Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art,

especially the decorative art, that was most popular between 1890 and
1910 A reaction to the academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired
by natural forms and structures, particularly the curved lines of plants and
flowers. English uses the French name Art Nouveau (new art). The style
is related to, but not identical with, styles that emerged in many countries
in Europe at the same time. Art Nouveau is a total art style: It embraces a

wide range of fine and decorative arts, including architecture, painting,

graphic art,interior design, jewelry, furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass art,
and metal work.

Art Nouveau is a total art style: It embraces a wide range of fine and
decorative arts, including architecture, painting, graphic art,

interior design, jewelry, furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass art, and metal
work.

By 1910, Art Nouveau was already out of style. It was replaced

as the dominant European architectural and decorative
style first by Art Deco and followed by

Modernism. Art Nouveau took its name from the Maison de l'Art
Nouveau (House of the New Art), an art gallery opened in 1895 by the
Franco-German art dealer Sigfried.

The term Art Nouveau first appeared in the Belgian art journal L’Art
Moderne in 1884 to describe the work of Les Vingt, a society of 20
progressive artists that included James Ensor. These painters
responded to leading theories by French architect
Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and British critic John Ruskin, who
advocated for the unity of all arts. In December 1895, the German-born
art dealer Siegfried Bing opened a gallery in

Paris named “Maison l’Art Nouveau.” Branching out from the Japanese
ceramics, Bing promoted this “new art” in the gallery, selling a selection
of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, and objets d’art. Encouraging the
organic forms and patterns of Art Nouveau to flow

from one object to another, the movement’s theorists championed a

greater coordination of art and design. A continuation of
democratic ideas from Britain’s Arts and Crafts

movement, this impulse was as political as it

was aesthetic. The movement’s

philosophical father, the English designer and businessman William

Morris, defined its

main goals: “To give people pleasure in the things they must use, and
they must make.”

He insisted that functional design be incorporated into the objects of

everyday life, and

his mix of aesthetics and ethics rejected the heavy

ornamental qualities of the 19th

century, specifically the cumbersome, almost suffocating

excesses of the Victorian

period. His ideas manifested as many distinct national

flavors. Art Nouveau was a
reaction against 19th-century academic styles and an expression of desire
by artists and

architects to create a new style for the coming turn of the century. In
other words, new art

for a new age. Art Nouveau involved a philosophy that

beautiful things could benefit

people who saw them. The end of the

19th-century was a time of increasing

industrialization and mass production of cheap, poorly-made

goods. Artists, designers, and architects reacted against this, wanting a
return to good craftsmanship and believing that art should be incorporated
back into everyday life.

Art Nouveau was a total style, an expression of an idea known as

Gesamtkunstwerk, the thought that all the arts should be
reintegrated. People who worked in Art Nouveau

included fine artists and illustrators, textile and

wallpaper designers, and glass and jewelry designers. They
also pursued work like interior design, furniture design, and

architecture. Beauty and design were just as important to functional

objects like buildings

as they were in fine art, and architects became some of the most
prominent practitioners of Art Nouveau

THE LEADERS OF THE ART NOUVEAU

William Morris, Louis Tiffany and Gustav Klimt