Art Nouveau

• Art Nouveau ‘launched’ in 1892 inBelgium

• Quickly spread to France and therest of Europe

• Inspiration from the English Artsand Crafts movement (WilliamMorris) and developments inwrought iron technology (Viollet-le-Duc)

• Closely associated with: the rise ofthe industrial bourgeoisie andregional movements for politicalindependence

• It spread quickly through high-quality, mass-produced images injournals like The Studio(lithography andphotolithography)

• Art Nouveau is the first attempt to replace theclassical system of architecture and thedecorative arts (The Beaux Arts academiesteaching)

• It abandoned post-Renaissance realism;inspirations came from Japan, the Middle Ages,Rococo

• Lasted barely 15 years but many of its traitsincorporated into the subsequent avant-gardemovements

• Pressing question: how to preserve the historicalvalues of art under conditions of industrialcapitalism?

• Art Nouveau approach, characteristic of lateravant-gardes as well: drawing from distant andidealised past in order to find historicallyjustified yet absolutely new art

• Preceded and influenced by the Arts and Craftsmovement, the two the developed concurrently,modifying each other

• Austria fused the two movements; Germanyinfluenced more by the Arts and Crafts, leadingto the creation of the Deutscher Werkbund:alliance between industry and the decorative arts

Critical influences

1 The reform of the industrial arts

• Art Nouveau is partly the result of a transformationin industrial or decorative arts initiated earlier in 19th

Century in England and France

• 1835 parliamentary commission set up to investigatethe decline in artistic quality of machine-madeobjects – and consequent damage to the exportmarket

• 1851 Great Exhibition of Industry of all Nations inLondon: commercial and political success;confirmed low quality of decorative products inindustrial countries

• Initiatives: Victoria and Albert Museum and theDepartment of Practical Art founded in 1852; similaractions taken in France

Arthur Mackmurdo, book cover for

Wren's City Churches (1883)

Institutional reforms result indi!erent developments:

• England: the reform of the artsdominated privately by WilliamMorris (1834-96) artist and poet

• As for John Ruskin, the reform forhim impossible under industrialcapitalism: artist alienated from theproduct of labour

• In 1861 Morris sets up Morris,Marshall and Faulkner: context forartists to relearn crafts as if under theconditions of medieval guilds

• His initiative followed up by otherscreating the Arts and Craftsmovement

• France di!erent: politically influentialart establishment + the abolition ofguilds during the French Revolutiondid not destroy artisanal traditions asthe Industrialised Revolution did inEngland

• For both countries the medieval guildis the model; in France this wascombined with the Rococo

Red House,

Bexleyheath

Philip Webb, 1959

2 Viollet-le-Duc and structural rationalism

• Use of iron as an expressive architectural medium – the second big influence after Arts andCrafts

• The use of iron dominated the debate between the traditionalists and progressive-positivistarchitects throughout the 19th Century in France

• Viollet-le-Duc’s theories and designs associated iron with the reform of the decorative arts

• An ‘idealist decorative movement’ grafted onto the ‘positivist structural tradition’

• Viollet-le-Duc: rational core of Gothic architecture is the only true basis for a modernarchitecture

Art Nouveau derived the following principles from Viollet-le-Duc:

• The exposure of the armature of a building as a visually logical system

• The spatial organisation according to function rather than symmetry and proportion

• The importance of materials as generators of form

• The concept of organic form derived from the Romantic movement

• The study of vernacular domestic architecture

• His theory and designs became ‘the rallying point’ for those opposed to the Beaux-Arts, inFrance, elsewhere in Europe and in North America

3 Symbolism

• The final two decades of the nineteenth century: importantchange

• The century had been dominated by the philosophy Positivism(Auguste Comte 1798-1857); a belief in progress made possibleby science and technology

• In literature and art Naturalism corresponded to Positivism

• By 1880s belief in it is eroding together with liberal politics –several political events contributed to this, including theEuropean economic depression that started in 1873

• France, the home of Positivism: increased influence of Germanphilosophy

• Symbolist movement in literature led the attack: art should notimitate appearances but should reveal an essential underlyingreality

• Belgian symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren: ‘…in[Symbolism]…the fact and the world become a mere pretext forthe idea; they are treated as appearance, condemned to incessantvariability, appearing ultimately as dreams in our mind.’

• The Symbolists did not reject the sciences, they looked onscience as the verification of subjective states of mind

Edvard Munch, Scream, 1893

Art Nouveau in Belgium and France

Formal principles:

• Characteristic motif of Art Nouveau: plant-like form, first found in Englishbook illustration and French ceramics in the 1870s and 1880s

• Imitation of nature subordinated to the organisation of plane surfaces

• Functional dependency of ornament leads to a paradoxical reversal: instead ofobeying the form of the object, ornament merges with the object and animatesit with life

• Consequences: objects become single organic entity, rather than (classical)aggregation of parts; ornament no longer space-filling – ornament and emptyspace establish a dialogue (possible influence of Japanese art)

• Boundaries between form and ornament become blurred

• Van de Velde chair – ornament andstructure indistinguishable

‘Ornament completes form, ofwhich it is an extension, and werecognise the meaning andjustification of ornament in itsfunction. This function consists in‘structuring’ the form and notadorning it…The relationsbetween the ‘structural anddynamographic’ ornament and theform or surfaces must be sointimate that the ornament willseem to have determined the form.’

Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) Principles ofModern Architectonic Beauty (1917)

• Desire to extend beyond the object – whole interiors.

• In many ensembles and room individual pieces of furniture absorbedinto a larger spatial and plastic unity.

Henry van de Velde, Havana Cigar Shop 1899, Berlin

Brussels• In 1892 Willy Finch (1854-1936) and Van de Velde inaugurate a decorative art movement based onArts and Crafts Society

• Van de Velde lectures follow Morris in defining art as the expression of joy in work but recognisethe necessity of machine production – a contradiction never resolved

Van de Velde, Werkbund Theatre, 1913-14, Cologne, Germany

Victor Horta (1861-1947)

• Beaux-Arts training; 10years of work in aneoclassical stylemodified by structuralrationalism of Viollet-le-Duc

• 1893 private house forEmile Tassel

• First in a series of housesfor the Belgianprofessional elite

• Combination of Viollet-le-Duc’s exposed metalstructure withornamental motifs fromthe French and Englishdecorative arts

• Tassel, Solvay, Van Eetvelde all designedbetween 1892 and 1895 ingenious range ofsolutions to narrow sites in Brussels

• Plan divided into 3 sections – middle is thetop-lit staircase, the visual and social hub ofthe house

• Reception rooms and conservatories of thepiano nobile, spatially fluid connections,accented by the use of glass and mirror(recall theatre foyers – houses intended forsocial display)

• Structure dissolves into ornament

Hotel Van Eetvelde, 1895

Victor Horta

Maison du Peuple,Brussels 1897-1900 (demolished

1965)

• Built for the Belgian Workers’Socialist Party

• The principles of Viollet-le-Ducpursued to their logical conclusion

• Brick and stone vernaculararchitecture exploited to reveal theconstruction: brick, stone, iron andglass

• Internally: the framework isexposed

France• Art Nouveau in France closely related

to that of Belgium but without thesocialist, political connotations

• 1895 German art dealer Siegfried Bingopens a gallery in Paris called L’ArtNouveau

• Van de Velde designed three rooms forit

• Hector Guimard (1867-1942)integrates the new decorative principlesinto a coherent architectural style

• Stronger allegiance to Viollet-le-Duceven than Horta’s

• Maison Coilliot 1897, Lille, early workbased on Viollet’s illustrations

• Impressed by Horta’s work in Brussels, he designs the Castle Beranger inParis (1894-98)

• In the Paris Metro entrances (c.1900) he pushed the analogy between metalstructure and plant form further than anything Horta did

• Guimard, Humber de Romans concert hall, completed in 1901, demolished in 1905

• One of the major achievements of Structural Rationalism, alongside Horta’s Maisondu Peuple

‘ main branches, eight in number, support a rather high cupola, pierced, like the sides,with bays filled with pale yellow stained glass, through which an abundance of lightfinds its way into the hall. The framework is of steel, but the metal covered withmahogany…the result is the most elaborate roof ever conceived by a French architect.’Fernand Mazade, 1902

Dutch Art Nouveau• Split into two groups, one influenced

by the curvilinear Belgian movement,the other by a more rationalistapproach, influenced more by Viollet-le-Duc and Arts and Crafts

• Structural and rationalist influences

pronounced in Hendrick PetrusBerlage (1856-1934)

• Neo-Romanesque after 1890, basicvolumes articulated and structuralmaterials exposed; uses Art Nouveauornaments sparingly to emphasisestructural junctions

• Houses organised with central top-lithalls, but instead of metal structures,he uses brick (groin vaults in the spiritof Viollet-le-Duc)

• Berlage’s furniture anticipates DeStijl and Constructivists

Berlage, Exchange, Amsterdam 1897-1903

• Competition 1883, despite being awarded4th place, he gets the commission

• This is an architecture of explicitconstruction:

‘Before all else the wall must be shownnaked in all its sleek beauty and anythingfixed on it must be shunned as anembarrassment’

‘The art of the master builder lies in this, inthe creation of space, not the sketching offaçades. A spatial envelope is establishedby means of walls whereby a space ismanifested according to the complexity ofthe walling.’ Berlage

• The development of the overall layout andform was one of simplification

• Load-brearing brick structure is inaccordance with the principles ofStructural Rationalism, while the granitemarks the points of structural transferenceand bearing

Berlage, Amsterdam South, 1901; 1915

• The logic applied to individualbuildings is taken into the immediateurban context but also the urbancontext and socio-politicalcommitment in general

• Deplored the disurbanising tendencyof the English garden city; cities havea supreme cultural importance

