Art Nouveau: Art, Architecture and Design in Transformation 9781350061156, 9781350061149, 9781350061187, 9781350061170

Table of contents :
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Illustrations
Figures
Plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction
What was Art Nouveau?
Art and the conditions of modernity
About this book
Part I: The Structures of Art Nouveau
Chapter 1: The nineteenth-century roots of Art Nouveau
The Gothic Revival, design reform and the Oxford Museum of Natural History (1860)
Aestheticism and Whistler’s Peacock Room (1876–7)
Nature, science and art and Liljefors’s Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows (1888)
Chapter 2: A new style for a new age: Innovations in form, materials and ornament
Gaudí’s Güell Palace: Form, materials and experience
Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts: The invention of national ornament
Sullivan’s Guaranty Building: New ornament for new modes of construction
Parallel developments in applied art
Gallé’s On Such a Night as This: Material becomes ornament
Chapter 3: Sites of Art Nouveau: New forms of exhibition
Brussels, L’Art moderne and the Les XX group
The Munich Secession
The 1900 Paris World’s Fair
Chapter 4: Designers and manufacturers: How Art Nouveau was made and sold
Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts
Louis Comfort Tiffany, Clara Driscoll and Tiffany Studios
Peter Behrens, Darmstadt and AEG
Chapter 5: Art Nouveau on paper: Print and graphic art
Odilon Redon and the artist print
Aubrey Beardsley: The artist as illustrator
Elizabeth Shippen Green: Art Nouveau and commercial illustration
International art and design journals
Chapter 6: Art Nouveau patrons and networks
Siegfried Bing and the Maison de l’Art Nouveau
Justus Brinckmann and museum curation
Princess Tenisheva: The World of Art and the Talashkino artist’s colony
Sarah Bernhardt: Celebrity and patronage
Chapter I: Conclusion to Part I: Art Nouveau in Vienna
The Vienna Secession
The Wiener Werkstätte
Part II: The content of Art Nouveau
Chapter 7: The power of nature
Victor Horta: Tassel House and the jungle in the city
August Endell: Elvira Studio and the wilder shores of life
France Macdonald: The Pond and the threat of fecundity
René-Jules Lalique: The beauties of nature
The raw materials of Art Nouveau
Chapter 8: The global reach of colonialism
The Sphinx Mystérieux and the performance of colonial power
India Art Nouveau and pan-Asianism
Dutch Art Nouveau and Javanese Batik
Transnational Art Nouveau and cultural exchange
Chapter 9: Visions of other worlds and hopes for the future
Stanisław Wyspiański: Visions of a future Polish nation
Mary Seton Watts and the cosmos in ornament
Hilma af Klint: Spiritualist visions
Chapter 10: Psychology, sex and the modern self
Fernand Khnopff: The journey into the self
Camille Claudel: The creative labour of the artist
Edvard Munch: Trials of isolation and connection
Elena Luksch-Makowsky: Gender and creativity
Magnus Enckell, George Minne and the adolescent male nude
Chapter 11: Dream spaces: The Art Nouveau interior
Fyodor Shekhtel: Ryabushinsky House and a kingdom beneath the waves
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald: Fritz Waerndorfer’s music room and the performance of beauty
The light of other worlds: Dreams of a nation
Otto Wagner: St Leopold’s Church and the healing power of art
Chapter 12: Conclusion: New art for a changing world
Art Nouveau: Public art and collective identity
Art Nouveau worldwide
Art Nouveau: Decline and evolution
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Art Nouveau

ii

Art Nouveau Art, Architecture and Design in Transformation Charlotte Ashby

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Charlotte Ashby, 2022 Charlotte Ashby has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image: Ex-Libris by John Lumsden Propert. Beardsley, Aubrey (1872-98) Private CollectionPhoto © AISA/Bridgeman Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ashby, Charlotte, 1979- author. Title: Art nouveau: art, architecture and design in transformation / Charlotte Ashby. Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021009255 (print) | LCCN 2021009256 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350061149 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350061156 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350061163 (epub) | ISBN 9781350061170 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Art nouveau. | Art and society–History–19th century. | Art and society–History– 20th century. | Architecture and society–History–19th century. | Architecture and society–History–20th century. Classification: LCC N6465.A7 A84 2021 (print) | LCC N6465.A7 (ebook) | DDC 709.03/49–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009255 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009256 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6115-6 PB: 978-1-3500-6114-9 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6117-0 eBook: 978-1-3500-6116-3 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations  viii Acknowledgements  xii

Introduction  1 What was Art Nouveau?  1 Art and the conditions of modernity  3 About this book  5

PART I  The Structures of Art Nouveau  9 1 The nineteenth-century roots of Art Nouveau  11 The Gothic Revival, design reform and the Oxford Museum of Natural History (1860)  11 Aestheticism and Whistler’s Peacock Room (1876–7)   16 Nature, science and art and Liljefors’s Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows (1888)  21

 2 A new style for a new age: Innovations in form, materials and ornament  24 Gaudí’s Güell Palace: Form, materials and experience  25 Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts: The invention of national ornament  29 Sullivan’s Guaranty Building: New ornament for new modes of construction  32 Parallel developments in applied art  37 Gallé’s On Such a Night as This: Material becomes ornament   38

3 Sites of Art Nouveau: New forms of exhibition  42 Brussels, L’Art moderne and the Les XX group  43 The Munich Secession  46 The 1900 Paris World’s Fair  52

4 Designers and manufacturers: How Art Nouveau was made and sold  60 Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts  61 Louis Comfort Tiffany, Clara Driscoll and Tiffany Studios  67 Peter Behrens, Darmstadt and AEG  72

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C ONTENTS

5 Art Nouveau on paper: Print and graphic art  79 Odilon Redon and the artist print  80 Aubrey Beardsley: The artist as illustrator  84 Elizabeth Shippen Green: Art Nouveau and commercial illustration  87 International art and design journals  90

6 Art Nouveau patrons and networks  97 Siegfried Bing and the Maison de l’Art Nouveau  97 Justus Brinckmann and museum curation  101 Princess Tenisheva: The World of Art and the Talashkino artist’s colony  104 Sarah Bernhardt: Celebrity and patronage  108

Conclusion to Part I: Art Nouveau in Vienna  117 The Vienna Secession  117 The Wiener Werkstätte  124

PART II  The content of Art Nouveau  127 7 The power of nature  129 Victor Horta: Tassel House and the jungle in the city  130 August Endell: Elvira Studio and the wilder shores of life  133 France Macdonald: The Pond and the threat of fecundity  137 René-Jules Lalique: The beauties of nature  138 The raw materials of Art Nouveau  142

8 The global reach of colonialism  144 The Sphinx Mystérieux and the performance of colonial power  146 India Art Nouveau and pan-Asianism  149 Dutch Art Nouveau and Javanese Batik  154 Transnational Art Nouveau and cultural exchange  159

9 Visions of other worlds and hopes for the future  163 Stanisław Wyspiański: Visions of a future Polish nation  164 Mary Seton Watts and the cosmos in ornament  167 Hilma af Klint: Spiritualist visions  172

C ONTENTS

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10 Psychology, sex and the modern self  177 Fernand Khnopff: The journey into the self  179 Camille Claudel: The creative labour of the artist  182 Edvard Munch: Trials of isolation and connection  184 Elena Luksch-Makowsky: Gender and creativity  188 Magnus Enckell, George Minne and the adolescent male nude  191

11 Dream spaces: The Art Nouveau interior  195 Fyodor Shekhtel: Ryabushinsky House and a kingdom beneath the waves   196 Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald: Fritz Waerndorfer’s music room and the performance of beauty  199 The light of other worlds: Dreams of a nation  202 Otto Wagner: St Leopold’s Church and the healing power of art  206

12 Conclusion: New art for a changing world  210 Art Nouveau: Public art and collective identity  210 Art Nouveau worldwide  214 Art Nouveau: Decline and evolution  218 Conclusion  223 Bibliography  227 Index  247

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3

Deane & Woodward, Oxford Museum of Natural History  12 Deane & Woodward, detail of internal ironwork  16 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain  19 2.1 Antoni Gaudí, Güell Palace  27 2.2 Antoni Gaudí, Palau Güell, detail of entrance hall  28 2.3 Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos, Museum of Applied Arts  31 2.4 Victor Ruprich-Robert, Flore ornementale  33 2.5 Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Building  35 3.1 Georges Lemmen, frontispiece  45 3.2 Franz von Stuck, poster for the first Munich exhibition  48 3.3 Franz von Stuck, Sin  49 3.4 Hermann Obrist and Berthe Ruchet, Cyclamen embroidery  50 3.5 Theodor Fischer, Richard Riemerschmid, Bernhard Pankok and August Endell, Applied Arts Section at the VII Internationale Kunstausstellung from Kunst und Handwerk  51 3.6 Martinique Pavilion, illustrated in Le Petit Journal  53 3.7 Dining Room by Eugène Gaillard with murals by Josep Maria Sert, ‘Pavilion Art Nouveau Bing’  54 3.8 Hector Guimard, Metro Station, Paris XVth  55 3.9 René Binet, Porte Monumentale, on the Place de la Concorde  56 3.10 Serrurier-Bovy and Richard Dulong, Pavillon Bleu  57 3.11 Henri Sauvage and Loïe Fuller, Loïe Fuller Pavilion  58 4.1 Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts, loop-handled jam dish  62 4.2 Archibald Knox, Cigarette Box, Liberty’s Cymric range  66 4.3 Louis Comfort Tiffany and Samuel Colman, The Music Room of the Henry O. Havemeyer House  68 4.4 Clara Wolcott Driscoll and Tiffany Studios, Poppy Filigree Table Lamp  71 4.5 Advertisement, Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. Art Interchange  72 4.6 Peter Behrens, The Kiss, Pan  73 4.7 Peter Behrens, Behrens House  74 4.8 Peter Behrens, Behrens House, dining room  75 4.9 Peter Behrens and AEG, Arc Lamp poster  76 4.10 Peter Behrens, A.E.G.-Metallfadenlampe 77 5.1 Odilon Redon, The Marsh Flower, a Sad Human Head, from Homage to Goya (1885, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA))  81

ILLUSTRATIONS

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

ix

Armand Clavaud, Flore de la Gironde  83 Aubrey Beardsley, Merlin and Nimue from Morte d’Arthur  84 Aubrey Beardsley, The Woman in the Moon from Salome  85 Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax from Salome  86 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge – La Goulue  90 Leon Bakst, Mir Isskustva  93 Heinrich Vogeler, Deustche Kunst und Dekoration  94 Ferenc Helbing, Magyar Iparművészet  95 Hans Christiansen, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration  95 Le Japon Artistique  99 Henry van de Velde and Paul Ranson, dining room installation for Siegfried Bing, Maison de l’art Nouveau  100 Justus Brinckmann, Paris Room, Museum of Applied Art, Hamburg  103 Nicholas Roerich, The Queen of Heaven  108 Princess Maria Tenisheva, Candle, Bronze, enamel and ivory. Reproduced in Denis Roche, Les émaux champlevés de la princesse Marie Ténichév  109 Sarah Bernhardt, Fantastic Inkwell (Self-Portrait as a Sphinx)  110 Sarah Bernhardt, Carte de visite, La Princesse Lointaine  111 Alphonse Mucha, Gismonda Poster  112 Gustav Klimt, poster for the first exhibition  118 Koloman Moser, Ver Sacrum  119 Joseph Maria Olbrich, Secession House  120 Koloman Moser, Dance of the Wreath Makers, mural on the Secession House  120 Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze, XIVth Secession Exhibition  122 Alfred Roller, Sinking Night, XIVth Secession Exhibition  123 Bruno Paul, Munich Fountain of Youth, Simplicismus  126 Victor Horta, Tassel House  131 August Endell, Elvira Studio  135 August Endell, Elvira Studio, entrance hall  136 Ernst Haeckel, Jellyfish: Leptomedusae  137 René-Jules Lalique, Wysteria Lognette and chain  141 Charles van der Stappen, Sphinx Mystérieux  147 Ivory bust of Leopold II by Thomas Vincotte with Charles van der Stappen’s Mysterious Sphinx in the background  148 John Lockwood Kipling, Wood-carver in Simla  150 Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof for Walter Crane, Kunst en samenleving  155 Jan Toorop, Oh Grave, Where Is Thy Victory  156 Agathe Wegerif-Gravestein, batik silk velvet, Batikatelier A. Wegerif  158 Eliza Charlotte (Lies) van Zuylen, Batik, Indonesia, Java, Pekalongan  159 Mary Seaton Watts, Watts Cemetery Chapel  168 Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, ‘Music of Gounod’ in Besant & Leadbeater, Thought-Forms  175 Camille Claudel, Clotho  182 Edvard Munch, Madonna  187 Magnus Enckell, Awakening  192 George Minne, The Fountain of Kneeling Youths  193

x

11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7

ILLUSTRATIONS

Ilya Repin, Sadko  198 Charles Rennie Mackintosh, music room for Fritz Waerndorfer, Vienna 1903  201 Eliel Saarinen, Hvitträsk, Kirkkonummi, Finland, 1903  203 Baldomer Gili i Roig, Baldomer Gili Roig in Barcelona's Reial Cercle Artístic (View of the interior of the gallery of Casa Lleó Morera), Barcelona, with windows by Antoni Rigalt i Blanch  205 Sigmund Freud, Study, Berggasse 19, Vienna  207 Antonín Balšánek and Osvald Polívka, Prague Municipal House  212 Adamo Boari, The Palacio de Bellas Artes  213 Raimondo D’Aronco, Sheikh Zafir Efendi Tomb  215 Gottlieb Redecker, Christ Church  217 Josef Hoffmann, Austria Pavilion, Werkbund Exhibition  220 Henri van de Velde, Werkbund Theatre, Werkbund Exhibition  221 Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, German Werkbund Exhibition  222

Plates 1 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room 2 Bruno Liljefors, Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows 3 Antoni Gaudí, Palau Güell, detail of central hall 4 Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos, Museum of Applied Arts, detail of entrance 5 Emile Gallé, On Such a Night as This 6 Théo van Rysselberghe, The Reading 7 Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts, Pendant in the form of a ship 8 Louis Comfort Tiffany, Summer Panel for Four Seasons window 9 Elizabeth Shippen Green, ‘Life Was Made for Love and Cheer’ 10 Jules Chéret, Saxoleine poster, 1894 11 Mikhail Vrubel, Princess Tenisheva: The Valkyrie 12 Princess Tenisheva and Sergei Malytin, Church of the Holy Spirit, Talashkino 13 Gustav Klimt, Detail of Beethoven Frieze, A Kiss for the Whole World, 1902 14 Victor Horta, Tassel House, Entrance Hall 15 France Macdonald, The Pond 16 René-Jules Lalique, Necklace of Black Swans 17 Abanindranath Tagore, Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka 18 Yokoyama Taikan, Floating Lantern 19 Stanisław Wyspiański, Chochoły 20 Stanisław Wyspiański, Polonia 21 Mary Seaton Watts, Watts Cemetery Chapel interior 22 Hilma af Klint, Childhood 23 Fernand Khnopff, I Lock the Door upon Myself 24 Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johans Gate 25 Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Ver Sacrum (Self-portrait with son Peter) 26 Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Adolescentia 27 Fyodor Shekhtel, Ryabushinsky House

ILLUSTRATIONS

28 29 30 31

Margarent Macdonald Mackintosh, The Seven Princesses, panel 2 Otto Wagner, St Leopold’s Church, Steinhof, Vienna Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Palau de la Música Catalana Wilhemina Geddes, Faith, Karori Crematorium Chapel

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book represents twenty years of study, teaching and reflection on Art Nouveau. As such, any acknowledgements really ought to include every teacher, colleague and student I have encountered along the way. In brief though, I would like to thank the particular people who have contributed to the development of this book. It would not have happened without the stimulation of my supervisor, Jeremy Howard, whose work on Art Nouveau first illuminated me as to the breadth and depth of the movement. Colleagues at Birkbeck and the Department of Continuing Education at the University of Oxford enabled me to develop my ideas through course design on a variety of Art Nouveau topics and the students I teach continue to stimulate me with fresh perspectives and questions. My involvement with two research projects – The Viennese Cafe and Fin-de-siècle Culture, led by professors Jeremy Aynsley and Simon Shaw-Miller and Dr Tag Gronberg, and International Cultural Exchange at the Fin-de-siècle, led by Drs Grace Brockington and Sarah Turner – were crucial in propelling me away from a focus on national themes to a consideration of the paramount importance of transnational culture in the period. The concrete effort of producing this book has been supported by my editor Rebecca Barden, assisted by Claire Collins and Olivia Davies and by my readers Professor Naomi Brookes and Sara Östh, and by the love and support of my parents. This book is dedicated with love to Lex and Edmund.

Introduction

What was Art Nouveau? The turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century was a period of intense experimentation across all cultural fields, from music, dance and literature to the visual arts. This was fuelled by a sense that the world had changed and was continuing to change rapidly. There was a desire to acknowledge the transformations brought about by modernization, but not to lose connection to what was valuable from the past. Art Nouveau, as a broadly defined movement, sought to negotiate these challenges by means of balances struck between national and transnational forms of identity, between modernity and tradition and between rational and spiritual ideals. This blend of contradictory impulses required agility and fuelled a brief period of unprecedented invention in the forms taken by art and design. In the field of the visual arts a host of labels has proliferated over the years: Modernism, Symbolism, Arts and Crafts, National Romanticism, National Revival Styles, Aestheticism and more. Each label signifies an effort to classify the main ideas behind the work of a particular group of artists and designers. Often one label or another is preferred in different national contexts. In a great many cases, however, the impulses indicated by these labels overlapped. A designer might be interested in engaging with the intrinsic qualities and traditions of the materials they used (Arts and Crafts) and with representing the nation (National Romanticism/ Revival) as well as the human soul (Symbolism). Different projects might sway them in different directions. Labels are useful in so far as they enable us to group practices and ideas with a shared character, but at the turn of the nineteenth century they become hopelessly entangled. If we look instead at how people in this period discussed what they were doing, the term that arises most often across many languages is ‘new’. They were looking for new ways of working and new ways to express themselves and their society. This is captured in many of the contemporary labels that sprung up around this time: ‘Art Nouveau’ (new art) was the francophone label, elsewhere ‘Nieuwe Kunst’ (new art), ‘Jugendstil’ (youth style), ‘Secessionist’ (the style of the secession or break-away) and many variations on the terms ‘modern style’ or the ‘new style’ were used in many different languages. All these labels shared an emphasis on newness, modernity and a new generation. They sought to capture the sense of a break with how things had been done before. The term ‘Art Nouveau’, shorn of its particularly French associations, became established as an umbrella term for these many inter-related trends in the scholarship of the 1990s and 2000s. This reflected the efforts to integrate the separate national art histories of the period and reflect on the international character of the movement. It might seem that what is proposed later could more simply be called a history of the art and design of the period 1880–1914, without any other label attached. Certainly, the contents of this book do not consistently exhibit shared formal attributes: the sinuous lines and imagery drawn from nature or the female figure that some readers will already associate with the label Art Nouveau. Some examples include all those features while others look entirely different. What all the artists, designers and works discussed here share, however, is more than mere proximity

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ART NOUVEAU

of years. They represent diverse efforts to bring about change in and through art and design: the pursuit of a new art for a new age and this is what I am using the label Art Nouveau to signal. The incoherence of the variety of works gathered under this label may still prove troubling to some. Elizabeth Prettejohn, in her work on Aestheticism, has grappled with a similar problem. The artists she focussed on did not share a professed collective public identity, nor was there any reliable consistency of style, subject matter or ideological position. This made the label ‘Aestheticism’ elusive and potentially meaningless. But what Prettejohn identified as definitive was a shared underlying commitment to a philosophical problem: the problem of what art might be if it existed purely for the sake of art and not to further any other moral or ideological goal (Prettejohn 2007: 1–7). I follow a similar rationale in this book. The problem that all the artists and designers I look at were grappling with was the sense that the rules of the academies, which had dominated the systems of training and professional validation in art and design since the mid-eighteenth century, were no longer adequate. A new way of doing things was needed. In the next part ‘Art and the Conditions of Modernity’, I will look more closely at the ways in which the world had changed and how these changes provided the underlying rationale for a new art. Art Nouveau, as a movement, was based on a shared commitment to the pursuit of a new mode of creativity that would meet the needs of modern men and women. Artists and designers ranged far and wide for rationale that might guide this search. They turned variously to the authority of the natural sciences, to pagan antiquity, to the peasant or medieval craftsman, to emerging ideas about the unconscious or human sexuality, to the spirit of the nation or to spirit guides. Many practitioners ranged eclectically across all these fields of thought, so that the work produced is almost staggering in its variety. It is marked by the primacy given to the intimacy of subjective experience. What gave the varied forms of the Art Nouveau movement its underlying coherence was the belief in the necessity for this innovation and the belief that the solutions pursued heralded a new art for a new age. This book does not seek to be an exhaustive history of the Art Nouveau movement, as this has already been effectively set out in a number of earlier books on the subject (Howard 1996; Greenhalgh 2000; Escritt 2000). The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a wealth of new research into Art Nouveau. The fall of communism in what had been the Eastern Bloc of Central and Eastern Europe revived interest in national art histories across the region. The anticipation of another ‘fin-de-siècle’ around the year 2000 also stimulated research into Art Nouveau in its famous centres: Paris, Brussels, Nancy, Munich, Glasgow and Barcelona. The unique interplay of the national and the transnational, modernity and tradition was a pattern that repeated across Europe and a number of key works have engaged specifically with Art Nouveau as an international movement. (Bowe 1993; Howard 1996; Purchla 1999; Greenhalgh 2000) These works represent just a fraction of the scholarship on the art and design of around 1900, including studies of the Art Nouveau of particular nations, cities or individuals. Since 2000, this scholarship has continued to develop, adding further richness to our understanding of the culture of this complex and varied period. The terms ‘Arts and Crafts’ and ‘Symbolism’ reappear throughout this book. These are parallel movements with their own histories. At the same time, they represent schools of thought integrated with the broader international Art Nouveau movement. Arts and Crafts represented engagement with materials and techniques that were intended to ground the art object in a relationship to local traditions (Cumming & Kaplan 1991; Livingstone & Parry 2005; Clegg 2006). In this way it frequently overlapped with endeavours to express national identity and ideas of authenticity. The Arts and Crafts movement sought to ameliorate the cultural devastation of

INTRODUCTION

3

industrialization by reasserting the relationship between the individual maker and the object. The rapid industrialization of Europe and America in the latter half of the nineteenth century meant that the solutions proffered by the English Arts and Crafts movement were of immediate interest elsewhere. These ideas were translated, literally in the form of texts, and figuratively in the form of local Arts and Crafts-inspired practitioners and collectives. Around 1900 these ideas were embraced and interwoven with a range of other impulses. Symbolism emerged as the self-proclaimed label applied to a literary movement originating in Belgium and France and subsequently to paintings and graphic arts that followed a similar trajectory (Hirsh 2004; Rapetti 2005; Grigorian 2009; O’Mahony 2009; Morehead 2017). It corresponded to a new trend to use language and imagery in ambiguous and suggestive ways, to privilege individual subjectivity over collective ideologies. Symbolist works could be opaque and troubling, using language and form in semi-abstract ways that left much of the final resonance of the work up to the reader or viewer to determine. A similar overlap exists in relation to the Aesthetic movement, which proposed an elevation of aesthetic concerns over moral and political ones, pursuing beauty in an age of ugliness. In different ways, Arts and Crafts, Symbolism and Aestheticism shared the core value of dissolving boundaries between art forms and bringing beauty into everyday life. This breaking down of the hierarchies that separated the fine arts of music, painting and poetry from the mechanical arts of architecture and design was central to the Art Nouveau movement. These categories had originated with the academy system, which was in the process of being superseded by new art and designs schools, art societies, workshops and collectives. Whether it was imagined democratically, as beauty for all, or in a more rarefied vein of a life effused with art for the aesthetically enlightened, there was a shared perception of such boundaries as artificial and limiting. Alternative cultural models, such as ancient Greece or Japan, were held up as evidence that it was possible to transcend these categories and invest all areas of life with aesthetic and spiritual value.

Art and the conditions of modernity The works and individuals traced within this book are all motivated in different ways by the sense that the world had changed and that the time had come to assert a new vision of it. This widely shared sense of the change that was overtaking the industrialized world is captured in this quote from the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (1848): Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. (Marx 2018) It does not so much matter that the actual realities of the pre-industrial past were far less stable than they were imagined to be here or that this transformation of work and life was far from universal and consistent. What matters is the degree to which the aforementioned statement

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conveys a contemporary sense that the modern world had begun to operate on different terms from that of the past. This dramatic change was concentrated in Europe and America and this is reflected in the focus of this book. However, the increasingly rapid, global circulation of images, goods, materials and people was central to the experience of modernity Art Nouveau artists and designers grappled with. The growing network of colonies controlled by the European powers created new geographies and brought distant portions of the globe into new relations with one another. Distances contracted as new modes of transportation – steamships and railways – and new modes of communication – the telegraph and postal services – dramatically reduced the time it took to traverse geographies. As well as all the raw materials mined, forested and harvested from occupied territories, animals and horticultural specimens were shipped back and forth, transforming ecosystems around the world. Antiquities and art objects were bought or seized and sent to collectors and institutions in Europe. Those that were not transported were studied, measured, photographed, drawn and spread across the world as image and text. They were also re-presented back to the cultures that had originated them, re-framed through a Eurocentric lens as examples of declining or underdeveloped forms of culture. The same process of scholarly colonialism extended to every aspect of life. People and traditions, stories, poetry, song, dress, art and design were studied, collected and published upon. The geography, geology, flora and fauna of the surface of the globe were similarly analysed to record the value of territories acquired or fought over. This new knowledge spilled from the academic and governmental arena into the text books of school children, into newspapers and the picture press, into popular song and into the new sites of public education: the botanical gardens, museums, galleries and zoos. By the end of the nineteenth century, Europe and America were saturated with imagery and things that spoke of these global connections. This process was not one-directional. Colonizing regimes introduced new systems of social organization, religion, education, law and labour and, alongside this, new modes of dress, new objects and new images. In addition to the contraction of space, as distant lands became familiar, the period was marked by a new sense of temporality. History, as an academic discipline, alongside archaeology, folkloristics and linguistics, broadened the understanding of the expanses of time and the flow of human cultures from the past to the present. This expanding field of knowledge had a significant visual dimension, as cultures from the Mesopotamian to the Aztec and the Han dynasty to the Maori were graphically reproduced in illustrated volumes for scholars to study and artists and designers to reproduce. Scientific advances also extended human understanding into geological time, dwarfing the few millennia of human civilizations. While this could feed a sense of contemporary superiority, it also fed anxiety regarding what aspects of the present would stand the test of time to be analysed by future generations. Just as the arena of the known past expanded, time became increasingly contracted in the present. News travelled instantly by telegraph and events were known and superseded by other events with unprecedented rapidity. The flow of goods into the marketplace was increasingly organized around cycles of seasonal fashions and annual exhibitions, with an accompanying pressure for the new. What was new would soon be known, spread around the world by print media, copied and emulated and then no longer be new. These forces of modernity were, by the late nineteenth century, widely recognized and reflected upon in literature, philosophy and psychology and the impact they had on the world was something that could not be ignored. As all that was solid melted into air, it became all the more important to establish what was of value and what were the truths around which the future might be built. Art could not simply turn its back on these changes. At the same time, some points of valid continuity with

INTRODUCTION

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the past had to be sought. Art Nouveau, as explored through the case studies in this book, arose from efforts to establish new certainties as well as embrace emerging possibilities. The resulting movement was necessarily agile and mutable, as it sought to respond to this evolving set of stimuli. In all the examples explored there is evidence of attempts to strike a balance across three main conceptual axes: the axis of modernity and tradition, of the national and international and of the rational and the spiritual. The axis of modernity and tradition represented the effort to reconcile tensions between the values of the past and the values that might shape the future. The axis of the national and international represented the competing pressures to affirm national distinctness, but at the same time reflect realities which were increasingly global, as well as the ideal of art itself as something that transcended time and place. The axis of the rational and spiritual was necessitated by the very challenges posed by the preceding ideas. The more the world was known, the more it was possible to apprehend limits of human knowledge. The more the authority of organized religion receded in the face of secular concerns, the more alternatives were sought. These alternatives might lie in the domain of new religions or the spiritual solace of nation, nature, science or beauty. The optimism of Art Nouveau lay in the sense that a point of balance could be found. Nations could be reborn or reaffirmed without sacrificing an active engagement with international exchange. A new culture could emerge that not only reflected new realities but also traced its foundations back into the past. And the new art could aid the development of the new individual, who wished to comprehend all that scientific understanding of the world had to offer and still be free to dream, love and transcend worldly considerations. The anxiety, and necessarily corollary to this, was that this would prove to be beyond reach. The fear that, instead of a new dawn of world civilization, the turn of the century would be marked by an inexorable slide into degeneracy, barbarism and crass consumerism was a shadow that lurked in the background of the new art movement. The ambitions of the Art Nouveau movement were hubristic and this is the explanation for its effusiveness of expression and the totalizing environments it sought to create. At the same time, this is the explanation for the rapidity of its rise and fall, as the vertigo induced by the loftiness of its ambitions saw many designers and patrons reel back and begin to manage their expectations more conservatively. The relatively short duration of its flowering should not be allowed to diminish the movement’s importance. As Chapter 1 will go on to show, it represented the logical extension and culmination of new thinking about art and design whose roots stretched back through the nineteenth century. Equally, many of the ideals proposed as part of the Art Nouveau movement shaped the Modernism of the twentieth century, whether they were acknowledged or not (Troy 1991).

About this book This volume draws on the rich developments in research of the last twenty years, to explore the key ideas that shaped the Art Nouveau movement. By focussing on themes and individual case studies, it is possible to introduce the reader to the breadth and complexity of the movement and the web of interrelated factors that stimulated its development. Bringing this range of examples and ideas into conjunction generates new understanding of the impulses that shaped Art Nouveau and what it means to study a global art movement. It might seem to some that the detailed focus on a necessarily limited range of examples is disproportionate to their individual

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importance and of course it necessitates leaving a lot out. But focus on a few case studies means there is room within each one for detail and it is in the details that critical understanding occurs. This book seeks to highlight the importance of understanding Art Nouveau – and indeed art and design in general – as the product of multiple intersections between artists and designers, patrons and political movements, technologies and philosophies and the international, colonialist networks that supplied wealth, raw materials, motifs and techniques. The editing out of such details can lead to their erasure and the erroneous impression that the history of an art movement is the history only of artists and their work. As readers we are so accustomed to certain omissions that we may not notice them: Whose labour was involved? Where did the money come from? How and where did these ideas travel? Where did the materials/motifs or techniques originate? The omission of the many other important individuals and objects that could have appeared in this book has, at least, the virtue of being a transparent omission. The particular approaches that this book is based on reflect recent developments in art and design history, as disciplines. The efforts of feminist scholars to reinsert the women erased from the history of art are ongoing. In relation to Art Nouveau this effort has particular resonances, as it was a period where women were gaining access, albeit still circumscribed, to art education. Women as professional artists and designers became increasingly common, and this book attempts to make that reality more visible. Debora Silverman’s work on the colonial legacy beneath the surface of Belgian Art Nouveau has inspired another key focus (Silverman 2011; 2012, 2013, 2015). The legacy of colonial exploitation and the labour of enslaved people emerges again and again throughout this book. Though the majority of case studies are drawn from Europe, it is vital to acknowledge the colonial context which shaped this European culture. The art and design produced in this period is inextricable from the colonial project and the global traffic in resources and people. The third new approach taken draws on the way design history in particular has made use of the Actor Network Theory of Bruno Latour (Latour 2005). An emphasis on actors and networks helps shift historical studies away from a narrative dominated by key individuals to consider the reality of interplay between multiple individuals, institutions and organizations, audiences, technologies, materials and sites that lie behind the emergence of a new art movement. These ideas manifest in this book in the attention given to the structures underlying Art Nouveau: new societies, new modes of production, new patrons and new audiences reached by means of the rapidly expanding world of print and exhibition media. Artists and designers remain prominent, but understanding of the contribution of these individuals must be connected to the wider cultural and social context in which they were embedded. The emphasis on networks also reveals the extent to which Art Nouveau was not a series of movements that developed across multiple national centres, but a transnational movement inextricably linked with the global exchange of ideas and images back and forth across borders. * Each of the twelve chapters in this book is based on a theme, with different case studies selected for the exploration of this theme. Readers will have the opportunity to learn about key Art Nouveau artists and designers, as well as a variety of different national contexts and art centres across this very fluid and decentralized movement. Case studies will be contextualized with reference to the wider cultural scene, and as the book progresses, there are more and more connections back and forth between case studies. The book is arranged in two parts. The first part sets up the conditions within which Art Nouveau developed. These included a new idea of the meaning and potential of art and design;

INTRODUCTION

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new relationships between designers, materials and modes of manufacture; the impact of exhibition and print in the international circulation of ideas; the emergence of new patrons and networks of patronage. These structures and impulses were integrated and united, generating a period of great dynamism and creativity. The second part of the book looks in further detail at the conceptual ideas that artists, designers and their patrons sought to explore and express through this creativity. The natural world offered a new paradigm, beyond human history, that provided that alternative model upon which development in the arts might be based. The concept of nature was elastic. On the one hand, the study of botanical and physiological systems offered a rational approach to design. On the other hand, the seemingly infinite variety of nature offered artist and designers free rein to pursue self-expression. The new art was required to express new things: the identity of modern individuals and their new needs. Chapter 1, ‘The nineteenth-century roots of Art Nouveau’, introduces the ideas that laid the foundations for new approaches towards the end of the century. Chapter 2, ‘A new style for a new age: Innovations in form, materials and ornament’, functions to establish the central idea set out in this introduction: the understanding of a need for new approaches to design. It traces different examples of the ways past and present, new technologies and traditional craft were blended to respond to this challenge. Chapter 3, ‘Sites of Art Nouveau: New forms of exhibition’, will set out the new cultures of display that transformed relationships between artists and designers and their audiences. The focus here is on the increasingly blurred boundaries between art and design, as attention was turned to creating aesthetic experiences. Chapter 4, ‘Designers and manufacturers: How Art Nouveau was made and sold’, takes an overview of the changing ideas and ideals relating to the production and retailing of design between the 1890s and the 1910s. This period is marked by the competing influences of the Arts and Crafts movement and modern mass manufacturing. In this arena we see the figure of the professional designers emerge. Chapter 5, ‘Art Nouveau on paper: Print and graphic art’, focuses on the transformative power of the reproduction of image and text. The circulation of visual material was central to the mass consumption of Art Nouveau and to the rapid exchange of the latest art and design innovations across geographic boundaries. Chapter 6, ‘Art Nouveau patrons and networks’, shifts perspective over to the individuals whose support was integral to the development of Art Nouveau. Through their personal connections and patterns of patronage these individuals directly facilitated the circulation of works around the globe and the transmission of new ideas and forms. Part I of the book concludes with a look at the Viennese Secession as a case study through which we can draw together all of the previously discussed issues. In the second half of the book we turn to further explore the ideas and beliefs that provided the underlying energy for Art Nouveau. These ideas are unavoidably present in Part I, but in Part II we have the opportunity to consider them in more depth. Chapter 7, ‘The power of nature’, explores how the Art Nouveau movement was profoundly shaped by engagement with new scientific thinking regarding the nature of life. Scientific exploration presented new visual and material worlds to the public imagination. Theories of heredity and germ theory opened up new interpretations of hygiene and vulnerability, as the body and the race were seen as in need of protection in new ways. All this contributed to an understanding of the power of things that could not be seen: electricity, magnetism, cells, atoms, germs and radio waves, and these new forces required visual expression in the arts. Chapter 8, ‘The global reach of colonialism’, focuses discussion on the Art Nouveau movement’s fundamental debt to the global circulation of objects, images, materials, people and ideas that operated within the structures of colonialism. It was not just an issue of wealth

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and raw materials but contact between cultures created new contexts within which to imagine one’s own society. Materials and techniques could be invested with new meaning and combined in ways that signalled new, hybrid identities. Chapter 9, ‘Visions of other worlds and hopes for the future’, looks at how artists and designers used the new wealth of motifs, materials and techniques at their disposal to concretize their hopes for the future. These visions of national realization and spiritual awakening were not just an escape from present realities but also an engagement with the question of the futures of their communities and of humanity as a whole. Chapter 10, ‘Psychology, sex and the modern self’, explores how perspectives on the nature of the individual and the power of the unconscious and sexual impulses were transformed by developments in the new science of psychology. Artists and designers sought to explore and reflect the complex and layered identities of the modern man and woman. Chapter 11, ‘Dream spaces – The Art Nouveau interior’, continues the focus on psychology and perception to consider the Art Nouveau interior as an instrument for the realization of human potential. Through the creation of stimulating experiences and transformative environments, designers could create new contexts in which the human mind and spirit could expand. In these spaces, designers and patrons sought a moment of reconciliation between the tensions represented by the pull between modernity and tradition, the national and the international and between rational thought and spiritual enlightenment. Chapter 12, ‘New art for a changing world’, is the final chapter of the book and takes us towards its conclusion. It draws together the threads of previous chapters to look at how the expression of individual identity could be extended to represent collective identity. In public architecture, the exploration of Art Nouveau artists and designers into the emotive power of space, light, imagery and materials could be used to create monumental spaces for the nation. Art Nouveau’s explicit engagement with the conditions of the modern world and the new visual languages it developed made it an attractive vehicle for patrons who wanted to assert their modernity in regions far away from the established centres of modern culture. Much of what continues to captivate audiences and admirers of Art Nouveau work today is the still-palpable sense of artists and designers striving to express ideas that were deeply important to them. These ideas might be about the beauty of the natural world, the need to express one’s identity or the desire to reach beyond the mundane and touch the divine. These works still speak about what it means to be human in the machine age, what it means to be an individual living in a mass society and what it means to pursue art within a capitalist commodity culture. The shared problem that defined the Art Nouveau movement was the question of how this complexity could be adequately addressed. Each artist or designer reached their own conclusions, and for this reason, each case study must be examined on its own terms and in relation to the varied cultural forces it responded to. The turn of the century was a period of flux, growth, transformation and social unrest. The sense that the world was changing was a source of excitement, but also of anxiety. The artists and designers considered in this book all strove in various ways to reflect and engage with the spiritual and material needs of the world around them. Some sought to restore a connection to the past, to halt the slide into entirely contingent and temporary meanings and relations. Many operated along a line of tension that pursued a rapprochement between competing forces and values. Art Nouveau was a movement that has long delighted the public with its beauty and invention, but it is riddled with contradictions, revealing how individuals and societies first struggled with the challenges of identity, modernity and globalization – struggles which in many ways continue to resonate today.

PART I

The Structures of Art Nouveau

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1 The nineteenth-century roots of Art Nouveau

Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. JOHN RUSKIN, THE STONES OF VENICE (1853)

The Art Nouveau movement arose in response to a perceived problem: the need for art and design to meet the needs of a new age. This new age had its roots in changes stretching back to the burgeoning of the Industrial Revolution and the origins of European colonialism in the sixteenth century. The pace of change accelerated through the nineteenth century, transforming landscapes, creating cities and changing patterns of life around the world. The new forms taken by Art Nouveau did not spring into being fully formed at the end of the nineteenth century. One starting point was new thinking about the expression of function and meaning in architecture, which originated with the Gothic Revival. Another key source was exposure to different art and design cultures, particularly that of Japan. A third source, introduced here, was new scientific ideas about nature, which suggested new ways to understand and represent the world. Each case study reflects different efforts to reconcile the competing demands of modernity and tradition, national and international identities for art and scientific rationalism alongside spiritual ideals.

The Gothic Revival, design reform and the Oxford Museum of Natural History (1860) The ‘dreaming spires’ of Oxford might seem a strange place to start this exploration of design’s engagement with the forces of modernity. The Oxford Museum is however an example of how

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mid-nineteenth-century British architecture and design responded to these challenges (Figure  1.1). One of the most influential theorists of architecture’s resistance to modernity was John Ruskin (1819–1900), whose ideas were closely followed in the museum’s design. Ruskin’s reputation was to grow through the nineteenth century until, in the 1890s, his ideas were quoted and reproduced in art magazines across the world as a foremost authority on design reform (Hanley & Maidment 2016: 137–95). Ruskin’s theories and the example of the Oxford Museum exemplify a response to modernity based on effort to reclaim values eroded by rapid industrialization. This idea of the recovery of aesthetic and spiritual meaning from the past fed directly into the developing Arts and Crafts movement and continued to resonate through much Art Nouveau. The Oxford Museum (1860) married this principle of revival with the use of new technologies and the invention of new forms to accommodate new functions and usage. Museums were one of the many new building types of the nineteenth century. They reflected the expanding world of academic knowledge and new ideals of public education. The modern world was marked by a proliferation of new building types for new forms of public life and municipal management. The Oxford Museum was designed to educate the public, as well as provide laboratories and teaching spaces required for the science departments of the university. It may seem anomalous to modern eyes that this building clothed its contemporary agenda in a generally gothic appearance, particularly noted for the richness of its hand-carved ornament and the detail of its polychromatic stonework. This seeming paradox frames the fact that exactly how design should respond to modernity remained far from clear through the nineteenth century. For much of the century debate was focussed on different historical styles and which might be regarded as appropriate for different buildings. For example, the Gothic was usually regarded as

FIGURE 1.1  Deane & Woodward, Oxford Museum of Natural History (Oxford, 1860) © Roger Fenton / Stringer / Getty Images.

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appropriate for churches, while various Italian Renaissance styles were seen as suitable for banks and commercial premises, by association with the origins of banking in renaissance Florence. The variety of styles available was extensive as art historical studies and archaeology provided more and more forms to draw on, from Chinoizerie to the Northern Renaissance and from Egyptian to Etruscan finds. Prompted by this, critics voiced concerns about this eclecticism and argued for the identification of one, single approved style for modern building (Bergdoll 2000: 139–70). These debates provide the backdrop to the conclusion reached by the end of the century, that what was needed was not a historical style but a new approach altogether: Art Nouveau. Two strands characterize both British and wider European debates on design reform in the nineteenth century. On the one hand, history maintained its crucial position as the reference point from which design was expected to draw its essential logic. On the other hand, the intended function of the building, the load-bearing system employed and the materials used were given greater significance in deciding what a building should look like. Debates about modern architecture continued to revolve around the term ‘style’. ‘Style’ was used to refer to outward appearance, usually dominated by historical ornament (Grecian, Gothic, Baroque, etc.). But the meaning of the term ‘style’ also became increasingly elastic. Discussions of what ‘style’ modern architecture should embrace made simultaneous reference to the duty of the design to articulate and serve the character of the building: what it was for and how it was built. The term ‘style’ might refer in its broadest sense to the ethos of the building and the relationship between construction and appearance. Which meaning was intended by different authors can often only be inferred by context. Increasingly, it was not merely aesthetically important to choose the right style; it was morally important. Architectural style was the language in which the building addressed the public, and this mode of address could be considered nationally appropriate or foreign (in the positive sense of exotic or the negative sense of alien), academic or hackneyed, strange or familiar and, ultimately, honest or dishonest when it came to the nature of the building within (Alofsin 2006). It was on these grounds that the experimental architecture of the end of the century was welcomed as a ‘new style’ and a final solution to these debates. The variety of styles presented in the architectural competition for the Oxford Museum included Classical, Renaissance and Gothic and exemplified the ‘battle of the styles’ that raged through the mid-nineteenth century (Herrmann 1992). Ruskin championed the Gothic as the appropriate solution for all modern, British architectural needs. Two prominent books The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–4) introduced his theories to the Victorian public. Subsequent translation of these works, or excerpts from them, spread Ruskin’s ideas worldwide. He presented the Gothic as the model for modern architectural reform by virtue of its responsiveness to intended function and available materials, in contrast to the abstract principles of Classical beauty. His theories mingled aesthetic appreciation with moral and philosophical approval for the architectural values, including the idea of truthfulness in materials, logical composition and responsiveness to practical needs: For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture . . . . . . it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic, builders that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they opened one; a room, they added one. (Ruskin 2003 [1851–4]: 168) The Gothic, for all its romantic and medieval associations, was understood as a rational choice because of this adaptability. A comparison of Deane and Woodward’s winning design with

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other entries reveals this in operation (O’Dwyer 1997: 160–73). The symmetry of Classical designs would have required the housing of the variety of disparate functions of the building – display galleries, lecture hall, chemical laboratory and so on – behind an entirely symmetrical facade. Whereas the Gothic allowed for greater flexibility: different volumes and different sized windows arranged where they were needed. Adaptability and specialization were ideas linked to efficiency and to an acknowledgement that the modern world had become increasingly complex in its varied requirements. The accommodation of tradition remained important, as another angle of design reform sought to consider architecture’s wider relationship with its environment and context. The Gothic matched the architectural character of the medieval foundation of the University of Oxford. Through this relationship to place and local tradition architecture could be understood to express values specific to its location and users. One of the principles of the wider Gothic Revival movement across Europe was the idea that it represented a direct relationship to national history, unlike the imported and pagan forms of Classicism. This assessment chose to overlook the pan-European dimensions of Gothic architecture. Both the functional flexibility of the Gothic and its resonances with national tradition were values that were retained by Art Nouveau designers, but shorn by them of any strict adherence to historical models. A crucial factor in the perceived modernity and rationality of the Gothic was the notion that the relationship between architectural form and ornament was analogous to the patterns of natural growth exhibited in nature. We shall go on in Chapters 2 and 7 to see how this idea developed into a core paradigm within the Art Nouveau movement. In relation to the Oxford Museum, the architect George Edmund Street asserted: [T]here seems to be a particular propriety in selecting the style [Gothic] which, above all others that have ever existed, took nature and natural forms for her guide and her ornaments, in a Museum intended mainly for the reception of a collection illustrative of Natural History. (Street 1853: 403–4) This quote reveals widely held understanding that the structures of Gothic architecture were sound and ‘right’ because they echoed the divine logic of nature. In the writings of Ruskin, this idea took the form of a conceptual synthesis of Gothic forms and natural forms, northern climate and nature and the presence of God: ‘this look of mountain brotherhood between cathedral and Alp’ (2003 [1851–4]: 164). But it was an association with a long pedigree in European thought. Nature as a model for architectural principles lay at the foundations of architectural theory in Germany: How joyfully I stretched my arms towards it [Strasbourg Cathedral], surveying its vast harmonious masses, animated by countless delicate details of structure! As in the works of eternal Nature, every form, down to the smallest fibril, alive, and everything contributing to the purpose of the whole! (Goethe 1772) As well as in France: The forests were the first temples of divinity and in them men acquired the first ideas of architecture. This art must, therefore, have varied according to the climates. The Greeks turned the elegant Corinthian column, with its capital of foliage, after the model of a palm tree. [. . .] The forests of Gaul were, in their turn, introduced into the temples of our ancestors,

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and those celebrated woods of oak thus maintained their sacred character. (Chateaubriand [1802] 1815: 288) Nature aligned with God and this was a key idea for those who supported the Gothic style. It offered an antidote to the supposed godlessness of the nineteenth century. This position was asserted so vigorously that The Builder, a British magazine of architecture, could joke that a man who deviates from the principles of Ruskin to build something that is merely comfortable for himself could be regarded as putting his eternal soul in jeopardy (The Builder 1862/19: 283). But in the previous quotes there is also evidence of the rationalism that was associated with the Gothic alongside the spiritual: the idea of structural logic and of all parts contributing to the function of the whole, as the leaf does to the tree. In this way, it is also possible to see adherence to the Gothic, not just in the light of its Christian associations, but also in relation to new modes of scientific thought. Rather than reproducing historical ornament, the ornamental scheme of the Oxford Museum was based on the visual reproduction of the most up-to-date system for the classification of plants (Forgan 1989: 415). The aim was to represent the natural world through the building itself, not just its display cases (Holmes & Smith 2020). Though they received guidance on the scheme, the majority of the stonework was not designed by the architect, but worked up via a direct carving method by the Irish stonemasons, James and John O’Shea, who worked directly from specimens collected each day from the Oxford Botanic Garden (O’Dwyer 1997: 230). The availability of these specimens reflected the systematic acquisition of species from around the world, facilitated by the ever-expanding colonial apparatus. The knowledge arrayed for public consumption in both the Oxford Museum and Botanic Garden reflected a centre of gravity for world knowledge located in colonial centres of power. With every flower, fern and palm at their disposal in botanical gardens and herbariums across Europe, the inspiration was in place for designers to take ornament in many new directions (Gamwell 2002). Through the ingenuity of the architect, the language of Gothic architecture was also employed to reflect the function of the building. The chemical laboratories were housed in an annex modelled on the fourteenth-century kitchen of the Glastonbury Abbey (Forgan 1989: 415). The form of the abbey kitchen, separate from the main building to minimize fire-risk and with great chimneys to void the smoke of the hearths within, provided a suitable source for a building design to house activities involving dangerous chemicals and noxious fumes. This was an adaptation of medieval forms to suit a modern function. The impossibility of always finding an appropriate ancient precedent to adapt for modern needs was a factor that would propel architects at the end of the century to abandon historical forms altogether. The inventive amalgamation of old and new forms can also be seen in the iron roof of the main exhibition hall (O’Dwyer 1997: 257–65). The advantages of glass roof-lights for areas intended for display were already established, for example in John Soane’s Dulwich Picture Gallery (1817). Entire iron and glass roofs, with the Crystal Palace of 1851 being the most notable example, used new technologies to cover larger and larger areas with glass. The Oxford Museum exhibition hall roof represents a fusion of new technology and Gothic form. The columns and ribs of the roof echoed the structural forms of stone columns and vaulting in Gothic cathedrals. The substantially greater tensile strength of iron allowed for greater lightness and delicacy than stone, as well as being substantially cheaper. The union of new technology with medieval aesthetics extended to the stencilling of the ribs with coloured patterns, just as the stone ribs of medieval vaulting had been decorated. The analogue between Gothic columns and vaulting and the trunk and boughs of a tree also provides the logic for the delicate tracery

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FIGURE 1.2  Deane & Woodward, detail of internal ironwork, Oxford Museum of Natural History (Oxford, 1860) © CA.

of metalwork tendrils and leaves in the spandrels, demonstrating how ironwork was able to fulfil a simultaneously aesthetic and structural function, just as stone was (Figure  1.2). This design aptly illustrated the conceptual connection between the Gothic and nature, as the slender columns soared upward and burst into leaf. The Gothic Revival was a movement that sought a return to past values of beauty and craftsmanship in an industrializing world. The attention paid to materials and techniques fed into the Arts and Crafts movement and onwards into Art Nouveau. The Oxford Museum foreshadows the intertwining of this impulse with new building technologies and new scientific ways of ordering and understanding the world. In the Oxford Museum the authority of history predominates. Towards the end of the century this balance is struck with greater and greater subjectivity and licence. The museum project, with its remit of public education, exemplifies art and architecture’s role as vehicles for national and institutional values.

Aestheticism and Whistler’s Peacock Room (1876–7) One of the key impulses of nineteenth-century design reform to feed into the Art Nouveau movement was the desire to dissolve the divisions between different art forms. This grew, in part, from within the Gothic Revival. Ruskin and later William Morris (1834–96) wrote evocatively of the Middle Ages as a period when there was no division between art and craft. This principle became a cornerstone of the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau. A parallel stimulus

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for this expansive definition of art was the widespread admiration for Japanese art that spread through Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ceramics from East Asia had been entering Europe since the sixteenth century, brought by Dutch traders. For a number of centuries Japan had elected to restrict nearly all trade with the wider world. In 1853 America used the threat of military force to coerce the Japanese to open ports to American merchants. With the opening up of commerce, Japanese goods began to make their way around the world triggering a swell of public fascination with these new artefacts (Weisberg, Bonsdorff & Selkokari 2016; Put 2000; Weisberg 1975). The Japanese aesthetic tradition was largely unfamiliar to European and American audiences. Artists, in particular, were captivated by the new principles of beauty it represented. In contrast to the long dominance of the classical tradition within Europe, Japanese artists had followed a different path, disregarding the pursuit of illusionistic perspective in favour of the close observation of life and nature, alongside sensitivity to form and medium. The sophistication evident in Japanese works on paper, ceramics and textiles challenged the European hierarchy of the arts, which traditionally regarded such media as lower status. Interest in Japanese art ranged from an in-depth and scholarly engagement with Japanese culture to the skimming off of a few tropes, such as the use of black and gold lacquer work (Ono 2003; Lambourne 2005). In contrast to Academic painting, with its emphasis on narrative drama, the classical rendering of large figures, Japanese art offered an alternative vision of beauty, which homed in on the salient points of outline, detail and delicacy of handling. Japanese prints and ceramics represented the careful integration of line, form and colour to carry the idea and signify artistry of the master. Rather than grand historical narratives, details of nature or everyday life were represented as themes. In delicately painted and glazed porcelain, jewel-like enamels and intricately printed and painted silks, works of applied art appeared whose beauty represented a challenge to the academic distinction between fine and applied art. Appreciation for such works provided a foundation for a new mode of appreciating art: art for its own sake, rather than as a vehicle for political or moral messages. This stance of ‘art for art’s sake’ became known in Britain and America as the Aesthetic Movement and in continental Europe as Symbolism. One key contrast between the Arts and Crafts movement and Aestheticism lay in the degree to which art reform was married to moral or political goals. Realistically or otherwise, Arts and Crafts reformers desire to bring beauty to all classes of society, through a return to hand making that simplified and democratized the production of material culture. This ethos will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. The aesthete, in contrast, pursued beauty as an end in itself and the results of this pursuit were often within the reach of only the wealthiest elites. The aesthete was an individual sensitive to the nuances of line and colour, aware of the innate qualities of different mediums and the resonances between objects and their environment. That both these impulses were to feed into Art Nouveau explains its paradoxical nature, with different practitioners striking different balances between their pursuit of beauty and their vision for a new world. The emphasis on hand making, on the one hand, and on aesthetic refinement, on the other hand, ensured that the majority of examples we will consider remained well beyond the purse of the common man or woman, whatever the principles of its makers. The decoration of the Oxford Museum was supported by public subscription. The endeavour was to make it an object of aesthetic as well as scientific education. This represented belief in the power of art to elevate the general population. The pursuit of beauty was in many ways a direct response to the tumult and filth of the modern industrial world. The degraded material culture of the industrial city was directly linked to the spiritual degradation of its working population.

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Sociological writing drew public attention to the dirt and squalor to which the population was subjected. In the increasingly crowded cities, evidence of poverty was unavoidably visible, even if many chose to ignore it. As these conditions pervaded and accompanied industrialization around the world, so it became a theme in literature from Charles Dickens (1812–70), to Émile Zola (1840–1902), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). The return to preindustrial nature, as proposed by Ruskin, was one remedy. Its alternative was an individual escape from ugliness itself, rather than the causes of ugliness, through contemplation of beauty. ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ (Wilde 2000 (1892): 202). Literatures sprang up that offered advice and affirmation of the value of this new intensity of aesthetic engagement. Walter Pater’s (1839–93) work is a key example of this. His writings reflected the influence of Ruskin, alongside French and Belgian Symbolist poets and German philosophers (Hext 2016). His work on the Renaissance was marked by a synthesis of scholarship and a lively exploration of the experience of the encounter with the art. The conclusion encapsulated his philosophical position as an aesthete and atheist. He reflected that science had revealed the matter of life as a set of physical processes housed within the body and between the body and its environment (Yannis 2010). At the same time, the value of this brief life was to be found in the stimulation of the mind and the inner life. The highest source of sustenance for this inner life was to be found, according to Pater, in ‘art and song’. Sensitivity to this encounter is the difference between a life lived fully and a life merely slept through: It is with this moment, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off – that continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves. (Pater 1873: 195–6) The fragmented grammar of this quote mirrors the attempt to grasp the ephemerality of the aesthetic encounter. What it indicates is a new engagement with the existential dimensions of perception that located the meaning of life and the making of the self in moments of such perception. The Art Nouveau movement sought not simply new art to reflect a new age, it was new art for a world that needed art like never before, to provide these moments of connection and meaning. The Peacock Room by the expatriate American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834– 1903) exemplifies the lofty ambitions of the directions the new art was to take (Plate  1). It synthesized a range of different forms to create a total aesthetic encounter. The creation of whole interiors to frame particular works of art spoke to the sensibility of the elite art-lover. The room was modelled within a South Kensington town house, in an area of West London built to escape the degradation of the districts to the east. The Peacock Room was a work of art in itself, designed to house Whistler’s painting, Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, alongside the collection of Japanese and Chinese ceramics amassed by his patron, Frederick Leyland (1831–92) (Merrill 1998). Leyland represented a typical patron of the new art movement: a wealthy self-made man, shipping magnate and art collector (Dakers 1999:140–4). Leyland originally commissioned the architect Thomas Jeckyll (1827–81) to remodel the interiors of his new London house in 1876 (Weber & Arbuthnott 2003: 190–7). Jeckyll was a well-established designer, particularly known for his work in the Japanese style. Jeckyll brought Whistler in on the project to design the colour scheme for the dining room, which was to display Rose and Silver, which Leyland

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already owned. Jeckyll succumbed to a bout of mental illness, near the end of the project, and Whistler undertook to finish the dining room. The core arrangement of the room and its tracery of shelves for the ceramics were Jeckyll’s work. Also, already in place were the antique leather wall-hangings that were to form a backdrop to the ceramics. The wall-hangings and ceramics were all sourced for Leyland by the Jewish-Dutch dealer and collector, Murray Marks, who had also helped Whistler and other artists build up their own collections of Japanese art (Anderson 2015: 131–9). The room represented, in its original guise, a fusion of the modern and the antique, displaying the taste and wealth of the patron. Without consulting Leyland, Whistler took it upon himself to completely rework the design. He had no experience as an interior designer, but experimented as he went along. Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (Freer Gallery, 1863–5) was a work in which the subject was secondary to the beauty of the composition and colour relations (Figure  1.3). The figure at the heart of the painting is not really its subject, as is indicated by the title’s emphasis on colour composition. Instead, the subject is beauty: both the women’s beauty – the model was the then-famous Anglo-Greek beauty Christine Spartali – and the beauty of the silk kimono she wears and artefacts which surround her (Ono 2003: 62–4). The painting was loosely painted, so that the actions of the brush on the canvas surface remain visible, they never cohere into an realistic depiction of what they represent. The soft layers of paint help to evoke the idea of impressions and sensations, rather than analysis of forms and surfaces. The visibility of brush marks on the canvas draws attention to the painting as an art object, rather than an illusionistic image. Beauty and art dominate: the artistry of the anonymous Japanese craftsmen behind

FIGURE 1.3  James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1863–5, Freer Gallery, Washington). Oil on canvas, 201.5 cm × 116.1 cm © The Washington Post/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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the objects represented is celebrated as well as the artistry of painter who has arranged and captured their beauty. This principle was extended to the Peacock Room, to which Whistler gave the title Harmony in Blue and Gold, explicitly presenting the room as a work of art (Huxtable 2013). The original leather wall-hangings had been embossed with red flowers, which Whistler was concerned clashed with Rose and Silver. He painstakingly painted them over in yellow all around the room, but did not stop there. His experiments with colour combinations and his pursuit of the perfect, aesthetic environment for his painting led, in the end, to his entirely painting over the valuable antique leather. The new interior that emerged was an exquisite Japanese lacquer box writ large, dominated by gold leaf peacocks on a ground of deep, dark blue, with accents of glowing green. The pendants of the Tudor-style ceiling, originally designed by Jeckyll, were augmented by new glass lanterns by Whistler, creating an exotic effect. Their artificial light caught the sheen of the gold leaf surfaces and the lacquer-like varnish applied to painted surfaces. The device of the peacocks arrayed across the window shutters was picked up in a feather motif that Whistler carried over onto the wainscoting and across the ceiling. The room created a significant public stir, with Whistler inviting friends and art critics to see it. He had, however, neglected to secure agreement from Leyland for the transformation of the room and the significant extra cost. Nor did he get permission to open his house to the public. The resulting disagreement destroyed what had been a long-standing artist-patron relationship and friendship between the two men (Merrill 1998: 251–4). The story of the peacock room contains many features that foreshadow issues that will arise in other case studies through this book. It was a story with pronounced transnational dimensions. Whistler was a cosmopolitan figure: an American, who lived in St Petersburg and London during his childhood, and moved to London permanently at the age of twenty-one. He was equally at home in Paris and exhibited there as well as in London. The Chinese and Japanese artefacts he admired were traded in London, via Holland, by Marks. Leyland’s fortune was based on steam shipping freight through the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic between Liverpool and Boston (Duval 1986). On Leyland’s death in 1892, his London house was sold, and the contents broken up. By this means the American industrialist and art collector Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) purchased first Rose and Silver and, a few years later, the entire Peacock Room from a London dealer in 1904. The room was shipped over to Freer’s mansion in Detroit, where it was reassembled alongside his already substantial collection of both East Asian and Middle Eastern ceramics and European art (Merrill 1998: 15–16). On Freer’s own death in 1919 it formed part of his substantial bequest to the American people and was moved and reassembled as part of the Freer Gallery of Art in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. The mobility of the piece, despite its scale, reveals the essentially transnational nature of the art world. Rose and Silver was exhibited in Paris and London before it was bought by Leyland and it later travelled on to Detroit and then Washington. The ceramics in the Peacock Room travelled from China to London and were dispersed on Leyland’s death, to be replaced by alternative ceramics collected by Freer. This reflected Freer’s regular art collecting trips across Europe. It also reflected the role of dealers, such as Marks and the dealership that dispersed Leyland’s collection, in shifting artworks around to where they would be most appreciated and secure the best prices. Understanding of this mobility is not incidental to understanding the Art Nouveau movement. The forms of art and design explored were attempts to reflect the diversity and complexity of a world of continuous exchange and would not have been possible without the array of sources, materials and ideas in circulation.

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Nature, science and art and Liljefors’s Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows (1888) The themes we have considered earlier are drawn together in the final case study of this chapter. Bruno Liljefors (1860–1939) serves to introduce us to fluid synthesis of varied influences that increasingly marked fin-de-siècle culture. His work blended the painterly techniques of French Naturalism learnt in Paris, with diverse influences from the international domain. His work can be seen to address national audiences through its focus on native, Swedish nature. At the same time, he drew on influences and ideas from French and Japanese art, which he worked on as part of an international community of artists. His approach also drew on a new scientific understanding of the natural world that transcended nationhood to reflect on universal principles governing the reproduction and survival of life. Paris had a global pre-eminence during this period as a place to buy and study art. The authority of the Salon, the annual exhibition of the academy, with a jury selecting the entrants and awarding medals, was the foremost arbiter of artistic achievement worldwide. Artists from around the world gathered to study at the academy and numerous private studios that surrounded it, all seeking to gain acceptance in the Salon (Milner 1988; Wilson 2002). The artistic approaches of Naturalism and Impressionism, developed in France, were disseminated worldwide, evolving into new forms in different cultural contexts. These forms were, in turn, recirculated in international exhibitions back in Paris and elsewhere. Liljefors specialized early in the depiction of animals and birds. His education was typical of many artists of the period who supplemented study in their home countries with periods of study in other art centres. This was so common as to make professional success in the art world more or less dependent on such experience. In 1882–3 he left Sweden to study animal painting in Düsseldorf, Germany. He later travelled on to Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and Pompeii, before making his way to Paris. He also spent a number of summers in the French artist colony of Grez-sur-Loing, alongside an international group of Nordic, Scottish, Irish and American artists (Herlitz 2013). This pattern of time spent in Paris and trips to Italy and to rural retreats was followed by a great many artists who balanced study of the art of the past with study of the natural world. Liljefors’s time in France introduced him to the freer brush-work and engagement with light, atmosphere and place that characterized French Naturalism. Naturalism rejected the polished ‘grand manner’ of classical academic painting. The approach ranged from a new emphasis on landscape and the effects of light, weather and seasons, often captured en plein air (outdoors), to a focus on new subjects, particularly scenes of everyday life (Thompson 2012; Weisberg 1992). Though there was much that was oppositional between the emphasis on reality within Naturalism and the often-fantastic visions of Art Nouveau, there were also important points of contact. Naturalism was a new way of painting, not dependent on the cultural authority of history. Its premise was artistic engagement with the realities of the contemporary world. In this way it foreshadowed growing commitment to a desire to reflect new ways of seeing. Paris was also where Liljefors encountered Japanese graphic arts, which were transforming visual culture in France as they were in Britain. The close observation of the natural world and contemporary life represented in Japanese prints seemed to offer an antidote to the formulaic, nature of academic art (Hokenson 2004: 57–108). European culture had traditionally treated nature as a subject to be consumed. This impulse manifested in a range of approaches to depicting the land as owned or discovered property and the scientifically observed zoological

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or botanical illustration. Another trend was the Romantic landscape and sentimental animal pictures that aimed to stimulate an emotional response. Understanding of the natural world and the place of humanity in relation to it went through a paradigm shift with the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859. The theory of natural selection represented a more contingent picture of humanity’s place in the natural world. This new picture was of a complex and integrated ecology in constant flux, no longer governed by a divine plan. New forms of visual art were needed to reflect this complexity and instability. Japanese graphic arts seemed to marry precision of observation with an expressive vitality missing in conventional scientific drawing. Liljefors’s work sought to retain accuracy in his depiction of animals and to invest this depiction with a fuller sense of each creature’s integration in its environment and the cycles of life of which it was part. The depiction of habitat was enriched with the qualities of the real, captured moment, which was the legacy of French Naturalism. To this was added the intimacy and informality of Japanese art, as well as the new compositional flexibility it offered. The principle of fidelity to nature was important to Liljefors, who was an experienced hunter and spent a great deal of time observing and tracking the birds and animals he represented. To increase accuracy, he also made reference to dead specimens as well as employing a camera to capture images of birds in flight (Ellenius 1985: 155). Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrow (Gothenburg Museum of Art, 1888) (Plate  2) is a composite image in which different paintings of different dimensions are collected within a specially designed gold frame. This breaks emphatically from the European tradition of illusionistic landscapes that could be viewed as windows onto the scene they depicted. Inspired by the focus on the microcosm of the natural world represented in Japanese art, Nordic artists like Liljefors experimented with the depiction of small details, birds, marsh flowers, invested these with a wider resonance and meaning (von Bonsdorff 2016: 224–30). Unlike earlier European series paintings, in which the canvases usually conform to a common scale and theme, this composite is intentionally varied. There is no narrative or spatial coherence linking the different panels of the piece, beyond the theme of native Swedish birds. At the same time, the tones and shapes of the separate panels are connected, linking season with season, day with night and predator with prey. The panel of sparrows, roosting on bare twigs in twilight is the one most clearly indebted to Japanese graphic art. The stark lines of the branches against the sky punctuated by the nearsilhouettes of the birds, their plumage puffed up for insulation for the night plays between twodimensional and three-dimensional representation. The line between ornithological illustration and decorative art is blurred without compromising either. The rounded border of the sparrows’ panel also breaks with pictorial conventions and suggestively echoes the shape of the setting sun inferred from the blush in the sky behind the birds. A similar disruption of the convention of the picture frame appears with the ‘escape’ of one of the butterflies from the Shrike panel onto the surrounding, gilded frame. The development of artist-designed frames was a crucial facet of Art Nouveau art that enabled artists to convey the idea of the art work as an art object and an experience of viewing curated by the artist. Allan Ellenius has commented on Liljefors’s interest in theories of protective colouration and camouflage as a survival trait and a key dimension of evolutionary theory. The development of such evasive strategies by prey birds gave the advantage to those whose colouration and caution allowed them to breed successfully. In this theory the creature is so intimately connected to its environment that it comes as close as it can to becoming indistinguishable from it. The central panel depicting the thrush on its nest exemplifies this most of all; the bird is literally hard to

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make out, its dappled breast and brown back sinking into the hedgerow that conceals its nest. In this ecological vision of the world all life, great and small, was intimately connected to its environment and to each other (Ellenius 1985). The largest, lower panel, the hawk seizing a sparrow, similarly reflects Liljefors’s understanding of the natural world as dominated by the struggle for survival. ‘The Struggle for Existence’ was the title of the third chapter of Darwin’s Of the Origin of Species and this reflected a fundamental challenge to the idea of nature as benign and divinely ordered. Scenes of predation were a theme Liljefors returned to throughout his career. In part this was a desire to capture the dynamism of the moment of attack. The fleeting and the timeless are brought together in the work, which was a concern shared by many contemporaries. Such moments were the points upon which the competing strategies of prey and predator turned in the ongoing competition to survive and reproduce. As a hunter, Liljefors was himself part of the cycle of life and death, in which prey and predator were pitted against one another. In Liljefors’s work the encounter with the predator was not a moment of pathos or a human allegory of fragile innocence, as it had been in earlier nineteenth-century nature painting. Its inclusion in the collection of panels under discussion reflected his understanding of it as an inextricable part of life. This vision is not that of a linear and orderly system, nor of a hierarchy, but of a dynamic assemblage of interconnecting elements. Each creature, each environment is distinct, yet they are also all connected in the cycles of day and night, seasonal change, life and death. Nature as multifaceted but interconnected and marked by infinite variety and a common drive for life connects this work to the new philosophies of this period. The form of presentation, the multi-panelled work, that broke pictorial conventions without departing from an emphasis on reality, can be understood not merely as a novel decorative device but as an attempt to capture this sense of interrelationship. The painting was bought by Pontus and Göthilda Fürstenberg, Jewish art collectors based in Gothenburg. Their wealth was derived largely from the banking fortune of Göthilda’s father. They supported a significant number of Swedish artists, through buying their work and subsidizing their living expenses for study in Paris. They collected mainly French and Swedish artists and their collection functioned as one of the first places many Swedish artists could see the new developments in art. Their intension was to promote the development of Swedish art, enriched by new international ideas, and made available to the Swedish public through the donation of their collection to Gothenburg in 1902 (Nordström 2015). The Fürstenbergs exemplify the importance of wealthy Jewish patrons to the development of new directions in art and design, which will continue to emerge through this book. Liljefors’s painting represents a moment of synthesis and transition, a harbinger of the increasingly experimental direction soon to be taken in the art world. These new directions would be called different things in different places and in different languages, but the emphasis was consistently on the idea of a new style for a new age, a break with the past and engagement with new ideas. As we shall see in the next chapter, the break with the past was not total, far from it. But the Art Nouveau movement drew its primary authority from the principle of meeting the needs of the present day and of drawing widely and eclectically on whatever sources were felt to best meet those needs.

