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What is... Art Nouveau?
Portrait of Louise-Delphine Duchosal by Ferdinand Hodler
The Art Nouveau movement (1890 - 1914) gets it name from the Maison De L'Art Nouveau, an interior design gallery that was opened in Paris in 1896. However, the movement spread all over the continent and was known by different names in different countries. In Germany, it was called Jugendstil, in Italy it was called Stile Liberty (after the London arts and crafts store Liberty Style) in Spain it was called Modernista, in Austria Sezessionstil and in France, Modern Style (trust the French to be totally au contraire!). Art Nouveau is characterised by writhing plant forms, parabolas and hyperbolas, the famous whiplash, sinuous lines and a firm turning back on history, myth and legend so beloved of the 19th century. In Britain, the art form made the greatest impact in illustration as seen in the works of Aubrey Beardsley and in periodicals like The Yellow Book. In France, Art Nouveau found expression in the applied arts. Les Vingts in Belgium promoted the art style while in Spain Art Nouveau flowered in the hands of eccentric genius Gaudi. In Germany, the movement was divided between Otto Eckman's decorative leanings and the streamlined look of Behrens. In America, the glassmaker Louis Comfort Tiffany embraced the concept but that is another story.
Art Nouveau was conceived as an international design style based on decoration. It was supposed to be new art for a new age. A response to the industrial revolution, artists welcomed the technical progress and experimented with material like cast iron and large irregularly shaped pieces of glassThere were, however, those who decried the shoddiness of machine-made goods. The concept of the different aspects of arts working together to create a total piece of art is also a characteristic of Art Nouveau. The roots of the movement can be traced to romanticism, symbolism and the Arts and Crafts movement.
While elements from rococo like the flame and shell find place in Art Nouveau, the vegetation base was extended to include seaweed, grass and insects. Japanese wood-block prints, with their flatness and contrasts greatly influenced the movement. Art Nouveau permeated every design discipline including architecture, interior design, jewellery, furniture, textile, utensils and art objects. In jewellery for instance, till then the emphasis had been on gemstones and providing an adequately beautiful setting for the stones. It is only with the art nouveau movement that the jeweller as designer was born.
The movement reached its peak with the Turin Exposition in 1902. With the start of World War, the flourishes of Art Nouveau gave way to the more streamlined no-nonsense silhouette of Modernism.
MINI ANTHIKAD- CHHIBBER
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