About Art Nouveau – an international movement
Art Nouveau, as it is known in France, England, and the United States, was an international movement that dominated design and aesthetics from the 1880s to 1914.
In Germany, the equivalent art movement was called Jugendstil; in Austria it was Secessionsstil, and there were strong movements throughout Europe, particularly in Poland, Scandinavia, Scotland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all with specific and defining national characteristics. Although Art Nouveau had its foundations in Europe, its effects were significant across the globe.
Art Nouveau artists and designers embraced a new approach to design that broke away from recycling existing stylistic forms. They often adopted nature as a theme, but came at it from two fundamentally different approaches. The first approach involved reinterpreting the surface of an object—for example the body of a vase, the surface of a book cover or the facade of a building— with stylized, organic, and curvilinear forms referencing foliage and flora.
Despite their use of an ornamental and organic visual vocabulary, Art Nouveau artists and designers of this ilk rejected traditional notions of (>) ornamentation as mere surface decoration and instead regarded it as intrinsic to the overall design. The second approach produced a more scientific view and engaged a deeper investigation into basic organic principles. This somewhat Constructivist-oriented (> Constructivism) analysis resulted in a simpler, more formal visual language that can be seen as anticipating functionalist approaches to design (> Functionalism). Art Nouveau celebrated and endorsed the (>) integration of multiple art forms and a reciprocal discourse between the arts and (>) crafts (known in German as Gesamtkunstwerk).
Art Nouveau artists and designers included architects, interior designers, painters, graphic designers, jewelry, fashion, and product designers (then called artisans). They sought to synthesize all of the art and design disciplines, irrespective of categories such as “high” or “low,” “fine”, or “applied.” Accordingly, they were dedicated to elevating “craftwork” not only by designing everyday ordinary objects as practiced in the (>) Arts & Crafts movement, but by applying the same aesthetic rigor to the posters, small advertisements and logos that they designed. In Germany, the term “Jugendstil” was first introduced to describe a style adopted by the Munich publication Jugend (youth) which was first published in 1896.
Looking for new forms of expression, Jugend endorsed an open approach to design. It did not use consistent (>) typography or uniform (>) layouts, and the magazine’s appearance varied with each issue. It was a platform for a new form of (>) aesthetics and inspired artists, designers, and architects such as Otto Eckmann, Richard Riemerschmid, Julius Diez, Bruno Paul, and Peter Behrens who began incorporating more floral, flowing forms in their work. Berlin, Munich, Darmstadt, and Weimar were the centers of German Jugendstil. Emerging artists’ associations, the “secessionists,” private printing presses, and artisan workshops embraced and developed the new aesthetic. The first secessions were established in 1892 in Munich and Berlin as a protest against the official art of the academy. In 1898, Hermann Obrist, Bernhard Pankok, Bruno Paul, August Endell, Richard Riemerschmid, and Peter Behrens founded the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst und Handwerk (United Workshops for the Arts and Crafts) in Munich, which produced high-quality, handcrafted household products.
They merged with the Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst (The Dresden Artisan Workshops) in 1907 to become the Deutsche Werkstätten (German Workshops) and were able to mass-produce high-quality work (> Deutscher Werkbund). In Darmstadt in 1899, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse invited Joseph Maria Olbrich and Peter Behrens to establish an artist colony at Mathildenhçhe. Its artists designed and furnished Mathildenhçhe’s apartment houses, studios, and a large exhibition hall, making it one of Jugendstil’s most important centers. In 1902, the Belgian Henry van de Velde, became the consultant to the craft industries in Weimar.
The building he designed for the School of Arts and Crafts, later the (>) Bauhaus, set the foundations for a more functional version of Jugendstil. Other centers of Art Nouveau, in addition to those in Germany, arose in France, Belgium, England, Scotland, Austria, and America. In France, the term “Art Nouveau” derived from the name of the gallery of art dealer Siegfried Bing. In Paris, Art Nouveau developed largely in opposition to the École des Beaux-Arts.
There, Hector Guimard designed the entrances to the Paris Motro (still one of the best examples of Art Nouveau); Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Thoophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and Jules Choret developed new directions for poster design; and Reno Lalique designed perfume bottles, lamps, vases, and jewelry with dragonfly and Cicada motifs. Nancy, a small provincial city where glass artists Auguste and Antonin Daum and Émile Gallo developed a strong symbolic expression of Art Nouveau, also became important center for the movement in France.
With artists’ groups such as Le Vingt and La Liberto Esthotique, Belgium was already a progressive hub of art and design activity as early as the 1880s. Victor Horta was one of the first and most significant Art Nouveau architects, combining new materials of the industrial revolution (like iron girders and glass) with organic ornamentation in large constructions that appeared to rise like plants from the ground. By designing the furniture and murals as well, Horta created a unity of structural design and ornament so that the building, its facade, and its interior docor were fully synthesized and resolved.
A very different direction developed in the United Kingdom. A new formal language in English print and book design began emerging in the 1880s. Drawing on the Arts & Crafts tradition and inspired by Japanese wood cuts, Aubrey Beardsley developed a graphic style that looked to nature for its flowing, organic, curvilinear forms. At the same time, a group of architects and artists in Glasgow, Scotland were developing a new functionalist formal language characterized by predominantly neutral tones like black and white and little ornamentation. Led by designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, they formed the Glasgow School of Art, best known for its geometric forms and planar areas with graceful horizontal and vertical lines.
In 1897, Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, and Otto Wagner established a new artists’ association called Secession in Vienna, which became the center for Art Nouveau in Austria. They used a formal visual vocabulary characterized by strong angles and lines that was partially influenced by Mackintosh’s work in Glasgow. In 1903, the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop) emerged from the Vienna Secession.
In America, Art Nouveau was exemplified by the stained and blown glass, ceramics, and jewelry designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany