Art Nouveau

Art nouveau was a movement in art and architecture that was popular in Europe and the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring ornamental works marked by the use of long, sinuous lines and the trademark whiplash curve, art nouveau was a conscious effort to escape from the historical styles that had been popular earlier in the nineteenth century and a reaction to the traditional belief that the craft-based decorative arts were inferior to fine arts like painting and sculpture. After first emerging in England, the art nouveau movement quickly spread across Europe and picked up numerous regional names, such as Jugendstil in Germany and modernismo in Spain, along the way. Some of the most notable artists and craftspeople associated with the art nouveau movement included Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Aubrey Beardsley, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Although it enjoyed a brief revival in the 1960s, the art nouveau movement ultimately fell from favor after the rise of art deco in the 1920s.

Background

In large part, the emergence of the art nouveau movement was a response to the status quo of the late nineteenth-century art world. By the 1880s, a growing number of artists were becoming disillusioned with the declining quality of the decorative arts. Many looked at this decline as the result of two separate but related problems. First, the trend in the decorative arts at the time was to imitate earlier popular styles, which often led to the production of what were essentially cheap knockoffs. Second, the widespread belief that the decorative arts were inferior to the fine arts also contributed to a lack of interest in quality artisanship. Art nouveau was a direct response to these problems and an effort to improve artisanship and rehabilitate the floundering decorative arts.

The roots of the art nouveau lie with English designer William Morris's arts and crafts movement, which was a response to the overly busy decorative art that was popular during the Victorian era. Along with the arts and crafts movement, the gradual emergence of art nouveau was also influenced by illustrator Aubrey Beardsley's expressive use of organic lines. A third inspiration that played a role in the development of art nouveau was the public's growing interest in Japanese wood-block prints featuring floral forms and a type of naturally flowing line known as the whiplash curve.

The circumstances surrounding the formal debut of art nouveau are a matter of some dispute. While some point to certain works by renowned artists like Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin as the earliest examples of art nouveau, most experts suggest the movement began in direct connection with the decorative arts rather than the fine arts. Those who subscribe to the latter theory typically point to the book jacket that architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo created for the 1883 book Wren's City Churches as the first example of the art nouveau style.

Whatever the details of its birth, the art nouveau movement quickly gained favor in England and soon spread to continental Europe. Eventually, the movement made its way to the United States.

Overview

Art nouveau was a distinct artistic style with several defining characteristics that can be seen in most works considered part of the movement. The most recognizable characteristic of the art nouveau movement was the use of smoothly flowing asymmetrical lines. Often, because art nouveau was strongly influenced by nature and organic aesthetics, these lines appeared in the form of plant stalks, vines, or other similarly sinuous objects. Equally common in art nouveau works was the use of the whiplash curve, which conveyed whip-like movement and symbolized growth. In architecture and other three dimensional forms, art nouveau works meshed organic ornamentation with functional design.

At the height of art nouveau's popularity, many artists from various fields embraced the movement. One of the most well known of these artists was Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose designs significantly influenced the development of art nouveau. Other influential figures in the movement included the Belgian architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta. Some famous European art nouveau artists included French furniture and ironwork designer Louis Majorelle, Czechoslovakian graphic designer Alphonse Mucha, and the French jewelry and glass designer René Lalique. Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí took art nouveau design to perhaps its greatest extreme by forgoing the simple use of organically flowing lines and instead turning entire buildings into grandiose curving structures. Standing out amongst the American class of art nouveau designers were famous glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany, who earned great esteem for his intricately designed lamps, and architect Louis Henry Sullivan, who complimented his traditionally designed buildings with art nouveau accents.

An important part of art nouveau's widespread popularity was the fact that many of the designs that defined the movement were easily reproducible in different formats. Many art nouveau designs were printed on book covers and in magazine advertisements. This helped expose many people to the art nouveau style. That style was also easily reproducible in architecture. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a large number of art nouveau–inspired buildings, such as Budapest's Museum of Applied Arts and Vienna's Secession Building, were erected in cities across Europe. Perhaps the most important work in popularizing the art nouveau style, however, was done by the Vienna secessionists. The Vienna secessionists were a group of artists, architects, sculptors, designers, and others who came together in 1897 to promote their works and put on art nouveau exhibitions. Their efforts, led by painter Gustav Klimt, played a pivotal role in art nouveau's emergence as a major international art movement.

In the end, the decline of art nouveau was as swift as its arrival. During the first decade of the twentieth century—perhaps less than ten years after the movement emerged—architects and designers began to abandon art nouveau. By the 1910s, the style was considered passé. In the 1920s, the art deco movement replaced art nouveau. Aside from a brief resurgence of interest brought about by the social and political upheaval of the 1960s, art nouveau has largely remained a bygone relic of the past.

Bibliography

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