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Standard Loan LSAD Library Main Collection 709.0349 GRE (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 39002000207085

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This definitive, in-depth study is the first to look at Art Nouveau from a truly international perspective, analysing its literary, philosophical, social and artistic origins.
Divided into key sections covering sources, masterpieces in different media and the urban centres where Art Nouveau flourished, the lavishly illustrated text explores the phenomenon of Art Nouveau from its inception to its collapse.
Outstanding examples of jewellery, ceramics, furniture, glass, metalwork, sculpture, prints, paintings and textiles illustrate the enormous impact of the style in cities across Europe and America from Brussels, Glasgow and Prague to Chicago and New York. Leading artists and designers, including Aburey Beardsley, Antoni Gaudi, Victor Horta, Rene Lalique, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Louis Comfort Tiffany, are examined, and their works are seen together as glorious components of an extraordinary whole.
This beautiful book features some of the earliest examples of Art Nouveau - collected by the V&A just as the style was emerging - and also includes many unusual pieces from other institutions and individuals across the globe. It is both an essential work of reference and a wonderful visual feast.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter One Paul Greenhalgh The Style and the Age I believe that art is destined more and more in the future to play a great role, that it is a force we have at our disposal to create a social harmony, a unity of humanity that never previously existed. (Gustave Geffroy, 1905) `The dominant characteristic of an époque of transition like ours is spiritual anxiety', Adolphe Retté told his readers on 1 March 1898. `It is not surprising', he went on, `we are living in a storm where a hundred contradictory elements collide; debris from the past, scraps of the present, seeds of the future, swirling, combining, separating under the imperious wind of destiny'. The theme of his column, in the French magazine La Plume , was the condition of contemporary society, but his words also described a phenomenon in the visual arts of which he and his colleagues at La Plume were aware, and had helped to create: Art Nouveau.     Art Nouveau was the result of intense and flamboyant activity in the visual arts by individuals wishing to change the character of European civilization. It began in the ateliers, workshops and galleries of the art world, but quickly moved out beyond these to become a commonplace that could be detected -- but not directed -- on all levels of fin-de-siècle culture. In the first decade of the new century it was everywhere (plate 1.1). It was simultaneously vulgar and élite, loved and hated. It could be found proudly decorating new and noble museum buildings, State monuments and official architecture (plate 1.2), as well as giving garrulous form to biscuit tins (plate 1.3), bill-posters, menu cards and children's toys. It inspired moral manifestos dedicated to the future good of society, while providing the imagery of erotic theatre and pulp pornography. It was hailed as a visual Esperanto by internationalists, and claimed as their own by Gauls, Slavs, Latins, Celts and Teutons.     Yet all this loudness, pomp and popularity has not helped the historical process much. In the nine decades since its decline, there has been no real agreement as to what Art Nouveau looked like, when it started or finished, where precisely it happened, or even what its politics and ideas meant. Commentators both for and against it have contradicted one another in successive attempts to position it within the larger scheme of European visual culture. There has been no consensus, for example, on whether it was a style or a movement. Usually depicted as a sudden flourish of activity immediately around 1900, it has also been seen as a far lengthier event: `the span of Art Nouveau must be seen as ranging from 1870 to 1914' and it has even been disputed that it actually occurred in this period at all: `it has been identified, wrongly, as an aspect of the belle époque' . Some have believed that `there is not a single Art Nouveau style, but that it comprises a number of varied and conflicting movements', whereas others have preferred it as a very specific visual development, a `style of art which ... has as its main theme a long, sensitive, sinuous line that reminds us of seaweed or of creeping plants'. It has been seen as a phenomenon of the French- and possibly German-speaking countries only, but also as `a European-wide invasion'.     Its intellectual underpinning has been understood in strikingly varied ways. A classic text on the subject is entitled The Anti-rationalists (1973) and, in this spirit, many have seen it as a consciously mystical and illogical continuation of the Romantic tradition. By contrast, others believe that it constituted `a logical opposition with a rationalist foundation', firmly rooted in the scientific achievements of the nineteenth century. Its ethical constitution has been stretched across the emotional range, from being a dark, immoral reflection of a corrupt world: `do not such pleasures signal the decline, if not in fact the end, of the civilization for which the First World War tolled the knell?' to being a moral beacon, heralding a new morality: `Art Nouveau was consciously and hopefully launched in the 1890s as a concrete expression of social conscience'. Condemned as being centrally concerned with `interiority', or the turning inward -- materially and psychologically -- of a decadent and capital-driven bourgeoisie, it has also been heralded as a style centrally concerned with public life. It has been exposed simultaneously as a government-based, pragmatic money-making strategy and as a non-conformist artistic revolt intent on `defeating the establishment order'. It has been pictured as an idealist crusade, composed of a number of international styles, and as a movement peopled by `artists and their institutional sponsors [who] shared a contemporary nationalist ideal'.     