Art Nouveau

“ 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 behaviour. (Franco Borsi, quoted Mucha 126)
How useful such a comment is for understanding particular works is open to debate, but it is a reminder that, at least in the eyes of its practitioners, Art Nouveau was never about mere decoration. Given its sense of having an important social and political purpose and the emphasis on symbols of spiritual energy, most Art Nouveau stands diametrically opposed to the notion of Art for Art’s sake. ”

“ It may be true also that Art Nouveau never really resolved the central dilemma of form and content in its art and hence was overtaken by the inevitable developments of artistic modernism, the trend towards increasing abstraction in art and purism in architecture. ”

“ The place of the Art Nouveau in the story of modern architecture, if only as an episode of youthful wild-oat-sowing, is now well established. Most of its exponents actually lived long enough to receive in their later years embarrassing praise for youthful work they had quite disowned if not forgotten. ”

“ But the very rapidity with which the Art Nouveau rose to popularity and descended to vulgarization encouraged its denigration in the name of ‘taste’ by almost all other architects soon after it reached its climax around 1900. In recompense, interest in the Art Nouveau began to revive early, by the early thirties, after a much shorter period of neglect than other phases of nineteenth-century architectural development have undergone and are still undergoing. ”

“ And it enables one to understand how the reactions against Art Nouveau, particularly the emphasis on certain forms of ornamentation, could arise from the within the most cherished ideas of the “movement.” For some of the harshest attacks on Art Nouveau were inspired by a strong reaction against the way some forms of it promoted excessive ornamentation (which, in turn, was often associated with sexual decadence) . ”

“ The general admiration in avant-garde circles for the work of these artists—with which went paradoxically a continuing and even growing estimation of the anti-architectonic 287pictures of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists both French and native—ran parallel everywhere with the rapid rise and spread of the Art Nouveau. In some sense, indeed, the Art Nouveau may be considered the equivalent as a mode of design of what is somewhat ambiguously called Impressionism in music—the work of Debussy, Delius, etc. ”

“ English innovations in decorative art of the eighties and nineties are accepted by most historians as providing one of the most important immediate sources of the Art Nouveau, [357] and English architecture and architectural theory of the later decades of the nineteenth century certainly offered a generic stimulus to Europeans between 1890 and 1910 that was of vital consequence to subsequent developments. ”

“ In France, various feats of metal construction of the sixties, seventies, and eighties had prepared the way for the Art Nouveau on the technical side, and these have, moreover, considerable intrinsic interest in their own right. ”

“ Whether “L’Art Nouveau” will ever produce permanent results time alone can show. Its present vogue is probably evanescent and it cannot claim to have produced a style; but it seems likely to exert on European architecture an influence, direct and indirect, not unlike that of the Néo-Grec movement of 1830 in France (p. 364) , but even more lasting and beneficial. It has already begun to break the hold of rigid classical tradition in design ”

“ Even purely functional objects now largely machine made and mass produced should be shaped by the decorative powers of art. Hence we see many Art Nouveau artists, and Mucha in particular, demonstrating an astonishingly wide range of artistic interests (in his case from posters and paintings to lottery tickets, jewellery, police uniforms, designs for money, stamps, wall hangings, and so on) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ To appreciate that work only in the light of what they had in common with their juniors is to miss much of the richness and all of the idiosyncrasy of their achievement. In considering the work of these older architects for its own sake, what sets it apart from the Art Nouveau, whose protagonists were in many cases their exact contemporaries, must first be indicated and evaluated. ”

“ The movement was kept alive by a few artists, at least until the outbreak of war in 1914, but that ended it. Given its significant popularity in all sorts of artistic fields, one might well wonder why Art Nouveau disappeared so quickly.
Because Art Nouveau was highly individualist, based above all on the artist, its practitioners could not solve the problem of machines and the mass production of common consumer objects. Hence, Art Nouveau style “never became a style for the masses, but remained an ‘artist’s’ style for the select few . ”

“ In vain does the pedant complain of the architecture here displaying the genius of that munificent founder, and tell us that it marks a decline from the elevation of the decorated period; for who can but see, in what is called decline, something much more like an elaborate adaptation of sacred art to academic purposes, exhibiting high invention, and a sense of the fitting and appropriate, which proves a taste truly refined, and a fancy rich and creative? ”

“ The introduction of an oil vehicle for the pigment material, in the fifteenth century, made possible a much greater range in gradated color, and reinforcing the increased knowledge of light and shade, aided in the evolution of decoration into the "easel picture," complete in itself. Released from its subjection to architecture, increasing its technical resources, and widening its interests in the matter of subject so as to include all life, painting becomes an independent and self-sufficing art. ”

“ It was then that religious fervor expressed itself in grand creations, and all the arts of the age were controlled and made to contribute to the one great art of the age, Architecture, as evinced in these wondrous works of their hands that they have left behind—models of artistic skill and beauty unexcelled as yet by those who have come after them. ”

“ A stroll in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shows us better than words the perfection of design at this grandiose era. There one sees Antony and Cleopatra of Rubens—probably. On these hangings the border has all the evidences of genius. If there were no picture at all to enclose, if there were but this decorative frame, a superb inspiration would be flaunted. From substantial urns at right and left, springs the design at the sides which mounts higher and higher, design on design, but always with probability. ”