• 1901: commissioned to prepare a planfor Amsterdam South

• The insistence on enclosure,postulated in the Exchange, is nowtaken to the street; some principlestaken from Camillo Sitte

• Served by the mass transport of theelectric tram

• 1915: revises the plan, incorporatesHaussmann-like avenues in order toestablish a continuity of the urbanenvironment

Modernisme in Barcelona

• Modernisme – the name for Art Nouveau inCatalan

• Predates the Belgian movement by several years

• Inspired independently by the publications ofViollet-le-Duc and Arts and Crafts movement

• Modernisme more closely related to thenineteenth-century eclecticism than the ArtNouveau of France and Belgium

• 1888 Lluis Domenech I Montener (1859-1923)publishes the article ‘In Search of a NationalArchitecture’

• The new industrial bourgeoisie of Catalonia sawModernisme as an urban symbol of nationalprogress but while Belgium associated ArtNouveau with an anti-Catholic internationalsocialism, in Catalonia it was Catholic, nationalistand politically conservative

• In the early works Moorish motifs used to suggestregionalism

• Historicist ‘inventions’ mixed with new structuralideas (exposed iron beams)

Antoni Gaudi i Cornet (1852-1926)the dominant figure

• Worked according to two principles:

1 derived from Viollet-le-Duc – studyof architecture starts with themechanical conditions of building

2 imagination of the architect shouldbe free from all stylistic conventions

• Work characterised by free associationof forms suggestive of animal,geological or vegetal formations

• Structure imitates irregular formsfound in nature

• Intimate, subjective architecture thatbecame a popular symbol of nationalidentity

• Cultural and personal anxieties at thecore of his architecture will fascinatethe surrealists in 1930s

The Sagrada Familia,

(1883…)

Park Guell, 1900-1914

Glasgow

• Closer to continental European ArtNouveau than Arts and Crafts movementin England

• No obvious political, theoretical ororganisational focus

• Glasgow’s New Art related to thedistinctive institutional, commercial andindustrial formations of the city

• New form evolved around 1890s

• ‘The Four’: Charles Rennie Mackintosh(1868-1928), key figure; MargaretMacdonald, artist, his wife; FrancesMacdonald, he sister; Herbert MacNair,her husband

• Highly stylised blend of figurative andplant forms; severe rectilinear geometry,decorative value of the line; light pastelcolours, use of white, occasional deeptones

• Mackintosh, House foran Art Lovercompetition (1900)influential in Austria andGermany (Ho!mann’sPalais Stoclet)

• Glasgow School of Art(1899; 1907-09)

Vienna

• The concepts behind Symbolism and Art Nouveaustrongly influenced by German Romanticism andphilosophical Idealism

• This finds expression in the work of the Viennese arthistorian Alois Riegel (1858-1905): decorative artswere the origin of all artistic expression; art rooted inindigenous culture, not derived from a universalnatural law

• This related to the ideas of John Ruskin and WilliamMorris

• Stands in contrast with the ideas derived from theEnlightenment – architecture aligned with progress,science and the Cartesian spirit

• In the Austro-Hungarian Empire this conflict ofconcepts underscored by the conflict between themetropolis (liberal and rationalist) and the ethnicminorities seeking to assert identity, to whom ArtNouveau became an emblem of political and culturalfreedom

• Liberal, rationalist spirit in Austriaepitomised by

Otto Wagner (1841-1918)

• On the other side of theideological divide from CamilloSitte

• For Wagner the modern cityshould consist of a regular gridwith new building types

• Post O"ce Savings Bank, Vienna(1904-06) his rationalism reachesits peak

• Does not abandon the allegoricallanguage of classicism but extendsit – apart from figurative ornamentthere are also redundant bolt-heads on the facade

• ‘These, like the functional glassand metal banking hall, these areboth symbols and manifestationsof modernity’ (Colquhoun)

• 1893 Wagner appointed directorof the School of Architecture atthe Vienna Academy of Fine Arts

• His two famous students: JosephMaria Olbrich (1867-1908) andJosef Ho!mann (1870-1956)

• Olbrich’s influence on Wagner:decorative motifs of Jugendstil(the German Art Nouveau)

• Early careers of Olbrich andHo!mann the same – both belongto Wiener Secession, a group thatsplit from the academy in 1897;both worked in architecture andthe decorative arts

• The Secession marked theintroduction of Jugendstil intoAustria

• After a few years bothabandon Van de Velde’sdynamic integration ofornament and structure andwork in a more rectilinearorganisation of planar surfacesand geometric ornament

• A"nity both with Wagner’sclassicism and the late Artsand Crafts designers

• Olbrich’s artists’ colony inDarmstadt are variations ofthe theme of the English ‘free-style’ house

• Ho!mann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-11) is aGesamtkunstwerk – a ‘total work of art’: murals byGustav Klimt and furniture and fittings by thearchitect (close to Mackintosh’s Hill House andHouse for an Art Lover)

• Over the next five years both architects turned toclassical eclecticism (Biedermeier style)