Art Nouveau: Art, Architecture and Design in Transformation

Description

Art Nouveau presents a new overview of the international Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau represented the search for a new style for a new age, a sense that the conditions of modernity called for fundamentally new means of expression. Art Nouveau emerged in a world transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and increasingly rapid means of transnational exchange, bringing about new ways of living, working and creating. This book is structured around key themes for understanding the contexts behind Art Nouveau, including new materials and technologies, colonialism and imperialism, the rise of the 'modern woman', the rise of the professional designer and the role of the patron-collector. It also explores the new ideas that inspired Art Nouveau: nature and the natural sciences, world arts and world religions, psychology and new visions for the modern self. Ashby explores the movement through 41 case studies of artists and designers, buildings, interiors, paintings, graphic arts, glass, ceramics and jewellery, drawn from a wide range of countries. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Figures Plates Acknowledgements Introduction What was Art Nouveau? Art and the conditions of modernity About this book Part I: The Structures of Art Nouveau Chapter 1: The nineteenth-century roots of Art Nouveau The Gothic Revival, design reform and the Oxford Museum of Natural History (1860) Aestheticism and Whistler’s Peacock Room (1876–7) Nature, science and art and Liljefors’s Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows (1888) Chapter 2: A new style for a new age: Innovations in form, materials and ornament Gaudí’s Güell Palace: Form, materials and experience Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts: The invention of national ornament Sullivan’s Guaranty Building: New ornament for new modes of construction Parallel developments in applied art Gallé’s On Such a Night as This: Material becomes ornament Chapter 3: Sites of Art Nouveau: New forms of exhibition Brussels, L’Art moderne and the Les XX group The Munich Secession The 1900 Paris World’s Fair Chapter 4: Designers and manufacturers: How Art Nouveau was made and sold Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts Louis Comfort Tiffany, Clara Driscoll and Tiffany Studios Peter Behrens, Darmstadt and AEG Chapter 5: Art Nouveau on paper: Print and graphic art Odilon Redon and the artist print Aubrey Beardsley: The artist as illustrator Elizabeth Shippen Green: Art Nouveau and commercial illustration International art and design journals Chapter 6: Art Nouveau patrons and networks Siegfried Bing and the Maison de l’Art Nouveau Justus Brinckmann and museum curation Princess Tenisheva: The World of Art and the Talashkino artist’s colony Sarah Bernhardt: Celebrity and patronage Chapter I: Conclusion to Part I: Art Nouveau in Vienna The Vienna Secession The Wiener Werkstätte Part II: The content of Art Nouveau Chapter 7: The power of nature Victor Horta: Tassel House and the jungle in the city August Endell: Elvira Studio and the wilder shores of life France Macdonald: The Pond and the threat of fecundity René-Jules Lalique: The beauties of nature The raw materials of Art Nouveau Chapter 8: The global reach of colonialism The Sphinx Mystérieux and the performance of colonial power India Art Nouveau and pan-Asianism Dutch Art Nouveau and Javanese Batik Transnational Art Nouveau and cultural exchange Chapter 9: Visions of other worlds and hopes for the future Stanisław Wyspiański: Visions of a future Polish nation Mary Seton Watts and the cosmos in ornament Hilma af Klint: Spiritualist visions Chapter 10: Psychology, sex and the modern self Fernand Khnopff: The journey into the self Camille Claudel: The creative labour of the artist Edvard Munch: Trials of isolation and connection Elena Luksch-Makowsky: Gender and creativity Magnus Enckell, George Minne and the adolescent male nude Chapter 11: Dream spaces: The Art Nouveau interior Fyodor Shekhtel: Ryabushinsky House and a kingdom beneath the waves Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald: Fritz Waerndorfer’s music room and the performance of beauty The light of other worlds: Dreams of a nation Otto Wagner: St Leopold’s Church and the healing power of art Chapter 12: Conclusion: New art for a changing world Art Nouveau: Public art and collective identity Art Nouveau worldwide Art Nouveau: Decline and evolution Conclusion Bibliography Index