

Artist: Clara Driscoll for Tiffany Studios, New York

Table lamps are some of the most famous Art Nouveau items produced by Louis Comfort Tiffany's firm. The model #342, commonly called "Wisteria," is one of the most prized. The bronze base resembles the roots and lower trunk of a tree, with the leaded glass shade that appears like the branches of a wisteria at its crown cast in bronze. These suspend the flowering petals that appear to drip like drops of water, created from nearly 2,000 individually-selected pieces of glass whose screen produces a warm, yet soft glow, suggesting the filtering of sunlight. The irregularity of the armature at the crown along with the border of the bottom of the shade add to the naturalism of the design, but they also recall the influence of Impressionism and Japonism on Art Nouveau, as wisteria are native to both the eastern United States, where Tiffany was based, and to China, Japan, and Korea. Recently-discovered evidence proves that Model #342 was designed by Clara Driscoll, head of Tiffany Studios Women's Glass Cutting Department and creator of over thirty of the company's famed lamps, including the Daffodil, Dragonfly, and Peony models. It thus also represents an important moment for women designers at the turn of the century, who were put in charge of a significant sector of the firm's production. Driscoll herself commanded $10,000 a year as one of the highest-paid women of her time, until she was required to leave Tiffany Studios when she married in 1909.

Leaded glass and patinated bronze

Artist: Gustav Klimt

Klimt's work, like Aubrey Beardsley's, involves the distortion and exaggeration of forms and, often, highly sexually-charged subject matter. Unlike Beardsley, however, Klimt is famous, particularly in his post-1900 paintings, for his frequent use of gold leaf, often in concert with a kaleidoscope of other bright hues. This combination helped create Klimt's signature mature style, often summarized as a set of dreamy, visually luscious (and materially luxurious) paintings of women, sometimes real portraits but often imagined or allegorical personifications, including his Hope II . The nearly-surreal imagery of exaggerated and flattened bodily forms, highlighted by the emphasis on pattern and the lack of depth and detached from a recognizable environment, underscores the way that Klimt focused on creating a literal "new art" that was free from prescribed rules or principles. As a founding member of the Vienna Secession, he rejected the tenets of academic painting under which he had been trained. The shocking reactions that Klimt's work has provoked - during his lifetime up to the present day - helps contribute to his renown as the most innovative Art Nouveau painter and a master of modernism.

Oil and gold leaf on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Artist: Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol

Antoni Gaudi, the foremost architect of Catalan Modernisme , may be best-known for his work on the still-unfinished Expiatory Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, but his signature designs can be seen in dozens of buildings throughout the city. One of the last projects that Gaudi, a devout Catholic, undertook before devoting himself entirely to the Sagrada Familia in 1914 was a speculative hillside suburban community for his chief patron, the textile magnate Eusebi Guell. The development displays Gaudi's innovative design capabilities, even though the only homes completed were his own house plus one other residence and the project is generally considered a financial failure. The park's design is thoroughly integrated into the landscape, with rough-hewn inclined columns seemingly excavated out of the hillsides and covered by vines. The centerpiece consists of a columned market space supporting an open plaza bounded by a serpentine bench covered with a conglomerate of discarded ceramic tiles, called trencadís , a hallmark of Catalan craftsmanship. The market is connected to the Parc's entrance by a grand staircase with a tiled fountain sporting the face of a dragon and the striped Catalan flag. There, the gatehouse and concierge's residence consist of rocky lodges crowned by irregular, conical spires, appearing to be crafted out of gingerbread. The undulating forms, inspired by inverted catenary arches, and brilliantly-colored tilework point to the collaborative nature of Catalan Art Nouveau, involving teams of craftsmen specializing in different media and the reliance on the honest treatment of ecologically-sensitive materials.

Beginnings of Art Nouveau

The advent of Art Nouveau - literally "New Art" - can be traced to two distinct influences: the first was the introduction, around 1880, of the British Arts and Crafts movement, which, much like Art Nouveau, was a reaction against the cluttered designs and compositions of Victorian-era decorative art. The second was the current vogue for Japanese art, particularly wood-block prints, that swept up many European artists in the 1880s and 90s, including the likes of Gustav Klimt , Emile Gallé , and James Abbott McNeill Whistler . Japanese wood-block prints in particular contained floral and bulbous forms, and "whiplash" curves, all key elements of what would eventually become Art Nouveau.

It is difficult to pinpoint the first work(s) of art that officially launched Art Nouveau. Some argue that the patterned, flowing lines and floral backgrounds found in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin represent Art Nouveau's birth, or perhaps even the decorative lithographs of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , such as Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891). But most point to the origins in the decorative arts, and in particular to a book jacket by English architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo for the 1883 volume Wren's City Churches . The design depicts serpentine stalks of flowers emanating from one flattened pad at the bottom of the page, clearly reminiscent of Japanese-style wood-block prints.

Art Nouveau Exhibitions

Art Nouveau was often most conspicuous at international expositions during its heyday. It enjoyed center stage at five particular fairs: the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles in Paris; the 1897 Tervueren Exposition in Brussels (where Art Nouveau was largely employed to show off the possibilities of craftsmanship with the exotic woods of the Belgian Congo); the 1902 Turin International Exposition of Modern Decorative Arts; and the 1909 Exposition International de l'Est de la France in Nancy. At each of these fairs, the style was dominant in terms of the decorative arts and architecture on display, and in Turin in 1902, Art Nouveau was truly the style of choice of virtually every designer and every nation represented, to the exclusion of any other.

The Regional Names for Art Nouveau

Siegfried Bing, a German merchant and connoisseur of Japanese art living in Paris, opened a shop named L'Art Nouveau in December 1895, which became one of the main purveyors of the style in furniture and the decorative arts. Before long, the store's name became synonymous with the style in France, Britain, and the United States. Art Nouveau's wide popularity throughout Western and Central Europe, however, meant that it went by several different titles. In German-speaking countries, it was generally called Jugendstil (Youth Style), taken from a Munich magazine called Jugend that popularized it. Meanwhile, in Vienna - home to Gustav Klimt , Otto Wagner , Josef Hoffmann and the other founders of the Vienna Secession - it was known as Sezessionsstil (Secession Style). It was also known as Modernismo in Spanish, Modernisme in Catalan, and Stile Floreale (floral style) or Stile Liberty in Italy (the latter after Arthur Liberty's fabric shop in London, which helped popularize the style). In France it was commonly called Modern(e)-Style and occasionally Style Guimard after its most famous practitioner there, the architect Hector Guimard , and in the Netherlands it was usually called Nieuwe Kunst (New Art). Its numerous detractors also gave it several derogatory names: Style Nouille (noodle style) in France, Paling Stijl (eel style) in Belgium, and Bandwurmstil (tapeworm style) in Germany - all names which made playful reference to Art Nouveau's tendency to employ sinuous and flowing lines.

Art Nouveau: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Art nouveau graphics and design.

Art Nouveau's ubiquity in the late-19 th century must be explained in part by many artists' use of popular and easily reproduced forms, found in the graphic arts. In Germany, Jugendstil artists like Peter Behrens and Hermann Obrist had their work printed on book covers and exhibition catalogs, magazine advertisements and playbills. But this trend was by no means limited to Germany. The English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley , perhaps the most controversial Art Nouveau figure due to his combination of the erotic and the macabre, created a number of posters in his brief career that employed graceful and rhythmic lines. Beardsley's highly decorative prints, such as The Peacock Skirt (1894), were both decadent and simple, and represent the most direct link we can identify between Art Nouveau and Japonism / Ukiyo-e prints . In France, the posters and graphic production of Jules Chéret , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Pierre Bonnard , Victor Prouvé , Théophile Steinlen , and a handful of others popularized the lavish, decadent lifestyle of the belle époque (roughly the era between 1890-1914), usually associated with the seedy cabaret district of Montmartre in northern Paris. Their graphic works used new chromolithographic techniques to promote everything from new technologies like telephones and electric lights to bars, restaurants, nightclubs and even individual performers, evoking the energy and vitality of modern life. In the process, they soon raised the poster from the ranks of the pedestrian advertisement to high art.

Art Nouveau Architecture

In addition to the graphic and visual arts, any serious discussion of Art Nouveau must consider architecture and the vast influence this had on European culture. In urban hubs such as Paris, Brussels, Glasgow, Turin, Barcelona, Antwerp, and Vienna, as well as smaller cities like Nancy and Darmstadt, along with Eastern European locales like Riga, Prague, and Budapest, Art Nouveau architecture prevailed on a grand scale, in both size and appearance, and is still visible today in structures as varied as small row houses to great institutional and commercial buildings. In architecture especially, Art Nouveau was showcased in a wide variety of idioms. Many buildings incorporate a prodigious use of terracotta and colorful tilework. The French ceramicist Alexandre Bigot, for example, made his name largely through the production of terracotta ornament for the facades and fireplaces of Parisian residences and apartment buildings. Other Art Nouveau structures, particularly in France and Belgium ( Hector Guimard and Victor Horta were important practitioners), show off the technological possibilities of an iron structure joined by glass panels.

In many areas across Europe, local stone such as yellow limestone or a rocky, random-coursed rural aesthetic with wood trim characterized Art Nouveau residential architecture. And in several cases, a sculptural white stucco skin was used, particularly on Art Nouveau buildings used for exhibitions, such as the pavilions of the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 and Secession Building in Vienna. Even in the United States, the vegetal forms adorning Louis Sullivan's skyscrapers like the Wainwright Building and Chicago Stock Exchange are often counted among the best examples of Art Nouveau's wide architectural scope.

