Art Nouveau(1890-1914 AD)

The New Art

1. Introduction

O Art Nouveau is a short-lived European phenomenon that is part of the Art and Craft Movement that dominated England (around 1860-1915), western Europe and USA well into the 1920s.

O It took its name from Samuel Bing's gallery, Maison de l'Art Nouveau, in Paris. In Central and Eastern Europe it is also known as Jugendstil or 'youth style'. One of its main influences was Japanese art, especially the woodcuts of Hokusai.

O Also known as the New Art/Style, Art Nouveau was first expressed in fabrics and graphic design; and the style spread to architecture in the 1890s.

Background Industrial Revolution

O The Industrial Revolution, which began in

England about 1760, led to radical changes

at every level of civilization throughout the

world. The growth of heavy industry brought

a flood of new building materials such as

cast iron, steel, and glass with which

architects and engineers devised

structures yet undreamed of in function,

size, and form.

Background Industrial Revolution

O Art Nouveau was in many ways a response

to the Industrial Revolution. It represented

the beginning of modernism in design,

occurring at the dusk of the industrial

revolution - a time when mass-produced

consumer goods began to fill the

marketplace, and designers, architects, and

artists began to understand that the

handcrafted work of centuries past could be

lost.

Background Industrial Revolution

O While reclaiming this craft tradition, art

nouveau designers simultaneously rejected

traditional styles in favor of new, organic

forms that emphasized humanitys

connection to nature.

3. Art Nouveau DecorationArt Nouveau is characterized by

asymmetrical shapes or non-

geometric curves and swirls, and the

facades of Art Nouveau buildings are

usually decorated with floral designs,

human figures and faces.

A good example is the Elizabetes iela

10b, in Riga

Art Nouveau Decoration

This detail of a door decoration from a

building constructed in the early 20th

century in Milan, Italy, illustrates the

stylistic themes associated with art

nouveau. The handcrafted intricacy of the

work reflects the reaction of art nouveau

artists against the rise of machine-made

designs. The soft features of the human

face and the robust pattern of leaves

illustrate the importance of naturalistic

representation. Depictions of flora were

so integral to the movement that in Italy

art nouveau was also known as stile

floreale (floral style).

Art Nouveau Decoration

O Art Nouveau reached its peak during the 1890s, emphasizing on handcrafting as opposed to machine manufacturing - the use of new materials, and the rejection of earlier styles. In general, sinuous, curving lines also characterize art nouveau, although right-angled forms are also typical, especially as the style was practiced in Scotland and in Austria.

O Art nouveau embraced all forms of art and design: architecture, furniture, glassware, graphic design, jewellery, painting, pottery, metalwork, and textiles. This was a sharp contrast to the traditional separation of art into the distinct categories of fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied arts (ceramics, furniture, and other practical objects).

Art Nouveau Decoration

O Milan has a number of buildings in the art

nouveau style, including the Balzarini house

on Via Pisacane. The ironwork of the balcony

railings provides an excellent example of the

flowing lines and floral motifs favoured by

art nouveau designers. In Italy, the style was

known as the Liberty style after a

department store in London, England, that

had popularized it.

Art NouveauO Art Nouveau was a concerted attempt to create an

international style based on decoration. It was developed by a brilliant and energetic generation of artists and designers, who sought to fashion an art form appropriate to the modern age - balancing modernity and handcraft through use of naturalistic forms.

There was emphasis on expressive power

of form, color and on aspiration to refine

and elevate the material dimension thus

erasing separation between fine and

applied art, designer and craftsman, art

and daily life.

There was willingness to experiment with

materials, transforming traditional ones

like wrought iron into new uses & shapes;

integration of ornament and structure.

4. Art Nouveau in other artsO Painting and graphic arts

Two-dimensional Art Nouveau pieces were painted, drawn, and printed in popular forms such as advertisements, posters, labels, magazines, and the like. Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichs that were later found in works of artists from many parts of the world.

O Sculpture >>

Art Nouveau in other artsO Glass

Glass art was a medium in which the style found tremendous expression

for example, the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, Charles

Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, and mile Gall and the Daum brothers in

Nancy, France.

O Ceramics

Art Nouveau ceramics were influenced by the work of Japan. The

development of high temperature (grand feu) porcelain with crystallized

and matte glazes, with or without other

decoration, is typical of these works. It was a

period where lost techniques were

rediscovered, such as the oxblood glaze, and

entirely new methods were developed.

Art Nouveau in other artsObjets d'art and other examples

O Jewellery of the Art Nouveau period revitalized the jeweler's art, with nature as the principal source of inspiration, complemented by new levels of virtuosity in enameling and the introduction of new materials, such as opals and semi-precious stones. The widespread interest in Japanese art and the more specialized enthusiasm for Japanese metalworking skills fostered new themes and approaches to ornament.

O For the previous two centuries, the emphasis in fine jeweler had been on gemstones, in particular on the diamond, and the jeweler or goldsmith had been concerned principally with providing settings for their advantage. With Art Nouveau, a different type of jeweler emerged, motivated by the artist-designer rather than the jeweler as setter of precious stones.

O The jewelers of Paris and Brussels defined Art Nouveau in jeweler, and in these cities it achieved the most renown. Contemporary French critics were united in acknowledging that jeweler was undergoing a radical transformation.

