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PRESTEL MUNICH LONDON NEW YORK

4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:9 19.07.11 12:13 12 INTRODUCTION 14 I THE NEW STYLE: AN APPROACH 18 ART LUXURY—LUXURY ART 20 THE MATTER OF ADVERTISING 23 A NEW AESTHETIC OF LIGHT 25 LUXURY FASHION AND REFORM DRESS 30 “MOBILIZING INWARDNESS” OR THE BREAK WITH THE STATUS QUO 32 SELF-PROMOTION: THE ART MAGAZINES

36 II PROBLEMS OF STYLE 40 VISIONS OF UNITY AND SPIRITUALIZATIONS 41 YOUTH—AWAKENING 46 “SACRED SPRING” 59 TOTAL WORKS OF ART 62 A CONSCIOUSNESS OF STYLE 64 “RINASCI”

68 III THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF STYLE 70 THE CULT OF BEAUTY 71 THE BEAUTY OF WOMEN 78 THE MAGIC OF JEWELRY 84 SYNESTHESIA 85 BUILT SYMPHONIES 87 PAINTED MUSIC AND DANCED ARABESQUES 98 ORNAMENTS AND LINES 99 POLARIZATIONS 106 JAPONISM

110 IV PRELUDES 114 THE ENGLISH PATH 115 FROM BLAKE TO BEARDSLEY

4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:10 19.07.11 12:13 120 FROM RUSKIN TO THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT 188 AUSTRIA 121 WILLIAM MORRIS, THE PRE-RAPHAELITES, 189 THE WIENER WERKSTÄTTE AND THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT 190 Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser 126 THE FRENCH PROPHETS 194 THE UNITED STATES 127 TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 195 NEW YORK AND TIFFANY 128 GAUGUIN AND THE NABIS 197 CHICAGO AND SULLIVAN 132 IN THE ORBIT OF SYMBOLISM 200 VI IMAGE SYSTEMS 204 FRANZ VON STUCK 136 V EVERYWHERE AN AWAKENING: THE GREAT 214 GUSTAV KLIMT 224 FERDINAND HODLER CENTERS OF ART NOUVEAU 232 EDVARD MUNCH 140 GREAT BRITAIN 141 GLASGOW AND MACKINTOSH 238 VII ART NOUVEAU AND THE AVANTGARDE 148 FRANCE 240 THE PARADIGM OF ARCHITECTURE 149 PARIS 241 VIENNA: BETWEEN RINGSTRASSE 149 La Maison Bing AND “WHITE CITY” 150 Guimard 241 Otto Wagner 153 Mucha 246 Adolf Loos 154 GALLÉ AND THE ÉCOLE DE NANCY 252 THE CASTING OUT OF ORNAMENT 160 BELGIUM 256 THE PARADIGM OF PAINTING 161 HENRY VAN DE VELDE: THE HOUSE IN UCCLE 257 František Kupka 162 VICTOR HORTA 257 Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter 166 THE NETHERLANDS 262 Piet Mondrian and De Stijl 168 SPAIN 169 ANTONI GAUDÍ 266 VIII CONCLUSION AND PROSPECTS 172 GERMANY 268 BETWEEN REALITY AND UTOPIA 173 BERLIN AND WORPSWEDE 272 THE SEMANTICS OF DESIGN 177 MUNICH 276 THE REVIVAL OF ART NOUVEAU 179 THE ARTISTS OF THE DARMSTADT MATHILDENHÖHE 180 Joseph Maria Olbrich 282 APPENDICES 182 Peter Behrens 290 REFERENCES AND SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 HAGEN, WEIMAR AND VAN DE VELDE 295 INDEX OF NAMES

