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Art Nouveau

1 Review 2

2 La Belle Époque 6

3 Poster Artists 20

4 Elsewhere 51

1 Explain “Pictures of the Floating World.”

Review Ukiyo-e

1 Explain “Pictures of the Floating World.”

Review 2 Ukiyo-e What was “Japonsim,” where did it start and when?

1 Explain “Pictures of the Floating 3 World.” What made Hokusai famous? Review 2 Ukiyo-e What was “Japonsim,” where did it start and when?

WORKBOOK Working from his Brooklyn art studio, Japanese artist Takuji Hamanaka uses the same centuries-old techniques to make his contemporary woodblock prints that Hokusai and many others used to make their prints. Does his Japanese heritage give him a stronger line of access to the ukiyo-e process than a non-Japanese person? What about the fact that he’s working in Brooklyn, as opposed to a location with stronger ties to the heritage of ukiyo-e such as Kyoto, Tokyo (formerly called Edo), or another town in Japan? Is he devaluing the technique by using abstract imagery rather than traditional subjects and motifs?

1871–1914 La Belle Époque France’s “Beautiful Epoch” was a time when the culture and the arts flourished.

Economic Prosperity

• New products from around the world • People have more leisure time and the ability to enjoy Paris’s nightlife • Flourishing of the arts • Paris attracts expats in large numbers

1890–1910 Art Nouveau Borrowing stylistic characteristics from Ukiyo-e, Art Nouveau was an international decorative style that flourished for two decades around the turn of the 20th century.

Art Nouveau encompassed all the design arts

• architecture • dishes • furniture • spoons • product design • chairs • fashion • door frames • poster design • staircases • packaging • factories • advertising • subway entrances • teapots • houses

As with the Arts and Crafts movement, it was held in the Art Nouveau period that aesthetic values should be combined with high standards of craftsmanship, and that works of art should be both beautiful and functional. The boundaries between fine art and the applied arts became blurred in the fields of furniture design, silverware and architecture, paintings, graphic art, jewellery, fashion and glassware.

EUROPEANA

1890–1910 Motifs • Vine tendrils • Flowers (rose) • Flowers (lily) • Birds (peacocks) • Female form Art Nouveau’s identifying visual quality is an organic, plantlike line.

MEGGS

Early Modernism • Victorians sought solutions through established historical approaches • “Modernists” adopted a new international ornamental style • Elegant motifs aligned with nature and often distinguished by free and graceful lines.

1890–1900 Poster Artists Nightlife was celebrated and perpetuated by the poster work of numerous Parisian artists who contributed to the citie’s visual culture and pushed the vision of Art Nouveau into the public sphere.

1841–1917 Eugène Grasset • Important early link between Victorian style and Art Nouveau • Sympathetic to the Arts & Crafts aesthetic of William Morris • Worked for Sarah Bernhardt before her contract with Alphonse Mucha

1836–1932 Jules Chéret • Regarded as a master of Belle Époque poster art • “Father of the modern poster” • Drew directly onto lithographic stone • Innovative spattering technique • Depicted young liberated women enjoying life In France, the Belle Époque was epitomised by the posters of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and Jules Chéret (1836-1932), both of whom were influenced by Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. Chéret was a painter and lithographer who became celebrated as a master of Belle Époque poster art.

EUROPEANA

Posters and advertising became a dominant means of mass communication throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century. The newly developed three-stone lithography process made dazzling colours available and advertising became a popular medium for many artists.

EUROPEANA

This exuberant image of the American dancer Loie Fuller captures the spirit of sensuality and excitement in the cabaret culture of fin-de-siècle Paris. Fuller was an important attraction at the 1900 Paris world’s fair, embodying Art Nouveau with her innovative choreography and diaphanous silk costumes illuminated by multicolored electric lights.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1862–1928 Loie Fuller • American actress and dancer • Pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques • Moved to Paris in 1892 seeking artistic appreciation she couldn’t get in the United States • Performed regularly at Folies Bergères in Paris

1864–1901 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec had turned obsessively to drawing and painting after breaking both hips in an accident at age thirteen.

Further growth of his legs was stunted, leaving him crippled.

He became a master draftsman in the academic tradition after moving to Paris two years later.

MEGGS

Japanese art, impressionism, and Degas’s design and contour were big influences on him.