Art Nouveau Furniture and Interior Design

Like the Victorian stylistic revivals and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau was intimately associated with interior decoration at least as much as it was conspicuous on exterior facades. Also like these other styles of the 19 th century, Art Nouveau interiors also strove to create a harmonious, coherent environment that left no surface untouched. Furniture design took center stage in this respect, particularly in the production of carved wood that featured sharp, irregular contours, often handcrafted but occasionally manufactured using machines. Furniture makers turned out pieces for every use imaginable: beds, chaises, dining room tables and chairs, armoires, sideboards, and lamp stands. The sinuous curves of the designs often fed off the natural grain of woods and was often permanently installed as wall paneling and molding.

In France, the chief Art Nouveau designers included Louis Majorelle, Emile Gallé, and Eugène Vallin, all based in Nancy; and, Tony Selmersheim, Édouard Colonna and Eugène Gaillard, who worked in Paris - the latter two specifically for Siegfried Bing's shop named L'Art Nouveau (later giving the whole movement its most common name). In Belgium, the whiplash line and reserved, more angular contours can be seen in the designs of Gustave Serrurier-Bovy and Henry van de Velde, who both admired the works of the English Arts & Crafts artists. The Italians Alberto Bugatti and Augustino Lauro were well-known for their forays in the style there. Many such designers moved freely between media, often making them hard to categorize: Majorelle, for example, manufactured his own wooden furniture designs and opened up an ironworking foundry, which also produced many of the metal fittings for the glasswork put out by the Daum Brothers' glassworks.

Painting and "The High Arts"

Few styles can claim to be represented across nearly all forms of visual and material media as thoroughly as Art Nouveau. Besides those who worked mainly in the graphics, architecture, and design, Art Nouveau counts some prominent representatives in painting, such as the Vienna Secessionist Gustav Klimt, known for Hope II and The Kiss (both 1907-08), and Victor Prouvé in France. But Art Nouveau painters were few and far between: Klimt counted virtually no students or followers ( Egon Schiele went in the direction of Expressionism ), and Prouvé is known equally well as a sculptor and furniture designer. Instead, Art Nouveau was arguably responsible, more than any style in history, for narrowing the gap between the decorative or applied arts (to utilitarian objects) and the fine or purely ornamental arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, which traditionally had been considered more important, purer expressions of artistic talent and skill. (It is debatable, however, as to whether that gap has ever been completely closed.)

Art Nouveau Glasswork and Jewelry

Art Nouveau's reputation for luxury was also evident by its exploitation by some of the best-known glass artists in history. Emile Gallé, the Daum Brothers, Tiffany, and Jacques Gruber all first found renown, at least in part, through their Art Nouveau glass and its applications in many utilitarian forms. Gallé and Daum's firms established their reputations in vase designs and art glass, pioneering new techniques in acid-etched pieces whose sinuously curved, shapely surfaces seemed to flow between translucent hues effortlessly. The Daum Brothers and Tiffany also exploited the artistic possibilities of glass for utilitarian purposes such as lampshades and desk utensils. Both Tiffany and Jacques Gruber, who had trained in Nancy with the Daum Brothers, became specialists in stained glass that celebrated the beauty of the natural world in large-scale luminant panels

In jewelry, René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Marcel Wolfers created some of the most prized pieces of the turn of the century, producing everything from earrings to necklaces to bracelets to brooches, thereby assuring that Art Nouveau would always be associated with fin-de-siècle luxury, despite the hope that its ubiquity might make it universally accessible.

Retailing and Corporate Identity

Art Nouveau rose to prominence at the same time that retailing expanded to attract a truly mass audience. It was featured prominently by many of the major urban department stores established during the late-19 th century, including La Samaritaine in Paris, Wertheim's in Berlin, and the Magasins Reunis in Nancy. Furthermore, it was marketed aggressively by some of the most famous design outlets of the period, beginning with Siegfried Bing's shop L'Art Nouveau in Paris, which remained a bastion of the dissemination of the style until its closure in 1905 shortly after Bing's death. His was far from the only store in the city to specialize in Art Nouveau interiors and furniture.

Meanwhile, Liberty & Co. was the major distributor of the style's objects in Britain and to Italy, where Liberty's name became nearly synonymous with the style as a result. Many Art Nouveau designers made their names working exclusively for these retailers before moving in other directions. The architect Peter Behrens, for example, designed virtually everything from tea kettles to book covers to advertising posters to exhibition pavilions' interiors to utensils and furniture, eventually becoming the first industrial designer when in 1907 he was put in charge of all design work for AEG ( Allgemeine Elektrisitats-Gesellschaft , the German General Electric).

Later Developments - After Art Nouveau

If Art Nouveau quickly took Europe by storm in the last five years of the 19 th century, artists, designers and architects abandoned it just as quickly in the first decade of the 20 th century. Although many of its practitioners had made the doctrine that "form should follow function" central to their ethos, some designers tended to be lavish in their use of decoration, and the style began to be criticized for being overly elaborate. In a sense, as the style matured, it started to revert to the very habits it had scorned, and a growing number of opponents began to charge that rather than renewing design, it had merely swapped the old for the superficially new. Even using new mass-production methods, the intensive craftsmanship involved in much Art Nouveau design kept it from becoming truly accessible to a mass audience, as its exponents had initially hoped it might. In some cases, such as in Darmstadt, lax international copyright laws also prevented artists from monetarily benefitting from their designs.

Art Nouveau's association with exhibitions also soon contributed its undoing. To begin with, most of the fair buildings themselves were temporary structures that were torn down immediately after the event closed. But more importantly, the expositions themselves, though held under the guise of promoting education, international understanding, and peace, instead tended to fuel rivalry and competition among nations due to the inherently comparative nature of display. Many countries, including France and Belgium, considered Art Nouveau as potential contenders for the title of "national style," before charges of Art Nouveau's foreign origins or subversive political undertones (in France, it was variously associated with Belgian designers and German merchants, and was sometimes the style used in Socialist buildings) turned public opinion against it. With a few notable exceptions where it enjoyed a committed circle of dedicated local patrons, by 1910 Art Nouveau had vanished from the European design landscape.

From Wiener Werkstätte to Art Deco

Art Nouveau's death began in Germany and Austria, where designers such as Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman Moser began to turn towards a sparer, more severely geometric aesthetic as early as 1903. That year, many designers formerly associated with the Vienna Secession founded the collective known as the Wiener Werkstätte, whose preference for starkly angular and rectilinear forms recalled a more precise, industrially-inspired aesthetic that omitted any overt references to nature. This reification of the machine-made qualities of design was underscored in 1907 by two key events: the installation of Behrens as AEG's chief of all corporate design, from buildings to products to advertising, making him the world's first industrial designer; and the founding of the German Werkbund, the formal alliance between industrialists and designers that increasingly attempted to define a system of product types based on standardization. Combined with a newfound respect for classicism, inspired in part by the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and given an official blessing by the City Beautiful movement in the United States, this machine-inspired aesthetic would eventually develop, in the aftermath of World War I, into the style that we now belatedly call Art Deco. Its distinctly commercial character was expressed most succinctly at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, the event which would, in the 1960s, give Art Deco its name.

Postmodern Influences

Despite its brief life, Art Nouveau would prove influential in the 1960s and '70s to designers wishing to break free of the confining, austere, impersonal, and increasingly minimal aesthetic that prevailed in the graphic arts. The free-flowing, uncontrolled linear qualities of Art Nouveau became an inspiration for artists such as Peter Max, whose evocation of a dreamy, psychedelic alternative experience recalls the imaginative, ephemeral, and free-flowing aesthetic world of the turn of the century.

Always recognized from the start as an important step in the development of modernism in both art and architecture, today Art Nouveau is understood less as a transitional bridge between art periods as it is an expression of the style, spirit, and intellectual thought of a certain time frame, centered around 1900. In its search to establish a truly modern aesthetic, it became the defining visual language for a fleeting moment of the age.

Useful Resources on Art Nouveau

• Art Nouveau: Utopia: Reconciling the Irreconcilable (Taschen) Our Pick By Klaus-Jurgen Sembach
• Art Nouveau By Gabriele Fahr-Becker
• Art Nouveau: An Anthology of Design and Illustration from "The Studio" (Dover Pictorial Archive)
• Art Nouveau (Architecture & Design Library) By Robert Fitzgerald
• Art Nouveau Architecture Our Pick By Keiichi Tahara
• Treasures of Art Nouveau: Painting, Sculpture, Decorative Arts in the Gillion Crowet Collection By Michel Draguet
• An Art Nouveau Master Remembered in Prague Our Pick By Dinah Spritzer / The New York Times / September 1, 2010
• Guest Column: The Social Agenda of Art Nouveau By Elisabeth Horth / Collectors Weekly / August 21, 2009
• An Art Nouveau Room Thick With Wisteria Our Pick By Carol Vogel / The New York Times / November 23, 2007
• Louis Tiffany's Eclecticism a Harbinger of Art Nouveau By Roberta Smith / Taipei Times / November 30, 2006

Similar Art

Jupiter and Semele (1895)

L'Indolence (Laziness) (1896)

Related artists, related movements & topics.

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Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Peter Clericuzio

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Europe 1800 - 1900

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Art Nouveau and Art Deco History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 21, 2018 | Original: September 8, 2017

Art Nouveau was an art and design movement that grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th Century. Art Nouveau highlighted curvaceous lines, often inspired by plants and flowers, as well as geometric patterns. Art Deco was a sprawling design sensibility that wound its way through numerous early 20th Century art and design forms, from fine art and architecture to fashion and furniture, as well as everyday appliances and even modes of transportation.

Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts movement, a precursor to Art Nouveau, focused on hand craftsmanship in the decorative arts and was personified by influential textile designer William Morris.

In Art Nouveau, the style of an object is not predetermined and imposed but developed organically through the process of creation, an idea derived from Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Mackintosh believed style came from function, and structures should be built from the inside out. One of his best-known buildings is the Glasgow School of Art, finished in 1910.

Art Nouveau was embraced by architects through the use of curves, iron and glass in designs. The result was buildings like Antoni Gaudí’s sinuous, organic Casa Battló in Barcelona, Spain, completed in 1906.

Art Nouveau in the Visual Arts

Mackintosh’s ideas had a significant effect on the visual arts. Austrian painter Gustav Klimt adopted his abstract patterning, indicative of winding plants, as backgrounds for figurative paintings. Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley brought Art Nouveau to book design, illustrating Sir Thomas Mallory’s La Mort d’Arthur and serving as art editor of the popular Yellow Book magazine in England.

Posters were the main medium through which Art Nouveau was spread. Czech artist Alphonse Mucha’s images of sultry, glamorous women captured the public imagination. His 1894 poster Gismonda , created for entertainer Sarah Bernhardt, brought him his first huge success.

Art Nouveau in Design

Art Nouveau featured object designers rather than sculptors. The best-known is Louis Comfort Tiffany, a former painter who created decorative items for his affluent customers.

Tiffany’s chief innovations were with stained glass, which was crucial to the design of his most famous offering, the Tiffany lamp. Tiffany is also known for his jewelry, boxes, clocks and pottery designs. Clara Driscoll, who worked for the Tiffany from 1888 to 1909, designed most of Tiffany’s most famous lamps, as well as many other items for the company.

French vase maker Emelie Galle formed the influential “Ecole de Nancy” in his hometown of Nancy, France, with bronze sculptor Louis Majorelle, to gather Art Nouveau masters of various disciplines like furniture design and jewelry-making.

By the end of World War I , Art Nouveau had dissipated as a force in the art world. Modernist movements took its place, most notably Art Deco.

Introducing Art Deco

Art Deco was announced to the world in the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, not as a new movement but one that had been in development for more than a decade.

The exposition was a World’s Fair-styled spectacle lasting six months and covering 57 acres in Paris. A popular show based on the exposition toured the United States the following year.

In 1927, Macy’s department store held an influential Art Deco exhibition highlighting eight architects, including Raymond M. Hood, chief designer of Rockefeller Center, and Joseph Urban, set designer and architect of Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida .

Art Deco Spreads

The rise of Art Deco coincided with the scramble to erect skyscrapers, and its influence is felt across America.

Designed in 1928, the Chrysler Building is considered one of the most iconic and most ubiquitous examples. The work of architect William Van Alen, its stainless steel spire with a scalloped base make it instantly recognizable.

Art Deco was the design choice for movie theaters of the era, such as Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles and Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Art Deco was also the guiding principle for stylish transportation, such as Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic automobiles, trains like Henry Dreyfuss’ 20th Century Limited and luxury liners like the Queen Mary.

Art Deco permeated people’s personal lives in its effect on furnishings and decorative items. The design works of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann in furniture, Jean Besnard in pottery, Rene Lalique in glass, Albert-Armand Rateau in metal, Georges Fouquet in jewelry and Serge Gladky in textiles were just a few to have major and lasting impacts.

Images of Art Deco

In the visual arts, Art Deco promoted a sophisticated sensibility. French painter Jean Dupas is well-known for his murals and print advertising. His famous Les Perruches was shown at the 1925 exhibition. Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka was renowned for her portraits of the rich and famous.

Like Art Nouveau, the graphic arts were crucial in embedding Art Deco in the public imagination and defining the culture linked to it. Charles Gesmar is best known for his posters of French entertainer Mistinguett, which gave identity to the Jazz Age. French artist Paul Colin’s posters of Josephine Baker were prime factors in launching Baker’s career. Jean Carlu pulled inspiration from Cubism and gained fame with his poster for Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 film The Kid .

Art Deco also shaped the public view of travel. Ukranian artist Cassandre specialized in transportation posters, most notably his 1935 poster of the French cruise ship Normandie , and is also known for his distinctive advertising work.

Animals were a popular subject among Art Deco artists. Paul Jouve’s paintings and sculptures focused on African animals. Sculptor Francois Pompon’s famous bronze Polar Bear statue debuted at the 1925 exhibition.

Art Deco in Sculpture

Art Deco sculpture frequently found homes in public view. Paul Manship’s most famous work, 1933’s Prometheus , rests in the fountain at Rockefeller Center. Italian-Brazilian sculptor Victor Brecheret found fame with his Monument to the Banderas in Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Brazil, which was started in 1921 and completed in 1954.

The imposing, 98-foot tall, 700-ton Christ the Redeemer sculpture on the 2,300-foot peak of Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was designed by French sculptor Paul Landowski, with the face by Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida. The statue was completed in 1931 and can be seen from just about anywhere in the city.

American sculptor Lee Lawrie is one of the most-seen and lesser-known Art Deco artists. His work adorns buildings across the United States—the National Academy of the Sciences in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles Public Library, the Nebraska State House, Rockefeller Center in New York City and many other locations.

The Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is also credited for spreading the Art Deco form in the United States with artists like Rockwell Kent, Diego Rivera and Reginald Marsh.

Art Deco Wanes

Art Deco was often aligned with the tastes of the wealthy. The 1929 stock market crash redirected the movement towards mass production.

By the early 1930s, an updated Art Deco called Streamline Moderne (or Art Moderne) took hold in America, simplifying designs and, in architecture, focusing on one story structures to better service more common building needs like gas stations and diners. By World War II , Art Deco and Art Nouveau had fallen out of favor and were largely replaced by Modernism .

Modern Art: Impressionism To Post-Modernism. Edited by David Britt. Art Nouveau. By Jean Lahor. The Spirit and Splendour of Art Deco. By Alain Lesieutre. Art Deco. By Victor Arwas . French Art Deco. Metropolitan Museum of Art .

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Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was an artistic movement that united the architecture and decorative arts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These were the European enthusiasts who practiced the variety of styles. The objectives of Art Nouveau were to escape the traditional historical styles and modernize a design. Consequently, the representatives of the movement united natural and flowing forms with the angular figures and evolved elegant designs. One should mention that both geometric and organic forms inspired the artists to create. As a result, the traditional hierarchy of the arts was abolished as the representatives of Art Nouveau did not consider sculpture and painting superior to craft-based decorative arts. Besides, this essay explores the relationship between the history of Art Nouveau and the emergence of global modernity.

The Key Ideas of Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was the result of leaving behind the historical styles and the way of transferring to modernism and creativity. Earlier periods were characterized by poorly made objects and the decorative arts were necessary to make the revolution in art. One should mention that the representatives of Art Nouveau raised the status of craft, produced modern and genuine design and revived good workmanship. Such forgotten crafts as silver-smoothing and furniture design had become the most sophisticated work and proved the necessity of craftsmanship.

The artists of Art Nouveau changed the vision and beliefs about crafts and inspired others to create the art of buildings and interiors. The attention was paid to the smallest objects and details that were decorated to be ornamental and unique. The representatives of Art Nouveau believed that this was the object that should dictate its form. The movement was short-lived as it was less collective. Not every artist supposed geometric forms of plants such as rectangles and squares attractive and exciting. Architects, visual artists, and designers were united to create the style of design for the modern art. Additionally, Art Nouveau was the reaction against Victorian-era decorative art that was too predictable and traditional.

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One should mention that the movement did not have boundaries presenting graphic art, printing of works on playbills, magazine advertisements, and exhibition catalogs. New forms of Art Nouveau were controversial, debatable and ambiguous. The natural world was the key muse of the artists. As a result, they were free in the choice of objects, forms, and meaning. The main features of Art Nouveau were curvy, elongated and sinuous lines, exotic woods, semi-precious stones and silver, female forms, stylized nature and vertical lines. Art Nouveau was influenced by botanical research, rococo style and crafts.

It is evident that objects were in the center of Art Nouveau. The artists designed flowers, ornaments, fireplaces, lighting, door handles, stained glass, furniture, tiles, wallpaper, walls color schemes and floors. The conceptual traits of Art Nouveau were imaginary, abstraction, conceptualization, minimalism, orientation on the natural world and simplicity. The ambiguity that provoked a lot of interpretations was another feature of Art Nouveau that proved transferring to the global modernity and leaving behind traditionalism of Victorian era. Art Nouveau was so rich that it was difficult to predict whether it evoked magic atmosphere and charm or shock and fear. The distinction of lines and colors was a proof of modernization of art and its movement to era of technologies. Calmness and non-aggressiveness of colors of the depicted objects made them different from the traditional art forms.

Conceptual meaning of objects was more important than their depiction. As a result, abstract expressionism did not always provoke astonishment and approval. It means that the representatives of Art Nouveau should not only present their vision of the modern art but fight against stereotypes and traditionalism of art forms that deprived craftsmanship of the place during the Victorian period. Imagery and physicality of objects were the driving forces of the representatives of Art Nouveau. Expressionism, minimalism, and cubism were the ways of the depiction of the natural world differently through colors, compositions, space and abstraction. The artists ruined the boundaries and limitations between the real and imaginary. The attention was paid to the perception and vision of the depicted objects.

The advantage of the artists of Art Nouveau was that they were not afraid to experiment with different materials making them look alive and realistic. They could make panels and floors depict the state of consciousness and perception. They fused with the objects involving creativity and creating mystery. Presently, it often remains a mystery for students who are assigned to write about this art form and share their perceptions. Our art essay writing service can help with this task and enable you to learn more based on vivid textual representations and comprehensive explanations offered by professionals.

