Art Nouveau

and
Art Deco
•
Art Nouveau
Ornamental style of art and architecture, literally means “new art”.
• Flourished between 1890s and 1910s in Europe and the united states.
• Was employed most often in architecture, interior
design, jewellery and glass design, posters, and illustration.
• This style of art was created as an attempt to move on from the
imitative historicism (dominant in 19th century) Paintings of the style
• The style was called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria,
Stile Floreale (or stile liberty) in Italy, and Modernismo (or modernista)
in Spain.
• In Europe, art nouveau was influenced by experiments with
expressive line by the painters Paul Gauguin and Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec. The movement was also partly inspired by linear
patterns of Japanese prints (ukiyo-e).
• Famous artists: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hector Guimard, Henry
Van De Velde, Antonio Gaudí and many more
• After 1910s, art nouveau appeared old-fashioned and limited and was
generally abandoned as a distinct decorative style making way for “art
deco”.
• However, in 1960s, the movement rehabilitated, with help of
exhibitions and established its status as a major art movement.
Regions of spread in Europe
 Art Nouveau- Features
• Characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic lines. Artists
drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving
elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms
• Undulating asymmetrical line, often taking the form of flower
stalks and buds, vine tendrils, insect wings, and other delicate
and sinuous natural objects. It also incorporates sensuality and
women. In architecture, the whole of the three-dimensional form Use of arches in interiors
becomes engulfed in the organic, linear rhythm, creating a fusion
between structure and ornament.
• In the united states the art nouveau movement arrived with
designer Louis Comfort Tiffany and was especially influential on
ornamental rather than spatial design.
• Most of art nouveau architecture, was gained through bizarre
form and ornament.
Curving
• Asymmetrical shapes
• Curved glass,
• Mosaics, Japanese motifs,
• Curving (plant-like embellishments)

Extensive use of arches and curved forms

Whiplash curve - intricate curvilinear patterns of sinuous
asymmetrical lines, often plant forms.
 Art Nouveau- Materials
• Use of new materials were promoted.
• 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.
Samaritaine department store
• The extensive use of iron and glass in art nouveau buildings Paris, France
was also rooted in 19th-century practice.
• In France, bizarre forms appeared in iron, masonry, and Use of glass in the
concrete, for example, Samaritaine department store. structures

• The art nouveau design movement used such materials as

cast iron and steel, ceramic and glass.
• Lime mortar was also used. Ceramic tiles

• Some artists used new low-cost materials and mass

production methods while others used more expensive
materials and valued high craftsmanship.

Tendril like supports Cast iron grills

 • Born June 25, 1852
Antonio Gaudi
• His distinctive style is characterized by freedom of form, voluptuous colour and texture,
and organic unity.
• Gaudí worked almost entirely in or near Barcelona. Much of his career was occupied
with the construction of the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Família),
which was unfinished at his death in 1926.
• The close integration between the construction, form, and decoration of Gaudí’s
buildings reveals his interest in nature and his belief that the structure of a natural
object informs its shape and embellishment.
• Notable projects included Park Güell, Casa Milá, and Casa Batlló, all also in Barcelona.
• Gaudí’s style of architecture went through several phases.
a. On emergence from the Provincial School of Architecture in Barcelona in 1878, he
practiced a rather florid Victorianism that had been evident in his school projects.
b. He quickly developed a manner of composing by means of unprecedented
juxtapositions of geometric masses, the surfaces of which were highly animated with
patterned brick or stone, gay ceramic tiles, and floral or reptilian metalwork.
c. The general effect, although not the details, is Moorish—or Mudéjar, Spain’s special
mixture of Muslim and Christian design.
d. Next, Gaudí experimented with the dynamic possibilities of historic styles.
e. But after 1902 his designs elude conventional stylistic nomenclature.
• Located in Barcelona, Spain.
Casa Batlló
• Best-known works of Antonio Gaudí.
• Its exterior is sheathed in colourful pieces of broken ceramics.
• The front facade reveals striking textures, colours, and imagery that work together to
conjure thoughts of fairy tales.
• At the top of Casa Batlló, eyes are greeted by the dominating reptilian surface of the
roof.
• Curved balconies
• Use of lustrous coloured bits of glazed ceramic and glass

Curved balconies and skeletal The roof is covered in scalelike Colourful ceramic tiles in
structure tiles. exterior
 Casa Batlló
• There are embedded and semi-concealed religious images and
texts planted in the upper levels of the building, as well as in
the small details around the facade.
• The creaturesque resemblance is made strikingly apparent at
night, when the facade glows and haunts with it's bone-like
skeletal structures and dramatic shadows.
• The very tip of the tower sits one of Gaudí's signature pieces, a
four-pointed transverse cross. Gill suggests that the goal was
to point out that "religion can embrace humour, fantasy and the
absurd.“ View at night

• Gaudí's state of the art use of central heating, uncommon in

the time and place of Barcelona, made air vents and chimneys
necessary. One of the most intriguing aspects of these
chimneys are their 45-degree angle departure from the roof chimneys
before they become vertical.
• In the interiors, a continuation of the sinuous flowing walls and
edges as well as color manipulation and incredible varying of
the scale.
• The winding and twisting exhibited in the decorative features of
doors, frames, peepholes, moldings and screens are all Interiors
interpretations of the natural forms that inspired Gaudí's art of the
nouveau style. structure
A four pointed transverse cross
 La Sagrada Família
• La Sagrada Família is one of Gaudí's most famous works in
Barcelona.
• It is perhaps the best known structure of Catalan Modernisme.
• He maintained del Villar’s Latin cross plan, typical of Gothic
cathedrals, but departed from the Gothic in several significant ways.
• Gaudi developed a system of angled columns and hyperboloidal
vaults to eliminate the need for flying buttresses. Rather than relying
on exterior elements, horizontal loads are transferred through
columns on the interior.
• La Sagrada Familia utilizes three-dimensional forms comprised of
ruled surfaces, including hyperboloids, parabolas, helicoids, and
conoids. These complex shapes allow for a thinner, finer structure,
and are intended to enhance the temple’s acoustics and quality of
light.
• Slanted columns of the Passion facade, recall tensile structures but
act in compression.
• Gaudi embedded religious symbolism in each aspect of La Sagrada
Familia, creating a visual representation of Christian beliefs.