“ Respecting the inimitable perfection of the antique in its few remains of a first-rate character, there is but one voice throughout the whole of civilized Europe; and if ever their merit was called in question, it was in times when the modern arts of design had sunk to the lowest depths of mannerism. Not only all intelligent artists, but all men of any degree of taste, bow with enthusiastic adoration before the masterly productions of ancient sculpture. ”

“ The sensible plan that results in perfect convenience in getting about, the clothing of this plan in noble and fitting architectural forms, the use of sculpture and painting as an integral part of the architectural scheme, the tying in of buildings to site with appropriate planting, and the pulling together of the whole composition with harmonious color-these are the things that will leave their impress on American art for all time to come. ”

“ And this is why architecture of the grand style—which is the only one of the arts that handles the alien and fear-instilling itself, the immediate Extended, the stone—is naturally the early art in all Cultures, and only step by step yields its primacy to the special arts of the city with their more mundane forms—the statue, the picture, the musical composition. ”

“ Not only does the exhibition of paintings in the world's fair make one very hopeful of the future artistic development of this continent, but the beauty of the architectural design of the noble buildings which contain the treasures of art and industry, and of the decorative figures and groups of statuary that embellish these buildings and the surrounding grounds, is a remarkable illustration of the artistic genius that has produced so exquisite an effect in general, whatever defects there may be in minor details. ”

“ We have at first an imitation, almost savage in its rudeness, of a classical design; as the art advances, the design is modified by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in which balance they advance to new perfection. ”

“ The return of the painters, sculptors, and architects to the old types of classical art after the reign of the Gothic seems at first sight as if in the arts there could be nothing new under the sun: as if the imagination, so fertile in creation during many centuries since the establishment of Christianity, had been utterly worked out and come to an end, and that there was nothing left but to repeat and copy what had been done ages before. ”

“ The old ways are still the only ways. When we care for art sufficiently to summon her{273} from her state prison-house of exhibitions and galleries, to live again a free life among us in our homes, she will appear as a controlling force, using not only painting and sculpture, but all the decorative arts to shape room and furniture under one purpose of design. Whether we shall then give her the time-honoured title of architecture, or call her by another name, is of no moment. ”

“ The necessities of leading and cutting the glass demand a certain severity and simplicity of design—from which a new beauty is evolved, capable in its turn of influencing other forms of art for good, as in easel painting—which harmonizes with its symbolic and religious intention as well as with the architectural and monumental character of its surroundings in its noblest forms in public and college halls and churches; while its glow and colour, suggestive symbolism, or heraldic adornment, may cheer and vivify domestic interiors with a touch of poetry and romance. ”

“ The modern prejudice against the use of colour in architecture set in about the same time that sculpture also became, like painting, an independent art, which was about the beginning of the decadence of the Renaissance, at the end of the sixteenth century.
The architect, sculptor and painter should confer together, and if possible work in harmony with each other, so that when a cathedral, a church, a city hall, or any other public building is about to be erected, the complete scheme of the finished decoration should be formulated when the plans are being made. ”

“ To this answer is made, that those improvements are made available, and very sensibly influence the character of the revived mediæval style; but that “to invent a new species of architecture, or suddendly to call into being a new development of an old art, is what no individual artist, however gifted, or genius, however powerful, has ever accomplished,” all art being the growth of time, influenced by various external circumstances. But, even if such an unheard-of phenomenon is to appear, before its advent, it is surely prudent to use the best art we possess in the best way we can. ”

“ We cannot, however, live on sensational effects without impairing our sense of form and balance—of beauty, in short. We cannot concentrate our attention on pictorial and graphic art, and come to regard it as the one form worth pursuing, without losing our sense of construction and power of adaptation in design to all kinds of very different materials and purposes—that sense of relation—that architectonic sense which built up the great monuments of the past. ”

“ But in elegance, delicacy, and subtlety of line [168] and surface, the best carving of the Renaissance is superior to that of ancient Rome. The linear basis of such design is highly artificial, consisting of formal scrolls and meanders, and the leafage and other forms introduced are treated artificially without being finely conventionalized. The conventions of this [169] art are not the natural result of a true sense of ornamental abstraction, of architectural fitness, and of the nature of materials. They do not manifest a fine appreciation of the beauty of the object conventionalized. ”

“ This may be some indication of a return to sanity and a desire to restore the art of painting as an art of design.
But over and above all these movements and varieties the desire for something antique seems to be dominant. The old masters eclipse the moderns in painting; and in decoration and furniture, if genuine old work is not to be had, the closest imitation is in demand, and the tone of time must, if possible, be anticipated in counterfeit. ”

“ He was a designer in the marvellous transition period of about 1500, when art trembled between the restraint of ecclesiastic Gothic and the voluptuous freedom of the Renaissance; hesitated between the conventions of religion and the abandonment to luxury, to indulgence of the senses. It is the fashion to regard periods of transition as times of decadence, of false standards of hybrid production, but at least they are full of deepest interest to the student of design who finds in the tremulous dawn of the new idea a flush which beautifies the last years of the old method. ”