Art Nouveau

• Art Nouveau ‘launched’ in 1892 in

Belgium
• Quickly spread to France and the
rest of Europe
• Inspiration from the English Arts
and Crafts movement (William
Morris) and developments in
wrought iron technology (Viollet-
le-Duc)
• Closely associated with: the rise of
the industrial bourgeoisie and
regional movements for political
independence
• It spread quickly through high-
quality, mass-produced images in
journals like The Studio
(lithography and
photolithography)
• Art Nouveau is the first attempt to replace the
classical system of architecture and the
decorative arts (The Beaux Arts academies
teaching)
• It abandoned post-Renaissance realism;
inspirations came from Japan, the Middle Ages,
Rococo
• Lasted barely 15 years but many of its traits
incorporated into the subsequent avant-garde
movements

• Pressing question: how to preserve the historical

values of art under conditions of industrial
capitalism?
• Art Nouveau approach, characteristic of later
avant-gardes as well: drawing from distant and
idealised past in order to find historically
justified yet absolutely new art

• Preceded and influenced by the Arts and Crafts

movement, the two the developed concurrently,
modifying each other
• Austria fused the two movements; Germany
influenced more by the Arts and Crafts, leading
to 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 transformation

in industrial or decorative arts initiated earlier in 19th
Century in England and France

• 1835 parliamentary commission set up to investigate

the decline in artistic quality of machine-made
objects – and consequent damage to the export
market

• 1851 Great Exhibition of Industry of all Nations in

London: commercial and political success;
confirmed low quality of decorative products in
industrial countries

• Initiatives: Victoria and Albert Museum and the

Department of Practical Art founded in 1852; similar
actions taken in France

Arthur Mackmurdo, book cover for

Wren's City Churches (1883)
 Institutional reforms result in
di!erent developments:

• England: the reform of the arts

dominated privately by William
Morris (1834-96) artist and poet
• As for John Ruskin, the reform for
him impossible under industrial
capitalism: artist alienated from the
product of labour
• In 1861 Morris sets up Morris,
Marshall and Faulkner: context for
artists to relearn crafts as if under the
conditions of medieval guilds
• His initiative followed up by others
creating the Arts and Crafts
movement
• France di!erent: politically influential
art establishment + the abolition of
guilds during the French Revolution
did not destroy artisanal traditions as
the Industrialised Revolution did in
England
• For both countries the medieval guild Red House,
is the model; in France this was Bexleyheath
Philip Webb, 1959
combined with the Rococo
 2 Viollet-le-Duc and structural rationalism

• Use of iron as an expressive architectural medium – the second big influence after Arts and
Crafts
• The use of iron dominated the debate between the traditionalists and progressive-positivist
architects 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 modern
architecture

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, in
France, elsewhere in Europe and in North America
 3 Symbolism

• The final two decades of the nineteenth century: important

change
• The century had been dominated by the philosophy Positivism
(Auguste Comte 1798-1857); a belief in progress made possible
by 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 the
European economic depression that started in 1873
• France, the home of Positivism: increased influence of German
philosophy
• Symbolist movement in literature led the attack: art should not
imitate appearances but should reveal an essential underlying
reality

• Belgian symbolist poet Emile Verhaeren: ‘…in Edvard Munch, Scream, 1893
[Symbolism]…the fact and the world become a mere pretext for
the idea; they are treated as appearance, condemned to incessant
variability, appearing ultimately as dreams in our mind.’

• The Symbolists did not reject the sciences, they looked on

science as the verification of subjective states of mind
 Art Nouveau in Belgium and France
Formal principles:

• Characteristic motif of Art Nouveau: plant-like form, first found in English

book 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 of

obeying the form of the object, ornament merges with the object and animates
it with life

• Consequences: objects become single organic entity, rather than (classical)

aggregation of parts; ornament no longer space-filling – ornament and empty
space establish a dialogue (possible influence of Japanese art)

• Boundaries between form and ornament become blurred

• Van de Velde chair – ornament and
structure indistinguishable

‘Ornament completes form, of

which it is an extension, and we
recognise the meaning and
justification of ornament in its
function. This function consists in
‘structuring’ the form and not
adorning it…The relations
between the ‘structural and
dynamographic’ ornament and the
form or surfaces must be so
intimate that the ornament will
seem to have determined the form.’
Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) Principles of
Modern Architectonic Beauty (1917)
• Desire to extend beyond the object – whole interiors.
• In many ensembles and room individual pieces of furniture absorbed
into 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 on
Arts and Crafts Society
• Van de Velde lectures follow Morris in defining art as the expression of joy in work but recognise
the necessity of machine production – a contradiction never resolved