These varied visions are not to do with the failings of scholarship or the subjective fickleness of taste. They all reflect some aspect of Art Nouveau. Rather, they point to the fact that this was a multi-faceted, complex phenomenon that defied -- then and now -- any attempt to reduce it to singular meanings and moments. Indeed, under the reductive scrutiny of art-historical scholarship, Art Nouveau has tended to disappear altogether. What we can say, however, is that through the collision `of a hundred contradictory elements', to use Rettés words, many disparate things cohered into a style which became, despite contemporary rivals, the style of the age . Nevertheless, definitions are important. In this volume, `Art Nouveau' is the name given to a style in the visual arts that was a powerful presence in Europe and North America from the early 1890s until the First World War. The style emerged from the intense activity of a collection of movements, manufacturers, public institutions, publishing houses, individual artists, entrepreneurs and patrons, located all over the urban, industrial world. It existed in all genres, but the decorative arts were centrally responsible for its invention and its fullest expression. It had diverse roots, meanings and results, but its many parts were held in proximity by a number of shared ideas and sources. Indeed, there was one defining characteristic that held Art Nouveau together, an ideal bestowing the many movements and individuals with a vision that, regardless of different aesthetic solutions and national cultures, meant they all flowed in the same direction. This defining characteristic was modernity. Art Nouveau was the first self-conscious, internationally based attempt to transform visual culture through a commitment to the idea of the modern.     A key motivation behind the drive for modernity in the arts was the recognition that the world was changing, that technical, economic and political developments were transforming the physical environment. Art Nouveau artist Alexandre Charpentier spoke for many when he asserted that `the face of the world has undergone more change during the last hundred years than it underwent in the previous eighteen centuries'. This implied that the uses of art had changed too and, in the words of Art Nouveau intellectual Julius Meier-Graefe, `if the uses of art change, art itself must change'. This shift in material conditions carried a sense of drama. Historian Clive Trebilcock has observed that `symbolically, the European civilization of 1914 could be represented as precisely by the steamhammer or the steam warship as it had been by the cathedral spire or the knightly banner'. He notes how the pace of development after 1870 was striking: There were engineering works in Spezia and Tsaritsyn, automobile factories in Vienna and Milan, Dreadnought yards in Flume and Ferrol.... And at St Étienne, Hayange and Décazeville, the French industrialists had created a handful of manufacturing installations which could rival any then in existence. To the casual glance, it might appear that industrialisation had overtaken Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, from the Channel to the Danube. In commercial and imperial terms, the last third of the century was one of frenzy. On the trade front there was a shift from British monopoly to pan-national competition, as the British lost their grip on the production and sale of industrial commodities. Old rivals came to understand the motor forces of the modern world and younger nations, most notably Germany, the United States and Japan, asserted themselves. Trade simultaneously became more international and more aggressive, as nations fought each other in the factory and the market place. This competitive energy fired the so-called `New Imperialism', in which nations scrambled not only for trade, but also for territory. The Europeans occupied and to a considerable extent asset-stripped the globe. As they did so, they voraciously consumed the cultures of the world and made them their own.     But while the processes of economic, imperial and industrial modernization occurred everywhere, everywhere was not the same place. Historian Sidney Pollard, for example, has noted that `Europe was a continent made up of many variegated and contradicting economies'. The geography and demographics of European countries, their traditional infrastructure, the type of government and wealth controlling them, together with the brand of entrepreneur introducing change, all had a bearing on the rate and type of change achieved. The complexity and variety of cultural modernization, of which Art Nouveau was the most expressive and successful example, is thus partly explained. The style was as it was, not simply because of the subjective visions of artists and designers (as important as these were), but because of the nature of the world they were born into. When artists and designers in urban, industrial centres began to express a desire to be modern, they invariably found themselves reconciling cosmopolitan ideas with the immediate conditions in which they found themselves. This fusion of universal and local sources is at the heart of the Art Nouveau style, and mirrors reconciliations and tensions evident in all spheres of life.     