Art Nouveau: Art, Architecture, and Daily Life

Introduction: Art Nouveau and Its Break from the Past

In all of its interpretations, Art Nouveau constituted a movement in the arts and architecture that marked a clear departure from the Victorian style popular at the tail end of the nineteenth century. What follows is a brief outline of the many ways in which Art Nouveau separated itself from past styles, and how the practitioners of the movement attempted to define their art, advance their practice, and change the fabric of daily life by taking a totalizing approach to architecture and a richly decorative — and sometimes direct — philosophy to the fine arts. The practitioners of the movement desired to be original, and many of the architects designed each part of a building on which they worked, including the decorations inside. The visual artists of the movement attempted to tap into the future by, for example, portraying modern women in new and sometimes risqué manners. Art Nouveau artists and architects saw themselves as forging a new era in art, when art would not be made simply for art's own sake but, instead, to transform the daily lives of people. This ambition — to change daily life — earned the movement the name Art Social in some circles (Pile 259).

Through the use of modern materials — such as iron and glass — modern industrial techniques, and recent innovations like electrical lighting, Art Nouveau established itself as a preferred art movement of the late nineteenth century, popular not only in art circles but in popular media such as advertising. In drawing on nature's forms for decorative ornamentation — the contours of flowers, vines, shells, bird feathers, and insect wings — the movement developed its signature ornamental vocabulary. These stylistic choices were employed not just in architecture but also in the fine arts, with which Art Nouveau architecture had a close relationship (Pile 260).

The late nineteenth century was a period of relative peace and prosperity in continental Europe. As economic growth gave rise to larger upper and upper-middle classes, new and experimental directions in design — especially in Belgium and France — resulted in the development of Art Nouveau. This new style also appeared in Germany, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries. During this time, increased travel broadened western awareness of design in distant places such as the Far East, and improved communication brought objects and artworks into European culture. The term itself is ambiguous, useful primarily in delineating a time of reform, rebellion, and freedom that dominated the art world at the end of the nineteenth century. Many argue the movement was, in part, a response to the proliferation of mass-produced materials during the period. These often uninspired goods had begun to dominate people's lives, rendering traditional artist-craftsmen irrelevant. Such sentiments were particularly strong in the English Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1860s — a precursor and contemporary of Art Nouveau, led by John Ruskin and William Morris, who looked admiringly to the guild craftsmen of the Middle Ages (Pile 260).

Art Nouveau originated as a strong reaction against traditional styles in conventional art, including those taught in schools, promoted in salons, and celebrated in public architecture. It stood in contrast, for example, to the Historical Style, which celebrated art and architecture by making large-scale tributes to earlier periods. All of the movements generally considered to fall under the rubric of Art Nouveau were based upon similar inspirations; common threads of the art form — exoticism, the literary and plastic, the mystical and erotic, the futurist and traditional, the functional and fantastic — round out the design motifs for which it is known. Art Nouveau embodied the Hegelian system of contraries, wherein an artistic truth is only valid if its opposite is equally true (Challi 9).

Origins, Influences, and Regional Variations

The term "Art Nouveau" was, in fact, meaningless at the time of the movement's development. It was the name of a Paris shop whose products displayed the qualities later attributed to the movement. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, the term Jugendstil was most commonly used. In England, Art Nouveau was at first only a feature of the Aesthetic movement; thereafter, the term "Liberty Style" came to prominence, taken from the name of the London shop that sold objects in the Art Nouveau family. In Spain, Scotland, and America, the style differed considerably from its counterparts in Brussels and Paris. Vienna, Austria was considered a center for the related design direction known as the Vienna Secession, which can be seen as a separate but parallel movement (Pile 261).

The Art Nouveau movement, according to its practitioners, was so important and revolutionary that it would change the manner in which even industrial mass products were produced. Common among Art Nouveau artists was their wide range of artistic interests. Alfons Mucha, a Czech visual artist, engaged with posters, paintings, lottery tickets, jewelry, police uniforms, currency design, stamps, wall hangings, and more.

A keystone visual artist of the movement, Mucha was born in southern Moravia during the period of Austrian rule. He grew up in a very traditional town, vastly different from cosmopolitan centers such as Prague and Paris. His work was rooted in, yet divergent from, the folk traditions of his homeland. His was a highly accessible style that required little knowledge of artistic traditions or modern conventions; his designs mixed dynamic lines in geometric patterning amid dramatic figures that tended to blur into the surrounding patterns. The focal point is typically his linear design rather than color. Many of his paintings project an atmosphere of wholesome and natural sexuality. In 1900, Mucha contributed to the Paris Exhibition, where he worked on the Bosnia-Herzegovina Pavilion and other areas. His most famous piece of jewelry was also featured there. As with most Art Nouveau artists, Mucha emphasized the need to unite beauty and function alongside a certain social message (Madsen 45).

For most Art Nouveau artists, nature was an endless source of inspiration and design ideas. Flora and fauna helped develop in the movement an appreciation for sinuosity, asymmetry, and flowing lines. The keystone ornamental characteristic of Art Nouveau is its asymmetrically undulating line, ending in a whiplike, energy-implying movement. Art Nouveau has the propensity to wholly transform the appearance of objects, subjugating the material to the design. Despite so much perceived movement in Art Nouveau artwork and architecture, the harmony of its designs is what stands out most. The ornamentation and linear patterning were not mere decoration for Art Nouveau artists; rather, they represented symbolic content functioning as a visual metaphor imbued with spiritual energy and meaning (Mucha 126):

Key Artists and the Philosophy of Nature

"Optimism and fatigue are symbolized by two movements, an upward one and a downward one, which occur together in serpentine sinusoids between two poles which attract alternately, thus formulating the profile of the movement which can be seen in all structural and decorative elements. The two mutually complementary poles are connected with specific human destinies. Another aspect of this characteristic is Art Nouveau's relationship with music, which acts as a catalyst of human experience. Music breeds rhythmic movement and heartbeat. Art Nouveau is primarily a mimic art which evokes, assumes, and in the end leads to a certain way of human behavior." — Franco Borsi

This quotation is significant insofar as it demonstrates the degree to which Art Nouveau was never merely decoration, especially to its practitioners. The movement carried important social and political interests and implications, and an emphasis on spiritual energy perhaps adopted from eastern traditions. The art and architecture offered a means of spiritual renewal and of seeing the world in a new way. The focus on patterning, lines, and natural shapes gave the art an atmosphere of abstraction, as if it were structural symbolic art, while simultaneously remaining highly organic — especially in France. Under the label Art Nouveau, there resides a long list of diverse artistic styles, from two-dimensional arts to constructive and geometrical arts.

The Art Nouveau motif can be identified in graphic illustration, typography, posters and advertisements, painting and sculpture, fashion design, and the design of jewelry and decorative objects such as ceramics, glassware, silverwork, picture frames, and lamps. With such diversity of application, Art Nouveau synthesized interiors and architecture. For many, Art Nouveau surroundings enveloped them in a chorus of flora and fauna, designs inspired by nature. S. Tschudi Madsen used the term "proto-Art Nouveau" to describe the work of A.H. Mackmurdo — especially a chair he designed in 1882, whose perforated back was carved in swirling, flowerlike forms (Dvorak 102).

Art Nouveau was an important architectural movement, inspired by the inherent patterns of nature. C.F.A. Voysey's textile prints showcase plant forms in free curves, while Christopher Dresser's design philosophy stemmed from his knowledge of botany. Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98) is famous for a style of illustration built around curving linear forms. The work of Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) uses similar themes, as do the works of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) and Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947).