London Evening

News:
December 27,
1905
''New Art'' in Daily Life. 1905 (julio – diciembre)

AN INTERVIEW WITH M. VICTOR SILLARD,

TOGETHER WITH THE OPINIONS OF OTHER EMINENT ARTISTS.

IHEN the much-discussed "Art Nouveau " burst on the world, vid Paris, many persons naturally wondered where it
would end. Was it to be restricted to clocks and hat-pins, brooches and bric-k-brac, or were its exponents to
extend its principles to higher and more ambitious objects ? One of its early critics, shocked at the fantastic and
flamboyant forms which were inundating the shops of the Palais Royal, expressed his devout thankfulness that at
least the " New Art " would never be able to enlist the sympathies of the sculptors and architects, however much it
had succeeded in carrying away the jewellers, wood-carvers, potters, and metal-workers.
But his gratitude, if we may credit M. Victor Sillard, one of the most enthusiastic devotees of the art, was
premature. We are on the eve of a revolution in design, a revolution that is to embrace not merely sculpture and
architecture, but all crafts and departments of manufacture.
We are not only to have New Art teapots, but New Art motorcars, New Art coal-scuttles, and New Art
perambulators. The very babes are to lisp in the bizarre and tortuous accents of the New Art, and New Art cradles,
feeding-bottles, and teething-rings are to conduct the coming generation gently and imperceptibly to a higher
appreciation of the Life Beautiful.
As one may see from the accompanying designs originating with M. Sillard, the whole face of our municipal
highways is to be altered, for the revolution will affect besides vehicles the very houses, churches, the shape of our
bridges ; perhaps the very waves of the Thames will leap into " new art " postures.
What is the New Art ? It is, according to one of its ad- mirers, **a voluptuous flowering of the highest aoethetic
sense." According to another "it is a bursting of the shackles which have bound art to
squares and circles for centuries."
But in the opinion of Mr. T. G. Jackson, R.A., it is "a mischievous, fashionable craze," and is characterized
throughout by " a fidgety, vulgar obtrusiveness quite de- structive of all dignity and repose." Another Academician
calls it "the concentrated essence of a wriggle," and still another "squirming lines and blobs." Mr. Alfred Gilbert,
R.A., denies that he ever had anything to do with such a movement. " UArt Nouveau, forsooth ! " he says. "
Absolute nonsense ! It belongs to the young ladies' seminary and the duffers' paradise." Nevertheless, other equally
eminent artists, such as Mr. Hamo Thomycroft, R.A., Goscombe John, A.R.A., Seymour Lucas, R.A., and Amesby
Brown, A.R.A., openly express their admiration in much of the work and believe in its future. 1

"my lady's boudoir: the very proportions ok the walls are roundeo."

It is noticeable, however, that the architects aims at utility as well as mere ornament, seem dead against the
movement, and their Briefly, it may be said that a propaganda is professional repugnance would probably not on
foot which its promoters hope will be lessened if they could behold the achieve a revolution. Its leading spirit
design given for an artistic house knows England well, having formerly ided here some years. In M. Sillard's
opinion the press made by art in England in the: dozen or fifteen years has been iply astounding.

*Even in the late eighties your ises, your clothes, your furniture e the ugliest of any nation in rope. There seemed
not the slightest desire on the part of the masses to cultivate the sense of beauty which has its expression in line and
form. That line and form were capable of soul - stirring harmonies as exquisite as perfect poetry, few in England
seemed to be aware. Even the harmonies of colour and tone were of the vulgarest description, represented on the
one hand by the paintings one saw at the Royal Academy, which always reminded me of your Christmas
supplements, and by >:, ' Grandfather's Clock2
* Put Me in My Little Bed, Mother/ on the other hand. I was not prepared for such a change as has happened. You
have actually grown artistic. You are not content any more with plush-covered furniture. You have grown tired of
stucco and plain, yellow brick houses. Enghshwomen are no longer dowdy, but dainty, in their dress. You have

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"new art" house. [772] THE STRAND MAGAZINE
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''NEW ART'' IN DAILY LIFE, [773]
painters — you have sculptors. Your restaurants are perfectly appointed. In short, in every direction you have — or
are beginning to have — art."
" To what do you attribute the change ? " M. Sillard was asked. " First to the aesthetes, who w^ere the pioneers in
awakening the British public to a sense artistic defects ; next to . Beardsley, and then to Gilbert, who cultivated u
line and form. But, j neither in France nor E does art go deep enou[ only touches the surfac stops short of workads
The cry should be, and with us is. Art, art, art — everywhere art. We want art not only in the drawing-
room, but in the counting-house ; not only in my lady's boudoir, but in the street and in the field
and workshop. People say they have no time to be artistic. They may as well say they have no time to be
moral. If a sense and knowledge of beauty permeated through the masses so that they learned to love the thing that
was graceful and despise that which was un- graceful there would be more real morality. Why shouldn't the
workman's tool be an artistic thing? Do you think it would do worse work than an ugly one ?

"Why shouldn't your factory chimneys look like this ? " Here M. Sillard exhibited the design reproduced herewith.
" Isn't that better than the square, hideous piles that deface modem manufacturing towns ? " It was hinted that we
lived in a material age, and that possibly those who provided tools
"why shouldn't your LIKE and buildings would not consider any expense warranted that was not met by increased
material efficiency.