2 A new style for a new age Innovations in form, materials and ornament It is of the essence of ornament that in its products the artistic volition of a people finds its purest and most unobscured expression. WILHELM WORRINGER, ABSTRACTION AND EMPATHY, 1907 (1953: 51)

As the end of the nineteenth century approached, there was an acceleration in experimentation in design. The search for the ‘right’ historical style to express the character of the nation and to meet the needs of modern society began to erode in favour of a search for something wholly new. The approach of a new century and the availability of new materials added to this impulse to rethink expectations of design and how it met modern needs. Architects also began to think in terms of how their design would affect the individual user: their experience of moving through a building. The relationship between form and ornament was widely discussed. New attention was paid to what the building was intended to do, the activities it was to house and the materials it was constructed from. Released from the strictures of historic precedents, ornament and the aesthetic arrangement of façades, interiors and objects could take on any form the designer could imagine. New manufacturing techniques had expanded the range of ornamental forms and the different ways these could be applied and reproduced. This freedom brought with it the necessity of identifying new guiding rationale (Picon 2014: 73–5, 91). One of the most prominent of these guiding principles was the idea that the relationship of form and ornament might be modelled on that of plants or other natural organisms. In addition to this, there was a focus on the expression of identity, particularly national identity. Art Nouveau was born of this culture of experiment: the rapid circulation and adaptation of new ideas. There was very little consensus but, as we shall see in the case studies that follow, there were common principles in circulation and points of connection between seemingly disparate endeavours. The geography of the case studies: Barcelona, Spain; Budapest, Hungary; Buffalo, New York State and Nancy, France reflect the simultaneity of invention and innovation across multiple art centres. Though Gaudí, Sullivan and Gallé are certainly ‘big names’ in Art Nouveau, it is not my intention to present these works as ‘the most important’. Those chosen reveal the engagement with local traditions in tandem with the international circulation of ideas. The initial emphasis on architecture in this chapter reflects the degree to which much of the discourse on the new style developed within the architectural arena. Reflection on the

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development of schools of design recurs across the case studies and experiments within the arena of manufacturing becomes the focus in the final quarter of the chapter and will be returned to in Chapter 4.

Gaudí’s Güell Palace: Form, materials and experience Antoni Gaudí is now one of the most prominent names associated with Art Nouveau. The rise and fall and rise again of his professional profile reflects the fortunes of the movement as a whole. Initial, international esteem for his work ebbed in the twentieth century, when it appeared out of step with the pared back, standardized forms of Modernism. He was rediscovered as a hero of Catalan and world architecture in the 1960s and 1970s and the restoration of his work in Barcelona since then has made him one of the city’s main tourist attractions (Bergós Massó 1972; Cirici 1978). In many ways, the success of his architecture today and the enthusiasm it excites mirrors the impact it had when it was originally built. The public discussions, competitions and experiments of the mid-nineteenth century had opened up the question of what forms modern architecture and design should take. Though English theorists like Ruskin and Morris carried a lot of sway, parallel debates were taking place in architecture and design schools across Europe and America. Everywhere, local concerns intersected with international currents, so that developments cannot be understood as radiating out from a single centre, but from multiple centres. Barcelona was one of these centres. This was where Gaudí undertook his architectural education and where European historicism blended with Catalan cultural nationalism. The Renaixença (Catalan Renaissance) referred to the rebirth of Catalan-language culture and a championing of Catalan political and economic interests within the kingdom of Spain (Llobera 2004: 64–81). The rapid industrial and economic development of Catalonia through the nineteenth century and the emergence of a mercantile elite with an independent outlook were also of huge importance in the development of art. Eusebi Güell was one of Gaudi’s principle patrons. His business interests financed an extensive engagement with art, culture and science in the city. He was a sponsor of the journal La Renaixença, which lay at the heart of national revival, and his patronage of Gaudí provided the bedrock for the architect’s early success. The wealth that underpinned this work was based substantially on Spanish colonial interests and the slave trade. Both Güell’s and his wife’s family made their fortunes in the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. Güell’s father’s fortune was made in Cuba in the 1830s, based on sugar plantations and slave ownership (González & Lacuesta 2013: 24–7). Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886. His father-in-law was Antonio López, later the first Marquess of Comillas, for whom Gaudí also worked directly. López’s fortunes were also derived from the slave trade and slave-worked plantations. Eusebi sat on the board of his father-in-law’s bank, Banco Hispano Colonial, which had been founded in 1876 to develop trade and industrial opportunities in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines and fund military efforts to resist the Cuban independence movement. He was also on the board of the General Philippines Tobacco Company and the shipping line the Spanish Transatlantic Company, both also run by his father-in-law (Surwillo 2014: 149–52). So, though Güell’s substantial wealth also rested on local textile factories in Catalonia, it cannot be separated from the context of Spanish and European colonial exploitation that spanned the globe. The Güell Palace was the mansion Gaudí built for Güell between 1886 and 1890. In this building it is possible to trace the connections between innovation and tradition and between

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the local and the international that mark Gaudí’s work and which go on to mark Art Nouveau architecture in all its variety. The palace was not built in one of the new, fashionable middleclass suburbs, but in the heart of the old town of Barcelona. This decision by Güell placed him in the neighbourhood of the old aristocratic palaces and in proximity to the medieval and baroque architecture of the old city. Gaudí’s design was a response to the character and challenges of the site and the heritage of the city. The global sources of the family’s wealth are signalled through the use of imported woods that augment the use of local materials. Inventive engagement with the function of the building was one of the central tenets of the new architecture. The Güell Palace was the home of a leading figure in the economic, political and cultural life of Barcelona. It was Güell’s place of business and the platform upon which his social presence in the city played out. This meant it was required to represent him and his family, their wealth and cultural capital, as well as function as a space for accommodating business and political meetings and large social gatherings (Lahuerta 2003: 66–84). It was also to function as a space to accommodate the spiritual and creative lives of a cultured and musical family. The nature of the Art Nouveau interior as a vehicle for self-expression and creative fulfilment will re-emerge as a key theme within this book and is explored in further depth in Chapter 11. The location of the building was, in some ways, not propitious for its many performative functions. The narrow street, tight urban plot and building regulations confined its scope. The street was known for its rowdy nightlife and regular disturbances (González & Lacuesta 2013: 81). The impregnable façade that the palace presents to the street with a stone frontage and deep-set, latticed or barred windows, is a response to this environment. The arrangement made for carriages, whereby visiting carriages would stop, not in front of the palace but within it, was an innovative solution to the building’s rather antagonistic relationship with the immediate neighbourhood. The route of the visitor into the palace and the journey they would make within was carefully orchestrated and central to the building’s function as the stage for Güell’s self-presentation. This captures one of the central traits of Art Nouveau: that it was designed for experience, not simply a visual style. The dramatic and sensory choreography of the building was a key feature. The visitor’s carriage would approach the Güell Palace down the straight-but-narrow cobbled street, past its taverns and brothels. It would then pass under one of the dramatic, deep-cut arches that dominate the ground floor of the façade, with visitors perhaps catching a glimpse of the energized swirls of the wrought-iron gates and sculptural, ironwork crest of Catalonia, surmounted by a phoenix, symbol of rebirth (Figure 2.1). Within the building, the carriage would pass into an internal hall that was a private extension of the street. Running on wooden cobbles to minimize noise-pollution through the house, the carriage would stop within building (Figure 2.2). From here, the visitors could alight from their carriages or horses and proceed up the carpeted stairs in the middle of the hall, transitioning into a more conventional interior environment. The dominant material was stone: light grey granite from the Catalan Pyrenees and dark grey Garraf stone from the Güell estate, which tied the building to the region and the family, as well as creating a cool, sombre ambiance (González & Lacuesta 2013: 117). The overall footprint of the palace was not large, particularly when it came to accommodating gatherings of up to 200 people. Gaudí rose to this challenge by perambulating guests around the central axis of the building, as they made their way onwards and upwards towards the central hall, creating a more protracted experience and enhancing the sense of scale. At the top of the first flight of stairs guests arrived at a large stone-clad landing, leading off on one side to Güell’s study. This meant that visitors with matters of business to discuss were

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FIGURE 2.1  Antoni Gaudí, Güell Palace (Barcelona, 1886–90) © Mark Williamson/ Getty Images.

conducted without delay into his presence. Social visitors did not linger here, but instead headed on, round and up the next staircase, back towards the front of the house. The colour and variety of materials subtly increased as the visitor ascended. From the grey stone and dark ironwork of the carriage hall, a crimson carpet led up to the more varied greys, red and orange stone of the checkerboard marble floor of the hall above. Ironwork details were augmented with warm, walnut wood. Further on, up the main stair, the visitor’s eye might be caught by the pale glow of the honey-coloured eucalyptus wood of the coffered ceiling. Gaudí used a gradually extended palette of colours and materials to nuance and animate the visitor’s journey towards the heart of the building. Anxiety about ‘false’ decorative elements had become a common cause for concern among commentators on design reform. Through the nineteenth century the repertoire of cheaper alternatives to expensive forms had expanded. Many new techniques and materials had been developed to replicate luxury elements of design using cheaper, modern alternatives: from cast gypsum or zinc to imitate carved stone, to all manner of veneers, plating and trompe l’oeil techniques that imitated expensive wood, metal or marble. It was dismay at this process that motivated Ruskin’s championing of real stone carving, which we have already noted. Gaudí was one of the first architects to respond to this conceptual challenge with a completely new attitude to the relationship between form and ornament. He placed supporting elements at the heart of the aesthetic scheme, celebrating its functionality rather than concealing it. The Güell Palace exemplifies how deeply rooted this integration of aesthetics and structure was in his practice. It was not a modern brick or iron-frame building, dressed in medieval stone garb. Stone, wooden and iron beams all played an interlocking role in both its construction

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FIGURE 2.2  Antoni Gaudí, Palau Güell, detail of entrance hall (Barcelona, 1886–90) © Michael Pasdzior/Getty Images.

and aesthetic. The elegance of the polished stone interiors incorporated visible cast-iron ceiling beams whose structural role was abundantly clear, rivets and all (González & Lacuesta 2013: 137). Gaudí managed the calculations of stresses with such precision that he was able to build in ways that had never been attempted before, requiring every element to simultaneously fulfil its functional and aesthetic role in the design. As González and Lacuesta have stressed in their indepth study of the Güell Palace, this achievement is also testament to remarkably attentive and skilled practice on the part of the entire building team, who succeeded in following his precise and unfamiliar plans (2013: 35). As visitors reached the principle floor, they entered a series of interlinked reception rooms. Again, Gaudí enhanced real and perceived space by the addition of a balcony that ran the length of the facade. The varied arrangements of columns and arches animated the space. Gaudí’s arches are another distinctive feature of his architecture that reflect the originality of his approach. Parabolic and catenary arches provided structural support. Their novel profile was simultaneously evocative of the gothic arch of Catalan medieval architecture, while being demonstratively ahistorical, and therefore modern. The highlight of the theatrical journey that Gaudí composed through the palace culminated at the central hall, a square, double-height room with a tall, parabolic vaulted ceiling (Plate  3). This was the principal social space in the place, intended for large receptions, musical performances and, through the addition of a concealed altar alcove, capable of transformation into a private chapel. The sense of scale was extended through the vertiginous height of the upper galleries and dome, and through pierced openings in the wall linking the hall to surrounding rooms. The

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palette of different materials and the richness of ornament reached its peak here (González & Lacuesta 2013: 178–93). The crescendo of artistry in the handling of colour, light and surfaces was appropriate for a room that was intended to function as the aesthetic and spiritual heart of the palace. Art was integrated into the space in the form of painted wall panels by Aleix Clapés (1850–1920), with ethereal figures in acts of piety. These panels were set into the corners of the hall, with the scenes wrapping around these corners, defying the conventions of traditional canvas painting (Lahuerta 2003:89). The altar was set into an alcove, which also provides one wall of the niche containing the organ. The alcove was concealed by a pair of doors, featuring Maracaibo boxwood, shell, horn and painted panels of the twelve apostles in oil on copper by Clapés. When opened, they lie flat back against the wall, dramatically revealing a space for an altar, lined completely in polished brass panelling. Throughout his design, Gaudí carefully orchestrated the experience of being within the palace. Through changing levels and orientations, through openings that revealed partial views or diffused light from other spaces, he created a sensorially dynamic space. On a multisensory level, these openings allowed for the flow of air, but also the flow of sound, so that the playing of the organ, or of any instruments, would float between rooms from unseen sources. This early building by Gaudí reveals the seamless integration of rigorous rationalization of building structure with a deep engagement with the phenomenology of the building as a psychoemotional experience. His designs offer the opportunities for intense, aesthetic encounter and moments of transcendence that Pater had identified as the moments that gave life meaning. The Güell Palace is also an early example of the new directions that were to be pursued by Art Nouveau art and design more generally, as a departure from historical conventions allowed designers to create new forms of aesthetic experience. Such forms also presuppose the existence of the sensitive, aesthetically attuned subject, who would notice and respond to this careful composition of colours and materials, space, sound and light.

Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts: The invention of national ornament One of the conditions of the development of such aesthetically attuned individuals was the provision of educational opportunities with which they might hone their taste. The Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, the National Hungarian Applied Arts Association and its magazine, Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Applied Art), and the Hungarian Royal National School of Arts and Crafts represent the type of new institutions and societies founded to educate taste on matters of art and design in the late nineteenth century. The museum building in Budapest exemplifies the transition from the use of eclectic, historicist forms to the invention of new forms and ornament (Ács 2002: 201–4). The building was funded by public subscription as bourgeois, educated Hungarians sought ways of expressing their national identity and asserting their cultural values and economic presence (Sisa 2016: 22). Ödön Lechner (1845– 1914) and Gyula Pártos (1845–1916) were already in their late forties, with solid architectural careers behind them when they designed the combined museum and art school. The building signalled a pronounced shift in their practice towards new ideas emerging in the field. After a series of nationalist uprisings, Hungary had succeeded in gaining a partial separation from the Austrian Empire in 1867. As part of the nation-building project, researchers across a

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range of disciplines explored the history and origins of the Hungarian people. The dominant theories of the day traced the nation back to the arrival of the Magyar people from east (Switzer 2003 and 2018). The cultural context for the focus on new forms and ornament in design came from these fields of ethnography and linguistics. Hungarian language and culture were understood at the time to have its origins in Central Asia and therefore to have a kinship with nations such as Turkey and Persia. Variations on this theory – known as Turanism – postulated kinship stretching as far as India and China (Alofsin 2006: 128–9). This offered a suitably marked point of contrast to the Germanic culture of the Austrians and framed Hungary as defiantly, culturally distinct and even non-Western. This thinking filtered into the arena of art and design, where elements of Asian and Middle Eastern art and design could be employed to signal at this heritage. Ethnographic research into Hungarian folk art also provided a rich body of visual material through which to express Hungarian identity (Rampley 2013: 19). This turn towards folk sources parallels the turn to the medieval craftsman in the writings of Ruskin and Morris, and was replicated across many regions seeking to express national identity. Lechner’s interests were drawn in this direction and through the 1880s he began to incorporate folk-inspired ornament into his designs. His friendship with Vilmos Zsolnay was also a key factor in his new design thinking. Zsolnay’s father had founded a ceramics factory in the 1860s, and Lechner had been using Zsolnay’s architectural ceramics since the late 1880s (Sisa 2014: 12). The Zsolnay factory was a successful business that relied on both aesthetic and technical innovation (Csenkey & Steinert 2002; Hárs 1997). Vilmos’s sisters, Julia and Terez, were both designers for the firm. They studied ceramic art in Vienna, Berlin and London, as well as amassing their own collection of Hungarian ceramics. Through the 1870s and 1880s the Zsolnay factory produced a range of ceramic goods based on a wide range of historical, Islamic and folk-art sources of inspiration. At the same time, the firm also developed a new form of engineered ceramic, known as pyrogranite, that could be used in architecture as a cladding material (Mattyasovszky-Zsolnay, Vecsey & Abelard 1997: 1456–7). The advantages of this material were that it was long-lasting, weather resistant and versatile in both colours and form. This was particularly in demand as increased atmospheric pollution, resulting from industrialization, took a noticeable toll on many stone and plaster façades. Zsolnay and Lechner travelled to London together in 1889 and visited the South Kensington Museum. The National Hungarian Applied Arts Association based its plans for its museum on the South Kensington model, which integrated design school and museum into one institution (Ács 2002: 201). Traffic of interest and influence was not all one way, and examples of Hungarian folk art and of Zsolnay ceramics were purchased for South Kensington in 1873 and 1878 (Keserü 1990: 143). The rationale for the South Kensington model was the provision of exemplary objects in all media and from across time and around the world to educate both design students and the wider public. The British imperial apparatus was integral to sourcing all this material. This model was repeated across Europe in combined museums and schools of design that provided the foundations for the development of Art Nouveau. Nation-building was an international endeavour. Ideas of what nationhood meant and what attributes a national culture ought to manifest depended on international examples. Nationhood was performed in an international arena, through exhibitions and through the necessity of keeping up with rival nations. Lechner’s visit to South Kensington provided relevant inspiration for his museum design. He explored the ceramic collections there and – inspired by Turanist beliefs – he began to see the classical forms he had been using as essentially non-Hungarian. The building Lechner designed for the Budapest museum (1893–6) blended the arrangement of long

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galleries and open courts of the South Kensington museum with a rich ornamental-language, which made use of elements inspired by Indian, Persian and Hungarian folk art (Howard 199: 108–9, 121–2). The museum was one of many new public buildings in the rebuilt districts of Pest, which had been modelled on the boulevards of Paris as a fitting modern capital for the re-emerging nation of Hungary. Executed by Zsolnay to Lechner’s designs, it is the ornamental scheme for the building that has the decisive impact (Figure 2.3). In place of the muted colours of classicism, the building’s green and gold roof and ceramic panels of floral patterns between the stone piers of the wall prelude the exuberant decoration of the interior (Sisa 2014: 19–21; Moravansky 1998: 135–9). From the entrance portal beneath the minareted dome and through the two-storey, skylit central atrium, the interior was clad from floor to ceiling in glazed ceramic, including a ceiling of a vivid, golden yellow and white, with floral designs in red and green (Plate   4). For visitors, used to classical forms, the effect would have been dramatic and exotic. But the premise of the eastern origins of the Hungarian nation was widely enough known for it to make sense as an expression of Hungarian identity. The design blended references to local heritage, in the form of Hungarian textile art and statues in Hungarian national dress around the roofline, with its more far-flung influences. The cusped Mughal arches of the interior court and the sinuous curves of balconies and balustrades evoked forms somewhere between Mughal architecture and lacework. The prominence of textiles as the inspiration behind the architectural decoration of the building reflected the importance of textiles within the museum collection. As much as the past was still looked to in order to provide the forms and ornamental language to articulate the idea of national identity, FIGURE 2.3  Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos, Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest, 1893–6) © Lipnitzki/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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the building was a distinct departure from tradition. The supporting iron structure of the atrium roof was a visible part of the scheme. The cladding inside and out was a conspicuously colourful and modern material. Very much a nationalist project, the design and the building it housed depended on the international circulation of people, objects and ideas. The aesthetic experience of entering such a building and the novelty of new forms, ornament and colour were intended to frame an encounter with objects from all over the world.

Sullivan’s Guaranty Building: New ornament for new modes of construction New building technologies, like pyrogranite, facilitated new ornament, but they also demanded it. The principle that ornament should relate to and reflect the construction of the building was increasingly prevalent across architectural and design schools. This thinking was an extension of the logic of nineteenth-century theories of style common to English, German and Frenchlanguage architectural discourse. What they all professed was that the best architecture – and they differed on whether this was to be found in ancient Greece or the Middle Ages – was the result of the harmonious integration of building technologies, materials and the appropriate expression of the spirit of the nation. Thus, Greek architecture was understood to perfectly express the column and lintel construction technique, as well as the harmonious and ordered nature of Athenian culture and the Gothic to perfectly express the stone vaulting technology of the Middle Ages, as well as its affinity to Christian values. As the turn of the century approached, buildings were increasingly constructed in new ways out of new materials and thus, in an extension of the logic above, required new forms of expression. Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), working in the United States, was another architect who engaged decisively with this challenge. He played an important role in the development of the skyscraper: a new building type that was to transform urban environments worldwide in the twentieth century. Sullivan was celebrated as an early champion of Modernism and is well known for his statement, ‘form follows function’ (Morrison 1935; Pevsner 1936). But, though his bold engagement with the new possibilities of steel construction was significant, his work is better understood as a weaving together of various strands of thought, integrating the structural and the ornamental. We have already seen, in relation to the Oxford Museum, the ways that nature and the natural world were understood as models for conceptualizing the connection between internal structure and outward appearance. Sullivan engaged with the many variants on these ideas circulating in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. In America, the works of Ruskin were well known and chimed with already established ideas about nature and the American landscape (Weingarden 2009). Sullivan, like many American architects, also spent time in Paris. In his case, only a year in 1874, but there he extended his knowledge of French architectural theorists. He was particularly drawn to Victor Ruprich-Robert’s study of the botanical world as a source for new ornament (Bergdoll 2007) (Figure 2.4). The seemingly endless variety of forms found in the natural world – awareness of which had been dramatically increased by colonial explorations – offered rich source material to a profession facing an unprecedented increase in new building types requiring expression. Plants were diverse, but could be understood as governed by a single overall logic: they looked the

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FIGURE 2.4  Victor Ruprich-Robert, Flore ornementale (Paris: Dunod, Editeur, 1866): Plate 4.

way they did because it suited how and where they grew, based on the need for light, water and nutrients and the pursuit of growth and reproduction. Botany was a highly visual science which organized material based on classification by visible, functional characteristics. This visual information was increasingly available to the wider public, including school children. Sullivan presented the text book Gray’s School and Field Book of Botany (1857) as foundational in his understanding of the relationship of form to function (Sullivan 1956: 165). These new modes of visual knowledge spread readily into the arena of art and design. The practice of drawing from nature and understanding the structures and forms of plants became a central plank of design education across Europe. Examples include Christopher Dresser’s work on design and botanical drawing at the South Kensington schools and Ruprich-Robert’s teaching at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris. Sullivan was familiar with the work of both (Brett 1995 & 2017; Ghoche 2017). He commenced his own treatise on architectural ornament with a simple line drawing of a seed pod and a distillation of his principle that this was the root for all creation: THE GERM: THE SEAT OF POWER Above is drawn a diagram of a typical seed with two cotyledons. The cotyledons are specialized rudimentary leaves containing a supply of nourishment sufficient for the initial stage of development of the germ. The Germ is the real thing; the seat of identity. Within its delicate mechanism lies the will to power: the function which is to see and eventually to find its full expression in form. The seat of power and the will to live constitute the simple working idea upon which all that follows is based – as to efflorescence. (Sullivan 1924: frontispiece)

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Biological function and the drive for life and growth are presented as providing the underlying logic for all creative expression and identity. On his return to America, Sullivan worked within the context of the rapid regeneration of the city of Chicago following a catastrophic fire in 1871. Chicago was booming and, as part of that boom, a new infrastructure was needed. The fabric of the urban centre became denser and denser, as plots of land in the city centre rose in value. A key way to get more revenue out of each plot was to build higher. The height of buildings had previously been limited by the structural capacity of brick and how many stairs people could reasonably climb. Steel structures and electric elevators created new possibilities. As cities around the world grew, the solution of the high-rise building transformed urban environments. Historical dress no longer seemed appropriate for these new buildings. Chicago architects experimented with alternative languages of ornament, often utilizing terracotta tiles. There was a resurgence of interest in ceramic architectural cladding in the mid-nineteenth century. It was, as we have seen in relation to the Budapest museum, a versatile material and valued for being fire-resistant and cheaper and lighter than stone. It also offered a myriad of possibilities of forms and coloured glazes and was less prone to pollution-generated discolouration and damage (Stratton 1993). Between 1882 and 1895, Sullivan developed an architectural practice with Dankmar Adler that specialized in the construction of tall, commercial buildings. The Guaranty Building, in Buffalo, New York (1894), is an example of their combined approach and a building that encapsulated Sullivan’s vision of architecture and ornament (Figure 2.5). The project was funded by Hascal L. Taylor, a businessman who made his fortune first in heavy-duty wagons for industry and later as president of the Union Oil Company (Aronoff 2009). The exploitation of natural resources was another cornerstone of the wealth that funded the expressive and inventive forms of Art Nouveau. The building was designed to maximize rental yields, but also, as an example of high-status architecture in downtown Buffalo, to hold its own architecturally. The strength of the steel minimized the need for internal walls, creating more flexible internal arrangements for the offices on each floor. The U-shaped footprint allowed in light from three external walls of windows as well as from a light well within the centre. Even after the advent of electricity, natural light was important for creating the maximum amount of internal working space (Siry 1996). Central to Sullivan’s vision was the principle that the design should render the construction of the building legible. Its purpose was not merely to decorate the naked structure, but to express it. At street level there were shopfronts and grand entrances to the building. The ceiling height at this level was high and the exterior walls featured massive, plate glass display windows. These features let light into the ground-floor premises, while the piers between the windows and the arches of the portals were densely ornamented to create visual impact and appeal at street level. The floors above were offices. The uniformity of window arrangement floor by floor ensured that the only thing that differentiated the experience of working on the third or thirteenth floor was what button you pressed in the elevator. This uniformity of experience ensured a uniformly high yield for rents. The tripartite arrangement of the building distinguished a base-level that was seemingly more solid, the main body of the building that was vertical in orientation and the top floor that capped the design off with a horizontal emphasis and more decorative detail. This suggested a structural logic that people were used to. Steel structures of this height were still very much a novelty and there were concerns about whether it was safe to build so high. The Guaranty

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FIGURE 2.5  Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Building (New York, 1894) © Demerzel21/Dreamstime​.co​m.

Building was not broader at its base and there was no structural reason for it to be so, but the different visual treatment of the lower storeys communicated the idea of stability. The medium of terracotta granted Sullivan particular freedom when it came to the detail of his façades. The terracotta could be moulded into any shape at comparatively little cost, compared to the carving of stone. The ornamental language Sullivan developed was dismissed as a Romantic hangover by Modernist critics through the mid-twentieth century who admired his innovative use of new technologies but disregarded ornament as a relevant element in the designs (Weingarden 2009: 357–93). But for Sullivan and his contemporaries architectural ornament was integral to architectural design. There was no inherent contradiction in this period between the idea that form should reflect new structural realities, while ornament might speak of new or timeless cultural affinities. The wall surface of the Guaranty Building was clad with a carpet of shallow, moulded ornament formed by hundreds of tiles in a carefully composed scheme. Geometric and linear patterns were overlaid by foliate details, so that the wall surface itself appears to be bursting into leaf and bud. This burgeoning was not a chaotic collapse of architectural order overrun by nature. Rather, the leaves echoed the underlying form, curling up above window apertures and up and around the corners of each cornice. The natural logic of plants growing towards the sun mirrored in the upwards thrust of the skyscraper (Weingarden 2009: 273–7). Sullivan’s functionalism was founded on a moral and metaphysical engagement with the principle of natural laws underlying the whole of creation, as represented in the quote above (Etlin 2000). In ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered’, published in Lippincott’s Magazine in March 1896, Sullivan outlined his beliefs for the general reader. This is where his

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dictum ‘form follows function’ can be found. But it is embedded in a longer passage in which ‘function’ does not indicate the stripped-back efficiency of the engineer, but the holistic and harmonious purpose-driven logic of the natural world, indeed of the whole cosmos: It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. (Sullivan 1896: 408) His call for rational design was driven by a vision of a new form of architectural practice, in which each project was approached on the basis of its own character and requirements and took form in response to them. This was a vision Sullivan felt particularly apposite for America, a young nation, ready to seize the opportunities offered by this departure from academic convention and embrace the lessons of nature, he saw as already close to American hearts. when we know and feel that Nature is our friend, not our implacable enemy that an afternoon in the country, an hour by the sea, a full open view of one single day, through dawn, high noon, and twilight, will suggest to us so much that is rhythmical, deep, and eternal in the vast art of architecture, something so deep, so true, that all the narrow formalities, hard and fast rules, and strangling bonds of the schools cannot stifle it in us then it may be proclaimed that we are on the high road to a natural and satisfying art, an architecture that will live will be of the people, for the people, and by the people. (Sullivan 1896: 408) A rejection of the tenets of historicism was, as we see in the previous quote, more than just an aesthetically sound or rational decision. It opened up architecture to operate on a level of intuitive understanding, rather than academic knowledge and thereby become a democratic art form. Sullivan’s skyscrapers proposed a new rapprochement between industrially produced buildings and the spirit and soul of the individual. This highlights some of the many paradoxes to which the new art was required to respond. Mass production was increasingly an economic reality in both architecture and design. The hand-carved ornament of the Oxford Museum was one form of response: a rejection of the mechanically mass produced. The Hungarian Museum of Applied Art and the Guaranty Building were another: the industrial production of both structural and ornamental elements. The integrity of industrially produced ornamental features was maintained through the coherence of the design vision inside and out. Attention to detail and originality ensured that the buildings demanded to be understood as works of art. Gaudí’s Güell Palace blended hand-carved stone and hand-wrought ironwork with exposed metal joists. Despite their differences, these buildings were all marked by the goal of their designers to find a new architectural language to articulate the particular nature of each building they designed. Whether the resulting building was public or private, elite or democratic, industrially produced or handcrafted, the combination of architectural form and ornament was the arena in which the designer’s vision was set forth. There is no visual similarity between these three examples, but they share the same goal of seeking resolution to the problem of what architecture might be once the rules of the past were set aside. In this way they provide insight into the foundations of the Art Nouveau movement.

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Parallel developments in applied art Industrialization had dramatically affected how objects were made and who they were made for, as the global circulation of objects, individuals and ideas transformed the design sector in the nineteenth century. Prosperous middle- and upper-class families in rapidly growing cities across Europe and North America sought to furnish their homes with all sorts of new things and industries of production and retail sprung up to meet and foster those demands. Unlike the academy system in the fine arts, the design and manufacture of objects was an unregulated and chaotic arena. As more and more things flooded the market, designed by draftsmen in factories around the world, anxieties began to grow regarding the quality of these goods. Like manufactured goods of other sorts, design objects increasingly sought to reach consumers far beyond local markets. In this atmosphere of global competition, the issue of design quality had significant economic importance. The question of what constituted ‘good design’, however, was not a purely economic one. The quotes in the previous chapter regarding the connection between the style, faith, nature and the nation reflect a widely held understanding that the objects produced by a culture directly mirror the essence of that culture. This principle, when extrapolated, meant that a modern people, who failed to produce coherent design, could be regarded as culturally flawed. In this period cultures were defined as synonymous with nations, so the question of design reform was a national concern. Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. (Ruskin 1877: iii) Ruskin’s quote and the huge reach of his reputation by the end of the nineteenth century reflect the importance of the arts in the nation-building projects of the period. Ruskin’s concern was national character and esteem, not commercial competition, but responses to these issues often overlapped. As noted previously, rapid industrialization in Britain from the late eighteenth century onwards precipitated engagement with these issues earlier than occurred elsewhere. The quality of British design goods became a source of concern in the 1830s, as the rest of Europe started to industrialize and compete. In 1837 the Government School of Design was founded as an institution specifically focussed on the artistic education of those destined to be designers for industry, rather than fine artists. The design school system expanded across the world, as many countries recognized that, as part of an increasingly global economy, they too were facing or would be facing the same problems sooner or later. The question of design education was not simply a case of educating designers, but also of educating the public who, through their purchases, supported the manufacturing industries. International exhibitions and museums of applied art were equally important features in the new design reform landscape of the second half of the nineteenth century. Again, Britain provided an influential model, but the rapidity with which the model was taken up and adapted elsewhere is evidence of simultaneous concerns and thinking in many countries. World’s fairs exhibited design objects alongside cultural and technological material of all kinds. Museums of applied arts sprung up in the wake of such exhibitions, providing a permanent collection of exemplary applied art to inspire and educate the local workforce and the consumer-public.

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The latter decades of the nineteenth century were marked by the development of opportunities to study design in new craft schools and technical universities around the world. This was not the only path pursued by those concerned with improving standards of design. Manufacturing companies also began to commission new designs from artists and employ professional artists or architects as artistic directors. Art and design education, professional societies of designers and venues for the display and evaluation of applied art all provided the foundation for the rich development of the sector seen at the end of the nineteenth century and for Art Nouveau. Though the South Kensington model was highly influential, British design was far from being the sole arbiter of taste. Paris had great cultural authority as a world centre of art practice. This reputation was carefully supported by a system of state patronage and prizes and artists and designers from all over the world studied there for long or short periods (Higonnet 2002). The inclusion of applied art within the annual Salon exhibitions in the mid-1890s was a significant development. It signalled the reappraisal of designed objects as art. This emphasis on infrastructure – exhibitions, fairs, societies and so on – is not intended to diminish the importance of individual designers and design innovation as a factor transforming the field. The breaking down of boundaries between art and design could only develop as a phenomenon if there were designers and artists ready to push across that boundary. Émile Gallé (1846–1904) was one such designer and his professional practice encompassing both design and technical innovation, marketing and manufacturing and the bridge between art and design. His work provides a key example of how design responded simultaneously to the challenge of new technologies and the development of a new language of ornament.

Gallé’s On Such a Night as This: Material becomes ornament The natural world, its mystery, its cellular complexity, infinite variety and psychological and emotional resonances were recurring themes in Art Nouveau and the work of Gallé. His work in glass in particular exemplified the dissolving of the boundaries between art and design, art and science and between art, literature and music at the fin-de-siècle. Within the smaller scale of individual objects, Gallé, like the architects discussed earlier, sought to use innovation and tradition to create affective designs that addressed the senses and stimulated the imaginations of those who encountered his work. The emphasis on botanical forms in architectural education in nineteenth-century France has already been mentioned earlier. Nature was the paradigm that bound all these spheres of human activity together and Gallé kept himself well informed about the latest thinking on the biosciences throughout his life (Silverman 1985: 40; Le Talcon 2005). His father owned a glass and ceramics factory, which Gallé would inherit. So, unlike many of the designers who will be discussed in this book, whose careers represented departures from fine art practice or other spheres, Gallé was raised within the tradition of arts manufacturing. The Gallé firm was located in Nancy and firmly embedded in the local Lorraine tradition of luxury craft production (Silverman 1989: 109–33). Gallé was studying glassmaking in Meizenthal on the French-German border when the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1869. Subsequent French defeat and German annexation of portions of Alsace and Lorraine shaped Gallé’s French and regional patriotism for the rest of his life. International admiration for French art and design was to be a crucial plank in rebuilding national self-esteem through the 1880s and 1890s. One of the layers of meaning that the natural world was capable of carrying was a reference to the specificities of place and the connection between people and land. The

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application of flora or fauna with national or regional associations was one widely exploited by Art Nouveau designers everywhere seeking to express such identities. Thistles and other plants emblematic of Lorraine frequently appeared in Gallé’s work and that of other designers working in the region, who would become known as the École de Nancy. Gallé’s patriotism never made his work parochial. In 1871 he represented the Gallé Factory and its wares at the Great Exhibition in London and took the opportunity to study Chinese, Islamic and Japanese applied arts at the South Kensington Museum (Dandona 2017: 54). Paris had also become a centre for the import and sale of Japanese applied arts in the late nineteenth century (Weisberg 1975). Japanese art provided Gallé with a model in which engagement with the natural world represented the artist’s direct engagement with reality and truth, rather than the second-hand remove of historical forms (Dandona 2017: 56–93). Gallé took over the running of the factory upon his father’s retirement in 1874 at the age of twenty-eight. He built on its tradition of high-quality craftsmanship, but took it in new directions. He began to innovate and experiment with materials and techniques to produce new forms in which the ornamental theme provided the central logic for the whole piece. The glass bowl Par une telle nuit (On Such a Night as This) (1894, Musée d’Orsay) (Plate  5) exemplifies some of the qualities that saw Gallé celebrated as a pioneer in the development of the design object as art. The piece pushed at the boundaries of what could be technically achieved in glass. In microcosm, the vase integrates technical innovations and traditional skills, high-culture and scientific associations. Its layered complexity called for the sort of aesthetic absorption described by aesthetes like Pater in England and Edmond de Goncourt in France in their discussions of the great art of the past. Gallé’s close collaboration with the glass technicians in his factory and the collegial environment he created there created a working environment of sustained innovation for over two decades. Par une telle nuit was a one-off, rather than serially produced piece. It relates to a portion of Gallé’s design output which he referred to as verreries parlantes (speaking glass) in which he moved beyond the decorative to pursue the use of glass as a vessel for meaning and ideas (Dandona 2017: 42–3). One means of doing this was to inscribe the glass with quotations, blurring the boundary between inanimate object and literature, or in this case, music. The stem was inscribed on the base with the text ‘par une telle nuit . . . Berlioz’. The reference was to an operatic work by the French composer Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens (1856–8), based on Virgil’s Aeneid. The opera was a vast and ambitious work, which Berlioz struggled to stage and never saw performed in its entirety. Gallé saw a revival of the opera in 1892, which inspired the piece. The bowl was not an illustration of the narrative of the opera, but a response to the absorbing, melodic rhapsody of the portion of the score where the lovers Dido and Aeneas meet (Le Tacon 2004: 76). There is a parallel between the layering of male and female voices and instrumental music in this portion of the opera and the triple layering of glass: distinct from one another but creating an integrated whole. The evocation of music in other art forms was an idea pursued with great intent at the turn of the century. It was the opinion of Pater that ‘all art aspires to the condition of music’ (Pater 1873: 111). In music, the form taken by the material (the music itself) and the ideas it conveyed were one and this was also what Gallé pursued in glass. The bowl was made of layers of glass with surface engraving. Particles of metal, gold and platinum were introduced to the molten glass, which then created lasting dynamic, iridescent effects as the glass cooled. The stem of the bowl was so dark as to lose transparency altogether. The deep blue of the night sky, the shimmering stars and the Virginia Creeper that winds across the surface are distinguished only with close looking. This necessarily slow contemplation, as the layers of subtle colour gradation, engraved imagery and irregularity of the metallic iridescence

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repay sustained engagement, integrates technical complexity with artistic intention. The result created an interplay between transparency and opacity and between different visual fields. The layered nature of Gallé’s work leaves the view to draw their focus between surface detail and unexpected depth and between closely observed naturalistic detail and the abstract, irregular swirls of air bubbles or additives floating in the glass. The result was a design object with unprecedented depth. With a few deviations into other forms, it was nature that provided the vehicle for Gallé’s artistic expression throughout his career. This pursuit wove together a scientific interest in the natural world with a more lyrical and psychological understanding of nature. Par une telle nuit used an allusion to nature, leaves silhouetted against a dusky sky, way to convey the romance of Berlioz’s music. At the same time the foundation of concrete botanical knowledge he maintained throughout his career endowed him with an extensive and versatile language of forms (O’Mahony 2008: 257–8; Dandona 2017: 574–80). Nature provided an alternative to the historical material relied on by his father, a model that was simultaneously timeless, universal and contemporary. The graphic silhouette of the vine on Par une telle nuit reflects the way familiarity with Japanese arts inflected Gallé’s approach to the representation of natural forms: simultaneously accurate in detail and lyrical in expression. Neither the motif of the vine, the colours and iridescence of the glass nor the engraving can be understood as ornament applied to form. Rather, the bowl itself was formed of all these elements and formed to embody the sensations Gallé sought to evoke: the sensations evoked in him by Berlioz’s music, Vergil’s poetry, by moonlight and lovers meeting. In this way Gallé extended the purview of the applied arts well beyond the development of beautiful objects for the home towards full artistic expression. Though design discourse still used the terms ‘style’ and ‘ornament’, Gallé’s work signalled a new direction in which architectural spaces and objects were conceived of as works of art and capable of the same complex expression as music or poetry. Gallé’s work in glass broke the confines of applied arts to engage with the primary cultural concerns of the day. This reflected both personal ambition and a widespread shift in regards to critical attention paid to design. Par une telle nuit was exhibited first at the regional exhibition, Exposition d’art décoratif et industriel Lorrain, Nancy, in 1894. In 1895 it was shown at the Salon, the first year applied arts were admitted by that institution. From there, it was purchased for the Luxembourg Museum, which was the national museum for contemporary artists (Musée d’Orsay 2019). This reflects an important shift in the definitions of art in this period. Gallé’s glass and furniture can be found in collections around the world and are synonymous with the term ‘Art Nouveau’. The engagement with science and sensibility, with the local and the universal are quintessential paradoxes that the period strove to bring into alignment. Gallé was a designer of unique talent, but the realization of his vision and its wider dissemination relied on an extended art and design infrastructure and surrounding networks. It was informed by his travels to England and Germany and by the arrival of applied arts from Japan. It depended on the skilled workmen of his factory. It was fostered in the regional cultural context of Nancy and Lorraine, which was striving to assert itself and flourish in the aftermath of the loss of territory to German and a Paris-centric national cultural policy. Gallé founded the École de Nancy to promote local designers and the new directions they were taking (Debize 1999). The following two chapters will look further at these structural issues: the importance of new exhibition societies in fostering new understanding of art and the relationship of designers to manufacturing and retail.

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The foundations for Art Nouveau, as set out in this chapter, are based on a new approach to form and ornament. New technologies of steel construction, engineered ceramics and innovations in glass manufacturing were developed in response to new needs. These developments facilitated, but did not drive innovation in design. As the Güell Palace shows, Art Nouveau designers were equally looking for new ways to apply old crafts and technologies. The drive for change was change itself, or rather a perception of change and the necessity for art and society to respond effectively to this change. The Güell Palace represented the aspirations of a family of the Catalan elite, keen to state their aristocratic origins, their innovative business flare and their cultural sophistication. Gaudí developed a building that defied architectural conventions, while also resonating with the palaces of the past. The Museum of Applied Arts showcased a new artistic idiom in a newly engineered material as Lechner attempted to develop a modern Hungarian style that spoke of ancient Turanist kinships to the East. Sullivan’s high-rise office buildings were based on the latest advances in steel construction and dependent on new technologies. Rather than attempting to adapt the proportions of traditional architectural styles, he developed a new language of ornament, based on the beauty, internal-rationale and infinite variety of nature. Gallé offers an example of an innovator in the arena of arts manufacturing who took on similar challenges, and pioneered a new integration of material and ornament to address new sensibilities. What links these diverse examples of Art Nouveau, and the others throughout this book, are their conceptual underpinnings in the determination to find new forms of expression for the modern age. This impulse was marked by an audacious interweaving of tradition and innovation and a seemingly irrepressible enthusiasm for experimenting with combinations of different materials, technologies and craft techniques. Designers sought to speak to increasingly visually sophisticated audiences, and they utilized a twin register of modern, scientific ideas and an equally modern interest in the irrational, dreamlike and imaginatively stimulating.

3 Sites of Art Nouveau New forms of exhibition Art for us is the very opposite of any recipe and any formula. Art is the eternally spontaneous and free action of man on his environment, to transform it, transfigure it, and shape within it an idea, ever new. An artist is truly such only when he suddenly sees in this world around him, in a moment of illumination, something different from what others have seen there. ‘OUR PROGRAM’, L’ART MODERNE, 1(1) 1881: 1

As we have already seen indicated in the work of Whistler and Liljefors, many artists were departing from the conventions of academic painting through the 1860s and 1870s. The cultural authority of Paris continued to be a major magnet for artists from around the world, but alongside the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and annual Salon exhibitions a host of private art schools and studios provided space for experimentation (Wilson 2002; Milner 1988). Just as designers at the end of the nineteenth century began to reject the authority of historical styles and experiment with a host of new forms and materials, so artists similarly accelerated their exploration of new modes of painting. Their motivation was the same: to find a new language of art to meet the needs of a new century and fit to express a new vision of the modern world. For many, this search for a new art included extending their practice beyond easel painting and into the arena of design. For those artists whose departure from academic rules of composition, handling and subject matter precluded success in the Salon, it was vital to reach their audiences in other ways. The development of independent artist exhibition societies created forums for mutual encouragement and public exposure for artists working on developing new art. Two examples of artist groups will be explored in this chapter: The Les XX group in Brussels and the Munich Secession. During the period around 1900 similar artist groups developed in cities across Europe and elsewhere, inspired by principles of artistic freedom and the desire to reach audiences. Both Les XX and the Munich Secession were models for many of the subsequently formed groups and were influential sites for the generation of new thinking. An understanding of the characteristics of such groups and of sites where their work was displayed and encountered provides an important context for the development of Art Nouveau. As shall be seen, these groups were not just about artists coming together to explore new directions but also about diversification into different media and applied arts and intersections and connections between the arts, music and literature. The breaking down of barriers between different art forms can also be seen in the final case study: the Paris World’s Fair. The world’s

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fairs blended arts and culture with international relations, economic competition, technology and public spectacle. Understanding sites which much of the new art was destined for and where it reached its audiences is an important facet in understanding the networks of fertile exchange that fostered Art Nouveau. The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by the development of alternative sites of exhibition which explicitly challenged the dominant authority of national institutions, like the academy. What became known as the First Impressionist Exhibition was held in Paris in 1874. It was, unlike the Salon exhibitions, an exhibition without a jury. Instead, it was a group of like-minded artists coming together to reach new audiences for their work. Their choices of subject matter – landscapes and scenes of contemporary life – contributed to a shift that was already disrupting the authority of scenes from history or mythology as the subjects most worthy of artistic attention. The ways and means for artists to display their work were diversifying rapidly. Private galleries and dealers, such as Galerie Georges Petit and Paul Durand-Ruel’s gallery, also hosted exhibitions alongside maintaining personal networks among collectors and artists (Jensen 1994: 49–67). The Grosvenor Gallery, established in 1877, and the New Gallery in London, established in 1888, provided similar alternatives within the London art market. In 1884 the Société des Artistes Indépendants was formed in Paris to host annual exhibitions without selection juries and without prizes. Jury-free selection ensured artistic freedom, though the resulting shows were necessarily somewhat large, chaotic and uneven in their displays.

Brussels, L’Art moderne and the Les XX group New exhibition societies, large and small, were a crucial way in which the art culture of a particular centre might be stimulated and developed. Despite the continued authority of Paris, cities around Europe experienced a similar diversification of art practice. The proximity of Brussels to Paris and the shared language ensured close links. At the same time, local wealth and the desire for self-expression stimulated cultural development. The young Belgian nation was in the process of establishing itself and negotiating an identity that balanced Francophone high culture alongside the Flemish tradition and a sense of more Northern European, rather than Mediterranean orientation. The flourishing of new national and regional identities was a key stimulus to the development of Art Nouveau, which was in its essence anti-monolithic. Much of the audience and resourcing of the new movement came from the middle classes, making their wealth in new industries and colonial trade, and keen to assert themselves on the cultural stage. In Brussels in particular, wealth and national self-image received a significant boost from 1885 onwards with the establishment of the Congo Free State and the systematic exploitation of the Congo. This will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 8, but the context of colonial and entrepreneurial expansion and economic prosperity is important in understanding the culture that embraced the principle of new directions and risk-taking in the arts. The Groupe des XX, known as ‘Les XX’ (Les Vingt/The Twenty) was formed in 1883 by the art critic and lawyer Octave Maus (1856–1919). It was not the first independent society to challenge the authority of the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, but it had a significant impact on Belgian cultural life through its activities integrating progressive art, music and literature. Maus and his colleague Edmond Picard (1836–1924) had already founded a weekly journal based on the same principles, L’Art moderne, a few years earlier. The alignment of exhibition and journal was effective in amplifying the impact of both and became a combination emulated by many

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other artist groups. Theory, criticism and a defence of the group’s aims could be set out in L’Art modern, while the Les XX exhibitions could put theories into practice and before the public. The editors, Maus and Picard, championed the freedom of the artist to disregard convention in favour of their own, unique vision. They claimed for themselves the role of explaining such visions to the general public. They championed the idea of art as central to human experience of the world: Our ambition is not modest. We want to smooth the way, facilitate the relationship between artists and the public, so that Art acquires every day more of the beneficent social influence which should belong to it, so that artists also occupy materially and morally the important position of which they are worthy. (L’Art moderne 1881: 1) Unlike the open-house of the Indépendants exhibition, the membership of Les XX was capped at just twenty, shifting the emphasis from complete artistic freedom to innovation within a select group that championed progressive approaches. There was, however, no prescriptive, single aesthetic programme and this became a common trait across many such groups formed to support new directions in art and again reflects the inherent pluralism of Art Nouveau. The emphasis in Les XX was on showcasing new directions taking place in Belgian art, ranging across Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and emerging Expressionism and Symbolism. The international nature of Les XX exhibitions was ensured by supplementing each exhibition with an additional twenty invited artists to underline the essentially transnational nature of developments in contemporary art. New exhibition practices were embraced, including the effort to present works at eye-line and appropriately grouped, in contrast with the jumbled, floor-to-ceiling hanging that persisted in academy exhibitions (Stevens & Hoozee 1994: 43). Alongside the visual displays, the annual exhibitions were cultural events, including lectures on art and Symbolist literature and performances of new music from composers such as Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré within the space of the exhibition. This underscored the new view of synthesis across and between the arenas of the visual arts, music and literature. The space of the Les XX exhibitions and the pages of L’Art moderne created an arena for connections between artists from different countries, different approaches and at different stages in their careers. The young Théo van Rysselberghe (1862–1926) was twenty-one when he became one of the founding members. His work was rapidly transformed by his exposure to the work of other artists encountered through Les XX exhibitions, including the work of Whistler and John Singer Sargent, another ex-patriot American artist, who were both invited to exhibit in the first exhibition in 1884. Van Rysselberghe’s work quickly developed on into a more Impressionist direction, following the inclusion of Monet and Renoir in the 1886 exhibition. In 1886 van Rysselberghe saw Georg Seurat’s monumental La Grande Jatte, which was the centrepiece of the final Impressionist Exhibition in Paris. This precipitated the development of a new pointillist phase in his work and, at his instigation, the invitation to Seurat to exhibit in the following year’s Les XX exhibition (Stevens & Hoozee 1994: 237–43). The frontispiece for L’Art moderne by Georges Lemmen (1865–1916) used between 1894 and 1900 is another example of such connections (Figure 3.1). He along with other members of the group had become increasingly interested in design, inspired by English Arts and Crafts. But, as this frontispiece shows, there is also a strong influence of Javanese batik which Lemmen would have encountered through local awareness of Dutch-colonial culture and his friendship with his colleague Jan Toorop. The influence of batik on Dutch Art Nouveau is explored further in Chapter 8. These moments of cultural exchange and transformation facilitated by Les XX were

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FIGURE 3.1  Georges Lemmen, frontispiece, L’Art moderne, vol.14, no.1 (1894).

a result of its overt policy of fostering transnational connections and this would continue to be a feature of such art societies. A broad definition of art, embracing all the visual arts, literature and music was central to the ethos of Les XX. The Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren (1855–1916) entered the circle of Les XX, having been a student of Picard’s, and developed a long-lasting interest in the visual arts. Van Rysselberghe was one of his closest friends and van Rysselberghe’s group portrait, The Reading (1903, Ghent Museum of Art) depicted Verhaeren reading his poems to an audience made up of the biologist Félix Le Dantec, the writers Francis Viélé-Griffin, André Gide, Maurice Maeterlinck and Henri Ghéon and the art critic and anarchist Félix Fénéon (Plate  6). A sculpture by Georg Minne (1866–1941) who had been elected to Les XX in 1891, stands on the mantelpiece, appearing doubled in the mirror and will be discussed in Chapter 10. This work captures the spirit of exchange and belief in the power of art that motivated the group. The formal exploration of the expression of space and volumes by means of the surface relationship of points of contrasting colours, pioneered by Seurat, was married by van Rysselberghe with subject matter closer to Symbolism. This reflected the influence of Verhaeren, who had, in 1889, identified the distillation of light effects in pointillism as a distillation of reality itself, penetrating ‘the soul of things’ (Hokanson 2016: 157). The idea of inner truth superseding surface reality resonated with the group’s wider Symbolist leanings. They felt that that formalist innovations were a means to an end in pursuit of ineffable, inner truths within modern art. The Reading relates to a common theme in the Symbolist painting of the 1880s and 1890s, that of capturing the ineffable act of listening to music (Leonard 2007). This reflects the widely held perception of music as the highest form of art. In the case of a group who explicitly pursued synthesis between the arts, the reading aloud of poetry can be understood as in many ways analogous to the performance of music. The dynamic gesture and vibrant red jacket given to Verhaeren make him and his poetry the driving force of the painting. The comparative realism of the faces of the other figures allows van Rysselberghe to pursue the parallel goal of depicting the cognitive act of listening. Five of the listening figures are presented in profile or three-quarter profile, rendering one ear particularly prominent. Hands are also raised to faces, signalling the effort of concentration. The gazes of the figures fall either on the speaker or are downcast in inner reverie. Crucially, this moment of contemplation, intellectual and artistic stirring is a collective one. Individuality is not subsumed but at the same time the men are drawn together, captivated by the mastery of Verhaeren’s spoken words.

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The pointillist technique used by van Rysselberghe is not incidental to the subject matter. The resonances of colour across the canvas visualize energy-transfer as these points of colour oscillate across the picture surface and serve as an effective analogue for the transportative power of the poetry being heard. We cannot hear the spoken words, but we can see them in the red spreading across the canvas and animating and connecting the listeners. Just as Verhaeren innovated on French Symbolist poetry, so van Rysselberghe innovated on French Neo-Impressionism. This captures some of the vitality of the new art centres and Belgium’s cultural position, between France and the Germanic/Dutch traditions (McGuinness 2007). The flourishing of new art centres from Barcelona to Budapest, and the connections between them facilitated by exhibition and print, was the well-spring of the Art Nouveau movement. In 1891 the Les XX exhibition extended its purview further into the applied arts. In addition to paintings, drawings, music and literature, the Anglo-Belgian member Willy Finch (1854– 1930) sent ceramic panels. Jules Chéret (1836–1932) exhibited a series of posters and Lemmen loaned his collection of illustrated books by Walter Crane (1845–1915). Over the next few years members and invited contributors showed examples of posters, book binding, ceramics, furniture, decorative screens and textiles. This effort had political as well as aesthetic dimensions and was part of a wider campaign to democratize art, led by the Belgian Labour Party and supported by members of Les XX. They promoted the mission in the pages of L’Art moderne, through lectures and by supplying illustrations to the Labour Party’s Art Section (Stevens & Hoozee 1994: 49). In 1893 Les XX was dissolved and formed into a new organization, still led by Maus, La Libre Esthétique (The Free Aesthetic). The annual exhibitions continued, this time with an even more overt emphasis on breaking down the barriers between art and design. The first La Libre Esthétique exhibition 1894 included jewellery by Charles Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts, Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations for Salomé, textile designs by Aristide Maillol, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Paul Signac, Maurice Denis and Lemmen, books from Kelmscott Press and Morris wallpapers as well as posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Chéret (Stevens & Hoozee 1994: 280).

The Munich Secession The pursuit of new exhibition opportunities proliferated in urban centres across Europe in the 1890s, reflecting intense competition for audiences and sales. Such projects were often framed within national or regional contexts, concerning the development of a local art culture. A parallel aim was the mission to stimulate local culture through exposure to developments from elsewhere. Cosmopolitanism was still something that could be seen as a threat to the integrity of national culture and, while the economic possibilities of fashionable design might be embraced, this tension never really dissipated (West 2000: 28–30). Whose work appeared in important annual exhibitions and how they were displayed remained widely contested as artists and designers strove to reach their audiences and promote themselves and their own cultural agendas. The situation in Munich provides another example of the unfolding of these various tensions as the art world evolved at the fin-de-siècle. Munich, in the mid-nineteenth century had a thriving art culture supported by the patronage of King Ludwig II. The Unification of Germany in 1871 pushed culture up the local agenda. With Berlin as the new national capital the political power of Munich was seen to be diminished. Munich was well established as a destination for

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art study by the 1870s. It was particularly favoured by American, Scandinavian, Russian and Polish artists and had two major exhibition venues, the Art and Industry Exhibition Building and the Glass Palace (Makela 1990: 5). The Munich Artists Association presided over the main annual art exhibition. As a regional centre, developments in Munich were influential across Eastern and Central Europe. The Munich Secession directly inspired similar groups in Vienna, Prague and elsewhere. The breakaway of the Munich Secession artists in 1892 was not a reaction against cultural conservatism on the part of the Association, but rather against its overly democratic culture. With the death of Ludwig II in 1885 funding for the arts had declined, leading to increased competition for resources among artists. The artists of the Secession broke away in anticipation of a future where it was impossible to make themselves heard over everyone else who was also clamouring for space within the exhibition (Makela 1990: 45–67). Through control of their own exhibitions, Secessionists were able to present themselves as an artistic elite, maintaining the highest artistic criteria as well as close ties to the international art scene. This image was presented through the content of their exhibitions, but also, as with Les XX, through the parallel medium of the press. The Munich Secession was supported from the beginning by the publisher Georg Hirth (1841–1916), who owned the large Munich daily, Die Münchner neuesten Nachrichten, and founded Jugend (Youth) in 1896, a magazine that gave the name ‘Jugendstil’ to Art Nouveau across the region. Hirth’s opening statement carried a disavowal of a single dogmatic position on aesthetic excellent and instead spoke energetically of a lively critical engagement with new art, broadly defined: We don’t have a ‘program’ in the middle-class sense of the word. We want to discuss and illustrate everything that is interesting, that moves the spirits; we want to bring forth everything that is beautiful, good, distinctive, brisk and – really artistic. (Hirth 1896: 2) The first Munich Secession exhibition was held in 1893 and was a pronounced success, which succeeded in setting the Secession apart from the Association (Makela 1990: 63–7). The new galleries of the Secession building were light and airy and free from rich interior decoration that might compete with the art works on display. Works were hung in a single row at eye-level. The experience of viewing the exhibition in this environment contrasted significantly with the crowded walls and halls of the Association exhibitions and suggested a more rarefied and cultured atmosphere. Similarly, though the Association also showed work by some of the most innovative artists of the day, the impact of their contributions was largely drowned in the volume of art shown and its mixed quality. The art on display in the Secession exhibition did not follow a strict aesthetic program, but was more selective and carefully hung. Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), who was to become the leading member of the Munich Secession, designed the poster for the first Munich exhibition (Figure 3.2). The poster signals the values of the new group through a simple, classicizing design. The head of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare, was the central emblem of the Munich Secession. This functioned on a number of levels. During the Renaissance, Athena was frequently invoked as a patron of the arts. Her beauty, her martial aspect and her patronage of various youthful heroes, from Jason and the Argonauts to Heracles, served to suggest the idea of the vigour of the Secession artists in their challenge to moribund convention. The decorative device of presenting the poster as a mosaic created the logic for a simplified and stylized combination of image and text, but one with the high-culture associations of classical antiquity.

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FIGURE 3.2  Franz von Stuck, poster for the first Munich exhibition (1893) Lithograph © Heritage Images/ Contributor/Getty Images.

Von Stuck also exhibited nine paintings at the first exhibition. Unlike the clean sobriety of the poster, these works captured the other dimension of his interest in the classical world: that of pagan rites and sensuality. The loose brush work of contemporary Naturalism and Impressionism were softened still further by von Stuck, with the emphasis no longer on natural light but on a hazy mythological world. Out of the darkness of his canvases, pale nude figures loom with intermingled suggestions of sex and death. Sin (1893, Munich Pinothek) is an exemplary work in this respect, exhibited at the first Munich Secession (Figure 3.3). The frame, also by von Stuck, was an integral part of the work. The golden, fluted columns creating a temple for the image, making it an art object as much as a painting. The figure lurks in the darkness between the columns, a nude female torso, draped in an enormous snake. The woman’s face is in shadow, while her body gleams in the light. The background of the painting suggests the shadowy interior of the temple, realized between the columns of the frame, but the illusion of depth is very much secondary to an evocation of atmosphere and charge. The woman and snake are bound together in an almost monochrome combination of whites and greys. The real threat of her sexual power is hidden in her veiled gaze, but revealed by the rearing serpent. The piece walks a fine line in terms of contemporary sexual mores, presenting a highly erotic image in a pseudo-moral manner. The title inscribed beneath adds a thin veneer of didactic purpose, preserving the artist from accusations of immorality. The overt sexual content of much of von Stuck’s work tapped into a vein of fin-de-siècle thought that sought release from the hypocrisy of bourgeois values and conservative Christianity (Becker 1996). Von Stuck’s ability

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FIGURE 3.3  Franz von Stuck, Sin (1893, Munich Pinothek). Oil on canvas, 94,5 × 59,5 cm © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

to suggest an alternative pagan realm of unfettered, libidinal energies, without falling foul of obscenity laws secured him preeminent status in the Munich art world. Von Stuck’s success was such that he was able to design and build himself a classical villa in the centre of Munich that combined classical geometry with pagan magic. Alongside the Secession, Munich’s reputation as an artistic centre continued to be furthered by smaller galleries and art dealers. Jakob Littauer was a dealer whose showroom-cumbookshop hosted a number of small but significant exhibitions. In 1896 he presented thirty-five embroideries designed by the Swiss artist Hermann Obrist (1862–1927) and executed by his collaborator, Berthe Ruchet (1855–1932). Ruchet was a specialist in ecclesiastical embroidery and had been the companion of Obrist’s mother, whose decease had given him the financial freedom to pursue art (Richardsen 2019: 134). Obrist and Ruchet had moved to Florence in 1890, another art centre with a strong international community. Obrist experimented with marble sculpture and together with Ruchet had also founded an embroidery studio to execute his designs. They both moved to Munich in 1894. The exhibition of their work travelled on to Berlin and London, where it was also well received. This success signals the spread of interest in the applied arts as a serious art form. The designs presented stylized arrangements of plants and flowers, such as the Cyclamen embroidery (Figure 3.4), which emphasized the dynamic energy of plant growth. The balance between close observation of the nature and abstract patterns was heavily influenced by Japanese applied art. Obrist’s emphasis was on the evocation of the power of nature and life force rather than botanical accuracy. Though the subject and medium differed completely from the work of von Stuck, there

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FIGURE 3.4  Hermann Obrist and Berthe Ruchet, Cyclamen embroidery, Pan, vol.1, no. 5 (1894): 327.

was a shared engagement with new philosophies that sought to tap into ideas of power and life force in the world and cosmos beyond organized religion (Larson & Brauer 2009). In 1897 the Secession artists contributed to the International Art Exhibition that took place in the Glass Palace. This was a major event in the Munich art world and had last been held in 1892. For the first time the exhibition included a dedicated applied arts section, which was given two rooms. This shift corresponds to the inclusion of applied arts in the Les XX exhibition in 1891 and the inclusion, a few years later, of an applied arts section in the Paris Salon. In multiple art centres across Europe the early 1890s were marked by a consolidation of the position maintained by Aesthetic and Symbolist writers that art could exist in many forms. The aims of the applied arts committee who organized the section for the Munich exhibition, which included Obrist and the artist-designer Richard Riemerschmid (1868–1957), were stated in their catalogue: 1. This exhibition of objects of the new applied art aims at selecting, according to strict principles, the best that modern applied art has accomplished. 2. It therefore places the main emphasis on originality of invention and on the perfect artistic and technical execution of such artistic objects as fulfil the requirements of our modern life. 3. On the one hand, it excludes everything that appears as thoughtless and false copy or imitation of past and foreign styles, that is not abreast of the latest developments in modern technology. (Hiesinger 1988: 169)

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The rooms were collaborative in design. They were presented as domestic interiors, rather than arranged by artist or object type. This represents a new mode of presentation that had been embraced by those seeking to push the boundaries of traditional applied arts. Presenting applied arts as rooms, rather than individual objects, emphasized the integrated effect of exciting new environments in which every object played a role. We have already encountered the room-as-awork-of-art in Whistler’s Peacock Room. The artistic environment or Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) will be discussed further in the conclusion to the first part of this book. Figure 3.5 shows a view of the room arranged by the architect Theodor Fischer and a group of young designers. August Endell (1871–1925) was a philosophy student who had met Obrist only a year previously in 1896 and abandoned his university studies in favour of art. His design for the portiere curtain and ceiling frieze demonstrated the liberating power of Obrist’s influence, with their pulsing, serpentine forms. The chair and mirror by Bernhard Pankok (1872–1943) were his first foray into furniture design. He had started his career as a portrait painter and graphic designer. They take the theme of organic growth and the flowering of form. Riemerschmid contributed the mural painting that dissolved the wall above the panelling into a moody landscape. The tones of blue and green were echoed in the painted wooden panelling and the mural above, leading critics to appreciate the artistic coherence of the room as a whole (Wieber 2009: 54–5). In relation to the goals quoted earlier, it must be understood that the needs of modern life that were to be met through design included helping people get back in touch with fundamental life energies. The success of the Glass Palace rooms prompted the above artist-designers to set up the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Art in Handwork) (Schwartz 1996b). Despite the Arts and Crafts associations of this title, the production of FIGURE 3.5 Theodor Fischer, Richard Riemer­ schmid, Bernhard Pankok, and August Endell, Applied Arts Section at the VII Internationale Kunstausstellung from Kunst und Handwerk vol. 47 (1897 –8): plate facing page 42.

