Art Nouveaux Style (1890-1910)

Professor Khaled M. Dewidar.

Professor of Architecture. Ain Shams University

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, especially
the decorative art, that was most popular between 1890 and 1910 A reaction to
the academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and structures,
particularly the curved lines of plants and flowers. English uses the French name Art
Nouveau (new art). The style is related to, but not identical with, styles that emerged in
many countries in Europe at the same time. Art Nouveau is a total art style: It embraces a
wide range of fine and decorative arts, including architecture, painting, graphic art,
interior design, jewelry, furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass art, and metal work.
By 1910, Art Nouveau was already out of style. It was replaced as the dominant
European architectural and decorative style first by Art Deco and followed by
Modernism. Art Nouveau took its name from the Maison de l'Art Nouveau (House of the
New Art), an art gallery opened in 1895 by the Franco-German art dealer Sigfried Bing
that that featured the new style. In France, Art Nouveau was also sometimes called by the
British term "Modern Style" due to its roots in the It was also sometimes called Le Style
Métro (after Hector Guimard's iron and glass subway entrances), Art Belle Époque,
and Art fin de siècle.
In Belgium, where the architectural movement began, it was sometimes termed noodle
style. In Britain, it was known as the Modern Style, or, because of the Arts and Crafts
movement led by Charles Mackintosh in Glasgow, as the Glasgow Style. In the United
States, due to its association with Louis Tiffany, it was often called the Tiffany style
In Germany and Scandinavia, a related style emerged at about the same time; it was
called Jugendstil, after the popular German art magazine of that name. Some names refer
specifically to the organic forms that were popular with the Art Nouveau artists: "floral
style" in France and ”wave style” in Germany.
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, Bing

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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 use, and they must make.”
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. Art Nouveau was a
reaction against 19th-century academic styles and an expression of desire by artists and
architects to create a new style for the coming turn of the century. In other words, new art
for a new age. Art Nouveau involved a philosophy that beautiful things could benefit
people who saw them. The end of the 19th-century was a time of increasing
industrialization and mass production of cheap, poorly-made goods. Artists, designers,
and architects reacted against this, wanting a return to good craftsmanship and believing
that art should be incorporated back into everyday life.
Art Nouveau was a total style, an expression of an idea known as Gesamtkunstwerk, the
thought that all the arts should be reintegrated. People who worked in Art Nouveau
included fine artists and illustrators, textile and wallpaper designers, and glass and
jewelry designers. They also pursued work like interior design, furniture design, and
architecture. Beauty and design were just as important to functional objects like buildings
as they were in fine art, and architects became some of the most prominent practitioners
of Art Nouveau.

The Leaders of Art Nouveau:

William Morris, Louis Tiffany and Gustav Klimt

They collaborated in the principle of a “Total Work of Art,” which aimed to be

spiritually uplifting through a combination of beauty and utility. It was Klimt’s 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
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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.

The Kiss By Gustav Klimt

On the other side of the Atlantic, Louis Tiffany became the name most associated with
the Art Nouveau movement in the United States. 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. He was best
known for an innovative fabrication of leaded glass that became a distinctly American
phenomenon. 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.

Louis Tiffany Glass

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Following the vision of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc:

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 Flexibility and Dynamic Architecture

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 in Scotland; Otto Wagner in Austria and Louis
Sullivan in the United States.

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Art Nouveau bridged an essential gap between 19th-century
aestheticism and 20th-century design. 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.

Characteristics of Art Nouveau Architecture

Art Nouveau is identified by its graceful curving lines. Some structures seem almost
organic, rising from the ground in swelling and undulating forms. Lines stretch and then
bend back on themselves to create a form sometimes called a whiplash curve. Whiplash
curves have become a hallmark of the style. Art Nouveau structures are very influenced
by nature, and you might see decorative schemes that incorporate elements like leaves
and vines, flowers, birds like swans and peacocks, and insects like dragonflies. Art
Nouveau buildings have bright, colorful ceramic tile work done in stylized floral patterns
that cover flat elements of surfaces.

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Art Nouveau Architecture:
Henri van de Velde in Belgium (1863-1937) pared away the conventions of art and
architecture in favor of a rather rigid floral style while Victor Horta in France (1861-
1947) seems to have passed the rule-book through a maze of botanical fact (the Hotel
Tassel, 1892-3, and the Maison du Peuple, 1896-9 in Brussels). Horta was widely
admired for his readiness to reconsider basic design problems and for the fluency of his
adaptations of organic principle. For the Tassel house he opened up the centre into a sort
of conservatory space in which the exposed cast iron supports are themselves stylized
plants. And the Maison du Peuple he constructed around a sinuous iron frame, every
decorative element of which arose from the containment of stresses. It was said that 'he
follows the secret law obeyed by vegetation, which grows in immutable and ever
harmonious forms, but he compels himself never to draw a motif, nor to describe a
solitary curve which could be seen as a pastiche of natural form'.

Art Nouveau architectural designs were widespread throughout many parts of central and
eastern Europe, leading Art Nouveau architects and designers included the

French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942):

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Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926):

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Belgian architect Victor Horta (1861-1947):

Viennese designer Otto Wagner (1841-1918):

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Viennese Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908):

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In France, Art Nouveau-style had the seal of approval when Guimard's designs for the
Paris Metro stations were accepted, and above the subways (1898-1900) sprouted
elaborate arrangements of iron and glass resembling large bean shoots and seed-pods.
In America, the giant office blocks of Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) - the Wainwright
Building, St Louis (1890), the Guaranty Building, Buffalo (1894), the Carson, Pirie &
Scott Store, Chicago (1899-1904) - reveal in their facades, their honeycomb insides and
the strips and panels which divide the cells a riot of plant-like ornament.

Famous Art Nouveau Artists:

The two greatest graphic artists of the Art Nouveau movement were the French
lithographer Jules Cheret (1836-1932) whose invention of "3-stone chromolithography"
made Art Nouveau poster art feasible, and the Czech lithographer and designer Alphonse
Micha (1860-1939) whose celebrated posters epitomized the Art Nouveau idiom. Emile
Galle of France and Louis Comfort Tiffany of the United States were famous for their
colourful Art Nouveau glassware, as were the English artists Aubrey Beardsley and
Walter Crane for their wonderful Art Nouveau drawings. Other famous artists involved
in the "new art" included: the French jeweler designer Rene Lalique:

the Viennese painter Gustav Klimt, the Polish theatrical designer and stained glass
artist Stanislaw Wyspianski, and the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie
Mackintosh (1868-1928), leader of the Glasgow School.

While Art Nouveau promoted a more widespread adoption of "beautiful" design, it did
not diminish the value of the machine or mass-production (as the Arts and Crafts
Movement did), but instead took advantage of many technological innovations from the
late 19th century. Even so, by World War I, it too succumbed to the more streamlined
design processes that were beginning to become available. Possibly its greatest influence
was on:

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 (1) 20th-century advocates of integrated design, such as the German Bauhaus and the
Dutch design movement De Stijl;
(2) Graphic Art such as illustration and poster-design.

Nowadays, Art Nouveau is viewed as an important bridge between Neoclassicism

and modernism, and a number of its monuments are on the UNESCO World
Heritage List.

Art Nouveau In Egypt:

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