In The Nouveau Style [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Anthropomorphism is an element of the Art Nouveau style which has been revived by several designers in recent years. Traces of the furniture created by Antoni Gaudi at the turn of the century, which had already inspired Carlo Mollino during the 1940s, are apparent in Roberto Lazzeroni's 1988 chair for Ceccotti (right). The same line of descent is acknowledged by the Spanish designer Oscar Tusquets Blanca who gave the name 'Gaulino' to a 1988 chair (below). In all the mass of publications about Art Nouveau which have appeared over the last two or three decades, there has been no attempt to describe one very important aspect of the style: its continuity. Art Nouveau has always been treated as a historical phenomenon, which flourished at the turn of the century and had withered and died by the time World War I began. But the ideas behind the style are permanent, and the philosophy lying beneath the surface of Art Nouveau has persisted through many transformations to the present day. This book is an account of those transformations. The Art Nouveau style, in its various forms and at various levels of sophistication, has been a recurring phenomenon of twentieth-century culture. Whenever artists and designers have felt the same aspirations and restraints which affected the creators of Art Nouveau, some if not all of the forms and motifs which first achieved currency in the years around 1900 have made a reappearance. Not only general characteristics such as an arrogant originality and a subversive defiance of all conventions - whether artistic, social or moral - but even motifs as specific as flowing hair and writhing vegetation have recurred throughout twentieth-century art and design. The Surrealism of the inter-war years, the organic Modernism of the mid-century, the hippy art of the Sixties and some of today's Post-modernism have roots in the decorative arts and architecture of the period around 1900; the visual and stylistic vocabulary of the later movements owes a distinct debt to Art Nouveau. It is often more effective to look at style as the product of contemporary feelings and opinions rather than as so many links in a historical chain. Art Nouveau has often been shaped by historians and critics to fit into a predetermined historical pattern. If certain aspects of the style have been found inconvenient in the context of the unfolding Modem Movement, such as the seductive nymphs lying voluptuously beside inkwells or crouching timorously in the comers of mirror frames, then they have usually been ignored. The significance and symbolism of the frogs, mushrooms, dragonflies, lilies, trees and all the other flora and fauna which adorned everything from jewellery to architecture were suppressed, and the greatest prominence given to abstract curves and geometrical figures. Other aspects of Art Nouveau which have never tallied with its role as the herald of the Modern Movement are the emphasis which many of its leading practitioners put on handwork rather than machine production, and the insistence of many others on individual creativity rather than the standardization of style called for by early Modemists such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.