Art Nouveau
ARTISTIC STYLE
WRITTEN BY:
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
LAST UPDATED:
12-12-2014 See Article History
Alternative Titles: Modernismo, Modernista, Sezessionstil, Stile Floreale, Stile Liberty
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Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and
1910 throughout Europe and the United States. Art Nouveau is characterized
by its use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed most often
in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters, and
illustration. It was a deliberate attempt to create a new style, free of the
imitative historicism that dominated much of 19th-century art and design. Art
Nouveau developed first in England and soon spread to the European
continent, where it was called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria,
Stile Floreale (or Stile Liberty) in Italy, and Modernismo (or Modernista)
in Spain. The term Art Nouveau was coined by a gallery in Paris that exhibited
much of this work.
“The Whiplash,” Art Nouveau tapestry by Hermann Obrist, silk embroidered on wool, 1895; …
Courtesy of the Münchner Stadtmuseum
In England the style’s immediate precursors were the Aestheticism of the
illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who depended heavily on the expressive quality
of organic line, and the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris, who
established the importance of a vital style in the applied arts. On the European
continent, Art Nouveau was also influenced by experiments with expressive
line by the painters Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The
movement was also partly inspired by a vogue for the linear patterns of
Japanese prints (ukiyo-e).
Art Nouveau illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for an 1893 edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s …
Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images
The distinguishing ornamental characteristic of Art Nouveau is its undulating,
asymmetrical line, often taking the form of flower stalks and buds, vine
tendrils, insect wings, and other delicate and sinuous natural objects; the line
may be elegant and graceful or infused with a powerfully rhythmic and
whiplike force. In the graphic arts the line subordinates all other pictorial
elements—form, texture, space, and colour—to its own decorative effect. In
architecture and the other plastic arts, the whole of the three-dimensional form
becomes engulfed in the organic, linear rhythm, creating a fusion between
structure and ornament. Architecture particularly shows this synthesis
of ornament and structure; a liberal combination of materials—ironwork, glass,
ceramic, and brickwork—was employed, for example, in the creation of unified
interiors in which columns and beams became thick vines with spreading
tendrils and windows became both openings for light and air and membranous
outgrowths of the organic whole. This approach was directly opposed to the
traditional architectural values of reason and clarity of structure.
Dragonfly corsage ornament made of gold, enamel, chrysoprase, moonstones, and diamonds,
designed by …
© Art Media—Heritage-Images/Imagestate
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There were a great number of artists and designers who worked in the Art
Nouveau style. Some of the more prominent were the Scottish architect and
designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who specialized in a predominantly
geometric line and particularly influenced the Austrian Sezessionstil; the
Belgian architects Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta, whose extremely
sinuous and delicate structures influenced the French architect Hector
Guimard, another important figure; the American glassmaker Louis Comfort
Tiffany; the French furniture and ironwork designer Louis Majorelle; the
Czechoslovakian graphic designer-artist Alphonse Mucha; the French glass
and jewelry designer René Lalique; the American architect Louis Henry
Sullivan, who used plantlike Art Nouveau ironwork to decorate his traditionally
structured buildings; and the Spanish architect and sculptor Antonio Gaudí,
perhaps the most original artist of the movement, who went beyond
dependence on line to transform buildings into curving, bulbous, brightly
coloured, organic constructions.
Art Nouveau painted oak cabinet with coloured glass, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
1902.
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
Art
Nouveau bracelet and ring made for Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Fouquet after a design by …
Marc Garanger
After 1910 Art Nouveau appeared old-fashioned and limited and was
generally abandoned as a distinct decorative style. In the 1960s, however, the
style was rehabilitated, in part, by major exhibitions organized at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York (1959) and at the Musée National
d’Art Moderne (1960), as well as by a large-scale retrospective on Beardsley
held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 1966. The exhibitions
elevated the status of the movement, which had often been viewed by critics
as a passing trend, to the level of other major Modern art movements of the
late 19th century. Currents of the movement were then revitalized
in Pop and Op art. In the popular domain, the flowery organic lines of Art
Nouveau were revived as a new psychedelic style in fashion and in
the typography used on rock and pop album covers and in
commercial advertising.
Casa Milá, Barcelona, by Antoni Gaudí, 1905–10.
© Ismael Montero Verdu/Shutterstock.com