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the workshops varied between special commissions for one-off, hand-produced pieces and designs executed by means of machine tools and division of labour (Hiesinger 1988: 14–15). The formation of the Unite Workshops and similar initiatives in Dresden, Darmstadt and Hellerau signal the rapid dissemination and close connections between the art exhibition and innovations in the manufacturing sector. The transition from fine art, through Arts and Crafts and on to industrial manufacturing will be explored through the career of Peter Behrens in the next chapter.

The 1900 Paris World’s Fair In addition to artists travelling to study and work in different centres and share their work in foreign exhibitions or through art magazines, there was a further important site for cultural exchange: world’s fairs. From the mid-nineteenth century, such fairs had proliferated and expanded (Findling & Pelle 2008; Greenhalgh 1989). These fairs operated as sites for the cross-comparison of economic, scientific and cultural achievements of all the nations of the world, though advantages for self-promotion inevitably accrued to the host nation and to nations with established power on the world stage. Success and failure could be measured by prizes awarded and by press-coverage, accolades or criticism. Negative performance spurred the development of reforms and investment at home so as to do better next time. The hosting of a fair was an enormous public-relations exercise, as the host country set the agenda and tone of the fair. The 1900 World’s Fair in Paris was a high-water-mark for Art Nouveau as an international movement. Nearly every artist and designer mentioned in this volume was represented there. The cultural developments of the 1880s and 1890s reached fruition in a huge event visited by nearly 50 million visitors and featuring displays ranging from popular entertainment to new communications technology and industrial inventions. The format of Paris 1900 replicates that of the many other fairs relevant to the development of Art Nouveau: the world’s fairs of 1893 in Chicago, 1894 in Antwerp, 1897 in Brussels and another in Stockholm, Glasgow in 1901 and 1904 in St. Louis. This list is far from exhaustive. Further large-scale exhibitions with regional themes were also significant in providing opportunities for collaboration and exchange and showcases for their work. These exhibitions often took the form of national/ imperial celebrations, such as General Land Centennial Exhibition in Prague in 1891, which was used as a platform for emerging Czech nationalism; the Pan-Russian exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod and the Hungarian Millenary Exhibition in Budapest in 1897 celebrating the founding of Hungary. The spatial arrangements of such exhibitions articulated unequal power relations, where the size, prominence and arrangement of displays served to reinforce hierarchies and narratives concerning race, gender and progress (Bennett 1995: 83–4). In Paris in 1900 France attempted to secure the legitimacy of her colonial policy through a Colonial Section where highly curated displays of French-occupied African nations were put on display. These so-called ‘human zoos’ were curated to deliver the dual message of the backward nature of African peoples and the supposed advances secured for them through the civilizing mission of French colonial occupation (Blanchard 2008; Greenhalgh 1989: 83–90). Figure 3.6 illustrates the Martinique pavilion and represents Black workers in the sugar plantations and their respectful interactions with white overseers and visitors. Slavery had been abolished on Martinique in 1848 as a direct

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FIGURE 3.6  Martinique Pavilion, illustrated in Le Petit Journal, no. 522 October (1900) © Print Collector/Contributor/Getty Images.

result of a number of successful slave insurrections. The image makes no references to this or to the plantation workers strikes that had been violently suppressed only months before (Church 2017: 222). English, Dutch, Danish and Portuguese colonial territories were similarly represented in this area. Such arrangements across the fair were heavily racialized, with the ethnographic displays of Russia’s Asian and Siberian peoples and the pavilions of China and Egypt also gathered in the Colonial Section. In contrast to the varied material presented in the Colonial Section, the cultural importance of the European fine arts category was enshrined in the permanent buildings of the Grand and Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts. The Grand Palais presented an exhibition of the art of the last ten years, marking a decade since the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. Over half the space was reserved for French artists, with the remainder divided between twenty-nine other participating countries (Stevens 2000: 57–9). The work of 2,299 different artists was on display, 762 of whom were in the French section. The result reinforced the authority of Paris as the world capital of art. The scale of the exhibition was subject to the same criticism that motivated many secession movements. The displays were too various and crowded to meet the conditions required for true aesthetic contemplation. At the same time, they did allow the public to access some of the most innovative artists and designers from around the world. International exhibitions like the world’s fairs repeatedly reinforced the significance of art and design in articulating national identity and achievement. At the same time, they were sites of contact and exchange with artists and designers encountering one another’s work, either in person or via surrounding media coverage.

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Art Nouveau design was well represented across the fair. The temporary nature of exhibition pavilions made them suitable projects for daring experiment. Siegfried Bing’s pavilion consolidated the cultural impact of his Paris gallery over the previous five years. His contribution will be discussed further in Chapter 6. Georges de Feure (1868–1943), Eugène Gaillard (1862– 1933) and Édouard Colonna (1862–1948), designed a series of room installations to showcase the fine and applied arts being promoted by Bing (Silverman 1989: 284–8; Weisberg, Becker & Possémé 2004). The room installations, such as Gaillard’s dining room (Figure 3.7), represented a vision of the artful home and artistic way of life. Bing had championed this mode of display since 1895. Descriptions of the Bing pavilion in the art press reveal the complicated interplay between national identity as a lens and international collaboration as reality. Maus, describing the pavilion in the pages of L’Art moderne, introduced it as ‘pretty furnishings in a new style, neither English nor Belgian, which strives with some success, to combine the aesthetics of today with the traditional elegance of French furniture’ (Maus 1900a: 209). The French critic Gabriel Mourey, writing in Le revue des arts décoratifs, was even more at pains to celebrate the Frenchness of the designs: ‘to make a truly French work that was truly an expression of the sensitivity of our race, and not an adaptation of the formulas of foreigners’ (Mourey 1900: 262). This was a reference to the scandal surrounding the opening of Bing’s gallery in 1895 and the perceived over-representation of foreign designers. At the same time, the reality was that the artists and designers of the pavilion project were various in their origins and influences. Colonna was German-born, trained in Brussels and

FIGURE 3.7  Dining Room by Eugène Gaillard with murals by Josep Maria Sert, ‘Pavilion Art Nouveau Bing’, The Studio, vol.89 (1900): 175.

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worked for an extended period in the United States (Silverman 1989: 287). The dramatic murals on the walls of Gaillard’s dining room were by the Catalan artist Josep Maria Sert (1876–1945). Their theme of lavish abundance and sensual fecundity led Maus to suggest they could be titled ‘The Apotheosis of Fertility’ and Gaillard’s furniture matched this theme of life and vigour, with Mourey describing it as ‘healthy’ and ‘muscular’ (Mourey 1900: 263). This theme of vitality will be discussed further in Chapter 7, but energy and growth was an essential dimension of the ethos that Art Nouveau sought to embody and express internationally. The fair gave millions of visitors an opportunity to experience the potential of Art Nouveau design to express the transformative potential of new technologies. Their trip to the exhibition might well start by entering one of the new Paris Metro stations by Hector Guimard (1867– 1942) (Figure 3.8). Guimard’s metro stations were spare, open-work cast-iron enclosures. They functioned to signal the presence of the new metro entrances in the Paris streetscape, rather than as traditional station buildings. Even the more substantial of the designs remained semi-transparent frameworks of iron rather than brick buildings. The iron ribbing that made up the core structure of the pavilions was handled in an elastic manner, suggestive of natural growth. The green-painted finish reinforced this suggestion, as integrated lamp posts sprung like flowering shoots to either side of the ‘Metropolitaine’ signage and glass awnings unfurled like the membrane of an insect’s wing. The effect was that of a new life-form, part plant and part insectoid, emerging from the grey pavement of the street. At the same time, it was not mere whimsy and entirely fitted its function, attracting attention without taking up more space than was needed. It was also fast and economical to erect, being composed of standardized cast-iron and glass elements and the portals (Descouturelle, Mignard & Rodriguez 2012).

FIGURE 3.8  Hector Guimard, Metro Station, Paris XVth, 1900 © LL/Contributor/Getty Images.

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Passing from the metro, entrance into the fairgrounds was under the spanning arches of the Porte Monumentale by René Binet (1866–1911) on the Place de la Concorde (Figure 3.9). The ironwork of the structure was an overt feature of the design, unlike in the Grand Palais and Petit Palais. These hid their iron construction and glass-roofed exhibition halls behind plasterwork Baroque and Rococo ornament (Mattie 1998: 103). The Porte Monumentale eschewed historical associations in favour of a free amalgamation of references. It presented a suggestion of Moorish fretwork married to the intricate cell-work of an undersea organism and two spires that duplicated the needle of the Luxor Obelisk from the centre of the Place de la Concorde, all set about with flag poles. The archway was a riot of ornament, varied materials, colour and imagery (Silverman 1989: 288–93). On top of the main arch was the prow of a ship, bursting forth, and the uppermost pinnacle was surmounted by a female figure, La Parisienne. This figure of a self-assurance, modern Parisian woman, wearing the contemporary fashions of the couture house of Paquin, was quite a contrast to the conventional classical nudes decorating the Grand and Petit Palais (Dymond 2011). Inside the fairground, the architecture of the pavilions varied between plaster imitations of national architecture, such as Spain’s Escorial palace in miniature, and new forms. The Pavilion Bleu restaurant by Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858–1910) and the architect Richard Dulong embraced the ebullient possibilities of fairground architecture (Figure 3.10). Its fourstorey design emphasized and dramatized the supporting frame of this temporary wooden building, painted in striking blue, with yellow highlights (Tharaud 2010: 6). Vaulting arches and decorative beams sprung from the surface of the structure, which was itself enlivened by

FIGURE 3.9  René Binet, Porte Monumentale, on the Place de la Concorde, 1900. © LL/Contributor/Getty Images.

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FIGURE 3.10  Serrurier-Bovy and Richard Dulong, Pavillon Bleu, Paris World’s Fair 1900. © DEA/G. Dagli Orti/Contributor/ Getty Images.

coloured awnings, friezes of flowering plants, window boxes and open-work balustrades. The shallow arches of the bays of windows created an overall effect of wavering movement and energy, a building that denied its static nature. The defiance of the conventions of architecture was part of the function of the design: architecture as advertisement. The temporary restaurant functioned as a promotional concession for the main Pavilion Bleu restaurant in Saint Cloud. Its success lay not solely in the revenue from diners, but in the building as a memorable talking point among visitors and in the press (Watelet 2001: 119–21). A sense of such novelties permeated the fair, despite the many retrospective and traditional displays they appeared alongside. Encounters with new technologies were an important part of the visitor experience. Electricity was celebrated in the Palais d’Electricité, which presented a dramatic show of lights and mirrors and an illuminated cascade of water from the Château d’Eau, pumped by means of the pavilion generator (Geppert 2010: 91–2). Nightly displays drew crowds to admire the colourful displays, accompanied by a live orchestra. The gas lighting in the 1889 Eiffel Tower was replaced by electricity and it was painted yellow (Mattie 1998: 103). Electricity also powered the trottoir roulant, a moving walkway or travellator that transported visitors around the extensive site (Geppert 2010: 79–82). Projected films included new talking pictures, such as the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre showing Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet (Allwood 1977: 103). All these new experiences were part of the wonders of the fair, but also the wonders of the modern world. Electricity and transportation were transforming lived experience and the contemporary science of physiology emphasized the body’s sensitivity and permeability to its environment (Brain 2008, 2015). This provided a central impetus for the development of new arts that might appropriately express this new reality. The independent pavilion of the dancer Loïe Fuller (1862–1928) blended many of the aforementioned themes. The building of the Loie Fuller Theatre by Henri Sauvage (1873–1932)

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defied architectural convention (Figure 3.11). Its rectangular form was concealed behind a sculptural plaster facade by Pierre Roche (1855–1922), part wave, part theatrical curtain (Mattie 1998: 110). The entrance portal was surmounted by a statue of Fuller, the silks of her dance costume in dynamic motion. Fuller had burst upon the Parisian popular entertainment scene in 1893 and her act presented a heady blend of science, nature and art. The projection of changing coloured lights onto the diaphanous silks she danced with was choreographed by her to present a novel spectacle of metamorphosis between woman, nature and raw energy. She herself developed many of the technologies and equipment related to her stage show (Gunning 2003). The visual stimulation of her performance captured the imagination of many artists, as well as wider audiences. Fuller’s performances offered audiences a transportative experience that began as they approached her dramatic pavilion. Passing beneath the furls of the portico, the visitor steps beyond the veil, figuratively penetrating the flowing silks that, in performance, would conceal and reveal the dancer’s body. The performance itself was a multimedia, multisensory experience, blending movement, light, sound and colour. Fuller’s dance was simultaneously modern and primitive, utilizing the latest technologies but suggesting also the free, expressive dance of pagan religious rites and communion with ancient Gods. Fuller embraced both dimensions, seeking legal patents on the innovations of her dances and scenography, but also pronouncing that she had traced the origins of her dances: ‘back four thousand years ago: to the time when Miriam and the women of Israel – filled with religious fervour and rapture – celebrated their release from Egyptian captivity with timbrels and dances’ (Pruska-Oldenhof 2016: 45). This evocation

FIGURE 3.11  Henri Sauvage and Loïe Fuller, Loie Fuller Pavilion, Revue des Arts Décoratifs, vol XX (1900): 343.

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of pre-Christian, primitive sexual energy is comparable to the work of von Stuck in Munich. The space of Fuller’s performances could be described as both a laboratory and a fairyland, an experience that defied categorization, just as the performer herself was called ‘the electric fairy’ and slipped between realities as flower, butterfly, flame and between bodily presence and ethereal absence (McCarren 1995). The examples in this chapter have captured something of the rapidly shifting territory within which art and design was encountered and displayed. Tensions are marked, in each case, between the economics of the market and the aesthetics of art for art’s sake. The more rarefied environments of the new exhibition groups sought to make the display of art itself an aesthetic experience. It was not incidental, however, that this disdain for the maelstrom of large annual exhibitions also served to distinguish these groups from their competitors. The mobility of art world figures and the reviews and photographic reproduction of new art in the press ensured that new display cultures, such as room installations, were quickly adopted across multiple art centres. Exhibitions presented an opportunity to draw together ideas from across the arts into accessible public events. This drawing together of these multiple threads will be explored at the end of the first part of this book through consideration of another important site for Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession.

4 Designers and manufacturers How Art Nouveau was made and sold [A]rt is founded on what I feel quite sure is a truth, and an important one, namely that all art, even the highest, is influenced by the conditions of labour of the mass of mankind, and that any pretensions which may be made for even the highest intellectual art to be independent of these general conditions are futile and vain; that is to say, that any art which professes to be founded on the special education or refinement of a limited body or class must of necessity be unreal and short-lived. WILLIAM MORRIS, ‘ART UNDER PLUTOCRACY’ (1883)

Art Nouveau, at its most ambitious, sought a transformation of the material and cultural environment to meet the new needs of the modern individual. This process of re-formation was embraced by designers who saw the work of design as an opportunity to bring art and beauty into everyday life. This chapter will consider the relationships evolving between designers and manufacturers and a new appraisal of the value of design within industry. The works produced within this arena tied the designer, not to an individual patron but to a broader public of consumers. At this time, we see the figure of the professional designer emerge, alongside the engagement of artists and architects in the applied arts. We will see how these individuals pushed the boundaries of what could be done in the territory between art, technology and homewares. The three case studies selected here represent different facets of the design industry. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicrafts represents the overlap between Art Nouveau and the later phases of the Arts and Crafts movement. It was also an inspiration for a number of European and American workshops and communities that sought to marry social and design ethics. Louis Comfort Tiffany’s design ethos was an adaptation of this model. Alongside the highest standards of materials, technical innovation and finish, he made effective use of advertising and exhibition opportunities to develop a worldwide market. The Tiffany Studios also diversified production, spreading risk between unique commissions for wealthy patrons and the production of cheaper ranges that benefitted from the esteem garnered by the elite pieces. The career of Peter Behrens is examined as the last case study and represents a designer who went from being an artist, to involvement in arts manufacturing and, ultimately, the genesis of industrial design. His professional development reflects the growing appreciation of the economic value of good design, as first the Duke of Darmstadt and later the AEG company sought to employ Behrens in the hopes that his designs would enhance commercial competitiveness.

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Government initiatives, such as new design schools and organizations like the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in France and the National Hungarian Applied Arts Association, reflected the degree to which design was understood as an important component of manufacturing. The founding of new museums and the inclusion of applied arts in exhibitions also contributed to this. William Morris was a key innovator in British design and his influence had spread around the world by the 1890s (Keserü 1988; Menz 1994; Nakayama 1996). Morris’s design company (est. 1861) sought, among other things, to bridge the gap between craftsmen and trained artists. The emphasis was on artistic design with a close engagement with modes of making, so that materials and manufacturing process should be in harmony. Design reform discourse in the general and the arts press and the growth of literature offering the consumer advice on furnishing their home stimulated awareness of design as an issue. In the last decades of the nineteenth century commercial manufacturing firms across Europe and America increasingly turned to professionally trained designers from the new design schools as well as academically trained artists and architects. This reflected the sense that there was a growing market of design-conscious consumers and therefore an economic advantage to be had in meeting their desires. There were also artists and thinkers around the world who were concerned with the design in relation to the perceived aesthetic degradation of everyday life. Internationally, crafts-revival practitioners and craft theorists were also concerned with the preservation of traditional techniques, often with a nationalist agenda concerning local culture. They emphasized the ethics of the relationship between the designed object, its materials and mode of manufacture and the people who made it.

Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts The balance struck between these different reform impulses varied nation by nation and practitioner by practitioner and was frequently marked by significant overlap. In general, the division between Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau can be placed somewhere along the faultline between a concern for the way objects were made (the mode of manufacturing) and a concern for the outcome (aesthetic values). Charles Robert Ashbee’s (1863–1942) guild was a design and manufacturing practice that lay somewhere between the two and which served as an inspiration to Art Nouveau designers across Europe and America (Jacobs 1985; Lübbren 2001; Livingstone & Parry 2005; Cumming & Kaplan 1991). There was also significant overlap between such groups and other movements that sought to find new communities based around lifestyle reform ideals, such as living off the land and vegetarianism (Maltz 2011; Alston 2013: 119–54). Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft emerged from an evening study group he ran at Toynbee Hall. Toynbee Hall was a University Settlement house, founded to facilitate engagement with the social problems of London’s East End. Ashbee was in London to study architecture. His engagement with Settlement work reflected his social ethics and would continue to inform his understanding of design and community. Alan Crawford’s in-depth study of Ashbee’s career reveals the enduring importance of the values of education and the socialist principle of the dignity of labour throughout Ashbee’s life, an ethical as well as aesthetic approach to design (Crawford 1985). The Guild of Handicrafts opened in 1888. Ashbee’s dream was that the guild would grow into a flourishing enterprise that made no distinction between works of fine or applied art. He was inspired by the Italian Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini and his description of life

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in his workshop. The Guild expanded its range of specialisms over time, from furniture and metalwork workshops to silversmithing, jewellery and enamel work. In 1898 Ashbee also took over the equipment of Morris’s recently closed Kelmscott Press to start the Essex House Press, extending the practice of the Guild still further. The years around 1900 represented a high point for the Guild. In 1901 the Guild received a royal warrant as Jewellers and Silversmiths to H.M. Queen Alexandra (MacCarthy 1981: 104). The example of a loop-handled jam dish (1900–1 V&A) exemplifies the workings of the Guild of Handicrafts (Figure 4.1). Multiple examples were manufactured from around 1900 onwards. These were all variants on a similar theme: shallow silver bowls, some with one handle, some with two, some with lids. Green glass insert bowls allowed them to be used for butter or jam (Crawford 1985: 335–7). It is likely that Ashbee was responsible for the initial form, but there was no standard design and different guildsmen could introduce their own interpretations and variations. In this manner, the cost of production could be kept down as guildsmen became familiar with the demands of producing more or less the same object. At the same time, each piece was the free result of the maker’s individual handling and therefore conformed to the principles of craft over mass production. The loop-handled bowl is characteristic in a number of ways of Ashbee’s work and the work of the Guild. The appeal of the object lay principally in the quality of materials and their skilled handling. The relative simplicity of the design required that the form of the bowl and the sweep of the handles be fundamentally pleasing in and of themselves, rather than dependant on the

FIGURE 4.1  Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts, loop-handled jam dish (1900–01 V&A). Silver and blue enamel set with a cabochon, 26.5 × 10.9 × 12.4 cm. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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application of additional elements such as engraved or cast ornament. The gentle patina of the silver itself was allowed to dominate, with the bowl largely unornamented. This simplicity distinguishes the bowl from the more heavily worked surfaces of historical-revival silverware, which dominated commercial silver production in the period. At the same time, the hand-worked quality of the piece was emphasized. The hammered and polished bowl was intentionally not brought up to a pitch of mirror-like perfection. This allowed the silver to express a gentle gleam and reveal its hand-worked origins and contrast to the high polish of machine-finished surfaces. The loop handles similarly reflect a direct engagement with the nature of the material. Silver wire was drawn out and attached to create the loops. With these comparatively simple means the handles created an arresting and dynamic silhouette. At the same time, they were also practical in facilitating the handing around the dining table of a shared dish. Silver tableware had proliferated in England through the nineteenth century. The opening up of new silver mines in North America and Australia brought down the price of the raw material and new technologies of machine rolling and polishing brought down the cost of production. Electroplating silver onto base metals, such as nickel, also brought silver-plated tableware within the grasp of the lowermiddle classes. Alongside cutlery, silver was used for candlesticks, ornamental centrepieces and an ever-expanding range of side dishes. Ashbee was deeply opposed to this embarrassment of riches, both to the mechanical production of ornate silverware and its vulgar display as part of elaborate table settings. The silverware produced by the Guild was, by contrast, intended to augment an otherwise simple table setting of white flatware on white linen. Seen from this perspective, the spare form and hand-finished surface would allow consumers to distinguish themselves and their aesthetic: taste over wealth (Betjemann 2008). The blue enamel lid of the example looked at here would have provided a jewel-like note of colour against white linen. Other similar dishes were ornamented with a few, inset, semiprecious cabochons. Enamelling was a technique Ashbee first revived in his jewellery workshop in the early 1890s. Using enamel and semiprecious stones allowed Ashbee to distinguish his jewellery from the prevalent forms of Victorian jewellery, which centred around clusters of diamonds, arranged in the form of flowers or other devices, animals, horseshoes and so on. Enamelling is a technique by which powdered glass is arranged on a metal base and fired so that it melts to form a smooth, coloured coating. Cellini was an important figure for the European enamel revival. Enamel gave designers great freedom when it came to the incorporation of colour in jewellery and metalwork. The ship pendant (c.1903 V&A) in Plate  7 exemplifies the skilled combination of materials and techniques that allowed the Guild to produce intricate works of great beauty and vitality. Both enamel and the use of semiprecious stones evoked connotations of medieval crafts. Enamel and the setting of semiprecious stones had been revived in relation to the design of church plate, candlesticks, chalices and so on, as part of the earlier Gothic Revival. Ashbee’s architectural training had been with a prominent Gothic Revival architect and may well have exposed him to the aesthetic potential of these techniques. The emphasis on the combinations of coloured stones and enamels alongside the shine of gold or silver and the occasional sparkle of precious stones made jewellery pieces into works of art rather than just displays of wealth. The value was centred in the design, rather than the raw materials. The compositions that drew on multiple materials, colours and patinas prompted close contemplation of the object. Imagery drawn from the beauties of nature stimulated the imagination and brought the natural and the manufactured into interesting conjunctions. Ashbee set out his principles of good silversmithing in his 1909 publication, Modern English Silver. The main aim of the book was to consolidate the legacy of the Guild, which had closed

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in 1907. The illustrations were, Ashbee suggested, made available to students and also to the ‘Trade Thief’ whom he accused of routinely manufacturing cheap copies of Guild pieces. Ashbee sourly dedicated the volume to such manufacturers with the rebuke that now they should at least ‘thieve accurately’ (Ashbee 1974: 3). A substantial proportion of the preface continues in this vein, to denigrate the character and products of commercial silversmithing in London and Birmingham and to lament the negative impact of the economic pressures that favoured rapid machine production over traditional crafts. The values Ashbee sought to hold up against the advent of the machine were those of the wider Arts and Crafts movement. The individual craftsmen who worked on the pieces illustrated were credited. Ashbee demanded a harmony of purpose between the designer and the maker, so that the piece produced should have ‘feeling and character’. These elusive properties were compared to poetry, music and architecture: essentially art. For Ashbee a workshop, in the cooperative medieval or renaissance vein, was necessary for the achievement of these qualities, where the mutual understanding of the people involved would ensure the integrity of each piece. The workshop was also presented as the natural site for the development of skill and understanding, as craftsmen would learn from one another. In this way, Ashbee envisaged a site of production that was dynamic, supportive and exploratory. So, it comes that when a little group of men learn to pull together in a workshop, to trust each other, to play into each other’s hands, and understand each other’s limitations, their combination becomes creative, and the character that they develop in themselves, takes expression in the work of their fingers. Humanity and Craftsmanship are inseparable. (Ashbee 1974: 7) Ashbee routinely chose the unskilled over the skilled to become members of his guild, so that they could be trained in the workshop culture he sought to create. The Guild, and the Arts and Crafts movement in general, preferred to develop their skills by trial and error rather than learn from practices still to be found in the commercial sector, for fear perhaps of the pollution of commercial ideas (Crawford 1985: 30–4, 323). For Ashbee and many of the clients and patrons who supported Arts and Crafts production, how something was made was as important as the finished effect. The extensive surrounding literature in art magazines and Ashbee’s own writings all sought to explain the value of work produced in conditions that allowed for the creativity and general well-being of the maker. It must be noted that concerns for the conditions of labour did not extend to those of the miners who mined the silver or quarried the stones in the Americas, Australia and South Africa. Ashbee’s work as a designer, organizer, architect and educator left comparatively little energy for the marketing of the work of the Guild. The Guild’s survival depended on selling their wares in a competitive market. As with all artists and designers, success or failure in self-promotion frequently made the difference between those whose careers flourished and those who did not. The realities of marketing and retail did not fit comfortably into the Arts and Crafts narrative, which emphasized the ethics of production and tended to assume that the goods produced would sell themselves. Private patrons and supporters provided an important stream of income for the Guild. Wider custom was, however, sought. The Guild issued attractive catalogues of its wares from 1895 onwards and in 1899 a shop was opened in the West End of London where a number of similar outlets for artistic homewares, such as Morris & Co., were already located (Crawford 1985: 220). The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded in 1888, also provided an invaluable arena for the promotion and sale of Guild work. This exhibition society was

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formed for the purpose of bringing together the best of the work of independent craftsmen and workshops. One example of the interrelationship of these activities was the interiors the Guild produced for the palace of the Duke of Darmstadt in Germany in 1897. The commission was given to the architect M. H. Baillie Scott (1865–1945), and the Guild was asked to contribute light fittings and make the furniture (Crawford 1985: 282–3). The project may have come about through a personal connection between Baillie Scott and Ashbee, who admired one another’s work at the 1890 Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Alternatively, the suggestion may have come from Darmstadt. The Duke’s mother was English and his English wife (and cousin), Princess Victoria Melita followed The Studio magazine, which regularly featured the Guild’s work. The two interiors in Darmstadt were themselves the subject of another Studio article in 1898. The international reach of the Guild was extended by further exposure in the international design press (Ashbee 1974: xxiii). The Guild also participated in exhibitions abroad (Greenhalgh 2000: 81). Various European designers were inspired by the Guild and its work and sought to emulate its practices. In Vienna the Wiener Werkstätte (The Viennese Workshops) was founded in direct emulation of the Guild, which will be discussed in the conclusion to Part I of this book. Knowledge of the Guild and its work was spread through North America by Ashbee’s lecture tours between 1896 and 1916. The Guild visitors’ books reveal regular visits from American and European designers, making their pilgrimage to one of the most successful of the many experiments in new ways of making beautiful objects within a craft community (Braznell 1996). Despite this success the Guild struggled financially after Ashbee’s decision to move from London to Chipping Campden in the Cotswold countryside in 1902. The eventual failure of the Guild in 1907 rested on a combination of factors. The move had drastically reduced the flexibility of the workforce. The craftsmen and their families who had followed Ashbee out of London could not supplement their income with side work elsewhere and so depended entirely on the Guild. This left Ashbee reluctant to reduce production, even when sales were not keeping pace. The work of the Guild had been new, exciting and newsworthy in the 1890s. Ashbee’s belief in the natural development of a workshop culture did not lend itself to chasing new fashions. The Guild’s success had also, as Ashbee’s 1909 noted, laid them open to imitation. Commercial manufacturers of silverware and jewellery were able to reproduce the general appearance of Guild wares, but without the underlying costs of hand production. The cigarette box from Liberty’s Cymric range (1903–4 V&A) is an example of such partial emulation (Figure 4.2). Liberty had been founded in 1875 in London as a shop selling a range of imported products such as Indian silks, Japanese lacquer boxes and carved North African wood. These chimed with the tastes of the Aesthetic movement reaching a broad audience of middle-class, female consumers, and the shop expanded rapidly (Cheang 2007). Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843–1917) responded skilfully to changing fashions and the rising popularity of Arts and Crafts. Cymric was a silverware range launched at Liberty in 1899. Cymric boxes, mirrors, vases, bowls and other articles echoed the Guild style of simple, handwrought silver forms ornamented with embossed details and notes of colour in the form of enamel and semiprecious stones. The mode and means of production were, however, very different from the utopian socialism of the Guild. The range was commissioned by one of Liberty’s directors, from the Silver Studio in 1898 (Turner 1980: 21). The Silver Studio was a commercial design studio founded in 1880. It employed designers primarily producing textile and wallpaper print patterns for

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FIGURE 4.2  Archibald Knox, Cigarette Box, Liberty’s Cymric range, made by W. H. Haseler (1903–4 V&A). Silver, with cedarwood lining, embossed and inlaid with opal matrix, 11.8 × 21.4 × 12.2 cm © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

manufacturers. These designs were the property of the studio and individual designers were not credited. The most notable designer associated with the Cymric range was Archibald Knox (1864–1933) (Martin 1995). The name of the range and of individual objects, such as ‘Edron’, ‘Edwy’, ‘Cenis’, lent the pieces an aura of Celtic Revival romanticism (Morris 1991: 81). The designs were then manufactured by the Birmingham firm of W. H. Haseler, which produced all Liberty silverwares and later the Tudric pewter range as well (Levy 1986: 92–3). Haseler used mass production techniques augmented with hand finishing, emulating the appearance of Guild silver. This allowed the production of objects in the recognizable style of a widely admired designer to be purchased, at a lower cost. The Cymric range was the result of a network of commercial collaboration between Liberty, the Silver Studio, Knox and other designers, Haseler who oversaw production and the anonymous technicians in his workshops. This is a very different operation from the vision that informed the Guild of Handicrafts. The success of the Guild of Handicrafts around 1900, despite its later failure, is important in revealing the persistence into the twentieth century of utopian visions of craft production. The Arts and Crafts movement was not superseded by Art Nouveau. The overlap was extensive in both ideological and aesthetic terms. The division between handcrafted and mass manufactured was not a clear one, as many firms and workshops continued to rely to a large degree on elements of hand-working and hand-finishing alongside the employment of the latest technologies or machine tools. Gallé’s workshop exemplifies this also, as does the next example of another artist in glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany.

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Louis Comfort Tiffany, Clara Driscoll and Tiffany Studios The various design firms led by Tiffany between 1879 and the 1920s had a huge impact on both the appearance and international reputation of American design. Tiffany was an artist-turneddesigner, but from a commercial family. His father, Charles Louis Tiffany, had founded his own firm in 1837 in New York, selling stationery and fancy goods. As well as European imports, he developed domestically produced ranges, such as Islamic style silverware by Edward Chandler Moore (1827–91) (Fish 1999). Tiffany & Co, as the firm became from 1853, made a strong showing at the World’s Fairs in Paris from 1867 onwards, challenging perceptions that America could not produce its own top rate designers. The firm won a gold and silver medals in Paris in 1889 with bravura displays of diamonds. Many of the diamonds had originally been part of the French crown jewels, which had been auctioned off by the French state in 1883. Tiffany & Co had bought the largest share of the lots, reselling historic pieces to American clients and resetting the rest. This event presaged how American wealth would go on to transform the European market for art and design (Zapata 1998: 186–8). Tiffany’s career both emulated and departed from his father’s. As a young man he sought to distance himself from the commercial world of Tiffany & Co. and instead had pursued a career in fine art and through this design. This shift in focus took place within the context of the flourishing Aesthetic movement in America, which elevated the applied arts as a cultural field (Burke & Frelinghuysen 1986). In 1879 Tiffany founded L.C. Tiffany & Associate Artists with a number of creative collaborators. Over just a few years the Associate Artists created a range of Aesthetic interiors. The Havemeyer mansion is an example of Tiffany’s early projects (Figure 4.3). It blended diverse influences from Islamic and Byzantine sources, the Arts and Crafts movement and Celtic Revival, as well as elements of Japanese applied arts (Frelinghuysen 1998: 12–15). These rich and distinctive interiors were statements not just of wealth but of informed and cosmopolitan taste. Tiffany’s light fittings for the house, in particular, signalled the direction his work would go, moving away from historical styles towards new forms inspired by nature and a direct engagement with the demands of new materials and techniques. From 1883 Tiffany continued to develop his practice as an independent designer, with a particular focus on glass. In 1892 he opened his own glass works at Corona, New York. This gave him the capacity to develop the production of the material and end his reliance on the uneven quality of commercially produced glass (Duncan 1992: 59–64). Through various iterations Tiffany expanded the workshops within his studios to include stained-glass windows, blown glass, glass mosaics, lamps, enamel work, ceramics and jewellery. The Tiffany Studios also continued to deliver interior design schemes. Tiffany oversaw the work of designers and technicians across these workshops, keeping a strict eye on quality and a strict hand on authorship. Like Ashbee, Tiffany was both a designer and presided over the work of others, though the scale of his firm far outstripped the Guild of Handicrafts. Unlike the Guild, whose egalitarian ethos was an essential element, it was Tiffany’s personal authorship and artistic vision that was central to the promotion of the firm’s work. Contributing-designers and technicians were never publicly credited. At the same time, the scale and complexity of Tiffany’s production across multiple workshops would have been impossible without the contributions of key members of staff. For example, Arthur J. Nash was an English glass technician who joined Tiffany’s Corona glassworks in 1893 (Eidelberg & McClelland 2001). His technical expertise alongside the chemical laboratory headed by Dr Parker McIlhiney, allowed the firm to develop a vast array of new colours, textures

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FIGURE 4.3  Louis Comfort Tiffany and Samuel Colman, The Music Room of the Henry O. Havemeyer House, 1 East 66th Street, New York, 1891–2. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. © 2021. Image copyright the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

and finishes for glass, which gave Tiffany wares their characteristic lustre and subtleties of colour and surface detail. There are parallels here with Gallé’s investment in technical innovation. After three decades of experimentation, the Corona works could boast over 5,000 variations in colour and finish (Duncan 1992: 64). Tiffany was notable for this period in employing a number of designers and technicians who were women and in giving them significant responsibility. The central importance of these women in creating the artefacts recognized today as the work of Tiffany has been revealed by the research of Martin Eidelberg, Nina Gray and Margaret K. Hofer (2007). There were a number of factors behind the number of women employed by Tiffany. One was the opening up of design education to women. Clara Driscoll (1861–1944), a designer and manager of the Women’s Glass Studio for Tiffany, trained at the Western Reserve School of Design for Women. This school had been founded in 1882 with the aim of training designers for careers in industry. Driscoll moved to New York in 1888 and continued her studies at another co-ed design school (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 14). The founding of such schools reflected the growing recognition of the role of design in commerce and the need for trained designers. The admission of women as students also reflected perception of the need for respectable training and employment for middle-class women (Kirkham & Walker 2002: 51–2). Tiffany had a track record of collaborating effectively with women. Candace Wheeler (1827–1923) was one of the associated artists he had worked with at the start of his career. Tiffany had also supported Wheeler’s philanthropic project, the Society of Decorative Arts in

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New York, which she founded in 1877 (Peck & Irish 2001: 27–38). This was an initiative to allow middle-class women in straitened circumstances to use their needlework skills to generate income. Throughout her career Wheeler strove to open up the design profession to women and Tiffany respected both her and this goal. The traditional Western cultural associations between femininity, taste and home-making made women’s employment in associated design fields easier for society to adjust to. It should also be remembered that the 1880s and 1890s were a period of significant labour unrest. Women were not permitted to join most unions and the employment of women was therefore free of the threat of industrial action (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 94). Driscoll worked for Tiffany from 1888 until her second marriage in 1909. As was common at this time, engaged or married women had to leave the company, so Driscoll’s employment was broken for the period of her first marriage 1889–92 and a brief engagement. At Tiffany Studios Driscoll built upon her training, learning to design for glass and working through the various stages of production: tracing cartoons, creating templates, selecting and cutting the glass. Her skills were obviously recognized. When she returned to Tiffany Studios in 1892 she was put in charge of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, which she led until leaving in 1909. She started with six women and by 1894 managed a team of thirty-five (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 99). The segregation by gender reflected the mores of the time, which mistrusted the idea of men and women working together. In practice, there was no difference in status or scale between the commissions managed by Driscoll’s department and those carried out by the men’s department. Driscoll had considerable responsibilities, project managing the flow of work and negotiating with other parts of the organization, such as the foundry who cast bronze bases for lamps. She trained and managed her workforce of women, who became known as the Tiffany Girls. This workforce was necessarily subject to flux as women became engaged and had to be replaced. Driscoll also guided her department through turbulent times. In 1903 unionized male workers went on strike demanding the removal of female staff. This demand was refused by the management and the compromise struck that there would be a freeze on the number of women employed and that new hires would only take place when replacing a woman leaving (Eidelberg et​.a​l. 2005: 75). The perception of threat posed by women workers rested on the pervasive reality of lower wages offered to women for the same work as men. Alongside her managerial role, Driscoll continued to practise as a designer. She collaborated directly with Tiffany in the design of major windows, such as the Four Seasons windows, which was the show piece of the Tiffany Studios displays at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, winning a gold medal there (Plate  8). The Four Seasons scheme exemplified the innovations brought to glass design by the work of the studio. The four windows, representing Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter landscapes departed from traditional stained glass, which was dominated by figural compositions, purely decorative ornament or a combination of the two. Tiffany Studios pioneered nature as subject, rather than secondary motif. Each window features a central panel in which particular species were selected to reflect the nature of the season: tulips for Spring, poppies and chestnut leaves for Summer, ripe grapes, plums and maize for Autumn and bare pine boughs in snow for Winter. Tiffany’s designs had depth as well as surface effects and depended, as Gallé’s work did, on close study of living specimens. Nuance was achieved through the use made of the firm’s newly developed ‘Favrile’ range of opalescent and textured glass. In the Summer window (1899–1900, Morse Museum), for example, the swirls in the yellow-ochre opalescent glass selected for the background create the suggestion of rows of ripening corn, without the need to paint details onto the glass surface.

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Each piece of glass was carefully selected. Irregularities in the glass surface and variations in density of colour made it possible to create shadow and depth in the designs using the qualities of the glass itself. The windows were designed by Tiffany, but his illness during the winter of 1899 saw Driscoll execute the work and oversee the selection of the glass (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 34). Driscoll also undertook her own designs for windows and, from 1898 onwards, she increasingly focussed lamps and other small objects. Lamp shades were a way of utilizing the resources of the firm in the production of smaller articles that supplemented the income from large-scale projects. Driscoll developed many, if not the majority of designs for Tiffany lamps. Each stage of product development was overseen by Tiffany, who approved and made suggestions or his own sketches. Driscoll worked comfortably with him and admired his ethos of always pursuing art, even in the arena of large-scale manufacturing (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 99). The lamps varied hugely in size and complexity, with prices ranging from $30 to $750, reflecting the diverse markets reached by Tiffany products (Duncan 1992: 71). This can be contrasted with the challenge faced by the Guild of Handicrafts, as its wares were undercut by commercial competitors. Tiffany’s unique and closely guarded recipes for its glass and the provision, in-house, of cheaper ranges of products served to keep competition at bay. Considering the production process of a Tiffany lamp exposes the challenges of determining authorship and of distinguishing between Arts and Craft production and industrial manufacturing (Eidelberg, Gray, & Hofer 2007: 42–69). In many cases, Driscoll developed the form and the theme of the lamp herself. The production of new moulds for new shapes of shade or bases was expensive and would not go ahead before Tiffany approved the designs. Greater efficiency of production could be achieved by producing several variants on any particular form. Similarly, the utilizing of motifs already developed for windows, such as the poppies from the Summer window reused in a lamp (c.1902–10, Cleveland Museum of Art), meant working with familiar arrangements (Figure 4.4). Simply acknowledging Driscoll’s contribution to Tiffany’s production does not fully capture the realities of co-creation that lay behind Tiffany Studios products. Driscoll’s initial design might be worked up and/or coloured by one of her designers. Individual lamps would be assembled by a team working to a design template. This team included a selector, whose job was to select from the approved range of glass the exact piece for each portion. With textured and opalescent glass this role was particularly important due to the colour and surface variations. The glass itself having been developed and produced by a different team at the Corona works. Different women could compose quite distinct lamps while following the same design. Glass pieces marked by the selector were cut by a cutter and assembled into the finished lamp. Each piece was edged with copper tape. The final soldering together of all the pieces took place outside the women’s department. The lamp bases were cast in the foundry to forms designed by Driscoll, approved by Tiffany and sculpted by one of her assistants. If the lamp base were of the more ornate kind featuring inlaid mosaic glass, as in Figure 4.4, this too went through a process of design, selection and assemblage. These processes represented the early stages of mass production, but at the same time depended on a high degree of skilled hand-working at every stage. Each lamp produce was unique and the work of a highly skilled team. The success of Tiffany glass was based on many interlocking factors, from Tiffany’s innovative, artistic vision to the skills of the people he employed and collaborated with. This was crucially supplemented by highly effective marketing. Tiffany benefitted from the model of his father and the promotional insight and activities of Bing in Paris. Bing admired Tiffany as a new kind of designer-manufacturer, who reconciled both the values of art and the opportunities of modern

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FIGURE 4.4  Clara Wolcott Driscoll and Tiffany Studios, Poppy Filigree Table Lamp (c.1902–10, Cleveland Museum of Art). Leaded glass, blown glass, brass, bronze; height: 58.5 × 42 cm © The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles Maurer 2018.275.

manufacturing. He was instrumental in exhibiting Tiffany glass and securing its inclusion, by purchase or donation, in the new museums of applied art across Europe (Eidelberg 2005). Inclusion in such museums was a powerful way of signalling the artistic value of Tiffany wares, and Tiffany continued this practice at home and abroad. By 1900 Tiffany glass could be found in forty-three museums worldwide (Duncan 1992: 56). Tiffany also followed the practice of his father in using world’s fairs as international showcases for his work. His Byzantine chapel and other displays at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair were awarded fifty-four medals (Bullen 2005). His decision to exhibit all work at the fair under his own personal name, rather than the company name, was an attempt to safeguard the value of the works of the Tiffany Studios as ‘art’ rather than ‘manufacture’. The aura of a single artist’s authorship still carried more status than the reality of collaboration between a team of designers and technicians. In the same manner, consumers were addressed as connoisseurs and art collectors, rather than as people making domestic purchasing decisions. An 1896 advertisement launching the new favrile glass vases being produced in Corona makes this clear (Figure 4.5). Despite the many successes of the firm and popularity of its products, Tiffany’s primary concern was with the artistic quality of the work produced. His self-image as an artist contrasted with Ashbee’s self-image as a guildsman. Ashbee prized the principle of free cooperation, in which each individual had the joy of their own labour. Tiffany focussed on the consumer and the possibility, through economies of scale, of producing affordable art works. At the same time, the studio regularly made annual losses, which had to be subsidized by Tiffany & Co (Duncan 1999: 94). There was a constant tension between Tiffany’s enthusiasm for innovation and artistic development and his business manager’s preference for low-cost multiples.

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FIGURE 4.5  Advertisement, Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. Art Interchange 36 (February 1896): vi.

Alongside Louis Sullivan, Tiffany introduced and promoted a dramatic break from Historicism in American design. He and collaborators within his firm, such as Driscoll, sought to marry understanding of art with understanding of their customers and unleash the artistic potential of the factory system and new technologies. Already in the 1910s the range of wares produced by Tiffany had to be drastically reduced, as the firm sought to streamline its production. The economics of the aspiration to extend art into the realm of everyday life and everyday objects remained a constant challenge. Through the nineteenth century the manufacturing sector had invested more and more in design. This ranged from a close engagement between designers and makers to simply applying professional design to conventionally produced items. As the next case study will explore, there was a continuum between Art Nouveau and the mass-produced object, just as there was between Art Nouveau and the craft object.

Peter Behrens, Darmstadt and AEG Peter Behrens was an artist and designer whose career spanned the arenas of fine art and the development of the Art Nouveau art object and artistic interior. He didn’t stop there, but went on to play a prominent role in the development of industrial design. Through tracing the course of his career, we can explore these shifts in the relationship between the designer and the manufacturing process. Much of this is also bound up with varying perspectives on the role of the artist or designer in society. Through the diverse forms his work took runs a

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thread that ties it all together: the desire to steer a new course between modernity and tradition, national and international representation and the reflection of rational and spiritual values, which characterized the Art Nouveau movement. The path Behrens followed in his early career was not uncommon among Art Nouveau artists-designers, in that he started with academic art studies in the 1880s, but was rapidly drawn towards more experimental approaches: Naturalism and Impressionism. In 1892 he was one of the first members of the Munich Secession. Through this period, he diversified his practice into print-making and the design of applied art objects. The Kiss (1898, MOMA) is a large-scale colour woodcut created by Behrens (Figure 4.6). It first appeared as a colour print in the literary and artistic journal Pan. In this print Behrens moved away from his earlier, painterly work towards a firmly flat, graphic style. The image of a kissing couple was reduced down to a pair of interlocked profiles, surrounded by an energized mass of flowing hair. The faces were indicated by outlines only and the lack of individualization meant that the emotive power of the kiss was conveyed primarily by means of the enclosing and binding locks of hair, which seem to represent their energies wrapping around each other, to the exclusion of everything else. The unconventional sensuality of the image reflects the tone of the group around von Stuck in Munich. He championed freedom in the arts, particularly in regards to explicitly erotic subject matter, reflecting his views on the primal force of human sexuality (Birnie Danzker 2016). The couple lacked identifying features, to the point where it is not clear what gender they are intended to represent. This lack of hierarchy, the kisser and the kissed, and the symmetry of the two figures suggest a total union of two souls, rather than a traditionally gendered idea of romantic love. The revival of woodcut printing in this period was inspired by German medievalism and Arts and Crafts values, as well as appreciation for Japanese woodcuts (Reizenfeld 1997: 291–2). Behrens’s print thus places him as part of a dynamic group of Munich-based artists and artists-turned-designers, who were at the forefront of new directions in the arts. Through his involvement with the Secession, Behrens became involved with the formation of the United Workshops for Art in Industry alongside Endell, Obrist, Riemerschmid, Pankok and Bruno Paul (1874–1968), discussed in Chapter 3. This group extended the Secessionist aims regarding the promotion of new forms of art, to pursue collaborations with industry. Their desire was the development of beauty across all areas of manufacturing. The diversification FIGURE 4.6  Peter Behrens, The Kiss, Pan, vol. IV, no. 2 (Jul-Aug-Sept 1898): plate, facing page 116. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Woodcut on cream paper, 27.2 × 21.6 cm. Publisher: Genossenschaft Pan GmbH, Berlin. Printer: Dr. C. Wolf & Sohn, Munich. Edition:1213 (artist's edition: 38, numbered, on Imperial Japan paper; deluxe edition: 75, numbered, on copper-plate printing paper; general edition: 1100 on copper-plate printing paper). Gift of Peter H. Deitsch. Acc. n.: SC510.1953. © 2021. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

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of Behrens’s practice from art to design was furthered by his invitation to join the Darmstadt artists’ colony in 1899. The colony was founded by the Duke of Darmstadt, whose patronage of the arts we have already encountered in relation to the interiors by Baillie Scott and the Guild of Handicrafts. The colony was supported by the local municipality and actively promoted by the arts publisher Alexander Koch (1860–1939). Its aim was to further the cultural and commercial development of Darmstadt within the still-young State of Germany (Anderson 2017). Behrens joined a number of other invited artists and designers and they began to work towards a major launch-exhibition, called Ein Dokument deutscher Kunst (A Document of German Art). This was to showcase the work of the colony in the form of workshop and exhibition hall buildings and model houses presenting the latest thinking on the artistic home. The young Viennese architect, Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908), designed all the buildings, apart from Behrens’s own house, which he designed by himself (Figure 4.7). The exhibition and all the houses received extensive coverage in Koch’s art magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, revealing the ready interrelationship of art and design collectives, exhibitions and the press in this period. Behrens’s house shows the rapid development of his work and skill. The design was unified inside and out, a home for an artist that was itself a work of art. The dominant influence was the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde (1863–1957), whose own home, Bloemenwerf house at Uccle, Brussels (1897), was one of the forerunners of the new artist’s house and was widely reproduced in art magazines (Windsor 1981: 23). Behrens’s interiors represented a dramatic FIGURE 4.7  Peter Behrens, Behrens House (Darmstadt, 1901) Deutesche Kunst und Dekoration vol. IX (1901– 2): 160.

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departure from the heavy, German Renaissance style of contemporary bourgeois interiors (Wieber 2007). The dining room reveals white painted wooden furniture, panelling and fitted cupboards, which kept the room light and airy (Figure 4.8). The whole design was unified by colour: white with notes of stronger colour in the yellow-ochre seat covers and the red stems of the glassware. Similarly, the design was unified by motifs which were echoed across different surfaces. A pattern of slender elliptical curves repeated on chair backs, the glazing bars of cupboards, the metalwork of the hanging lamps, even on the handles of cutlery. The ceiling was ornamented with dramatic curved mouldings that swept majestically around the anchors of the two light fittings. This approach was one that extended across the interior and exterior. The corners and bays of the building’s facades were picked out in green glazed brick, while the basement and eves were in red brick, contrasted against the white plaster walls. Unity extended as far as the kitchen, with its white fitted units and elliptical glass panel doors. The furnishings and objects were all executed by local manufacturing firms. In this manner the commercial aims of the colony were met by providing innovative designs for local industry. Behrens House and the whole exhibition was a modern marketing exercise. Despite the attention to detail, Behrens and his family never lived in the Behrens House. The rooms presented a theatrical illusion of a lived-in home. Publicity photographs featuring Behrens’s wife and daughter suggested the fiction of their residence in this house of art, while they all preferred to live in town in an apartment with mains electricity (Deicher & Whyte 2011: 223–4). Behrens’s contribution to the exhibition extended

FIGURE 4.8  Peter Behrens, Behrens House, dining room (Darmstadt, 1901) Deutesche Kunst und Dekoration vol. IX (1901–2): 168–9.

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to his direction of the lavish opening ceremony. The ceremony revolved around a contemporary parable, written by Koch’s assistant and called The Sign. The central symbol was the crystal, which was used to draw an analogue between the formation of a diamond from base carbon and the creation of art from the mundane matter of life (Anderson 2002: 29; Schwartz 1996b: 173–4). Behrens left Darmstadt in 1903 to become director of the School of Applied Art in Düsseldorf. His patron there was Hermann Muthesius (1861–1927), who was leading efforts to develop Germany’s design industries at the Ministry of Trade (Windsor 1981: 53). Behrens’s interest in design for industry culminated in his move in 1907 to become artistic adviser to AEG in Berlin. This step coincided with the formation of the Deutsche Werkbund, which extended the aims of the United Workshops to place a firmer emphasis on art within industry. This will be discussed further in Chapter 12. AEG was a substantial business concern that manufactured almost everything to do with electricity and power, from light bulbs to electric motors, cables, turbines and built its own power stations. At AEG Behrens played a unique role designing a branded identity for the company. He designed everything from its logo and marketing materials to the products they manufactured and the factory buildings they were made in. AEG products were, in the main, not those that typically caught the attention of artistdesigners: arc lamps, desk fans and electric kettles. For Behrens, however, the collaboration with the directors and engineers of AEG offered him was a chance to put into practice the ideal of repairing the breach between art and industry and creating beauty through the sensitive and rational treatment of materials (Buddensieg & Rogge 1984: 34). The union of art and industry

FIGURE 4.9  Peter Behrens and AEG, Arc Lamp poster (1907). © Heritage Images/Contributor/ Getty Images.

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would have economic advantages and social advantages in the extension of well-designed, beautiful objects to the masses. Behrens’s redesign of standard AEG products involved a close engagement with their function, materials and technical specification. He did not believe that good engineering alone would produce beauty, but that beauty should arise out of the nature and materials of the object itself, not applied decoration. The AEG arc lamp was the first product to be redesigned by Behrens (Figure 4.9). This form of lighting was primarily used in industrial facilities, so little thought had been given to its aesthetics. Behrens changed none of the core specifications, but smoothed out the design to create a clean silhouette involving a cap, a shaft that flared at the bottom and the larger flare for the reflector disk. The sheet metal of the lamp’s construction was coloured green or grey with bronze trim and fittings (Buddensieg & Rogge 1984: 49–53). The principle of using shape and colour in harmony with materials and function is consistent across the development of Behrens’s career and the wider field of Art Nouveau. Behrens also went on to produce all the company’s posters and catalogues. From his early interest in print, he had developed a number of new typefaces. For AEG he developed a variant on the Behrens Antiqua font he had designed in 1906. This was a clean, serif font, based on Central European Romanesque sources. It was clearly suited to mechanical reproduction, yet retained the authority of tradition (Heidecker 1984: 178). Its simple uniformity distinguished it from the expressive, curvilinear fonts of earlier Art Nouveau typography. The L’Art moderne cover in Figure 3.1 exemplifies the other extreme of Art Nouveau fonts. The poster for the AEG

FIGURE 4.10  Peter Behrens, A.E.G.-Metall­ fadenlampe (1907, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)). Lithograph 69.2 × 52.7 cm. Arthur Drexler Fund. Acc. no.: 173.1991. © 2021. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

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screw-cap light bulb (1907, MOMA) illustrates the development of Behrens’s graphic work (Figure 4.10). The image is simple, block printed black, tan and white, with the white void of the light bulb shape at the centre. The emanation of light is represented by concentric rings of white dots. Across the poster, similar dots are also used to divide up the surface, framing the poster and the zones of text. Additionally, a triangle and a circle are picked out in dots, alluding to the spread of light from the central light source. The repetition of dots creates unity between the pictorial and non-pictorial elements of the poster. The geometric spareness of the design is quite a contrast to the luxury of the Darmstadt house. But there are parallels too: colour contrasts used in lieu of ornament and a clear understanding of the expressive power of line to either animate or demarcate surfaces. Many Art Nouveau designers dreamed of developing a new language of design for the twentieth century. They wanted art and design to be integrated into all areas of life and for principles of beauty to determine the appearance of everything, from the objects people used to the buildings themselves. In many cases, the emphasis on beautiful materials and quality craftsmanship meant that the results were beyond the reach of all but the richest. Behrens’s decision to collaborate with industry presented an alternative course and another means of shaping the design culture of the twentieth century. The examples in this chapter present a chronological spread from the 1880s to the 1910s, from craft to machine production and variations on the unique art work and the mass-produced, standardized object. But there was at this time no certainty as to which course would prevail. The Art Nouveau of the 1890s and 1900s was a response to this range of possibilities. The search for new forms, explored in Chapter 2, was played out across this range of production paradigms. The objects produced continued to depend on the same infrastructure of exhibitions, fairs, museums and print media, to reach customers and patrons. It is this latter domain that will be the subject of the next chapter as printed text and image transformed the art world.

5 Art Nouveau on paper Print and graphic art [H]e had Baudelaire’s works printed in a large format recalling that of ancient missals, on a very light and spongy Japan paper, soft as elder pith and imperceptibly tinted with a light rose hue through its milky white. This edition, limited to one copy, printed with a velvety black Chinese ink, had been covered outside and then recovered within with a wonderful genuine sow skin, chosen among a thousand, the colour of flesh, its surface spotted where the hairs had been and adorned with black silk stamped in cold iron in miraculous designs by a great artist. JORIS-KARL HUYSMANS, AGAINST NATURE (1884)

The role of art and design publications in the promotion and spread of Art Nouveau has been impossible to avoid in the preceding chapters. Based on developments in print technology and public interest, art and design journals flourished in the years around 1900. The volume of illustrated material within them – new buildings, new interiors, new paintings, new ceramics, glass and so on – kept artists, designers and consumers informed of the rapidity of invention. In texts and images these magazines spread the emerging gospel of Art Nouveau: a vision of a world in which everything could be made beautiful. They were also part of an increasingly image-rich world as the print culture of the nineteenth century was expanded to include the photomechanically reproduced image (Wood 2000). This led to the development of increasingly sophisticated visual literacy and the blurring of boundaries between fine art, graphic art and new arena of advertising (Zmelty 2014). The circulation of visual material was central to the mass consumption of Art Nouveau and to the dissemination of the latest art and design innovations around the world. It was print that made Art Nouveau an international movement. The development and spread of the printed image through the nineteenth century took diverse forms. Art presses, such as Morris’s Kelmscott Press led a renaissance in art-book publishing, producing richly decorated books of poetry and literature which aimed to revive the tradition of the illuminated manuscript (Miller 2008). Commercial publishers also saw the advantage of adding attractive images to books, especially children’s book. Fine artists extended their practice into print as a way of reaching a broader audience. The work of Odilon Redon in this chapter presents an example of this. For others, as we have seen with Behrens, this extension of practice into print was a stepping stone to a broader graphic and applied arts practice. From art prints to illustrations, typography and poster design, print offered a route by which art could reach into

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everyday life. Graphic art was also a career in itself. Aubrey Beardsley and Elizabeth Shippen Green are presented here as two examples of Art Nouveau graphic art practice. Finally, Art Nouveau journals, as we have seen with the examples of L’Art moderne and Jugend, were key sites for the manifestation and dissemination of Art Nouveau forms and ideas.

Odilon Redon and the artist print The market for albums of artists’ prints had developed through the nineteenth century. Etching through wax onto a metal plate allowed for the direct transference of the artist’s hand, with a particular emphasis on subtleties of line. Lithography, in which the image was applied to an inked stone, allowed for greater emphasis on tone and on the addition of colour. Later photomechanical reproduction also made it possible to accurately reproduce ink drawings without the artist needing any particular technical facility with the medium of print. The supposed artistic validity of one method over another was subject to intense debate (Clarke 2012). By the 1890s public interest in prints saw the advent of dedicated exhibitions, the coverage of prints in the art press and the blurring of boundaries among collectors between artistic and commercial illustration. Among the artists whose print production was central to their practice was the French artist Odilon Redon (1840–1916). His print albums, which he referred to as Noirs, were particularly admired and collected by members of Symbolists circles in Paris. His work used tone as much as line to create strange and otherworldly images, often connected to a combination of Symbolist literary sources and new scientific thought and imagery. These works were not illustrations in the conventional sense, but responses to the sensations and images conjured in him by the texts and ideas he was exposed to. Print, as a medium with less established high-art conventions, helped him break with naturalistic imagery altogether and present unmediated visions from his own imagination. As we have seen, Art Nouveau was particularly marked by such engagements between one form of creativity and another. Groups like Les XX encouraged close interactions between literature, art and music. Van Rysselberghe’s painting of the poet Verhaeren reading his poetry aloud is a reflection of this. This engagement went both ways, and Verhaeren and other Symbolist writers were inspired to write about their engagement with the visual art. Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) paid homage to Redon’s work in his novel Against Nature, which strove to capture the experience of intense, multisensory aesthetic reverie. Redon’s prints are described in detail within the novel, with an emphasis on conveying the effect of the imagery of the sensitivities of the main protagonist, the aesthete Jean des Esseintes (Huysmans 2003). Though the intensity with which des Esseintes loses himself in beauty is extreme, it reflected a contemporary sense of the power of art to transport the individual, which was a central tenet of Art Nouveau. Redon developed the lithographic album as an arena in which his poetic vision of art could be realized. The collection of prints into a series created a more substantial aesthetic experience than a single image, an exhibition in miniature. Homage to Goya (1885, MOMA) was the fourth of such albums. The title reflected Redon’s admiration for Goya’s prints of the early nineteenth century. An admiration shared among other French Symbolists, including Charles Baudelaire and Huysmans. Homage to Goya comprised a series of six lithographs, linked by means of captions which function as a sort of prose poem across the otherwise disparate images (Figura 2005: 84–9). I. In My Dream, I Saw in the Sky a FACE OF MYSTERY II. The MARSH FLOWER, a Sad Human Head

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A MADMAN in a Dismal Landscape There were also EMBRYONIC BEINGS A Strange JUGGLER Upon Waking, I Saw the GODDESS of the INTELLIGIBLE, with her Severe and Hard Profile. (Gamboni 2011: 142–50)

The images defy conventional narrative. In the first caption, Redon signals the dream as the arena closest to the experience conjured by these works. His first lithographic album had similarly been called In the Dream (Dans le rêve) (1879). The second print in the series, The MARSH FLOWER, a Sad Human Head, shows the tendril of a plant rising out of an expanse of dark water that seems to stretch into the distance to meet a dark, almost black sky (Figure 5.1). The tendril bears a few dark leaves and glowing, pale buds. The largest bud takes the form of a wizened head, the leaf from which it emerges appears like a skullcap, creating the appearance of a sad Pierrot. The face glows palely against the dark sky, reminiscent of the man in the moon. The smaller buds are unformed, with only one suggesting through the shadow of eye sockets that it too holds a similar capacity to take human form. The result is an image that holds within it a strange conjunction of life and death. The budding plant is symbolic of burgeoning life, but its fruits are strange and rapidly decaying. The black water and black sky indicate an unwholesome environment, not conducive to growth, yet the buds shine brightly in the darkness, glimmering on the surface of the water below. Barbara Larson has looked at Redon’s engagement with contemporary science, particularly with new

FIGURE 5.1  Odilon Redon, The Marsh Flower, a Sad Human Head, from Homage to Goya (1885, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)). Portfolio of six lithographs on Chine applique, 27.3 × 20.4 cm. Publisher: probably the artist, Paris. Printer: Lemercier et Cie., Paris. Edition: 50. Gift of The Ian Woodner Family Collection. Acc. n.: 161.2000.2 © 2021. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.