Plan of the structure

 La Sagrada Família
• He designed three iconic facades for the basilica, the Glory, Nativity, and Passion
facades, facing south, east, and west, respectively.
• The central nave soars to a height of 45 meters, and is designed to resemble a
forest of multi-hued piers in Montjuïc and granite. The piers change in cross
section from base to terminus, increasing in number of vertices from polygonal to
circular.
• The slender, bifurcating columns draw the eye upward, where light filters through
circular apertures in the vaults. These are finished in Venetian glass tiles of green
and gold, articulating the lines of the hyperboloids.

The structure is still under construction.

Bifurcating columns Staircase Central nave Venetian glass tiles

 Art Deco
• Also called style modern
• Originated in the 1920s and developed into a major style in
western Europe and the united states during the 1930s.
• First exhibited at an exposition in Paris, France.
• The intention was to create a sleek and anti-traditional Art deco style paintings
elegance that symbolized wealth and sophistication.
• Formative influences on art deco were art nouveau, the
Bauhaus, cubism.
• Decorative ideas came from American Indian, Egyptian, and
early classical sources as well as from nature.
• During the 1930s the style took over south beach in Miami,
Florida, producing an area known as the art deco historic
district.
Art deco style buildings
• Famous artists: William van Alen, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann,
H.G. Murphy and many more
 Art Deco- Features
• Features of the style are simple, clean shapes, often with a
“streamlined” look
• Geometry based style
• Style reflected admiration for the modernity of the machine and
for the inherent design qualities of machine-made objects.
• Planarity
• Symmetry Windows

• Unvaried repetition of elements

• Characteristic motifs included nude female figures, animals,
foliage, and sun rays, all in conventionalized forms. Entrance with pediment

• Doors and entrances have elaborate pilasters and pediments.

Also embellished with reeding or convex decoration and fluting or
Flat roofs with parapets
concave decoration.
• Windows usually appear as punctured openings, either square or
round. Often arranged in continuous horizontal bands of glass.
• Use of flat roofs.
• There is a use of parapets, spires, or tower-like structures.
Chimneys were also added.
Spire Pattern and motifs
 Art Deco- Materials
• Expensive materials
• Man-made substances (plastics, especially Bakelite;
vita-glass; and ferro concrete) in addition to natural
ones (jade, silver, ivory, obsidian, chrome, and rock
crystal).
• Stucco - a fine plaster used for coating wall surfaces or
mouldings into architectural decorations. Use of concrete Vitrolite glass tiles

• Concrete - a composite material made from

aggregates bonded with fluid cement.
• Smooth-faced stone
• Terracotta - A clay based material that can produce
tiles, bricks, and surface establishments in Glass block Use of steel
construction.
• Steel and aluminium
• Glass blocks and decorative opaque plate glass
(vitrolite).
• Decorative glass for wall openings

Band of windows
 Chrysler Building
• Located in New York, USA.
• Designed by architect William van Alen.
• Completed in 1930.
• Height is 1,046 feet.
• Houses 77 floors, including a lobby three stories high
with entrances from three sides of the building
• Interior and exterior alike, it is admired for its distinctive American eagle
ornamentation gargoyles

• 185-foot tall spire. The stepping spires are made of

stainless steel with a stylized sunburst motif, and sit
just above a series of gargoyles that depict American
eagles
• Materials used are brick, steel and glass.
• About 5000 windows.
• The white and dark grey brickwork of the facade Building facade
emphasizes the horizontality of the rows of windows.

Chrysler building with the spire

 Chrysler Building
• Red moroccan marble walls
• Sienna-coloured floor, onyx, blue marble and steel.
• Murals on the ceiling
• The stainless-steel cladding is ribbed and riveted in a radiating
sunburst pattern
• Triangular vaulted windows, transitioning into smaller segments of
the seven narrow setbacks of the facade of the terraced crown
Entrance lobby
• Approximately 3,826,000 bricks were manually laid, to create the
non-loadbearing walls of the skyscraper.
• It is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel framework
• Ornamentation is based on the chrysler automobile designs of the
time.
• The entrance hall, three stories high, tapers as it rises, showing a Sienna coloured floor
triangular shape. Entrance gate
• The skeleton of the dome is made of curved steel beams. The
interior walls are brick dome but the outside is coated with a type
called nirosta stainless steel.

Murals
 Art Nouveau Art Deco
Year 1890s-1910s then 1920s to 1960s
again in 1960s
Established Flourished in Europe Flourished in western
and USA Europe and USA
Forms use of a long, Use of perfect forms,
sinuous, organic lines angles and geometric
and curved geometry shapes
Symmetry May or may not have symmetry
symmetry
Facades Highly decorative, use Plain facades, less
of harsh curves decorative
roofs Parametric or flat or Flat roofs with parapet
highly decorated roofs
materials Glass, ceramic, Glass, steel,
bricks, cast iron, steel, aluminium, stucco,
lime mortar concrete
ornamentation highly ornamentation less ornamentation