The concept of the `new' did not simply imply novelty or relative change, but the transformation of culture through a process of evolutionary development. In 1902 Gabriel Mourey commented: This change is taking place. Here and there, in every Country, men with willing minds are endeavouring to hasten it. Will they succeed? Why not? What right have we to fix the limits [of] human progress? And even if we had enough foolish pride to do so, would that prevent what is destined to happen from coming to pass? Thus, the New Art was to be a vehicle to radicalize established practices in art and design, to effect permanent change. As commentators said at the time, it was to `enrich the old patrimony with a spirit of modernness', and to place itself `in the opposite camp from the prose of old art, which is a rehash of ancient things'. Many in this opposite camp believed, like designer August Endell in 1897, that `we are not only at the beginning of a new stylistic phase, but at the same time on the threshold of the development of a completely new art'. They felt they must break decisively with the past, a past that implied not only formulations of art that had become dominant and resistant to change, but that had also created institutions which taught, promoted and protected the old ways.     The driving passion behind all these ideas stemmed from the belief that art and life were synonymous. The artist's creative spirit was believed to be a force through which the life of the community could be generally improved. Individuality was a key component in the new thinking, as Charles Rennie Mackintosh espoused: `the focus will eventually prove to be the work of the individual worker ... will prove to be the emancipation of all artists from stupid forms of education -- which stifles the intellect, paralyses the ambition and kills the emotion'. The individual was the vehicle of change: through him or her, the spiritual transformation of the whole of society could be achieved: `the time has come; the idea of love will be communicated to all men; art will return to the light in a new form. The earth has been worked from which the new flower will rise; but we will not see this rise before the complete obliteration of the present.' (Henry van de Velde, Déblaiement d'art, 1894.)     Powerful as these poetic statements were, however, they were essentially rhetorical. They gave few recipes and less guidance as to what the stuff of this modern world should look like. If the word `modern' were to mean more than simply `now' (or denote the period commencing with the Enlightenment), if it were to suggest a fundamental shift, then artists and designers faced the problem of producing objects which somehow expressed this. It was an obvious requirement that modern objects looked modern: artists and designers had to do something that changed the look of things.     The first and most important position to help achieve this change was the idea that the new style was to exist in all media, and would aim at the creation of Gesamtkunstwerk (`total' works of art). A term first used in the fin-de-siècle context in relation to the music of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk implied equality among the arts and their orchestration into unified ensembles. This determination to render the arts equal, in an effort towards cultural renewal, was not new to the period. It was widely held among European intellectuals by 1860 that the visual arts had become divided against themselves, and were configured within a hierarchy that was more to do with economics and bureaucracy than with creativity. The great divide was between the fine arts -- of painting and large-scale sculpture -- and the so-called lesser, decorative arts. Major thinkers, such as Gottfried Semper in Germany, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in France and John Ruskin in Britain, argued consistently against the segregation of the arts which they understood as happening on both a practical level, among practitioners and patrons, and on an institutional level, in museums, universities and government ministries. By arguing from historical precedent, that decoration had formerly enjoyed an all-embracing role in the creation of all art, Ruskin was particularly persuasive: `There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front -- the best painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael's best doing is merely the wall-colouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican.'     Mainly via the Arts and Crafts movement in England and Symbolism in France (see chapters eight and four), the unity of all arts became a key debating point in fin-de-siècle culture in general, and Art Nouveau in particular. Ruskin's Arts and Crafts followers saw division in the arts as directly analogous to social division, which tinged their discussions with politically motivated anger. Leading designer C.R. Ashbee was typical in asserting that `we are dealing with Art as a whole, and not with picture-painting ... with decorative Art, in which the painting of a picture is of minor importance'. Albert Aurier -- the celebrated critical supporter of the Parisian Symbolist group the `Nabis' -- developed the idea that in order to achieve its full spiritual potential, art should have no artificial barriers separating its various spheres of activity. Following Ruskin's line, he argued from history that decorative art had formerly dominated, and that art had been divided into classes only under the weight of commerce: `Decorative painting is, strictly speaking, the true art of painting.... The easel-picture is nothing but an illogical refinement invented to satisfy fantasy or the commercial spirit in decadent civilizations.' Julius Meier-Graefe also pointed to the commercial underpinning of the fine arts: `Sales are effected as on the Bourse, and speculation plays an important part in the operation.' He confessed to `a strange kind of fury' at the thought of large private collections of paintings acquired for investment, and `a silent longing to destroy the whole lot. Who would be the loser if this were actually done?'     