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Art Nouveau cannot be presumed to have the to Art Nouveau or that closely touched upon it, in same degree of art historical and cultural histori- particular Symbolism. cal signifi cance as, for example, Impressionism or Expressionism. For this reason I will approach its CHAPTER V is devoted to the main centers of the origins and historical development as carefully as style and their artistic exponents, with the excep- possible, that is to say as impartially as possible. tion of four outstanding painters for whom I reserve a special chapter, which follows. CHAPTER I concerns phenomena linked with the style’s “self-promotion.” Did it react to the modern CHAPTER VI examines the works and impact of world of consumerism with what Walter Benjamin Franz von Stuck, Gustav Klimt, Ferdinand Hodler, called a “mobilization of inwardness” or did it and Edvard Munch. It also returns to the question place priority on an attempt to avoid being clois- raised previously of whether the art form of paint- tered off from the world and rather to oppose the ing must be excluded from Art Nouveau; whether, contemporary industrialized world? that is, Art Nouveau is realized only in the crafts and in architecture. CHAPTER II seeks to clarify a problem rooted in the contemporary terms “Art Nouveau,” “Jugendstil,” CHAPTER VII deals with the relationship between “Modern Style,” and so on: whether the self-image Art Nouveau and the Functionalism of the early expressed in these gives us the right, from the per- twentieth century, which sought to allow art to spective of art historical scholarship, to similarly be absorbed into everyday usefulness and thus speak of a “style.” I believe that a comparison with to dispense with “superfl uous” decoration. The the paradigm of Renaissance style permits impor- apologists for an ornament-free art categorically tant conclusions to be drawn, which additionally condemned Art Nouveau as a cosmetic aesthetic illuminate Art Nouveau’s penchant for the Gesamt- of repression, as a fundamental self-delusion and kunstwerk , or “total” work of art. cultural illusion; was this condemnation based upon appropriate premises? The concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk also creates a transition to the idea of the “physiognomy” of CHAPTER VIII returns to this problem in a resumptive style, discussed in CHAPTER III , whose most impor- look back at the history of Art Nouveau and in light tant features lie in the all-encompassing cult of of its revival, which began a couple of decades ago beauty (which proves itself obsolete in the further (“metaphor of a utopian hope”—see below). course of the twentieth century), in the striving for synesthetic harmony, and in the immense signifi - Two positions, which I single out from the litera- cance of ornament and decoration. ture, offer extremely contrasting perspectives on Art Nouveau, which ventured the attempt—a late In order to classify these qualities within the his- one in terms of cultural history—of combining torical development, CHAPTER IV introduces those intrinsically artistic forms, but also fashion, dance, nineteenth-century artistic movements that led the culture of eating, and an environment suit-

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able for children, into a style of life and of binding there any intention to list designers, artists, and their these to an ideal. works anywhere near completely. 3 The fi rst sees the new movement, which began The present book thus investigates fundamental toward the end of the nineteenth century, in terms aspects. It raises, not least, the question of whether of cultural psychology, and locates its guiding image one must presuppose an “inborn” failure on the part in Narcissistic self-love: “Man is never less immedi- of Art Nouveau, or whether this assumption is not ate than when he seeks to bring forth the immediate the result of an overly narrow avant-garde view, into expression of himself. The idea of Jugendstil [as con- whose coordinates “art nouveau” does not quite fi t. temporary Germans termed Art Nouveau] was to These objectives simultaneously declare what surround people, in fact the era in its entirety … the book does not aim to achieve: It is not one of with nothing but refl ections of their own inner that large group of publications that organize the selves … Narcissus died because he lost himself in development of Art Nouveau chronologically or his own refl ection.” 1 According to this view, Art Nou- in terms of art as a whole. Only chapter VII follows veau’s “autism,” its aesthetic self-refl ection in a mass this model, with the intention of making it possible society, necessarily led to its swift conclusion. to glean synoptic information of undoubted signifi - The second interpretation, which could title cance. But all the other chapters examine the fun- itself “How Modernism Learned to Walk,” locates damental problems with which Art Nouveau saw the failure of Art Nouveau not in its Narcissism, itself confronted in the historical and socio-cultural but rather in the opposing attempt, namely in its context of the epochal threshold around 1900. effort “to bring about a reconciliation of conven- In order to keep the bibliography within bounds, tional expectations about art with the phenomena I have limited myself to important works that are of the technological age,” and especially with the relatively easily accessible to the reader. I also driving impulses of technocratic motion. “The fact sought to set limits to the footnotes by generally that something like this was possibly a self-con- citing only quotations or particularly important tradiction can be suspected, but it became certain sources of ideas from the literature. As a rule I have fi rst through Jugendstil. This was surely painful; avoided listing again in the footnotes publications its continuing popularity can therefore only be already in the bibliography that clearly deal with interpreted as the irrational desire to repeatedly concrete artists, factual matters, and so on. This delay this moment of realization. For this reason limitation should not lead the reader to falsely pre- Jugendstil will … probably live on forever as the sume that my investigations are not indebted to all metaphor of a utopian hope.”2 the publications mentioned.