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Georgia O’Keefe and her Works

Georgia O’Keefe was one of the brightest and most talented artists of Art Nouveau whose works revealed the traits of that movement and presupposed modernization not only of art but even of its perception. Her vision of the modern art was not aimed at shifting art trends. On the contrary, it intended to look for abstract and essential forms in nature. It means that Georgia O’Keefe concentrated her attention on natural objects. One should mention that her great finesse and powers of observations made her paintings unusual and untraditional. She ruined the canons of Victorian art that was too pompous, sophisticated and complicated.

Bones, flowers, and landscapes fascinated her the most. Her life experience and place of living were the sources for her creative ideas. She contributed to Art Nouveau as she was one of the American representatives, and she was a woman that was a rare case among painters. One should mention that Georgia O’Keefe had developed as an artist and a painter under the influence of the modernist photographers and painters.

Her work “Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue” was created in 1931. Her depiction of this painting on canvas made it a bit traditional. However, the subject of that work was really shocking and unexpected for the audience. The colors of the painting were meaningful and symbolic as red, white and blue were the colors of the American flag. It means that Georgia O’Keefe wanted to identify and promote the American artistic style as it lagged behind the European one. Her symbols of America are not stereotypical as she did not use landscapes and natural beauty as regionalist artists did. On the contrary, she managed to reveal urban problems and represent American enduring spirit.

“Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue” was an iconic painting as it symbolized also the American West and was like a joke on the American art scene. One should mention that the work was based on perception and cultural background of the audience. Cow’s skull was an unusual object for depiction that provoked fear and disgust. However, peaceful colors and association with the American flag changed the opinion about the work. Vertical lines also made “Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue” calmer and not so aggressive. Minimalism and abstractness reinforced the depth and symbolism of the depicted objects.

Another distinctive work of Georgia O’Keefe was “White Canadian Barn” that was painted with oil on canvas. That painting differed from the previous one with the commitment to the geometric forms. Summer trip to Gaspe Peninsula of Canada inspired her to create such work that belonged to the theme series. The barn was the key object that was stark in design and color. The narrow and horizontal proportion of “White Canadian Barn” and flat rectangular forms of the walls and roof proved its belonging to Art Nouveau. Three distinct areas such as ground, building and denoting sky divided the space into three areas.

One can say that “White Canadian Barn” is made in three-dimensional form that made it modernist and innovative. It is evident that commitment to geometry and form proved the orientation of Georgia O’Keefe toward Art Nouveau and violation of traditional and old-fashioned subjects and forms. Frontal presentation put forward the barn as an object of the painting. The massive size and somber coloring added it some mystery and unpredictability. Every detail from the geometric shape and architectural element to black doorways proved the breadth of the painting and depiction of every object as a small and important painting with its own meaning and form.

In conclusion, one should say that Art Nouveau is the movement and design, creativity and modernization that violates the canons of the traditional and stereotypical art vision and benefits the emergence of global modernity. The value of Art Nouveau is that it managed to turn the usual objects in the masterpieces and symbolic things. Flowers, ornaments, fireplaces, lighting, door handles, stained glass, furniture, tiles, wallpaper, walls color schemes and floors could be the inspiring subjects for the artists of Art Nouveau. The conceptual traits of Art Nouveau are imaginary things, abstraction, conceptualization, minimalism, orientation toward the natural world and simplicity.

Georgia O’Keefe is not only a revolutionary artist of Art Nouveau but also of the American painting that was not as famous as a European one. Her modernist vision of art is reflected in her works “White Canadian Barn” and “White Canadian Barn”. Both paintings are oriented toward the abstractionism and geometric simplicity. However, design of every object showed depth of meaning and symbolism. Live Chat Order Now

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Art Nouveau – The Decorative Stylings of the Art Nouveau Movement

What is Art Nouveau? The Art Nouveau movement explored a decorative art form that thrived in the United States and Europe from around 1890. The Art Nouveau style, which was popularly applied in interior design, architecture, jewelry and glass designs, advertising, and graphics, is distinguished by the employment of long, serpentine, natural lines. The Art Nouveau period was defined by a conscious effort to develop a unique design that was distinct from the mimetic classicism that characterized most 19th-century design and art.

Table of Contents

• 1.1 Important Concepts
• 2.1 Exhibitions
• 2.2 Art Nouveau Design Concepts
• 2.3 Art Nouveau Architecture
• 2.4 Interior Design
• 2.5 Art Nouveau Paintings
• 2.6 Jewelry and Glasswork
• 2.7 Corporate and Retailing Identity
• 2.8.1 The Death of Art Nouveau
• 2.9 Influences
• 3.1 Cover Design for Wren’s City Churches (1883) by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo
• 3.2 Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• 3.3 The Peacock Skirt (1892) by Aubrey Beardsley
• 3.4 The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts (1896) by Ödön Lechner
• 3.5 The Entrances to the Paris Metro (1900) by Hector Guimard
• 3.6 Ernst-Ludwig Haus (1901) by Joseph Maria Olbrich
• 3.7 Model #342, Wisteria Lamp (1905) by Clara Driscoll
• 3.8 Hope, II (1908) by Gustav Klimt
• 3.9 Park Güell (1914) by Antoni Gaudí
• 4.1 Émile Gallé (1846 – 1904)
• 4.2 Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 – 1933)
• 4.3 Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926)
• 4.4 Victor Horta (1861 – 1947)
• 5.1 What Is Art Nouveau?
• 5.2 Where Does Art Nouveau Come From?

Exploring the Art Nouveau Style

Throughout Europe and far beyond, Art Nouveau designs and concepts generated a desire for decorative arts, architectural design, and style. As a consequence, it has a number of different aliases, including Jugendstil and the Glasgow style. By rejecting the formerly trendy diverse blend of earlier styles, Art Nouveau artists aspired to modernize the design.

Art Nouveau patterns were inspired by naturalistic and geometric patterns and produced appealing designs that merged fluid, organic shapes suggestive of plant branches and flowers.

As a result, linear outlines took precedence over vivid colors like oranges , reds, and yellowish-orange. The Art Nouveau movement attempted to eliminate classical art systems, such as sculpture and painting being more essential than craft-based decorative arts. This design, which had fallen out of favor long before World War I, laid the stage for art deco’s revival in the 1920s. However, it was revitalized in the 1960s and is today seen as a key predecessor to, if not a core component of, Modernism.

The most prevalent examples of the style can be observed in Art Nouveau architecture and Art Nouveau paintings.

Important Concepts

The desire of Art Nouveau artists to break away from 19th-century historic traditions was a primary driving reason behind the Art Nouveau movement’s modernism. Despite the fact that industrialized manufacturing had become commonplace, imitations of earlier eras gradually became more prevalent in decorative arts.

Art Nouveau practitioners wanted to restore outstanding workmanship, enhance craft, and produce really modern designs that appealed to the pragmatism of the products they were creating and producing.

Due to the academic systems that characterized art training from the 17th through the 19th centuries, sculpture and painting were deemed preferable to skills like interior designing and ironwork. According to many, this resulted in disdain for excellent craftsmanship. When it comes to architecture and interior design, Art Nouveau architecture attempted to defy convention by constructing “complete works of the arts”, in which all of the parts worked in unison within a unified aesthetic language.

The Art Nouveau period was crucial in bridging the gap between the fine and practical arts, but it’s uncertain if that gap has ever been totally overcome. A number of Art Nouveau designers considered that previous designs were excessively ornamental to avoid what they viewed as unnecessary embellishment. This led them to feel that an object’s purpose, instead of the other way around, should affect its form.

In reality, this was an open-ended mindset that would affect future modernist movements, particularly the Bauhaus.

Key Aspects of the Art Nouveau Movement

Around 1880, the Art Nouveau style arose as a reaction to the cluttered motifs and compositions of Victorian-era artwork. The second influence was the Arts and Crafts movement from England, which was a reaction against Victorian-era ornamental art, similar to Art Nouveau patterns. As a consequence, many European artists of the 1880s, such as Émile Gallé, Gustav Klimt, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler were captivated by Japanese artwork, particularly.

Flowery and globular designs, as well as “whiplash” curvature, were common in Japanese prints, which ultimately became linked with Art Nouveau designs. It’s difficult to tell which work or pieces of art officially launched Art Nouveau.

While some argue that Vincent van Gogh’s rhythmic, fluid lines and flowery backdrops mark the beginning of the Art Nouveau period, others argue that Henri de Toulouse-ornate Lautrec’s lithographs demonstrate the culmination of the style.

Exhibitions

Art Nouveau paintings and architecture were most prominent in international exhibits during its heyday. The Tervueren Exhibition in Brussels, The Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889, and the Nancy International Exposition of 1909 all exhibited it significantly (where Art Nouveau design was mainly utilized to demonstrate the potential of workmanship with exotic timbers from the Belgian Congo).

Each of these exhibitions was centered around decorative arts and architecture, and eventually Art Nouveau was actually the trend of choice for nearly every architect and country exhibited, with no other styles jockeying for position or sales.

L’Art Nouveau, founded in 1895 by Siegfried Bing, a German trader who was also an admirer of Japanese art , became a major supplier of the style’s decorative arts and furniture. The store’s fame extended across Europe and the United States, and it became a household name. Art Nouveau has been called a multitude of titles due to its extensive popularity in Western and Central Europe. In German-speaking countries, it was dubbed Jugendstil when a Munich journal called Jugend popularized it.

The name “Sezessionsstil” was coined in Vienna, home of artists such as Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, and Josef Hoffmann, all members of the Secession Style.

