Art Nouveau

I'm Susan Euler. This is an Art Nouveau Vate, and this program is about an art style called Art Nouveau, or New Art. It developed in the last decades of the 19th century, but remains very popular today, almost 140 years later. Like a number of art styles that developed during the 19th century, Art Nouveau was in part a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and commercialization. Thanks to modern methods of mass production, middle-class consumers could now afford to buy beautiful new things for their home. Furniture, clothing, dishes, silverware, all at a fraction of the price of craftsman-made goods. But there was a downside. Even though mass-produced items were much, much cheaper than handmade goods, they were also less well-made and lacked what might be called the designer elegance of goods made by artists. But what the heck? You could always buy new stuff at these prices, and so the throw-away culture was born. Naturally, a reaction to all this consumerism was inevitable, and it started early in the 19th century. Part of the problem with mass-produced goods lay in the fact that they were very conservative in style, copied from classical, Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo styles that were fashionable decades, even centuries earlier. However, even though artists spoke out against this, consumers wanted their homes to reflect the safe taste of the past. After all, weren't these styles in all the great homes and palaces of Europe? Therefore, the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the heyday of revivalist style, with houses, government buildings, and universities, as well as clothing and household goods designed to look like imitation Greek vases, Renaissance palaces, and Gothic churches. Art Nouveau formed a transition between the eclectic historical revivalist styles and what will become 20th century modernism. This transition began unexpectedly early in the mid-19th century, when in 1851, the Crystal Palace was built in London to house the Great Exhibition, a revolutionary architectural concept unlike anything seen before. The Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton, following an idea put forth by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert. Made of plate glass, set into a decorative cast iron framework, the Crystal Palace was simple and functional, meant only to serve as a dramatic space in which to display the latest manufactured goods from around the world. These goods were advertised as the ultimate of modern good taste, although English artist William Morris condemned them as tons and tons of unutterable rubbish. That aside, it was the Crystal Palace itself that garnered the most attention and praise. It was seen as something new, contemporary, and representative of the bold new spirit of the modern age. This innovative concept, combining cast iron and glass, is known as Ferrovitreous architecture. It will become one of the hallmarks of Art Nouveau, since cast iron allowed artists to create the elaborate curvilinear and undulating lines that define the style. Other 19th century innovations that inspired Art Nouveau artists included the arts and crafts movement founded by William Morris as a reaction against mass production. Morris insisted that items such as furniture and fabric should be unique, designed and produced by artists, not run off by the millions in factories. His distinctive wallpaper, fabric, and furniture designs formed the basis of what is known as the Liberty Style. Named after the famous London department store, the Liberty Style is synonymous with Art Nouveau. Just as an aside, Target recently partnered with Liberty to launch a colorful line of clothing and household goods known as Liberty for Target. Besides Morris and Liberty, American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler did much to inspire what will become Art Nouveau. In fact, his famous Peacock Room, created in 1877, may be the first example of the style. Called harmony in blue and gold by the artist, the Peacock Room was inspired by the designs, colors, and elegant lines of Asian art. Done in what is known as the Anglo-Japanese style, its peacock motif will become a prominent Art Nouveau subject matter. The work of both Whistler and Morris reflects their interest in Japanese art and Japanese design. Japanese design, known as Japonisme in the West, had been extremely popular in Europe and America since 1853 when the United States opened trade with Japan. This was the first time in over 200 years that Westerners had seen Japanese art, and they were very impressed. Artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Mary Cassatt, for example, were inspired by the bold simplicity of Japanese woodblock prints. However, the Art Nouveau artists, like Whistler before them, look to the rich gold and jewel-like elegance of a style known as Rinpa, which is famous for its gold foil screens and lacquered boxes. The most influential Rinpa artist was the 17th century painter Ogata Koren, whose abstract natural forms and richly encrusted surfaces will be reinterpreted by many Art Nouveau artists, including Gustave Plipp, Aubrey Beardsley, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Well, what does the Art Nouveau style look like? Well, it's somewhat varied, and that may account for its lasting popularity and widespread appeal. First of all, Art Nouveau was meant to be thoroughly modern, like nothing ever seen before. There are two basic forms. The first is organic, based on growing plants, wafting smoke, undulating waves, and the long curling tendrils of a woman's hair. The second style is geometric. Popularized by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and referred to as the Glasgow style, geometric Art Nouveau uses clean, simple shapes and controlled lines to create intricate patterns. But there is much overlap, with strong geometric shapes combined with curvilinear plant-based organic forms to create the rich, complicated designs typical of Art Nouveau. And then there is the distinctive subject matter, flowers, obviously, but not ordinary tame garden flowers, but wild, lush, tropical varieties, the kind not seen in Europe or the United States before the Crystal Palace introduced the innovation of the glass-paneled greenhouse where such hothouse flowers could be cultivated. These flowers always look a bit menacing, as if they are about to engulf everything. Reminiscent of the French poet Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs de Mal, The Flowers of Evil, a series of poems with the principal themes of sex, immorality, and death. Sex, various forms of immorality, and death are favorite themes of Art Nouveau artists as well. If one were to characterize the style of Art Nouveau as a whole, it can be seen as a physical manifestation of what is known as fin de siècle decadence, the end of the century decadence, that world of drugs, excessive partying, alcohol, loose women, and nightclubs. The world depicted by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in his many paintings and Art Nouveau posters of the Moulin Rouge and other Paris nightclubs, which were frequented by the demimonde, the half-world of people who seem to come out only at night. And as in Toulouse-Lautrec's work, women play a central role in Art Nouveau imagery. They are portrayed as either pure virgins or evil creatures of the night who lure men to their doom. Witches, vampires, Medusa with her snakes for hair are all popular subjects in Art Nouveau, found in everything from posters and paintings to jewelry. It's no coincidence that just when these dangerous mythological women become popular subjects for art, real women are demanding equal rights with men and upsetting long-held societal norms. And it's also no coincidence that in other times of social unrest and economic insecurity, for example, the 1960s and the 1980s, there is a resurgence of popularity for Art Nouveau and Art Nouveau-inspired imagery. For the 10-Minute Professor, this is Susan Ray Euler. Thanks for tuning in and make sure you watch our next program.