Obviously, the organizational structure of this book In addition I would like to thank Stefanie Penck of necessarily ignores a whole array of points: in par- Prestel Verlag, who supported this project from the ticular technological aspects and questions of pro- very beginning; Anita Dahlinger for her astute and duction technology have been set aside, for example thorough image research; and not least Eckhard in the case of decorative glass and furniture, just as Hollmann, whose editorial supervision of the text has a listing of factory, workshops, and so on. Nor is was performed with reliable and seasoned diligence.

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4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:15 19.07.11 12:13 artist sees the ﬂ ow of line as the formal echo of a PLANTS ARE ORGANIZED non-objective, poetical sentiment and as a result BEINGS, POSSESSED OF abstracts it much more severely.

A POWER OF GROWTH. Henry van de Velde was one of the most impor- Christopher Dresser, 1859 tant representatives of a new style, one that understood itself as the beacon of a new cultural era. In 1902 it made its impressive collective appearance on the international stage: With its WHAT IMPEDES THE ENGLISH motto “Le Arti Decorative Internazionali Del Nuovo IS THEIR INABILITY TO FREE Secolo,” the great decorative arts show in Turin brought together products from America, Eng- THEMSELVES FROM THE land, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Den- FLOWER. mark, Holland, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Hun- Julius Meyer-Graefe, 1896 gary, and the host country Italy.5 The exponents represented all possible design options, ones that would have pleased someone like Meier-Graefe as well as ones that abandoned themselves unreserv- edly to a horror vacui of fl oral ornament. Self-cel- The English designer Christopher Dresser 4 began ebratory ostentation, which carried forward the teaching at the design school of London’s South bourgeois historicism and exoticism of the previ- Kensington Museum, today’s Victoria and Albert ous years clothed in a new “stylistic dress”—and Museum, in 1859. That same year he published that not infrequently crossed the line into kitsch— his book Unity in Variety. Deduced from the Veg- encountered an unadorned formalism that even etable Kingdom in London. On the very fi rst today is still considered “classically” modern. page can be found the sentence quoted in the The new aesthetic, to which a different nomen- epigraph above, which ultimately relates all clature was applied in each country, is considered individual forms of vegetation back to essential by some art historians to be the last unifi ed style “lines of life.” since the Baroque; by others, however, it is seen as It was just this clinging to plant-based orna- a “non-style,” since allegedly any common design ment by the English applied arts that became the criteria manifested themselves only in architecture subject of criticism by German art writer Julius and the applied arts, but not in painting or sculpture. Meier-Graefe on page 77 of volume 1, book 2 Klaus-Jürgen Sembach wrote in 1990 that Art Nou- of the magazine Dekorative Kunst. To his mind, veau expressed itself only in the fi eld of the applied the dominance of the “fl ower” obstructed the arts and that to transfer the stylistic term to painting forward-looking path of the “pure” line, freed was to obscure matters, since the spokesmen of from mimetic functions. What Meier-Graefe the time no longer sought a “high art” but rather its might have meant in 1896 by linear “emancipa- abolition. 6 This was diametrically opposed to the tion” can be seen in a dust jacket designed three view of someone like Peter Behrens, who in 1900, years earlier by Henry van de Velde for a volume phrased it as follows: “For this reason we will have of Max Elskamp poems entitled Salutations, dont a new style, our own style in everything we create. d’angéliques (fi g. bottom). A comparison of its The style of an era does not refer to specifi c forms in decoration with that of a dust jacket designed by some specifi c type of art. ... The style ... symbolizes Aubrey Beardsley in 1893/94 for Le Morte d’ Arthur the total feeling, the entire attitude to life of an era (fi g. bottom) makes it clear that, although van de and manifests itself only in the universe of all the Velde too draws upon natural models, the Belgian arts.” 7