Art Nouveau Design Concepts

The great appeal of the Art Nouveau period in the late 19th century can be ascribed in part to the use of easily reproduced graphic art forms by many artists. During the Jugendstil era, print media such as book covers and exhibit catalog covers, magazine advertisements, ticket stubs, and billboards were fashionable in Germany.

However, this new growth was not only limited to the German-speaking globe.

In his brief career, Aubrey Beardsley, a British artist noted for blending the erotic and macabre in his work, created a series of posters with flowing, rhythmic lines. Because of his art, he was one of the most divisive individuals in Art Nouveau. Beardsley’s highly embellished works show that Art Nouveau and Japonism prints have much in common.

New chromolithographic processes were used to promote new technology like electric lights and telephones, as well as nightlife venues such as taverns and eateries, and even solo performances, all of which conveyed the thrill and energy of modern living. As a result, the poster was quickly elevated from a banal form of advertisement to a work of art. Any genuine study of Art Nouveau must include architecture and its huge impact on European culture.

Art Nouveau blossomed architecturally in large cities such as Brussels and Paris, as well as smaller towns such as Darmstadt, and Eastern European localities such as Prague, Riga, and Budapest.

Art Nouveau Architecture

It may be found in anything from modest row dwellings to large institutional and commercial structures today. Art Nouveau occurred in a wide range of architectural styles, most notably. Many structures make considerable use of terracotta and colorful tilework. Alexandre Bigot, for example, became famous in the late 19th century for his terracotta decorations for the exteriors and fireplaces of mansions and apartment complexes in Paris.

Iron buildings are connected by glass panels in many other Art Nouveau buildings , notably in Belgium and France. In many regions of Europe, Art Nouveau architecture was popular, using local materials such as yellow limestone coupled with wood trim. In many cases, sculptural white stucco coverings were used, particularly on Art Nouveau exhibition pavilions.

The Chicago Stock Exchange and Wainwright Building are two of Louis Sullivan’s buildings that are regarded among the finest examples of Art Nouveau architecture in North America.

Interior Design

Art Nouveau design, like the Arts and Crafts traditions before it, was concerned with both interior and exterior design. Art Nouveau interiors strove to create a coherent environment that made the most of every square inch. In this context, much emphasis was focused on furniture design, particularly in the manufacturing of hand-carved wood with sharp, irregular curves, which was normally done by artisans but occasionally by machines.

Furniture producers made beds, dining room chairs and tables, sideboards, and lampstands. The flowing curves of the patterns, which were used as wall paneling and crown molding, were inspired by the natural grain of the wood.

The most well-known French Art Nouveau designers were Emile Gallé, Eugène Vallin, Tony Selmersheim, and Louis Majorelle. The whiplash lines and restricted, more angular shapes were utilized by Belgian artists Henry van de Velde and Gustave Serrurier-Bovy who were both inspired by the Arts and Crafts style.

The Italians Augustino Lauro and Alberto Bugatti were among the most well-known guests to the nation.

Majorelle, who produced in a number of mediums, was infamous for being difficult to categorize. He developed and manufactured his own furniture pieces, for instance, before opening an ironworking foundry and producing metal fittings for the Daum Brothers’ glassworks.

Art Nouveau Paintings

Art Nouveau is one of the only styles whose work may be found in almost any visual or material media. Famous artists associated with Art Nouveau include Gustav Klim, and Victor Prouvé, a French graphic designer who specialized in design, graphics, and architectural work.

Artwork from the period is hard to come across due to the paucity of Art Nouveau artists like Klimt and Prouvé, who was both an architect and an artist.

Art Nouveau artists may have done more than any other time in history to bridge the gap between ornamental and applied arts , which had previously been seen as more significant and pure representations of creative talent and expertise. However, whether or not that chasm has ever been closed is debatable.

Jewelry and Glasswork

Art Nouveau’s penchant for luxury was used by some of history’s most well-known glassmakers. Emile Gallé, Jacques Gruber, and the Daum Brothers were all famed for their Art Nouveau glass, which was employed in a broad range of utilitarian goods throughout their professions. These companies made their reputations in vase design and art glass, respectively, by pioneering novel ways in acid-etched pieces with sinuously curving, shapely patterns that looked to flow between translucent colors with ease.

Furthermore, glass painters such as the Daum Brothers utilized it to make practical goods such as shades, vases, and desk decorations.

Jacques Gruber and Tiffany, both of whom had trained with the Daum Brothers, were masters of large-scale luminant paneling with stained glass reflecting nature’s splendor. Louis Comfort Tiffany, René Lalique, and Marcel Wolfers were among the notable jewelers of the time.

Despite the notion that its accessibility would make it more readily available, they manufactured it all from rings and pendants to necklaces and pins, guaranteeing that Art Nouveau would stay associated with luxury.

Corporate and Retailing Identity

Shopping was growing to attract a larger clientele at the same time that Art Nouveau was gaining popularity. It was widely displayed in the late 19th century at the La Samaritaine, and Wertheim’s. There were some major design businesses that championed the style, such as Siegfried Bing’s L’Art Nouveau Boutique in Paris, which remained a bastion of the movement until 1905, only a few years after Bing’s passing.

Not only was his business selling Art Nouveau interiors and furnishings, but so were others across the city. Liberty & Co. was the movement’s primary Italian and British distributor, and consequently, Liberty’s brand grew closely associated with the movement.

Numerous Art Nouveau designers rose to prominence after working exclusively for these establishments.

Designers such as Peter Behrens designed everything from kettles to book illustrations, exhibit pavilion furnishings, kitchenware, and furniture, eventually becoming the first industrial designer when AEG hired him to oversee all design work in 1907.

After the Art Nouveau Period

In the last half-decade of the 19th century, as in the first ten years of the 20th century, architects, artists, and designers changed their stance and public outlook on the Art Nouveau style. Some designers thought that “form must follow function,” but others went far with embellishment, and the style was criticized for being too excessive. As the period continued, a growing number of critics claimed that rather than rejuvenating design, the new style just replaced the previous with something that appeared to be new.

Even with new mass-production processes, the high degree of expertise demanded by most Art Nouveau designs ensured that it would never be as accessible to the general population as its supporters had hoped.

Due to lax international copyright restrictions, several artists in Darmstadt were unable to earn monetarily from their works. The relationship between the Art Nouveau movement and exhibitions was doomed from the outset. To start with, the bulk of the fair’s buildings were only intended to be transitory and were promptly removed after the celebration was over.

While well-intentioned, the exhibitions themselves served to foster rivalry and competition among countries due to the naturally comparative character of exhibitions, rather than promoting education, intercultural cooperation, and peace.

Art Nouveau was considered a candidate for the title of “national style” in a number of nations, including Belgium and France until charges of its foreign roots or subversive political overtones turned popular sentiment against it. By 1910, Art Nouveau had all but vanished from Europe’s design landscape, with just a few notable exceptions where it had a devoted local following.

The Death of Art Nouveau

Early in 1903, designers like Josef Hoffmann, Peter Behrens, and Koloman Moser in Austria and Germany began to move away from Art Nouveau in favor of a more sparse, strictly geometric style. In the same year, a group of designers formerly linked with the Vienna Secession formed the Wiener Werkstätte, whose penchant for sharply angular and rectilinear shapes recalled a more accurate, industrially-inspired style devoid of overt connections to nature.

Both Behrens’ appointment as chief designer of AEG, establishing him as the planet’s very first industrial designer, and the establishment of the German Werkbund in 1907, emphasized this conceptual framework of the machine-made characteristics of the design.

This machine-inspired style would grow into the aesthetic that we now call Art Deco in the aftermath of World War I.

Despite its brief existence, Art Nouveau had a considerable influence on graphic designers from the 1960s to the 1970s who sought to break away from the stark, cold, and more minimalist design that had previously dominated the industry.

Art Nouveau influenced artists like Peter Max to produce work that portrays the innovative, ephemeral, and free-flowing creative world of the early 20th century in its dreamlike, psychedelic sensory experience.

Art Nouveau was recognized as an important stride toward modernism in architecture and art from the start. It is now seen as a reflection of the manner, atmosphere, and intellectual thought of a specific historical time centered around 1900.

It became the visual medium that characterized the modern era’s desire for a truly current style for a limited period of time.

Examples of Art Nouveau Architecture and Art Nouveau Paintings

So far, we have covered the key concepts of the Art Nouveau style, as well as the history of the Art nouveau movement. Now we will look at some distinctive examples of Art Nouveau paintings and architecture. We can see how these Art Nouveau designs have influenced every form of art.

Cover Design for Wren’s City Churches (1883) by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo

Art Nouveau was influenced by the English Arts and Crafts movement, particularly the Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo woodcut. Two factors lend to this affiliation: the handcrafted character of the artwork, which identifies a woodcut, and Mackmurdo’s use of negative and positive space, which is simple.

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo’s abstract-naturalistic forms, as well as his signature whiplash curves, exemplify the visual illusion of motion and vitality that would come to define Art Nouveau in the years ahead.

The book’s apparent subject matter is concealed by the concentration on floral and vegetal imagery on the cover, underlining the book’s purposefully decorative look and implying that Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo’s effort is exploratory rather than a fully formed instance of the Art Nouveau style.

The woodcut is far more valuable than the text, which is a scattershot account of London church architecture.

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue (1891) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec, one of Art Nouveau’s most prominent graphic designers, elevated the billboard from an item of commercial junk to creation of fine art in the 1890s, the very same decade that saw the emergence of creative journals completely committed to this medium. Even though the word “Art Nouveau” was not introduced until after Lautrec’s death in 1901, the graphic designers who collaborated with him recognized their own inventiveness.