The first Art Nouveau designer to articulate the position fully was the Belgian Henry van de Velde. He too believed that the existing nomenclature of the arts was a recent invention and was politically and economically motivated. He campaigned aggressively to change the situation: Suddenly they were called arts of the second rank, then decorative arts, and then the minor arts ... and last, industrial arts.... None of [the arts] had been independent, they were held together by a common idea which was to decorate.... Who or what has the power over these arts? ... It is important to note that all terminology, like low art, art of second rank, art industry, decorative art and arts and crafts are only valid as long as one agrees to them. However, this does not imply that these terms are just or that the situation they describe really means anything. We can't allow a split which aims at single-mindedly ranking one art above the others, a separation of the arts into high art and a second class, low industrial art. French designer Émile Gallé was concerned particularly with the effect of the hierarchy on practitioners: `Let us not tire of saying over and over again that there are no castes among the artisans of art, that there are no mean and plebian arts.' There was also anxiety about the detrimental effects of the separation of the arts on the general public. Equality of the arts was widely seen as an important pre-condition to making them available to a wider audience. There could be no spiritually uplifting Gesamtkunstwerk while the arts were divided. When the group Les Six (formerly Les Cinq and latterly Les Huit ) exhibited in Paris in 1898, their advertisements made this clear: `It is necessary to make art part of contemporary life, to make the ordinary objects that surround us into works of art.' The harmonious ensemble of equal arts, they believed, would surround and transform the audience.     By 1900 Art Nouveau was recognized as the style that had made attack on the existing hierarchy of the arts a main motivation. Practitioners in the style in many countries enjoyed reputations as `ensembliers', orchestrators of complete interiors known for their ability to design for various media. The ensemble had become the main aesthetic vehicle of the style, and decoration was positioned as the central, expressive force. At time, Art Nouveau faced a considerable amount of highly articulate, hostile criticism. Indeed, styles in the visual arts have often been most concisely summarized by those who loathed them most. In 1911, J.H. Elder Duncan, an undistinguished English writer on household design, recognized Art Nouveau's territorial triumph `the chaos in design has spread all over France, Germany, Austria and Italy, upon which countries the creed of "L'Art Nouveau" lies heavily' -- before advancing his ideas with examples: Metal is twisted into the most weird and unnatural shapes. Chairs appear as clumps of gnarled tree roots; twisted boughs conspire to form a bedstead; electroliers appear to be boxes suspended by innumerable strings; walls show trees with their roots in the skirting boards, and foliage on the ceiling; sea serpents chase each other around the walls and entrance doors are guarded by appalling dragons.... The electric lights must masquerade in pools under the eyes of a nymph; ... snakes twisted into ingenious knots for stair balusters threaten you as you ascend; the door knocker becomes a grinning satyr, and even the carpet casts a malevolent eye at you as you traverse it. Accepting the writer's frenzied venom, his analysis of the scope of the style is surprisingly perceptive. He deliberately collectivized the various approaches, making the strategies used all over Europe and the United States into a common cause, and he recognized that the look was eclectic (a combination of sources from many diverse places). The `gnarled' trees, `boxes', `strings', `appalling dragons' and `grinning satyrs', for example, acknowledged imagery that was being used in France, Belgium, Scotland, Spain, Norway and Austria. He understood that the use of this range of imagery could result in objects that were extremely complicated or disarmingly simple, but that nevertheless held something in common.     The sources made use of in Art Nouveau emanate from particular areas of fin-de-siècle cultural experience. There were three types of source at work: these can be identified as natural, historical and symbolic. While this typology was hardly new to the history of art, the way in which the three were used certainly was. Each was re-explored, either individually or in combination, so that they could be used to generate an overtly modern idiom. Nature, history, symbolism: chapters are dedicated to each of these in this volume, but suffice it to say here that, while the three were combined to create what was the first self-consciously modern style to embrace the whole of visual culture, they too were subjects of modernization by forces both within and beyond themselves. Indeed, a main reason they were used as an agent of transformation in the arts was because they themselves were transformed.     Nature was the most important of the three sources. It inspired the creation of the most archetypal products of the style, and was the key element in ensuring that the style itself was a genuinely international phenomenon (plates 1.4 and 1.5). In the context of the rapid urbanization of the European and North American Continents during the later nineteenth century, it aquired new cultural meaning as a wild and unruly determinant outside of normal lived experience. Nature also had a revolution from within, in the form of evolutionary theory, exemplified by the work of Charles Darwin. Humankind was made firmly part of the natural process, and nature itself appeared to acquire its own sense of direction. (Continues...) Excerpted from Art Nouveau 1890-1914 by . Copyright © 2000 by The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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