HENRY VAN DE VELDE DUST JACKET FOR “SALUTATIONS, DONT D’ANGÉLIQUES,” BY MAX ELSKAMP, 1893 LWL-LANDESMUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND KULTUR- GESCHICHTE, MÜNSTER

AUBREY BEARDSLEY COVER FOR “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR,” 1893/94 MUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND GEWERBE, HAMBURG

4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:16 19.07.11 12:13 Harry Graf Kessler, too, at the end of the led to organic or zoomorphic “growths” as in 17 nineteenth century, deemed the cooperation the work of Antoni Gaudí (compare pp. 52/53 between “high” and “applied” art as a gain for the and 168ff.). The playfully fl amboyant version, latter: Now, he enthusiastically stated, “for the fi rst Easton believed, invited parody, thus prompt- time, the applied arts [participate] in the mystical ing its imminent demise. Easton thus concurs radiance that has always transfi gured the great with those authors who place the death of Art art, architecture, sculpture, and painting. While Nouveau in the fi rst decade of the twentieth insurmountable obstacles kept them [the cultural century. Following upon fl oral Art Nouveau, a pioneers; N. W.] for the time being away from the movement emerged that was liberated from design of practical life …, in art the adaptation the stream of ornament, and was practiced by to the new feeling for life met with the weakest artists such as Henry van de Velde, Charles Ren- resistance. For this reason, it was there that the nie Mackintosh, and Josef Hoffmann. 10 But with profound transformation from old to new human this, Easton claims, Art Nouveau had reached being fi rst manifested itself.” 8 its conclusion, for now began a radically “orna- Clearly then, the amount of avant-garde ment-free” and technical design, which, via Otto power one attributes to the new style—and Wagner, Adolf Loos, Peter Behrens, and others, which kind of power—is a function of what one led to the German Bauhaus or, in the US, to the discursively subsumes under it or “expects” from Functionalist building style of Louis Henry Sul- it. Henry Wilson’s design for the Ladbroke Grove livan and Frank Lloyd Wright. 11 Free Library in London in 1890–91 has been A minority of scholars sees the formal con- described by several architectural historians as trast just described as arising genetically from Art the earliest example of the new style—of Art Nou- Nouveau, as two sides of one and the same coin, veau—in Europe, an assessment rejected by Tim so to speak, and sees this matrix as remaining Benton, however, for it is based solely on a small in effect at least into the years of the First World number of superfi cial decorative elements. 9 In the War. Later chapters will attempt to show why I fi eld of painting, long before Kandinsky, experi- share this view. ments conducted with ornamental abstraction in the style of Henry van de Velde’s image Abstract Plants (Abstrakte Pß anzenkomposition ) of 1893 (fi g. right) had been considered incunabula of the new style. While researchers generally date its begin- nings to the 1890s, the chronology of its closing stages presents signifi cant problems.

Laird M. Easton postulates three formal premises of Art Nouveau. These consist, ﬁ rst, in the rejection of the spatial illusionism that was an essential formal tool of the academic art of the nineteenth century; second, in ornament as a replacement for naturalistic representational elements: with the help of complex rhythms, the ornamental principle is suffused by sym- metrically arranged and frieze-like sequences, even in the case of subject matter with an unavoidably object-like quality; and third, in the dictates of the line, which, in extreme cases,

HENRY VAN DE VELDE ABSTRACT PLANTS, 1893 MIXED MEDIA RIJKSMUSEUM KRÖLLER-MÜLLER, OTTERLO

CARLO BUGATTI CHAIR, TABLE, AND “THRONE” CHAIR, c. 1900 PAINTED WOOD, EMBOSSED BRASS FITTINGS, AND METAL INLAYS CHAIR HEIGHT: 86.5 CM, TABLE HEIGHT: 76.5 CM, “THRONE” CHAIR HEIGHT: 154.5 CM SOTHEBY’S, LONDON

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4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:18 19.07.11 12:13 In his opening address at the Turin exhibition in true substrata of modernity: technology and com- 1902, which presented the most complete exhibi- merce. And this at a time when, in addition to tion of Art Nouveau worldwide, the Italian minis- its technological achievements, it was precisely ter of education and cultural affairs Nunzio Nasi this commercial character of modernity that was acclaimed the new style as an art that would be becoming increasingly irrefutable—seen against democratic, in order to elevate the aesthetic taste this background the decorative-fantastical fl our- of the masses to a previously unknown height, ishes on the Villa Ruggeri in Pesaro (fi gs opposite and at the same time to create new jobs.12 The and bottom), for example, completed in 1902, emotionalism of his choice of words scarcely parallel to the Turin exhibition, are indeed akin to conceals the mercantile essence of the statement, atavistic mannerisms. which also makes clear why in Italy the new style Benjamin inserted the sentence about Art was generally referred to as “lo Stile Liberty” after Nouveau into the “exposé,” or exposition, to the the Art Nouveau department store Liberty in Arcades Project , which he entitled “Paris, the Capi- London. Arthur Lasenby Liberty, a cunning entre- tal of the Nineteenth Century.” Like the art of Art preneur, opened his department store in London’s Nouveau, he saw the arcades—which had been West End in 1875; there, in addition to goods built in the French metropolis in the decades after imported from the Near and Far East, he sold a 1822 but by the time of his writing had already collection of Orientalizing fabrics and wallpapers. disappeared or become nostalgic enclaves in the Among the designers was the Christopher Dresser cityscape—as “quintessential forms” of the Mod- mentioned above. Liberty products were soon ern. available worldwide: textiles, embroidery, carpets, Nineteenth-century tourists’ travel guides furniture and fashion, silver, tin, and decorative to Paris extolled these passageways—covered objects. “The Liberty style” availed itself of no by iron and glass constructions and paneled in 19 single design norm, but rather a design strategy marble, cutting through entire quarters of the aimed at exquisite products with a restrainedly city—as shopping centers of industrial luxury and modernist appearance. as objects of longing for sophisticated consumer desire. On both sides of these passageways and The interpretation of Art Nouveau in Walter connecting corridors, which “are both house Benjamin’s Arcades Project stands in only appar- and street,”14 one elegant store followed the ent contradiction to the “commodities fetishism” next under muted light from above. The arcades of the “stile Liberty.” Benjamin worked on this developed their greatest “radiance,” of course, in philosophy of the history of the nineteenth cen- the evening, in artifi cial light: fi rst gas then later tury from 1927 until his death in 1940; it was never electric. At night, what “was fascinating was the completed. Art Nouveau makes its appearance fabric of the brilliance of the light, the brilliance in this work as a paradigmatic confl ict phenom- of the commodities, and the mass of people in enon of modernity: “The transfi guration of the motion. ‘A labyrinth of brightly colored, glittering solitary soul seems to be its goal. Individuality is arcades like a collection of rainbow bridges in an its theory... It represents the fi nal attempted foray ocean of light. A completely fairy-tale world.’”15 of an art besieged in its ivory tower by technol- Like the boulevards, the arcades, too, developed ogy. It mobilizes all the reserves of inwardness. into places of pleasure and strolling. “In the per- They fi nd their expression in the mediumistic son of the fl âneur, intelligence takes to the market, language of lines, in the blossom as the symbol of intending to look at it, and in reality, neverthe- naked, vegetative nature, opposing a technologi- less, to fi nd a buyer. In this intermediary state … it cally armed environment [...].”13 In Art Nouveau, appears as a Bohemian.”16 for Benjamin, established art carried out a futile Admittedly, neither the arcades with their rearguard action, a fi nal attempt to ennoble the offerings of luxury goods, nor the strolling, nor