This design takes the flair and wildness of a French can-can dancer’s garment and reduces it to a few basic, rhythmic lines, implying motion and space.

The flattening of shapes to basic outlines with flat color infill reflects Art Nouveau’s affinity to Japanese prints as well as the illumination in such nightclubs, which would naturally render surface details of persons and other things obscure. Similarly, the cabaret’s name, written in red letters, indicates the throbbing intensity of the performances, in which dancers such as La Goulue took center stage.

The Peacock Skirt (1892) by Aubrey Beardsley

This artwork was made as a picture for Oscar Wilde’s 1892 drama Salomé, which was based on the Biblical story of Salome ordering the head of John the Baptist to be decapitated and placed on a platter. Several other Art Nouveau painters, like Victor Prouvé, were inspired by Salome. Compared to some of Beardsley’s other more sensuous and downright nasty works, Salomé is a mild-mannered affair.

Several of the Art Nouveau-influenced artists emphasize line, and they commonly abstract their figures to obtain the Art Nouveau-inspired flowing curves.

It may also serve as an example of how passionate usage of the style’s formal vocabulary may lead to critique. Beardsley’s work demonstrates the influence of Japanese prints on Art Nouveau through its flattened portrayal of form. This image may also be viewed as a depiction of the modern Aesthetic movement , demonstrating how Art Nouveau was inspired by many historical eras and genres.

The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts (1896) by Ödön Lechner

The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, designed by Ödön Lechner, demonstrates how the Hungarian “national” branch of Art Nouveau, called the Hungarian Secession due to its location to Vienna, was more of a fusion of previous forms than a quest for new ones.

This structure, which sits on a trapezoidal lot, features an atrium at the back of the primary façade that is filled with natural daylight.

Tilework, stained-glass windows, and stone link the complicated structure all around, creating a vivid polychrome style that maintains the audience’s eye wandering and informs one of the harmonizing the union of art forms in generating a “complete work of art”. The complex multi-lobed arches, along with Central European-derived grandiose, bell-shaped spires and towers with onion-shaped sculpted finials, are examples of the forms utilized inside and out.

The Entrances to the Paris Metro (1900) by Hector Guimard

Following London, Paris was just the second city in the world to build an underground rail system when Hector Guimard was commissioned to design these renowned subway station entrances. Hector Guimard’s design was inspired by the aim to commemorate and promote the new infrastructure with a dramatic tower that would stand out in the Paris skyline.

The entrances feature Art Nouveau-style twisted, organic shapes that appear to be practically seamless at first glance, but are really made up of multiple cast iron components that could be mass-produced in Osne-le-Val, east of Paris.

Hector Guimard had effectively hidden some aspect of the object’s modernism behind its serpentine continuity, a method that typifies Art Nouveau’s ambiguous stance toward the modern period. Hector Guimard’s design was therefore critical in introducing Art Nouveau’s normally sophisticated, labor-intensive designs to a broad audience for whom the style was thought to represent unachievable luxury.

Ernst-Ludwig Haus (1901) by Joseph Maria Olbrich

This is the focal point of the new Darmstadt Artists Community, which was founded in 1899 under the auspices of Grand Duke of Hesse. Olbrich, who was among the community’s original painters, was stolen from the Vienna Secession by the Duke. The Ernst-Ludwig Haus, like Secession architecture, is highly rectilinear, with a shining white facade crowned by a gently sloping roof and situated on a hill.

The arched, centrally positioned main entrance, with its gold-plated, cloudlike geometric design around the entryway, which is flanked by Ludwig Habisch’s two male-and-female statues portraying the Strength and Beauty, counteracts this.

The sloping skylights that run the length of the back of the tower reveal its role as one of the few Art Nouveau structures constructed primarily for studio space, and it was the focal point of the Darmstadt group’s first exhibition in 1901. Despite the fact that the Colony only existed until the onset of World War I in 1914, the facility now functions as a museum dedicated to its artistic accomplishments.

Model #342, Wisteria Lamp (1905) by Clara Driscoll

Louis Tiffany’s is well-known for their Art Nouveau table lamps. The leaded glass shade of the lamp seems to resemble the wisteria branches at its top when lighted. The bronze base and shade work together to give a natural appearance. The screens of nearly 2,000 painstakingly chosen pieces of glass provide a warm, but soft illumination, giving the blooming flowers the illusion of water drops pouring. This indicates that sunlight has passed through the screen.

This motif, which incorporates an irregularly-shaped framework at the top and a bottom boundary, mimics realism and Japonism, as wisteria is native to the eastern side of North America as well as Japan, China, and Korea.

Clara Driscoll designed it, according to newly unearthed evidence. It also marks a watershed event for female designers at the turn of the century, when they were given control of a large portion of the company’s manufacturing. Driscoll was among the highest-earning females of her period, earning $10,000 a year until she was forced to quit Tiffany Studios in 1909 when she got engaged and eventually married.

Hope, II (1908) by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt’s work is marked by form deformation and embellishment, as well as explicit sexual themes. Gustav Klimt, unlike Beardsley, is noted for his extensive use of gold leaf, usually in combination with a kaleidoscope of other vivid colors, particularly in his post-1900 works.

Gustav Klimt developed his unique sophisticated aesthetic as a consequence of this mixture.

This can be summarized as an array of dreamy, visually luscious (as well as materially lavish) paintings of women, occasionally portraying real people, but more often displaying envisaged or metaphorical embodiments, such as in his artwork Hope, II.

Gustav Klimt achieved his objective of producing a “new art” that was free of existing conventions or principles by employing accentuated and flattened body forms, as well as a focus on patterns and a lack of depth.

As original members of the organization, Secessionists like Klimt criticized academic painting’s ideals.

Gustav Klimt’s work evoked a wide spectrum of emotions during his lifetime and continues to do so now, contributing to his status as one of the most forward-thinking painters of the Art Movement and a pioneer of modernism.

Park Güell (1914) by Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí, best known for his work on the unfinished Sagrada Familia Expiatory Church in Barcelona, also built dozens of other structures in the Catalan metropolis. Antoni Gaudí’s final project before dedicating himself entirely to the Sagrada Familia was the preparation of a hillside residential neighborhood for textile entrepreneur Eusebi Güell.

Regardless of the fact that only Gaudi’s residence and one other property were built, and that the venture was a financial failure, this structure exemplifies Gaudí‘s innovative architectural skill.

Park Güell’s architectural style blends seamlessly with the surrounding environment, with rough-hewn slanted columns that appear to have been dug from the slopes and covered in vines. A columned market space supports an open plaza, which is surrounded by a serpentine seat covered with a combination of abandoned ceramic tiles known as trencads , a characteristic of Catalan artistry.

A great stairway connects the market to the park’s entrance, which has a tiled basin with a dragon’s face and the Catalan flag. The main gate and concierge’s apartment are made out of rocky lodges with uneven, conical spires that look as if they were made out of gingerbread.

The undulating shapes, influenced by inverted catenary arches, and vividly colored tilework reflect Catalan Art Nouveau’s collaborative ethos, comprising teams of artisans specialized in several media and dependence on the ethical management of environmentally sensitive materials.

Art Nouveau Artists

Now we have looked at some of the most famous examples of the Art Nouveau style. But who were the artists behind the movement? Let us discover some of these pioneers in the movement.

Émile Gallé (1846 – 1904)

Along with Louis Majorelle, Émile Gallé, a glassmaker, created the École de Nancy, an organization committed to extending the reach of Art Nouveau. He personally instructed the designers and supplied them with watercolors of floral patterns he created in his home’s gardens.

Gallé instructed his designers to utilize only genuine flowers and plants as models, albeit they were allowed to make certain creative choices in the end.

“It is vital to have a marked leaning in favor of models borrowed from flora and animals while allowing them free expression,” he wrote in 1889. Nature and literature both influenced his art. In his spare time, he would gather and study plants and bugs for inspiration, developing experimental glass-making processes that he ultimately trademarked.

Many of his works had flower patterns and poetry written just for the owner.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 – 1933)

Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, a well-known jeweler. Though he was originally trained in painting, he started dabbling with stained glass in 1875, and three years later, he opened his own glass business.

His skill with glass became well-known in other countries.

Education , a stained-glass window at Yale University’s library, is his most well-known work. It was erected in honor of one of Yale’s sponsors’ daughters. The sculpture was taken from the premises in 1970 as a precautionary measure in case of demonstrations. As a result, it was mistaken and forgotten later on.

Years later, when the item was mislabeled and another Tiffany piece went missing instead, this blunder likely protected the piece from robbery.

Antoni Gaudí (1852 – 1926)

Antoni Gaudí was a pioneering architect who mostly worked in Barcelona, where his Art Nouveau style dominated. With flowing lines and bright surfaces that deviated from normal architectural forms, his work was influenced by nature and the Catholic religion.

The balconies of Casa Mila depict abstractions of leaves and blades of grass, while the benches in Parc Güell are supposed to line with the human spine. Gaudí was identified as an Art Nouveau member by his imagination, which set him apart from other styles of the time.

La Sagrada Família, his most renowned masterpiece, has been under development since 1882 and is continuously being worked on today.

Gaudí was assigned to commence on the church in 1883 despite the fact that he would not survive to see it finished, a reflection of his strong religion. The church was approximately 20% built when Gaudí died in 1926. When finished, the structure will be the world’s highest basilica.

Victor Horta (1861 – 1947)

Victor Horta was a founding member of Art Nouveau and is credited for broadening the movement’s scope beyond the visual and ornamental arts to include building. Horta’s work was distinguished by his grasp of technological advancements in both iron and glass.

