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Art Nouveau. Style of architecture and the decorative arts that flourished in Europe and the USA from c.1888 to c.1914, featuring asymmetrical compositions; attenuated blooms, foliage, roots, and stems with sinuous flowing lines, as though floating in water; the dream-maiden (female figure with long wavy tendril-like hair known as femme-fleur); stylized rose-bowls; intertwining plant-forms; and indeterminate whiplash curved tendrils. It evolved from some late-Gothic Revival patterns, and owed something, perhaps, to Auricular and Rococo ornament. Proto-typical Art Nouveau capitals at Blackfriars Railway Bridge (1862–4) and Holborn Viaduct (1863–9), both in London, demonstrate that the essence of the style was in place in the early 1860s, while the illustrations in Viollet-le-Duc's hugely influential Entretiens sur l'Architecture (Lectures in Architecture–1872) spread images of free-flowing curved forms throughout Europe and America. Certain artists associated with the Arts-and-Crafts movement, notably Arthur H. Mackmurdo, William Morris, and C. F. A. Voysey produced celebrated designs that fall firmly within the style. Named after the Paris shop (Maison de l'Art Nouveau) of the art-dealer Siegfried Bing (1838–1905—which stocked artefacts that were not reproductions of styles of earlier periods, but were modern and often oriental, and had interiors designed by Henry van de Velde (1896)), the style was associated first with the Aesthetic Movement, and then with modernity (in France it was also known as the Style Moderne, in Spain as Modernismo, Estilo Modernista, or Modernisme (Catalan), in The Netherlands as Nieuwe Kunst (New Art), in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Scandinavia as Jugendstil (Youth style), and in Italy as Stile Floreale or Stile Liberty (from Liberty's shop in London which stocked Art Nouveau objects), so its new, youthful, and modern associations were emphasized by its various names). In architecture the style reached its heights of virtuosity with the buildings of d' Aronco in Milan, Gaudí in Barcelona, Guimard in Paris, Horta in Brussels, and Shekhtel′ in Moscow. Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98), furniture by Louis Majorelle (1859–1926), designs by Margaret Macdonald (1865–1933) and her husband C. R. Mackintosh, graphic work by Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), glassware by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1913), and architectural designs by Émile André (1871–1933), Basile, Hankar, Hoffmann, Jourdain, Jules Lavirotte (1864–1924), Olbrich, and Louis Sullivan, all display characteristic Art Nouveau elements. Journals such as L'Art Décoratif (Decorative Art), Die Jugend (Youth), Kunst und Kunsthandwerk (Art and Craft), Pan, and The Studio disseminated the style, which was also promoted in German-speaking countries by various Sezession groups (in Austria-Hungary the preferred term was Sezessionstil rather than Jugendstil). In the Ottoman Empire traditional Muslim and Turkish motifs and ways of handling space blended with new ideas from Western Europe, so that some extraordinary Art Nouveau works were erected in Istanbul around 1900: curiously, they are not well known in Europe or America.

Bibliography

Arwas (2000);
Barillari & and Godoli (2002);
Borisova & and Kazhdan (1971);
Borisova,, Sternin,, & and Palmin (1988);
Dierkens-Aubry & and van den Breelen (1991);
Escritt (2000);
Greenhalgh (ed.) (2000);
J. Howard (1996);
Latham (ed.) (1980);
Loyer (1986, 1986a., 1991, 1997);
Nicoletti (1978);
Ogata (2002);
P&R (1973);
F. Russell (ed.) (1979);
Shinomura (1992);
Tahara et al. (2000);
Tschudi-Madsen (1967);
Jane Turner (1996)

Art Nouveau. Decorative style flourishing in most of Western Europe and in the USA from about 1890 to the First World War. As the name suggests, it was a deliberate attempt to create a new style in reaction against the imitation of historical forms that had been such a prominent feature of 19th-century architecture and design. Its most characteristic theme was the use of sinuous asymmetrical lines based on plant forms; flower, leaf, and tendril motifs are common features, as are female figures with abundant flowing hair. At their most typical these motifs are found in the decorative and applied arts, such as interior design, metalwork, glassware, and jewellery, but Art Nouveau also had a major vogue in illustration and poster design and its influence can be seen to varying degrees in much of the painting and sculpture of the period—in a fairly pure form in the work of Alfred Gilbert and Jan Toorop, for example, and in certain aspects of such diverse artists as Munch (his penchant for undulating lines) and Matisse (the flat arabesque forms of the trees in some of the landscapes of his Fauve period).

The style takes its name from a shop called La Maison de l'Art Nouveau opened in Paris in 1895 by the German-born art dealer Siegfried Bing (1838–1905), a leading propagandist for modern design. Paris was one of its most important centres, but its origins were diverse (Celtic and Japanese art have been cited as influences) and its roots were less on the Continent than in England, where the Arts and Crafts movement had established a tradition of vitality in the applied arts. In France, indeed, Art Nouveau is sometimes known by the name ‘Modern Style', reflecting these English origins. In Germany the style was called Jugendstil (from the Munich journal Die Jugend, founded in 1896); in Austria, Sezessionstil (after the Vienna Sezession); in Spain, Modernista; and in Italy, Stile Liberty (after the Regent Street store that played so large a part in disseminating its designs). The style was truly international, its archetypal exponents ranging from Mucha, a Czech whose most characteristic work was done in Paris, to Tiffany in New York, and to the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi (1852–1926) in Barcelona, the centre of a distinctive regional version of the style charcterized by exaggerated bulbous forms. This cosmopolitanism was encouraged by the great international exhibitions that flourished during this period, and the style perhaps reached its apogee at the Paris ‘Exposition Universelle’ of 1900. It nowhere survived the outbreak of the First World War to any extent, but it played a significant part in shaping modern aesthetic attitudes: George Heard Hamilton writes that ‘its fundamental concept of the expressive properties of form, line, and colour was an important contribution to the discovery and formulation of abstract and non-objective art.’

art nouveau Ornamental style which flourished in most of central and w Europe and the USA from c.1890 to World War I. The idea originated in England with the Arts and Crafts Movement. Focusing mainly on the decorative arts, its most characteristic forms come from sinuous distortions of plant forms and asymmetrical lines. It is sometimes known in France by its English name, the ‘Modern Style’. Outstanding art nouveau graphic artists include Beardsley, Tiffany, and Mucha. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Antonio Gaudí, and Victor Horta were among its most gifted architects.

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