Copyright 2000 www.cosmopolis.ch Louis Gerber All rights
reserved.
Louis Majorelle, cabinet.
Walnut and oak veneered, enriched with marquetry of various woods,
wrought iron. French, 1900. Photograph copyright: exhibition
catalogue V&A.
Art Nouveau 1890-1914
History and exhibitions
Art Nouveau 1890-1914, Victoria
& Albert
Museum, London, until July 30, 2000
What is Art Nouveau? A
consciously mystical and illogical continuation of the Romantic
tradition? "A logical opposition with a rationalist
foundation", firmly rooted in the scientific achievements of
the nineteenth century? A concrete expression of social science? A
turning inward - materially and psychologically - of a decadent
and capital driven bourgeoisie? A style centrally concerned with
public life? A government-based, pragmatic money making strategy?
A non-conformist artistic revolt intent on "defeating the
establishment order"? An idealistic crusade, composed of a
number of international styles? A movement by artists and their
institutional sponsors who shared a contemporary nationalist
ideal? There are a lot of often contradictory definitions of Art
Nouveau, which are reflections of its multiple facets.
In a major exhibition, the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London (V&A) celebrates Art Nouveau and,
therefore, unites many disparate objects from museums and private
collections from Europe and the USA, which at their time cohered
into a style which became, despite contemporary rivals, the style
of the age. At the V&A exhibition, Art Nouveau stands for:
"a style in the visual arts that was a powerful presence in
Europe and North America from the early 1890s until the First
World War. The style emerged from the intense activity of a
collection of movements, manufacturers, public institutions,
publishing houses, individual artists, entrepreneurs and patrons,
located all over the urban, industrial world. It existed in all
genres, but the decorative arts were centrally responsible for its
inventions and its fullest expression." The key motivation
was modernity in the arts as a recognition and expression of a
technically, economically and politically changing world. The
German Art Nouveau intellectual Julius Meier-Graefe stated that
"if the uses of art change, art itself must change." One
aspect was the equality among the arts and their orchestration
into unified ensembles: Gesamtkunstwerk was the keyword (a
term first applied in the fin-de-siècle context to the music of
Richard Wagner).
One of the first representatives of the
Art Nouveau style was German-born French entrepreneur Siegfried Bing who
opened a gallery and shop in Paris in 1895. The gallery L'Art Nouveau
subsequently expanded to include workshops and ateliers. Hermann Obrist
in Germany, Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland, Emile Gallé in
France and Louis Comfort Tiffany in the United States are a few other
early names of the style, which, in its second phase from 1895 to 1900,
spread to many urban centers in Europe and North
America.
The V&A exhibition and its catalogue
not only deals with the creation and meaning of Art Nouveau (e.g. the
cult of nature and the relation between Orient and Occident), but also
the materials of invention (e.g. new textiles and ceramics) and the
different centers and their designers (e.g. Victor Horta and Brussels,
Secession and Jugendstil in Munich). An exhibition not to miss, which
includes painting, sculpture, jewelry, furniture, vases and other
decorative objects as well as a look at architecture.
1900: Art at the crossroad.
Royal Academy of Art, London,
until April 2000. Catalogue edited by Robert
Rosenblum, Mary-Anne
Stevens and Ann Dumas, Royal Academy of Arts editions, 448 p.
The exhibition was centered on painting and sculpture. Objects from
all styles, schools and nationalities of the year 1900 were represented
(Europe, Russia, USA and Australia). At the same time a limited topic
since nothing from 1890 or 1910 was included and a large show since not
only Art Nouveau was on display. The show was divided in topical parts
such as historical paintings, nudes, portraits, landscapes, etc. Within these
categories, a large variety of schools were presented, such as the
post-impressionists and the realists, Munch and Klimt, Maillol and Cézanne,
Gauguin and Matisse, Liebermann and Von Stuck, Hodler and Nolde, young
artists at the beginning of their career such as Kandinsky and Mondrian.
The industrial society and the birth of the culture of the masses was
one of their central subjects.
Grand Palais, Paris. Exhibition:
1900, until June 26,
2000.
Catalogue: 1900, ouvrage collectif sous la direction
de Philippe Thiébaut, avec des contributions sur l'histoire, la
science, l'architecture, la sculpture et la photographie, Editions
RMN, 400 p.
Built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900,
the stone, glass and steel architecture of the Grand Palais is the natural place to show the
exhibition centered on Art Nouveau. All other artistic movements of 1900
are excluded from the show which presents, in contrast to the
Royal Academy of Art, not only painting and sculpture, but also the
applied arts, jewelery, illustrated books and, as an important part,
architecture. Grouped around themes such as "modernity and
tradition" and "the unity of the arts", the organizers
tried to show a coherent image of Art Nouveau, excluding everything that
does not fit into their definition. Important foreign Art Nouveau
centers and nations are neglected or even ignored completely.
In 1900, Paris wanted to blend the world
and the Art Nouveau building of the Grand Palais was one of the means to
do so. At the turn of the century, architects, decorators, painters,
sculptors and others were in search of a new art. Based on national,
re-actualized and often rural traditions of arts and crafts, a new
vision of art, architecture and design was to be born. A return to
nature and its bio-morphological forms was one of the results. That's
the essence of the Art Nouveau-definition at the Paris exhibition.
