8/19/2017 Art Nouveau | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Art Nouveau

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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

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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 Hotel Tassel and Van Eetvelde House (Brussels, 1893–
95), Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald’s design of the Hill
House (Helensburgh, near Glasgow, 1903–4), and Josef Hoffmann and Gustav
Klimt’s Palais Stocklet 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
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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, 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 siè ( 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
which 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
which 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
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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), Édouard 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 La 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.

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

October 2006

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