French Art Nouveau Style

Art Nouveau was a decorative style of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe and North America. This new style manifested itself mainly in the applied arts, including ceramics, glass, furniture and buildings. The Art Nouveau style was also known as Jugendstil in Germany, Modernista in Spain, Sezessionstil in Austria, Stile Liberty in Italy and sometimes as Style Moderne in France.

Art Nouveau was at the height of its time at the Exposition Universelle in Paris 1900. It combined many elements found in European, Middle Eastern and Oriental decoration. The style was associated with the Galeries de l’Art Nouveau opened in Paris by Siegfried Bing in December of 1895. Bing was an influential art dealer and was instrumental in the dissemination of the Art Nouveau style. Bing sponsored several designers, such as Georges de Feure, Eugene Gaillard, Edward Colonna and Hector Guimard.

European Art Nouveau emulated and adapted the naturalistic elements of the Oriental style, often incorporating them into organic forms. This Oriental style was brought about when trade was re-established with Japan in 1859. New ideas were associated with this renewed contact with the Japanese and their art. The Japanese observation of nature and their subtle application and integration of decoration and form caught the imagination of Victorian artists and the public. The import of Japanese art prompted a craze for anything in the Japanese style, a vogue that eventually manifested itself as the Aesthetic Movement. This informal artistic movement advocated beauty in all furnishings and wares.

At the same time that Art Nouveau was developing, other areas of movement developed such as the cinema. The motion picture industry and stylistic animation both resulted in one way or another from the industrial age. The two were not unconnected since they started from the same premise. They both shared a generating factor and that was the fascination of movement. Both cinema and Art Nouveau came together at the Exposition Universelle in Paris 1900. The importance of cinema was revealed when an enormous auditorium to show films was constructed at great expense in what had been the “Galerie des Machines” of 1889.

There was also an interest in the movement produced by Loie Fuller in Paris. Loie Fuller danced in shimmering, colored light, which inspired many Art Nouveau artists. Loie Fuller was a phenomenon. Many of the artists of the time were influenced by the movement of her dance which can be seen in bronzes showing the flowing movement of her scarves.

Art Nouveau derived much of its power from two principal art movements Symbolism and Naturalism. The Symbolists regarded even the most mundane, workaday objects as symbols conveying messages. Ordinary things were imbued with hidden meanings ranging from the mystical to the whimsical. To the Naturalists, nothing was too mean or mundane to be transformed into a thing of beauty. Nothing was too utilitarian for artistic interpretation. Every kind of domestic appliance was lavishly treated with contemporary decoration. The tulip or ivy leaf ornament, one of the hallmarks of Art Nouveau was to be found all over Europe in public and semi-public buildings of the period.

The final years of the nineteenth century were an exciting time in industry and technology. Electricity was still a novelty and man-powered flight was being developed. People were more conscious than ever before of living in a more modern world. At the same time, the late nineteenth century was an age of romanticism, and it was this combination of the romantic with the modern that spawned the remarkable phenomenon known as Art Nouveau.