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Darwinian, evolutionary thought and origins of life on earth (Larson 2005). New thinking across the domains of astronomy, archaeology and biological sciences all proposed a vision of a universe subject to chaos and upheaval and one in which humanity’s presence was a matter of chance rather than divine design (Eisenman 1992: 169–72). Redon’s imagery of floating forms, dissolving in darkness, offered a similar sense of the transience of life and the elusiveness of meaning. The pale, malformed buds evoke simultaneous associations of plant life, or of protozoa floating in a black sea. The imagery surrounding the new science was widely disseminated. Redon was friends with the biologist Armand Clavaud. Clavaud was particularly interested in species exhibiting both plant and animal properties, suggesting an origin for Redon’s recurrent imagery of flowers with human faces (Larson 2005:5). Clavaud produced publications on his research, illustrated with imagery of specimens and their patterns of growth and reproduction (Figure 5.2). One of the reasons Redon had turned to print was to reach a wider audience than he had with his paintings. His early albums captured the imagination of a small group of Symbolist writers who would champion his work with a wider public. The Homage to Goya album was released in conjunction with a piece by Huysmans, published the same day, that transcribed the experience of viewing the album into a prose poem (Gamboni 2011: 133–42). It was later re-published under the title ‘Nightmare’. The emphasis on the experience of engaging with art and the way art might directly addressed the inner-world of the viewer reflected the belief in the power of art to move and transform the individual. It is this belief that motivated much of the new art. From this darkened water, under this opaque sky, the monstrous stem of an impossible flower suddenly sprang up. One might have thought it a rigid rod of steel, sprouting hard, clear-cut metal leaves. Then buds came out, like tadpoles, like incipient heads of foetuses, whitish pellets, sans nose, sans eyes, sans mouth; and of these luminous buds, seemingly steeped in a phosphorescent oil, one at last burst and swelled to form a pale head which swayed silently above the water’s darkness. An immense and wholly personal pain emanated from this livid flower. Its features expressed simultaneously the anguish of a worn out Pierrot, an old clown weeping for his ruined loins, the distress of an ancient lord sapped by spleen, an attorney found guilty of scheming bankruptcies, and old judge dumped, after a tangled skein of murders, into a prison yard! (Gamboni 2011: 135) The allusion to tadpoles, malformed foetuses and impotence born of dissipation were all themes with a powerful resonance in late-nineteenth-century France. The Franco-Prussian war of 1869–71 cast a long shadow over French culture (Thompson 2004: 169–97). It was a humiliating defeat that cast aspersions on French masculinity. In addition, conscription had exposed the fact that a great many men of fighting age were unfit to fight (Nye 1998: 72–97). This was compounded by low birth rates through subsequent decades, and by new understanding of heredity and evolution to raise the nightmarish spectre of the degeneration and extinction of the nation (Menon 2004). Such existential concerns were not limited to France and these ideas are explored further in Chapter 10. The spindly, sickly plant reflected

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FIGURE 5.2  Armand Clavaud, Flore de la Gironde (Paris: Bordeaux Féret et fils, 1882): Plate 10

anxieties regarding the depleted strength of the French nation. In contrast, Gallé’s verdant and thriving plants and flowers by the 1890s can be seen to signal returning optimism. In the oeuvres of these artists, as in the work of many others over the last decades of the nineteenth century, plant life was used as an analogue for life-force. The subject of life-force, spent or in abundance, was one that concerned a range of scientific disciplines and philosophical positions, such as the Monist theory of the universe propounded by biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), the élan vital of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and the life forces explored by sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel (1858–1918) (Botar 2017; Brain 2015). This vision might be affirmative of the possibilities of reanimating connection to one another and one’s environment or pessimistic concerning the human body’s ability to withstand the rigours of the modern world. By the 1890s print was a medium embraced by increasing numbers of artists who turned to it as a means of reaching wider audiences. The dealer Ambroise Vollard represented Redon and encouraged other young artists to diversify into colour lithography albums, which he could sell alongside their paintings and drawings (Groom 2006). This suited the artists of the Nabis group: Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Paul-Élie Ranson, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton. Their style, inspired by Paul Gauguin, was based on simplified forms and flat areas of colour. Print, in the form of the art journal, was also significant to the promotion of the new group and its aims. The Revue blanche was a small art and literary magazine founded in 1891, which publicized the endeavours of the Nabis.

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Des Esseintes’s collection of first editions, art prints and the bespoke binding of his favourite books reflects the great meaning with which print could be invested in this period. The delight in ambiguous imagery sat in a paradoxical relationship with the significance invested in beauty of form. The concrete beauty of the perfectly bound book, described in the epigraph to this chapter, the desirable assemblage of handmade, watermarked paper, antique font, quality ink and artistically decorated silk lining, was something concrete that could be known and valued. It was this disjunction of tolerance for the meaningless or the obscure with the investment of meaning in the material object that gave the Symbolist and Aesthetic movements the alternative label of Decadence (Desmarais & Condé 2017). The mutability of Redon’s imagery represented the loss of stability and certainty that lay at the heart of late-nineteenth-century modernity and the new arts that sought to capture this.

Aubrey Beardsley: The artist as illustrator Though the aristocratic des Esseintes represented the elite end of the social spectrum, in many ways print was a democratizing medium. Reproduction allowed for the wider dissemination and more affordable patronage of the new art. Many individuals who for reasons of social class and/or gender lacked the resources for the long period of training and precarious earnings of a painter could make their careers in the graphic arts. Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98) came from a lower-middle-class household and worked as a clerk in London, undertaking only three months of night classes at the Westminster School of Art in 1892. His career was given its foundation by a substantial commission to provide illustrations for an edition of Le Morte d’Arthur by the publisher J. M. Dent. This press produced limited print runs of classics, with an emphasis on the quality of paper, binding and graphic design. Dent was inspired by the Kelmscott Press, but by utilizing photomechanical methods of illustration, rather than woodblocks he was able to achieve a similar effect much more economically (Calloway 1998: 45). Though the Morte d’Arthur project started in an Arts and Crafts vein, in which the homage to Morris’s ornament and Edward Burne-Jones’s graphic style was apparent, under Beardsley’s hand the imagery shifted register towards a parody of Burne-Jones’s ethereal eroticism to capture more of sexual tension of the original Arthurian legends (Figure 5.3). Over the next few years before his early death, Beardsley developed a highly individual and successful style FIGURE 5.3  Aubrey Beardsley, Merlin and Nimue from Morte d’Arthur (London : J. M. Dent, 1898) © Culture Club / Contributor/Getty Images.

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of illustration that incorporated influences from Japanese graphic arts, alongside, variously, the graphic work of Albrecht Dürer, Mantegna and French Rococo prints (Calloway, S. & Corbeau-Parsons 2020: 13–21; Zatlin 1997). These varied graphic traditions were married with a disregard for Victorian morality to create images that flouted both pictorial and social conventions. The subtle and not-so-subtle allusions to sexual desire, particularly female sexual desire, caused outrage in the British press (Zatlin 1990). The erotic content of his work was partly inspired by the volumes of Japanese erotic prints, Shunga, which circulated among collectors across Europe and America. Beardsley’s work straddled the divide between the practice of an artist and that of a commercial illustrator. Unlike Redon’s albums, much of his work was commissioned by publishers or appeared in art and literary magazines. The degree to which he conformed to the conventions of the role of illustrator is one that can be contested. His later Morte d’Arthur illustrations departed more and more from the source text, introducing entirely unrelated imagery, as Beardsley grew frustrated with the long-running project (Calloway 1998: 54–5). The large decorative boarders to the pages, a format inspired by the Kelmscott Press’s highly decorative pages, became more and more energized with abstract tension and vaguely grotesque forms. Beardsley’s illustrations for Salome by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) reveal the degree to which his work stretched the conventions of book illustration. Art historians and literary scholars have continued to diverge in their assessment of the relationship of the images to the text (Zatlin 1990: 95; Calloway & Corbeau-Parsons 2020: 38–45). Some illustrations, such as The Toilet of Salome, cannot be linked to any scene in the play. The Woman in the Moon (1894) frontispiece (Figure 5.4) presents a recognizable caricature of Wilde as the face of the moon, looking down

FIGURE 5.4  Aubrey Beardsley, The Woman in the Moon from Salome (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894) © Culture Club/Contributor/Getty Images.

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on a pair of figures whose identities are open to debate, but who are likely to represent the Young Syrian who loves Salome and the Page who loves the Young Syrian. The ambiguity of the man/woman in the moon and the identities and relationship of the figures is consistent with the incongruities and internal contradictions found within the Wilde text and across Beardsley’s illustrations. The Climax (1894) is a reprise of the image published in The Studio magazine in 1893, which had secured him the commission for the Salome book. It shows the moment in the play when Salome takes up the head of John the Baptist and takes the kiss the living man had denied her (Figure 5.5). Beardsley’s pen and ink style was perfectly attuned with the photomechanical method of reproduction. He was able to employ both the delicacy of hair-thin lines with dramatic blocks of black and white. The Climax is an example of the rapid development of his style from the earlier Morte d’Arthur illustrations. There is no longer any regard, however cursory, for placing his figures within interiors or landscapes. Salome floats in the upper half of the frame, as if transcendent in her moment of victory. Behind her, a cloud of black circular forms evokes the energy of her desires. Below Salome, blood from the severed head of John the Baptist appears to form a black pool. Areas of white suggest the idea of a glistening surface, out of which emerges some strange, flower. The sinuous forms of evil flowers suggest a connection to French Symbolism and its seminal text Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), which is also one of the books depicted on the dressing table in Toilet of Salome I. Interestingly, for the representation of a female character known for the erotic power of her naked body,

FIGURE 5.5  Aubrey Beardsley, The Climax from Salome (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1894) © Culture Club / Contributor/Getty Images.

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the figure of Salome in The Climax is almost incorporeal. She is represented as a robed form suggested by a few fine lines. The energy of the image is thereby concentrated on the psychological power of her intense and possessive gaze into the face of John the Baptist. Though the characters are antagonists, there are ambiguous visual parallels between their pouting lips, furrowed brows and sinuously coiling hair. The ambiguous depiction of gender can be compared to Behrens’s Kiss, though in Beardsley’s hands the suggestion of erotic energy is far darker. Through the reproduction of his work in The Studio and the circulation of copies of his printed books Beardsley’s work rapidly became known internationally. The influential book, Modern Art (1908), by the German art critic Julius Meier-Graefe (1867–1935), presented Beardsley as a crucial figure in the break with the past. He introduced Beardsley to his readers with the statement ‘At Beardsley’s house one used to see the finest and most explicitly erotic Japanese prints in London’ (Meier-Graefe 1908: 252). Sex sells and, like von Stuck in Munich, Beardsley presented erotic imagery as an expression of the cutting edge of new ways of living as well as making art. Unlike von Stuck, though, Beardsley suffered repercussions for the risqué reputation he had built up. He was too closely associated in the public imagination with Wilde and his career was in jeopardy following Wilde’s conviction for gross indecency in 1895. Despite having a brief, six-year-long career before his early death, Beardsley’s work had a lasting influence on graphic art internationally, as shall be discussed later in this chapter.

Elizabeth Shippen Green: Art Nouveau and commercial illustration The reproduced image was not limited to the art print and art journal. Books and magazines of all sorts carried increasingly extensive illustrations. In addition to this, pictorial images were used across advertising and product packaging. The arena of commercial illustration was quick to pick up on the new developments in graphic art, where the novelty of new styles lent an aura of modernity to products and publications. While this book emphasizes the rapid dissemination and exchange of new ideas through exhibition, print and personal networks, the dissemination of Art Nouveau forms into popular culture is also significant. Cheap reproduction of Art Nouveau played its part in the demise of the movement, as we saw in the case of the Guild of Handicrafts. But its ubiquity in the public sphere, in metro station signs, posters, costume jewellery and popular magazines, is also why it is still so redolent of a particular period of transformation and the emergence of the modern, image-saturated world as we know it today. Women’s magazines and children’s books were one of the many ways Art Nouveau design entered the common home. These media were also a field of employment for the growing number of women training as graphic artists (Scanlan 2015; Thompson 1971: 47). Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871–1954) was a successful American illustrator from what became dubbed the ‘golden age of American illustration’ (Perlman 1978). She worked prolifically, in the art department of the Ladies Home Journal, alongside freelancing for Saturday Evening Post, Saint Nicholas, Woman’s Home Companion, The Critic and Harper’s Weekly (Goodman 1987: 17– 18). In 1902 she signed an exclusive contract as the first women staff-artist for Harper’s Weekly (Herzog 1993–4: 14).

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Green studied under Howard Pyle (1853–1911), one of the foremost American illustrators of the day, at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (Scanlan 2015:8–12). Drexel had been founded in 1891 as a philanthropic initiative to provide professional training in the arts and sciences for men and women, regardless of origins. It is another example of the expansion of art and design education already noted. Through Pyle, Green met fellow-illustrators, Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863–1935) and Violet Oakley (1874–1961), with whom she would live for the next fourteen years. The trio became known as the Red Rose Girls and were also all members of the Plastic Club. This was one of the oldest art clubs for women in America and provided members with the exhibition opportunities and collegial support more commonly available to male artists (Graham 1980). In addition, Green, Smith and Oakley were among a handful of women granted associate membership to the all-male New York Society of Illustrators, founded in 1901 (Doyle, Grave & Sherman 2018: 324). Life Was Made for Love and Cheer (Plate  9) was an illustration produced by Green to appear in Harper’s Monthly Magazine alongside a poem called ‘Inscriptions for a Friend’s House’ (Van Dyke 1904: 507). The image was only tangentially related to the poem, taking one line as inspiration for a scene depicting Green, Oakley and Smith among other friends and family in the garden of their home, known as the Red Rose Inn. Where the poem focuses on the cosy and secure interior of the home, Green’s image is one of informal conviviality in a lush garden. The watercolour on illustration board was rendered as a halftone, black-and-white image in the magazine by means of photomechanical reproduction. It captures the mixture of the decorative and illustrative in Green’s work. It plays with surface and depth alongside stylization and naturalism, in a manner that reveals Green’s deep understanding of the possibilities of the medium and the expectations of her audience. The loss of colour in the halftone illustration renders the graphic arrangement all the more important. The vertical composition presents clusters of figures of diminishing scale up the page, leading the eye between the door of the house in the background and the pair of children playing with a dog in the foreground. Firm outlines around the figures allow them to stand out distinctly from the lush background. Observation from life is balanced with stylization: the children, their bare feet sunk in the grass, are naturally posed, though there is no modelling to round out their forms. The flowers, water surface and pebble paths of the background privilege surface pattern over naturalism. The light tones of the children’s and women’s clothes, of the pebbles and some blossoms lead the eye back to the facade of the house, hidden among the trees. This suggests depth, though the dense foliage obscures any sense of real perspective. The composition emphasizes the aesthetic qualities of the silhouette of dark branches against a pale sky, of white dresses and pale blossoms against dark greenery, without fully departing from verisimilitude. The white scarf that floats in the middle ground, fluttering freely around the central female figure adds a further, decorative element. Without being directly derivative, Green’s work recalls the art of contemporary French posters. Japanese graphic art is a common influence. The blurring of distinctions between fine and applied art and between art and poetry connects this work to the ambitions of Art Nouveau. Translated into the popular arena of mainstream magazine illustration, Green and many artists like her extended the aim of bringing art into everyday life. Green’s full name appears in a banner in the lower right-hand corner of the image. This prominent claim to authorship signal’s Green’s status where the majority of commercial artists often went unacknowledged. The nominal divide between fine art and commercial illustrations was substantially breached in the arena of poster design in the late nineteenth century. Developments in lithography enabled printers to produce larger and larger scale colour images and the cities of Europe were

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increasingly animated by walls of coloured posters and on Morris columns, sandwich boards and the sides of vehicles (Chapin 2012: 12–18). The poster was designed to be visually consumed in a passing moment and yet also carry a clear message (Iskin 2014: 54–5).  Its disposable quality made it an appropriate medium for artistic experiment, just as temporary exhibition architecture was for designers. In addition, the remit of the poster to seize the attention of the passer-by had intrinsic affinities with the Art Nouveau impulse for art to reach and breach the boundaries of the individual, to move and affect them. Jules Chéret was a leading innovator in the field. Over his long career, from the 1870s to the 1890s, he developed approaches that made the most of the poster form. He simplified the drawings and palette and used exaggerated silhouettes and dynamic poses to create striking, animated images (Chapin 2012: 22–4). His poster for Saxoléine paraffin oil of 1894 exemplifies the successful formula he developed (Plate   10). The virtues of Saxoléine as a product are proclaimed in concise text: that it is a stable fuel source, produces an extra-white light and is odourless and non-flammable – all highly desirable for use in the home. The image reinforces these qualities. The brightness of the light is demonstrated by the contrast between the vivid yellow of the woman’s dress and the blue shadows cast behind her. Its safety, ease of use, cleanliness and so on are signalled by the elegance of this woman in evening dress, effortlessly adjusting the lamp without fear of fire or smuts or polluting odours. The simplicity of the composition – a single figure and a lamp – and the vivid palette lent itself to immediate, arresting affect. Chéret pioneered the use of a restricted palette of primary colours to create brilliance. From the 1890s he discarded black to use royal blue for outlines and text, further adding to the vibrancy and visual coherence of the image. Chéret’s posters became so synonymous with a form of vivacious, commercial, female beauty that they gave rise to the term ‘la chérette’. La chérette’s charm, sexual allure, fashionable attire, alongside her presumed regard for quality and lack of technical proficiency, proclaimed the desirability and ease of use of everything from bicycles to cigarettes and became the dominant image within advertising of the period (Thompson 1971). The poster did not remain in the domain of the commercial. Art Societies and exhibition groups, like Les XX and the Secessions adopted the poster and poster-inspired graphics within their journals as a means of promoting themselves and their vision for art (Geyer & Laps 2007: 19). Ruth Iskin has commented that the poster, with its simplified graphics and colour palette, propelled the break from conventional drawing, anatomy and perspective, and functioned as the arena where artists broke through in applying the lessons of Japanese graphic arts (Iskin 2014: 51–3). A number of artists produced posters alongside their fine art practice. One of the most notable of these was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), who developed an uncompromising graphic style across both his painting and his posters. His 1891 poster advertising the Moulin-Rouges nightclub is a stark contrast to Chéret’s gaiety, but nonetheless employs the lessons learned from his work (Figure 5.6). The passer-by is arrested by an image that captures the sexual frisson of this popular nightspot. The figures are heavily stylized, even caricatured, and represent the dancer La Goulue (The Glutton) and her dance partner Valentin le Désossé (The Boneless). The perspective up the skirts of the dancer and the suggestive position of her partner’s raised hand is dramatized by the red punctuation of her stockings. Legs akimbo and face tired and impassive, the dancer is the opposite of the graceful, smiling chérettes. The bare floorboards of the club and the surrounding, faceless crowd that gather around the dancers emphasizes the anonymity and opportunities for illicit, sexual activity at the club, while the floating lights suggest the disorientation of inebriation (Chapin 2012:25). The critic Fénéon commented: ‘That Lautrec’s got a hell of a nerve, and no mistake. No half measures, the way he draws, or the way he colours either. Great flat dollops of white, black and

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FIGURE 5.6  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge – La Goulue, (1891) Lithograph © Photo 12/ Contributor/Getty Images.

red – forms all simplified – that’s all there is to it’ (Iskin 2014: 60). The disregard for pictorial convention and the dissolute imagery achieved the attention-grabbing effect demanded by the client. Departure from the norm was important as images competed for attention in a crowded urban environment. Alfons Mucha, who shall be discussed further in the next chapter, rejected the bright colours of the contemporary poster in favour of gentle, muted tones and dreamy female figures, part wood nymph and part siren, to distinguish his work. The poster was championed as a modern art form by Huysmans in his reviews of the 1879 and 1880 Paris Salons, where he praised the vitality of Chéret’s work in contrast to the conventional paintings in the Salon (Collins 1985: 44–5). Growing regard for the poster as a new, democratic art form led quickly to coverage in the art press and the emergence of collectors and experts. In 1889 Chéret was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for creating a new art form (Chapin 2012: 16). The massive growth in demand for graphic artists across the domains of posters, illustrated books, magazines and product packaging provided work for many artists and began to saturate the world with new imagery.

International art and design journals As has already been mentioned, the proliferation of art and design journals across Europe in the decades around 1900 created a new site for the discussion and exchange of visual material and ideas. The period saw an explosion of titles, driven by the growing appetite among professional

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groups and the public for discussion of art and design issues. This new type of journal was heavily illustrated by means of both line drawings and full- and half-page photographic reproductions, as well as occasional inserts of colour lithographic plates, as we have already seen with Behrens’s The Kiss. Visual content added to the cost of production and so was not undertaken lightly. It represents a clear commitment among these publications to conveying visual information. A sense of the sheer volume of art, architecture and design magazines in this period can be gauged by the 111 separate European titles listed in Tschudi-Madsen’s classic Sources of Art Nouveau, which even so did not extend to Russian, Nordic or Eastern European publications (Tschudi-Madsen 1956: 455–7). This list captures something of the cacophony of voices, images and rhetoric by which an increasingly active press communicated to a world-readership regarding what form modern art and design should take. The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art was a title that many of the later design journals in Europe and America acknowledged as an influence (Beegan 2007: 49; Spens 1993). It was founded in 1893 by Charles Holme (1848–1923). He worked in the textile trade, which gave him connections to Turkestan, India, China and Japan, and he was particularly interested in Japanese culture (Spens 1993: 5). As a writer and editor, Holme sought a broad scope of coverage, ranging across Britain, Europe, America and occasionally Asia. The particular appeal of The Studio was this range, covering not just contemporary art, but prints, photography, architecture, garden design, interiors and design. A host of art journals sprang up in the 1890s, all following a similar brief of exploring new currents in art and design. Some, like The Studio and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (German Art and Design) were the initiative of publishers. Some, like Mir Iskusstva (World of Art (Russia)) and Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring (Austria)) were periodicals devised by groups of artists to promote their vision of modern art and design. Some were the vision of individuals, such as Gustav Stickley’s The Craftsman (USA). Some included art and design alongside contemporary literature, such as Pan. Some developed out of professional societies, like Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Crafts (Hungary)), which was the official magazine of the National Hungarian Applied Arts Association. These publications frequently had an explicit concern with improving national culture, through providing a forum for debate on how national art might develop. However, they were also sewn through with connections to the broader arena of pan-European and American art and design journals and as such functioned as transnational spaces through which the crosscurrents of culture flowed. Like the exhibitions and fairs, these journals can be seen as a facet of the transnationalism of the art and design world that facilitated the explosive inventiveness of Art Nouveau. Despite this variety, many Art Nouveau journals followed a similar format: a few key feature articles in each issue, supplemented by notices, competitions, annual exhibitions, meetings of key societies and book reviews. These journals had the effect of compressing time and space across the art world. A new exhibition in London could be read about in St Petersburg, in Philadelphia or in Krakow the following month. Familiarity with the latest art and design was no longer the preserve of those with the means to travel frequently and maintain an extensive, international circle of friends. This pursuit of cultural exchange was central to the founding of such journals. Mir Isskustva was the mouthpiece of the World of Art group in St Petersburg and sought, simultaneously, to promote the work of the group’s members and to open up the Russian art scene to new international currents. Ver Sacrum was founded to perform a similar function for the members of the Vienna Secession. The first editorial of the inaugural issue in 1898 spoke of the need to

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break through the torpor of Viennese cultural life to raise awareness of the huge changes in art and design taking place elsewhere: Artists and writers who ventured to look beyond the bounds of the city brought tidings of something different, something new and timely, which here and there awoke a response, passing like a whisper from person to person: perhaps there is something on the other side of the Kahlenberg – perhaps, finally, even such a thing as modern art! (Harrison, Wood & Gaiger 1998: 917–18) Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration was founded in 1897 in Darmstadt by the entrepreneurial art publisher Koch, who had also backed the initiative of the Darmstadt artist colony. Its aspirations were to support German design culture and industries. The overtly nationalist tone of much of the coverage embraced a pan-German identity that strove to overcome the cultural dominance of France and England. The programme for the journal emphasized that its goals depended also on an openness to foreign material: ‘We want our artists to forge a free path, we want to let specifically German work have the word, without losing sight of what can be learnt and what can be bettered’ (Koch 1897:15–16). The first editorial of Magyar Iparművészet similarly emphasized the journal’s role in supporting cultivating the taste of the Hungarian public. The nationalistic aim of fostering Hungarian art culture was clearly outlined: Our task will be to inform our readers in relation to the efforts of creating our own independent national art, just like the big foreign nations, the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, the Russian, etc., and, where we find such artwork, to conserve it. Our efforts have to be double theirs, to save the flower, which has grown on our fields, from being stolen and taken away, and, by widely distributing its seed, to prepare the ground for renewed lush growth. Our applied arts can only thrive if they are Hungarian and not just a weaker copy of foreign art, which doesn’t speak to our hearts. (Magyar Iparművészet 1897: 2) These quotes reflect the duality of thinking within Art Nouveau, in which the past was turned to as a model, but could not be allowed to dominate at the expense of the contemporary. And, at the same time, the nationally specific was sought, but not at the cost of short-sighted parochialism. Despite the differing national agendas, Art Nouveau journals reveal a marked similarity of contents, reflecting the transnational nature of the search for a new art. Through the 1890s it was common to come across features profiling prominent figures from the British Arts and Crafts movement, Ruskin, Morris or the Pre-Raphaelites (Szczerski 2015). Visual similarities also attest to art journals as both a medium for and a reflection of the rapid circulation of new imagery. Beardsley designed the cover for the first issue of The Studio and his subsequent international fame was enhanced by the early coverage he received in this publication (Greenhalgh 2000: 24; Houfe 1992: 79–81). The second issue of the Russian art journal Mir Iskusstva in 1902 featured a cover by Leon Bakst that was clearly indebted to the Beardsley (Figure 5.7) as well as an illustrated feature on him inside. In the same year, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration featured another Beardsley-esque cover by Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942) (Figure 5.8). This is not to say that the contents and graphic design across all these journals was uniform. Ver Sacrum put its commitment to modern art into practice in its very form. The non-traditional square format and primacy of image over text transformed the journal itself into a work of art (Silverthorne 2011). In all cases, the new journals transported readers to a realm where the

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FIGURE 5.7  Leon Bakst, Mir Isskustva, vol. 2 (1902): cover.

visual and material world of design was taken seriously. ‘Looking’ was as much a part of the process as ‘reading’ and the educative function of the magazines was dominated by the visual. Full-page photographic reproductions of objects prompted readers to look carefully to consider details of ornament and form. The double-page spread of Behrens’s dining room (Figure 4.8), with its sympathetic decorative boarders exemplifies the care with which the encounter with the magazine’s contents was curated. This visuality opened up the possibility of engaging with the content of journals without a complete grasp of the language of publication. An international audience was anticipated in the occasional provision of dual language editions. The Studio had a French-language edition (Spens 1993). Other journals, such as Mir Iskusstva and Magyar Iparművészet, included a French translation of their contents page in each issue. At the same time, the literature review sections of the journals implied a potentially multilingual readership. German, French and English publications on art and design were regularly listed across all journals to keep readers abreast of new literature in the field. At the same time, design discourse in the national language made a significant contribution to an independent design culture. It was part of the development of new art centres and the opening of new art and design schools and museums in cities around the world, which challenged the primacy of Paris. This was particularly important in places which understood themselves as historically marginalized and which focussed in this period on the fostering or renewal of national culture. A domestic journal was a step along the way that would free local culture from unmediated dependence on foreign models. In Hungary, for example, this was primarily a step away from German-language hegemony in culture and education.

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FIGURE 5.8  Heinrich Vogeler, Deustche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. 7(1) (1902): cover.

These journals frequently revealed a complicated balancing act between claims of national authenticity and uniqueness and cosmopolitan connectivity with international currents. The cover of Magyar Iparművészet in 1899 by Ferenc Helbing (1870–1958) manifests the journal’s vision of its contribution to Hungarian culture and to a wider transnational or universal art culture (Figure 5.9). The figure of the angel – itself a transnational allegorical symbol – with outstretched arms holds in one hand a laurel wreath and in the other pens, brush and hammer. It represents the trope of the unification of the liberal arts and mechanical crafts that was common across the field of international design reform. We can compare it, for example, to the cover for Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration by Hans Christiansen (1866–1945) in the same year (Figure 5.10). Helbing’s angel is given a Hungarian character by means of the ornamental motif on his loin cloth, recognizably related to the extensive work done on Hungarian ornament as part of the national revival. At the same time, these stylized floral forms sit comfortably alongside the frame of flowing graphic lines and stylized ornament that signalled the journal’s connection to the new graphic arts of the European Secession movements in Germany and Austria. Although these journals were, not infrequently, chauvinistically nationalist in their rhetoric, in both their form and content, they reveal an underlying transnational understanding of art and culture. It is clear that they were concerned not with the flow of information from centres to peripheries but the flow of information back and forth among art and design practitioners across Europe and the world. Even where journals expressed their mission to their readers in explicitly national terms, this was never considered at odds with participation in the world-wide project of art and design reform. Indeed, familiarity with and participation in the wider art

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FIGURE 5.9  Ferenc Helbing, Magyar Iparművészet, vol. 2/4 (1899): cover.

FIGURE 5.10  Hans Christiansen, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. 3(1) October (1899): cover.

world was regarded as necessary to maintain creative vitality. Their pages indicate that to be an artist, architect or designer was to be a member of an international community whose practice transcended national boundaries. It is in many ways impossible to imagine the development and spread of Art Nouveau without the medium of print. The inventiveness of Art Nouveau was seminally influenced by the accessibility of new imageries: botanical and other scientific drawing, such as the details of cells revealed by new microscopes. This was disseminated in illustrated books, whether intended for scientific instruction, as seen in Clavaud’s Flore de la Gironde, or the translation of such

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science into the realm of ornament as in Ruprich-Robert’s Flore Ornamental. Archaeological discoveries were similarly shared through illustrated scientific publications. The ornament of the world was collected in Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament (1856) and Albert Racinet’s L’Ornement Polychrome, ten volumes between 1869 and 1873. Different nations also published their own illustrated accounts of national ornament, such as Jósef Huszka’s Magyarische Ornamentika (1891). The profusion of visual material from across time and geographies was enriching but also a central impetus in the need for a new rationale to make sense of the abundance of choices. Keeping up to date with the latest ideas in art and design no longer meant a Grand Tour or visiting Paris once a year. The consumption of the arts of the past alongside new ideas, newly exhibited artworks or newly completed works from around the world was now constant, fostering the rapid uptake of new directions. Admiration for the work of foreign colleagues frequently led to the establishment of international commissions, friendships and collaborations. The next chapter will go on to consider some examples of the cosmopolitan individuals whose practice was central to Art Nouveau as a transnational movement.

6 Art Nouveau patrons and networks

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. OSCAR WILDE, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891)

In this chapter we shift perspective away from objects and makers and over to the individuals and networks whose support was integral to the development of Art Nouveau. These individuals and routes of exchange reflected transformations in the art world through the nineteenth century. The individuals focussed on are influential and cosmopolitan. Going beyond simply buying art, they facilitated the circulation of works around the globe and the transmission of new ideas and forms through their personal connections and practices of acquisition and display. Their interest spurred the rapid development of Art Nouveau and extended its reach into new localities. Their work in bringing together artists from different places created new conjunctions and new, transnational sites of art.

Siegfried Bing and the Maison de l’Art Nouveau Siegfried Bing (1838–1905) was a collector and dealer whom we have already encountered. Through his Parisian gallery, Maison de l’Art Nouveau, he coined the term ‘Art Nouveau’ that was to become over time the label for the international movement. This broad application of the label ‘new art’ matches Bing’s cosmopolitan view of art and design, which transcended national boundaries. The original goal of his Maison de l’Art Nouveau enterprise had been to bring together the best of the new art movement from around the world. This initiative built on his prior experience as a dealer in East Asian art. In his long career Bing contributed both to the dissemination of East Asian art in Europe and to the promotion of numerous Art Nouveau artists and designers. He strove to spread knowledge and appreciation of such work among his patrons in Paris and across his networks worldwide. Bing came originally from a Jewish mercantile family in Hamburg, well established in the practices of art dealing and manufacturing. Bing himself is an elusive figure and relatively few records survive regarding the details of his life. Much of what is known is due to the work of scholars Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg (see bibliography). In the aftermath of the FrancoPrussian war Bing shifted his focus away from manufacturing towards dealing in Japanese art.

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He quickly established a reputation at the centre of the network of European and American collectors (Weisberg 2005a). Bing’s brother-in-law, who was German consul to Tokyo, and later his younger brother and son travelled there, securing first-hand access to Japanese artefacts (Chang 2017: 122). The major wave of Japanese art to reach Europe in the 1860s has already been mentioned, but the situation quickly became more complex. The Japanese did not take long to stem the flow of valuable antiques out of Japan and adjusted production to meet the international appetite for Japanese art (Ono 2003: 114). The export of applied arts for foreign markets was interconnected with the import of foreign technology (Chang 2017: 89). It made Japan a simultaneously important market for the export of European goods at the same time as Europeans clamoured for Japanese art. Bing had been naturalized as a French citizen in 1876 and played a significant role in securing French trade with Japan, for which he received the Légion d’Honneur (Weisberg Becker & Possémé 2004: 16–25). As exports from Japan, of varying quality, flooded into Europe the demand arose for experts who were able to distinguish the origins and antiquity of these objects. The connections between Bing’s practice as a dealer and his subsequent promotion of Art Nouveau operated on a number of levels. It provided him with a foundation of contacts with collectors and curators across Europe. He donated or sold objects to major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée des arts decoratif, Paris; and the Hamburg Museum of Applied Art. He was considered a leading authority on Japanese art. He founded and edited his own journal, Le Japon Artistique (Figure 6.1), between 1888 and 1891, which published simultaneously in French, English and German editions (Weisberg 2004: 51–60). As the cover shown in Figure 6.1 illustrates, the publication was highly visual, to the point of sensuality. The presentation of Japanese art within preached the ethos of close aesthetic contemplation of nature and of art objects of all kinds. This publication served Bing’s pedagogic, aesthetic and commercial missions to broaden and deepen public understanding of Japanese art and its potential to inform contemporary design. This objective was paralleled in his retail practice. His didactic aim was presented in the initial editorial: It seemed to me that to give the precise feeling of things, there was only one effective way: that of speaking to the eyes by a faithful reproduction of the originals. The whole task I am undertaking today will be devoted to putting this system into practice. It will consist in making pass under the eyes of the amateur, using the best engraving processes, an uninterrupted series of varied artefacts, drawn from all branches of art and borrowed from the most diverse periods, to the effect to thus constitute a sort of graphic encyclopaedia for the edification of all the fervent followers of Japanese art, eager to follow its development in its various manifestations. However, this is not the sole aim that this publication sets out to pursue. It is particularly aimed at the many people who, in any capacity, are interested in the future of our industrial arts, especially you, modest workers or large manufacturers, who have an active role in this part of our productive life. (Bing 1888: 4–5) In the face of objects of varied quality, it was important to educate the consumer. The journal made an accessible contribution to an already flourishing field of scholarly studies on Japanese art in French, English, German and Danish.

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FIGURE 6.1  Le Japon Artistique, vol.35, March (1891): cover © DEA/G. Dagli Orti/Contributor/Getty Images.

As we will see in relation to Brinkmann later, many of Bing’s connoisseurial and curatorial contacts shared his growing interest in the new, often Japanese-inspired, direction European applied arts were taking in the 1890s. Bing was ahead of the field in also looking with enthusiasm towards new American design. Word of exciting developments in American decorative art was filtered back to Europe by journalists reviewing the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and this may have been part of the stimulus behind Bing’s 1894 trip to America, which was financed by the Beaux-Arts administration (Brauer 2014: 209). American connoisseurs were major collectors of Japanese art and Bing had well-established relationships with collectors and institutions. The real objective of the trip was to familiarize himself with contemporary American design and manufacturing (Weisberg 2004: 77–89). His report for the Beaux-Arts administration was later privately published as a pamphlet on American art and design, La culture artistique en Amérique (Bing 1970; Troy 1991: 13). This pamphlet can be regarded as a continuation of Bing’s practice of utilizing print publishing to raise awareness and understanding of the objects he dealt in. It revealed the persistence of his perspective that French design should seek cultural renewal through contact with foreign forms and innovation (Dandona 2010: iii; 84–5). Another dimension of this thinking and a further significant outcome of the trip was the development of Bing’s relationship with the Tiffany Studios. He returned to Paris with samples of Tiffany glass and immediately set up an audacious project, soliciting designs for stained-glass windows from leading artists in Paris and sending those designs to Tiffany to be made up. The finished windows were shipped back to Paris, and Bing was able to show them at the opening of his new gallery in 1895. The primary group of artists approached by Bing were the Nabis. They were well placed to adapt the flat and simplified forms of their imagery into cartoons for stained glass. In addition, Bing also solicited designs from Toulouse-Lautrec and a few others (Eidelberg 2005). His enthusiasm for new directions in art, where he saw artists and designers learning the lessons to be learnt from Japanese art, made it natural for him to make the leap into the promotion of these contemporary developments. His Maison de l’Art Nouveau opened in Paris in 1895 as a gallery and showcase for the best of the recent directions being taken in art and design. In disregarding distinctions between fine and applied arts, Bing championed an innovation in display culture that was just emerging. His displays in l’Art Nouveau centred on a number of room installations. Though there were still objects in vitrines in the more usual

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fashion. The complete interiors he commissioned featured furnishings, wall panelling, murals and a selection of smaller objects to bring the ensemble to life. He was aware of the work of the circles around Les XX in Brussels. He and his assistant MeierGraefe had visited Brussels earlier in the year and been inspired by what they saw there. Interiors for the new gallery were commissioned from Van de Velde, who was pioneering a distinctive, expressive form across design fields (Silverman 1989: 272–4). The dining room was the largest room and featured furniture and wall panelling by Van de Velde and a painted mural of peasant women by the Nabis painter Ranson (Figure 6.2). The cedarwood panelling and furniture was animated by inlaid copper ornament of energized buds and swirls. While this resonated with the orange and earth tones of Ranson’s wall paintings, there was some disjunction with the plates by Vuillard that were set out across the table and depicted fashionable modern women in blue, green and mauve. The speed with which the installations for l’Art Nouveau were put together and the mixture of extant pieces and new commissions contributed to the richness of the displays that amounted in some places to incoherence (Troy 1991: 24–5). Weisberg has examined how the mixed palette of promotional tools Bing developed as a dealer in Japanese art were extended to his new direction as a promoter of Art Nouveau (2005a). He took out extensive advertisements in the general and specialist design press and developed both a strong message and a strong visual identity for his new enterprise. The aim was promoted as follows: ‘L’Art Nouveau will strive to eliminate what is ugly and pretentious in all things that presently surround us in order to bring perfect taste, charm, and natural beauty to the least

FIGURE 6.2  Henry van de Velde and Paul Ranson, dining room installation for Siegfried Bing, Maison de l’art Nouveau (1895) © SIAF/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/ Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle.

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important utilitarian objects’ (Becker 2004: 115). The title of his showroom translates as the House of the New Art and the interdisciplinary and international nature of the work he showed there aligns with the rationale of this volume and with others that have taken Art Nouveau as a label transcending a particular place or narrow definition of form. The names of many artists and designers championed by Bing were relatively unknown and have become widely famous. Bing’s role in breaking this new ground extended beyond his showroom to exhibitions he arranged travelling exhibitions across Europe, reaching new audiences, clients and institutions across Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czech and Scandinavia. He was the European agent for Tiffany Studios and responsible for getting Tiffany glass, as well as other examples of Art Nouveau design, into collections across Europe. This replicates his earlier practice in the promotion of Japanese art. He did not found a new journal to promote Art Nouveau, as he had with Le Japon Artistique, but he continued to write articles for the design press. In addition, his collaborator, Meier-Graefe, took on the task of presenting the argument for Art Nouveau, as an art critic and founder of both Pan and later Dekorativ Kunst. The contacts Bing had established across France, Belgium, Germany, England and America through his earlier career ensured he was able, at short notice, to collect a wide range of recent works from artists and designers. The first catalogue issued by the of Maison de l’Art Nouveau contained 662 items, by over a hundred different artists and designers, mostly from France, but also from the United States, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Britain, Hungary, Sweden, Finland and Norway (Salon de l’art nouveau 1896). He readily mixed displays of paintings, prints, pastels, sketches or sculpture with furniture, jewellery, glass, ceramics and textiles. From around 1898 Bing increasingly focussed on directly commissioning work to show, either through relations with manufacturing firms or within his own in-house workshops as part of Maison de l’Art Nouveau (Weisberg 2004: 168–9). This practice reached a pinnacle in the rapid execution of the l’Art Nouveau Bing pavilion at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, discussed previously. The turn towards a more tightly curated form of Art Nouveau, with an emphasis on French rococo heritage, was propelled in part by xenophobic responses to the international range of his initial offering, discussed at the end of this chapter (Silverman 1989: 270–83). The coherence of the pavilion, its success and celebrated impact continued to rest on Bing’s careful selection and coordination from the vast range of forms available (Lacquemant 2004: 190–7). Bing’s role at the heart of an active and innovative network was one that contributed significantly to the development and reach of Art Nouveau. His activities created links between artists and designers, manufacturers and craftsmen, audiences and patrons, curators and critics, across national boundaries that might otherwise not have existed. Bing’s enterprise was not an isolated effort. Meier-Graefe’s own gallery, La Maison Moderne founded 1899, was directly inspired by Bing’s. Similar galleries-come-retail-spaces opened in cities across Europe. These were sometimes linked to particular sites of production, as with the outlet for the Talashkino workshops discussed later. In other cases, they represented the initiatives of individual dealers and groups who supported the new forms of art and design.

Justus Brinckmann and museum curation Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915) sat at a similar key point in multiple European design networks and was a close friend of Bing. He was the founder and director of the Hamburg Museum of Applied Art from 1874 until his death (Seemann 1998). Through his personal connections, as a

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friend and mentor to a number of other European curators in the emerging field of professional curation, he contributed to a formative period in thinking on the role applied arts in national culture. His connections with artists and designers were founded on his passionate interest in applied art and on his acquisitions-role overseeing a growing museum collection. His understanding of art was grounded on a historical knowledge of styles, periods and techniques, in line with his German art historical education. But it was also very much oriented towards the mission of furthering the development of the fine and industrial arts in his city and nation. The museum, as an institution, is an example of the impossibility of neatly separating the national from the foreign in the arena of art and design. The impetus for the founding of Brinckmann’s museum came from the Hamburg Society for the Promotion of the Arts and Useful Trade (est. 1765). Its concern, like many similar organizations across Europe, was the fostering of innovation in design and manufacturing, with the aim of promoting economic growth within the nation. The notion of a museum of applied arts, as a collection of modern and historical design objects, was similarly a transnational concept. The South Kensington Museum (London, 1852), the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (Vienna, 1863), German Trade Museum (Berlin, 1867) and the Hungarian Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest 1872) were all built on the same principles. The establishment of a teaching collection of exemplary objects was intended to aid in the instruction of designers and the improvement of public taste. The scope of the international community of objects gathered in such museums can be illustrated by reference to the index of the 1902 guide to the Hamburg museum by Brinckmann. Museum collections were all subject to a common principle of arrangement: by materials and techniques, by era and country of origin. The ceramics section alone comprised examples from ancient Greece to contemporary Japan and ranged across twenty-seven different countries (Brinckmann 1894: x–xii). The choice of objects was evidence of Brinckmann’s own particular interests in the design cultures of East Asia and Scandinavia, reminding us of the power wielded by individual curators in this period in forming national collections and deciding what constituted exemplary design. Both Bing and Brinkmann were part of an international network of Japan enthusiasts, with a significant overlap in relation to collectors of Art Nouveau. Brinckmann visited Paris annually to keep up with French developments and regularly made purchases from Bing, first Japanese objects and later Art Nouveau pieces (Weisberg, Becker & Possémé 2004: 249–53). Among the Scandinavian ceramicists Brinckmann admired was Pietro Krohn (1840–1905), who was part of a circle of active collectors of Japanese art in Copenhagen. Krohn was artistic director of the porcelain manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl and founder of the Danish Museum of Applied Art. Danish collectors frequently sent the Japanese objects they acquired to Brinckmann in Hamburg for identification. At the same time, Bing was invited to Copenhagen to curate a Japanese section of the Nordic Exhibition of Industry, Agriculture and Art in 1888 (Weisberg, von Bonsdorff & Selkokari 2016: 124). Bing, Brinckmann and Krohn were all active in the intersection between the connoisseurial practice of Japan-enthusiasts, museum curation and contemporary design. The transnational nature of the design-reform community and the friendly connections between Krohn, Bing and Brinckmann are also indicated by their frequent collaborations (Christensen 2008: 9). In 1900 Brinckmann secured the funds for purchases from the World’s Fair in Paris (Brinckmann 1901). He displayed his extensive acquisitions, made substantially from Bing’s pavilion, in a dedicated ‘Paris Room’ in the museum that opened in 1901 (Figure 6.3). The arrangement demonstrates the diffusion of the room-installation form from Bing’s gallery into the wider museum arena. Figure 6.3 shows a portion of the room with arrangement of furniture

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FIGURE 6.3  Justus Brinckmann, Paris Room, Museum of Applied Art, Hamburg (1901). Featuring furniture by Edouard Colonna from Bing’s Pavillion Art Nouveau (1900), Otto Eckmann’s Five Swans, tapestry (1897) and Frida Hansen’s Bluebells portiere (1901) © Museum of Applied Art Hamburg.

from the drawing room by Colonna from Bing’s pavilion. On the wall hangs Otto Eckmann’s (1865–1902) tapestry, Five Swans, and in the doorway hangs a portiere by Norwegian artist Frida Hansen (1855–1931). Bluebells (1901) demonstrates her innovative semi-transparent weaving technique (Moi, Ueland & Leithe 2015: 66–72). Through the Hamburg museum, Brinckmann made the latest design from around the world available to art students and the general public. The network of influence and support for new design that Brinckmann was a part of is further illustrated by his relationship with Jens Thiis (1870–1942) in Norway. Brinckmann supported the career of Thiis, a young appointment (aged twenty-five) to the role of museum director at the newly set-up Museum of Applied Arts in Trondheim, which had opened in 1893. Thiis was made director on letters of recommendation from Brinckmann and from Julius Lessing, the director of the Berlin Museum of Applied Art (Mæhle 1970: 86). Following his appointment he spent four months in Hamburg with Brinckmann learning the principles of museology. Brinckmann and Thiis had a mutual interest in Japanese design, but also in Scandinavian weaving traditions. The Thiis collected Japanese art for Trondheim, some from Bing’s shop in Paris and some from the auction of Bing’s collections following his death. These purchases were often guided by Brinckmann (Weisberg, von Bonsdorff & Selkokari 2016: 128–33). Brinckmann was inspired by Thiis and by the wider Norwegian textile revival to seek to set up a weaving workshop and school in Northern Germany in 1896, for which he enlisted Thiis’s help (Wieber 2015: 332). This, in turn, inspired Thiis to set up a weaving school in 1898, in Trondheim, alongside the

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museum (Fallan 2016: 22–4). This exemplifies the mutually informed activities of such curators and their larger vision for their role in national design culture. The Skærbæk weaving workshop operated under Brinkmann’s patronage from 1896 to 1903, with instruction led by Thiis’s sister-in-law Katrine Dons (Wieber 2015). Brinckmann had hoped to secure Hansen, whose work he admired, as the instructor but she refused on the grounds that she regarded her work as a contribution to the Norwegian national tradition. Ironically, her work was marginalized in Norway by cultural gatekeepers such as Thiis on the grounds that it was too international (Thue 1986: 64–7). Eckmann had studied at the school of applied art attached to Brinckmann’s museum. This gave him access to Brinckmann’s collections of Japanese applied arts and his collection of contemporary French posters. Both these sources were seminal in Eckmann’s career, first in his graphic art for Pan and Jugend, and secondly in his textile designs which he developed for the Skærbæk weaving workshop. Five Swans reflects the influence of Japanese applied arts in the theme of stylized depictions of nature and in the slim, vertical format that echoes Japanese kakemono (hanging scrolls). Brinckmann was influential in the career development of a generation of German artists and designers, particularly those who studied in Hamburg, through his support and through the visual material he made available to them. Christiansen is another example of a designer whose career was shaped by Brinckmann’s support. Brinckmann’s collection of French and Japanese graphic art helped him develop his graphic art style (Figure 5.10). When he moved to Paris in 1895, Brinckmann furnished him with an introduction to Bing (Beil 2014: 44–7). In 1899 he became one of the founding members of the Darmstadt artists’ colony and his house featured tapestries designed by him and manufactured by Skærbæk. This is a brief sketch of just a few of the connections that made up Brinkmann’s professional and personal community. He was connected with artists, collectors and museum professionals around the world. These connections were developed and maintained by a range of activities including personal travel and letters, professional recognition in the form of dedications or introductions to one another’s books, as well as the purchase, gifting and lending of objects back and forth. Alongside contributing articles, Brinckmann undertook the translation of Bing’s Le Japon Artistique for its German edition, and supervised printing and distribution (Weisberg, Becker & Possémé 2004: 56, 66). The collection he amassed at Hamburg reflects this international community: ceramics from Copenhagen and textiles from Norway alongside prints from Japan and contemporary European and American Art Nouveau design objects. Men like Brinckmann represented a growing field of professionals active in the collection and display of new forms of applied art and the almost instantaneous transfer of new knowledge and ideas among them.

Princess Tenisheva: The World of Art and the Talashkino artist’s colony The pursuit of new art and design required supporters in each country. The efforts of the Duke of Darmstadt have been commented upon in relation to his patronage of Ashbee, Baillie Scott and the foundation of the Darmstadt colony. Nation-by-nation and, as indicated earlier, maintaining links between and across nations, there were networks made up of artists, designers, promoters, manufacturers, retailers and patrons who facilitated the transformation of art and design cultures around the world. Princess Mariia Tenisheva (1858–1928) was an individual who, in a

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variety of guises, embodied all these roles in Russia. Her activities were facilitated by her second marriage to Prince Tenishev, whose fortune provided the financial foundation for her work. The turn-of-the-century was a period of intense artistic activity in Russia, as new voices fought to be heard against the backdrop of a largely conservative art culture and rising social and political tensions. The Realist break from the academy had taken place in the 1870s, proposing a dramatic rejection of academic conventions in favour of paintings of Russian life and people (Shabanov 2019; Jackson 2006). By the 1890s, however, the movement had been reabsorbed into the establishment as a new orthodoxy. A younger generation of artists were pursuing new directions, looking either to the West and the development of Symbolism and post-Impressionism or to the East and new forms inspired by Russia’s own diverse art heritage. These initiatives needed support, and Tenisheva was at the forefront of many efforts to foster the development of modern Russian art. The nucleus for her contribution were the craft workshops set up by her around her country estate of Talashkino, near Smolensk, though her surrounding activities were extensive and varied (Salmond 1996: 115–43). Tenisheva was deeply committed to the project of the revival of Russian art and culture. Part of this commitment was expressed through the patronage she provided to a significant number of Russian artists whose work she bought, often at early stages in their careers. These were all artists whose practice pursued new languages in the visual arts inspired by encounters with both Western European art and by Russian traditions (Kennedy 1977; Petrova 1998, Raeburn 1991; Kharitonova 1991). She employed the artist Alexandre Benois (1870–1960) as the curator of her art collections, supporting him through the first five years of his career. She also supported emerging artists through the founding of an art school in St Petersburg to prepare young artists for entrance into the academy (Petrova 1998: 264). With the establishment of her Talashkino workshops at the end of the century and the building of the new church there Tenisheva provided vital employment for the designer Sergey Malyutin (1859–1937) and artist Nikolai Roerich (1874–1947), as well as hospitality to other artists and cultural figures, including Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910) (Bowlt 2008: 148, 265–6). Her patronage was not limited to Russian artists. She travelled regularly to Paris, where she also shopped at Bing’s gallery (Zhuravleva 1994: 158). She contributed paintings by Edgar Degas and Whistler to the 1899 World of Art exhibition (Bowlt 1979: 41). She was also at the forefront of the reappraisal of Scandinavian artists in Russia. Scandinavian art was seen to offer an alternative model for revitalizing Russian art, one which engaged with modern currents without losing a sense of national rootedness. Tenisheva collected the work of many Scandinavian artists, including Liljefors (Konstantynow 1996: 171). Her collections were accessible to the many Russian artists she patronized, providing an important conduit for the understanding of new developments in European art. In 1898 she donated a large collection of Russian and European graphic works to the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg (Bowlt 1979: 41). The importance of her ongoing patronage of new artists must be understood in the context of the conservative, even xenophobic, culture predominating in Russia at the time. When she made her donation, there was some discussion as to whether the museum was prepared to even accept the work of foreign artists (Kennedy 1977: 49). In 1899, alongside another major patron of the arts Savva Mamontov, Tenisheva sponsored the launch of a new art journal, Mir Iskusstva. This journal, spearheaded by Benois, who was already in her employ, and art impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929), who would achieve worldwide fame as the director of the Ballet Russe. Mir Iskusstva aimed to provide a critical platform for the regeneration of Russian art, through discussion of both Russian heritage and international art and design. Tenisheva’s involvement with Mir Iskusstva did not continue after

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its first year, though her support was instrumental in getting the journal off the ground. Both Tenisheva and Mamontov had hoped that the publication would focus more substantially on Russian crafts (Kennedy 1977: 2). The dedicated applied arts section of Mir Iskusstva never emerged, though applied art objects appeared here and there in the form of illustrations. The design-reform focus of Mamontov and Tenisheva did not sit easily with the core World of Art group, who dreamt of a new, modern and sophisticated arena for cultural debate (Chuchvaha 2016: 74–7). Tenisheva’s position in relation to the World of Art group was never easy. In her memoirs, written in Paris following the Russian Revolution, she commented that as a wealthy woman, it was impossible to be taken seriously as an artist or as anything other than a dilettante (Tenisheva 2008: 419). Her desire to contribute to and steer the content of the Mir Iskusstva journal was resisted by both Diaghilev and Benois. Her support for their work was mocked in the public press, where she was depicted as a dupe to Diaghilev’s chicanery and as a cow being milked for her money (Petrova 1998: 48, 296–7). Diaghilev’s reputation would go on to eclipse Tenisheva’s, due substantially to his interpersonal skills and the adaptability of his artistic goals to the opportunities on offer. This eclipse obscures her contemporary prominence in the Russian and European art worlds as both a patron and an artist in her own right. Tenisheva was represented in portraits by a number of artists. These portraits share a common emphasis on her intellectual presence and often allude to her identity as an artist herself. Vrubel’s portrait of Tenisheva in the guise of a Valkyrie (State Art Museum, Odessa, 1899) is revealing of both the artistic innovation she supported and Vrubel’s perception of her (Plate  11). Vrubel is best known for the sequence of paintings he made around the figure of a solitary demon. Maria Taroutina has explored how the religiosity and engagement with traditional byzantine iconography of Vrubel’s early work evolved into a modern style in which the picture plane fractured into multiple coloured planes and the angelic and demonic blurred into existential crisis (Taroutina 2017). Vrubel’s portrait of Tenisheva echoes the haunted, melancholy eyes of his demon figures, who also represented the artist himself. The Valkyrie shares the same liminal quality as the demon/angel, a figure who crosses between worlds. The frontal pose echoes the figures of saints in Russian icons, while the reins of her steed in one raised hand and a wolf’s head cape slung over one shoulder are attributes of power. This is far from the idea of the credulous, dilettante and represents Tenisheva as a figure of supernatural perception as well as sensitivity. At her estate in Talashkino Tenisheva had complete freedom to develop her artistic and spiritual vision. The workshops she founded there produced applied art objects in wood, ceramics and embroidered textiles. They were similar to a number of other workshops set up in the latter decades of the nineteenth century to revive traditional Russian crafts. Cultural theorists of the Russian Revival had become increasingly exercised by the spectre of the old ways being given up in favour of cheaper, foreign alternatives (Hilton 1995; Salmond 1996). Cultural activities at Talashkino included the collecting of folk art that would be made up into an estate museum. Her husband bought her the estate in 1896 from her lifelong companion Princess SviatopolskChetvertinskaya who continued to reside there (Bowlt 1979:42; Oser 2016: 240–1). After 1900 Tenisheva accelerated activity at Talashkino, with the employment of Malyutin as artistic director. Her Talashkino crafts reached an international audience at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, as well as a national audiences. Objects from the workshops were exhibited at the third and fourth World of Art exhibitions in St Petersburg in 1901 and 1902 (Oser 2016: 255). She also opened a shop in Moscow, The Source, between 1903 and 1906 with an interior by Malyutin that captured the stylized fantasy of a peasant world (Oser 2012: 66–71). Tenisheva

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was a designer in her own right. She designed wooden objects and textiles for execution by Talashkino crafts people and became a renowned enamellist in the later decades of her life. Malyutin and Vrubel also provided designs for the workshops and worked with Tenisheva on her designs for the estate church (Oser 2016: 245–8). The church is comparable as a project with the central hall of Gaudí’s Güell Palace in that it was a total work of art and spiritual environment combined (Plate  12). The form of the church echoed the forms of seventeenth-century Russian architecture, with its solid brick walls, multiple ogee arches and onion domes. Despite this, the Talashkino church was not archaeological in its references, rather it was a fantasy of the past and a vessel for Tenisheva’s artistic and spiritual beliefs. The building was completed in 1903, in time to serve as a funeral chapel for Prince Tenishev, but the work on the project halted with the upheavals of the 1905 revolution. Social unrest in Russia caused Tenisheva and Sviatopolsk-Chetvertinskaya to relocate to Paris for two years (Oser 2012: 75). On her return work continued and Roerich was commissioned to produce decorations for the church. Roerich and Tenisheva stimulated one another’s interest in history, myth and artistic and spiritual experimentation. They were both interested in pre-history and cultural exchange through the migration of peoples. Tenisheva prompted Roerich, who up to this point had been focussed on the ancient Scandinavian roots in Russian culture, to look eastward to the Himalayas and Tibet for further understanding (McCannon 2000: 280). They carried out archaeological excavations together into medieval sites (Bowlt 2001). Tenisheva also extended her interest in medieval enamels, which she started studying in Paris, and wrote a thesis on for the Moscow University in 1916 (Bowlt 1979: 42). Roerich’s murals for the Talashkino church referenced the pre-Petrine traditions of Russian church mosaics. In addition to this both Roerich and Tenisheva looked beyond that to a more esoteric vision of world spirituality, closely informed by Theosophy (Hardiman 2017: 73–4). Roerich’s interior mural, The Queen of Heaven, from 1914 blended Orthodox Russian traditions with elements of Eastern religious imagery (Figure 6.4). Roerich commented that it was Tenisheva who encouraged his growing interest in the synthesis of arts across time and space (Andreyev 2014: 28–9). The Queen of Heaven depicted a fusion of the Mother of God with the Mother of the World, a transcendental and transnational figure of female wisdom overseeing the turbulent waters upon which humanity struggles. Both Roerich’s and Vrubel’s imagery, inspired by Tenisheva, of female figures of empowered spiritual and creative status represents an alternative current of thought to the well-known fin-de-siècle femme fatale. The 1905 revolution disrupted Tenisheva’s efforts in Russia and the 1917 revolution terminated them. The disruption of the revolution is also responsible for the destruction of much of her legacy and the loss of many of her own art works. She was an enamellist of renown and fused archaeologically research and technical innovation with her interest in both new and old decorative arts. The candle stick in Figure 6.5 was part of a set of a mirror and pair of candles on the theme of Snow White. It was represented in an illustrated study of Tenisheva’s enamel work published in Paris (Roche 1907). The ivory and amaranth wood mirror frame was inset with an enamel of a princess in Russian dress before the mirror, while the candle sticks depicted the apples with which Snow White was poisoned. These objects represent the fusion of tradition and modernity, Russian medievalism and the international that characterized the work of Tenisheva. The folktale theme could be rooted in Russian tradition, but was equally part of a pan-European culture. The folk tale and fairy tale offered Art Nouveau artists another route through which to escape the confines of the mundane, material world. On a superficial level, such tales were safely rooted in childhood and the past.

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FIGURE 6.4  Nicholas Roerich, The Queen of Heaven (1910, Church of the Holy Spirit, Talashkino) © Photo: Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York.

The themes of virtue and wickedness, underlying danger and (often sexual) threat made them rich territory for exploration of new identities. The technique of enamel work that Tenisheva specialized in was simultaneously a revival of a medieval Russian craft and part of the European enamel revival, which in turn had been stimulated to a large extent by the encounter with the enamel traditions of Japan and China. The combination of the Byzantine-inspired form of the candlesticks and the stylized leaves and fruit created a piece that was simultaneously archaic and contemporary. The incorporation of ivory and Central American hardwood indicated the ubiquity of the importation into Europe of luxury materials from colonized territories. Tenisheva’s art and cultural practice represented a fusion of the traditional focus of the Russian arts and crafts-revival and modernist interest in primitivism and alternative spirituality.

Sarah Bernhardt: Celebrity and patronage Tenisheva’s wealth and social standing gave her the power to pursue her own interests, but her identity as a woman marginalized her contribution to Russian culture, particularly after the revolution dispersed the artists she had gathered around her. Celebrity was another source of power that enabled women to pursue cultural leadership, but it proved fragile when it came to securing their reputations within art history. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) was an artist and actor who achieved unprecedented worldwide fame in the nineteenth

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FIGURE 6.5  Princess Maria Tenisheva, Candle, Bronze, enamel and ivory. Reproduced in Denis Roche, Les émaux champlevés de la princesse Marie Ténichév (Paris: J. Povolozky & Cie., 1907): Plate 3.

century. Her career took her from ingénue roles at the Comédie-Français to running her own theatres, producing her own productions and tours and appearing as the first serious actor to engage with the new mediums of recorded sound and film. As an artist she exhibited sculptures and paintings in the annual Salon exhibitions from 1874 until 1897, as well as showing her work internationally. Her patronage of art, through the propagation of her own image in photographs, posters and paintings, and through costume, jewellery, interiors and other artefacts, was a key ingredient in Bernhardt’s maintenance of her own reputation. Her celebrity was such that she furthered the careers of a number of artists and designers associated with her. Her career has been described as an interplay of opposing forces: ‘tradition and innovation, institutional power and personal ambition, national conventions and worldwide consumption’ (Stokes 1988: 15). In this way it mirrors many of the tensions already identified as characteristic of Art Nouveau. As an actor Bernhardt pioneered a personal style based around expressive physicality, while her classical training gave her voice sustained power. Her command of dramatic gestures and movement allowed her to convey powerful emotions on a visceral level and enthral audiences around the world. In her mastery of the emerging publicity machine of the twentieth century, Bernhardt was able to maintain her connection with audiences, saturating the world with images of herself, while maintaining something elusive and unknowable, leaving them wanting more. Bernhardt began studying with the sculptor Mathieu Meusnier in 1869, six years after her debut as an actor. Contrary to its prominence in her posthumous reputation, her sculptural

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practice ran alongside her stage practice throughout her career. In 1876 her marble group After the Tempest was awarded an honourable mention by the Salon jury. This professional accolade reflects the degree of proficiency she had attained. The work represented an elderly Breton woman, with the body of her drowned grandson lain across her knees in the manner of Michaelangelo’s Pieta (1499). The scale, the material and this reference to one of the masterworks of European art indicate Bernhardt’s ambition to be taken seriously as an artist. Charlotte Foucher Zarmanian has explored the reluctance of both contemporaries and subsequent art history to accept this. Despite the award, there was a widely circulating rumour that some other, male artist had executed After the Tempest (Zarmanian 2015: 164). It was challenging enough for women to secure professional recognition for their work without seeking it in multiple fields. To do so opened Bernhardt up even more fully to the misidentification of her art practice as an affectation. This assessment is refuted by her sustained commitment of time and resources and by her long association with fellow artists as friends and colleagues. The integration of her sculptural and theatrical practice breached the boundaries between spheres defined by contemporaries as, respectively, masculine and feminine (Zarmanian 2015: 161). In both arenas Bernhardt explored the embodiment of intensities of emotion and themes of metamorphosis and transformation. As an actor she transgressed boundaries in the playing of male roles. Her Fantastic Inkwell (Self-Portrait as a Sphinx) (1880, Boston Museum of Art) plays both with her celebrity and the idea of hybridity (Figure 6.6). The bronze bust is a self-portrait, but one in which the figure is part gothic chimera, with claws, a tail and the wings of a bat.

FIGURE 6.6  Sarah Bernhardt, Fantastic Inkwell (Self-Portrait as a Sphinx) (1880, Boston Museum of Fine Art). Metal; bronze, Overall (without base): 31.8 × 34.9 × 31.8 cm. Helen and Alice Colburn Fund. Acc.n.: 1973.551a-d© 2021. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights reserved/Scala, Florence.

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The self-representation here is slippery. She makes a hideous monster of herself. In this way she plays with the ‘unnaturalness’ of her persona as a professional artist and business woman. She presides over the ink well like an uncanny Muse. Despite the hostility of many critics, Bernhardt consistently maintained her identity as a visual artist as part of her public persona. She had a white Pierrot-like, trouser-suit made by the couturier Worth, which she was photographed in, in her home-studio in defiance of the conventions governing women wearing trousers (Ockman 2005: 43). By ‘dressing up’ as an artist, Bernhardt both made visible and evaded criticism for transgressing the boundaries of her profession as an actor. Heather McPherson has analysed the imagery surrounding Bernhardt, the majority of which was carefully controlled by Bernhardt herself (McPherson 2001: 93–116). The face of Bernhardt adorned postcards, souvenir photographs in the form of small carte de visite (Figure 6.7) and larger cabinet prints, newspapers and magazines. The carte de visite was patented in 1854. The availability of these small-scale photographic portraits initiated a new practice of collecting the portraits of celebrities as well as the exchange of personal portraits among family and friends. Images of Bernhardt took the form of both character portraits in costume and portraits of the actor in street clothes, posed stills from productions and interiors of her homes. Through this abundance of representation Bernhardt’s choices in terms of costume and jewellery were far from ephemeral. In her stage costumes and her own wardrobe Bernhardt favoured dramatic forms. Bernhardt’s patronage of Alfons Mucha (1860–1939) was an example of mutually beneficial elevation of reputation. Mucha was a Czech artist, trained in Munich, but by the 1890s working in Paris as a graphic artist and struggling to make ends meet. A short-notice commission for a

FIGURE 6.7  Sarah Bernhardt, Carte de visite, La Princesse Lointaine (1895) © Apic/Contributor/ Getty Images.

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new poster for Bernhardt’s revival of Gismonda gave the young artist the break he needed. The poster was a sensation when it appeared on the streets of Paris (Rennert & Weill 1984: 10). In contrast to the bright colours and dynamic energy common to advertising of the period, Mucha’s poster had a static, stately quality and a subdued palette (Figure 6.8). The figure of Bernhardt appears monumental, elaborately robed. Her body is almost entirely concealed, with only her face and hands showing. The tensile energy of Bernhardt’s body, which was such a notable part of her presence as a performer, was paradoxically concealed in Mucha’s representation. Instead of displaying her body, movement was introduced to the composition through a large, reversed S-curve, which carries the eye from the roundel over her head, across the sweep of her robe and folds of her train, then back across the scroll displaying the name of the theatre. It has all the more impact because of the double length format Mucha initiated, creating an unusual and therefore eye-catching long, narrow profile and allowed the figure to appear full length. The poster combined areas of rich ornamentation, the embroidery of the robes and the mosaic patterns of the upper third of the image, with the completely blank field behind the figure in the middle. Lettering is integrated into the mosaic, with the first part of her name, ‘Sarah,’ concealed behind the palm she is holding. The message is thus conveyed in words and image with the utmost economy: What – Gismonda. Who – ‘Bernhardt’, represented in both text and image. Where – the name of the theatre. The poster encapsulated two features that were to dominate Mucha’s graphic art output over the next ten years: the correspondence of female figures with flowers and use of mosaicstyle decorative patterns. Mosaic ornament reflected his exposure to the revival of interest

FIGURE 6.8  Alphonse Mucha, Gismonda Poster (1895) Lithograph © swim ink 2 llc/Contributor/Getty Images.