" Pardon me, that is all nonsense. We do not live in a material age any more than we live in an irreligious or an
unliterary age. People are always ready to pay a little more for an article that looks well than for one in the rough. I
don't believe people are really blind to or careless about beauty, but only that they are lax and unenterprising and
take what they can get. Of course, innovations must begin with the most intelligent and cultivated classes and filter
downwards. But if a working- girl can wear an artistic hat-pin — and you will find that she does — why should she
not comb her locks with an artistic comb, button her boots with an artistic button-hook? Why shouldn't she iron her
frock with an artistic flat-iron ? But before the tolos of the workman are made artistic the appliances and
appointments of the rich must be transformed.
Line and form must replace the hideous geometrical shapes in which everything is manufactured, from a carpet
tack to a railway engine. It has always struck me as extraordinary that a rich man who could afford to travel in a
steam launch or an electric brougham, and has these built to his order in any shape. He desires, should not order
them to be beautiful. When all that meets the eye mirrors line and form you will become a nation of conscience and
industry. It is their devotion to line and form which is the secret of the success of the Japanese."
The reader will see from the following illustrations the sort of motor-launch and car that this earnest champion of
linear beauty recommends to the denizens of Park Lane.
According to M. Sillard, what is known to us as "I'Art Nouveau" combines in itself both line and form. It has met
with opposition3 on the part of many artists because they are wedded to old canons, and denounce everything as
fantastic and bizarre which does not tally with their notions of Greek and Renaissance art.
" Benvenuto Cellini and Giovanni di Bologna had to meet with the same kind of opposition and the same sort of
criticism.
Everything that is new is attacked. But look at this beautiful motor-car of my design. Do you think if it were put on
the street tomorrow it would receive half as much abuse and ridicule as the first ugly motorcar received twenty
years ago? When the inventor of the steam locomotive built the first machine, he was merely consulting his
primary convenience in placing a boiler horizontally on a truck with a chimney at one end. But ever since then
nobody seems to have thought it worth while to make any
aesthetic improvements in the railway engine, except to employ brass and paint lavishly. But brass and paint are
poor substitutes for line and form. Why should not our sculptors be employed in designing engines? Think of the
Scotch express being led by a beautiful bronze and enamel swan into Edinburgh ! Or a blue and crimson dragon,
unslain by your national saint, harnessed to a line of white, cool carriages, careering through the green country-
side. Or a brilliant emerald serpent noise lessly linking London with Liverpool."
" Do you really believe we shall ever have these things ? "
" I am convinced that art is but in its infancy when its field is restricted only to luxury. Art has already grown out of
that stage. The commonest bedroom and kitchen furniture is now fashioned with
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FACTORY CHIMNEYS LOOK THIS?" [774] THE STRAND MAGAZINE,
an eye to beauty. There will be a long road to travel before we see a steam-roller which shall be delightful to look
upon, but if I live a moderately long life, and I am not yet forty, I shall see it."

Briefly, then, as we see from the accompanying designs, M. Sillard's system consists in applying the principles of
the New Art, with which we are all so familiar in the form of jewellery and bric-k-brac, to architecture and
engineering, ironwork, bookbinding, frame-making, and other forms of
production.

" VVho are the leading exponents of the art?'

* It would be impossible to name them all. In France splendid examples have been 4 produced by Gaillard, De
Feure, Bignon, Bagues, Majorelle, and Farcey, amongst others, and in Germany and Austria there are some clever
workers. These men are prepared to execute anything in the new style, and, as a matter of act, nearly all of them are
as busy as possible with commissions. You must not suppose the movement, even in the wide form I propose, is
without its sympathizers in England. I could show you the opinions of any number of eminent artists on this head.
Look at this from Mr. Goscombe John, A.R.A. :
"Any new enthusiasm is certain to be op|X)sed by the usual phalanx of petrified opinion and criticism, quite of the
same kind that has done duty over and over again for generations. * UArt Nouveau ' has received the usual amount
of assault and battery, but this can in no way affect what is good in it ; what is valuable will be absorbed, giving
vitality and variety to what in many directions has become conventional and dead ; the worthless part will, of
course, be very quickly forgotten."
And this is the opinion of Mr. Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. : " The movement is an indication of the age in which we
live — an age of upheavals. Revered canons of art are shattered, and the decorative art — across breed with a good
deal of Japanese blood in its veins — has come into existence, and with sufficient strength evidently to last some
time ; for the rapidity with which it has spread into so many forms of art shows that it has some deep-rooted raison
d^Ure, What this is may be difficult to determine.
This *Art Nouveau' appeared concurrently with that of freedom from the curbing influence of tradition in so many
other activities of the human mind ; it may be considered as an honest expression of the age."

Nevertheless, there will doubtless be considerable pondering of the matter before any of the London companies
who administer to the vehicular requirements of the public decide to replace their new motorcars and omnibuses
with the chariot here so considerately presented to them by M. Sillard.

(Illustrations by Victor Sillard)

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A DESIGN FOR A MOTOR-CAR. ''NEW ART'' IN DAILY LIFE. A LOCOMOTIVE OK THE FUTURE.