Drawing directly on the lithographic stone, he often worked from memory with no sketches and used an old toothbrush that he always carried to achieve tonal effects through a splatter technique.

He haunted Paris cabarets and bordellos, watching, drawing, and developing a journalistic, illustrative style that captured the night life of la belle époque (the beautiful era), a term used to describe glittering late- nineteenth-century Paris.

MEGGS

1859–1923 Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen • Born in Lausanne, Switzerland • Moved Montmartre Quarter of Paris with his wife in their early twenties • Became associated with Le Chat Noir where he received numerous poster commissions • His daughter Colette was featured in much of his work

1860–1939 Alphonse Mucha Mucha’s distinct illustrative approach involving beautiful young women surrounded by lush flowers set him apart as the preeminent practitioner of the Art Nouveau style.

Mucha’s advertisement for the Job cigarette company illustrates the idea that “sex sells.” A voluptuous woman holds a lit cigarette, as her closed eyes and parted lips, suggested ecstasy. The very fact that this woman is smoking could be seen as scandalous, as few respectable women of the time would smoke in public.

EUROPEANA

1894 On Christmas Eve, Mucha was at the Lemerciers’ printing company, dutifully correcting proofs for a friend who had taken a holiday.

Suddenly the printing firm’s manager burst into the room, upset because the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt was demanding a new poster for the play Gismonda by New Year’s Day.

MEGGS

1894 • Elongated Grasset’s format • Added Byzantine-inspired mosaics as background motifs • Produced a poster totally distinct from any of his prior work • Printed in two carefully registered sheets • Bottom half unfinished

1894 Sarah Bernhardt, who had not been pleased with Grasset’s Joan of Arc poster or many other posters for her performances, felt that Mucha’s Gismonda poster expressed her so well graphically that she signed him to a six-year contract for sets, costumes, jewelry, and nine more posters.

MEGGS

Mucha’s women project an archetypal sense of unreality.

MEGGS

Exotic and sensuous while retaining an aura of innocence, they express no specific age, nationality, or historical period. His stylized hair patterns became a hallmark of the era.

MEGGS

Elsewhere

1866-1945 Hans Christiansen • German designer, artist, illustrator • Produced vivid cover designs with distinctive hand-lettered fonts. • Moved to Paris in 1895 to study art • Designed wallpaper patterns, tapestries, ceramics and glass windows.

I take my work as an artist as general as possible: I want to paint a portrait but can also design a piece of furniture; I draw cartoons but also wallpapers, posters; I design stained glass windows but also occasionally a screen.

HANS CHRISTIANSEN

1868–1940 Peter Behrens The German artist, architect, and designer Peter Behrens played a major role in charting a course for design in the first decade of the new century.

1910–1914 Henry van de Velde • Belgian Architect, industrial designer, and graphic designer • Practiced in the Art Nouveau style • Director, Weimar Arts and Crafts School

1872–1898 Arthur Mackmurdo • English artist and designer • Participant in England’s Arts & Crafts Movement along with William Morris • Works with Century Guild of artists, designers, printers, and publishers • Produces one of the earliest examples of Art Nouveau

1872–1898 Aubrey Beardsley A strange cult figure, he was intensely prolific for five years before dying of tuberculosis at age twenty-six.

• English illustrator, late Victorian era • Subversive approach take on Arts & Crafts styling • Contributed to the emerging English Art Nouveau style • Moved to Paris in 1892 after encouragement from Edward Burne-Jones (a close friend of William Morris)

Beardsley’s reputation was established by an illustration of Salome holding the head of John the Baptist, published in the first edition of The Studio.

EUROPEANA

Aubrey Beardsley was the enfant terrible of art nouveau, with his striking pen line, vibrant black- and-white work, and shockingly exotic imagery.

MEGGS

“The black spot” was the name given to compositions based on a dominant black form.

1,874 – 1,912 Ethel Reed American

An important American poster artist and book designer, Ethel Reed’s short but vibrant career was cut short after a visit to the United Kingdom.

WORKBOOK Practitioners of Art Nouveau were predominantly male, yet they regularly featured imagery of idealized and fantastical women in their artwork. How should we think about these works of art through a contemporary viewpoint, one that is becoming more conscious of issues relating to physical appearances and the exploitation of idealized human beauty?