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in mosaic within Russian art and the wider pan-Slavic movement to which Mucha was sympathetic. Mucha succeeded in blending the decorative and the monumental, the stylized and the naturalistic and the overall flattened form and subtle palette created a sophisticated tone that enchanted contemporaries. Mucha produced posters for all Bernhardt’s productions, and reissues of these posters for new productions and tours until he left for America in 1904. All these posters replicated the formula of the Gismonda poster: the vertical format, the sparse text featuring only the title of the play, Bernhardt’s name and the theatre and the single, fulllength figure of the actor. This created consistency across what can be understood as the early emergence of a curated celebrity image. Mucha also contributed designs for costumes and staging for her productions. Of particular note was the jewellery he created for her. The diadem produced for her role in La Princesse Lointaine (1895) was designed by Mucha and fitted around a crown designed by another designer patronized by Bernhardt, René-Jules Lalique (1860–1945) (Figure 6.7). The lifesized lilies made of pearls sat around her head much as the flower-crown given to the figure of Gismonda and many other Mucha images. That Bernhardt could commission a piece that saw the combination of the work of the rival jewellery houses of Lalique and Fouquet reflects her authority as a patron. The jewellery designed by both Mucha and Lalique for Bernhardt pushed the parameters of the medium, blurring the boundaries between jewellery and worn-sculpture. In the 1890s, in the context of rampant antisemitism in France, Bernhardt’s Jewish identity was potentially career limiting. As one of the most prominent women in the world, a proportion of the attention fixed upon her revolved around this aspect of her identity. The antisemitic content of this material variously focussed on Bernhardt as both venal and profligate and as simultaneously dangerously seductive and asexual or masculine (Ockman 1995). As with all such prejudices, attacks were more revealing of anxieties prevalent within the society that originated them than with any feature of the individual attacked. Bernhardt herself negotiated the challenging terrain of her relationship with her public by embracing many of the accusations levelled at her and flipping them round to become attributes. Bernhardt’s self-presentation in the roles she took on, which segued between archetypally French heroines and roles in which the perceived exoticism of her Jewish heritage could be used as an asset (Bergman-Carton 1996). She asserted her ability to play both archetypally feminine and cross-dressed male roles, embracing the paradox of the critics who considered her at once too much of a woman and too much of a man. Bing was a victim of similar antisemitism in the late 1890s, when the Dreyfus Affair exacerbated widespread antisemitism in France. Dreyfus was a French officer falsely accused of selling secrets to Germany. His Jewishness placed him at the epicentre of tensions between conservative Catholic factions and liberal secular ones. Silverman and Troy have explored the xenophobic backlash that greeted the opening of Bing’s Maison du l’Art Nouveau and the perceived threat to national French culture posed by the transnational visual language presented there (Silverman 1989: 270–83; Troy 1991: 20–7). The conservative press unleashed a torrent of antisemitic hatred that agitated ongoing French anxieties regarding modernization, social change and the threat still posed by a rapidly industrializing German state. In contrast to Bernhardt, Bing’s response to antisemitic attacks was evasion. For such a significant cultural figure, Bing had almost no public persona whatsoever, to the extent that there was even lingering confusion as to whether his first name was Siegfried or Samuel (Weisberg 2005b). Apart from a few published texts that stuck resolutely to aesthetic subjects, Bing made no attempt to address his detractors or refute any of their attacks. The pursuit of beauty could itself be reframed by critics as a sign of decadence and immorality. Bergman-Carlton concludes

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her study of Bernhardt with a quote from the antisemitic text, Les Femmes d’Israël (1898) that quoted a passage recounting seeing Bernhardt in Bing’s gallery from the diaries of Edmond Goncourt: Yesterday, at Bing’s, the merchant of japonaiseries, I saw a tall woman, very pale, wrapped in an endless raincoat, scurrying about, out of place, occasionally putting an object on the floor saying, ‘This will be for my sister.’ I had not recognized the woman but I had the feeling that it was a woman known to me and to the public. . . . It is remarkable how this Sarah Bernhardt reminded me today, on this grey and rainy day, of those elegant and emaciated convalescents . . . floating past you in a hospital in the five p.m. twilight. (Bergman-Carton 1996: 63) The quote is useful in revealing the overlap between the figures highlighted in this chapter. The diary entry was taken from 1877 and refers only to Bing’s dealing in East Asian art, years before the opening of his Art Nouveau gallery. It is evident that Goncourt, one of the foremost collectors of the day, also patronized Bing’s gallery. Bernhardt’s similar patronage is, in the quote, reduced to frenzied acquisitiveness. Goncourt presumably regarded his own acquisition process in a very different light. Her celebrated physicality as an actor is transformed into the embodiment of sickness, both physical and mental. As the first global celebrity, Bernhardt established a smokescreen of publicity around herself. She disseminated thousands of images of herself, let the public into her home, granted hundreds of interviews and authored autobiographical and semi-autobiographical books. Her extravagant and idiosyncratic dress and her personal eccentricities, from her pet chameleons to episodes of hysterics, ensured that her persona was as vivid as her on-stage presence. Celebrity and the curation of her public image was a vital ingredient in her practice as a performing artist. Bernhardt’s perceived masculinity related to a cultural shift that began, at the fringes of the bohemian and cultural elite, to explore the performativity of gender. Bernhardt was associated with queer cultural figures such as the feminist playwright Natalie Clifford Barney and poet Renée Vivien (Roberts 2002: 168). She has also been linked romantically to the artist Louize Abbéma (Ockman 2005: 47–51). The bat, as a creature that could be seen to defy normal mammalian categories, was a motif used in the self-representation of the circle of nonheteronormative aesthetes, Robert de Montesquiou, Marcel Proust and Barney (Syme 2010: 180–1). Jewellery featuring bat iconography was commissioned from Lalique by Vivien for her lover Barney (Musée des Arts Décoratifs). Bernhardt’s self-portrait bust also gave her the wings of a bat. Part of the modernity of Art Nouveau, the new art for a new age that it promised, was its ability to assert new individual and collective identities by means of a new inventiveness of imagery. Its idiosyncratic visual language of animals, flowers and flowing lines lent itself to coded messages. These might be statements of allegiance, like the flowers of Lorraine used by Gallé, or the stone of Catalonia used by Gaudí. But Art Nouveau also took the nineteenthcentury convention of allegorical symbolism, inspired by the Gothic Revival, in new directions. Alison Syme has explored how representation of cross-fertilization and the hermaphroditic sexuality of flowers could be used as a way of representing nonheteronormative identities and of resisting pathologizing medical discourse on these identities (Syme 2010). Beardsley’s strange, foetal grotesques and fleurs du mal and Bernhardt’s bats were part of an explosion of new forms whose symbolism remained personal, obscure and disquieting to those who distrusted its ambiguity.

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Art has always sought to express the values, ideals and aspirations of its patrons. The artists and designers of the new art movement were addressing new and diverse publics. Industrialization and colonialism created new mercantile elites, many with huge fortunes and little allegiance to tradition. In addition to this, an expanding middle class with growing spending power could also be enticed to invest in art and design. Intermediaries such as Bing, Brinckmann and other curators, retailers, cultural impresarios and critics played a key role in informing and educating the public about the new art. Prominent patrons and the lavish work they commissioned were important in creating aspirational images of the artistic home. Promotion and patronage, marketing and display interlock inextricably with the related themes explored in Chapters 3 and 4 around the manufacture and presentation of applied art. The Art Nouveau movement was no more intrinsically commercial than any other, but it arose and was marked by a period of transformation in retail and marketing and the infotainment experience of fairs, exhibitions and other cultural spectacles. The power of print underpinned these changes and the rapidity with which new ideas might become mainstream and might, just as quickly, be superseded. The conclusion to this half of the book seeks to draw together these interrelated threads that made up the foundation upon which the dreams and visions of Art Nouveau were based.

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Conclusion to Part I Art Nouveau in Vienna The first half of this book has sought to draw out key structural aspects of the transformation of art and design culture around the fin-de-siècle that formed the Art Nouveau movement. The materialism and industrial growth of the nineteenth century precipitated an intense cultural reaction: an attempt to reassert the value of beauty and craftsmanship. Bringing art into everyday life could be seen as a balm for the modern soul or as an escape from inescapable realities. The thematic chapters covered so far create connections between parallel endeavours, but may also create inadvertent divisions. In order to bridge these themes and reassert the interconnectedness of all the previously discussed ideas, I will conclude this half of the book with a case study that seeks to draw all these strands back together and make visible the interrelationship and crossfertilization that defined the Art Nouveau movement.

The Vienna Secession The Vienna Secession was closely inspired by the Secession in nearby Munich introduced in Chapter 3. Unlike in Munich, the split from the artists’ association, the Künstlerhaus, was driven by a more active policy of excluding new or foreign trends. A group of artists left the Künstlerhaus in 1897 forming a new organization under the leadership of Gustav Klimt (1862– 1918), who was by then a well-established artist comparable to von Stuck’s status in Munich. Two architects, Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), and one designer, Koloman Moser (1868–1918), were also founding members of the Secession, signalling an early commitment to the unity of art and design. The first actions of the group were the launch of a new periodical, Ver Sacrum, and the arrangement of an exhibition. They sought in this way to announce their presence as a new force in the Viennese art world. As such they can be seen to be following a model established by other artist groups and exhibition societies like Les XX, the Munich Secessionists and the World of Art. Klimt’s poster for the first Secession exhibition in 1898 (Figure 6.9) can be directly compared to von Stuck’s poster for the first Munich Secession (Figure 3.2). It shared the motif of the figure of Athena, making an obvious nod to Munich as a source of inspiration for the group. The martial aspect of Athena was more pronounced in Klimt’s poster. In addition to her helmet, she was shown holding a shield and spear. This reflected the more overtly rebellious character of the Vienna Secession. As the first issue of Ver Sacrum announced, the group saw itself overturning an established art culture that had become moribund and tawdry in its commercialism. Athena’s patronage of youthful heroes is explicitly illustrated in the upper portion of the poster, which shows the strong, muscular figure of Theseus lunging forward to slay the minotaur.

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FIGURE 6.9  Gustav Klimt, poster for the first exhibition (1898) Lithograph © Heritage Images/Contributor/ Getty Images.

The composition of the poster itself was equally rebellious. Almost a third of the poster area was left as a blank void. On display in the street, it would have stood out among the full-colour, multi-figure images of more conventional posters. The san-serif font of the text was arranged so that text of different sizes filled the box of the lower section, with the core message: ‘art exhibition’, ‘Secession’ and ‘Gartenbau’ (the exhibition venue) most prominent. The use of classical imagery was extended to the style. The strong outlines and in-profile figures invoked ancient Greek vase painting. Like the Munich Secession, ancient Greece was reinvested by Secessionists, not as staid, classical authority, but reimagined as a virile, pagan past where art was integrated with life (Florman 1990). The pages of Ver Sacrum presented a space for the dissemination of the new vision of the Secessionists, in editorial and design. The unconventional square format disrupted expectations and prompted the viewer to re-engage with the ‘objectness’ of the magazine they were looking at. The first cover by editor Alfred Roller (1864–1935) arranged the image and fields of text into zones around the square. The image showed a potted shrub breaking the bounds of its pot to thrust its roots into the surrounding soil. This neatly illustrated the aims of the Secession to reinvigorate Viennese art and culture through engagement with new ideas from further afield. The metaphor of life-energy and new growth is one that can be traced through many of the works already looked at. Moser also contributed a number of cover designs, which played with the idea of metamorphosis and the overlap of female and nature forms. His design for issue two in 1898 depicted two female figures, or more accurately the same figure multiplied, romping energetically across the cover (Figure 6.10). Their skin was marked with the patterns of butterfly wings and around them these wings flowed like swirling draperies, reminiscent of the silks of Loïe Fuller. Women, into

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FIGURE 6.10  Koloman Moser, Ver Sacrum, vol. 2 (1898): cover.

butterfly, into gossamer silk, into darkness. Even the secondary title of the journal is obscured, as the women dance over it. The sexual dimensions of the life-energy invoked here are suggested by the flowers that emerge from the women’s loins. The multiplied figure conflates the theme of nature with that of mechanical as well as sexual reproduction. The pages within Ver Sacrum presented a range of content: editorials, articles on art, architecture and design, poetry and even musical scores. Extensive marginal decoration and vignettes made even text-based pages into an aesthetic experience. If anything, textural content was subordinate to the visual content of the journal. The layout made extensive use of the white page, so that images might occupy only a fraction of the area. This was comparable to new exhibition design that had begun to allow more neutral wall space between paintings for an uncluttered aesthetic encounter. Images were presented in full colour, in black and white or in a single tone, such as red crayon, across white or grey pages. In this way, each issue of Ver Sacrum offered a closely curated aesthetic experience comparable to the viewing of an exhibition (Silverthorne 2011: 993). The first Secession exhibition was a pronounced success, both critically and financially. On the basis of this, the group proceeded to build its own exhibition building, designed by Olbrich. This was subsidized by the industrialist Karl Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, the father of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, had amassed an enormous fortune in the iron and steel industry. He ran a cartel that controlled the price for iron and steel throughout the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. He was known for his uncompromising personality, risk-taking and his ruthless attitude to his workers (Bramann & Moran 1979). He retired from active involvement in business in 1898, at the age of fifty-one, and concentrated on patronage of the arts. His disdain for tradition and his belief in the pursuit of individual liberty meant that the rebellious goals of the Secession appealed to him. Olbrich’s Secession House was designed to provide the Secession with a space in which to hold exhibitions that fulfilled the artistic aims of the group. The building fused Classical elements, in its overall symmetrical, temple-like form, with Art Nouveau departures from convention. The most pronounced of these was the open-work dome of gilded laurel leaves that burst like a rising sun above the main entrance (Figure 6.11). The building design also reflected recent developments in exhibition practice with glass roofs to provide overhead light and an iron supporting structure to create a large internal space that could be subdivided in different ways for different exhibitions. The building represented a fusion of modernity and tradition typical

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FIGURE 6.11  Joseph Maria Olbrich, Secession House (Vienna, 1899) © PHAS/Contributor/ Getty Images.

FIGURE 6.12  Koloman Moser, Dance of the Wreath Makers, mural on the Secession House (Vienna, 1899) © Imagno / Contributor/Getty Images.

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of Art Nouveau, incorporating new architectural technologies with an expressive language of nature-based ornament. The rear of the building was decorated by a now-lost frieze, Dance of the Wreath makers, of stylized maidens holding laurel wreaths aloft, by Moser (Figure 6.12). Here again Moser used the reproduced female figure. This time the repetition set up a rhythm that blurred the division between representation and abstract ornament and invoked the primitive, cultic energy of dance. The laurel was an extended motif throughout the building, a symbol of victory associated with the god Apollo. A pair of living laurel bushes flanked the entrance, which was crowned by a frieze of gilded laurel leaves. Inside the building walls were dressed for exhibitions with fresh laurel wreaths and garlands. These details expressed an explicit association between the Secession and ancient Greece, which was widely regarded as a high point in world culture and a time and place particularly noted for the ecstatic union of art and spiritual life. Over the entrance three Medusa-like heads, with entwined snakes, were presented to represent art, architecture and sculpture: the unity of the arts. The motto of the Secession was announced above: ‘To Every Age Its Art and to Art Its Freedom’. This encapsulated the principle behind much of Art Nouveau, that each age must seek its own form of aesthetic expression and that artists must be free and unfettered in their pursuit of this goal. The temple-like quality of the building reflected the view held by the Secessionists of the higher purpose of art. As within the related Aesthetic and Symbolist movements, art was a matter of profound importance. The pursuit of beauty was something that gave life meaning, transcending mundane concerns and even replacing traditional religion. The experience of entering the Secession House was one that fostered this idea. The visitor would need to approach the gleaming white and gold building and mount the steps beneath the imposing portal. The vestibule area inside was visually cut off from the street. As well as practical offices, like cloakrooms to the side, it functioned like a narthex in a church to provide a space for the visitor to prepare themselves for an encounter with art. The exhibition space was entered by passing through another pair of doors beneath a large round stained-glass window by Moser. This window would filter coloured light from the skylit exhibition hall into the vestibule. The exploitation of the psycho-emotional impact of light was a recurring theme through the nineteenth century. Richard Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art was powerfully resonant in intellectual circles around the fin-de-siècle (Silverthorne 2018). The concept suggested a union of different art forms that could transcend the mundane and decadent modern world and create a utopian space of communal artistic transformation. The idea was not merely aesthetic, but potentially a national regenerating force, elevating and uniting the people. In many transformative stage and exhibition events inspired by this idea, darkness and light were employed as key elements in the manipulation of the audience’s experience. Wagner had innovated the use of light and sound at his Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. For example, he instituted a cowl to shield the orchestra from the view of the audience, concealing the light they worked by and diffusing the sound (Mendes & Tulloch 2006: 268–9). Dimming the house lights to near-darkness was another innovation. It focussed the attention of the audience on the stage and created the context for the manipulation of different light effects, colour and stage design to have the greatest impact on them. The Beethoven exhibition of 1902 was the fourteenth Secession exhibition and was curated as an artistic experience that made full use of the flexible form of the building and new ideas about the viewing of art. It was curated by Roller and he designed a processional route for visitors, taking them from darkness to light and on a transformative journey to the higher realms of art. The exhibition was focussed around a single work, Max Klinger’s (1857–1920)

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polychrome sculpture of Beethoven. The whole exhibition was envisaged as a celebration of this work, of Beethoven’s music and a realization of a Gesamtkunstwerk (Winkler 2008: 80). On their route through the exhibition, small apertures in the dividing walls of the side galleries gave anticipatory or reflective glimpses of the central space, where the Beethoven sculpture was displayed. This route was animated by a frieze at ceiling height by Klimt (Figure 6.13). The Beethoven Frieze was a key element in the synthesis of the arts that the exhibition sought to realize. Klimt’s scheme was a visual realization of Wagner’s notes on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Bisanz-Prakken 1977: 32–4; Winkler 2008: 83). The exhibition fused influences from literature and music with visual, plastic and spatial arts: a Gesamtkunstwerk with art and design at its apex, challenging the primacy of music in the cultural life of Vienna (Celenza 2004: 203). The exhibition was not a display of art works to be simply looked at. It was a holistic experience for the visitor, which they participated in bodily, passing through spaces until they entered the central hall, flooded with overhead light. This reflected the ideas on the art of space or Raumkunst developed by Klinger and interpreted by Hoffmann and Roller (Vergo 2010: 116). The journey made by the visitor was, in some ways, an echo of the journey depicted in the Beethoven Frieze. The frieze, though continuous, was broken into episodes by passages of largely blank wall marked only by the procession of angelic figures or fates, who indicated the flow of the narrative, visual pauses that suggested the passage of time. The narrative took the form of a quest, a semi-religious journey from the mundane to the numinous, represented by the last figures, A Kiss for the Whole World.

FIGURE 6.13  Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze, XIVth Secession Exhibition 1902 © Imagno/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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The quest, as imagined by Klimt, was substantially more sensual than Wagner’s emphasis on spiritual elevation. Writhing nudes, most of them female, represented both ‘suffering humanity’, who sought the aid of the Knight, and the temptations and dangers the Knight faced: Disease, Insanity, Death, Debauchery, Lechery, Intemperance and Gnawing Worry. The Knight’s ultimate reward took the form of a final, consummating kiss, surrounded by an angelic choir (Plate  13). Women, in Klimt’s imagination, embodied both the world’s perils and its ultimate rewards. They were simultaneously carnal in their unashamed, voluptuous nudity and divinely ethereal in their pale, etiolated, supplicating limbs. The Knight, in contrast, was heavily armoured, almost dwarfed by the gleaming, gold plates of his armour, but in his final incarnation he is naked and appears stronger and more substantial in his nakedness. The completion of this quest allowed the visitor to emulate the knight’s transcendence. The semi-religious character of the central room was conveyed through the comparative emptiness of the vaulted space surrounding a single, railed-off sculpture (Figure 6.14). The low plinth and broad rail had something of the character of an altar rail where the congregation might kneel to receive communion. Roller’s frieze, Sinking Night, provided a wall of colour behind the sculpture: rank upon rank of angels holding celestial globes. Again, the use of rhythmic figures can be seen as analogous to the rhythms of music and of dance. The full sensory experience of the exhibition was to include a performance, conducted by Mahler, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, though in the end this could not be realized (Celenza 2004: 209).

FIGURE 6.14  Alfred Roller, Sinking Night, XIVth Secession Exhibition 1902 © Imagno/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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The Wiener Werkstätte The Beethoven Exhibition embodied the artists’ mission not merely to represent, but to further the realization of an aesthetically and emotionally developed world. This aim was also carried through the founding in 1903 of the Wiener Werkstätte (The Vienna Workshops). This was a cooperative endeavour by Hoffmann, Moser and their patron, the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer (1868–1939). All three were directly inspired by the model of Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft, which Waerndorfer had visited in 1900 to facilitate the preparations for the Guild’s inclusion in the eighth Secession exhibition. The enterprise was funded by Waerndorfer and his mother Bertha (Shapira 2010: 73–6). Waerndorfer was, like Wittgenstein, a Jewish industrialist. As the son of a prominent textile manufacturer he had been sent to England in the 1880s to study the textile trade, but had instead largely occupied himself in galleries and museums (Clegg 2008: 118). On his return he joined the family firm, which grew to be one of the largest textile companies in the Dual Monarchy. Elana Shapira’s work on Jewish patrons of in Vienna represents Waerndorfer as an individual carefully using art and design to mediate his Jewish identity and position in society. Through his patronage of art and his self-presentation through his home, discussed in Chapter 11, he could acknowledge, challenge and subvert prevailing, antisemitic associations of the Jewish male as effeminate, venal and decadent (Shapira 2016: 122–51). British Arts and Crafts attracted significant admiration in Vienna. Waerndorfer wrote to his friend, the cultural critic Hermann Bahr, in 1900 about a mutual friend who ended up furnishing his entire apartment out of volume ten of The Studio (Vergo 2000: 23). The Wiener Werkstätte intended to meet this desire locally with high quality design and manufacture. Both Hoffmann and Moser were already producing designs for local manufacturing companies. With the founding of the Wiener Werkstätte the realization of these designs could be taken in-house and could be retailed both as individual objects and as total interiors. Patrons like the Wittgensteins and Waerndorfer were among some of the wealthiest people in the world. Their business interests spanned the globe, facilitating their awareness of alternative currents of thought. Their Jewishness and manufacturing backgrounds ensured they would never secure full acceptance in the hierarchical and antisemitic culture of imperial Vienna. The role of Jewish patronage of Art Nouveau raises interesting questions regarding the new identities and values the art movement was supposed to foster and reflect. Shapira has commented on the nature motifs championed by Bing and the geometric and linear style Waerndorfer selected for his own home (Shapira 2010). These twin facets of the new art of Art Nouveau both offered a departure from dependence on historical tradition and had the potential to function as a new, universal visual language. The natural world and Euclidean geometry made reference to authorities that transcended historical human allegiances. In their abstract qualities both these sources of inspiration could suggest either spiritual or rational associations. There is no simple correlation between Jewish identity and Art Nouveau. The many individuals concerned and the variety of contexts, city-by-city and region-by-region preclude this. Jewish patronage was undoubtedly seminal in a number of areas, but the new movement also found supporters across the established European aristocracy and the nationalist middle classes. Paradoxically, for a movement that championed the transcendent and ethereal realm of Art, it relied heavily on a model of daring innovation that owed much to capitalist entrepreneurship. Wittgenstein’s financial success was substantially based on his securing of the sole rights to

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the Thomas-Gilchrist process, which allowed him to process iron ore in his foundries more efficiently and with financially remunerative by-products (Bradman & Moran 1979: 110). Emil Rathenau was the Jewish entrepreneur and industrialist who founded AEG and who took the initiative to employ Behrens as the firm’s artistic director. His success was also based on having the insight to secure sole German rights to Edison’s patents for electric light bulbs, which enabled the company to dominate the German electrification process. His decision to employ Behrens was also based in part on his observation of the model presented by the new department stores, many of which were run by Jewish entrepreneurs, and which used design and display to attract customers and create reputation (Shapira 2010: 79–84). More than simply generating wealth, these examples are based on the practice of individuals who travelled, who stayed informed of international developments in emerging fields, who built their businesses on the early uptake of new ideas from abroad and were successful in consolidating these ideas and translating them to local markets. Bing’s early engagement with Japanese art and his ready recognition of the innovations in glass design represented by Tiffany offers a parallel example within the cultural arena. Jewish heritage was not a prerequisite for such an approach. The Darmstadt colony was founded on the principle of importing and cultivating design talent to develop local industry. The Zsolnay factory in Hungary built its success on technical and aesthetic innovation based on local and international sources. Nonetheless, the contribution of Jewish patrons in support of Art Nouveau across Europe was decisive at various moments in the development of the movement. Art Nouveau was a new art movement. Even the connections it sought to the past, to the ecstatic culture of ancient paganism or the convivial creativity of the medieval workshop were re-imagined and broke with established practice. Jewish patronage, along with the patronage of women, makes particular sense in this regard and when the identity politics of the late nineteenth century pursued the possibility of new forms of emancipation. Art Nouveau offered a realm in which new realities could be realized and the mire of the past could be erased in gleaming white and gold. This faith in the transcendental power of the new art is revealed and lampooned in Bruno Paul’s cartoon in the Munich-based satirical journal Simplicissmus (Figure 6.15). Fashionable women patrons are drawn to the ‘Munich Fountain of Youth’, a pun on Jugend the title of the leading Art Nouveau magazine in the city. The women emerge from their encounter transformed into ugly distortions that satirized the stylized forms of Art Nouveau. Their dress is transformed from conventional shirtwaist, corseted costumes into a parody of the long, flowing gowns and leg-of-mutton sleeves of reform dress, often championed by Art Nouveau designers. The surrounding text mocks the women’s’ credulous belief in the transformative power of art and the rhetoric of the Secessionists: Can life be happy? It is so old and bland. You have to renew with the times. Youth calls for action. However, this world is not cured by fire and swords it can be improved painlessly if stylized. Strange are the women. It is high time to let her be free to take on a look that is a departure from the commonplace. And if (despite their freedom) they are, unfortunately, not always naked, their clothes make one curious to see them nude. The women entering the fountain are determined in their pursuit of change. Their appearance afterwards makes a mockery of these ideals, as they contort themselves in shapeless garments.

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FIGURE 6.15  Bruno Paul, Munich Fountain of Youth, Simplicismus, vol. 2(10) (1897/8): 76–7.

As well as ridiculous, the text makes a suggestion that such ‘new women’ were potentially laxer in their sexual morality. The desire for freedom through art was easily mocked: women patrons were simply gullible consumers of the latest fads. Male patrons, in turn, were similarly gullible, but also subject to attack for effeminacy. But the widespread criticism of Art Nouveau as a sickness reveals, beneath its disdain, the presence of real anxiety regarding the movement’s ability to create new forms and new environments and to legitimize new identities. The international women’s movement was slowly gaining ground. The new developments explored through this section: the perception of the need for art to express new realities and the various means by which this ambition might be furthered, reveal the rapid transformation of the cultural sphere. New art groups, workshops, galleries, publications and other projects were creating new spaces for art. The second half of the book will go on to explore these forms and the identities they sought to express. The six thematic chapters that follow explore the dominant cultural ideas and influences that provided the matter for the new art. Engagement with new scientific knowledge regarding the natural world opened up a new framework for understanding humanity’s relationship to its environment. The globalization of the world through colonialist expansion and trade was also a phenomenon that permeated the emerging Art Nouveau movement. The final three chapters interlink to look in more depth at various dimensions of Art Nouveau as an art of individual expression and transcendence. In a world increasingly marked by mass culture and mass consumption, Art Nouveau addressed individual minds, bodies and spirits, and reflect the complexity and elusive quality of the modern individual.

PART II

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7 The power of nature

Whomever the delicious curves of the blades of grass, the wonderful relentlessness of the thistle leaf, the bitter youthfulness of sprouting leaf buds has never enraptured; whomever the massive shape of a tree root, the unshakable strength of broken bark, the slender smoothness of a birch trunk, the great calm of the masses of leaves and has not excited down to the depths of his soul, knows nothing of the beauty of forms. AUGUST ENDELL, ON BEAUTY (1896)

Part I of this book has focussed on the drivers behind the search for a new style and the developments in the worlds of art and design that shaped its pursuit. The Part II of this book will focus in more detail on the ideas the new style explored and expressed. The focus of this chapter pursues a theme that is central to Art Nouveau and which has already been noted a number of times. As we have seen, the natural world offered an alternative to the authority of historical models and could be used with a range of associations, from the scientific to the fantastical. It could be used to suggest resonances with other cultures and periods that had similarly turned to the natural world, such as Japanese art or folk art. In addition to this, it offered an almost infinite variety of new forms, colours and arrangements, some unlike anything that had been seen before. Nature had the dynamic potential to offer the new solutions that designers and artists needed to meet the new challenges of the modern world and express modern identity. The foundations for this thinking can be traced across new areas of understanding in the life sciences. There was seemingly nothing that nature, in some guise, could not offer an answer to. In Chapter 2 we have seen how theorists from across Europe saw nature as offering a structural system, capable of providing a conceptual foundation for new construction techniques and the principles of modern design. Materials and their qualities and the response of botanical forms to their environment were seen as playing a key role in determining architectural and design form. The German architectural theorist Gottfried Semper commented: ‘Tectonics is an art that takes nature as its model – not nature’s concrete phenomena, but the uniformity and rules by which she exists and creates. Because of these qualities nature seems to us who exist in her to be the quintessence of perfection and reason’ (Semper 1989: 219). While Semper emphasized underlying rules over external phenomena, many designers were equally captivated by both. Nature was also a repository of spiritual and moral values, as well as rational thinking. Different designers and artists reconciled these varied visions of nature in different ways. Often, as we saw in the work of Sullivan, they blended structural rationalism with more evocative

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readings of natural life. The following examples delve further into the use of nature in pursuit of new forms at the end of the nineteenth century. Darwinian and Lamarckian theory regarding the competition for life and the adaptation of organisms to their environment drove a new understanding of the relationship between humanity and the world. Some dimensions of this will be explored later and the theme continues to resonate through subsequent chapters looking at psychology, sexuality and the power of design to penetrate consciousness. Nature was a theme that could articulate this new perception of humanity’s evolving state and psychological vulnerability. The employment of new scientific imagery asserted a commitment to new ways of thinking and being. Alternatively, nature motifs could be used to emphasize humanity’s emotive relationship to the natural world, particularly to the terroir of the nation. In a world of rapid change and technological transformation, allusions to nature could suggest the endurance of a relationship to an agrarian way of life or, more loosely, to notions of a timeless or mythic connection to the natural world. Nature imagery was leveraged by artists and designers seeking to express a range of ideologies from across the political spectrum. This chapter starts with the Tassel House and a return to the concept of nature as a model for articulating new understanding of the relationship between ornament and structure, and structure as ornament. In addition, the allusion to the colonization of new territories was a statement of political as well as cultural authority. The fusion of the aesthetic and the politicized in use of forms derived from the natural sciences also appear in the Elvira Studio, where it was used to defiantly express the presence of the ‘new woman’ in Munich. Examples of work by Frances Macdonald and Rene Lalique are then used to explore contrasting ideas expressed through the equation between the nature, sex and the nude female body. Finally, a closer look at the materials employed across the case studies raises the issue of the exploitation of the natural world by the colonial apparatus as a foundation for much of the beauty found within Art Nouveau.

Victor Horta: Tassel House and the jungle in the city Victor Horta (1861–1947) was a key designer in the development of European Art Nouveau. His work was shaped by new ideas regarding the necessity of design reflecting the intended function of a building and the mode and materials of its construction. Horta’s work was marked by the orchestration of forms, colours and imagery to achieve spaces of great beauty, which also reflected the worldview of his clients. The Tassel House was built for the scientist, photography and optics enthusiast and art collector, professor Émile Tassel in Brussels in 1893–4. It is a building marked by the rapprochement of the old and the new and by an inventive approach to meeting the practical, experiential and representational needs of the patron. Through the course of the nineteenth century the architectural use of iron and glass had been extended via the glasshouse, museum atrium and department store, into domestic building. The presence of iron was usually concealed behind an illusion of stone. Horta, like Gaudí, broke emphatically from this convention. He used the superior load-bearing qualities of iron to open up the interior spaces of his buildings and did so without concealing its role. Rather he made the structure an integral part of the aesthetic scheme. Horta’s facility with iron was developed as he worked as an assistant on the construction of a series of glasshouses in the Royal Gardens of Laeken. These were to house the botanical collection of Leopold II of Belgium, derived from his colonialist acquisition of territory in the Congo, which will be discussed further in the following chapter (Silverman 2011: 143).

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The facade of the Tassel House integrated the old and the new, the rational and the spiritual (Figure 7.1). It occupied a regular plot within a street of town houses, all built as part of the recent expansion of Brussels. Brussels had become the capital of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium in 1830. Tassel House bears a superficial resemblance to neighbouring buildings. It is a narrow, stone-clad town house with a symmetrical facade, the focus of which is the central bay window. Classical details, common to its neighbours, can be traced in the consoles that frame the entrance, the horizontal stone courses and the projecting cornice at the top of the facade. Unlike its neighbours though, the ironwork that serves structural function within the building has a key visible role in the design. The central bay and the second-floor windows directly above it break through the stone surface. Stone gives way, in the form of a gentle curve, to glass and slender iron supports. The incorporation of these materials was not entirely novel. The buildings to either side contained large windows and ironwork balustrades. What Horta did, though, was to dissolve the distinctions between separate elements. Stone flows into metal and into glass and into stone again as the eye is guided from one side of the facade to the other. Residual traditional elements in the facade coexisted with a new architectural language based on the growth patterns of plants. Vine-like iron tendrils twisted their way up the stained-glass window of the mezzanine and curled around the window balustrades. The iron columns that then ran up the bay were stem-slender and painted green. The visible rows of rivets in the lintels they connect to ensure there was no illusion as to their material nature. In embracing the possibilities of iron to transform architecture, inside and out, Horta realized the visions that had been suggested by architectural theorists in the mid-nineteenth century. Theorists in both German and French architectural discourses had forecast that the advent of iron as a new

FIGURE 7.1  Victor Horta, Tassel House (Brussels, 1893–4) © Heritage Images/Contributor/Getty Images.

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material within building had the potential to foster a wholly new architectural style (Violletle-Duc 1854; Herrmann 1992: 158). Horta sought to develop an aesthetic response to new technical realities, while at the same time, these new materials allowed him to articulate space and identity in new ways. Horta’s transformative vision extended throughout the interior and continued to utilize the new possibilities that iron construction offered. Interiors, like those of the Hotel Tassel, were places where the transformative power of Art Nouveau reached its fullest expression. Here, the residents and their guests occupied an environment that was very different from both the street outside and from other, more traditional, buildings they would encounter elsewhere. In these new spaces, patrons enacted their taste, their love of art, their wealth, their forward-looking outlook and their values. Though, as we have seen with the Peacock Room, the vision of the designer and the patron cannot always be assumed to align perfectly. Tassel House is a very personalized project, designed to intimately reflect and serve the client. Tassel was a man of science, but also a Mason and closely engaged with the cultural life of Brussels. It was not to be a family home, as Tassel was a bachelor who lived only with his grandmother, but at the same time it was required to accommodate the social gatherings of his circle of scholarly and artistic friends. The layout of Tassel House negotiates a division between the public and private functions of the home. Use of iron enabled Horta to open up the centre of the building and create a light well that contained the main staircase and a winter garden. The public functions of the house were arranged on the street front side, while bedrooms, dining room and kitchen were arranged in the rear half of the building (Kulper 2009: 113–14). The facade had already signalled the building’s departure from convention. On entering the sense of the unfamiliar was amplified (Plate  14). The entrance hall introduced the visitor to a spectacular vista of unexpected openness. After passing through a small lobby, the internal hall offered a confusing, and for the period entirely unexpected, effect of having entered a building only to find oneself outside again. Skylights above provided overhead natural light and the tropical plants of Tassel’s winter garden were echoed in the plant-like tendrils of floor mosaics, wall murals and the curling fronds of the iron-work structure that was visible running up through the middle of the house. This was an architecture of spectacle and enchantment for Tassel and his friends. Breaking the regular segmentation of the floors by means of mezzanines and halflandings created dynamic flow within the space and up and down the house (Vandenbreeden 1996: 49). The smoking room offers a chance to explore this interior further. It was both public and private, in that it was a social space where Tassel could invite select friends, but it was more private than the main salon where larger mixed gatherings would be hosted. It included a privileged view out, from its own interior balcony, from which the gatherings in the salon could be observed, as if from a box at the theatre or minstrel’s gallery (Kulper 2009: 118–19). The relationship to the street outside was also interesting. The curling tendrils of smoke that decorate the stained-glass bay window signalled the function of the room when it was illuminated at night, but the opaque glass prevented anyone in the street from seeing those inside clearly. The stained glass also muted the daylight into the room, which would have been exacerbated when cigar smoke hung in the air. Smoking was a masculine pastime, and the guests invited to join Tassel there would likely have been exclusively male. The mezzanine floor it occupied meant lower ceilings, creating a sense of intimacy. The house was carefully designed to meet Tassel’s various specific needs, such as the provision of a darkroom and image-projection facilities, reflecting his fascination with latest photographic

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technology. It also allowed for the performance of a complex identity, blending science and art, engineering and fantasy. Projects like the Hotel Tassel can be regarded as displays of wealth or forms of conspicuous consumption: a dandy manifesting his identity through possessions. And yet the boundary between consumption and creation is blurred in relation to this and many other Art Nouveau interiors. Connoisseurship of fine and applied art from different periods and countries and the curation of one’s collection made an important contribution to art practice in the late nineteenth century, as we have seen in the earlier chapter on patronage. After the completion of the house in 1894, Horta continued to work for Tassel designing further furnishings, which Tassel supplemented with purchases from Bing’s l’Art Nouveau gallery in Paris and also of van de Velde wallpapers from Essex & Co. (Loyer & Delhaye 1986). This made the house a nexus for recent developments in the applied arts. Essex & Co. was a British firm of wallpaper manufacturers who produced Art Nouveau designs. The purchases for his home indicate that Tassel was well informed regarding the latest developments in Belgium, Britain and France. It also illustrates again the transnational nature of the Art Nouveau movement, in which new ideas, designs and objects circulated across national boundaries. The Hotel Tassel emerged in the context of a lively and well-established new art scene in Belgium. Horta’s work was regarded by Maus as a consolidation of recent innovations in the applied arts. In his discussion of ‘Modern Homes’ in L’Art moderne, Maus started with Horta and presented him as the architect leading engagement with the new principles of design: ‘the new movement which has substituted for the imitation of traditional formulas the search for a style born of the aspirations and necessities of our time’ (Maus 1900b: 221). The break from tradition and the style for ‘our time’ represented here was one in which the evocation of nature took centre stage. In this example Horta can be seen to be employing nature as a model for rational construction, with the building as analogous to a living organism whose form is best adapted to its needs and functions. This is a given expressive form in the imagery of natural growth that permeates the design. The pervasiveness of this imagery and the resulting strangeness of the interiors speaks also to a parallel meaning of nature, one that is less rational and more emotive. Nature can also stand for the untamed and exciting. The frisson of fear conjured by wild nature can be enjoyed, while it is held in check by the authority of the architect and his patron. This was, among other things, a means of articulating Belgium domination over their colonial territories in the Congo: the jungle subdued, exported and consumed in civilized Brussels (Silverman 2011). Exploration of this will continue in Chapter 8. Horta’s clients were primarily drawn from the Brussels elite and from the Masonic connections he enjoyed there. Though he demonstrated some sympathy for the Workers Movement also and designed The House of the People for the Belgium Workers’ Party, the majority of his buildings addressed only those privileged to be entertained by their owners. The next case study, through its iconoclastic facade made more of a public statement.

August Endell: Elvira Studio and the wilder shores of life The Elvira Studio by August Endell (1871–1925) was first and foremost a place of work, rather than a home. In this project disregard for architectural conventions was taken to an extreme to establish a memorable image for the business it housed. The design was also a reflection of the radical, life-reform ideas espoused by its owners and their wider circle within the women’s movement in Munich (Richardsen 2019: 20–40/307). At the same time, it reflected a young designer’s determination to create spaces that reflected new thinking on the relationship between

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the individual and their environment. In the Elvira Studio the life-force of the botanical world was used to create a compelling and dynamic experience of space. The Elvira Studio was a portrait photography studio founded by Sophia Goudstikker (1865– 1924) and Anita Augspurg (1857–1943). Ingvild Richardsen has explored the lives of these radically independent women as part of her wider study of the women’s movement in Germany (2019). Goudstikker was the more committed photographer and built up the studio practice, taking over leadership as Augspurg diminished her involvement. She was the first woman to be appointed ‘Royal Bavarian Court Photographer’ in 1898 and was the only female member of the Munich Photographic Society. Augspurg and she had started the studio in 1887 as a means of securing financial independence and the freedom for them to co-habit, which they did until they separated in 1899. Augspurg wrote for the radical women’s newspaper, Die Frauenbewegung (The Women’s’ Movement) and went on to qualify as the first German woman with a doctorate in law from the University of Zurich. Augspurg was also the first chairwoman of the Society for the Promotion of Intellectual Interests of Women, co-founded with Goudstikker in 1894. The photography studio drew clients from the stage, the nobility as well as the cultural elite. Alongside this, it functioned as a social centre for the men and women interested in social reform and women’s rights in the city. Endell moved to Munich in 1892 and joined the Munich Secession discussed in Chapter 3. He met his mentor Obrist when he attended a lecture by him on his embroidery designs given to the Society for the Advancement of the Intellectual Interests of Women (Richardsen 2019: 172/307). Both designers were committed supporters of the women’s movement. Endell was inspired by Obrist to turn his back on an academic career and to devote himself to design. As a student, Endell had struggled to find direction. He had abandoned a course in philology and come to Munich in order to study mathematics and natural sciences, though here he soon switched to philosophy, psychology and aesthetics. He began to write his doctorate under the philosopher Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) and was inspired by him to explore the emotional and psychological meanings of form (Alexander 2010). The principle that forms had concrete psychological effects, not just as symbols but directly operating on the human mind and emotions, was taken from Lipps’s theory and applied to his work as a designer. Empathy theory was both the science of aesthetic perception and the psychology of aesthetic experience. It proposed that that people were not bounded and autonomous, but resonated emotionally and psychologically in response to the world around them. This included responding to other people, but also to objects and spaces. This empathy theory had potential connections to pantheism and placed the individual in intrinsic interrelationship with their environment and as part of the flow of life and energy of which the universe was composed (Curtis & Elliott 2014). Endell left academia and commenced his design practice without any formal design training. The Elvira Studio (1898) was his first architectural project and was marked by a total departure from traditional form (Figure 7.2). Goudstikker and Augspurg were not afraid to draw attention to themselves. They lived openly together as a couple, wore their hair cropped short and rode bicycles, all in contravention of the contemporary mores governing the behaviour of middleclass women. Endell, whose own sexuality was ambiguous, designed a building for them that loudly proclaimed its difference from the restrained historicism of the neighbourhood. The midblock brick building was smaller than its neighbours to either side, small but outrageous. Rather than regularly placed windows and the use of render to create an imitation of stone, the design was characterized by an almost windowless expanse of smooth plaster. This was dominated by a large and strange, dynamic relief, all picked out in bright colours. Red and yellow forms on a sea-green background (David 2003).

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FIGURE 7.2  August Endell, Elvira Studio (Munich, 1898) Die Kunst: Monatshefte Für Freie Und Angewandte Kunst Vol.2 (1900): 298

The scarcity of windows in the facade could be attributed to the control of light needed by the practice of photography, but little about the building could be described primarily as functional. The main field of plaster ornament evoked the foaming curls of a wave in a Japanese print, fused with the stamen and leaves of some hybrid plant or undersea creature. The unusual ornament caused the same stir on the streets of Munich as Olbrich’s Secession House. That had been nicknamed ‘the golden cabbage’, while Endell’s design was referred to as ‘the Chinese Embassy’ or ‘Dragon House’ (Richardsen 2019: 212/307). Endell’s commitment to his aesthetic vision was total. Everything, down to the glazing bars in the windows, and the metal-work and plaster-work throughout the building, pulsed with the same undulating energy. The wildly unconventional design contained no explicit reference to women’s emancipation, but it clearly refuted the authority of tradition at every level. The motif from the facade is still used as the logo of the Munich Society for Women’s Interests. At the same time, the furore surrounding the design was all good publicity for the photography studio. The Art Nouveau represented by this design is one that wholeheartedly provided an innovative aesthetic experience for a new, modern consciousness. Modernity was represented in the total departure from convention, in the novelty of the encounter with spaces unlike any that had ever existed before. Everything about the interior was disorienting, or re-orienting (Figure 7.3). The effect was that of a tiny rococo palace that had sunk beneath the sea and been overtaken by giant forms of coral, anemone and amoeba. Even the banister that curved around the spiral staircase undulated up and down, denying stability. Electric light bulbs were incorporated into the waving tendrils of the metalwork newel post and the spreading fronds of the plaster cornice ornament that stretched across the ceiling, like bioluminescent outgrowths.

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FIGURE 7.3  August Endell, Elvira Studio, entrance hall (Munich, 1898) © Rat für Formgebung/German Design Council, Frankfurt am Main.

The organic, biomorphic energy we have already encountered in Obrist’s embroidery was one source of inspiration. Endell and Obrist shared the influence of the vibrant colour-plates of the biologist Ernst Haeckel’s illustrations of undersea organisms. The detailed, highly coloured plates Haeckel developed to illustrate his published studies on his research into comparative anatomy reached wide audiences (Figure 7.4). In Endell’s interior details are not direct imitations of living things, but the concepts of life energy and growth are evoked throughout. The whole can be connected to a radical and experimental culture in Munich during the 1890s and the bold patronage of Goudstikker and Augspurg. Lipps and Endell’s theories of perception revolved around the idea of empathy, psycho-emotional responses in which the self is projected out and then recognized and embraced in the encountered object (Gamwell 2002: 101–2). This permeable idea of the self is something we will return to in Chapter 10, but considering the Elvira Studio and the pulsating, unfurling sense of life conjured by this interior invites a physical and emotional response, a response in which the individual is drawn in and absorbed by the environment they have become part of. This reflected not just an interest in new forms of aesthetic experience but a fundamental reframing of humanity’s relationship to the world. Scientific discoveries, the theory of evolution, the invention of the microscope and the discovery of the building blocks of life, the cell and the atom, broke down assumptions as to the uniqueness of humanity. Numerous overlapping and competing schools of thought sought to grapple with this reality, in which humanity was not next to the angels but made up of the same units of matter as everything else. This could take the form of scientific materialism that entirely stripped the numinous from the universe or new forms of spiritualism, such as Monism or Theosophy. There was a plethora of alternative

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FIGURE 7.4  Ernst Haeckel, Jellyfish: Leptomedusae, c.1880 © Buyenlarge/ Contributor/Getty Images.

paradigms that saw the life-world of the primal organism in mystic terms. The result was a hybrid of scientific thought and ecstatic new philosophy in which the ever-burgeoning, ever dynamic world of nature offered a liberating and energizing new world view (Halse 2011).

France Macdonald: The Pond and the threat of fecundity In Munich private salons and cafes were the primary sites for cultural exchange. Elsewhere, art schools became nuclei for similar fruitful creative contacts. The Glasgow School of Art was one such crucible for the development of new forms of representation to reflect new visions of the world. Margaret Macdonald (1864–1933), Frances Macdonald (1873–1921), Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and Herbert MacNair (1868–1955) met as students at the Glasgow School of Art. Their nickname, ‘the Spook School’, referred to the disquiet provoked by the ethereal and unconventional imagery they pioneered (Burkhauser 1993: 85–9; White 1897: 89). Frances Macdonald’s watercolour The Pond (1894, Glasgow School of Art) was the colour frontispiece for the Glasgow School of Art student publication, The Magazine (Plate   15). In it we see the fusion of nature, science and the spiritual and the rendition of the prevalent theme of the female figure as a personification of nature, this time authored by a woman. The contrast to Moser’s Ver Sacrum cover (Figure 6.10) is telling. The skeletal forms of the two female figures suggest an insect’s exoskeleton far more than Moser’s voluptuous butterflies. Macdonald’s work is strangely incorporeal, despite the fact that sexual reproduction is a central theme. The symmetry of the curving wings of the women and trailing tails of their hair and the tadpole/sperm surrounding them suggest vaginal imagery (Howard 1996: 58–9). The purple and pinkish-tan colours used are also evocative of human anatomy rather than the blues and greens one might expect of a depiction of pond life. Unlike the flowers bursting from the loins of Moser’s butterfly-women, the depiction of sexual reproduction is both more explicit and more complex. The figures of the two women make a mirrored hieratic gesture that could mean ‘offering’, though it could also mean ‘supplication’ and their bowed backs and upturned eyes echo this. The Mackintosh sisters, like Driscoll and Green, were among the many women to take advantage of new opportunities for higher education in art and design. Their attendance at the Glasgow School of Art was, as it was for many middle-class women students, initially framed in terms of a feminine pastime before marriage rather than serious professional training. Unlike

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Augspurg and Goudstikker, the Macdonald sisters did not cut their hair short and openly defy the mores of their gender and class. Their portrayal by the critic Gleeson White in The Studio, following exhibition of their work at the Arts and Crafts Society in London in 1896, emphasized their feminine attractiveness: ‘two laughing, comely girls scarcely out of their teens’, though by this time Frances was twenty-four and Margaret was thirty-three. They are represented by Gleeson White as making light of any attempts to pursue meaning in their work and do not apparently require that their work be correctly attributed to one or the other (White 1897: 89). These are typical defensive strategies intended to deflect possible censure. In their work, however, they were far less circumspect. The overt depiction of sperm, thinly disguised as tadpoles, demonstrated the artist’s familiarity with scientific imagery. The watery medium of A Pond is in fact a reflection on the origins of life in primeval and reproductive fluids. The curiously sexless female figures reveal a challenging reading of the costs to women exacted by the act of sexual reproduction, as the emaciated bodies of the women contrast markedly with the plump, grinning sperm. The ambiguity of the image defies resolution. Are the women mythical water nymphs, dragonfly nymphs sharing their pond with a group of tadpoles or is it in fact human sexual reproduction that is being depicted? The opacity of much of the imagery employed by the Macdonald sisters through their careers was central to their resistance to patriarchal assumptions surrounding both the reality of women’s lives and the representation of women (Helland 1993). The critical hostility to the desexualized, representation of female figures, seen in both the criticism of the ‘spook school’ and satires such as Pauls’s Fountain of Youth, suggests that this resistance to the commodification of women’s bodies in the visual arts was recognized on some level as a threat to prevailing values. As with the Elvira Studio, scientific imagery offered the means of making visible truths about the world that had only recently come to light and thereby suggesting that the old ways of seeing and understanding the world might now be in question.

René-Jules Lalique: The beauties of nature Nature imagery was, however, not inherently revolutionary or iconoclastic. It could equally be invoked simply as a source of infinite variety and beauty. Lalique was a designer whose jewellery captured the energizing effect of this new model and its appeal to consumers. Lalique’s works around 1900 encapsulate many of the key ideas associated with Art Nouveau: the seemingly impossible blend of modernity and tradition, innovation and revival, art and craft. Like Gallé’s glass, Lalique’s work pushed at the boundary between art and design. He had a trade training, apprenticed to a Parisian jeweller, and then later attended art school in Paris and, briefly, in London (Vever 2001: 1207). His belief in the artistry of his work, or at the very least, in the commercial value of having the artistry of his work recognized, manifested in his early efforts to get his work shown within the annual Salon. Lalique joined Gallé in 1895 in the first Salon to include applied art (Brauer 2014: 218). He also contributed jewellery to the opening display of Bing’s Maison de l’art Nouveau and continued to exhibit regularly and successfully. His design work was based throughout his career on direct study from nature, in the form of both drawing and photography (O’Mahony 2009: 303). Photography was an increasingly accessible technology and was used by many artists and designers, including Liljefors, Tiffany, Driscoll and Mucha. It provided another way of engaging with the intricacy of natural forms. Lalique studied the forms of nature and used them to develop delicate and detailed technical drawings of the pieces he designed, which he annotated with information on materials and

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techniques. It was these drawings which workshop technicians used to execute his work (Phillips 2000: 238). The artistry of his draughtsmanship was one pillar on which his work rested. The other pillar was his understanding and innovation in relation to the use of materials and techniques. Lalique greatly expanded the palette of materials found within jewellery. In this respect, his work shares parallels with many of the Art Nouveau innovators in this arena. In addition to gold and diamonds, Lalique added semiprecious stones of all sorts, pearls, glass and enamel. With this range of materials, the value of each piece lies more obviously in the quality of the design and manufacture, not simply in the raw value of gemstones and precious metals. This parallel with Ashbee’s jewellery of the 1890s reflects not necessarily direct influence, but the transnational nature of design innovation in this period. Lalique’s experimentation in forms, materials and techniques created an oeuvre of jewellery that pushed the boundaries of what had been seen before. His work turned its back on historical and archaeological ornament. Nature provided the central model for his work. He would spend long hours studying plants, flowers and trees, admiring their elegant forms, their varied colours and exquisite harmony. He was captivated and deeply moved by the constantly changing spectacle of nature, which greatly contributed to the development of his artistic temperament. (Vever [1906] 2001: 1203) Underlying all of this was the pervasive influence of Japanese art and its translation across the European and American applied arts. A vital facet of the fascination with Japanese art was the revaluation of the applied arts, so that the art object, from being a minor decorative work, became recognized as a stimulus for more complex aesthetic, sensual and imaginative responses (O’Mahony 2009). Across the cultural centres of Paris, Brussels and London and spreading rapidly around the world, the parallel Symbolist and Aesthetic movements valorized the power of the perfect art object. In Paris, writers such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Huysmans frequently made reference to the intensity of an encounter with a beautiful object or jewel. Art for art’s sake placed beauty above the use of imagery as a vehicle for moral or political ideals. Of course, this stance was inherently political and frequently conservative, privileging the informed eye and refined enjoyment of the wealthy, male, connoisseur over all other concerns. The contemplation of historical objects, Ming or Sèvres porcelain, the enamels of Cellini, paved the way for a reappraisal of contemporary objects and appreciation for quality of workmanship and refinement. Lalique responded to this challenge with pieces of jewellery that captured the imagination of the period. As we have seen in the work of Gallé, a close study of nature provided the foundation, but not the end-point, for Lalique’s compositions. The necklace of black swans and female figures (c.1897–9, MET), designed for his long-term companion and subsequent second wife, Augustine Ledru, captures many of the innovative features of his work in this period (Plate  16). Among other things, again like the work of Gallé, the design invokes time and duration, in the slow revelation of its inner complexity. The necklace takes the form of a circular collar that would sit around the woman’s neck and rest on her collarbone and shoulders. It exemplifies the mix of materials and techniques used by Lalique. The basic structure of the necklace was made of gold. Large round Australian opals were arranged around the circumference of the necklace and purple amethysts punctuated the bottom of the larger winged, enamel pendants and sat at the tops of the opal pieces.

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The intricacy of the piece demands and repays close examination. The large pendants take the form of a female figure in gold, whose black enamel locks of hair make up the links of the necklace. The black of the enamel makes a dramatic contrast with the warmth of the gold and the rich purple of the amethyst. The black hair also rises up above each figure’s head in two curls that form horns or a heart over the head of each figure. Her elongated legs point down to the amethyst. There is a form of metamorphosis taking place, as the arms of the female figure extend into a sweeping line that suggests furled wings. A comparison to the Macdonald watercolour above reflects the transnational resonances of this idea, though Lalique’s work represents the more widespread commodification of women’s bodies as decorative motif that the Macdonald sisters resisted. The insectoid association of Lalique’s figure is amplified by the pointed feet of the figure morphing in the serrated, repetitive patterns of a dragonfly’s abdomen. The theory of natural selection had introduced the idea of advantageous mutations, including the revolutionary inference that mankind had evolved from its nearest animal ancestors, apes, causing both consternation and fascination (Gamwell 2002: 40–5). The part woman, part insect hybrid blended elements of science and with age old mythologies of human transformation and women/animal hybrids (Brunhammer 1998: 79–85). As a gift to a woman with whom he had a sexual relationship, the proximity of female nudity and animal forms suggest the celebration of female sexual allure. The conflation of the women and animal reflected a current in contemporary thought that saw women as more animalistic in their desires and hence more naturally immoral or even criminal (Kaye 2007: 56–7). Lalique broke new ground in his introduction into jewellery of the female figure, which had long been a staple motif in fine art (Vever 2001: 1234). The allusion to female sexuality aligned the jewellery with contemporary Symbolist art and literature that marked its modernity through dealing with the topic of sex in a newly overt manner, often segueing between the naturalness of sexual desire and its awful, destructive aspects. The black swans could be seen as a reference to the swan as a symbol of love and fidelity, a gift for a woman he would not marry until 1902, following the divorce of his first wife in 1898. The swan also had mystical associations, appearing frequently in folklore. It was a popular motif at this time that reappeared in the work of Lalique and other Art Nouveau designers, such as Eckmann, who employed the graceful curve of the neck in various aquatic themes (Figure 6.3). The symbolism of the piece extends also to the stones used. Amethyst is thought of in many mythologies as a protection against evil. Opals are also associated with healing and the power of prophecy as well as bad luck and were a stone greatly favoured by Lalique in the 1890s. The wings of each pendant were formed with plique-à-jour, which was a technique ascribed to Cellini and revived by French enamellists in the nineteenth century. Cellini had similarly been a significant influence on Ashbee’s work. In this technique the glass enamel was poured into a gold mould with a temporary back, so that rather than sit in compartments, the finished enamel was only framed in gold and semi-transparent, like miniature stained glass (Barten 1998: 125). This transparency would cause the wings to take something of the tone of the skin beneath, as well as adding a sense of ethereal delicacy to the experience of handling the object. It is clear that the object was designed, not just as a form of personal ornament, but as one in which the intimate experience of the object was important. The reverse of the necklace, which would not be seen when worn, shows the female figures from behind, their heels, buttocks and the gold tendrils of hair all carefully worked. This detail shifts the necklace from its primary purpose as an object of public adornment to an object of private gratification.

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The black swan necklace belongs to the class of more dramatic jewellery produced by Lalique. These were show-stopping pieces like the headdress for Bernhardt discussed in Chapter 6 that pushed boundaries of scale and imagery. They were worn only by particularly confident and unconventional women such as Bernhardt and Barney or prominent courtesans such as Liane de Pougy. The more extreme pieces could only be worn by extreme personalities. Others were never worn, but were collected by connoisseurs, notably the millionaire Calouste Gulbenkian, who made his vast fortunes through the exploitation of the oil fields of Iraq. These art pieces can be regarded as a form of marketing and reputation-building for Lalique, the fabulous aura of such works serving to promote more modest and wearable jewellery in the same way that Gallé used his exhibition pieces (Harrison 2009: 60). The mainstay of Lalique’s business rested on the production of pieces of jewellery that straddled the line between miniature art work and personal ornament. The example of the wisteria-themed lorgnette and chain (c.1900, MET) serves to exemplify the translation of closely observed natural forms into ornament (Figure 7.5). The long gold chain of the lorgnette was composed of irregularly shaped and twisted links, which imitated the twisting, vine-like branches of a climbing wisteria. The chain was punctuated by bursts of wisteria blossoms, depicted with diamonds, and leaves in delicate green plique-à-jour. The chain was enamelled white around these blossoms and the traces of white enamel and gold patinate the chain in a manner similar to the silvering of wisteria bark. The graphic, twisting lines of the wisteria

FIGURE 7.5  René-Jules Lalique, Wysteria Lognette and chain (1900, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Gold, enamel, diamonds, jade, glass. Doublechain: 101.6 cm. Gift of Mrs J. G. Phelps Stokes (née Lettice L. Sands), 1965 (65.154ab). © 2021. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

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branches, in contrast to the relatively small and sparse blossoms create an aesthetic reminiscent of Japanese graphic art, with its recurrent motif of bare branches and cherry blossoms. The choice of wisteria, a far less common motif in decorative arts, reflects the scope of Lalique’s engagement with nature. Wisteria, native to China, Korea and Japan, had become popular in garden design in Europe and America by the late nineteenth century (Compton 2015). The East Asian associations of the wisteria are amplified in the lorgnette by the introduction of jade, which was a stone particularly associated with China in European culture. The intent behind this association is made clear by the jade disk that marks the connection between the chain and the lorgnette proper. This disk evokes the form of a Chinese jade bi, a ritual object found from the Neolithic period onwards and common enough to have made it into European collections in large numbers (Laufer 1912). The subtle, pale greens of the jade complement the spring greens of the translucent wisteria leaves. This lorgnette, though it is one of Lalique’s less dramatic pieces, nevertheless encapsulates an important dimension of his work and of much Art Nouveau. However much the exquisite luxury and technical artistry of the piece invokes the French tradition of objet d’art, it is an object that must be understood as the product of internationally circulating materials, people and ideas and colonial trade. The lorgnette was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1965 by Mrs J. G. Phelps Stokes (née Lettice L. Sands). As it is marked with the Sands arms in relief on cameo glass inset on one side of the case, it was likely purchased directly from Lalique by or for her mother, Eleanor Lydell Livingston Sands, or another female relative. Unlike the celebrities and demimonde who bought the more outrageous pieces, the Sands and Livingstons were old New York families, who traced their lineage back to the American Revolution. Wealthy American visitors were a mainstay of the Parisian luxury goods and fashion industries, of which Lalique’s workshop was a part (Davis 1989).

The raw materials of Art Nouveau The natural world of plants and flowers that inspired Lalique, Tiffany and Gallé was only partially based on native species. The richness of the flora they had access to was a product of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European horticultural expeditions around the world. Botanists often accompanied or followed hot on the heels of military expeditions. A few specimens of wisteria had reached Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but in the aftermath of the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Nanjing, British power was asserted to open up trade with China. In the wake of this the Royal Horticultural Society commissioned expeditions to China to collect specimens and it is by these means that many of the now wellknown species of plants, such as magnolia, peony and wisteria entered European and American garden design (Compton 2015: 286–7; Voskuil 2012: 7). The gold, diamonds, amethyst, opal and jade that made up the pieces discussed similarly did not have European origins. In the nineteenth century, the importation of these precious metals and stones into Europe was a global industry inextricably linked to colonialist exploitation. In the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century, the largest source of gold in Europe was from South America. Diamonds were also found in Brazil in 1728, providing an important alternative source to the famous diamond mines of Golconda in India (Pointon 2009: 41–4). Both gold and diamonds were mined substantially through the use of the enslaved labour of people transported to Brazil from Africa (Higgins 1999: 73). As emerging South American nations began the struggle for independence, supplies of gold were interrupted, soon to be

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superseded by the California Gold Rush of the mid-nineteenth century, that boomed and then tailed off. In the late nineteenth century South Africa entered the arena of global trade in both gold and diamonds. Diamonds were discovered in Kimberley in 1871. Though a rush of ad hoc mining followed, the South African mines were swiftly rationalized into the hands of a few individuals, such as the De Beers company, and extraction practices were industrialized (Davenport 2013: 122–33). A similar pattern of industrial extraction, white ownership and exploited black labour, characterized the development of the South African gold mines in the 1890s. As we have seen, the use of semiprecious materials, particularly enamel and coloured glass, played an important role in reframing Lalique’s jewellery as art, rather than the simple setting of gems. But gold and diamonds never disappeared from his work and continued to assert their traditional allure in new arrangements. The medieval kings of Europe had demonstrated their power through the display of silks, spices and ivory imported into Europe by merchants from the Islamic world. From the establishment of the Spanish colonies of South America, through the sixteenth century onwards, a vastly expanded range of new materials appeared on the European markets allowing for new means of performing power. Furniture design was transformed with a new array of imported hardwoods. New sources for ivory, ebony, mother of pearl, semiprecious stones, as well as precious stones and minerals of all kinds were discovered by different colonial powers. In all times and cultures, the display of artefacts known to have travelled great distances functions as a display of power and of the global reach of those able to secure such goods. The import of such materials, the products of colonialism and international capitalism, made the art centres of Europe and America the repositories of luxury materials from all over the globe. The gleaming and varied surfaces of Art Nouveau would not be possible without this trade. Similarly Art Nouveau would, in many cases, not have been realized without the support of profits from the international trade in commodities such as oil, sugar, tea and cotton. It is important to understand Art Nouveau as a movement heavily implicated in the economics of empire and the exploitation of the world’s resources to benefit a very few European and American companies and individuals. These global connections were not merely economic. As has already become apparent through the first half of this book, by the 1880s and 1890s it was not possible to conceive of culture as untouched by the international exchange. The next chapter focuses in detail on this dimension of Art Nouveau.