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

Victor Horta (1861-
1947)
• Beaux-Arts training; 10
years of work in a
neoclassical style
modified by structural
rationalism of Viollet-le-
Duc
• 1893 private house for
Emile Tassel
• First in a series of houses
for the Belgian
professional elite
• Combination of Viollet-
le-Duc’s exposed metal
structure with
ornamental motifs from
the French and English
decorative arts
• Tassel, Solvay, Van Eetvelde all designed
between 1892 and 1895 ingenious range of
solutions to narrow sites in Brussels
• Plan divided into 3 sections – middle is the
top-lit staircase, the visual and social hub of
the house
• Reception rooms and conservatories of the
piano nobile, spatially fluid connections,
accented by the use of glass and mirror
(recall theatre foyers – houses intended for
social 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-Duc
pursued to their logical conclusion
• Brick and stone vernacular
architecture exploited to reveal the
construction: brick, stone, iron and
glass
• Internally: the framework is
exposed
 France
• Art Nouveau in France closely related
to that of Belgium but without the
socialist, political connotations
• 1895 German art dealer Siegfried Bing
opens a gallery in Paris called L’Art
Nouveau
• Van de Velde designed three rooms for
it
• Hector Guimard (1867-1942)
integrates the new decorative principles
into a coherent architectural style
• Stronger allegiance to Viollet-le-Duc
even than Horta’s
• Maison Coilliot 1897, Lille, early work
based on Viollet’s illustrations
• Impressed by Horta’s work in Brussels, he designs the Castle Beranger in
Paris (1894-98)
• In the Paris Metro entrances (c.1900) he pushed the analogy between metal
structure 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 Maison
du 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 light
finds its way into the hall. The framework is of steel, but the metal covered with
mahogany…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 rationalist
approach, influenced more by Viollet-
le-Duc and Arts and Crafts
• Structural and rationalist influences
pronounced in Hendrick Petrus
Berlage (1856-1934)
• Neo-Romanesque after 1890, basic
volumes articulated and structural
materials exposed; uses Art Nouveau
ornaments sparingly to emphasise
structural junctions
• Houses organised with central top-lit
halls, but instead of metal structures,
he uses brick (groin vaults in the spirit
of Viollet-le-Duc)
• Berlage’s furniture anticipates De
Stijl and Constructivists
Berlage, Exchange, Amsterdam 1897-1903

• Competition 1883, despite being awarded

4th place, he gets the commission
• This is an architecture of explicit
construction:
‘Before all else the wall must be shown
naked in all its sleek beauty and anything
fixed on it must be shunned as an
embarrassment’
‘The art of the master builder lies in this, in
the creation of space, not the sketching of
façades. A spatial envelope is established
by means of walls whereby a space is
manifested according to the complexity of
the walling.’ Berlage
• The development of the overall layout and
form was one of simplification
• Load-brearing brick structure is in
accordance with the principles of
Structural Rationalism, while the granite
marks the points of structural transference
and bearing
Berlage, Amsterdam South, 1901; 1915

• The logic applied to individual

buildings is taken into the immediate
urban context but also the urban
context and socio-political
commitment in general
• Deplored the disurbanising tendency
of the English garden city; cities have
a supreme cultural importance
• 1901: commissioned to prepare a plan
for Amsterdam South
• The insistence on enclosure,
postulated in the Exchange, is now
taken to the street; some principles
taken from Camillo Sitte
• Served by the mass transport of the
electric tram
• 1915: revises the plan, incorporates
Haussmann-like avenues in order to
establish a continuity of the urban
environment
 Modernisme in Barcelona
• Modernisme – the name for Art Nouveau in
Catalan
• Predates the Belgian movement by several years
• Inspired independently by the publications of
Viollet-le-Duc and Arts and Crafts movement
• Modernisme more closely related to the
nineteenth-century eclecticism than the Art
Nouveau of France and Belgium
• 1888 Lluis Domenech I Montener (1859-1923)
publishes the article ‘In Search of a National
Architecture’
• The new industrial bourgeoisie of Catalonia saw
Modernisme as an urban symbol of national
progress but while Belgium associated Art
Nouveau with an anti-Catholic international
socialism, in Catalonia it was Catholic, nationalist
and politically conservative
• In the early works Moorish motifs used to suggest
regionalism
• Historicist ‘inventions’ mixed with new structural
ideas (exposed iron beams)
 Antoni Gaudi i Cornet (1852-1926)
the dominant figure

