Art Nouveau: Understanding Art Nouveau Art and Architecture

Art Nouveau (French for ‘new art’) was an artistic movement in fine art, architecture, interior design, and the decorative arts during the Belle Epoque period between the 1880s and the outbreak of the first World War. The new style first began in France and Belgium but quickly spread to other European countries like Austria, Germany, and Spain. Art Nouveau broke established artistic traditions surrounding historical and academic subject matter and developed a new style that prioritized the natural world.

Art Nouveau art often features swooping and flowing figures that mimic the forms of plants and flowers, or borrow influence from Byzantine art. This style was especially prevalent in decorative arts objects, including furniture, cabinets, jewelry, light fixtures, and ceramics. Some of the famous Art Nouveau artists include illustrators Aubrey Beardsley and Alphonse Mucha, artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, decorative artists Louis Comfort Tiffany and Henry van de Velde, and architects Antoni Gaudí and Victor Horta.

Though Art Nouveau technically originated in France, the Arts and Crafts movement in England inspired Art Nouveau artists. In the mid-nineteenth century in Britain, textile designer William Morris and architect Phillip Webb pioneered new ornamental styles inspired by nature that could be used in fine art, architecture, and the decorative arts.

The term art nouveau was first used in 1880 in the Belgian publication L’Arte Moderne to describe the progressive work of an artist’s collective called Les Vingt. In 1895, French-German art dealer Siegfried Bing opened the Paris gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau or “House of New Art” which was the first gallery devoted to Art Nouveau and popularized the movement in France.

Through the first decade of the twentieth century, this style spread throughout Europe—from Vienna, Austria where painter Gustav Klimt broke traditions with his gilded paintings, to Spain where Antonio Gaudí built lavish, undulating buildings epitomizing Art Nouveau architecture. After World War I, the geometric, classically-influenced Art Deco replaced Art Nouveau as the primary decorative arts influences of the time.

Here are a few examples of the characteristics of Art Nouveau work in the visual arts, decorative arts, and architecture.

1. 1. Natural shapes: Art Nouveau work is full of biomorphic shapes—or non-geometric, organic forms—that resemble flowers, insects, and other elements of the natural world.
2. 2. Ornamental lines: Art Nouveau artworks—like the Paris Metro signs—frequently incorporate curvy, sinuous lines that mimic the swirling forms of plants or stems.
3. 3. Flat, decorative patterns: In paintings and graphic arts, Art Nouveau artists tended to emphasize the flatness of the medium by creating small, densely packed patterns, like William Morris’s fabrics and wallpaper patterns, and the gilded motifs in Gustav Klimt’s paintings.
4. 4. Byzantine influences: Artists like Gustav Klimt, with his mosaic-like gilded paintings, and Alphonse Mucha, who often painted the subjects of his paintings like Byzantine queens, drew influence from the ornate, embellished style of Byzantine art. Decorative artist Louis Comfort Tiffany presented his first Tiffany lamps in a Byzantine-influenced chapel at the World’s Colombian Exhibition in Chicago.

Here are some examples of Art Nouveau painting, architecture, and decorative arts.

1. 1. The Paris Metro Signs, Hector Guimard (1900): The entrance signs to the Paris subway stations—with a distinctive typeface reading “Metropolitain,” and the swirling ironwork—were designed by Hector Guimard in 1900, and exemplify the Art Nouveau style of text.
2. 2. Tiffany Lamps, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1893): Louis Comfort Tiffany (the heir to the Tiffany & Co. fortune) popularized Art Nouveau in the United States with his colorful stained-glass and leaded lamps. Tiffany exhibited his first lamps at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893.
3. 3. Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí (1883): In 1883, Antoni Gaudí took over the construction of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica when architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lorzano resigned from the job. Though the project is still not completely finished, you can see Gaudí’s influence in the cathedral’s facade, accented with naturalistic moldings that almost look like they’re melting.
4. 4. The Posters of Alphonse Mucha (1890s): Czech illustrator Alphonse Mucha’s celebrated commercial posters from the 1890s, especially of the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, exemplify the style of art nouveau. These posters featured images of young women painted to look like ethereal wood nymphs, or Byzantine queens, wearing heavily patterned and tasseled garments, surrounded by flowers and plants.
5. 5. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (1903–1908): These two paintings by Gustav Klimt are part of the Austrian painter’s golden phase, for their use of mosaic-like, gilded motifs. The Kiss shows a man covered in a black and gold cape kissing the cheek of his lover. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I shows the wife of a wealthy banker and sugar merchant, rendered in realistic detail around her face, and covered in a gown of gold.

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