8 The global reach of colonialism

It is when Western civilization is brought face to face with the results of other cultures, Eastern cultures, when the stages of its progress are resumed from the points of view of other religions, when Japan, for instance, rejects or chooses what she needs to make her a fighting force, when India seeks to form, out of an imposed educational system, a political consciousness of her own; when Persia and Turkey are in the act of creating constitutions on the Western model, that we in the West come to realize that the stages of progress, as we understand them, are not obligatory. Some of them may be skipped. C. R. R. ASHBEE, FORWARD TO A. COOMARASWAMY THE INDIAN CRAFTSMAN. (1909)

This chapter focuses discussion on Art Nouveau’s fundamental debt to the circulation of objects, images, materials, people and ideas around the world. New global connections provided new sources of imagery, techniques and ideas about art and making. Primarily, this focus involves the acknowledgement of the role of colonial imperialism, and its exploitation of global resources, which lies behind much of the beauty of Art Nouveau. At the same time, emerging national movements around the world also sought to resist this process, reclaim their own cultures and make new selections from the array of traditional and imported ideas available to them. A fascination with alternative art practices from outside the European tradition also had a transformative effect within colonial centres. This chapter emphasizes the transmission of ideas back and forth, across the globe. The scope of European colonialism in the nineteenth century must be stressed in order to understand how pervasive it was. By 1900, the British empire covered almost a quarter of the globe and comprised around 400 million people. The French empire controlled much of North Africa, French West Africa, French Somaliland, in addition to Madagascar, Indochina and the French West Indies. The old colonial powers of Spain and Portugal still maintained remnants of their colonies as well as economic and cultural ties to former colonies in South and Central America. Denmark still held the Danish West Indies, Iceland and Greenland. The Dutch had a long history of trading by sea and by this means had established a far-flung empire based substantially on territories acquired by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century. The most substantial territories were in what was known as the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. Much of the Congo region was acquired as the private property of the Belgian Crown. Italy had only unified in 1861, but pursued colonialist ambitions and

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secured territory in Eritrea and later Tripoli and much of Libya. A similar situation occurred in Germany, which unified in 1871 and rapidly engaged in colonial expansion acquiring territory in both Africa and the Asian Pacific. This brief overview serves to illustrate how thoroughly Europe was enmeshed in complex colonial relationships designed to ensure economic advantage for the colonizer. Colonizing nations competed successfully and unsuccessfully with one another to secure new territories. Where territories could not be secured, economic advantages could still be pursued by means of exploitative trading relationships, backed up by military threats. Examples of this are the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), the Treaty of Tianjin (1858) and the Treaty of Kanagawa (1858), which forced open ports in China and Japan in violation of local sovereignty. Art Nouveau was not by any means the first movement in Western art to deploy the forms, materials and techniques of non-European cultures as a means of displaying wealth and cultural capital. At the same time, the rapaciousness of European colonialism through the nineteenth century flooded Europe with raw materials, artefacts and images of places and peoples from around the world as never before. The new disciplines of ethnography and anthropology brought a botanizing eye to the peoples of the world who, so long as they were not white and middle class, were subject to expeditions to map and recodify their land, examine and record evidence of their languages, their faiths, mythologies and way of life (Blomley 2003; Stockington 1982) ‘Natural peoples’, meaning African, Oceanian and North-American indigenous people, were subject to the same classification systems as flora and fauna and their artefacts were exhibited in natural history museums (Qureshi 2011). Through world’s fairs, museums and the extensive dissemination of printed images, unprecedented volumes of new-to-European-eyes, visual material was available (Edwards & Morton 2016). The flow out from Europe of manufactured goods and missionary literature destined for colonies similarly accelerated the long-established processes of worldwide cultural interchange. The national prestige associated with the possession of colonial territory was celebrated within the colonizing nations, so that displays of the culture of the colonized functioned as patriotic display for the colonizer. The pervasive appearance within European homes of artefacts from or inspired by the colonized nations cannot be extricated from these unequal power relations. European writers lamented the effect of one direction of this cultural traffic. Just as national revivalists had decried the influence of cheap, industrially produced commodities on the traditional crafts of rural communities across Europe, so scholars fretted about the loss of indigenous crafts among the people subject to colonialism (Corbey & van Damme 2015: 11). The solution most commonly favoured was not to question the economic or coercive forces which propelled people to make or purchase imitations of European culture, but to collect the finest examples of indigenous art and artefacts. These artefacts were then classified and preserved in museum collections, often thousands of miles away in the capitals of the colonial powers. The effect of cultural influence in the other direction was much less closely considered. The bias of white nationalisms tended to assume a position of empowered superiority that neutralized perception of influences from elsewhere. Art historians are just beginning to grapple with the full implications of this. In relation to Art Nouveau, Silverman has pioneered this approach in her work on Belgian art and design (2011; 2012; 2013; 2015). My own work in this book is inspired by Silverman’s model: exposing the many layers of connection that implicate Art Nouveau within networks of global exploitation. The case studies in this chapter focus on interactions between the Belgium and the Congo, British, Indian and Japanese interactions and

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Dutch-Indonesian cultural exchange. As with previous chapters, a selective focus is necessary to develop understanding of the specificities of these points of contact. By the late nineteenth century there was no culture that could truly claim to be untouched by global currents of trade and cultural exchange.

The Sphinx Mystérieux and the performance of colonial power Silverman has explored in depth the links between Belgian Art Nouveau and the cultural impact of the forming of the Congo Free State. This first case study introduces just some of the facets of this complex process of translation and appropriation. By 1885, most of the Congo basin in Central Africa had been secured as the personal possession of King Leopold II. From 1885 until 1909, when international outcry forced the Belgian government to annex the territory, the region was subject to an unregulated private regime of forced labour and systematic brutality. The purpose of this system was to maximize the extraction of rubber, ivory and minerals, securing huge wealth for the small, politically neutral nation of Belgium. Alongside these natural resources, the material culture of the peoples of the Congo were collected, wholesale, and shipped back to Brussels. Silverman has demonstrated how the Belgian imagination was saturated with colonial material, from mountainous arrays of elephant tusks to images of the verdant jungles of Central Africa and the sinuous liana vines, from whose veins the profitable rubber flowed (2011). The interior of Tassel House, discussed in the previous chapter, is given a new layer of meaning in conjunction with this imagery (Plate  14). The iron-work tendrils and mosaic and mural vines that sprout and entwine throughout the interior can now be seen as inextricably linked with this new world of imperialist imagery. The huge diversity of the forms inspired by nature that fed the nineteenth-century design reform agenda were derived from specimens collected in the wake of imperial expansion. In these contexts, the beauty of nature was a mark of the successful domination of global territories and resources. Condemnation of the way the Congo was exploited began to emerge already in the late 1880s, but Leopold II was quick to defend his position. He used the media to discredit critics and maintain a smokescreen that represented the occupation of the Congo as a civilizing mission. The 1897 Brussels-Tervuren World’s Fair was an important event for the celebration of this mission on the world stage (Silverman 2015: 620–2). Leopold’s General Secretary for the Congo, Edmond van Eetvelde, had already advised the commissioning of art from leading Belgian designers in relation to the 1894 Antwerp Exhibition. Van Eetvelde was a patron of the arts and his own home, commissioned from Horta in 1895, made extensive use of Congolese materials and imagery. With his encouragement, Leopold II had donated pieces of Congolese ivory to a number of Belgian artists in order to mount a spectacular display of ivory and silver sculptural pieces in the Fair’s Palace of the colonies. These sculptures became known by the term ‘chryselephantine’, which was a label used to describe the ivory and gold votive statues of the ancient Greeks (Flynn 1997). Ivory statuary also recalled the tradition of medieval devotional statuary in ivory that flourished in the Low Countries. Its revival as an art form, therefore, presented a highly desirable mixture of classical and national cultural associations, married with the employment of a newly abundant colonial product. One of the centrepieces of the Gallery of Honour was the ivory and silver gilt sculpture, Sphinx Mystérieux (1897, Royal Museums, Brussels), by Charles van der Stappen (1843–1910) (Figure 8.1). The sculpture was presented on a plinth of green onyx and displayed in a case of

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FIGURE 8.1  Charles van der Stappen, Sphinx Mystérieux (1897, Royal Museums, Brussels). Ivory, onyx, silver and bronze, 56.5 × 46 × 31.3 cm © RMAH, Brussels.

Congolese wood and brass made for it by van de Velde (Silverman 2011: 149, 177; Silverman 2012: 191). As a bust of a beautiful woman, it sits comfortably alongside the dominant trend in Francophone Art Nouveau sculpture. But the figure is not all she seems. Though called a sphinx, the body is clearly not that of a lion, and the combination of helmet and armour are more readily associated with the figure of Athena, which we have already seen closely associated with the new style of the Secessionists. The snake that wraps around the figure’s wrist is also an attribute of Athena. Silverman notes that the piece was alternatively titled The Secret (2011: 149). Certainly, the gesture of silence being made by the figure resonates with this title. The gentle enjoinder of the raised hand does not work in relation to the mythology of the sphinx: a creature that stands guard and asks a riddle of those who would pass her. The youth and delicacy of the female figure depicted also makes it seem unlikely that she was ready to devour all those who fail to answer her riddle. The figure may be interpreted then as a femme fatale, a complex mixture of beguiling innocence and martial strength. More suggestive still is the analogue to the maintenance of a Sphinx-like silence, the gesture signalling something which cannot be spoken of. The Gallery of Honour from the 1897 World’s Fair was reinstalled in the Royal Congo Museum, which was founded in 1898. A contemporary photograph (1898–1909, RMCA Tervuren) shows the installation of the Sphinx Mystérieux directly behind a bust – also in ivory – of Leopold II (Figure 8.2). The king casts an imperious gaze around a room full of chryselephantine sculptures. In the museum beyond Congolese artefacts of all kinds were on display. The walls were decorated with Kasai textiles of the Kuba people alongside allegorical silk, applique tapestries. These presented a propagandistic narrative of the Congo before and after colonialism, with the pre-colonial subjects of Barbary, Slavery, Fetishism and Polygamy answered by Civilization, Freedom, Christianity and Family (Ogata 2001: 52–3; Couttenier

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FIGURE 8.2  Ivory bust of Leopold II by Thomas Vincotte with Charles van der Stappen’s Mysterious Sphinx in the background, in a photograph of the Gallery of Honor in the Royal Congo Museum (1898–1909, RMCA Tervuren) AP.0.0.6287. © RMCA Tervuren.

2015: 28). The agenda here was to use art to refute the criticisms that were being levelled with increasing vehemence at the atrocities carried out by Leopold’s regime in the Congo. The silencing gesture of the sphinx takes on a more sinister aspect in this context. She is not asking for an answer to a riddle, but the keeper of an increasingly open secret. This figure of Congolese ivory can be seen to reveal, by her sign of prohibition, the presence of a silence that must be maintained (Flynn 1998). Van de Velde, Serrurier-Bovy and other Belgian Art Nouveau designers and artists were closely involved in the design of the 1897 exhibition. The result was a fusion of Art Nouveau design with Congolese materials, imagery and artefacts, resulting in another of the many local synonyms for Art Nouveau: ‘Style Congo’ (Ogata 2001: 51–8). Van de Velde’s case for Sphinx Mystérieux can be looked at as an example. The legs of the stand, executed in Congolese hardwood, reflect the dynamic lines that characterized his work. They do not imitate the growth patterns of nature, so much as distil a sense of natural vitality and energy. The upper corners of the glass case flare up in rearing leaf-forms, as if the energy drawn up from the floor by the firmly planted, splayed feet of the stand were bursting forth. The leaf forms are attached to the case by means of a row of prominent rivets, the raised heads of which create a decorative punctuation. This captures the synthesis in van de Velde’s work between a celebration of expressive, organic ornament and celebration of technological progress and industrial production. Van de Velde trained as a painter. He was drawn initially to the new style of pointillism and joined Les XX in 1889. Here he was exposed to the groups’ thinking on the unity of

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the arts and their interest in English Arts and Crafts (Couttenier 2015: 28). The turn towards applied arts was, as we have seen, also precipitated by exposure to Asian art and the expressive potential of design objects. Van de Velde went on to become a preeminent figure in European Art Nouveau and early Modernism. His commission from Bing for room installations Maison de l’Art Nouveau in 1895 placed him at the heart of the new movement. Van de Velde’s thinking pursued a synthesis of design theory from across Europe, reconciling the technical and material with the expressive: the mechanical and the psychological (Haddad 2003: 131). Through this, the idea of the line emerged as the prime design element that was non-representational but full of vitality and expressive potential. The handling of line formed the basis of his design philosophy and was described in his theoretical writings variously as a ‘line of force’, ‘line as force’ and line as ‘violence’, which Silverman has linked to visual representations of the whips used as part of punitive systems of violence in the Congo (Silverman 2011: 179). The dimension of van de Velde’s approach that is also of particular relevance to this chapter is the use he made of models derived from premodern examples, like Palaeolithic peoples and Celts, as well as from diverse non-European art cultures (Haddad 2003: 128–32). His writings were broad-ranging in their search for evidence of the foundations of a universal language of ornament that could meet the need to imbue modern design with expressive power without compromising function. Common to all the European theorists who sought a universal principles of design was a pronounced blindness to the cultural specificities they erased in pursuit of this goal. Van de Velde’s abstract ornament based on the power of the line to express vital energy should not be separated from the realities of the Belgian colonial project, which gave him and others access to new imagery and unlimited vistas of wealth and power. This issue cannot be seen as a purely Belgian one. Though the colonial stories of other nations varied, there was a common thread behind all Art Nouveau. The new art was motivated by the same urgent search for new vitality and for the restoration of meaning to art and design that was seen as having been devalued by cheap industrial production. Arts of the non-industrialized world was turned to for inspiration, even as these territories were stripped of their own resources.

India Art Nouveau and pan-Asianism As indicated in the introduction to this chapter, cultural exchange was not unidirectional. The long history between Britain and India reveals further dimensions of the circulation of influence. British Arts and Crafts principles regarding the validity of authentic materials and the handmade also influenced cultural policy in Britain’s colonies. British assessment of Indian culture generally emphasized an orientalist narrative of cultural decadence and decline (Mittar 1977: 252–68). Schools of art and design, on the South Kensington model, were proposed by the colonial administration as an initiative for the cultural and economic betterment of India. Art schools were established at Madras (1850), Calcutta (1854) and Bombay (1857), while the Mayo School of Art was founded in 1875 in Lahore. These schools acted as a conduit for British design-reform thinkers to engage with Indian culture and for Indian artists and designers to engage with the question of their own cultures under imperialism. From its foundation the Mayo school had a particular focus on local crafts. The first director, John Lockwood Kipling (1837–1911), was steeped in British Arts and Crafts ideology, which informed his admiration for the traditions of Indian crafts he encountered, studied

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and collected (Figure 8.3). The school particularly aimed at attracting students from artisan backgrounds, which contrasted with the mainly middle-class constituency of students at the other schools of art. As Nadeem Omar Tarar has observed, Kipling’s thinking on the matter was closely informed by colonialist ethnography (Tarar 2011; 2018). The Punjab, where the school was located, had only been annexed by the British in 1849. Acquiring knowledge of new subject peoples was a central plank of the imperial project and this included ethnographic surveys. These surveys tended to identify the people of artisan castes as having preserved aspects of ‘true’ Indian culture (Tarar 2011: 202). On the basis of this logic, the Mayo school admitted students from artisan background at reduced fees and directed students into specialisms, in carpentry, metalwork, carpet design and so on, based on their ancestry (Tarar 2011: 212–13). This approach extended scientific understanding of heredity into the domain of craft skills. Kipling based the teaching programme at Mayo around the study of local architectural and craft models from the Lahore Museum (est. 1864), of which he was also the curator. This can be compared to the establishment of museums of peasant artefacts associated with the development of Art Nouveau in Europe, as noted in the example of Talashkino. Through activities of collection, curation and education the definition of what was ‘Indian culture’ was developed and perpetuated. Kipling saw his mission as the study and development of traditional Indian crafts, without acknowledging the extent to which this process required the amalgamation of many different regional traditions. One principle learnt from the British Arts and Crafts movement was the notion that for the crafts to flourish they needed to reach an educated audience prepared to select them over industrially manufactured goods. Kipling founded the Journal of Indian Art and Industry in 1886, with a view to stimulating interest in Indian crafts among British consumers (Ata-Ullah 2012: 71). Bhai Ram Singh (1858–1915) was one of the first students at the Mayo School of Art. He came from a family of carpenters originally from Amritsar, a traditional centre for wood-carving. He therefore fitted Kipling’s orientalist expectations of innate native talent. Ram Singh went on to work alongside Kipling on designs for public buildings in Lahore and elsewhere in India (Tarar 2018: 9–10). He was also a close collaborator on projects that exported the work of the Mayo school to Britain. The first of these was a Billiard Room for the Duke of Connaught’s house, Bagshot Park (1885–7). Kipling and Ram Singh designed the extensive scheme of panelling for the room, which was executed by students of the school and a professional carpenter based FIGURE 8.3  John Lockwood Kipling, Wood-carver in Simla (1870, V&A). Pencil, pen and wash on paper, 26 × 36.5 cm © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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in Amritsar (Bryant 2017: 436–48). The design fused a desire for authenticity – native Indian wood, carved by Indian artisans – with the desires and expectations of a British audience. Elements of Indian iconography, lotus flowers and images of the Hindu god Ganesh sit alongside carved rabbits and woodpeckers. This example functions to illustrate the integration of non-European elements in European design that was foundational for Art Nouveau’s later synthesizing approach. Just as imagery of the Congo suffused Belgian culture, images of Indian art, architecture and sculpture became increasingly available worldwide. Key interventions in the framing of this growing awareness of Indian visual culture were provided by the well-illustrated publications of Ernest Binfield Havell (1864–1937) and Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) and by the founding in 1910 of the India Society (Turner 2010: 244–8). We have already noted the use made of the Indian collections of the South Kensington Museum by Hungarians Lechner and Zsolnay. The reach of this imagery extended well beyond the relationship between Britain and India. The image credits in Havell’s books reveal the some of the scope of the collecting of Indian art across public and private collections in India and the UK, as well as museums in Copenhagen, Paris and Leiden. Havell, like Kipling, was a member of the British colonial service. He was Superintendent of the Madras School of Art from 1884 to 1892 and then of the Calcutta School of Art from 1896 to 1906. He became Keeper of the adjoining Calcutta gallery at the same time. The gallery, founded in 1876, had previously been filled with copies of European masterpieces (GuhaThakurta 1992: 64–8). Havell overturned this policy to amass a significant collection of Indian art to provide an alternative basis for instruction. Alongside this, his publications argued for a revaluation of a unique Indian creative genius. He looked for a new, positive reading of the culture of the region as spiritually deep, rather than primitive. This paradigm continued the orientalizing practice of identifying India as ‘other’ in order to address a perceived lack in Western culture, in this case an absence of spirituality. At the same time, it introduced a new sense of cultural relativism and awareness that cultural values were produced through social structures like the system of education. Havell lamented the British educational policy that had attempted to transplant European cultural values at the expense of Indian traditions (Havell 1908: vi). Havell’s position on Indian art was closely aligned with both a long-standing orientalist trope of the East as mysterious and mystical, but it received fresh energy in the context of new European interest in the Hindu and Buddhist faiths related to the international Theosophical Society. Havell was associated with the Theosophical society, which had its headquarters in Adyar, Madras. Study of Indian philosophy and religion was a key part of the society’s programme, alongside promoting universal brotherhood and the spiritual development of mankind. These elements combined to suggest an alternative, high wisdom that could be found in Indian thought and culture. The international Theosophical movement was a conduit for many artists worldwide to engage with Indian culture. Havell’s desire to educate Indian artists and designers in the principles of Indian rather than European art was not merely an external imposition. It chimed with wider currents within Indian culture and domestic discussions of Indian nationalism and nationhood. Havell was an early promoter of the artist Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), who he saw as the modern Indian artist the nation needed. Abanindranath was a member of the Tagore family, which played a prominent role in the nationalist movement and in Indian culture through the latenineteenth and into the twentieth century (Parimoo 2011).

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Debashish Banerji’s study of Tagore has explored the overlaps and divergences in Havell and Tagore’s vision of ‘Indian Art’ (Banerji 2010: 29–32). The medievalism of British Arts and Crafts, predisposed Havell to value the model of largely anonymous makers and to look for authentic, spiritual expression over naturalist illusionism. Tagore’s work was, however, highly individualistic, rather than anonymous, and though it was readily framed as ‘Indian’ by Havell and subsequent Indian historiography, it also engaged strongly with transnational currents and shares many parallels with the work of Symbolist and Art Nouveau artists internationally. Tagore’s importance to subsequent Indian art history and the Bengal School has tended to overshadow recognition of the transnational elements in his work. Similarly, the promotion of Tagore by European orientalists, such as Havell and Coomaraswamy, and the degree to which his work was regarded as collusive with orientalizing structures obscures the elements within his practice that challenge the limitations of such structures (Banerji 2010: xv–xvi). With Havell’s encouragement, Tagore studied Mughal miniature painting and began to develop a new pictorial approach. He departed from established practice in India by favouring watercolour and ink over large-scale oil painting. The ideology of the unity of the arts raised the status of works on paper worldwide, as we have seen in Chapter 5. Tagore was encouraged in his departure from European-style Naturalism by Art Nouveau graphic art, accessible to him in prints and journals (Guha-Thakurta 1992: 233–4). Rather than seeking a return to past traditions, he was selective in his use of traditional elements and innovative in pursuit of new expression and emotional depth. In this way he paralleled the literary innovations of his uncle, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, whose work both resonated with and departed from the classical Indian literature. The lyricism of Tagore’s paintings went further than the innocent spiritualism looked for by Havell. Though Havell also celebrated Tagore as not merely imitating an old style, but bringing it to life, this was tinged with an orientalist reading of India as essentially timeless. Havell asserted: ‘the India of today, outside the semi-European cities, is in all essentials the India of five hundred years ago’ (Havell 1903: 30). Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka (1911, V&A) is an example of the development of Tagore’s work (Plate   17) and refutes the statement made by Havell to demonstrate currents of contemporary artistic exchange. The subject of the watercolour was drawn from Indian history and legends surrounding the emperor Asoka (304 to 232 BCE). The scene depicts Asoka’s queen in jealous contemplation of a bodhi tree, the symbol of her husband’s conversion to Buddhism. According to legend, Asoka renounced all war and violence and spent much of his time meditating beneath a bodhi tree, causing his queen to destroy the tree out of jealousy. In the background of the painting is the Buddhist temple at Sanchi, founded by Asoka. The temple was one of the buildings featured in Havell’s Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India, which he dedicated to Tagore (Havell 1915). The image is at once delicate and powerful. The depiction of the figure in profile, the attention given to details of jewellery and dress and the balance of realistic and decorative elements reveal the ongoing influence of Mughal miniature painting. But the precision of finish is overshadowed by the psychological intensity of the Queen’s presence in the painting, charging the beauty of the work with complex significance. The image revolves around the point of tension, represented by her gracefully furrowed brow, patrician profile and pinched hand covering her mouth. The rest of her body dissolves into insubstantial flowing drapery, leaving the authority of her presence to be communicated solely by face and hands. This method of marrying psychological acuity within a decorative composition is one we have already seen in the work of Beardsley and Klimt. The subject matter of a dangerous, beautiful and powerful woman is also suggestive of transnational resonances.

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As well as destroying the bodhi tree, in some versions of the legend the Queen had her step-son blinded in an act of sexual jealousy. As such, the subject was a significant departure from the established iconography of women in Indian visual arts at this time as embodiments of national virtue (Ramaswamy 2010: 76) and closer to the femme fatale of Art Nouveau. Mughal miniature painting was not the sole source of inspiration traceable in this work. Tagore was also inspired by Japanese art. His rejection of the hegemony of European art led him to embrace a pan-Asianist position that celebrated the Asian continent as an alternative centre of gravity for world culture. Tagore’s work in the early twentieth century was markedly influenced by his encounter with Okakura Kakuzō (1862–1913), a key proponent of panAsianism, and with the Japanese artists Okakura sent to Calcutta to study Indian art (Tankha 2008). In Japan, Okakura had founded the Japan Fine Arts Academy, Nippon Bijutsuin, where he promoted study of pre-Meiji period painting. He advocated the development of modern Japanese painting, Nihonga, that resisted the Meiji trend of wholesale Westernization in favour of a revival of traditional Japanese forms and the integration of carefully selected Western elements. Though pan-Asianism maintained the binary opposition between East and West that characterized orientalism, it shifted the balance of virtues in favour of the East and, significantly, suggested that this was where the future of world culture lay. This orientation towards the future contrasted with the timeless or decaying East typical of orientalism. It also chimed with Theosophical thought that also saw mankind’s future spiritual elevation as leading to the East. Yokoyama Taikan (1868–1958) and Hishida Shunsō (1874–1911) visited Calcutta in 1903 and stayed with the Tagore family. Yokoyama demonstrated Japanese brush and ink work to Tagore in a period of fruitful cultural exchange that saw Tagore develop a new wash technique that intensified the colouristic and emotive qualities of his painting (Guha-Thakurta 249–53; Parimoo 2011: 129–30). The employment of colour washes allowed Tagore to create ethereal, mood-enriched images, with focussed areas of graphic precision. He was also able to study prints of Japanese art brought by Yokoyama and Okakura. Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka reveals the influence of Japanese graphic arts in the stylized branches of the bodhi tree and the crisp, linearity of eyebrow, hair and plump fingertips. In the same manner, the art of Yokoyama and Hishida was marked by their time in India. Floating Lanterns (1909, Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki) by Yokoyama represented a Japanese fantasy of India (Plate  18). The painting depicted three Indian women on the banks of the Ganges. It evoked the notion of cultural kinship based on shared Buddhist culture, which was one of the lynchpins of Okakura’s pan-Asian philosophy. Repositioning the heartlands of Buddhism from China to India also served an ideological purpose when it came to Japan’s own colonial ambitions in the region (Wattles 1996: 49). Japan’s rapid modernization through the latter decades of the nineteenth century included overturning the unequal treaties forced on the nation in the 1850s. Increasingly Japan competed with the European powers for colonial dominance in East Asia. Successful military campaigns against China and Russia secured Japan’s control of Taiwan and Korea. The style of the painting blended the traditions of Japanese and Mughal graphic arts to create a hybrid, modern Asian image. The emphasis in the image was on subtle colours and an introspective, spiritual mood. Downplaying the importance of line work was also a part of Yokoyama’s agenda to suggest a new direction in Japanese art that distanced itself from historical Chinese influences at a time when Japan was asserting its dominance over China (Wattles 1996: 51). It has been suggested that the wash technique Tagore learnt from Yokoyama was itself an innovation designed to appeal to Western markets for Japanese art, by re-importing the dreamlike colouristics of Whistler’s Japonisme (Inaga 2009: 152). The intense gaze and incorporeal form

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of Queen Tissarakshita can also be compared to Beardsley’s Salome and certainly The Studio circulated in India, making Beardsley’s work available (Parimoo 2011: 188). At the same time, the tall, slim format favoured by Beardsley’s and many other Art Nouveau artists was inspired by the aesthetics of the Japanese kakemono, hung-scrolls. This raises the question of whether the work of artists like Yokoyama and Tagore, whose work was marked by encounters with contemporary Japonisme as well as with their local art heritage, should be regarded as selfexoticizing or internalized orientalism. The pursuit of cultural self-empowerment through overturning the hegemony of European forms was a significant shift in Asian visual culture at the turn of the century. The nationalist and pan-Asian components of this should not be discounted. At the same time, these works can also be seen as contributions to Art Nouveau as a transnational art movement. They shared the rejection of academic hierarchies of realism and media and shared a vision of the practice of art as transcending time and place in pursuit of an ephemeral vision of beauty and truth. The mobile print culture of the late nineteenth century was a transformative factor in the visual arts worldwide. Artists had access to an unprecedented array of visual material from across different cultures and periods and were also able to disseminate their own work and reach new audiences. Tagore’s preference for small-scale watercolour lent itself to reproduction as stand-alone prints and as book and magazine illustrations. The reproduction of his work in The Studio to illustrate articles by Havell on Indian art in 1902 and 1908 helped secure an international audience. The original watercolour of Queen Tissarakshita was given to Queen Mary by the wife of the Viceroy of India on the occasion her being crowned Empress consort of India in 1911. The reproduction illustrated here was a print issued by the India Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta and in the collection of Havell. The interchange between Europe and Asia by the early twentieth century was so entangled as to make the tracing out of who was influencing whom largely moot. Japanese graphic art, followed by the Indian-inflected spiritualism of the Theosophical movement transformed Western culture. At the same time, European art, both old and new, travelled in the other direction. Tissarakshita can be seen as an original Indian femme fatale, in pan-Asian form. This reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the Tagore family’s way of life and cultural connections, as well as their engagement with the rising tide of Indian cultural nationalism.

Dutch Art Nouveau and Javanese Batik If we turn now to another site of colonial encounter it is possible to elaborate further parallels illuminating the role of the colonial within the form and development of Art Nouveau. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) forcibly established a trading post in 1619, in what is now Jakarta, Indonesia. By the late nineteenth century, therefore, the connections between the Netherlands and the Indonesian archipelago were centuries old. As with other colonial powers, one feature of colonization was a process of scientific conquest, as the topography, flora and fauna, peoples and their customs and cultures were studied, categorized and collected. This so-called Indology was framed as the foundation for successful colonial governance through an informed colonial civil service (Kommers & Buskens 2007). Institutions such as the Colonial Museum in Haarlem (est. 1863), the Museum of Ethnography, Leiden (est. 1864), and the Museum of Geography and Ethnography, Rotterdam (est. 1878), made the artefacts of these encounters available to Dutch audiences. Indonesian materials also decorated the homes of colonial administrators, merchants and their families across the Netherlands.

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In 1883 Amsterdam hosted the first International Colonial and Export Exhibition at which colonial nations could showcase their colonial possessions and display the commodities they accrued (Lukito 2019). The success of this event further raised the profile of the Dutch East Indies within Dutch consciousness as a source of pride for a small nation (Gouda 2008: 39– 41). As the host nation, artefacts from the Indonesian archipelago were well represented in a dedicated pavilion and a native settlement, including groups of Javanese, Sundanese and Sumatran people brought over to inhabit it (Bloembergen 2006: 2). The exhibition featured a large section devoted to batik, a form of textile decorated by means of the wax-loss technique, which had been developed to a highly refined form by Javanese craftswomen. The visual appeal of batik and the profusion of its display in 1883 filtered it into Dutch culture as a metonym for her colonies and a celebration of the status, wealth and power enjoyed by virtue of these colonies. The vivid colours and new patterns were readily assimilated into new Dutch art and design, alongside exposure to European Japonisme. Javanese batik was a fresh element that could be integrated into local art and design reform efforts. Dutch artists and designers were influenced by the Belgian Les XX and later La Libre Esthétique groups and also by the ideology of the English Arts and Crafts movement. These interconnections can be traced in the work of Dutch Art Nouveau – or ‘Niewe Kunst’ as it was known in the Netherlands – and artists such as Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof (1866–1934) and Jan Toorop (1858–1928). In 1893–4 Dijsselhof designed a luxury edition of a Dutch translation of Walter Crane’s The Claims of Decorative Art (1892). Dijsselhof’s design reflected the widespread development of the book as a work of art (Purvis & Jong 2006). The design blended ornament from nature with a powerful graphic manner that revealed the strong influence of the Javanese batik tradition. This was even more apparent in the swirling, abstract patterns of the inner cover (Figure 8.4). The earthy tones were also suggestive of batik, which primarily made use of vegetable dyes and emphasized the book as a crafted, rather than mechanically produced object. This attention to detail extended to the careful integration of images and text and to high-quality manufacturing. The design revealed the absorption in the Netherlands of principles regarding the integration of art and crafts and the corresponding appreciation of the highly developed culture of batik. Toorop’s engagement with Indonesian culture was, in contrast to most Dutch artists, firstrather than second-hand. Born in Java, Toorop’s father was from a Dutch family with long associations in the region and his mother was Javanese-Chinese. He lived in Java until the age FIGURE 8.4  Gerrit Willem Dijsselhof for Walter Crane, Kunst en samenleving (Amsterdam: Scheltema en Holkema, 1894–3): Frontispiece.

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of thirteen, when he was sent to the Netherlands to complete his education and where he went on to study art. He continued his studies in Brussels and there came into the orbit of Les XX, becoming a member in 1884. By the 1890s Toorop had developed a distinct graphic style across the mediums of painting and graphic art, marked by thin, elongated figures and a fascination with the expressive potential of agitated and repetitive lines. Oh Grave, Where Is Thy Victory (1892, Rijksmuseum) is a large-scale drawing that takes as its starting point a reference to the Bible verse, Corinthians 15 (Figure 8.5). Toorop’s wife, Annie Hall, was English and the use of the title in English gave the work a more international flavour (Hefting 1989: 75). Toorop has departed from the biblical subject to create a haunting, Symbolist image as light and dark figures vie with one another for the soul of a dead man. The image is rendered tense by the concentration of line: short horizontal dashes for the ground, vertical dashes for the mid-ground, repetitive, skeletal forms of a forest in the background and a soft haze of lines making up a lowering sky. This background grid is broken across by flowing lines of energy between the combatants: the crackling, bare branches of trees and the thorns that the seraphim figures seek to disentangle from the corpse. Toorop did not copy batik ornament or techniques, but his work revealed his understanding of its decorative principles and his long familiarity with it and other elements of Javanese visual culture. The compositional arrangement can be directly compared to the batik practice of laying areas of large-scale, naturalistic, flowing elements, over a background of small-scale, geometric patterns. The long, slender arms of the Seraphim, their presentation in profile and the out-sized scale of their hair recall the thin, jointed limbs of the wayang (shadow) puppets, Toorop would have encountered in his childhood and again in ethnographic collections in the Netherlands

FIGURE 8.5  Jan Toorop, Oh Grave, Where Is Thy Victory (1892, Rijksmuseum). Paper, pencil, chalk, 60.5 cm × w 75 cm © Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images.

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(Purvis 2002: 130–2). The arched brows, large, expressive eyes and bracketed mouths of the evildoers also recall this puppetry tradition. The repetition of figures and the speakinglanguage of gesture that conveys the narrative in puppet theatre are readily fused with the story-telling elements of Toorop’s Symbolism. Even the flowing robes, bound about the waists of the Seraphim, are suggestive of sarong. Though Toorop was more thoroughly familiar with the culture of Java than his Dutch colleagues, who had never left Europe, he was also absorbed into the European culture of his art education. Batik’s work was closely associated with the burgeoning of Dutch Art Nouveau and design reform. Marjan Groot has explored the development of the gallery, Arts and Crafts, which was founded in the Hague in 1898, inspired by Bing’s Maison de l’art Nouveau (Groot 2005). Like Bing’s gallery, this enterprise aimed to present fine and applied arts alongside one another to promote the Art Nouveau vision of the unification of the arts. The English-language name of the gallery underscores, like Toorop’s use of an English title for his drawing, the twin points of reference, between English and French design reform thinking. As in Bing’s gallery, contemporary artists and designers were commissioned to produce designs for sale. Artists like Johan ThornPrikker (1868–1932), who was another member of Les XX, had shifted his practice from the visual to the applied arts. He was interested in applying batik motifs and in working directly in batik. Thorn-Prikker was the artistic director of Arts and Crafts in 1898, but resigned in 1900 after falling out with one of the founders of the gallery, the architect Chris Wegerif. Prior to this, he had encouraged Wegerif’s wife, Agathe Wegerif-Gravestein (1867–1944), in her engagement with batik. She went on to set up her own batik studio. Initially her studio, which was staffed entirely by women, produced the designs of other artists, such as Thorn-Prikker (Groot 2007: 65). After 1900 she began to develop her own designs and her studio became a centre for Art Nouveau textiles. It expanded to employ thirty craftswomen and she experimented with the use of batik fabrics, applying batik technique to unconventional materials: velvet, velour, leather and parchment (Priestman 1907: 790). This allowed for the production of hybrid works, blending different textile traditions (Figure 8.6). The exhibition of new Dutch batik art at world’s fairs saw it rapidly taken up by Art Nouveau fashion designers in Paris and Vienna (Hansen 2016). Wegerif-Gravestein pushed at the boundaries of craft practice, moving batik away from traditional approaches and applications. In doing so and in departing from the oversight of professional male designers, she was subject to criticism from the design establishment and overlooked as a purely commercial artist by art historians (Groot 2006: 126). In Groot’s study of the role of women in Dutch art one parallel she drew attention to was that between Wegerif-Gravestein’s innovations in batik and contemporary developments in batik design in the Dutch East Indies (Groot 2007: 65). Here workshops sprung up from the 1860s onwards run by women from the Indische, Indo-European community. These women ran batik businesses to ameliorate their precarious position between the Dutch and Indonesian populations. Their mixed heritage and multilingual backgrounds excluded them from membership of the colonial elite but could be turned to economic advantage as they traded their batiks to European, Indonesian and Chinese clients (Hochstrasser 2011: 151–2). Their contacts inside and outside Java facilitated their development of the batik medium as they incorporated European or Chinese elements to meet the tastes of their international customers. They also adopted the European artists’ practice of signing their work as a means of copyright and to confer value as certain designers developed reputations for excellence (Legêne & Waaldijk 2001: 45). This disrupted the ethnographic-based reading of the anonymous craftsperson insulated from commercial practices.

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FIGURE 8.6  Agathe Wegerif-Gravestein, batik silk velvet, Batikatelier A. Wegerif (c.1910, Kunstmuseum den Haag) 196 × 96 cm © Kunstmuseum den Haag.

Designers like Eliza van Zuylen (1863–1947) exported their batik fabric across Europe and China and integrated traditional hand-worked technique with new patterns and experiments with synthetic dyes as well as local vegetable dyes. Her work reflects the enduring reality of batik as a dynamic medium, which responded to new influences and new markets in its use of colours and motifs. New batik studios in the Netherlands and in Indonesia were a continuation of this tradition (Dartel 2005: 12–13). Van Zuylen introduced elements of Art Nouveau and Japonisme to appeal to European tastes, expanding new markets for batik (Hochstrasser 2011: 153–61; Raadt-Apell 1980). Such batiks fused traditional Javanese forms with new colour combinations and imagery (Figure 8.7). The realities of the international exchange of raw materials and imagery, as well as the economic pressures to reach outside of local markets meant that design cultures everywhere were interacting and developing new forms. This was contrary to the illusion of unspoilt native practice under threat from an influx of imported manufactured goods. In reality, the Indonesian textile industry was substantial and responsive to both domestic and export markets (van Nederveen Meerkerk 2017). The desire to preserve craft traditions was always freighted with tensions between economic viability and authenticity. The craft store, Boeatan, which was founded in 1902 in the Hague to sell ‘authentic’ Javanese batik in a bid to support the maintenance of the tradition back in Java, could not extricate itself from the paradox inherent in craft revivals (Groot 2007: 127–8). Like the craft stores across Europe founded to retail folk handicrafts, the very process of such a retail operations transformed objects into souvenirs and novelties. The required adaptations to develop products the metropolitan audience would buy – such as napkins and fire screens –

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FIGURE 8.7  Eliza Charlotte (Lies) van Zuylen, Batik, Indonesia, Java, Pekalongan, (c.1900–10, LACMA). Hand-drawn wax resist (batik) on machine-woven cotton, natural dyes, waxed and stamped signatures, 104 × 216 cm. Inger McCabe Elliott Collection (M.91.184.134). Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). © 2021. Digital Image Museum Associates/LACMA/Art Resource NY/ Scala, Florence.

disrupted the fiction of the timelessness of the crafts. Whether by means of new training schools, as in India, or new workshops and retail outlets, efforts to provide traditional crafts with a future necessarily demanded adaptations to non-traditional usage and contexts. By this means crafts became part of the global capitalist system at the same time as its role was to confer a spirit of timeless authenticity to modern, domestic interiors.

Transnational Art Nouveau and cultural exchange The impact of European colonialism on Art Nouveau went far beyond a simple, one-way traffic of motifs or materials. As we have seen, artists, designers and ideas, as well as objects, texts and images, circulated back and forth. A crucial European export was the concept of the nation itself as the natural unit of global polity. The concept of nationhood drove the consolidation of diverse regions, inside and outside Europe, into new self-images as nations or potential nations. The colonial administration of the Dutch East Indies gave birth to Indonesian nationalism, just as the British Raj gave birth to Indian nationalism. Culture as a national artefact was an important dimension of these nation-building projects, just as it was among the nations of Europe. The formation of colonial education systems and art institutions and the presentation of colonial cultural riches in exhibitions formed and reproduced what would become national cultures and national art histories out of often disparate regional, ethnic and religious traditions. The process of self-definition affected both the colonizer and colonized as they asserted themselves on the world stage. It propelled the gaze of cultural theorists back into the past in search of indigenous, ‘national’ forms of expression. At the same time, there lay a parallel desire for manifestations of national progress. This contemporary relevance was constructed with

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reference to foreign, imported forms, which spoke of modernity through their novelty. Their presence signalled the reality of the fruits of global trade and cultural exchange. Japonisme, and many other forms of borrowing from non-European sources, performed this function within European Art Nouveau. So that, though these forms were often intended to speak of a pre-modern or anti-modern craftmanship, they were also unmistakably new, offering a fresh solution to contemporary aesthetic problems. They were implicitly energized with associations of conquest, global trade and riches pouring into Europe from far-flung empires. All of the revival movements that fed into the broader currents of Art Nouveau were concerned with new solutions and national futures as much as they were with past forms. The Nihonga revival in Japan was concerned to resist the wholesale importation of Western styles, but it was not a static return to timeless traditional practices. The pursuit of national forms was, among other things, ideologically and economically validated in the international marketplace. As Okakura informed an audience of Japanese bureaucrats in 1884: In the future, arts and handicrafts will play the most important role in our country’s foreign trade. Until the present day, the reason why Japan became known to the West was not because of the profundity of its science, nor because of the elaborateness of its machines, nor for its promptness in copying foreign customs and manners. Rather, it was on account of its natural ability to transcend the dust of worldly matters through the spirit of art. . . . But in order for art objects to become widespread in foreign markets, they must have the Japanese elegance. If instead these products are made according to Western forms, no one will take notice of them. (Volk 2010: 21) Okakura encouraged his students and colleagues at Nihon Bijutsuin to innovate on traditional practice and emphasize atmosphere, colour and light as Japanese characteristics, over linear precision, though this approach was soon criticized as an adoption of Western visions of Japanese art (Tsuji 2018: 407). A similar fate awaited Tagore, as the aestheticism of his vision for Indian art was criticized for too close an alignment with foreign values. This fate is not dissimilar to the period of critical relegation suffered by many Art Nouveau artists, whose pursuit of the personal, subjective and ephemeral was critiqued as self-absorbed, romanticism. Okakura’s pan-Asianism sought to turn the binary of orientalism on its head and conceptually relocate both the cultural authority of the past and its future in the East. Images, objects and individuals travelled back and forth and this was reflected in the transnational realities of art theory and scholarship. Ashbee’s neighbour in Chipping Campden was the half-English, half-Sri Lankan Coomaraswamy. Ashbee built him a home out of a conversion of a Norman chapel and interior was a representative mixture of English and Indian arts and crafts. Campaigners for craft revivals and national revivals shared a belief in authenticity of expression, rooted in national traditions, but were often explicitly outward looking and forward looking, and in this they supported one another’s work. Ashbee wrote the forward to Coomaraswamy’s book The Indian Craftsman (1909), in which his condemnation of industrialization and its cost for the common man is framed in global terms: There has come over Western civilization, in the last 25 years, a green sickness, a disbelief, an unrest; it is not despondency, for in the finer minds it takes the form of intense spiritual hopefulness; but it takes the form also of a profound disbelief in the value of the material condition of modern progress, a longing to sort the wheat from the chaff, the serviceable

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from the useless, a desire to turn from mechanical industry and its wastefulness, and to look once more to the human hand, to be once again with Mother Earth. (Coomaraswamy 1909: xii) Coomaraswamy and Havell were influenced by Okakura’s pan-Asianism. Okakura’s theories were developed on from his teacher in Tokyo, the American art historian Ernest Fenollosa (1853– 1908), and also influenced by the principles of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Okakura ended his career as the curator of Chinese and Japanese art at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, where Fenollosa had also served (Reed 2019). He also paved the way for Coomaraswamy to become the first Keeper of Indian Art in the Boston museum. Curators were guardians and inventors of national heritage, but they were also members of a closely interconnected, international profession, as we have already noted in relation to Brinkmann, Thiis and Krohn. It was not necessary to be in a colonizer-colonized relationship to be touched by the cultural impact of colonialism. Lockwood de Forest (1850–1932) was one of the partners in Tiffany’s Associated Artists collective. Chapter 4 has already commented on how the firm blended inspiration from Byzantine, Islamic and Japanese sources within its Arts and Crafts interiors. In 1881 de Forest travelled to India on his honeymoon and met Kipling in Lahore (Mayer 2008: 74–5). The trip led to his setting up a design business in the city of Ahmedabad, inspired by Kipling’s work at the Mayo School. The studio was a collaboration with Muggunbhai Hutheesing, who was a member of a family who had made a fortune in the trading of Indian opium to China under the aegis of British colonial policy, though much of that fortune had then been lost speculating on Indian cotton during the cotton crisis of the American Civil War (Mayer 2008: 63). This economic story is important in revealing the emphatically global nature of the world economy by the mid-nineteenth century. It was the reality of this global economy that underpinned the global art market. The Ahmedabad Woodcarving Company provided carved teak and decorative metal-work to de Forest’s designs, which he used for luxury interiors in the United States. The Indian craftsmen provided the aura of authenticity as well as the exoticism that Indian craft had come to signify in Europe and America. At the same time, Lockwood promoted the artistic abilities and skills of Indian craftsmen as a model from which American designers and manufacturers had much to learn (McGowan 2009: 132–3). In Tiffany’s home, Laurelton Hall, a Chinese-style dining room led into a smoking room crammed with Japanese and Native American artefacts. In 1913 he hosted an Egyptian pageant, with guests in orientalist costumes, the dancer Ruth St Denis performing her Radha dance she had invented based loosely on Hindu mythology (Duncan 1992: 139). Art Nouveau was based on a foundation of encounters with new forms: with the art and archaeology of the past, both local and from across the globe. This multiplicity served to establish a culture of aesthetic pluralism and necessitated the development of theories that might help navigate this ever-expanding world of visual and material forms. Ideas such as truth to materials and fidelity to function could serve as value systems that transcended time and place and gave artists and designers a lens through which they could establish working affinities between the old and the new. This approach was rapidly disseminated around the world, thorough the circulation of images, literature, cultural actors and the establishment of new institutions of training and display. The spread of nationalisms encouraged the study and revaluation of local art traditions, but also engagement with new forms and ideas. Exchanges between Indian and Japanese artists represent just one example of the transnational flow of influences and ideas that bypassed,

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without undermining, the principle of national specificity. The quote by Ashbee earlier, voiced from the heart of the richest and most industrialized empire in the world, was the apprehension that the cultural and spiritual attributes that were most valuable could only be found among people who were being systemically denigrated by colonialist narratives for their backwardness and racial inferiority. The influence and appropriation of the art of other cultures, from nonindustrialized people elsewhere across the globe or across time, was fraught with tension. It was simultaneously an attempt to reassert cultural superiority and a form of self-critique of a civilization that had lost its way and needed to be steered back on course.

9 Visions of other worlds and hopes for the future

CHOCHOŁY A new spell cast! (The enchanted figure of the CHOCHOŁY, clumsily grasping in his straw-covered stumps, the sticks handed him by JASIEK, now assumes the attitude and gestures of the fiddler in action. Wedding music, quiet but lively, can be heard, as it were emanating from the blue atmosphere – a strange melody appealing to the heart and soothing the soul, lazily entrancing, yet as vital as blood, with the beat of an irregular pulse, spurting from an open wound: a melodious sound, familiar from the cradle, an expression of pain and delight rooted in the soil of Poland) STANISŁAW WYSPIAŃSKI, THE WEDDING (1901)

The visual arts had transformed rapidly through the 1890s. In particular, the boundaries between media were challenged and dissolved and visual artists and designers sought to find new ways to express the complex thoughts and visions that arose from new philosophies and ideological positions. They strove to rise to the challenge laid down by other art forms, in particular music and theatre, which engaged audiences sensorially and emotively through performance. The shifting forms of visual art at the turn-of-the-century related to the absorption of new imagery, ranging from medieval and folk art to photography, scientific illustration and art traditions from around the world. The pursuit of a union between art and life, sought to make the everyday realm beautiful and restorative, to counter the visual and spiritual impoverishment of the industrialized world and the isolated modern individual. Aestheticism proposed beauty as a solace or alternative to the lack of meaning in modern life. Other paths pursued new meanings through a revival of intense spirituality, inside and outside the Christianity. New strands of mystical Christianity spoke directly to the individual and the search for individual redemption and transcendence. With the rise of nationalism, faith could be merged with a mystical sense of membership of a national body and a mystical connection to the nation’s land and soul. Alternative religious and spiritual positions also proliferated, with the rise of interest in spiritualism, the esoteric and the birth of the theosophical movement. The three case studies selected for this chapter explore different dimensions of the way Art Nouveau sought to pursue art’s reach beyond the mundane and to express hopes for a

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new world. For Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907) these hopes were bound up in a vision of a free and unified Polish nation. His work drew on his understanding of the international Symbolist movement, blended with his engagement with Polish culture and tradition. Through this he invited his audience to participate in a spiritual connection to the Polish landscape and people, a connection that transcended space and time. This effort to represent the nation on a metaphysical level was a step towards its realization in actuality. The case study of the Chapel in Compton, Surrey by Mary Seton Watts (1849–1938) presents a work that synthesized art and architecture and created a communal experience for those who came to work and worship there. The project grew out of the utopian visions of the Arts and Crafts movement, which sought to bring art to the people. Through both the experience of communal making and through the expansive and intercultural ornamental scheme, the chapel sought to support the spiritual life of the community that used it and connect them to the wider cosmos (Cumming 2002: 26). The final case study focuses on the work of Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) whose esoteric art was intended as a contribution to the future realization of human spiritual progress. Inspired by the Theosophical movement and her own readings on spiritualism, af Klint painted the message sent to her by her spiritual guides which contained visions of a world of creative power and balance between male and female energies. These three artists, like many others in this period, engaged with the pursuit of spiritual meaning, presenting visions of new worlds and seeking to answer the yearning for connection to something beyond the individual and material.

Stanisław Wyspiański: Visions of a future Polish nation Wyspiański is an example of one of the many artists whose engagement with new forms of art practice was given impetus by his desire to further the cause of national revival. Crowley 1992: 38–44). Like many, he responded to the challenges and opportunities of the period, moving from canvas painting into practice across a range of media. His creative output remained diverse throughout his relatively short career, spanning literature, fine art and a range of different design projects (Gowin 2006; Śliwińska 2013). His work was framed by simultaneous engagement with the Young Poland movement of national revival and with new currents of thought regarding art and literature flowing back and forth across Europe. Krakow, during the 1880s and 1890s was an important centre for Polish culture and education (Czubińska 2008/9: 60–4; Howard 1996: 127–36). At this time the territories of the old Polish Kingdom were partitioned between the Russian Empire, the newly formed German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. Efforts to revive and maintain a distinctive Polish culture, and ultimately the hopes for an independent Polish nation, were nurtured by many cultural figures. Wyspiański was very much part of this. He was a founder member of Sztuka, the Association of Polish Artists, which was formed in 1897, and supported innovation with publications and exhibition opportunities, similar to the other secessions and artist groups we have looked at already (Cavanaugh 2000: 59–97). He was also active in the exhibition society, Kraków Society of Friends of Fine Arts, and editor of its weekly journal, Życie (Life). History painting had played its part in the 1860s and 1870s in sustaining a sense of Polish nationhood by means of emotive scenes from Polish history. These inspired the school-boy Wyspiański to write his first dramatic work (Śliwińska 2013: 174). Wyspiański also worked as an assistant on new stained-glass windows for the Mariacki Church restoration. Stained glass within national monuments offered the artists the chance to produce public art, accessible to the

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people, and to contribute to the revival of the nation’s heritage, past, present and future. Stained glass was one of the favourite mediums in which Wyspiański practiced. The stained-glass revival was a key facet of Art Nouveau’s exploration of means of extending art practice into a closer relationship with people’s lives. Stained glass was embraced initially as part of the mid-nineteenth-century boom in ecclesiastical building. From ecclesiastical projects the use of stained glass spread into civic and domestic architecture. To be bathed in the multi-coloured, dappled light of a stained-glass window retained the potential, even in secular settings, to suggest the other-worldly and the spiritual through the cultural associations of the church window. Stained glass was also a public art form. Through the nineteenth century its use spread to schools, meeting halls and many other public spaces. The production of stained glass designed by artists was a means by which their art could reach wider audiences (Cormack 2015; Allen 2018). In 1890 Wyspiański received a grant to study abroad. He travelled to Bohemia, Italy, Germany and France. From 1891 to 1894 he lived largely in Paris, where he incorporating more of the immediacy of French Naturalism and Impressionism into his work. In Paris Wyspiański was also exposed to the latest developments in painting and graphic arts, as well as Japanese art, which all contributed to the development of his mature style. He built relationships with other artists, including Gauguin and Mucha, whose use of colour and integration of the decorative surface into fine art influenced his work (Cavanaugh 2000: 41–2). These two artists also exemplified the practice of ranging across different media from graphic art to ceramics and jewellery design. Wyspiański worked primarily in the medium of pastel. He developed an expressive approach to the medium that blended Naturalism and skilled draughtsmanship with vivid colours, stylized forms and areas of flat pattern. The immediacy of pastel on paper, as a drawn rather than painted medium, lent itself to fresh and intimate portraits and dream-like, symbolic landscapes. Chochoły (1898–9, National Museum of Warsaw) was a pastel landscape that exemplifies this trend in his work (Plate  19). It represents a haunting nocturnal scene, at the centre of which stand a group of rose bushes, swaddled against frost-damage for the winter in straw wraps (chochoły). The bare branches of trees in the Planty Park, Krakow, are silhouetted against a pale winter sky and the ground gleams, reflecting the same pale light on slushy snow. The yellow light of street lamps pierce the gloom like fallen stars and the chochoły appear as dark shadows, simultaneously recognizable and transfigured into bowed and swaying figures. The symbolism of the work resonates with the idea of dormancy, the vital bloom of the roses of the coming summer contained within these strange, wizened forms. The analogue is with that of the Polish nation, whose strength slumbers, waiting to be recalled. There is an air, too, of secret conference, with the circle of chochoły in silent communication with one another that suggests that waking is possible and even plotted. This patriotic allegory is only one possible layer of interpretation. It is also a scene of contemporary life: artificial light gleams on the roadway and, faintly, from lights across the city. The roses have been swaddled by the groundskeepers: nature domesticated within the city. At the same time, it is eerie and magical, full of movement, momentarily arrested. Framed by tree trunks to other side, the view presented is that of a glimpse at something that perhaps should not have been seen by mortal eyes: the circle of roses like a circle of uncanny spirits. The suggestion is that of forest-dwellers who have been surprised in some kind of dance and have momentarily disguised themselves. The magical figure of the chochoły also appears as a character in Wyspiański’s 1901 play, The Wedding. Here the chochoły is a capricious character who comes in from the orchard and hypnotizes the guests, undermining their best intensions. The figure transgresses of boundaries between worlds, between the mundane and otherworldly truths. The mission of developing a new art for a new

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world encompassed this possibility of showing audiences things that could not yet be seen, only imagined. In Wyspiański’s stained glass designs, only a few of which were executed, we can see the translation of his vision into a public art form. Polonia (1893–4, National Museum in Krakow) was an unexecuted design for a stained-glass window intended for Lviv Cathedral. It was executed during the period Wyspiański was largely resident in Paris (Plate  20). It represents his hopes and fears for the Polish nation and treads a fine line between hope and despair, full of uncertainty and passionate feeling. The restoration of historic Polish buildings, such as Lviv cathedral, was a facet of the wider national revival movement. Nationalism, as an impulse, was characterized by a simultaneous gaze to both the past and the future (Díaz-Andreu & García 2007: 368–97). Restoration efforts drew on a strong sense of the importance of Poland’s history and heritage and the desire to renew and bring the nation to life. Wyspiański’s design used the medieval medium of stained glass, but brought to it a new freedom of graphic expression. The centre-point of the image is the recumbent figure of Polonia, the personification of the nation. The ambiguity of the figure’s state (is she dead, unresponsive or sleeping?) is amplified by the dynamic urgency of the imagery surrounding this static central figure. Polonia’s arms are shown passively extended, slender, pale and vulnerable. The pose, with the palms uppermost carries with it a suggestion of the Christian symbol of the stigmata and thereby of martyrdom or sacrifice. The sword that rested against her chest is bloodied, indicating past struggle. The figure no longer grasps it, but it is there, begging the question, Can she find the strength to take it up again? The secondary figures closest to Polonia are represented as being in a state of heightened anxiety or despair: one clutches his brow, another her unresponsive arm and a third bites his nails. Their gazes are all intently focussed on her. Her lack of response is dramatized by the contrast with their frantic concern. The wider group of figures are varied: children in brightly coloured national dress, an older woman in black, two men, one of whom may be a monk – they represent the diverse people of the Polish nation, united in their patriotism. In the upper portion of the image, two nude youths extend their arms towards heaven in dramatic supplication on behalf of Polonia. The graphic handling of the image goes a long way towards invigorating the theme. The composition is dynamic. The upwards sweep of Polonia’s black robe echoes the thrust of the supplicating arms and the plant forms (irises, lilies and thorns). It is not simply an upward trajectory of movement. The figures encircling Polonia, the billowing orange/red cloth around her and the contorted thorns of the foreground, animate the composition in an unfolding spiral that has Polonia’s face at its centre. The dynamism of the composition captures the passion and desperation that characterized Polish nationalism, after over a century of frustrated attempts at reunification. The inclusion of diverse figures, from the church, the intelligentsia and peasantry represented a position, which Wyspiański shared, that held that the success of the national revival depended on securing the support of the whole Polish nation, not in a return to power of the Polish aristocracy (Struve 2014). It is a nationalist image without a hero. The figures clustered around Polonia show an intense investment in her state, but only the figures of the youths undertake any action. This action, of prayer, remains unanswered within the confines of the image and their youth and nakedness renders them incapable, at least in the immediate future, of any other course. The resolution of the crisis represented by the recumbent figure remains unresolved, outside the immediate scope of the painting or the knowledge of the artist. In this way, it is an image of an emotional response to a political reality that was simultaneously in crisis and enduring, and for which no clear course of action could be discerned, other than to sustain hope.

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In the context of the cathedral restoration project, this foregrounds the role of faith and culture in keeping the vision of the Polish nation alive until these hopes could be realized. The graphic style of the drawing is suitably animated to convey the emotional intensity of Wyspiański’s message. Figures are partially stylized with taut, elongated limbs and exaggerated gestures that emphasize inner-tension. The jagged lines and upwards thrust give the image a Gothic intensity. The powerful, non-naturalistic colour works in a similar manner, with bold clashing tones (purple, orange and yellow) contributing to the passionate character of the scene. Imagined as a stained-glass window, the narrative imagery would have emerged from within an intense network of jagged lead-lines and deep, saturated colours, within the solemn space of the cathedral, straddling the medieval and the contemporary. The thorns are dangerous and rampant, threatening to engulf and overwhelm the body of Polonia and suffocate the hopes of those who surround her. The lilies and irises in the top left-hand corner are represented alternately reaching towards heaven, echoing the supplication of the youths, or in the process of decaying, overtaken by the dark thorns. In this way they symbolize both life and death, dramatizing the struggle going on inside the body of Polonia. Though the imagery of Polonia is primarily secular, there are echoes of religious imagery. For artists attempting to convey spiritual meaning, the reinterpretation of religious themes served to lend gravitas to their ideas. The figures, clustered in reaction around a single prone figure, can be related to imagery of the deposition of Christ and the dormition of the Virgin within Christian art. The desperation of the figures also evokes the religious passion of Gothic art. Medieval church art offered an earlier example of the blending of the naturalistic, the decorative and symbolic. The Europe-wide Gothic Revival had revived interest in pre-modern art culture. The ways in which medieval art blended realistic representation with a language of Symbolism and addressed emotions rather than reason made it a source of inspiration to Art Nouveau artists (Emery & Morowitz 2003).

Mary Seton Watts and the cosmos in ornament Watt’s Cemetery Chapel, Surrey, is one of the great monuments of Art Nouveau, but as a nonmetropolitan, semi-private endeavour, it is comparatively little known. It is another example of the adaptation of Christian iconography, re-energized with expanded spiritual meaning. It was designed by the Scottish artist Mary Seton Watts and was built to her design and decorated in accordance with her scheme by herself and a team of local people she directed (Figure 9.1). Like the work carried out by Tenisheva at Talashkino, it raises the issue of the overlap between the movement known as Art Nouveau and the movement known as Arts and Crafts. As we have seen in the earlier discussion of Ashbee’s Guild of Handicrafts, the point of this overlap lies where the utopian visions of Arts and Crafts intersect with an openness to invention and external sources. The Watt’s Chapel project was simultaneously an attempt to build a creative community and a spiritual community, transcending boundaries of education, gender and class. The chapel was used by Mary Watts as an opportunity to realize an alternative vision of the world, based on the primacy of interpersonal connections and creative expression. As a place of worship, the chapel also allowed her to articulate her vision of Christianity that transcended time and place to connect all humanity within a spiritual family. The primary power of the design lies in its ornamental scheme, devised by Watts. Appreciation for the applied arts as a legitimate cultural form was a double-edged sword for artists who were women. The boom in the design industries provided access to training and employment

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FIGURE 9.1  Mary Seaton Watts, Watts Cemetery Chapel (Surrey 1896–8) © Mike Kemp/ Contributor/Getty Images.

for many women who might otherwise have been excluded from professional practice in the creative arts. At the same time, there exist enumerable examples of women whose aspirations as painters were redirected by social forces beyond their control into the applied arts, where their presence was more acceptable and where their practice could be more readily accommodated within the domestic sphere. The value of the work they produced within these spheres may well have been admired by contemporaries, but it would not attract the same esteem in later histories and lead to their erasure. It is one of the intentions of this book to rebalance the historiography and reflect the art culture of the fin-de-siècle within which these women were prominent and recognized, albeit not without certain paternalistic overtones, by leading male critics and journal editors. The desire to expand public engagement in art and craft was an impulse that could be motivated by either democratizing, socialist principles, as it was with Ashbee and Morris, or be based on a nationalist desire to reconnect people to traditional culture, as was the case at Talashkino. The work on the Watts chapel was undertaken on a voluntary basis. The success of evening classes, offered by Mary Watts, led on to professionalization and employment with the formation of the Compton Pottery Company. The work undertaken at Talashkino, aimed foremost at the preservation of an indigenous craft tradition, not the artistic awakening of local people. In contrast, Mary Watts was motivated by the principle of unleashing the creative talents of the people she invited to participate in the project with her. These people, though certainly bound into a more or less rigid class structure, were better placed through primary education, literacy and wider opportunities to seize the opportunities Mary Watts placed before them.