His structures were clad with twisted and bent iron that flowed from the exterior to the interior.

The Hôtel Tassel was the first Art Nouveau structure and one of Horta’s most well-known masterpieces. This townhouse was created for one of his Université Libre de Bruxelles colleagues. It perfectly blends natural and industrial motifs, and the building’s renowned stair hall can be seen from the outside.

The Art Nouveau movement started in 1890 with the purpose of updating the design and rejecting previously established classic and historical forms. Natural features such as flowers and insects inspired Art Nouveau painters. Curves, asymmetrical shapes, and vibrant colors were among the movement’s other recurring themes. In addition to ornamental art, painting, architecture, and even commercials, the Art Nouveau style appears in a variety of media.

Take a look at our Art Nouveau style webstory here!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is art nouveau.

Many talented artists specialized in ornamental art, architectural design, and glass craft, particularly slag glass, emerged from the Art Nouveau movement. Collectors and Art Nouveau enthusiasts alike seek out much of their work nowadays. The desire of Art Nouveau artists to break away from 19th-century historic traditions was a primary driving reason behind the Art Nouveau movement’s modernism.

Where Does Art Nouveau Come From?

Art Nouveau may be traced back to the Arts and Crafts group, which was a reaction against the 19th century’s academic art forms . The design was also influenced by an inflow of Japanese woodblock prints with flowery themes and powerful curves. Art Nouveau was prominent until 1905, but it is now seen as a precursor to Modernism. Art Nouveau started with the purpose of updating the design and rejecting previously established traditional and historic approaches.

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Art Nouveau – The Decorative Stylings of the Art Nouveau Movement.” Art in Context. June 13, 2022. URL: https://artincontext.org/art-nouveau/

Meyer, I. (2022, 13 June). Art Nouveau – The Decorative Stylings of the Art Nouveau Movement. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/art-nouveau/

Meyer, Isabella. “Art Nouveau – The Decorative Stylings of the Art Nouveau Movement.” Art in Context , June 13, 2022. https://artincontext.org/art-nouveau/ .

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The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

Symbolism and Art Nouveau

Many artists in the late 19th century broke from naturalistic representation and sought visual equivalents to poetry and music.

c. 1880 - 1910

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Art nouveau, the nabis and symbolism, videos + essays.

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Gustave Moreau, Jupiter and Semele

Moreau paints with brilliant jewel-like colors, and everywhere we look the figures seem filled with Melancholy.

Broncia Koller, Sitting (Seated Nude Marietta)

By the early 1930s, Broncia Koller’s career was lost to art history, despite her extraordinary artistic talent and insight.

Antoni Gaudí, Park Güell

If visitors know one thing about Barcelona before boarding a plane, it is the surname of the city’s most celebrated architect, Antoni Gaudí

Gustave Moreau, Salome

Learn more about this symbolist painter's enigmatic depictions of one of his favorite subjects—Salome.

James Ensor, Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889

The painting mocks humanity, as well as human beliefs and institutions, both civic and religious.

The Nabis and Decorative Art

Through their many forms of artistic production the Nabis expanded art into all areas of life.

Art Nouveau artists and designers created a completely new style of decoration.

Symbolist artists embraced the spiritual significance of art while rejecting science and objectivity.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Vase

Inspired by the sheen of ancient Roman and Syrian glass, Tiffany created startling, modern objects.

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Hair Ornament

Only three inches high, Tiffany captures an ephemeral moment in nature with the most sumptuous materials.

Léon Bakst, “Costume design for the ballet The Firebird”

Bakst loved this character from Russian folklore, and made a drawing influenced by Cubism and Parisian aesthetics.

Edvard Munch, The Storm

The anxiety felt by the women waiting for husbands sailing on a stormy sea is almost tangible in Munch’s picture.

Selected Contributors

Dr. Juliana Kreinik

Dr. Noelle Paulson

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What Is Art Nouveau?

If you’ve been to Paris or seen it in photos, you’ll recognize the swirling, plant-like gates, with their distinctive lettering, that serve as entryways to the city’s subway system, or metro , as it’s known there. Of the many terms for Art Nouveau in France, Style Metro remains one of the most persistent, thanks to Hector Guimard ’s enduring design for the entrances. Unveiled during the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, the design would become a symbol of the Art Nouveau movement.

But it had begun years earlier. From the 1880s until World War I, artworks, design objects, and architecture in Western Europe and the United States sprouted with sinuous, unruly lines. Taking cues from  Rococo curves, Celtic graphic motifs, Japanese masters  Andō Hiroshige and  Katsushika Hokusai , and  William Blake ’s Songs of Innocence (1789), Art Nouveau artists took the plant forms they saw in nature and then flattened and abstracted them into elegant, organic motifs.

The Movement’s Origins

The term Art Nouveau first appeared in the Belgian art journal L’Art Moderne in 1884 to describe the work of Les Vingt, a society of 20 progressive artists that included  James Ensor . These painters responded to leading theories by French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and British critic John Ruskin, who advocated for the unity of all arts. In December 1895, the German-born art dealer Siegfried Bing opened a gallery in Paris named “Maison l’Art Nouveau.” Branching out from the Japanese ceramics and ukiyo-e prints for which he had become known, Bing promoted this “new art” in the gallery, selling a selection of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, and objets d’art .

Encouraging the organic forms and patterns of Art Nouveau to flow from one object to another, the movement’s theorists championed a greater coordination of art and design. A continuation of democratic ideas from Britain’s  Arts and Crafts movement , this impulse was as political as it was aesthetic. The movement’s philosophical father, the English designer and businessman  William Morris , defined its main goals: “To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.” Morris disdained the working conditions bred by the industrial revolution and abhorred the low-quality bric-a-brac created by factories and amassed in homes of the era.

He insisted that functional design be incorporated into the objects of everyday life, and his mix of aesthetics and ethics rejected the heavy ornamental qualities of the 19th century, specifically the cumbersome, almost suffocating excesses of the Victorian period. His ideas manifested as many distinct national flavors. In Scotland, there was the rectilinear Glasgow Style; in Italy,  Arte Nuova  or  Stile Liberty , after the London firm Liberty & Co.;  Style nouille  (“noodle”) or  coup de fouet  (“whiplash”) in Belgium;  Jugendstil  (“young style”) in Germany and Austria; Tiffany Style in the United States; and in France,  Style Metro ,  fin-de-siècle ,   and  Belle Époque . For some, Art Nouveau was the last unified style; for others, it was not one style, but many. As with all art movements up until the late 20th century, it was dominated by men. 

The Leaders of Art Nouveau

Perhaps the person who best expressed Art Nouveau’s steep historical arc, like a flame that burned brightly but briefly, was the young Englishman  Aubrey Vincent Beardsley , whose perverse sensibilities made him the most controversial figure of Art Nouveau. Finding inspiration in the truculent manner of American expat  James Abbott McNeill Whistler  and in  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ’s Japoniste posters, Beardsley began his formal artistic career at just 19 years old. The celebrated  Pre-Raphaelite  painter  Sir Edward Burne-Jones  would come to shower praise on the untrained Beardsley’s drawings when he saw them in 1891.

Beardsley’s India ink illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s play  Salomé  established many essential Art Nouveau ideals. Their shadowy imagery, flat decorative patterns, stark contrast, and controlled but swooping lines quickly earned the artist international recognition. Depicting the biblical story of Herod beheading St. John the Baptist at Salomé’s request, the drawing for “J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan” drips with erotic imagery: folds of fabric, streams of blood, and tendrils of hair. At lower right, a flower evocatively blooms in the darkness, while a black passage at upper left seems to reverberate with the dark thoughts of a scowling Salomé. Thanks to his formal talents—not to mention his propensity for erotic and sometimes pornographic subject matter—Beardsley became a touchstone for some of Art Nouveau’s most recognizable artists, despite his early death from tuberculosis in 1898.

Left: Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax , 1894. Image via Wikimedia Commons; Right: Photo of the painting Medicine by Gustav Klimt, via Wikimedia Commons.

While Beardsley was an untrained prodigy, Gustav Klimt attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) and began his career as the establishment wunderkind. Klimt’s early works, such as his murals for the new Burgtheater in Vienna’s Ringstrasse, fulfilled academic and bourgeois expectations for art with their naturalistic depictions of historical scenes.

But not all of Klimt’s work fit such orthodox constraints. The atmosphere of erotic love and sexuality that pervaded Vienna around 1900 exerted a powerful influence on the artist. Like the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Klimt saw the artist as a messenger of truth, not fantasy. In 1894, he undertook a commission for murals in the assembly hall of the University of Vienna. Rather than representing the field of Medicine in a logical or sanitized way, as he was expected to do, Klimt portrayed confusion and darkness, knotting together naked bodies and juxtaposing pregnant stomachs with veiled skeletons.

The scandal that ensued ultimately ended Klimt’s academic career, prompting him to found and serve as the first president of the Sezession , the radical Art Nouveau group in Vienna that brought together artists, designers, and architects. They collaborated in the principle of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” which aimed to be spiritually uplifting through a combination of beauty and utility. Josef Hoffmann ’s design for the dining room of Brussels’s Palais Stoclet , which included Klimt’s spiral-filled arboreal murals, exemplified this goal.

It was his iconic portraiture style, however, that earned him a place in art’s historic pantheon. The Kiss (1907), perhaps his most famous work, displays the basic but revolutionary elements of his distinctive idiom: a flattening of form and rich design flourishes within patches of gold leaf applied to the canvas. Representing love as an alignment of surfaces, The Kiss locks the central figures in concentric shapes, entwining lovers’ bodies like jewels in a gold ring. They embrace, a shimmering cloak surrounding them like a membrane, and a wall of flowers falls away. This anxious eroticism for which Klimt is known infused the work of subsequent artists, including his protégé Egon Schiele .