GIUSEPPE BREGA VILLINO RUGGERI, 1902–07 PESARO

4541_final_rl_final Bilder.indd Abs8:19 19.07.11 12:13 the artifi cial light are “products” of Art Nouveau. printing techniques offered new design possi- The phenomena arose somewhat earlier and bilities. Color lithography (chromolithography), as they culminated in the late nineteenth cen- patented in 1837, captured the market with the tury, they characterized the cultural cocktail of emergence of the lithographic printing press the Belle Époque and the fi n de siècle in all their beginning in 1852, and in 1891 Henri de Toulouse- nuances of taste. But Art Nouveau (at least a Lautrec hazarded the step from the graphic arts good part of it) readily embraced these options. to advertising art with his earliest poster Moulin The Galerie Bing can be cited as a representative Rouge. La Goulue (fi g. opposite), revolutionizing example.17 poster design in the process and anticipating Frequently described in the literature as an many aspects of Art Nouveau. The artistically impresario of Art Nouveau, Siegfried Bing, a refi ned poster pitched anything and everything: native of Hamburg who became a French citi- bicycles, medications, nightclubs. Moreover, it zen in 1876, was an expert in East Asian art. On was hoped that “courting” the visitors expected at December 26, 1895—in the bustling Paris street the 1900 Paris world’s fair would boost sales of the Rue de Provence, rather than an arcade—he products on display. And the presence of the new opened a gallery and art dealership under the style was already obligatory at that same exposi- business name La Maison Bing, L’Art Nouveau. tion universelle ; Samuel Bing designed a pavilion And with this he created the French catchphrase that housed a large model home consisting of six for those works of art that distanced themselves furnished and decorated rooms. from the established taste of the salons and the Under the infl uence of Toulouse-Lautrec and bourgeoisie. Bing functioned not least as the Pari- Jules Chéret (on the latter, see p. 95), the artistic sian representative for Louis Comfort Tiffany, who poster also made its appearance in England in in turn represented Bing’s business interests in 1894. During this year, for example, Dudley Hardy New York. Surrounded by noble design, in Bing’s designed the poster for the operetta A Gaiety Girl for gallery the well-heeled public open to the avant- the Prince of Wales Theatre. But it was the Brothers garde could buy modern bronzes and images by Beggarstaff (a self-ironic reference to their limited the Nabis (see p. 128ff.) as well as ceramics, jew- income)—the Scotsman James Pryde and the Lon- elry, textiles, and glass from the product line of his don painter and woodcut artist Sir William Nich- American business partner, and, in keeping with olson—who brought the Art Nouveau poster to its sophisticated contemporary taste, there was also high point in England. The two had trained in Paris an abundant offering of Japanese antiquities. and worked together until 1899. 18 Unsurprisingly, the art of the poster prospered not only in Paris and London but in all the large European cities, such as Berlin, where, starting in THE MATTER OF ADVERTISING 1901, to mention one fi nal name, Lucian Bernhard (actually Emil Kahn) emerged as the “creator of Art Nouveau artists, at least the representatives the modern Sachplakat , or object poster.” 19 of the applied arts, generally had no fear of con- Aesthetically sophisticated advertising was not tact with commerce and modern trade. The role infrequently reproduced in the art magazines of played by the design of advertising media in the the time and thus additionally “ennobled.” Henry entire “Stilkunst” or “style art” of around 1900 is van de Velde, for example, was commissioned suffi cient evidence of this. by Eberhard von Bodenhausen to design all the Advertising kiosks had been in existence since advertising materials (until 1900) for the recently 1855. They demanded striking advertising posters founded Tropon plant, a foodstuffs fi rm in rather than the provisional bills formerly posted Cologne Mühlheim. This included a poster (inci- on house walls and street corners. Improved dentally the only one van de Velde ever made),

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC POSTER, “MOULIN ROUGE. LA GOULUE,” 1891 COLOR LITHOGRAPH, 84 X 122 CM PRIVATE COLLECTION

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HENRY VAN DE VELDE POSTER, “TROPON,” 1898 COLOR LITHOGRAPH ON PAPER CALMANN & KING, LONDON

LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY TIFFANY STUDIOS TEN-LIGHT LILY TABLE LAMP, c. 1900 PRIVATE COLLECTION

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