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Mary Watts trained as a painter and was part of middle- and upper-class artistic circles in London. There she met and became the third wife of the Symbolist painter G. F. Watts (1817– 1904). He was one of the preeminent artists of the late-Victorian period and his reputation has long overshadowed hers. After her marriage Mary Watts’s energies turned towards supporting her husband, while in her own practice she refocused on craft works. The chapel project was an extension of the social conscience of both the Wattses. G. F. Watts maintained a gallery of his paintings, open for free on weekends, at his home, first in London then in Surrey. Mary Watts had taught clay modelling to working boys in the East End of London before her marriage, in an initiative that paralleled Ashbee’s work at Toynbee Hall. These efforts made by the Wattses to reach broader audiences reflect their engagement with British discourses on art and education as an antidote to the dehumanizing effects of industrialization (Borzello 2014). Mary Watts had trained in clay modelling and after her marriage her sculptural interests turned to gesso, which was a technique that fused mural painting and modelling on the wall surface (Gould 1998: 9). There had been a revival of interest in medieval gesso work among English artists and designers in the 1870s (O’Neill 2010: 56–9). The gesso revival is another facet of the widespread rejection of formulaic, mechanically produced ornament in favour of the hand crafted. Though this can be seen as an anachronistic retreat from contemporary realities, it was also part of a desire to reintroduce or preserve human values. The marks achieved by human hands imbued the object, artwork or building with that humanity, in contrast to mechanically reproduced ornament (Crawford 1985: 207–8). The idea for the chapel arose out of Mary Watts’s commitment both to her Christian faith and to the social-spiritual dimension of the Arts and Crafts ethos. She offered Compton Parish Council a chapel for the newly opened parish cemetery in 1895. She was supported by her husband, despite his personal agnosticism, who sold paintings to finance the plan (Unwin 2004: 241). It was to be a small, brick building, on a Byzantine plan, decorated externally by terracotta tiles and internally by murals and gesso. Local people were invited to her studio in the evenings to learn to make terracotta tiles, to beautify their own place of worship (Gould 2011). Unlike Sullivan’s industrially produced terracotta, this clay was sourced locally and the hand making by local people was essential to the work’s value and meaning. The amateur clayworkers involved in the project progressed, under her guidance, from the most basic forms on to more complex, free work. The entire community was invited to take part (Cheasley Paterson 2005: 723). Mary Watts individually acknowledged their contribution to the project, crediting seventy-eight of them by name in her guide to the chapel. The names are both male and female in almost equal number and many members of the same families were represented as evidence of a genuinely communitarian endeavour (Watts 1904: 27–8). It was not just the making that was infused with a utopian vision of a world connected by art. The content of the work, its deep symmetries of architectural form and extensive, hand-wrought ornament, were all designed to further this vision. Mary Watts developed a complex, symbolic scheme of ornament for the chapel that wove meaning into every inch of the building. She presented this scheme in a guide called The Word in the Pattern (1904), meaning the word of God or of the Holy Spirit in ornament. Here she outlined the interweaving of biblical allusions and Celtic symbols with a wider symbology drawn from Egyptian, Judaic, Sanskrit, Greek and Romanesque sources. Meaning could be found on every level of the project. The incorporation of materials sourced nearby and the labour of the local people who would go on to worship in the chapel, created a link between the material and immaterial worlds (Greenhow 2011). The terracotta friezes, columns and capitals of the exterior of the chapel enriched the simple brick form of the building with complex and lively relief patterns. Elaborate knot-work of

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various kinds, punctuated with birds and angels, invoked the archaic spirituality of the Book of Kells and other Celtic objects, which Mary Watts studied in the British Museum (Gould 1998: 39). As visitors progress on into the interior of the chapel, the ornament shifts from monochrome terracotta to painted and gilded gesso work. Large, high windows with plain, mottled glass send shafts of light to illuminate the colours and create shadows to animate the undulating surfaces (Plate  21). The placid faces of the angels bring moments of repose to the complex surface and rhythmic energy of the design. Mary Watts’s symbolic scheme ranged well beyond the Celtic. Her long honeymoon with G. F. Watts had taken her across Egypt, Greece and Turkey. Her encounter with the integration of sculpture, architecture, symbol and religious practice in Egyptian, Classical and Islamic art offered alternative visions of the integration of art and life sought for within the Aesthetic movement (Greenhow 2011: 93). Mary Watts was born in India and had familial ties to many involved in the colonial service. This connected her into a strand of British culture with a high degree of awareness of non-European art (Cheasley Paterson 2005). Though it should be noted that expanding understanding of non-European cultures continued to operate within the context of Eurocentric cultural debates and concerns (Guha-Thakurta 1992: 146–84). The Watts chapel incorporated symbolism from Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Buddhist, Hindu and Babylonian sources. The idea of the comparative power and even shared basis for world myths, languages and religions was one gathering momentum in the latter decades of the nineteenth century (Owen 2007; Olender 1992). Mary Watts was particularly influenced by William Lethaby’s Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (1892), which presented architecture as a system of forms and signs bearing meaning, beyond the purely aesthetic (Cumming 2002: 20–2). Mary Watts’s symbolic scheme was learned but eclectic. It required her own key and made use of other cultural forms as it suited her own personal vision. Her mystical approach can be captured in the following quote from the end of The Word in the Pattern. The rhythmic, run-on sentences echo the visual form of the interlocking ornament. Behind the cross on the door there is a glimpse through a circle into light; circle within circle, with flames and wings – eternity, mystery, light, motion, spirituality, protection – ruling above the mystery of darkness; the dragon below, smitten through by the cross. Into the iron hinges is wrought an old symbol, beautiful in the light of its accepted meaning in symbolism; the sail as the breath of life, with the T (tau) cross for the mast; the cross of faith and key of eternal life; another link in the great chain of aspiration forged only of these little concrete signs, but stretching far down the ages from human heart to human heart, for its comforting, strengthening and uplifting God-ward. (Watts 1904: 25–6) In the richly coloured and gilded interior, the knot-work became increasingly free and lyrical, twining across walls and ceiling, interspersed with fruit and flowers as well as jewel-like coloured medallions of huge symbolic variety. The effect of the interior was transcendental. The complexity of the ornament, in contrast with the simplicity of the small, centralized space of the chapel, merged the familiar with the arcane. Despite the use of iconography with thousands of years of tradition behind it, the whole effect was the creation of a new space and a new vision for what art offered life, very much in line with the wider Art Nouveau movement. Mary Watts was not content to let the infrastructure and expertise she had fostered in the local community become redundant after the completion of the exterior in 1898. She founded a studio, the Compton Terra Cotta Home Arts, later the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild

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(Underwood 2011). The pottery was run as a guild system, taking its inspiration from the Guild of Handicrafts, so that profits were shared by guildsmen (Latham 2019: 33). Through the guild she continued to provide work and an arena for creative expression to local men and boys, including training and accommodation and, unlike the majority of such guilds, operation continued successfully into the early 1950s. Mary Watts had taken advice from an architect on her plan, but overall, the project management and artistic vision were handled entirely by her (Gould 2011: 70). The realization of the Watts Chapel was therefore a mixture of personal and collective effort and a mixture of privilege, philanthropy and progressive thinking. The overlap between Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau lies in the pursuit of a new vision for art and for the role art would play in society. The Watts Chapel was an act of personal charity and piety, rather than public or paid commission. As a substantially decorative work, it also skirted the boundaries of fine art and architecture, both spheres still largely the preserve of men. Mary Watts made extensive use of textile analogues when describing the work and, in this way, we can see her positioning her work in ways that seek to underplay her departure from the established preserve of the feminine in Victorian culture (Paterson 2005: 721–2). Though a tiny, rural chapel, designed by an artist-craftswoman, it shares with contemporary designs by Gaudí, Behrens and Horta a transcendental vision of form and ornament in perfect synthesis. It is important to note that for all the buildings covered in this book, architectural ornament was never an afterthought. It was a central element in the design and where the identity of the building was overtly located. The later exclusion of ornament as a legitimate area of architectural practice and theory severely stunted retrospective understanding of Art Nouveau. The decorative could be used by Art Nouveau as something of a Trojan horse, a vehicle for ideas that challenged prevalent certainties or expressed, in abstract ways, powerful emotions. The seriousness with which new ornamental languages were engaged with by artists, curators, educators and writers indicates the extent to which ornament was understood as a rich form of expression. Following the ideas of Alois Riegl, in its abstract and semi-abstract manifestations ornament functioned as a language that served to communicate the very essence of the age and its urge towards expression (Schafter 2003: 44–59). In particular, ornament could express things which could not yet be directly represented: emotional and psychological responses to the pressures of the modern world, repressed desires and unrealizable yearning, through twisting thorns, dragonflies’ wings and strange hybrid forms. The validity of this reading of ornament as a language is reinforced by the vigour with which its detractors attacked it. The backlash against the rich use of ornament that characterized Art Nouveau focussed on excessive ornament as reflective of moral degeneracy, effeminacy and primitive urges (Trilling 2003). This only makes sense if it was felt that ornament was capable of conveying amoral ideas and transgressing boundaries. This reaction was a continuation of the moral opprobrium that had consistently attached to some Art Nouveau artists, such as Beardsley and Klimt. The reaction against ornament ramped up in the period after 1905 at the same time as the stirrings of international conflict and potential world war became more and more marked. The later dismissal of ornament within the historiography of the Modern Movement in the mid-twentieth century sought to ratify this erasure of expression. Ornament and the decorative were denigrated as manifestations of corrupt taste, despite its persistence throughout the twentieth century and beyond (Brolin 2000). The perceived femininity of the decorative could be weaponized by critics of Art Nouveau and by later waves of cultural criticism that sought to reassert alternative values, though in fact the urge to human expression embodied in ornament was never fully suppressed.

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Hilma af Klint: Spiritualist visions Art Nouveau’s attempts to push at the boundaries that separated art and craft, music, performance extended naturally into the spiritual realm. For some it was music or poetry that offered transcendence. For others, art was turned to serve a spiritual vocation, to uplift and, as seen in the previous example, create a point of connection between the mundane and the numinous. Mary Watts’s definition of the numinous was largely Christian, but expansively interpreted. Hilma af Klint was one of a number of artists moved to engage with alternative forms of spirituality. Though she never renounced her Lutheran faith, she aligned it with new ideas from Spiritualist practice and the thinking of the Theosophical movement. Various forms of alternative spirituality flourished in the latter decades of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth (Kontou & Willburn 2016). Spiritualism was predicated on the idea that the dead were not gone, but could be communicated with by various means, guided by people who had the right sensitivities. The roots of much of the movement could be traced back into the long history of the European esotericism, but it was given mainstream credibility in the nineteenth century in the context of new scientific thinking. Science was in the process of revealing the existence of much that could not be seen with the naked eye. John Dalton had posited the existence of the atom as the basic unit of all matter in 1803. Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves in 1887. Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895. In 1897 Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity and J. J. Thompson inferred the existence of electrons (Kern 2015: 28). Scientific discoveries were followed closely in the mainstream press. If the telegraph could transmit messages instantaneously between continents by means of electricity, why should it not be possible to achieve communication between the realms of the living and the dead? The parallels between the tapping method which mediums often employed and the tapped-out signals of Morse code have been commented upon (Stolow 2010). The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky (1831–91), a Russian aristocrat and mystic, and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907), a lawyer and journalist. In contrast to the ad hoc practice of individual mediums and spiritualist groups, Theosophy proposed a hybrid spiritual-philosophy which synthesized elements from contemporary science, philosophy and world religions, including Egyptian pantheism, Kabbalism, Platonism, Astrology, Gnosticism, Hinduism and Buddhism. These diverse sources were studied in pursuit of underlying principles and the fundamental truths behind all things (Lavoie 2012). Theosophy in not a Religion, we say, but RELIGION itself, the one bond of unity, which is so universal and all-embracing that no man, no speck – from gods and mortals down to animals, the blade of grass and atom – can be outside of its light. Therefore, any organisation or body of that name must necessarily be a UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD. (Blavatsky 1888) The impulse to move beyond a religion to the essence of spirituality itself is analogous to the desire in the art world to move away from competing styles towards a new, universal art. In 1879 Blavatsky relocated the headquarters of the movement to India, to Adyar, near Madras. In 1907 leadership of the movement was taken over by Annie Besant (1847–1933), a social reformer who advocated women’s and workers’ rights and, later, Indian independence. Theosophical lodges were opened in many countries through the 1880s and 1890s. The unity of all life was a core key that promoted gender and racial equality within the Theosophical movement. The initial mission statement proposed a ‘universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour’ (Cranston 1993: xviii). In the early

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decades the prominence of women within the movement was particularly marked. This paralleled the prominence of women within the general Spiritualist movement (Owen 2004). Women-mediums used the practice of channelling other voices and authorities, to speak and be heard in a world where their voice was conventionally restricted. Those that attempted to assert themselves too prominently, such as Blavatsky, were still subject to harsh censure, verging on persecution (Yeager 1993). One core overlap between Theosophical belief, social theory and contemporary science was the principle of evolution. The theory of evolution proposed that all life forms emerged from and were intrinsically part of an ongoing process. Future development of all life was governed by the action of natural selection as individuals with advantageous traits thrived and were reproduced. These ideas were developed by theorists of Social Darwinism who took the idea of competing for survival onto a social plane, framed in terms of racial survival. One of the most prominent manifestations of this was the eugenics movement, which proposed the perfection of the human race through selective breeding. The spiritual development proposed by Theosophy suggested instead that mankind was in the process of evolving towards a higher state of being (Singleton 2007). Through meditation and through drawing the peoples of the world together in acts of unifying love and beauty, it was thought that the energies collected and released could propel the individual and mankind towards this higher plane of existence (Goodrick-Clarke 2008: 219–24). Af Klint encountered Theosophy through an early interest in spiritualism. She attended her first seance at the age of seventeen. Her sister died in 1880 and this added to her interest in the possibility of communication with the dead. She studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm between 1882 and 1887. There she met the friends and fellow artists with whom she would form a group, The Five, in 1896. They would meet regularly in her studio to meditate, discuss biblical texts and conduct seances during which messages from the spirits were recorded by means of automatic writing and other forms of free-association, image making (Higgie 2016). In was in the course of a seance that af Klint received communications from the ‘High Masters’, spiritual authorities also invoked by Blavatsky (Blavatsky 1931: 36). Af Klint believed that she had been charged by the Masters to create paintings for a new, spiritual temple. The temple was to be instrumental in ushering in a new age of spiritual enlightenment and a new, more equitable phase in human relations, including between men and women. Between 1906 and 1908 she painted 111 large-scale paintings for this notional temple. The works were executed rapidly, without preparatory drawing or a formal plan of the cycle in advance. Instead af Klint let herself paint what she intuited the Masters wished her to paint. The Ten Largest were, as the title suggests, a sub-group of ten works from within this larger cycle. They expressed the evolutionary themes of the cycle of life, through childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. The first painting in the series, No.1 Childhood (1907, Moderna Museet) is a work on a paper roll over three meters long and nearly two and a half meters wide (Plate   22). It was, like the other paintings in the cycle, painted in tempera, in strong, block colours with no shading or depth. Various forms float against a rich blue background, like cells in a suspension. The parallels to microscopy are appropriate in that af Klint was also seeking to make visible truths that were invisible to others. As the first image in the cycle its subject is conception. In the centre of the work are forms that can be read as an ovum and sperm. Clearly af Klint was familiar with scientific imagery on this subject. Her painting departed from conventional scientific imagery in that it seeks to conjure the very energy of life forming by means of colour and movement: the bright yellow sperm, some with cobalt blue tails and some with yellow energetically penetrating the pink membrane of the ovum.

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Across the extended cycle of her abstract, spiritual paintings af Klint developed a personal symbolic language of colours and forms (Ryle 2018). Not all of these have been deciphered and it would be a mistake to reduce her work to a series of cyphers, but the pursuit of a language of colour was one that preoccupied a number of artists at this time and which fed into the move towards abstraction (Alderton 2011). Goethe’s colour theories of the early nineteenth century were a source of inspiration to af Klint and to many others including the spiritual and educational theorist Rudolf Steiner (Birnbaum & Enderby 2016: 11). Goethe suggested the existence of traceable connections between perception and psychological or emotional responses. This was taken up by artists at the fin-de-siècle and interwoven with the desire to achieve immediate, psycho-emotional effect without recourse to narratives content (Rubin & Mattis 2014). Af Klint’s colour symbolism included yellow meaning masculine and blue meaning feminine. The signification of male and female was also expressed through flowers: lilies representing the female and roses the male (Birnbaum & Enderby 2016: 10). These can be seen in No.1 Childhood, in which the sperm are variously male or female and the centre of the ovum is inscribed with one yellow and one blue symbol. Above the ovum are two large, circular elements made up of lilies and roses. The presence of both male and female signifiers in the image reflect af Klint’s perception of the duality of male and female within life, rather than as opposing forces. This contrasts markedly with the perspective of many contemporary male artists who emphasized the binary between male and female as a battle of the sexes, as we have seen in the work of von Stuck. Across af Klint’s cycle of life, corporality and sexual difference is minimized in favour of expression of the intertwined life force of male-female (Voss 2016: 29–32; Roussau 2013). Her graphic arts work for children were characterized by rich colours and decorative floral imagery that share something of the same emphasis on life-energy as her spiritualist works. The pollinating insects that enrich her children’s illustrations convey, in a child-appropriate manner, the themes of reproduction and the genesis of life (Ryle 2020). Her spiritualist works, though, remained a private endeavour, shared only among fellow theosophists. As a result, her innovative vision did not feed into wider currents of developing abstraction in Western art, as did the art of fellow theosophists, Vassily Kandinsky, František Kupka and Piet Mondrian. Her paintings present an array of symbols and forms, colour and line on a flat surface. In conjunction one with another across the extended series, her works convey the complex metaphysical visions she was seeking to communicate (Fer 2018). The painterly language she developed did not come from nowhere. No.1 Childhood is inscribed by a dynamic orange line that curls and loops energetically across the image. It derives from the practice of automatic writing, or spirit writing that she had pursued in seances since 1879. Like spirit writing, it occupies an ambiguous position between script and abstract symbol, and it is suggested as the route by which she unlearned her academic training and unleashed, spontaneous communicationthrough-gesture (Müller-Westermann 2013: 38). The work, and the cycle as a whole, sought to capture the essence of life as a dynamic and vital force. She was interested in the commonality of life and spirit across all living things and across time, space and other realms. It was this desire to paint the ineffable, the infinite and unbounded that propelled af Klint and other theosophical artists towards abstraction (Lomas 2015). Her creative imagination fed on the wide store of image forms she had been exposed to as an artist with access to an extensive print culture, including scientific illustration. Af Klint’s professional life included the production of detailed botanical studies, which also fed into her spiritual imagery (Lomas 2013). A key influence was Besant and Leadbeater’s theosophical

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treatise, Thought Forms: How Ideas, Emotions and Events Manifest as Visible Auras (1901), which was illustrated with brightly coloured, abstract images, which reflected a similar adaptation of scientific graphic practice (Higgie 2016: 14) (Figure 9.2). Scientific pictorial conventions such as sequential images, colour-coding and numerical or text notations were common and are also found in af Klint’s work (Fer 2018). Her move to abstraction occurred a few years before similar initiatives were taken by Kupka, Kandinsky, Mondrian and others. They shared a common goal of propelling art towards a new state where it might express ideas beyond the physical and concrete. A crucial difference was that these artists exhibited their work publicly and invited public criticism. They also produced their own texts and solicited support from across their professional networks to defend and position themselves. The scale of The Ten Largest and other canvases within af Klint’s Spiritual cycles indicate that they were conceived with a public art function. At the same time, they remained private through her choice and she stipulated in her will that they remain unexhibited for twenty years after her death. This seeming paradox of the ambition of the series and her reticence in regards to its public reception is explained by a number of factors. Even in Sweden, where women had been admitted as students to the academy as early as 1864, the position of women within the profession remained precarious (Ingelman 1984). Af Klint supported herself by means of the conventional portraits, landscapes and graphic arts she sold. The public presentation of these conventiondefying, Spiritualist works might well have entirely jeopardized her business as a working artist. Women who were perceived as flaunting the authority of the art establishment were routinely savaged in the art press. The exposure of fraudulent mediums was another prominent lesson of the public opprobrium that might be brought to bear on women who testified to access to higher powers. Af Klint’s many years of practice and over 1,000 works represent an enormous undertaking, much of which was done without any expectation of seeing the works reach an audience. That they were intended, ultimately, for an audience is evidenced by her careful preservation of the entire corpus. In 1922 she had offered some of her paintings to Steiner for the interior of his new Goetheanum temple but he declined the offer (Hillström & Voss: 232–3). In the absence of support beyond her immediate circle, she was motivated in this decades-long endeavour by an inner sense of purpose that derived from her spiritual practice. Af Klint’s spiritual art practice

FIGURE 9.2  Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, ‘Music of Gounod’ in Besant & Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (London; Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1901): Plate G.

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was undertaken to extend and capture her understanding of the world and her place in it. In her notebook she stated: Firstly, I shall try to understand the flowers of the earth, shall take as my starting point the plants of the world; then I shall study, with equal care, that which is preserved in the waters of the world. Then it will be the blue ether with all its various animal species . . . and finally I shall penetrate the forest, shall study the moist mosses, all the trees and animals that dwell among these cool dark masses of trees. (Lomas 2015: 206) This quote captures the sense of seeking to know and understand the world through art, even art-as-research. The natural world was the subject through which a deeper understanding could be sought. In Wyspiańsky’s eerie parkland and Mary Watts’s undulating and all-connected trees of knowledge, nature articulated the reality of the world at the same time as it expressed what lay beyond it. The alignment of the personal and subjective with wider social, political or ideological agendas was a crucial facet of the work of all the artists discussed here. Art and design practice extended beyond the aesthetic to pursue alternative visions for a world that was to come, whether through national realization or spiritual transformation. The transformative potential of art was a large part of what propelled artist into the public arena, seeking to reach wider audiences. Their wishes in these regards often exceeded their grasp, with Wyspiańsky’s stained-glass scheme for Lviv cathedral and af Klint’s theosophical temple unrealized. Only Mary Watts had the connections, cultural capital and resources to see her vision brought fully to life.

10 Psychology, sex and the modern self

Being apart and lonely is like rain. It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains; from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs to heaven, which is its old abode. And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city. It rains down on us in those twittering hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn, and when two bodies who have found nothing, disappointed and depressed, roll over; and when two people who despise each other have to sleep together in one bedthat is when loneliness receives the rivers. ‘LONELINESS’, RAINER MARIA RILKE (1902)

At the heart of Art Nouveau’s pursuit of new forms lay a pursuit of resolution to the problems besetting the psyche of the modern man and woman. The transformation of modern life, the anonymity of the city, the destabilization of social relations rendered previously assured identities precarious. This fluidity in human relations triggered anxieties regarding the emergence of the economically independent ‘new woman’ and the unionized working class. The pursuit of selfrealization, outside the strictures of class or gender propelled artists and designers towards works of ever-greater self-reflection. Such work was not simply inward-looking. Self-realization offered a path towards remaking humanity and a new world where truths such as desire, loneliness and longing could be acknowledged without fear. The development of the new medical discipline of psychology also offered new modes of understanding the human psyche. That this new science was so quick to penetrate contemporary culture was due to its resonances with wider concerns regarding the modern self (Blackshaw & Topp 2009; Silverman 1989). Across the fields of the arts, writers and artists all sought to dig beneath the surface of superficial appearances and mores. Symbolist authors, like Huysmans, Maeterlinck and Rainer Marie Rilke, played with rich imagery, sensory depth and stylistic abstraction to conjure sensation, to horrify and enchant. Others such as Henrik Ibsen, August

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Strindberg and Henry James produced works of challenging psychological depth, exposing the tensions between human needs and the unforgiving apparatus of modern manners and morals (Levenson 2011). The poem by Rilke with which this chapter starts captures the mingling of yearning, lyricism and a harsh confrontation with reality, extending to the unflinching comment on dysfunctional sexual relations, that characterize literary modernism. The philosophies of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) sought to overturn the primacy of rationalism, positivism and over-mighty empiricism (Barnard 2011; Micale 2004). They were directly inspired by new scientific theories of protoplasm, as the uniting matter of all life, and of connections between the body and the surrounding world, apprehended through the senses (Brain 2015: 181). They strove to acknowledge the power of forces which could not be seen, the intuitive power of the human psyche and relational forces between individuals and between individuals and their environment. In the work of these writers, and the many others inspired by their ideas, the modern world was represented as having ensnared and enfeebled mankind, cutting it off from the creative forces of the spirit and natural sexual energies. To break these toils was the challenge to which humanity must rise. These visions could be either resplendent or terrifying, as the costs were high in terms of rejection of traditional religion, morality and human connections, while the costs of failure were the bleakness of alienation, nihilism and despair. As noted in the previous chapter, theories of evolution had given sexual reproduction a new weight of significance, from the fitness of the race to the fulfilment of one’s natural drives. Emerging forms of birth control offered new means of social engineering as well as the potential to free women to enter other spheres. Understanding of heredity created a new burden of responsibility regarding what traits were passed on. The emerging discipline of psychology focussed substantially on sexuality as a drive and the damage caused to the psyche when it was thwarted or distorted. Theories of sexuality played a central role in increasing the visibility of homosexuality, though in a pathologized form. The expression of identity, gender and sexuality is bound together in many of the case studies in this chapter. In the context of fin-de-siècle culture, these were new truths that artists were in the forefront of grappling with and therefore central to the expression of modernity. The turn towards self-expression, psychological depth and highly individualized imagery fostered art works of great originality and variety. They shared a mutual awareness of each other and of the work of poets, writers, musicians and others who also pushed at the boundaries of their mediums to reflect a new understanding of humanity. The first case study, Khnopff’s I Lock the Door upon Myself, sets up the extent to which the new art concerned itself with the struggle to express the nature of the creative process. This example also takes us back to Belgium and the Les XX group, underscoring the connections between art and literary Symbolism found there. In place of social, political or moral messages, many artists sought instead to convey understanding of the human condition and of their own struggles at self-realization and creation. Claudel’s Clotho is an example of this and also serves to develop the discussion of the role of the female figure, and particularly the female nude, in this process. Munch’s Evening on Karl Johans Gate (Bergen, 1892) provides context for much of the work in this chapter and the next: the idea of the modern city as alienating and hostile to the human psyche. Munch’s emphasizes the disorientation and isolation of the fragile individual who is out of step with these rhythms. The work of Luksch-Makowsky, like Munch’s, has autobiographical dimensions. As a woman seeking to secure her reputation in a profession dominated by men, she sought to leverage the associations between femininity and creativity. Alongside this, she wanted to evade its reductive dimensions. The nude female figure appears in another guise, a

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counterpoint to Claudel’s aged figure, both challenging the limited parameters of conventional thinking on women’s creativity. At the end of the chapter we turn to a different trope, that of the vulnerable, male nude. Enckell’s Awakening (1894, National Gallery, Helsinki) and Minne’s Fountain of Kneeling Youths (1901, Folkwang Museum) are examples of this idea. Such figures allowed artists at the end of the century to consider rawer depictions of the male body, to explore identities that might run counter to conventional masculinity. These youthful figures signify potential and capture a sense of ambivalence and questioning as to the direction in which society was travelling. The subject matter and experimental handling of art works around 1900 became increasingly diverse and diffuse as part of this exploration of new subjectivities. A key shift was towards ambiguity. It is this indeterminacy that art historians came to regard as the central indicator of developing Modernism (Clark 1985; Eco 1989). The engagement of the viewer is crucial to this ambiguity of subject matter. Paintings began to interact with the viewer interrogatively, rather than didactically. The viewer is drawn in to an art work by recognizable elements and by the expectation that the painting has something to say, but they are denied the resolution of being able to tell conclusively what that is (Sidlauskas 1993). Through the 1880s, in the work of Symbolists like Redon, indeterminacy became increasingly overt. Meanings are present only by inference and then only through the active contribution of the viewer, who must bring their own thoughts and feelings bear to creatively pursue what those meanings might be (Gambioni 2002). In this manner, artists made their audiences active participants in the creation of art (Belting 2001). The elusive quality of this new approach was simultaneously empowering and destabilizing. This is a quality that lies at the heart of the Art Nouveau. The viewer was free to make the intuitive leap towards meaning, but there was in many cases no guarantee of arrival. Such art works engaged with modernity by offering an experience parallel to the experience of modern life: stimulating, transitory, fragmented and unpredictable: ‘all that is solid melts into air’. In engaging with the anxieties generated by modern life, artists produced works that provoked disquiet. In engaging with the pursuit of individual identity and meaning, artists highlighted the slippery, elusive quality of these sought-after attributes.

Fernand Khnopff: The journey into the self One artist whose approach to these issues and influences resulted in a highly distinctive, personal vision was the Belgian Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921). Khnopff was one of the founding members of Les XX and his work was marked by a close engagement with Symbolist literature and poetry, particularly that of Mallarmé and his life-long friend Verhaeren. It was through Les XX that Khnopff also became aware of the critic and novelist Joséphin Peladan and his artistic salon, Salon Rose-Croix, which he founded in Paris in 1892. Khnopff exhibited frequently in the Salon Rose-Croix and the Secession exhibitions in Munich and Vienna (Delevoy, de Croës & Ollinger-Zinque 1987). Alongside his fellow Symbolists, Khnopff searched for meaning through the disintegration of certainties. Georges Vanor, the poet, writing about Symbolism in 1889 stated: The task of a Symbolist poet might be . . . to grasp relationships between the world’s visible, perceptible, tangible things and the intelligible essence of which they partake; to go from effects to cause, from image to prototypes, from phenomena and appearances to mysterious meanings. (Vanor 1889: 38)

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Khnopff’s large canvas, I Lock the Door upon Myself (1891, Neue Pinakothek, Munich), exemplifies the paradox of Symbolist painting, its verisimilitude and its illegibility (Plate  23). The painting operates on three registers. On the first register is the clarity of the representation of a central female figure in a meditative pose, three standing lilies in the foreground and a background composed of various wooden partitions, a shelf of sorts with a bust of the Greek god Hermes and oblique views of the outside world. The details are represented skilfully, so that the petals of the lilies curl with botanical accuracy, and surfaces and materials are represented with care. The folds of black cloth in the foreground, the rumpled dress of the central figure and the worn wood of the panelling all distinguish their contrasting patina, the legacy of Naturalism. On the second register lies the interpretation of these objects as potential symbols. The black, cloth-draped ledge upon which the figure leans her elbows is tomb-like. An arrow lies on its surface, pointing at the figure, a symbol of the pangs of love. Lilies are commonly associated with the idea of purity and the Virgin Mary, though not red lilies, which serve to disrupt the legibility of the symbol. The fragility of life can also be seen as represented by the withering of summer flowers. Hermes, among other attributes, was the god who served as a messenger and herald and as a guide to the underworld. In this way various ideas are suggested around the contemplation of death and the passing from life into death. On the third register, the painting denies and disrupts the viewers’ attempts to ‘read’ it in this manner. The restricted palette of blues and greys, with a few earthy tones of red and ochre, creates formal relations across the canvas surface that mute the representation of depth. Imagery is ambiguous. The ledge in front of the figure is too long to be a tomb or table and too deep and too broad to be a parapet. Though the lilies, with their dry stalks, appear to be dying, the winged helmet of the Hermes appears to be coming to life as the wings of a real bird sprout from the cold marble. Most troubling of all is the background, which persistently confuses any grasp on recessional space. The panelling represents a patchwork of elements that cannot be read as a coherent interior. A window at an oblique angle throws the reading of interior and exterior into further confusion. Another frame, appearing in one of the roundels, suggests the possibility of mirrors and reflections. The view of a street with a single cloaked figure in the distance is also impossible to conclusively place as a view through a window, a painting or a reflection. It is not simply that there is an opaque personal symbolism at work. The unreadability is intentional. Khnopff used photography as a tool to create a palimpsest of the real and the unreal, layering together images so they were simultaneously accurate and distorted (Kosinski 1992: 27–8). The slippery meaning and shifting sense of space are there to disrupt comfortable consumption of the scene. In this manner the painting succeeds in fulfilling Vanor’s prescription for Symbolist works to progress from real appearances to ‘mysterious meanings’. The title I Lock the Door upon Myself refers to a poem, ‘Who Shall Deliver Me’, by the English Pre-Raphaelite poet Christina Rossetti. Khnopff’s awareness of the poem reflects his wider interest in British art (Pudles 1992: 638). The painting was exhibited first at the third Les XX exhibition in Brussels in 1892. It subsequently travelled to the New Gallery in London, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Rose-Croix exhibition in Paris and on to the Munich Secession exhibition at the Glaspalast (Delevoy, de Croës & Ollinger-Zinque, 1987: 263). This reflects the international character of the new art movement, the art market and Khnopff’s growing international reputation. It also reveals the continued cultural resonances between British culture and the continent in the 1890s, despite the apparent lack of British engagement with Art Nouveau.

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The element Khnopff homed in on within the poem was not the salvation through Christ with which it concludes, but the existential angst that precedes it. All others are outside myself; I lock my door and bar them out The turmoil, tedium, gad-about. I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all? (ROSSETTI 1876) The poem and the painting reflect on the necessity for the creative artist to isolate themselves from the ‘turmoil, tedium, gad-about’ of modern life and its abundance of meaningless activity and exchange. At the same time, it is acknowledged that this solitude is imperfect because the flawed self necessarily remains, only thrown into relief by this isolation. The strange, assemblage of panelling in the background can be read as a visual representation of the imperfect barricade with which the artist must surround themselves. There is also a parallel between the taut, staccato lines of the poem and the repeated, linear division of the painting into horizontal and vertical planes that collide uneasily. The mood of the painting oscillates between light and dark, between the ominous symbolism of the black void in the foreground and the serenity of the central figure. Rossetti’s poem similarly oscillates between nihilism and frustration and spiritual peace located in faith. The outcry of self-loathing in the first half of the poem is too resonant to be easily set aside and the appeal to God still too laden with despair to offer conclusive comfort. This paradox is characteristic of Symbolism, which frequently seems to undermine its own ideals creating competing points of gravity within a single work, so that the reader or viewer is caught oscillating between resolution and doubt (Rapetti 2012: 21). The result are works that are dream-like in their ambiguity and necessarily open to interpretation. This dreamlike quality was enhanced by Khnopff’s use of black lines to outline all the separate elements represented. The soft, smoky brush strokes of the lines delineate and flatten the image, creating hazy edges between floating areas of colour. The pale, glassy eyes of the central figure, with barely discernible pupils, add to the sense of the depiction of reverie. Barricaded within the strange picture space of the painting, the woman is nonetheless free-sighted, her mind elsewhere, not looking at us, nor conscious of being looked at, but captured in the act of looking inward upon the self. Though the mode of depiction is very different, the painting can be compared to van Rysselberghe’s The Reading (1903) in that both works pursue the representation of creativity. Unlocking this inner world was the burden of the artist. The biological sciences had placed man on a continuum with animals, going all the way down to amoeba. Influential thinkers, such as Nietzsche, cited rampant materialism and the apparatus of civilized mass society as having robbed mankind of its more God-like creative attributes (Trodd 2017: 106–0/1966). Artists and poets were, they felt, among those best placed to throw off such shackles. States of altered consciousness, from alcohol and drug abuse to mediumistic trances and the transcendental experience of the Gesamtkunstwerk, were all alternative routes taken in pursuit of a retrieval of the potent communion with higher forces that modernity had cost mankind.

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Camille Claudel: The creative labour of the artist In sculpture, just as in painting and the graphic arts, artists increasingly invested their work with psychological depth and complexity. Camille Claudel’s (1864–1943) Clotho (1893, Musée Rodin) is an example of the powerful developments in sculpture in the 1890s (Figure 10.1). Claudel’s teacher Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) was, by this period, one of the most influential artists of the age. His approach sought to liberate sculpture from academic convention and bring it back to life, through a combination of close observation of the human form, rather than idealization, and selective focus, exaggerating those features which best bore the message intended (Ayral-Clause 2002: 49–50). This approach was adopted and adapted by Claudel. Claudel’s work fused a turn towards truthful representation with references to Classical mythology and literary allusions, to present human figures of intense psycho-emotional depth. Clotho is such a work. The subject is one of the three Fates, who were the divine triad who controlled human destiny in Classical mythology. They determined the fates of individuals and their ultimate lifespans. The Fates share parallels with the Norse Norns and other mythologies, triads of female figures that function as an archetype of the tragedies of human destiny, creation and destruction. In Clotho, the weaver of human destinies, Claudel has represented both the allegorical figure of Clotho and the psychological burden of uncontrollable fate. The Fates are typically represented as weavers of life’s threads, but Claudel has reimagined the threads in question as long skeins of hair which grow unchecked and abundant from the figure’s head. The hair drapes and winds itself around the figure, animated by its own life force or independent existence. In this way, though it emanates from the figure, it is not of the figure. It is a burden to her, weighing her down, dragging her head to one side. This distinction is also FIGURE 10.1  Camille Claudel, Clotho (1893, Musée Rodin) Plaster, 90 × 49.5 × 43.5 cm. S.1379. © Musée Rodin – photo Christian Baraja.

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emphasized by the frail, aged form of Clotho’s body, in contrast to the thick, endless coils of her hair. The production of these multiple human destinies is not something Clotho can choose or control, it is her function and she is resigned to bearing the burden. The aged form of Clotho is more than a reference to the traditional representation of the Fates as old women. Claudel had demonstrated an interest in capturing the un-idealized humanity of old age in one of her earliest works, Old Hélène (Camille Claudel Museum, 1882) (Paris & Cressent 2014: 82–7). Old Hélène was executed in her first studio in Paris, which she shared with a number of young, British women who had also come to Paris to study art (AyralClause 2002: 28–9, 38–9). The work connects her to the trajectory of Naturalism, that sought to liberate sculpture as an art form from the narrow boundaries of the ideal representations of the human form that dominated Classical art. It also marks an early engagement on her part with psychological depth over surface accuracy. Both Old Hélène and Clotho seek to engage with not just the physical signs of aging on the body, but on the marks left on the psyche of a long life. Clotho has been read as an autobiographical work, expressive of Claudel’s state of mind or depression in this period (Schmoll 1994: 70). But it fits most readily into a picture of collegial labour and inspiration within Rodin’s studio, where Claudel was an assistant and student. The model was the same one as used by Rodin for She Who Was the Helmet Maker’s Beautiful Wife (Rodin Museum, 1887), as well as Jules Desbois, a fellow studio assistant’s Destitution (Musée d’Orsay, between 1884–94) (Schmoll 1994: 74–7). These closely comparable works indicate a group of artists working in intimate proximity, exploring similar themes and pushing the boundaries of conventional subject matter in art. They blend naturalistic observation of the figure with allegorical or philosophical themes, which extend each work from the particular to the universal. In Rodin’s and Desbois’s work the aged female form is used as a vanitas to call to mind ideas of inevitable decay and death. Clotho is a more ambiguous figure. Her frailty is signalled by gaunt limbs and hollow breasts, yet she still stands and bears her burden. Furthermore, she is an immortal, however aged she may be, and her hair pulses with life energy. Claudel was able to seem more in the elderly female model than either of her male colleagues. At the same time, the marks of Rodin’s influence are apparent in the liberties Claudel was prepared to take with finish. The hands, in particular, were large and roughly modelled, while the feet and falling tresses merge into the textured plaster plinth. The scored lines in the hair and the evidence of the application of clay in the modelling process were left in place to indicate vitality through the rapidity of execution and to suggest movement, leaving evident the gestures of the sculptor who had brought the piece to life. There is a suggestive connection between the vitality of the figure of Clotho and the labour of an artist. Clotho’s creative strength bursts forth from her as the hair on her head, it is not something she chooses. It is both a burden and a destiny. Claudel herself pursued her creative practice with single-minded dedication, even when it involved years of penury and the repeated frustration of her efforts to secure professional recognition. At the age of twenty-nine, when she executed this work, Claudel had had ten years of public exhibiting and she had been recognized as the favoured student of a modern master. At the same time, consolidation of her professional status continued to elude her, and her list of reliable patrons remained small. As the daughter of a prosperous bourgeois family, her persistence in an artistic career contrasted with those of her friends, women who had been students with her and who, in the face of ongoing financial struggle, set aside their careers in favour of the security of marriage (AyralClause 2002: 74–83).

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The perception of resonances between Clotho and the artist do not rest solely on their shared gender. In her work on a subsequent piece, The Vanished God (1894), the figure of the young woman is possessed of similar coils of uncontrollable, uncontainable hair (Paris & Cressent 2014: 398–9). This trope was also repeated in La Petite Châtelaine, with dishevelled hair (Musee d’Art et d’Industrie de Roubaix, 1895). This repetition, across the figures of girl, young woman and old women, suggests the wild hair stood as a motif for the uncontained creative energies of these female figures. Energies that are demanding and implacable, which have a life-force of their own emanating from, but potentially depleting the subject. Female figures are repeatedly used at the fin-de-siècle by male artists, such as Khnopff, seeking to represent the artistic psyche. Where the artist was also herself a woman, these representations become layered with additional tensions between the myths and realities surrounding women and creative practice. We shall return to this point in relation to the work of Luksch-Makowsky later. Claudel’s use of an aged figure and Luksch-Makowsky’s use of a prepubescent figure can be understood as different strategies of employing the female nude while evading the sexualized consumption of her image. At the same time, abundant hair symbolizes virility and sexual energy across many cultures. The juxtaposition of such tresses with the wasted frame of Clotho suggests a manifestation of sexual energy that is burdensome, deviant or at least challenging to public mores and expectations. The parallels between sexual energy and creative energy, between artistic creation and reproduction was another theme that captivated many artists in this period, as we have already noted in regards to Frances Macdonald and af Klint. For Claudel, whose art practice and personal life was conducted in resistance to the expectations governing the behaviour of middle-class women, Clotho represented a more nuanced picture of woman’s creative practice, both the strength and endurance needed and the toll taken on the individual.

Edvard Munch: Trials of isolation and connection Alongside images that sought to conjure visions of the release of creative power, artists also engaged with explorations of its absence: the struggle for self-realization. Edvard Munch was one of the artists whose work focussed extensively, not just on modern life, but on its challenges for the individual. Through the 1890s and 1900s Munch created painting after painting that reflected both personally and universally on the challenges facing individuals and their search for connection and meaning. Evening on Karl Johans Gate (1892, Bergen) is a painting that represents the nightmarish qualities of the alienation of mass society (Plate   24). Having spent over a year in Paris from the end of 1889 onwards, Evening on Karl Johans Gate is the product of a short period of intense development in his work, as he assimilated the free handling of paint and the new unconventionality of viewpoints developed by the Impressionists. Munch’s painting shares with Impressionism the subject matter of modern, urban life and the sweeping perspective of the long, straight boulevard of the modern city, its crowds and night time illumination (Clark 2009: 36–57). But as well as transporting this theme back to Oslo (then Christiania) Munch made key choices which shifted the painting’s subject from the spectacle of modern life, to its psychological impact on the individual. The perspective in the painting is taken from street level, thrusting the viewer in among the crowds. They are permitted no contemplative distance, as the close-cropping of the image, with foreground figures cut off at chest and even neck height, means that the crowd meets us face to face, up close to the picture plane. The multitude of anonymous strangers bear down upon us, in an inexorable wave from the centre of the canvas and stretching back as far as the eye can see.

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The homogeneity and anonymity of the crowd has been emphasized by the predominant palette of blacks, which all the figures appear to wear. Their white faces are mask-like, with staring, pin-prick pupils. A number of the faces are entirely devoid of features, eyeless and pale beneath their hats, nightmarish and robbed of all humanity. A number of artists, such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas, had similarly explored representations of the dehumanizing effects of modern electric light, bleaching the heavily made-up faces of dancers and prostitutes into grotesque masks (Clayson 2019). But Munch’s work depicts not the denizens of the demimonde, but a host of ordinary strangers whose top hats and respectable, high-necked costumes render them simultaneously uncanny and banal. This oscillation between the familiar and the strange continues across the streetscape. The buildings recede into the distance, with blank walls and windows alternately dark recesses or lights within. The sky is a brighter blue than the shadowy street, though it is deepening into night. Dusk was a time of day frequently depicted in Symbolist landscapes as it lent itself to the apprehension of that liminal state between day and night, a time of change and transformation. The trees in the Studenterlunden Park have become looming shadows. Neither nature, as represented by the park, nor human habitation appears to offer refuge from the crowd. The light showing through or catching the windows erases the glazing bars, presenting only blank, bright rectangles. Munch’s handling of the paint also amplifies the mood of tension, with hastily applied lines and thin washes of colour. A solitary figure, a dark silhouette, makes his way against the flow of the crowd, alone in the middle of the street. Any desire to know who this figure is or to join him is frustrated by the tide of strangers bearing down upon the viewer in the other direction, cutting us off. The challenges of modern urban life, alienation and loneliness are common themes in literature of the period. Modernist writers experimented with short, disjointed sentence structures, to capture the fleeting impressions conjured by the fast pace of urban life. Munch himself provided a biographical anecdote of a love affair that saw him walking the streets of Christiania at night, hoping to run into his lover. He wrote a prose poem that has been frequently associated with Evening on Karl Johans Gate and which described his brief encounter with his lover in a crowd. She moves on and he comments: ‘everybody who passed looked so strange and alien, and he felt that they looked at him, stared at him, all these faces, pale in the evening light’ (Woll 1993: 32). The affair had concluded more than seven years before, but Munch frequently used autobiographical revelations to cultivate an emotionally heightened public persona as part of his strategy of self-promotion (Clarke 2009: 56). This can be related to the prevalent image of the tortured modern artist who sought, at great personal cost, to break free of the trammels of materialism and bourgeois mores in pursuit of individual freedom. The Polish critic Stanisław Przybyszewski met Munch in Berlin in 1892. He played an important role in promoting Munch’s work and emphasizing Munch’s unique and unflinching vision. Writing about him in 1894 he opined: Munch paints hauntedness and existential angst; he paints the chaos of the fevered mind and the presentient dread of the abyss; he paints a theory that cannot be elaborated logically and can only be sensed in a muted, ill-defined way – in the same way that we sense what death is and yet cannot picture it. (Nielsen 2015: 90) Przybyszewski, who was also a physiologist who had studied with Haeckel, emphasized that Munch had moved beyond painting from nature, to paint from his memories and his visceral perceptions of the world stored within his body (Brain 2015: 180–4). The conjunction of memory

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and sensation and the interrelation of body and environment is captured in the loose handling of paint. The paint is thin revealing the presence of the canvas beneath and the artificiality of the whole scene. The blue under-drawing shows through in the outlines of buildings, figures and trees, creating equivalences between nature, humanity and matter. This use of blue rather than black outline echoes the choice made by Chéret’s posters and therefore gives the work a contemporary edge. The shift to urban living was a significant factor in precipitating this interest in the vulnerability of the individual to their environment. As Simmel put it in 1902: ‘The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces’ (1964: 409). The tensions he identified in The Metropolis and Mental Life arose from this need for selfpreservation and self-assertion in the face of mental overload. This pressure arises from the need to create human connections at the same time as one must also shut oneself off from the sheer volume of possible encounters and competing calls on one’s attention. Perception of the mental strain of modern, urban life fed into the developing science of psychology. Curative practices, from single-cell confinement to asylums out in the countryside all sought to remove the individual from the source of their disturbance: the encounter with too much and too many other people. Awareness of mental disorder and strain raised the spectre of the mind imperfectly under its owner’s control. The idea of the unconscious had emerged slowly between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth century in parallel with modernity. The realm of the unconscious was identified as the locus of drives and desires that evaded human reason, but which shaped or even dominated human behaviour (Silverman 1989: 75–106; Nicholls & Liebscher 2010: 3–18). Both science and culture were increasingly fascinated by the proposition of this hidden realm of mental activity. Fear of mental illness was very real and medical research focussed on ways to restore self-awareness and self-control to those individuals whose faculties had been unbalanced. At the same time, artists and poets sought to explore the possibility that the overturning of reason could be a source of new insights and new freedom. Among discussions of the self the issue of sexuality loomed large. Again, this represents the ongoing philosophical repercussions of Darwin’s work. The consequent focus in the natural sciences on sexual selection and heredity all placed the sex drive as a central impulse shaping life on earth. This understanding swiftly flowed into wider discussions of human identity, challenging centuries of Christian reticence on the subject of sexuality and desire. In bohemian circles relationships were conducted with less and less regard for bourgeois and legal conventions. Men and, in much smaller numbers, women began to pursue freedom in the expression of their sexual desires, including same-sex relationships, as we have seen briefly in relation to the groups around Bernhardt and Barney. Medical researchers, such as Henry Havelock Ellis, and social reformers, such as Edward Carpenter championed the idea of homosexuality as a facet of human sexuality, rather than ‘sin’. The work of the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, particularly his Psychopathia sexualis (1886), greatly expanded the vocabulary for discourse around sexual desire. At the same time, all expressions of difference from a heteronormative orientation were pathologized as aberrant, as captured in the contemporary terms ‘invert’ or ‘inversion’ (Crozier 2008; Ivory 2003). It must also be remembered that this all took place within a legal context which criminalized homosexual acts. Science came to loom larger and larger in discussion of sex, replacing emphasis on religious morality. Though the comforts offered by this new scientific perspective were scant, with both

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abstinence and sexual gratification found to be potentially dangerous in some form or other. Birth rates were also a source of anxiety, as the upper and middle classes increasingly regulated the size of their families. This prompted fears of national decline, unmotherly women and, ultimately, racial degeneration as the population would be supposedly overwhelmed by the unfit offspring of the poor (Hirsh 2004: 167–77). Texts such as Max Nordau’s Degeneration (1892) and Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character (1903) were widely read. They reflected the way scientific thinking regarding the mind and the libido was mobilized in discussion of cultural and moral issues, particularly in relation to the performance of gender identity (Silverman 1989: 75–83; Sengoopta 2000; Olson 2008: 277–94). The cultural crisis around sex can be seen reflected in Munch’s lithograph, Madonna, produced in Paris in 1895 (Figure 10.2). It was one of a series of images based on a painting of the same name (1894–5, Oslo National Gallery). The image centres on the nude upperbody of a woman, her head thrown back and her arms in shadow. The low viewpoint causes her to loom over the viewer. The representation is paradoxical in a number of ways. The title and halo identify her as Mary, mother of God, yet her nudity and demeanour are incompatible with this identification. Her pose is that of sexual abandon, as she arches backwards. Her facial expression is ambiguous; both serene and withdrawn. In contrast to the many representations of maternity, this is a depiction of the moment of conception and far too carnal a representation to align with the Christian narrative. Instead she is simultaneously creative and destructive. The theme of the conception of life is extended in the decorative border around the edge of the print. Pale spermatozoa swim up and around the red channel of the border, demonstrating again the dissemination of scientific imagery related to reproduction into the public sphere. In the left-hand corner is a wizened childlike form that can also be red as a foetus (Menon 2004). FIGURE 10.2  Edvard Munch, Madonna (1895) Lithograph, 60.5 × 44.5 cm © Heritage Images/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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Whether child or foetus, the figure is malformed, with stick-thin limbs and unformed hands. Its ghostly, pupil-less eyes are simultaneously sightless and mournful. It is the very antithesis to the glowing, vigorous Christ Child of traditional Christian iconography. The pale circles of its eyes are a counterpoint to the deeply shadowed, sunken eyes of the woman. Madonna oscillates between sensuality and horror; between attraction and repulsion. This has a direct resonance in Munch’s own biography. He maintained that his awareness of the strong taint of mental illness in his own family determined him against having children of his own (Clarke 2009: 127). His understanding of contemporary ideas of negative heredity are expressed via the relationship between the hollow-cheeks of the mother and emaciated child/foetus. The anxiety surrounding sex was far from unique to Munch and the practice of projecting this ambivalence onto women was widespread. In a number of prominent discourses, notably those of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the negative, animalistic dimensions of the sexual drive were assigned to women, represented as a threat to male autonomy (Müller-Westermann 2005: 32–3). In both art and literature this impulse took the form of the femme fatale, the woman whose allure is deadly. Such views were widespread. Przybyszewski represents a typical example in his condemnation of women and of the contemporary women’s rights movement. All the degenerate ills of modern life, from mental illness to nightclubs, brothels and drug use are framed as a conspiracy of modern women to lure men to their doom: The Satan of hysteria and boredom has triumphed over woman. The modern man has fallen into mental decrepitude and has been seized with a desire to lift women up to the ‘heights of his education’, for in the atmosphere of philosophical cynicism and atheism there always grow and lavishly spread ill propensities. [. . .] New satanic temples have cropped up in the shape of Moulin-Rouges, Orpheum or flowery halls, destined for ‘superior’ members of the famous circles. A modern cancan has taken place of fantastic dances of medieval witches, while witch’s poisonous aphrodisiacum has been transformed into a syringe of morphine. (Małodobry 2010: 262) Munch was influenced by the rampant misogyny of the Berlin circle around Przybyszewski and Strindberg. But Madonna remains too ambiguous a work to sit neatly alongside such diatribes. As the darkness envelops her, the Madonna figure is drawn into death herself, as much victim as perpetrator. The image of a mother figure receding into darkness has resonances in Munch’s own loss of his mother in childhood. The Madonna’s halo and the title of the work are not simply an act of rebellious blasphemy. Her serenity suggests the possibility of a form of redemption in her embrace. Only the portal of spilt sperm and the sorrowful gaze of the foetus serve as a barrier to us joining her in darkness.

Elena Luksch-Makowsky: Gender and creativity Works that pursued the fusion of the personal and the universal became common at this time as artists turned away from established narratives and mythologies to pursue themes of personal psychological resonance. The subjects of creativity, maternity and sexuality were also tackled by women. Elena Luksch-Makowsky was a Russian artist who trained at the art school set up by Princess Tenisheva before progressing to the St Petersburg academy. She went on to study in Munich (Ewald 2017: 176–7). There, she met the Austrian sculptor Richard Luksch

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(1872–1936). They married and she moved with him to Vienna where, through his auspices, she was introduced to the circle of the Viennese Secession. Women were not permitted to become voting members of the Secession, however LukschMakowsky was able to establish herself as a full member in all other respects. She was the only woman to have a monogram of her own in the collection of member’s monograms published in the XIV catalogue for the group in 1902 (Johnson 2012: 55). Luksch-Makowsky’s success during her years in Vienna between 1900 and 1907 was based on her talent and her cosmopolitan education as an artist, which gave her work authority. There were also clear resonances between her interests in mythology and the interests of other leading Secessionists. She was able to accommodate herself within the group, gaining access to their elite clientele and spaces of exhibition, without compromising her own artistic interests (Johnson 2012: 63–8). Ver Sacrum (Self-portrait with son Peter) (1901, Upper Belvedere) was painted following the birth of her first child (Plate   25). The work is simultaneously autobiographical and makes overt reference to the wider self-mythologizing strategies adopted by the Secessionist group. The Vienna Secession had presented themselves in the first edition of their journal as a modern incarnation of the Roman secessio plebis, walking out of the academy as a means of bringing about reform. ‘[T]his band of youths, themselves a sacred spring, withdrew from the old dwelling places into foreign parts in order to found a new polity with their own strength and their own purpose’ (Burkhardt 1898: 1). This theme of spring and youthful renewal was replicated across the visual representation of the Secession through the repetition of the slogan ‘ver sacrum’ (sacred spring) and through the iconography of leaves and flowers and other signifiers of new life and vitality. It was by these means that Secessionists sought to valorize their departure from tradition as an act of revitalization. Luksch-Makowsky’s Ver Sacrum is a public statement of her close affiliation with the group (Johnson 2012: 68). In it the sacred spring is represented in an alternative act of creation: the creation of new life. The figure of her son, bright light reflecting off his pale skin and white tunic is held up towards the viewer, a wondrous offering. The theme of renewal and new life is reflected also in the early spring flowers he holds and with which he is crowned. The composition makes clear analogues to images of the Virgin and Christ Child, with the crown of flowers substituted for the crown of thorns. The vertical format, with the child contained within the silhouette of his mother’s body, both of them facing out of the image, also evokes the traditional form of Russian icons. The layers of meaning include the expression of individual love and the sacralization and celebration of women’s reproductive power. The work was prominently hung at the 13th Secessionist exhibition in 1902, suggesting that it was seen to meet the wider aesthetic standards and goals of the Secessionists (Ewald 2017: 180–1). The painting also presents a paradox and an irreconcilable point of tension that marks it out as modern in its approach. Luksch-Makowsky’s authorship of the miracle of her son and of the painting itself is made overt by her presence holding him up. The green tone of the jewel on her left-hand ring finger echoes the vibrant green of the spring flowers underlining her role in this act of creation. At the same time, Luksch-Makowsky recedes into the background. The birth of her son precipitates or coincides with the obscuring of the figure of the artist. Her expression, partly hidden by her son’s head, is marked by an intense but ambiguous gaze out at the viewer. What is she trying to say? Perhaps it is unsayable, as her mouth is concealed. Both maternal instincts and social expectations of maternal love preclude a voicing of ambivalence about what this new identity as mother will mean for her identity as an artist. Luksch-Makowsky had thought long and hard about accepting Luksch’s proposal, concerned about what it would mean to her career. She went so far as to get a written promise from him,

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prior to the marriage, that she would be free to visit Russia when she wanted, with or without his permission, and that her career was not expected to take a back seat to his (Ewald 2017: 180). With the arrival of the first of her three children, Luksch-Makowsky may well have begun to apprehend that, whatever their intentions had been, her professional practice was not to remain untouched by the realities of motherhood. Ver Sacrum (Self-portrait with son Peter), Evening on Karl Johans Gate and I Lock the Door upon Myself all share as subject matter tensions between the inner life and the outer, between the self and others. Khnopff’s work is focussed on the costs and challenges of isolation, while Munch’s painting explores the individual’s vulnerability in the face of the inhuman force of the crowd. Luksch-Makowsky’s Ver Sacrum is, on one hand, a public celebration of maternal connection and joy in the union of mother and son. On the other hand, it raises the taboo topic of what this costs the mother whose own needs are now subjugated to her child’s. Her hands where she clasps the child are bathed in light, but the rest of her is thrust back into darkness. The life represented by the child simultaneously signifying a kind of death for her, in a manner that has some parallels with Munch’s Madonna and the fatality of the (pro)creative act. The femme fatale as a trope represented attempts on the part of male artists and writers to tackle things that they were afraid of: overwhelming sexual desires, a fear of vulnerability and emasculation engendered by the yearning for love or human connection. The need to set such fears apart from oneself, on the part of the vast majority of male artists, led to the frequent use of female figures as vehicles for the expression of identities, needs and desires, which they struggled to own in themselves. For those artists who were women this presented the dual challenge of negotiating the widespread cultural practice of othering the feminine and of managing the visual tropes associated with it. Luksch-Makowsky’s Adolescentia (1903, Upper Belvedere) is a rare example of a direct engagement with these issues (Plate   26). The large format canvas (171 × 78 cm) depicts a youthful female nude standing in a field of flowers. It was given a preeminent position in the 17th Secession exhibition curated by Hoffmann (Johnson 2012: 85–7). The combination of the clarity of the central figure and the decorative qualities of the floral field on which she stood accorded well with the programme of the Secession and its blend of ornament and symbolism. The slender elegance of the central figure resonated particularly well with the slender columns of the sculptural fountain by Luksch and Hoffmann that occupied the centre of the room surrounded by potted flowers. With her toes touching the lower edge and her head nearly at the top, the nude occupies the entire frontal plane of the canvas. Her adolescent body, and those of the boys ranged behind her, are central to the subject of the work: an engagement with the theme of coming of age and the advent of individual and sexual identity. Adolescence as a developmental period was invented in the nineteenth century and occupied a particularly prominent cultural position around the turn of the century (Neubauer 1992). It was composed of a fusion of biological ideas concerned with puberty and cultural ideas concerned with a new sense of youth as a formative period. A focus on youthful figures in literature, particularly the development and spread of the German form of Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, established the concept of youth as a period of life, characterized by the search for the individual’s unique identity and spiritual and sexual realization. Luksch-Makowsky’s Adolescentia is unusual in taking both a female subject and a positive approach to this question. Weininger’s Sex and Character had strongly deprecated the possibility of feminine creative power. The girl who dominates the painting is poised on its very threshold. She is vulnerable in her nakedness and excessive slenderness and very much outnumbered by the boys in the background. At the same time there is fearlessness in her insouciance. She dominates

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the attention of the boys in background, who appear to gaze at her, talk about her and, in one instance, hoot at her. But the barrier presented by her turned back, her disregard and her out-flung arms prove insurmountable. In this way the painting slips back and forth between registers in a manner typical of the new art of this period. She is an object of sexual interest to the boys in the painting and perhaps to some viewers, but there is a pending quality to her own sexual expression, her body is shown on the cusp between childhood and adulthood. She looks out of the painting, neither at the boys nor at the viewer, but out to a future only she has sight of. Though there is a clear analogue between her budding form and the flowers of the field with which she is surrounded – one of which she holds – there is also a clear assertion of the figure’s own agency in the course she will take. Despite her unashamed, burgeoning sexual identity, the figure cannot be read as a femme fatale. Any threat that this large-scale female nude might pose her male audience are further offset by the positioning of the scene in the distant classical past. The naked youths in the background exercise in the open air in the manner of young Spartans. The bright palette and stylized field of flowers further the sense of the work as decorative allegory, defusing the charge of any sexual content. Neither does the work fit the category of the femme fragile, another trope which caught the fin-de-siècle imagination and which featured prominently in the work of Luksch-Makowsky’s husband (Wieber 2011). The femme fragile was a paradoxical amalgam of the sensual and the ethereal, otherworldly and compelling. The threat of her sexuality was contained by the fragility of the physical vessel within which it was housed. Adolescentia is a personification of the potential of autonomous womanhood which, LukschMakowsky appears to contend, need not be shied away from or regarded as intrinsically threatening or fraught. In this way it represents an attempt by a woman to push at the boundaries of the dominant narrative regarding female sexuality and creativity. The optimism of the work makes it distinct from the wracked representations of sexual awakening presented elsewhere. Munch chose to project his own deeply ambivalent ideas about sex onto his female figures, but male sexuality and vulnerability was a subject directly tackled by very few artists.

Magnus Enckell, George Minne and the adolescent male nude Magnus Enckell was a Finnish artist who encountered the Symbolist movement while studying in Paris in the early 1890s, particularly the circle around the Salon Rose-Croix (Sinisalo 2002: 33). Awakening (1894, National Gallery, Helsinki) was painted on his second visit to Paris (Figure 10.3). Though on a superficial level the awakening represented is that of a youth raising from bed, the stillness and strangeness of the work signals a more important inner awakening of consciousness. The movement of the figure is awkwardly arrested, as he appears frozen in the act. His shoulders are painfully hunched and the left hand which should be braced on the bed supporting his torso is instead clenched in a peculiar gesture of simultaneous aggression and defeat. Colour, depth and details are kept to a minimum within the work to ensure that its complexity lies in the power and ambiguity of the scene represented. The pared-back detail and strained pose serves to direct attention at the figure’s face as the viewer searches for an explanation. The shadowed face holds none of the open gaze of Luksch-Makowsky’s adolescent figure. Instead the gaze is directed inwards. Whatever the figure is reflecting upon, it is a source of tension, reflected in the pinched brows, the rigid line of the

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FIGURE 10.3  Magnus Enckell, Awakening (1894, National Gallery, Helsinki) Oil on canvas, 13 × 85.5 cm © Photo Finnish National Gallery.

mouth and the awkward bow of the body. He appears hunched between the creamy purity of the wall behind him and the inky dark of the void beneath his feet. The suggested symbolism is that of a moral crisis, staged in the bed. The nudity of the figure and the prominence of his genitals in the centre of the composition suggest this inner conflict is sexual in nature. The symbolism in Enckell’s work revolved around the subject of the self, the unique, psychologically separate individual and the desire for connection and transcendence. His oeuvre was dominated by youthful male nudes, often marked by a languid eroticism. This and the pointed silences surrounding his private life have led to his retrospective identification as a queer artist, concerned with exploring sexuality and identity (Kalha 2005; Tihinen 2008). Though there were some calls for the decriminalization of homosexuality and boundaries were pushed in certain, bohemian circles, the topic remained largely taboo. Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick has described this context as a ‘glass closet’, where homosexuality may be recognized and tacitly condoned, while also remaining forbidden (1990). Adolescent male nudes trod a fine line between the erotic and the chaste, enmeshed in the parallel symbolism surrounding the idealization of youth and the visualization of the aspirations of a new generation (Vicinus 1994). In The Awakening, the boy is both an erotic object and also an erotic subject, becoming aware of his own desires and wrestling with the challenges they represent. As Juha-Heikki Tihinen put it, ‘the boy faces the dilemma of masculinity alone’ (Tihinen 2000: 126). The acknowledgement of a greater spectrum of sexual desires and conflicting emotions surrounding sex and other human relations was an important facet in the new art and literature. Through the expression of such ideas artists and their viewers could align themselves with new thinking, biological, philosophical or spiritual that recognized the complexity of human needs and wishes.

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The most resonant image of the fragile male psyche was captured in George Minne’s Kneeling Youth, which in multiple versions became known across Europe. Minne was a member of Les XX and one of a group of Belgian artists invited to exhibit in the first Salon Rose-Croix in Paris in 1892. Minne’s work revolved around the theme of human vulnerability and variations on the motif of a kneeling boy evolved through the 1890s. It first appeared in his illustrations for Maeterlinck’s 1889 volume of poetry, Serres Chaudes (Hothouses) and Kneeling Boy is composed in the same spirit as the poetry, described by Patrick McGuinness as ‘curiously static, knowing, frozen’ (McGuinness 2000: 28). In the Kneeling Youth (1898) Minne distilled the idea of vulnerable humanity down to this slender figure of a kneeling boy, wrapped in a self-embrace, shielding his body and soul, both of which are not yet fully formed, isolated and introspective. Minne’s work was celebrated in the art criticism of Maus, Verhaeren and Meier-Graefe. The 1900 Secession exhibition was dominated by a composite reworking of five repeated versions of the figure, The Fountain of Kneeling Youths (1901) (Figure 10.4). Minne had designed it at the instigation of van der Velde for the Folkwang art museum he was designing in Hagen. Issue two of the 1901 volume of Ver Sacrum was dedicated entirely to Minne. As well as its appearance in Brussels and Vienna, variations on the fountain were exhibited in Budapest and Venice (Lauwaert n.d.). The copy of The Kneeling Youth owned by Verhaeren appeared in van Rysselberg’s The Reading in 1903 (Figure 3.2). Another was installed in the Viennese home of Waerndorfer in the same year. The reach of Minne’s work across Belgium, France, Austria, Hungary and Germany reveals the resonance of the theme he employed. At a time of unprecedented change across Europe, class antagonism and souring international relations, the fragility of the boy seemed to speak to

FIGURE 10.4  George Minne, The Fountain of Kneeling Youths (1900, 8th Secession Exhibition, Vienna) Plaster © Imagno/ Contributor/Getty Images.

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many. The arrangement into a fountain, through the replication of the figures, emphasized the commonality of each figure’s unbreachable isolation. At the same time, a new note is added, or emphasized in relation to the original single figure. Each figure’s rapt gaze is now directed into the water of the fountain, at their own reflections, emphasizing the narcissistic, self-regarding nature of their introspection. They turn their backs on the outer world, wholly absorbed in the inner (Neubauer 1992: 109–10). This self-absorption could be read as a form of decadence and the decline of the overintellectual, neurasthenic, aesthete who regards only that which is beautiful. In this respect, a parallel can be drawn to the prospect of an evolutionary split in the human race presented in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). The premise of this early work of science fiction was that the contemporary social divide between the privileged classes and the workers would over time lead to the evolution of two distinct species. The future version of the earth explored in The Time Machine is inhabited by the ‘Eloi’, who are beautiful, idle and childlike and, it emerges through the course of the novella, essentially being kept as livestock by the strong and brutal ‘Morlocks’ who live beneath the ground. Wells intended his text as a warning, using the scientific principle of speciation, to suggest that the profoundly different conditions of life experienced by the working masses and the elite had the potential to split mankind into two. The fragility of so many Art Nouveau representations of the human figure, the youthful and spindle-thin limbs of figures by Toorop, Klimt, Macdonald, Minne, Luksch-Makowsky, Wyspiańsky and many others was not accidental. Nor did it stem from one single, common source. The emaciation of these figures dematerialized the body as artists sought ways to represent the inner nature of the modern human. It was for many a way of stripping back artifice and the veneer of civilization, to reveal the naked human beneath. Such figures, like Minne’s Kneeling Boy, were ambiguous and suggestive. They were modern in the multiplicity of paradoxical identities they suggested. The boy is slender, weak and vulnerable, but he is also self-absorbed and self-contained. His juvenile body is not manly, but it is beautiful and holds within it the seed of vitality. Is he wasting away or growing towards manhood? Is he frightened and isolated or simply turning inwards, in rejection of the crass materialism of the outer world? Appetite for such imagery, at a time of simultaneous fear of national and racial degeneration, reveals the desire among many patrons for access to such questioning visions of the world: visions that might help them to articulate their own unease and seeking for something more.

11 Dream spaces The Art Nouveau interior In modern times the house of the average citizen is necessarily a somewhat prosaic affair. It has been my endeavour to show how far some quality of romance may be introduced into its scheme, so that man who is justly not content with bread alone may find in his home some solace for the imagination – some stuff of which dreams may be made. BAILLIE SCOTT (1906)

We have already seen in the examples of the Peacock Room, the Güell Palace and the Tassel House the importance of the domestic interior within Art Nouveau. For the wealthy to commission lavish homes, to showcase their taste and their collections of art was nothing new. The interiors of Art Nouveau can be seen as part of a long history of performative, high-status interiors intended to represent their owners’ wealth and cultural capital. Art Nouveau interiors can also be approached as part of histories of modern design, where the emphasis has been on the use of new materials and technologies and new principles, such as revealed construction. Without meaning to dismiss any of these points of interpretation, my focus in this chapter is on an attribute of Art Nouveau interiors that is particular (though not unique) to them and to the cultural context of their conceptualization. Many Art Nouveau interiors were conceived by designers and patrons as manifestations of a new way of being and as tools for the realization or furthering of this modern consciousness. These spaces were designed to address the modern individuals discussed in the previous chapters: individuals newly aware of the interrelated functioning of their minds and bodies within an environment. They were designed to restore and protect psyches damaged or fettered by the pressures of modern life. A full understanding of the varied and often astonishing interiors created during the Art Nouveau period depends on recognizing them not simply as art works but also as instruments of stimulation, in the manner of the Gesamtkunstwerk. The user was addressed not just on a visual level, but across the spectrum of the senses as designers sought to affect the whole body (Gillin & Joyce 2018). The impact of light and dark, enclosed and open space, profusion and absence of ornament, intriguing variations in surfaces, textures and colour modulations, unexpected sight-lines and the disruption of expected relationships were more than mere dramatic artifice. The user was transported in their exploration of these new interiors and their connections to the mundane world temporarily severed.