O The jewelers were keen to establish the new style in a noble tradition, and for this they used the Renaissance, with its works of sculpted and enameled gold, and its acceptance of jewelers as artists rather than craftsmen. In most of the enameled work of the period, precious stones receded. Diamonds were usually subsidiary, used alongside less familiar materials such as molded glass, horn and ivory.

5. Beliefs and Principles

O Art Nouveau is based on the principles of: originality, organic integrity, symbolic employment of ornament.

O To some extent, it reconciled the antagonism between the machine-made & hand-made that raged during the 19th century.

O It was spread by international exhibitions like the expositions in Paris in 1900 & Turin in 1902 where most pavilions praised the ascendency of Art Nouveau. It also had rectilinear forms which retained nature as the basic source of inspiration but focused on the geometric substructure underlying organic forms .

Influence of Art Nouveau on Modern Architecture

O Though neo-classicism can be said to be the start of the intellectual revolution, it was more of an anti-reaction towards the excessive ornamentation of baroque and rococo styles.

O Classical architectural models were adapted or referenced in a range of architectural forms, including churches, arches, temple, house, terraces, garden monuments and interior designs.

O Rather than coming up with something original the neo-classicists went back to classical architecture and derived eclectically from it.

Influence of Art Nouveau on Modern Architecture

O Following the rapid commercialization of art nouveau in the

decade 190010, designers reacted in two fundamentally

different manners. While a decorative school of designers

turned to new sources for decor and produced Art Deco, the

other, a radical approach, swept away all decorative detail as

degenerate/corrupt and looked to a sleekly machined. Out of

that reaction evolved Bauhaus styles and International

Modernism.

O Although the stylistic elements of art nouveau evolved into the

simpler, streamlined forms of modernism, the fundamental art

nouveau concept of a thoroughly integrated environment

remains an important part of contemporary design.

6. Architects and their works

O Samuel Bing

O Victor Horta

O Hectar Guimard

O C.R Mackintosh

O Antoni Gaudi (in Spain)

Samuel BingSiegfried Bing (February 26, 1838 September 6, 1905),

often referenced mistakenly as "Samuel Bing", was a

German art dealer who lived in Paris as an adult, and who

helped introduce Japanese art and artworks to the West

and was a factor in the development of the Art Nouveau

style during the late nineteenth century.

During December 1895 he opened his famous gallery,

the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, which showed works of

artists of what would become known as the Art Nouveau

style. Henry van de Velde designed the interior of the

gallery, while Louis Comfort Tiffany supplied stained

glass. Bing's gallery featured entire rooms designed in

the Art Nouveau style by his in-house designers.

Samuel BingThe Maison de l'Art Nouveau

Victor HortaVictor Horta (1861-1947), Belgian architect, one of

the pioneers and leading practitioners of art nouveau

architecture.

He supervised the interior decorationeven the

furniture designof all his buildings, and his

characteristic flowing whiplash lines, inspired by

vegetation motifs, were prominent in his wall

decorations, doors, and staircases, as shown:

Victor Horta

Hectar GuimardHector Guimard (Lyon, March 10, 1867 New York,

May 20, 1942) was an architect, who is now the

best-known representative of the French Art

Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries.

Guimard's reputation has risen since the 1960s, as

many art historians have praised his architectural

and decorative work,

Guimard attended the cole nationale suprieure des arts dcoratifs in Paris

from 1882 to 1885, where he became acquainted with the theories of

Eugne Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. These rationalist ideas provided the basis

for the principles of Art Nouveau. Some say that Guimard became devoted to

this style when he visited the Htel Tassel in Brussels, designed by Victor

Horta, however of a very different style.

In 1898, he designed the Castel Branger,which displays a tension between

a medieval sense of geometrical volume, and the organic "whiplash" lines[2]

Guimard saw in Brussels.

Hectar Guimard

C.R MackintoshCharles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928),

Scottish architect and designer, whose

chaste, functional style exerted a strong

influence on 20th-century architecture and

interior design.

C.R Mackintosh

Antoni Gaudi

O In Spain, the Arts and Craft

movement was explored by

Antoni Gaudi through regional

identity by use of native

materials to produce a unique

architectural style. It faded by

1914 to be overtaken by the

International Style.

Antoni Gaudi

O Born June 25, 1852, in Reus, Catalonia, Antoni Gaud i Cornet was the son of a coppersmith. He attended the School of Architecture in Barcelona (1874-1878), the city where he spent his life. As a student he was already involved in several building projects. His earliest major assignment was the Casa Vicens (1878-1880), a private home in Barcelona. This and other work brought him the patronage of an industrialist, Eusebio Gell, for whom he carried out many important commissions, including the Palacio Gell (1885-1889), distinguished by parabolic arches and rich ironwork, and the bizarre Park Gell (1900-1914), with its stone trees, reptilian fountains, and mosaics of broken ceramic pieces set in concrete.

Antoni GaudiAntoni Gaud (1852-1926), Catalan architect, one of

the most creative practitioners of his art in modern

times. His style is often described as a blend of neo-

Gothic and art nouveau, but it also has surrealist

and cubist elements.

His notable works include the La Sagrada familia

and the Cassa Milla Hotel in Spain.

Antoni Gaudi

End

This presentation is courtesy of:

O Microsoft Encarta 2009

O http://www.nga.gov/feature/nouveau/nouveau.shtm

O http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c19th/artnouveau.htm

O http://thearchiblog.wordpress.com/