The decorative arts formed another cornerstone of Art Nouveau’s legacy. While France was home to many notable figures— Georges de Feure ,  Édouard Colonna , and Eugène Gaillard, among others—on the other side of the Atlantic,  Louis Comfort Tiffany  became the name most associated with the Art Nouveau movement in the United States.

Heir to the silver empire of Tiffany & Co., a company founded by his father, Charles Lewis Tiffany, in 1837, Tiffany started his career as a painter. After studying under  George Inness , he began working with decorative art in the 1870s. Supported by enthusiastic patrons in New York, he produced elaborate interiors and complementary metalwork, enamels, lighting, and jewelry.

But Tiffany (as well as his leading competitor, John LaFarge ) was best known for an innovative fabrication of leaded glass that became a distinctly American phenomenon. By 1881, his experiments in chemistry had led to the development of glass with an opalescent finish that produced a dreamy, milky quality of light. Surviving features from Tiffany’s elaborate estate on Long Island, Laurelton Hall, reveal his work in full bloom, with windows, ceramic tile, and architectural features coalescing into a garden-like alcove. Staining his glass in an array of colors and adding finely painted details to it prior to firing, Tiffany created a revolutionary look that was hugely successful and allowed the company to expand into the empire of decorative art and jewelry that continues today.

Why Does Art Nouveau Matter?

The success of Tiffany and other decorative artists testifies to Art Nouveau’s goal of tearing down hierarchies between the arts. The rise of print and graphic arts similarly advanced this cause and, unlike Tiffany’s more rarified creations, they could be reproduced to enrich the lives of a broader public. Czech artist  Alphonse Mucha ’s representations of  la femme nouvelle  (the bold new woman) are illustrative of the emerging medium of graphic advertisements, as are those of  Jules Cheret , whose distinctive Belle Époque designs led to his being considered the father of the modern poster. Even talented painters like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and  Jan Toorop  became as renowned for their graphic art as for their canvases.

Following the vision of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, architects used steel and other modern materials to create new vocabularies featuring arched and cantilevered forms. The breathtaking Tassel House by  Henry van de Velde  and  Victor Horta , the latter a gifted Belgian disciple of both Morris and Viollet-le-Duc, remains a highpoint of this fluid architectural design. Other outstanding examples came from  Charles Rennie Mackintosh  and Margaret Macdonald in Scotland;  Otto Wagner  in Austria;  Louis Sullivan  in the United States; and the inimitable  Antoni Gaudí , known for Casa Mila and Sagrada Familia, in Spanish Catalonia.

Left: Antoni Gaudí, Casa Mila . Photo by deming131, via Flickr; Right: Hector Guimard, Style Metro . Photo by zoetnet, via Flickr.

Art Nouveau bridged an essential gap between 19th-century aestheticism and 20th-century design.  Wassily Kandinsky  and  Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , for example, two iconic modern painters, worked in  Jugendstil  before moving toward their own personal styles. But, just as quickly as it had blossomed across the Western aesthetic landscape, Art Nouveau began to wither in the early 20th century. Ultimately, the movement’s reputation for decadence drove an unintended wedge between wealthy patrons and skilled workers. The flowing, floral character that had once been praised became its liability, leading the English illustrator  Walter Crane  to condemn it as a “strange decorative disease” as early as 1903. By 1920, the  style coup de fouet , or whiplash, had been limply renamed  style branche de persil , or sprig of parsley.

Cover image: Gustave Klimt,  Adele Bloch-Bauer’s Portrait , 1907. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Portraits via Wikimedia Commons. Timeline: Photo of Style Metro by Ganymedes Costagravas, via Flickr; Beardsley and Steinlen images via Wikimedia Commons.

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What was the End of the Art Nouveau Era

This essay about the decline of Art Nouveau explores the movement’s demise in the early 20th century. It discusses factors such as impracticality in the face of societal changes, the impact of World War I, and the rise of modernism. Despite its fading prominence, Art Nouveau’s legacy persists in modern design, serving as a reminder of its enduring influence on artistic expression and cultural trends.

How it works

As the 19th century drew to a close, a captivating artistic movement emerged from the shadows of industrialization: Art Nouveau. Its sinuous lines, organic motifs, and intricate designs swept through Europe, captivating the imaginations of artists, architects, and craftsmen alike. Yet, like a delicate flower reaching the end of its bloom, Art Nouveau’s heyday was destined to be brief, giving way to the winds of change that swept through the early 20th century.

One of the defining factors in the decline of Art Nouveau was its impracticality in the face of shifting societal needs.

While its ornate beauty enraptured the eye, the movement’s emphasis on craftsmanship and individuality often clashed with the demands of a rapidly changing world. As economies shifted and technology advanced, the allure of handcrafted luxury began to wane, replaced by a desire for efficiency and mass production.

The outbreak of World War I marked a turning point for Art Nouveau and the world at large. The horrors of war shattered the optimism of the pre-war era, leaving behind a scarred and disillusioned society. In the wake of such devastation, the extravagant flourishes of Art Nouveau seemed out of touch with the harsh realities of the post-war landscape, leading to its gradual decline in favor of more somber and introspective artistic movements.

The rise of modernism further sealed Art Nouveau’s fate, as artists and designers embraced the principles of simplicity, functionality, and mass production. Rejecting the ornamental excesses of the past, figures like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius heralded a new era of design that prioritized clean lines and geometric forms. The Bauhaus movement, with its emphasis on unity of art and craft, emerged as a beacon of innovation, casting a shadow over the fading glory of Art Nouveau.

Despite its eventual demise, the legacy of Art Nouveau endures, woven into the fabric of modern design and culture. Its influence can be seen in the sleek lines of Art Deco skyscrapers, the organic shapes of mid-century furniture, and the vibrant colors of contemporary art. Though the era of Art Nouveau may have passed, its spirit lives on, a testament to the enduring power of artistic expression to capture the imagination and inspire generations to come.

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Art nouveau.

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            In this introduction I will be talking about art nouveau and what art nouveau is and what it stands for and how it influenced art, architecture and fashion. Also I will be talking about how posters in the art nouveau period were designed and produced in mass with not many colours. Finally I will discuss the many famous art nouveau designers of the time, I will discuss them their work and what kind of effect they had on the public.              Art Nouveau, literally new art, It found expression in a wide range of art forms "architecture, interior design, furniture, posters, glass, pottery, textiles, and book illustration "and was characterized by its devotion to curving and undulating lines, often referred to as whiplash lines. The term Art Nouveau is derived from Maison de l'Art Nouveau, a Paris shop opened in 1896 by the dealer Siegfried Bing.Art Nouveau was an art movement, which lasted from the 1880's to the beginning of 1914; this movement changed many people's lives and lead the way to a new centaury of art and a new art form. Art nouveau influenced the design of everything in that period, architecture, interiors, furniture, ceramics, glass, jewellery, graphic posters, coffee pots, lamps, cutlery, cake tins and bikes. At Nouveau represented life and how it can be flowing and back to nature.              This form of art took mankind back to nature, as its main theme was the human womanly form and the buds of many plants. Art took the form of women's long exotic flowing hair, which often flowed into fames or water. The feminine art' or art nouveau is and was basically made up of a sensualist flowing line that often turns and twists into it. This one art movement expressed what the female body was about using her curves and lines to bring painting back to nature giving a very popular design. Art Nouveau took up and elaborated the Arts and Crafts manifesto, calling for the creation of a completely new style and a devotion to handicrafts.

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1. art nouveau.

The graceful lines seen in Art Nouveau were an expression of a new graphic style. ... Art Nouveau artists aimed at unifying all arts, centering it around man and his life. ... His architecture was dressed with art nouveau detail. ... Even though Art Nouveau was short lived its importance is crucial to the development of modern art styles. ... American Art Nouveau. ...

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The graphic style of Art Nouveau portrayed a balance between space and line. ... Art Nouveau artists aimed at unifying all arts, centering it around man and his life. ... His architecture was dressed with art nouveau detail. ... Even though Art Nouveau was short lived its importance is crucial to the development of modern art styles. ... The style of Art Nouveau has a modern appearance which makes it appealing to me....

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Art Nouveau (1880's-1914) Art Nouveau is an elegant decorative art style characterized by intricately detailed patterns of curving lines. Somewhat rooted in the British Arts and Crafts Movement of William Morris, Art Nouveau became popular across Europe and in the United States. ... Art Nouveau remained popular until about the time of World War I, and was ultimately replaced by the Art Deco style. ... Post-Impressionism (1880-1910) Post-impressionism is an art-historical term coined (1910) by British art critic Roger Fry to describe the various styles of painting that flourished i...

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6. Biography of Gustav Klimt

Gustav's early artwork very much followed the "guidelines" of Art Nouveau. ... The natural world is a main influence in Art Nouveau. ... Art Nouveau often incorporates a variety of mediums in order to unite all artists. Gustav Klimt was Art Nouveau. ... Gustav Klimt was Art Nouveau. ...

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Pop Art first emerged in Britain as part of the general Pop movement. ... Influence also came from the revival of the decorative styles of Art Nouveau and Art Deco especially in terms of Cubism and Futurism incorporated into design. Surrealism was another form of art that inspired Pop art and can be found in the popularization of bizarre objects and also brightly colored interiors. More importantly, the use of Surrealism in Pop art interiors demonstrated the importance of fine art for interior design. ... Pop Art's contribution to modernism was that the designs used inexpensive methods to...

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