Art Nouveau Tile 
by Porteous

Art Nouveau Tile 
by Motawi










 

The Art Nouveau Movment

Art Nouveau (French for 'new art') design in fine art, architecture and design peaked in popularity between the years 1880 to 1914. Art Nouveau is characterized by highly-stylized, flowing, curvilinear designs often incorporating floral and other plant-inspired motifs. The form is very sensual, with it's fine flowing lines often combining with the female form. The name 'Art Nouveau' is derived from Siegfried Bing's Paris shop, Maison de l'Art Nouveau, which showcased objects that followed this approach to design.

The style introduced by Siegfried Bing was not an immediate success in Paris but rapidly spread to Nancy and to Belgium (especially Brussels) where Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde would make major contributions in the field of architecture and design. In the United Kingdom, Art Nouveau developed out of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The most important center in Britain was Glasgow with the creations of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mackintosh moved in a sparce direction leaving much of the decorations aside. The work of his wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, however, pushed Art Nouveau to its sensual, nearly mystical, limits.

Dynamic, undulating, and flowing, with curved 'whiplash' lines of syncopated rhythm, characterized much of Art Nouveau. Another feature is the use of hyperbolas and parabolas. Conventional moldings seem to spring to life and 'grow' into plant-derived forms.

A high point in the evolution of Art Nouveau was the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris, in which the 'modern style' triumphed in every medium. In the same year the entrances to the Paris Métro designed by Hector Guimard in 1899 and 1900 are famous examples of Art Nouveau in Paris.

By the start of the First World War, however, the highly stylized nature of Art Nouveau design — which was expensive to produce — began to be dropped in favor of more streamlined, rectilinear modernism that was cheaper and thought to be more faithful to the rough, plain, industrial aesthetics that became Futurism then the more refined Art Deco style for the 1920's and 30's.