• Worked according to two principles:

1 derived from Viollet-le-Duc – study
of architecture starts with the
mechanical conditions of building
2 imagination of the architect should
be free from all stylistic conventions

• Work characterised by free association

of forms suggestive of animal,
geological or vegetal formations
• Structure imitates irregular forms
found in nature
• Intimate, subjective architecture that
became a popular symbol of national
identity
• Cultural and personal anxieties at the
core of his architecture will fascinate
the surrealists in 1930s
 The Sagrada Familia,
(1883…)

Park Guell, 1900-1914

 Glasgow
• Closer to continental European Art
Nouveau than Arts and Crafts movement
in England
• No obvious political, theoretical or
organisational focus
• Glasgow’s New Art related to the
distinctive institutional, commercial and
industrial formations of the city
• New form evolved around 1890s
• ‘The Four’: Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1928), key figure; Margaret
Macdonald, artist, his wife; Frances
Macdonald, he sister; Herbert MacNair,
her husband
• Highly stylised blend of figurative and
plant forms; severe rectilinear geometry,
decorative value of the line; light pastel
colours, use of white, occasional deep
tones
• Mackintosh, House for
an Art Lover
competition (1900)
influential in Austria and
Germany (Ho!mann’s
Palais Stoclet)
• Glasgow School of Art
(1899; 1907-09)
 Vienna
• The concepts behind Symbolism and Art Nouveau
strongly influenced by German Romanticism and
philosophical Idealism
• This finds expression in the work of the Viennese art
historian Alois Riegel (1858-1905): decorative arts
were the origin of all artistic expression; art rooted in
indigenous culture, not derived from a universal
natural law
• This related to the ideas of John Ruskin and William
Morris
• Stands in contrast with the ideas derived from the
Enlightenment – architecture aligned with progress,
science and the Cartesian spirit
• In the Austro-Hungarian Empire this conflict of
concepts underscored by the conflict between the
metropolis (liberal and rationalist) and the ethnic
minorities seeking to assert identity, to whom Art
Nouveau became an emblem of political and cultural
freedom
• Liberal, rationalist spirit in Austria
epitomised by
Otto Wagner (1841-1918)
• On the other side of the
ideological divide from Camillo
Sitte
• For Wagner the modern city
should consist of a regular grid
with new building types
• Post O"ce Savings Bank, Vienna
(1904-06) his rationalism reaches
its peak
• Does not abandon the allegorical
language of classicism but extends
it – apart from figurative ornament
there are also redundant bolt-
heads on the facade
• ‘These, like the functional glass
and metal banking hall, these are
both symbols and manifestations
of modernity’ (Colquhoun)
• 1893 Wagner appointed director
of the School of Architecture at
the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts

• His two famous students: Joseph

Maria Olbrich (1867-1908) and
Josef Ho!mann (1870-1956)

• Olbrich’s influence on Wagner:

decorative motifs of Jugendstil
(the German Art Nouveau)
• Early careers of Olbrich and
Ho!mann the same – both belong
to Wiener Secession, a group that
split from the academy in 1897;
both worked in architecture and
the decorative arts

• The Secession marked the

introduction of Jugendstil into
Austria
• After a few years both
abandon Van de Velde’s
dynamic integration of
ornament and structure and
work in a more rectilinear
organisation of planar surfaces
and geometric ornament
• A"nity both with Wagner’s
classicism and the late Arts
and Crafts designers
• Olbrich’s artists’ colony in
Darmstadt are variations of
the theme of the English ‘free-
style’ house
• Ho!mann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905-11) is a
Gesamtkunstwerk – a ‘total work of art’: murals by
Gustav Klimt and furniture and fittings by the
architect (close to Mackintosh’s Hill House and
House for an Art Lover)

• Over the next five years both architects turned to

classical eclecticism (Biedermeier style)