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The Güell Palace, the Tassel House and the Elvira Studio were interiors unlike any that had been seen before and their forms expressed a synthesis of innovation and tradition, tied to the identities of their owners and the design ideals of their architects. They blended traditional techniques and cutting-edge engineering to create interiors that flowed from one space to the next in unconventional ways. The designs were both legible and obscure. Structural supports were revealed to the visitor and yet, once inside, the visitor was taken on a journey that far exceeded what they might have expected from outside. Imagery, twists and turns, coloured glass, half-landings, even music was used to enchant the visitor. The results were not intended simply to overawe, but to address the sophisticated subjectivity of the patron and their guests. As discussed in the previous chapter, a new awareness had developed regarding the complexity of human consciousness. Empathy theory and other schools of scientific thought on the permeability of the human organism sought to explain how people were viscerally affected by beauty in nature or in man-made artefacts (Brain 2015). This process was one of bodily resonances, not merely cerebral processes. One could not ‘know’ something was beautiful, one had to ‘feel’ it. Notable collectors, such as the Goncourt Brothers, wrote about the powerful, transportative sensations invoked on their encounters with certain objects (Silverman 1989: 23–39). The most famous example of this idea is Huysmans’s des Esseintes, who attempts to cut himself off entirely from what he regards as the ugly and plebeian character of the modern world. His sole preoccupation is beauty, which he pursues simultaneously through the mediums of colour, materials, imagery, music, food and exotic scents. The aesthetic spells he weaves transport him across the world and across time, without his ever needing to leave his home. Fantastic as he was, des Esseintes was known to be modelled on the Symbolist poet de Montesquiou, who curated his own apartment in Paris with objects from around the world and careful shifts in colour palette in different rooms to create contrasting experiences (Emery 2009). The interior, as an art form and a complete entity, was increasingly recognized in publications and by museums, reflected in the presentation of objects in room installations. There is not one simple explanation for the development of these imaginative interiors and for why people at the end of the nineteenth century, many of whom made their money in the very concrete spheres of global trade and industry, should want to live in spaces that offered the possibility of escape from reality. The case studies chosen here are each unique, one-of-a-kind commissions, but they reflect the widespread pursuit among artistically informed patrons to experience art in this way and to employ design as an instrument to address mind, body and spirit.

Fyodor Shekhtel: Ryabushinsky House and a kingdom beneath the waves If we look at the Ryabushinsky House in Moscow (1900–03) by Fyodor Shekhtel (1859–1926) we find an Art Nouveau interior that used nature and fairy tale as a starting point for an imaginative and sensory journey. Nature was an infinitely flexible motif, offering everything from the simple beauty of a daisy, the glamour of a peacock and the uncanny forms of the sea anemone. The evocation of nature in artificial forms functioned in interiors as an imaginative bridge to places the real world could not (yet) reach. Such dream destinations could be both spiritual and political, homely and eerie, novel yet grounded in something enduring and thus functioned as both an escape from and engagement with the conditions of modernity.

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The centrepiece of the Ryabushinsky House is a sculptural staircase (Plate  27). The staircase and two-storey hallway create an otherworldly, theatrical space at the heart of the home. The space is strange and unstable, with diffused light from different sources – a stained-glass window, skylight and electric lights – and makes no reference to the external world of the Moscow street outside. These light sources softly illuminate the undulating forms of the staircase and the dominant green colours of the hall. The effect is to evoke the rippling, dynamism of an underwater world (Howard 1996:149). It is the manipulation of light that unifies the interior and transforms it from aesthetic curiosity into a journey to another world. One of the common features of such Art Nouveau interiors was the use of the natural world as a theme, while paradoxically denying an actual relationship to the environment outside. Art Nouveau buildings across Europe presented interiors where, even in cases where they stood within carefully planned gardens, an alternative reality was preferred for the interior. This was frequently achieved by cutting the interior off from the surrounding environment by means of opaque stained glass, sheer drapes and the preference for overhead light rather clear glass windows that let in views of the world outside. Ryabushinsky House was commissioned by a young mill-owner and businessman, Stepan Pavlovich Ryabushinsky (Kirichenko 1973: 61–70). His father had died in 1899, leaving him in charge of the textile mills and fortune amassed by his father and grandfather. He was also a member of a community of Moscow-based, newly enriched merchant families of serf origin who subscribed to a then-proscribed subsect of the Russian Orthodox Church, known as Old Believers (West 1991: 41–6). There are some parallels to the social position of the Jewish financiers and industrialists of Vienna: wealthy and cultured and at the same time excluded from the traditional centres of power. The inventive form of his home allowed Ryabushinsky to embody his aspirations for a Russian cultural revival, but also for a more personal transformation made possible through a departure from the realms of the mundane. The thematic inspiration is the Russian fairy tale of Sadko. Ryabushinsky chose to associate himself with Sadko, who made his fortune by means of his skill as a musician, delighting the Tsar of the Sea and winning his choice of bride. This tale inspired, among others, Ilya Repin’s painting, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (1876, Russian Museum) (Figure 11.1) as well as Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic work (1867) and opera, Sadko (1898). Sadko was also the theme taken by Luksch-Makowsky for one of her panels for the Beethoven exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1902 as well as the subject of some of Vrubel’s work. The selection of fairy-tale themes, as we have seen in Princess Tenisheva’s Snow White dressing table set, appealed to artists and designers in part due to the foundational role of folk tales in studies of national language and culture. Repin’s Sadko was painted, not in Russia, but during his stay in Paris between 1874 and 1876. David Jackson has suggested parallels between this composition and Repin’s next painting, A Parisian Café (1875, private coll.), which depicted the encounter of an overwhelmed Russian youth with the glamour of Paris nightlife and its modern women (Jackson 1998). Though the Russian tale and contemporary Paris might seem a world apart, there is something similar in the atmosphere of strange enchantment that pertains to both scenes. Repin’s Sadko is shown selecting his bride from among the Princesses of the Sea. Repin described his Sadko painting as ‘brilliantly lit by electric light’, the artificial light effect used to capture the uncanny world of the undersea kingdom (Jackson 1998: 398). The theme of Russian fairy tale appealed to a Muscovite intelligentsia who patronized the Russian national revival (Frey 2018). In contrast to the Polish national revival, which sought cultural identity for the nation in the absence of statehood, Russia was a strong, sovereign empire.

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FIGURE 11.1  Ilya Repin, Sadko (1876, Russian Museum). Oil on canvas, 322 x 230 cm © Photo 12/ Contributor/Getty Images.

The impetus instead was a desire to shake off the sense of cultural inferiority which lingered in Russia’s relationship to Western Europe. Tsar Peter the Great’s reforms in the eighteenth century had energetically reoriented Russian culture towards European norms. The Petrine reforms included a disdain for the traditionally Russian as backward and unsophisticated. But by the latter decades of the nineteenth century a movement was underway to reclaim the cultural validity of Old Russia. Assertion of this identity was also a way for individuals like Ryabushinsky to revalue their peasant heritage, turning it from a liability into a cultural asset in assertion of their true Russianness. Shekhtel’s staircase drew on a traditional tale, but depended also on new technologies to achieve its effects. The form of the staircase itself was made of a marble composite, which enabled the casting of the smooth, liquid forms. The integrated electrical light at the foot of the stairs, with bulbs in the form of stalactites, waving tentacles and a glass canopy like the back of a giant sea turtle created a centrepiece both theatrical and contemporary (Brumfield 1987: 24–5). Its strangeness and undulating forms have grown out of and broken free from the regular floral patterns of traditional folk art. The effect captures the lure and threat of wild and untamed natural world, a central trope in the fairy-tale genre: the atavistic threat posed by darkness and tangled briars and poisoned apples. The unconventional layout of the house departed from the regularity of the classical palace or villa. Rooms tessellated around the central staircase in a manner that reflected Shekhtel’s awareness of contemporary Art Nouveau architecture from across Europe and the irregular forms of Russian folk architecture (Cooke 1995: 10; Howard 1996: 149). The irregular building layout and layers of illusion also facilitated the concealment

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of an Old Believer chapel for private, and at the time illegal, worship within the house (West 1991: 46). The interior incorporated a range of more traditional crafts in innovative ways to create resonances across the design. The regular pattern of the parquet floor breaks into wave forms that echo the themes of the staircase. The stained glass at the head of the stairs ensures that the light filtering down is appropriately blueish and watery. The stained glass is abstract, composed of dynamic, sweeping forms and bubbles. There is a great synthesis in the various details used. The stained-glass window is complemented by a metalwork balconette, in which the sweeping lines and curves suggest both rushing water and fishes’ scales. From the head of the stairs, past a sculpted capital of writhing salamanders and blooming water lilies, the householder would descend into the watery zone of the floor below, the balustrade undulating gently under their hand. Shekhtel’s background in theatre design, fed into his architectural practice, which was shaped by the inventive pursuit of theatrical effects. In their home Ryabushinsky and his family could signal their cosmopolitan awareness of new design currents and their connection to traditional Russian culture. They could practice their faith in the hidden chapel and, more publicly, their vision for a dynamic and innovative modern Russia in which the merchant classes implicitly had a key role to play. The division between public and private could be regarded as a psycho-emotional retreat from a world, increasingly fraught with tension and conflict. Though, as I shall argue later, it could also be employed in pursuit of freedom to imagine other worlds and yet-to-be-realized futures. One of the key texts in the history of Art Nouveau is Carl Schorske’s cultural history of fin-desiècle Vienna (Schorske 1979). In this work he set out a thesis that explained the astonishing flowering of modern design and art in Vienna in this period. More specifically, he focussed on the patronage of a new generation of assimilated Jews who had witnessed the efforts of their fathers and grandfathers, amassing wealth, investing in ostentatious, conservative art and liberal politics and attempting to secure their place in the social hierarchy of the Austrian Empire. The rise of right-wing, antisemitism in the 1890s and the failure of liberal hopes resulted, so Schorske argued, in this new generation turning their back on the public realm and investing instead in the private realm of art. This took the form of Art Nouveau, a new style of art and design that ostensibly rejected politics in favour of a deep investment in personal subjectivity and beauty.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald: Fritz Waerndorfer’s music room and the performance of beauty In reflection on this point, we can now turn to the home of Waerndorfer. Collaboration between patron and designer is an important feature of projects at this time, which were driven by a desire to reflect the individual identity of the patron. Waerndorfer was one of the key patrons behind the development of Art Nouveau in Vienna. In particular through his patronage of the Wiener Werkstätte, which implemented a new vision for the integration of art, architecture and design (see the conclusion to Part I). His home was a remarkable commission. Instead of building a new house or placing himself in the hands of one designer, in 1903 Waerndorfer commissioned a group of interiors from four designers, the Viennese Hoffmann and Moser and the Scottish partnership of Mackintosh and Macdonald. The focus on the interior, with the exterior of the house largely untouched and unostentatious, can be seen as a pre-emptive defence against common antisemitic accusations of vulgar display (Parkinson 1997: 52). Unlike des Esseintes, the aristocrat who retreats into the sealed interior of his house, Waerndorfer’s home remained a public statement. Shapira has explored how the very theatricality

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of its interiors was designed to showcase both his collection of cutting-edge Secessionist art and his persona as an aesthete. This exotic persona was exaggerated: he liked to horrify his visitors with his pet snakes and collection of erotic art (Shapira 2016: 136). This mode can be compared to Bernhardt’s use of an exaggerated persona as a protective device. Cabinets and draws which only the host could open ensured that the experience of looking could not erase the presence of the patron-as-impresario (Shapira 2006: 62–5). The selection of different and often controversial artworks and designers again asserted the acknowledgement of Waerndorfer’s own taste, against the accusation that it had simply been bought wholesale. Minne’s Kneeling Youth (1898) was displayed in front of a mirror, just as it appears in van Rysselberg’s The Reading. A paradoxical set of associations is invoked between the inward gaze of the youth, his reflection, his narcissism and the reflection of the visitor looking at him. A visit to Waerndorfer’s home was a world away from a conventional Viennese family home. From the leafy streets of the bourgeoisie residential district, known as the ‘Cottage-Viertel’ (Cottage District) due to an earlier fashion for English-style detached family homes, the interiors of the house offered a contrasting artificial environment of seamlessly composed spaces. The theme of travel and transportation can be traced in various ways (Shapira 2006: 65–70). The dining room by Hoffmann evoked the narrow, yet luxurious interior of a Pullman railway carriage (Shapira 2016: 129). This allusion was noted by the contemporary critic Ludvig Hevesi: Also, these windows in the outer wall are an illusion, a pretension. Belts are attached below the panes in order to lower them or raise them, as in a railway salon wagon of the NiceExpress. We are sitting in this salon as in a white-marbled Pullman that is silently rolling forward. We are not in Karl-Ludwig-Straße no. 45 any longer, but passing Genoa. Drifting along the Riviera. (Shapira 2006: 67) The music room by Mackintosh and Macdonald presents another form of architectural transportation (Figure 11.2). While all the interiors presented sophisticated atmospheres in which the elevation of art over everyday life was paramount, Hoffmann’s and Moser’s were sober, with an emphasis on the stark graphic contrast of light and dark colours and geometric precision. The Mackintosh/Macdonald interior was of a complementary, though different, order. The prominent note of white continued the luxurious alternative character of the whole project. Instead of dark contrasting colours, however, the secondary notes were of pink and lavender. These light tones gave the room an ethereal air that was extended throughout Mackintosh’s designs for furnishings and through Margaret Macdonald’s friezes. The scale of the friezes, mounted high on the walls, and the complementary handling of the rest of the room ensured that they dominated the overall effect. The theme of the friezes was taken from the play The Seven Princesses (1891), by Maeterlinck (1862–1949). Maeterlinck was famous throughout Europe by the 1900s (Laoureux 2008). His work resonated within the new unity of the arts being pursued in Art Nouveau circles because of the genre-breaking emphasis in his texts on imagery, scenography and on abstract rhythms rather than the content of speech, music without music (Rykner 2007: 23–9). Similar rhythmic patterns can be found in Macdonald’s frieze, which instead of illustrating a series of scenes, seeks to capture the overall atmosphere of the play with similar economy (Parkinson 1997: 57). The story of The Seven Princesses uses a fairy-tale-like theme to explore the humanity’s powerlessness in the face of fate. It tells of a prince, travelling to visit his cousins, seven sisters, who all wait for him. Their waiting takes the form of withdrawal from the material world, a form of suspended animation. The prince comes too late, or possibly it is the intrusion of the worldly realm

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FIGURE 11.2  Charles Rennie Mackintosh, music room for Fritz Waerndorfer, Vienna 1903. In The Studio, 57 (1912):72.

he represents that causes catastrophe, and the seventh princess is dead. Macdonald’s frieze (1903, MAK) layers key events from the play, the vigil of the princesses, the laying out of the seventh princess by her sisters and the mourning of the prince into a unified composition (Plate   28). The repetition of the female figures echoes the uncanny use of repetition in Maeterlinck’s text. The image is ephemeral, white figures on a white ground. In underplaying the narrative qualities of the work as an illustration, it takes on a timelessness that also resonates with this theme within the play. The gesso panels were a technique Macdonald and Mackintosh had recently turned to, reflecting their awareness of the wider gesso revival. Their first friezes were displayed at the eighth Secession exhibition in Vienna in 1900, The May Queen, by Macdonald and The Wassail, by Mackintosh (Billcliffe & Vergo 1977: 739–40). These panels had been produced for the ladies’ luncheon room of Mrs Cranston’s Tea Rooms, Ingram Street, Glasgow. It was Waerndorfer, as a supporter of the Vienna Secession and a selector for its exhibitions, who arranged for their participation (Robertson 2000: 48). The Mackintoshes were an enormous success at the eighth Secession exhibition and it was in this context that Waerndorfer commissioned the music room. Mackintosh-Macdonald interiors from around 1900 are marked by a particular balance of lyricism and rigour. The tightly restricted palette they preferred created a contemporary impact, in contrast to the opulent interiors of previous decades. The spatial arrangements show the influence of Baillie Scott, whose flowing room plans were published in The Studio and were widely emulated (Baillie Scott 1896; 1897; 1900). The only structural change Waerndorfer made to his house was, at the instigation of Mackintosh, a small side extension to create an inglenook fireplace, including a little window and fitted benches. Niches and alcoves of this

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specific type played an important role in Baillie Scott’s theory of the interior, the ‘houseplace’ (Kornwolf 1972: 209–15; Baillie Scott 1906: 18). This was a way of conceiving of the domestic interior as revolving around the living patterns of the family. Baillie Scott opposed the convention of separate rooms for all the different functions of middle-class life. Instead he focused on how the home might be communally lived in. Alcoves and inglenooks were a way of creating intimate subspaces within larger, shared space. For example, he often used a dining alcove, rather than dining room, with curtains to separate it off from the main room so that the untidiness of the setting and clearing of the table could be concealed and the reveal of the laid table, rich with dishes could be rendered charmingly dramatic. This usage could be further extended, he proposed, by using the curtained dining alcove for staging home theatricals (Baillie Scott 1896: 33). The quote with which this chapter opens indicates the way his widely influential theory of architecture pursued a balance between practical comfort and poetry in life and centred on the lived experience of the user (Scott 1906: 138). It has been suggested that the connection, via a curtained partition, between the Mackintosh/ Macdonald music room and the Hoffmann dining room makes the music room something like a minstrels’ gallery. The curtains could be drawn back and the diners regaled with musical performances (Vergo 2000: 36). However, it is also possible to imagine Mackintosh, who had a friendly rivalry with his Austrian colleague, conceiving of the relationship between the two rooms more as Baillie Scott suggests, and conceptually reducing Hoffmann’s dining room to a curtained dining alcove off of his central ‘houseplace’. Given Waerndorfer’s self-styling as an art lover, it is not unreasonable to give such precedence to the aesthetic heart of the home. The all-white interior created an elevated effect of paradoxical simplicity and complexity. The restriction of palette in the room and the friezes directs the attention towards closer contemplation of the details. The struts of chairs are twinned and delicately turned. The fin-like table legs on the tea table before the fire present a different aspect, depending on the angle from which you view them. The plain surfaces compel the viewer to notice the points of colour, the tile, glass inlay and stained glass detailed and the jewel-like stones scattered across the surface of the frieze. The artistry of the interior was fine-tuned and, in the manner that Whistler utilized musical titles for his paintings, suggests a strong analogue between art and music. This was picked up by a contemporary critic: The composition forms an organic whole, each part fitting into the rest with the same concord as do passages in a grand symphony; each thought resolves itself as do the chords in music, till the orchestration is perfect, the effect one of complete repose filling the soul. (Levetus 1913: 72) We can compare this quote with the one by Baillie Scott which proposed an analogue between the experience of architecture and Shakespeare’s celebration of the imaginative life. Both use correspondences to other art forms to present the idea of an interior that touches the visitor on a deeper level, stimulating the soul, an aesthetic experience beyond the mundane.

The light of other worlds: Dreams of a nation The manipulation of light and space were key ingredients in the orchestration of such new architectural experiences. Though these experiences could be rarefied, a retreat from the everyday, this did not mean they did not engage with contemporary challenges. Hvitträsk, Kirkkonummi (1903), the villa home of Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950), used light and evocative materials and imagery to create a theatrical interior, but with an emphasis on the creation of a

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space from which to envisage the future of an independent Finland. The villa was designed as part of a trio of living spaces for the architectural colleagues, Saarinen, Armas Lindgren and Herman Gesellius. The site chosen was a plot on the wooded shoreline above lake Vitträsk (Hausen 1990: 116–26). The main hall of Saarinen’s villa was very much a ‘houseplace’ and the social heart of the complex. It was reached via a journey through the centre of the house from the entrance on the other side of the building. This journey took the visitor into a shady porch and under the massive stone arch of the front door, then along a low narrow corridor that finally opened onto the substantial, double-height space of the hall. A journey from enclosed to open space. Windows in the living room were used relatively sparingly and overhung by deep verandas above. Contemporary photographs show them draped with gauzy curtains and, as a result, the large space was never brightly illuminated, but it was open and airy. To one side the ceiling height was lowered to create a more intimate seating area by the fire. To the other side a broad alcove opened onto a connected dining room. During the evenings, the hall would be illuminated by firelight, lamplight and candlelight. The monumental cylindrical form of the brick stove incorporated both a closed stove and an open hearth in a fusion of the Nordic and British architectural traditions. A contemporary photograph of the area in front of the fire shows the floors covered with furs beneath the low beams of the ceiling (Figure 11.3). While the stove element is adequate for the heating of the room, the leaping flames of the open hearth, beneath its beaten copper hood made an important psychological contribution to both the homeliness and modernity of the interior. Though this may seem contradictory, the symbolic archaism of the open hearth in places like

FIGURE 11.3  Eliel Saarinen, Hvitträsk, Kirkkonummi, Finland, 1903. Magyar Iparművészet, XI (1908): 23.

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Finland and Russia, where more efficient brick stoves had been in use for over a century, was as much a reference to the vogue for contemporary English Arts and Crafts architecture as it was an evocation of the ancient tribal hearth. The arrangement of the large room into zones of experience and the dominance of the hearth again reveals the pan-European influence of Baillie Scott and British domestic architecture, disseminated in design journals and other publications such as Das englische Haus (1904–5) by Herman Muthesius (Muthesius 2007). The candles of the polished brass wall-sconces around the room performed a similar function to the open fire – overtly archaic and atmospheric in their contribution of low, flickering light. This was a conscious aesthetic choice, as the studio space upstairs, where good quality light was needed for work, was lit by large windows and incandescent gas mantles (Amberg 2000: 88). At night the large space of the hall would be dimly illuminated with pools of light and areas of comparative darkness in-between. The letters of the Viennese composer Gustav Mahler contain an account of his visit to Hvitträsk in 1907. He observed that ‘At dusk, we sat in the twilight in front of the open fire, where huge logs blazed and glowed as though in a smithy’ (Mahler 1973: 218–9). Though there is little detail in this description, the comparison to a smithy, with the intensity of the single light source of the forge suggests the theatrical impact of the lighting arrangements at Hvitträsk. The rich timber colour of the pine interior of the main hall, augmented by textiles and brass and iron fittings, contrasted with the light pale colours, white painted furniture and cheerful yellow notes of the bedrooms upstairs. Again, Saarinen’s design followed widely understood precepts on the way environments affected the psyche. The Swedish social reformer and feminist Ellen Key in her treatise on design, Beauty for All (1899), wrote of the bedrooms: Above all, truly important for your health is light, calm wallpaper in some mild colour in your bedroom. It is harmful to your nerves as well as your eyes to be repeatedly exposed to the ugly, the messy, and the pointless! It has been scientifically proven that calm, warm, cheerful colours not only increase the vital energy of healthy people, they also have a calming influence on nervous dispositions. (Key 2007: 44) In contrast to the scientific cleanliness and calm upstairs, the main rooms downstairs evoked the fantasy of an ancient Finnish feasting hall. The massive log walls of the main hall, furs, textiles candles and deep-set windows signalled loudly the building’s protective function and its relationship to Finnish traditions, both real and imagined. Light acts upon surfaces, animating the materials: the subdued glow of bare pine, the shine of copper and brass and the gentle glimmering of coloured textiles, murals and stained glass. The adjacent dining room had vaulting and abstract murals that evoked the interior of a medieval church – an element of Finland’s architectural heritage greatly prized at this period. It also contained a stained-glass window that included a view of Hvitträsk in the background of a scene of figures in seventeenth-century dress. The pseudohistorical representation of the house endowed the newly built home with a fantasy history. When Hvitträsk was built, at a point of crisis in Finland’s history as Finns strove to resist total unification with Imperial Russia, the future possibility of an independent Finland was an idea in need of such a home. The representation of an alternative Finnish past, of great halls and heroes, rather than centuries of subjugation to first Swedish then Russian authority, created the context for the imagining of an alternative national future. Hvitträsk and many similar interiors in students’ unions, banks and public buildings were sites for the fostering of national consciousness. Art Nouveau spaces like these were, therefore, not solely sites of escape from an unacceptable reality. They were instruments for mental emancipation and the fostering of the imagined community of the nation.

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Casa Lleó Morera (1902) in Barcelona can be understood in a similar fashion. Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1850–1923) transformed an existing townhouse into a modern Catalan-GothicMoorish palace, for Francesca Morera i Ortiz, the heiress of another Catalan family that had made its fortune in the Spanish colonial plantations of the Americas. It had a sculpted facade by Eusebi Arnau (1864–1933) that blended heraldic beasts, flowers and life-like human figures and the interiors were illuminated by extensive stained-glass windows by Antoni Rigalt i Blanch (1850–1914). The wealth of surface ornament, mosaic, cast majolica bosses and tiles, carved wood and marquetry created an interior rich in narrative and allusion. Occupants of the house were surrounded by images of flowers, foliage and elegant maidens, the lyric poetry of Catalan troubadours sprung to life. The flow of space and the many apertures in the facade depended on the use of new structural technologies, while the decoration addressed the subjectivities of the occupants and visitors in a manner that blended the rational and symbolic, the modern and the traditional (Domènech i Girbau 1994: 17–21). The gazed gallery facing the inner courtyard depicts a mountainous Catalan landscape, including the Mulberry bush associated with the name Morera, as alternative vista. The space within was bathed in natural light, but it was not the light of the modern city. Instead it offered a vision of rural Catalonia that spoke both of nationalist nostalgia and of the shared dream of future independence. A contemporary photograph of the interior of Casa Lleó Morera presents the interior as a space that cannot be simplistically framed as a site for escapism and private dreaming (Figure 11.4). The men are figures of the Barcelona art world and are gathered in

FIGURE 11.4 Baldomer Gili i Roig, Baldomer Gili Roig in Barcelona’s Reial Cercle Artístic (View of the interior of the gallery of Casa Lleó Morera), Barcelona, with windows by Antoni Rigalt i Blanch, (c.1910, Museu d’Art Jaume Morera) © Jaume Morera Art Museum (Dolors Moros Legacy) MALL 3268.

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perusal of the latest print publications, they are not enacting a retreat from public life. Their activity is perfectly framed by the space, not removal from the world but a transcending of the limits of present realities with a firm eye on the future. Dream spaces might be unreal in and of themselves and representative of realities that were aspired to, rather than achieved, but the ultimate failure or success of these dreams in securing political change should not be what marks such interiors as advances or retreats.

Otto Wagner: St Leopold’s Church and the healing power of art By the 1890s, the health-giving benefits of calm, simple design had already permeated the public consciousness. It made sense that orchestration of psycho-emotional affect could also be directly employed by the medical profession. Otto Wagner’s designed for the Steinhof Mental Asylum outside Vienna represents the coming together of the latest thinking on architecture for mental wellbeing across both the psychiatric and design professions. Even if, as Leslie Topp points out, these ideas were pursued alongside the public esteem accrued by investment in fashionable design (Topp 2005). The church, which sits at the geographical and conceptual apex of the complex encapsulated Wagner’s efforts to contribute to the therapeutic treatment of patients. This corresponded with Wagner’s general principles that saw the architect’s role as one that engaged rationally and creatively with the needs of modern life and the solutions offered by modern technologies. He was a prominent architectural educator and his 1895 textbook Modern Architecture went into many editions. His stance was captured in the preface which proclaimed, in capital letters: One idea inspires the whole book; namely, THAT THE WHOLE BASIS OF THE VIEWS OF ARCHITECTURE PREVAILING TODAY MUST BE DISPLACED BY THE RECOGNITION THAT THE ONLY POSSIBLE POINT OF DEPARTURE FOR OUR ARTISTIC CREATION IS MODERN LIFE. (Schorske 1979: 74) Wagner did not design the details of all the pavilions, only the overall plan and the church building. The church lies at the epicentre of his vision of an ideal, modern community, rational, enlightened and set in nature (Topp 2005: 150). Psychiatric treatment had evolved through the course of the nineteenth century, moving from a pre-modern policy of incarceration of the ‘incurably mad’ to a range of treatments designed, in aspiration if not in practice, to affect a cure. These treatments were based on an assumption of intimate connectivity between body and mind. Electro-shock therapy or hydro-therapy variously sought to rebalance the mind by startling or soothing the body. Emphasis on access to light, nature and occupational therapy (gardening, art or music) were based on the principle of reversing the damage done by life in the cities. Wagner’s design accommodated these new ideas and addressed both the bodies and the minds of the patients of the hospital. The layout of the various pavilions was regular and orderly, but not monotonous, set amid lawns and trees. Many of the ideas around the avoidance of monotony, access to light and fresh air and a logical arrangement of accommodations and central buildings had parallels in new thinking on urban planning more widely (Topp 2005: 143–6). The church represented the heart of the community and its spiritual life. In this building Wagner took the opportunity to make a statement as to the role design might play in alleviating

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the ills of the modern city. The building was light and airy, clad inside and out in washable marble slabs. The bodily needs of patients were considered down to the minutiae of design details like the absence of steps to trip over and the substitution of a holy water faucet for the traditional stoup, to prevent the passing on of infection. Subtle control over the patients was facilitated through varying the length of benches, so that calm patients could sit in larger groups than potentially unquiet ones. Access to the pulpit and organ loft was carefully restricted and across the facility balconies were protected with wire mesh so that there could be no danger of disturbed individuals falling from heights. The needs of patients for mental order was addressed through the symmetrical, regular plan of the complex as a whole and this culminated in the Greek-cross plan of the church, with its central dome. The colour palette of the pavilions was white and green. In the church this shifted to a more celebrational white and gold, with a cool, blue-dominated palette for the stainedglass windows (Plate 29). Abundant light and gentle colour were used to uplift and calm. This attention to detail extended through the iconography of the church, which replaced potentially disquieting images of Christian suffering with a benign, paternal deity and a pantheon of serene, caring saints and angels. All the figures, in the windows by Moser, were calm and static, rather than active. They modelled the desired behaviour of the congregation: quiet attentiveness, gazing towards the altar. The link between environment, body and mind permeated well beyond the design professions. The study of Sigmund Freud at Berggasse 19 was carefully arranged by him to further the aims of his evolving psychoanalytic therapy (Figure 11.5). The couch was a central instrument in his

FIGURE 11.5  Sigmund Freud, Study, Berggasse 19, Vienna (1910s) © Authenticated News/Staff/ Getty Images.

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treatment. Reclining and unable to see the analyst signalled to the analysand that they were not participating in a conventional social discourse. Freud’s couch was covered in warm, deeppile carpet and multiple cushions and blankets, so that the body of the analysand would both cocooned and gently stimulated by patterns and colours. Around the room was an assemblage of archaeological fragments. Above the couch itself was a print depicting the Abu Simbel temples in Egypt. These had been lost beneath the desert sands and rediscovered by archaeologists in the early nineteenth century. Freud often favoured the analogue of archaeology when discussing the function of psychoanalysis in the bringing to light that which was buried beneath the surface (Armstrong 2005). Both psychology and the occult were both interested in ‘occluded’ phenomena and shared the assumption that there were layers of hidden knowledge present but not immediately accessible (Lahelma 2015: 63). These examples from across European Art Nouveau all evince the wide-spread awareness that the mind of the subject could be affected by every element of their environment. It was understood that through the orchestration of light, materials, acoustics, colours and images different associations, perceptions and experiences could be set in motion. The conceptual tools of dream, fairy tale and myth, which were commonly employed in these interiors, were shared by the emerging discipline of psychoanalysis as a means by which to tap into the unconscious. A contemporary critic described his impression of the 1902 Beethoven exhibition: ‘a buried temple is brought to light not from centuries past but from our own souls’ (Lux 1902: 481). The inward turn represented by these interiors was not solely a retreat. It can also be understood as a striving towards an extension of perception and wisdom, a pursuit of knowledge of the self. What propelled patrons like Waerndorfer, Ryabushinsky, Morera and the many other industrialists, merchants and artists to invest in interiors that sought to affect users in these ways? In the city, upon which the home turned its back, the mud of the streets was controlled by means of new surfaces of macadam. Dams, sewers and the Water Boards regulated the flow and disposal of waste and fresh water. Gas and electric light banished night, at least in the cities. Railways, steam ships and the telegraph encircled the globe, all governed by timetables. The earth and its resources were controlled and monetized as never before. Dream-like interiors, evocative of under-sea kingdoms or ancient castles could all be seen as a form of psychic defence against external systems of ever-increasing complexity and scale and a release from ridged social conventions. Art Nouveau interiors can be compared in their indeterminacy with the new forms of art discussed in the previous chapter. Place and time are mutable, space is ambiguous and fixed surfaces frequently appear to melt or burst into life. In this way the user, like the viewer previously discussed, is required to make the final determination of where they are and what they might make of it. These interiors were statements of overt public positioning on the part of their clients. The idiosyncrasies of these spaces were simultaneous statements of individuality and modernity: a performance of freedom from convention. Nonetheless, there is also a fancifulness to many of these interiors that demands attention. The sensory stimulation of winding routes, glimpses from one space to another, coloured light, of music filtering out of nowhere, of deep furs and cigar smoke all seem to share a desire to inject sensation in to lives that have become too prosaic and ordered. There remains an element of adults playing make-believe in these medieval halls and fairy-tale realms. There is an uncanny dimension to the evocation of living nature, the frozen undulation of a staircase that seems almost to pulse with life and in surfaces that appear to burst into bloom. Sequences of rooms that instead of opening up, wrap around themselves within the cocoon of an inward-looking house can be claustrophobic or disorientating, particularly when visual reference to the world outside is obscured.

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What do such designs reveal? An impulse towards beauty that is ambiguous rather than straightforward. An experience of architecture, and particularly interiors, which are theatrical, disconcerting and difficult to navigate. This obscurity of navigation slows down the visitor; the encounter is more vivid and has greater impact because it is unfamiliar. Increasingly, architects and clients sought to create not just displays of objects, but experiences. Our contemporary notion of the ‘experience economy’ reflects a similar impulse to substitute a memorable experience or encounter for the act of consumption. Among the wealthier classes this could function as a mark of distinction, signalling that an individual had not merely financial means, but that they and their guests also had the sensibilities and intellectual refinement to prefer stimulation over mere opulence. One of the marks of difference in Art Nouveau is its very difference. It is different not only from the architecture of the past and also from the architecture of contemporaries, unique and the sole preserve of the client. A bid for particularity in an increasingly mass-produced and crowded world. There is both a spiritualism in the pursuit of beauty and a crassness in the intentionally inaccessible and elite display of wealth and refinement of temperament. As another of Shekhtel’s clients is said to have put it when he was asked in what style he wanted his Moscow mansion: ‘In all styles. I have the money’ (Kean 1982: 108).

12 Conclusion New art for a changing world In this final chapter we have the opportunity to reflect on some of the ways the ideas traced in this book played out across diverse fields of architecture, as the innovations and invention of Art Nouveau spread around the world. In the arena of public architecture, the potential of Art Nouveau to realize individual identity was extended to express collective, often nationbased, identities. The examples focused on, from Barcelona, Prague and Mexico City, brought together groups of artists and designers and wider community of the people. The new visions of Art Nouveau spread rapidly around the world as part of the mobility of people and ideas emphasized in this book. The work of the Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco (1857–1932) in Istanbul is used as an example of the many architects and designers who sought work around the world and brought with them the forms of Art Nouveau, which they transformed to meet the needs of their clients. The work of Wilhelmina Geddes (1887–1955) for the Karori Chapel in Wellington represents an example of the mobile object and the channels of colonial patronage that saw Art Nouveau adopted as a simultaneous statement of modernity and cultural allegiance. In the Christuskirche in Windhoek we see evidence of the networks of education, patronage and materials that brought distant territories into symbolic connection with colonial centres. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the evolution of Art Nouveau in the years up to and following the First World War. The pavilions of the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition reveal how the visions of Art Nouveau were contested and transformed as mechanization and mass society challenged its emphasis on the individual.

Art Nouveau: Public art and collective identity The careful arrangement of colour, volume, light and ornament to create transportative spaces swiftly travelled from domestic architecture into public buildings. The same principles could be used to create spaces of community celebration, commemoration and collective transcendence. The Palau de la Música Catalana (Barcelona, 1905–8) by Domènech is a quintessential example of such a project (Plate  30). The Palace was a public concert hall, commissioned by the Catalan choral society, Orfeo Català, which had been founded in 1891 to champion the cause of Catalan music. Choral music represented a synthesis of music and the Catalan language, the ultimate national art (Vidaud 2015). It was, in every way, designed as a spectacle and a statement of Catalan creativity and can be seen as a collective and public expression of the Catalan identity expressed in the private dwellings of the Güell Palace and Casa Morera. The building further

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extended the synthesis of the arts, adding the visual and plastic arts as well as advanced engineering to create a monument to the artistry and modernity of the Catalan people. The load-bearing structure of the building was provided by a steel skeleton and it was this that enabled the walls of the large concert hall to be opened up, flooding the space with light. Domènech arranged large windows around three sides of the hall, and a central roof light with an integrated pendant of stained glass. The steel frame of the building was clad inside and out with a profusion of applied ornament, in stone, iron, brick, mosaic, ceramic, painted glass and plaster sculpture, much of it contributed by the leading Catalan artists of the day (Sack & Suzuki 1995: 19–21). In the concert hall the comparatively limited wall surface between the large windows explodes in ornament. The decorative scheme was united by a strong emphasis on nature, with flowers blooming on every surface. The figurative elements combined an emphasis on Catalan folk culture – sculptural illustrations of folk songs – and Catalan’s place in world music culture. The frieze of female muses that encircled the rear of the stage served symbolically to connect the singers on the stage to the history of music. The sculptural busts that emerge from the wall surface provide the artists on the stage with a virtual accompaniment. Their instruments range from the ancient Greek kithara, through Catalan traditional instruments and on to allusions to Germanic, Celtic and North African music cultures. The Catalan flag at the centre of the frieze clarifies the identity of the heirs to all these traditions (Cazurra 2002). The richness of light, colour and ornamentation and music, enhanced by the room’s acoustics, created a Gesamtkunstwerk accessible to all who attended concerts there. The spectacle of the audience themselves, occupying the stalls and open galleries of the auditorium, further animated the space and ensured that they too were participants in the manifestation and celebration of Catalan culture. The Palau de la Música exemplifies the way in which Art Nouveau design embraced the possibilities offered by new materials and construction techniques. This was used in the creation of spectacular spaces in which a rich decorative scheme, inside and out, could carry public messages of shared identity. The attention given to the experience of users of Art Nouveau buildings and objects lent itself to the generation of collective experiences in which communities could come together and mutually reinforce shared values. This dimension of Art Nouveau stretched around the world and lasted well into the 1920s. It met the needs of emerging nation states for public buildings expressive of new, national identities. The internal paradoxes of the Art Nouveau movement facilitated the interweaving of references to both the past and the future, modernity and tradition, which was particularly resonant for these nation-building public buildings. This can be seen in the Prague Municipal House by Antonín Balšánek (1865–1921) and Osvald Polívka (1859–1931), built between 1904 and 1911 (Figure 12.1). The building was devised as a municipal centre and cultural home for the Czech people. It was conceived at a time when Czech nationalists were striving for autonomy within the Dual Monarchy of AustriaHungary. The site chosen was intentionally loaded with national significance: the location of the demolished palace of the kings of Bohemia. It was built adjoining the Powder Tower, one of the surviving thirteenth-century gates into the city. The Gothic ornament of the Powder Tower found a new reflection in the rich, plaster ornament of the Municipal House. The design had associations of French Art Nouveau, which avoided the implication of too great a cultural dependence on the imperial capital of Vienna. The technical lessons of the Wagner school were absorbed, but there was strong feeling in Prague that the form of expression must reflect Czech heritage (Balšánek 2005: 82–5).

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FIGURE 12.1  Antonín Balšánek and Osvald Polívka, Prague Municipal House (Prague, 1904–11) © Imagno / Contributor / Getty Images.

The architectural flexibility of steel construction allowed Balšánek to create a dynamic layout across the awkward, almost triangular plot. The Smetana Concert Hall sat at the heart of the plan, breaking through the divisions between floors. The building ranged across multiple functions, commercial, social, cultural and municipal. The rich decorative scheme across the facades and interiors was achieved through the cooperation of the leading Czech artists, designers and craftsmen of the day, including Mucha. His Mayor’s Hall scheme incorporated murals, sculptural ornament, stained glass, furniture and textiles, on the theme of the civic virtues personified by figures from Czech history. Room by room through the building, each space represented a similar commitment to craft, artistry and a celebration of Czech and Slavic culture. Such efforts at creating national palaces of art were not restricted to Europe. The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City, 1904–34) designed by Adamo Boari (1863–1928) was initiated with the hopes of a grand opening in 1910 to celebrate the centennial of Mexican independence from Spain (Figure 12.2). The aspiration of building a grand national theatre reflected the nation-building goals of the Porfiriato regime. A national theatre was one of the quintessential institutions of a national culture. Situated at one end of the central Alameda public park, the building was part of a wider vision for the representation of Mexico City as a modern, national capital (Vernon & Condello 2004: 2). Boari was an Italian architect, but his career was international. Prior to moving to Mexico, he had worked in Brazil and Chicago. He was also sent back on a three-month trip of Europe to study theatre architecture and his design reflected contemporary European models (Romero Vázquez & Betancourt Mendieta 2020: 283). Boari’s design was a fusion of modern technology

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FIGURE 12.2  Adamo Boari, The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City, 1904–34) © Dge/ Wikimedia Commons.

and the desire to express Mexican identity. The building was based on a steel skeleton, set on a concrete base. The steelwork necessitated the engagement of a firm from Chicago to execute it. The visual language of the building mixed European Beaux-Art Classicism, with Art Nouveau and pre-Hispanic Mexican motifs. Boari was also particularly interested in relating the building to nature, as a way of distinguishing its Mexican character. As well as its relationship to the Alameda park, he envisaged a central winter garden filled with indigenous plants (Vernon & Condello 2004: 6). The centrepiece of the main auditorium was a glass theatre curtain by the Hungarian artist Géza Maróti (1875–1941), following Boari’s design. It was commissioned from Tiffany Studios and represented Mexican landscape in glass, depicting the snow-capped volcanoes Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. Tiffany sent an assistant to Mexico to sketch these mountains and also the local flora, which appeared in the curtain (McNiven 2010). This represents a continuation of Tiffany’s commitment to nature as a model. The collaboration between an Italian architect, a Hungarian artist and an American design studio in the execution of a Mexican work of art exemplified the transnational nature of the art world at this time. The building ran into a host of structural and financial difficulties and was only partially completed before all work ground to a halt in the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). The project was only revived and completed by the architect Federico Mariscal in 1932–4, this time in a very different political context. The interior scheme was adapted to reflect the shift in ideals from a bourgeois national theatre to a theatre for the people and included new murals on socialist themes by Diego Rivera and others. Though the idiom had moved on to forms more commonly

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labelled Art Deco, the spirit of the spectacular civic and cultural buildings that drew together artists and designers to create a total work of art remained an enduring legacy of Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau worldwide By the mid-1900s Art Nouveau was no longer a shocking and iconoclastic break from the hegemony of tradition. It was seen in railway stations, hotels, apartment buildings, magazine covers and objects of all sorts. Monumental civic commissions, like the ones mentioned earlier, demonstrate that its potential to unite and represent shared aspirations for modern society had been recognized. This synthesis of modern forms and national aspirations was one that could also be used to address modernizing impulses around the world, in territories far away from the industrial and urban centres of Europe where it originated. The adoption of Art Nouveau in many cities around the world was used to signal aspirations to be a part of this cosmopolitan and contemporary movement. The modernization policies of the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid II, included many invitations to European architects. Istanbul was rapidly expanded. Large rental apartment blocks were erected, which formed part of new European-style neighbourhoods (Barillari & Godoli 1996: 133–68). The application of fashionable facades in styles of Art Nouveau – drawn variously from France, Belgium, Germany, Italy or Vienna – was designed to attract potential residents. This commercial architectural practice characterized the diffusion of Art Nouveau in cities around the world in the 1900s and 1910s. Stripped of Art Nouveau principles regarding form, materials and structure, mass-produced Art Nouveau-style ornament was applied to standard buildings, to give them a veneer of modernity. In Istanbul ornamental ironwork and moulded plaster details were the cheapest way of applying European glamour to new buildings. The teachings of Art Nouveau could also be used in pursuit of modern Turkish architecture. The Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco worked for Abdul Hamid II from 1893 until the Sultan was deposed in 1909. Like many Italian architects of this period, D’Aronco was influenced by the designs of the Wagner school, whose work he saw in international exhibitions and in publications. His architectural practice blended elements of European Art Nouveau with the calligraphic and geometric patterns of Islamic architecture and design. The integration of local elements created designs that were both contemporary and Europe-facing but also rooted in local traditions, a mode of working that remained at the heart of much Art Nouveau. Designers in Vienna, Budapest, Zagreb and other Eastern European cities made use of Byzantine elements to articulate this dimension of their ‘Eastern’ identity. In the same way, the history of Islamic architecture could be married with European forms to create a modern national style within the Ottoman Empire (Barillari & Godoli 1996: 99). This urge became increasingly prevalent as the progress-oriented ‘Young Turks’ reform movement gained ascendancy. D’Aronco’s tomb for the religious leader Sheikh Zafir Efendi in Beşiktaş, (Istanbul, 1903–4) is an example of this approach (Figure 12.3). Unlike the ad hoc application of Art Nouveau details to add fashionable appeal, D’Aronco’s design attempted a deeper integration of cultures. The freestanding cubic form of the tomb simplified the freestanding polygonal structure of Ottoman tomb architecture or türbe. The tall, round-arched windows and ribbed dome recalled, in miniature, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, one of the landmarks of Istanbul. The connection to Islamic tradition was not merely visual. D’Aronco’s design referenced traditional shrine architecture through the inclusion of a public fountain and a library wing, to signify charity and education in the faith (Barillari & Godoli 1996: 100).

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FIGURE 12.3  Raimondo D’Aronco, Sheikh Zafir Efendi Tomb (Beşiktaş, Istanbul, 1903–4) © Chapultepec/Wikimedia Commons.

The integration of cubic volume and central dome recalls Olbrich’s Secession House. This cannot be read simply as an example of Viennese influence. One of the nicknames for the Secession House was ‘the Mahdi’s Tomb’, in reference to its resemblance to the Tomb of the Mahdi in Omdurman, Sudan (Vergo 1975: 34). This, in turn, reveals the widespread awareness of Islamic architecture in Europe and its appearance as a source for new European design. This illustrates how far the mobility of architects and the mobility of architecture in illustration and exhibition had gone towards the development of a transnational architectural culture by the beginning of the twentieth century. Design could also travel colonial routes without the designer. Wilhelmina Geddes was an Irish stained-glass artist whose personal travels were limited to Great Britain and France (Bowe 2015: 48–9, 72–3). However, major work by her can be found in Wellington, New Zealand and Ottawa, Canada, through commissions secured via links between Ireland and other parts of the British Empire. The importance of Geddes’s career for the development of stained glass into the twentieth century has been highlighted by the work of Nicola Gordon Bowe (Bowe 2015). Geddes worked between 1911 and 1925 within the stained-glass workshop of An Túr Gloine (Tower of Glass), Dublin. Its aim was the fostering of an independent Irish tradition of artistic stained glass, in opposition to importation of factory-made English and German stained glass. Stained glass has already been noted as a significant art form within the Art Nouveau movement. As public art, its potential as a vehicle for national expression was particularly important for artists connected with national revival movements. Geddes’s windows Faith and Hope (1914) were designed for the St Martin Chapel, in the Karori Crematorium in Wellington, New Zealand, which had been built 1909 (Plate 31). They

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were commissioned by the British-born engineer William Ferguson, who had immigrated to New Zealand in 1883. The two windows were intended as memorials to his wife’s mother and his daughter who died in childhood. Ferguson’s connection to Ireland can be traced to his engineering studies at Trinity College, Dublin (Bowe 2015: 75–6). The commission was a deeply personal one and Ferguson would go on to commission further memorial windows for his brother-in-law, his wife and finally himself, in the chapel from Michael Healy, another An Túr Gloine artist (Caron 2001: 114). The choice of these Irish artists was clearly important and allowed Ferguson to express his allegiance back to the city of his youth. In the two windows, Geddes married her graphic skills with her sensitivity to colour and light. The delicate drawing and movement of the two central Angel figures of Faith and Hope lent dynamism and lyricism to the compositions, which are otherwise dominated by jewel-like geometric ornament. The stylized figures, with their wet-draped robes, recall the early medieval and ancient classical sculpture Geddes studied in French cathedrals and at the British Museum (Bowe 2015: 48–9). This gave the windows an archaic feel, rooting them in the long tradition of European religious art. At the same time, the rich colour and abstract ornament gave them modern energy. Nothing is rigid, despite the dominance of the rectilinear glazing bars. The designs integrate abstract patterns and narrative elements seamlessly. An example of this is the detail in which the figure of a crowing cock – symbolizing both dawn and the promise of the resurrection – breaks through the division between the frame and the central scene of Hope. The basket on which the cock stands visually echoes the cross-hatching used across different panes of the frame creating formal resonances across the surface. The globalization of design culture was not a politically neutral phenomenon. Though influences flowed back and forth, much of the political and economic power remained in the hands of white Europeans and Americans. Art Nouveau as an exported style, therefore, also reflected the continued dominance of colonial power. The Christuskirche (1907–10) by Gottlieb Redecker (1871–1945), in Windhoek, now the capital of Namibia, is an example of this (12.6). It was a prominent building, built for the new and growing German Lutheran congregation of German South West Africa. This territory had been established as a colonial possession of the German Empire in 1884. Windhoek was founded as an administrative centre for the colony in 1890 and plans for the church were drawn up in 1900. Redecker had been appointed Government Architect for the colony in 1899. He had been born in the region, a son of a German missionary, though he completed his higher education back in Germany (Mossolow 1978). This exemplifies another route for the globalization of culture as young artists, designers and architects, born in other parts of the world, accessed training in colonial centres, before returning to practise in their homelands. Redecker’s connection to Germany remained sustained by regular trips back and his architectural work was marked by a free interpretation of German historicism and Art Nouveau. The growth of Windhoek was rapid and marked by the dominance of design and planning principles originating in Europe. Redecker drew up building regulations and designed multiple public buildings (Böhm 2018: 210). The development of a new colonial cityscape was significant in visually asserting German control of the region. The Christuskirche was set on a hilltop and its 42-metre-high steeple was a highly prominent symbol. It stood near the Old Fortress, which had been built in 1890 as headquarters for the colonial military forces. Together the two buildings signified the spiritual and military dominance of the German regime (Steinmetz & Hell 2006: 175). The Christuskirche was built of local sandstone, though the main portal was carved from Carrara marble shipped from Italy (Figure 12.4). Carrara marble was a material with a long tradition in high-status European art and architecture. The church bells, spires, clock and

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FIGURE 12.4  Gottlieb Redecker, Christ Church (Windhoek, 1907–10) © Ljuba brank/Wikimedia Commons.

other fittings were all ordered from Germany. The stained-glass windows were a gift of Kaiser Wilhelm II and manufactured in Germany before being shipped – as Geddes’s glass would be – across the globe. The design of the church reflected recent developments in northern European, Lutheran church architecture, which fused Gothic and Romanesque elements with a free plan to create dramatic open interiors for preaching. The vault of the main roof was high and steep and each facade was enlivened by means of the dense irregular arrangement of windows and shallow buttresses, which punctuate the walls. In deference to the climate, the window area was kept small so that, with the exception of the main windows within each gable, a series of very small windows let in shafts of light that animated the interior. The stained glass was largely nonfigurative and presented geometric interlace patterns with borders of leaves and other foliate ornament. The European style of the building clearly addressed the German origins of the congregation. The gift of Wilhelm II also served as a visual reminder of the contribution of the colony to the German Imperial project and their inclusion within the wider German nation. This symbolism took on particular significance in the context of the completion of the church, which was interrupted by the Namibian-German war of 1904–7. Anticolonial uprisings of the Ovaherero and Nama people threatened the maintenance of the colony and the brutal suppressions that followed have been recognized as genocide (Niezen 2018: 547). The foundation stone of the church was laid in 1907, at the end of the war, in the presence of the colonial governor (Mossolow 1978). The church was dedicated to peace, with the bells bearing the inscriptions ‘Ehre sei Gott in der Hohe’ (‘Glory to God in the highest’), ‘Friede auf Erden’ (‘And on earth peace’) and ‘Den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen’ (‘Goodwill towards men’). But the monument of the war that was erected in 1912 between the church and the fortress commemorated only the 1,705 German citizens who died during the conflict and not the approximately 65,000 Ovaherero and 25,000 Nama people. The Christuskirche is something of a paradox. The form of the Lutheran church emphasized the democratic principle of access to light and to the word of God. The erection of the massive form of the church, its solidity and its steeple stretching up to heaven, would have articulated for the German population, the restoration of order and peace. To the subjugated indigenous populations, it conveyed a very different message. Everywhere the iconography asserted the superiority of the European tradition and the permanence in stone of the colonial regime (Becker 2018: 3). The importation of art, design and planning ensured that the heart of colonial

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Windhoek was tied to a vision of German identity looking both back to the past and to a shared contemporary identity.

Art Nouveau: Decline and evolution The rapidity of the spread of Art Nouveau and the diversity of the forms that it took across Europe and around the world makes the question of what came next a complex one. The outpouring of inventive new forms that we have traced through the 1890s and around 1900 continued in new directions as artists, architects and designers sought to consolidate their vision. Rather than fading away, there are many ways in which Art Nouveau persisted. The principles and ideals at the heart of Art Nouveau continued to resonate and resurface in modern art and design throughout the twentieth century. At the same time, there was a retreat from the wilder shores of experimentation. The influence of Classicism had never disappeared from the consciousness of European and American artists and designers and remained an integral part of their training. The prominence of the figure of Athena and the temple form, among other things, reveal the enduring cultural resonance of the Classical, even if in the hands of Art Nouveau artists and designers it took a mystic and hedonistic turn. The resurgence of Classicism as a more dominant model in the 1910s reflected diminishing faith in the principle that the natural world could effectively function as the basis for a wholly new approach to composition and architectural construction. Though iron and steel could be made to twine like vines and spread like branches, it was in practice more rational and economical to manufacture straight beams. The column and lintel system of Classicism was therefore easily returned to. This system was more readily integrated with the grid of steel posts and joists and the grid plan of modern cities than the irregularity of Art Nouveau. The rapid spread of ideas facilitated by exhibition and print lent itself to the promulgation of the new movement, but these media hungered for new forms, not the consolidation of established ideas. The Art Nouveau movement had been driven by the sense that the new realities of the twentieth century would need new art and design to meet the needs of the modern society. It is hardly surprising that no consensus could be reached on what form that would take. The turn back to Classical sources could itself go in different directions. A delicate, Rococo classicism was easily integrated with the floral and folate forms of French Art Nouveau. A stripped-back temple style could be married to the geometric volumes and ornament of Central European Art Nouveau. The brevity of the high point Art Nouveau invention around 1900 raises questions about its success or failure in meeting its own objectives. Was it the forerunner of Modernism, as suggested by its inclusion in seminal histories of Modern design such as Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of the Modern Movement? (Pevsner 1936). Or was it the last gasp of nineteenth-century eclecticism? The destruction of Art Nouveau architecture in the 1950s and 1960s and the relegation to museum stores and attics of Symbolist painting marked a low point in the appreciation of the movement. Paul Greenhalgh’s compelling conclusion to his Art Nouveau exhibition catalogue, ‘A Strange Death . . .’, suggests one answer to the rapidity with which Art Nouveau was superseded in the 1910s (Greenhalgh 2000: 429–36). He puts forward an explanation based on the idea of a movement no longer able to contain the conflicting momentum of its increasingly polarized constituent ideological parts: Intellectually and ideologically, the forces that largely destroyed Art Nouveau were in fact invented from within the parameters of the style itself. Internal polarisation became a prelude

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to exodus, so that by the end of the first decade of the new century the style had effectively torn itself apart, the two halves drifting to left and right. (Greenhalgh 2000: 429–30) The forces of modernity that artists and designers sought to reconcile in their work were certainly substantial. Frequently this included references to national identity rooted in the past, married with a forward-looking, transnational vision of the future. Modernity, in the form of new technology, was to be integrated with tradition, represented by the highest quality craftsmanship and materials. At the same time, access to beauty was to be extended to all. The fractured modern soul was to be repaired through rational design and spiritually released by new forms of art. Greenhalgh sees competing conceptions of the nature of modernity at the heart of the movement’s collapse. Two broad groupings separated out. The first wished to continue the radical agenda by formulating a modernist design that continued to pursue social and material progress, and that remained morally committed to the transformation of society. [. . .] The second element rejected this moral idealism and sought to replace Art Nouveau with a style that attempted to represent modern life, rather than to change it. This approach used the eclecticism developed within Art Nouveau to create an exotic, hedonistic style for the new age. (Greenhalgh 2000: 431) Greenhalgh represented the afterlife of Art Nouveau as a left-right political split: with the forces of conservatism, capitalism and consumption on the one hand, represented by a return to Classicism and ultimately the development of Art Deco, and on the other hand the birth of the Modern Movement, committed to rationalism and social transformation. There are certainly some truths to this, though in line with the rationale of this book, if we start looking at individual case studies and local contexts, we again find that there are nearly as many answers to the decline or development of Art Nouveau as there were individual practitioners. Individuals remain important in understanding the development of art movements. The generation born in the 1850s and 1860s were the pioneers of Art Nouveau and were at their most productive in the years around 1900. A number of key figures died around 1900, including Beardsley (1898), Gallé (1904), Bing (1905), Wyspiański (1907) and Olbrich (1908). For those who worked on into the 1910s and beyond, there was a general split between those whose approach evolved and those who kept on their own personal trajectories, much as before. Gaudí, Khnopff, Watts, Tagore, Mucha and Baillie Scott and others continued their practice, with the developments of the 1910s and the disruption of the First World War making comparatively little impression on their vision. Among those artists and designers whose work did change direction in the 1910s, the return to a more Classical vein was common. The lyricism of nature-based ornament or folkish vernacular influences were toned down in favour of simplified Classical forms and geometric ornament. We can see this in the architecture of Horta, Saarinen, Endell, Shekhtel and Mackintosh, among others. Despite these changes in forms though, they maintained their sensitivity to the use of contrasting materials, finishes and tonal effects, recognizable from their Art Nouveau work. Artists like Toorop and Klimt also continued to work, but with greater emphasis on geometry and stability in their compositions. Others, like Munch, von Stuck and Enckell, turned towards the energy of bright colours. This might appear as a volte face, if it is compared to the rhetoric of the 1890s. In reality there was more continuity than rupture in these new directions.

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The First Werkbund Exhibition, mounted in Cologne at the eve of war in 1914, is an event that reveals the different directions in which Art Nouveau had developed and the seeds of the future developments of the inter-war years. The Werkbund association had been founded in 1907 as a union of practitioners and manufacturers in architecture and design. Members ranged from individual artists to large manufacturers such as AEG, Daimler and Bosch (Maciuika 2005: 102). In principle, the organization aimed to unify the two groups and improve industrial manufacturing through the contributions of artists and designers. In reality, the tensions between art and industrial manufacturing were held in uneasy balance. The exhibition in 1914 was intended to showcase the work of members and the manufacturing and design prowess of Cologne and Germany. One of the dominant notes of the exhibition was the presentation of a simplified Classicism as a way of lending dignity to modern design. Hoffmann’s Austrian Pavilion is typical of this. The play with geometry and positive and negative space that characterized his work from the 1900s had evolved into a more stable Classicism. The Austrian Pavilion (Cologne, 1914) presented a facade of uniform, fluted columns, stripped of capitals, Classical but not historical (Figure 12.5). This design language could express the steel columns and joists from which modern buildings were constructed, but remained suitable for non-industrial settings, augmented with notes of classical ornament or sculpture. The regularity of Classicism could also be taken still further, as it was in the model factory by Walter Gropius (1883–1969). Here only symmetry remained and the curtain walls of glass around the twin stair cases signalled the direction Modernist architecture would take after the war.

FIGURE 12.5  Josef Hoffmann, Austria Pavilion, Werkbund Exhibition (Cologne, 1914) © Imagno/Contributor/Getty Images.

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The efforts of the Werkbund were coordinated by Muthesius. Inspired by the twin models of British industrialization and the Arts and Crafts movement, Muthesius was committed to the development of design and industry in Germany. By 1914, he was convinced that the solution to question of design quality in mass manufacturing was standardization. In the Werkbund congress held just before the opening of the exhibition, he put forward a proposal for a typology of standard forms to achieve beauty in mass production. This was vehemently rejected by a subgroup of members who championed artistic freedom (Schwartz 1996b: 147–9). Even Behrens, whose work at AEG might be seen as an application of the standardization principle, could not accept a proposal that threatened to erase the creative freedom of the designer. Other opponents to such rationalization included van de Velde, Obrist and Endell. Van de Velde’s Werkbund Theatre design reveal some rationalization of the fluid, expressive lines that had marked his earlier Art Nouveau, but the project remained infused with transnational thinking on drama, performance and the user experience (Kuenzli 2019: 127–54). The smooth, unornamented plaster walls of the theatre building emphasized the union of line and volume rather than decorative surface. The function and arrangement of the building was legible from the outside, the broad entrance, the raised volume of the auditorium behind and the still higher volume of the stage and fly loft at the rear (Figure 12.6). The stage was designed to facilitate new forms of stage and lighting design, integrating the latest thinking in this arena (Kuenzli 2012: 251). The theatre interior was decorated with murals and figural sculpture in a classical vein. But the design also included relief sculptures by another Werkbund founder-member, Obrist. The

FIGURE 12.6  Henry van de Velde, Werkbund Theatre, Werkbund Exhibition (Cologne, 1914) © Fonds Henry van de Velde. ENSAV – La Cambre, Bruxelles nr.5291

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sculpted biomorphic forms set in the windows to either side of the entrance gave the otherwise sober building the uncanny appearance of eyes. His abstract organicism remained very much in line with the mystical pantheism of the Munich Secession and reveals the thread of continuity between this and the apparent rappel à l’ordre of the Classicism of the 1910s. The persistence of attempts to fuse the rational with the transcendental can be traced further in another exhibition building, the Glass Pavilion by Bruno Taut (1880–1938) (Figure 12.7). At the heart of both this pavilion and the theatre lay a concern for the sensory, emotional and psychological experience of the building. Van de Velde created a building that was both theatrical and communal. His design referenced the Greek amphitheatre and the cathedral as two examples of collective spiritual transcendence (Kuenzli 2012: 256). Taut’s Glass Pavilion took the idea of architecture-as-experience even further. The purpose of the design was to dramatize the contribution new forms of engineered glass could make to architecture. Glass brick, coloured-glass panes and glass mosaic, set in a concrete frame, were all employed to create a small, luminous, temple-like space. Like the Beethoven exhibition of 1902, the pavilion employed a circuitous route around which visitors should progress in order to appreciate the experience and varied aesthetic encounters that had been orchestrated for them (Gutschow 2006: 66). Glass was an art form that connected the viewer back to the stained glass of the great European cathedrals. Unlike a painting, it was an art form experienced with the whole body: coloured light in space. Displayed inside the pavilion were inspirational texts contributed by the poet and author Paul Scheerbart, such as ‘Light seeks to penetrate the whole cosmos’ and

FIGURE 12.7  Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, German Werkbund Exhibition (Cologne, 1914) © ullstein bild Dtl./Contributor/Getty Images.

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‘Coloured Glass / Destroys Hate’ (Haag-Bletter 1981: 34). This view of transcendence can be linked to the theosophical vision of af Klint and to many others. Once inside Taut’s pavilion, there was no direct contact to the outside world, apart from the abstract medium of the light itself. The experience of the building addressed multiple senses. Light, surface glitter, the physical experience of moving through the space, up and down stairs, passing from light into a velvetlined, dark space into which coloured light was projected, the sound of running water from the fountain. Art Nouveau’s legacy for the twentieth century was the primacy it gave to subjective experience. Art Nouveau artists and designers through the 1890s and 1900s strove to reflect and stimulate individual subjectivity using the array of resources at their disposal. Materials and techniques, a blend of the ancient and the industrial, colour, form and imagery, were all variously deployed in pursuit of beauty. Beauty was defined not by abstract laws, but according to emotional response. This was the source of the criticism that attacked Art Nouveau work as decadent, irrational or ugly. It might be all these things, but so long as it triggered a response, touched the sensibilities of the viewer or user intimately, then it had succeeded in ascending to the realm of art. The conflict of the Werkbund Exhibition centred on whether the pursuit of such an emotive response could be aligned with industrial production and the variously democratic or nationalist principle that art should address the group rather than the individual. If we consider the early years of the Bauhaus school, set up in 1919, we can see one of the routes by which Art Nouveau was transformed, but also how some of its values were translated into later Modernism. The school grew out of Weimar Art School directed by van der Velde between 1906 and 1915. The aim was to integrate the training of arts, crafts and design to create new art professionals for the modern world. Under the later leadership of Gropius, the emphasis of the school came to focus primarily on design for an increasingly mechanized world. But beneath the surface persisted the ideal of the creative community of the medieval guilds, which had inspired designers and design theorists from Ruskin onwards. Under the tutelage of Johannes Itten and Gertrud Grunow, the ethos of the school guided students in the consideration of the body and the bodies of those who would encounter their work (Burchert 2019). Diet, rhythmic movement and spiritual reflection were all dimensions of becoming designers whose work would continue the Art Nouveau mission of meeting the needs of the modern man and woman.

Conclusion If we return to the split suggested by Greenhalgh, this earnest pursuit of aesthetic fulfilment can be set in opposition to the commercialization of art. Just as the circulation of printed images was seminal in the rapid development of Art Nouveau, the advent of cinema brought a new dimension to the consumption of design. The gleam of chrome, the sheen of polished surfaces, geometric patterns and stark contrasts of light and dark created dramatic moving images and this aesthetic contributed to the development of spectacular Art Deco buildings and objects. Lalique had diversified from jewellery design into glass manufacturing in the 1910s and in the 1920s he shifted his attention entirely over to glass. Glass was perhaps the medium through which the values of Art Nouveau could best be translated through the twentieth century. Hand blown, hand etched and hand-painted glass continued to meet the desire for high-status art objects. At the same time, mould-pressed glass

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in the form of perfume bottles, ashtrays and lamp shades met the need for mass-produced art. Glass could be affective through the abstract impression of colour, light and form, but it could also bear figurative details. Lalique’s dining room for the SS. Normandie (1931–5) represents the translation into Art Deco of the transportative visions of Art Nouveau. Glittering and otherworldly, this interior was also literally transportative, as occupants made the highspeed crossing between Le Havre and New York. Glass also played a key role in the development of Modernist architecture. Though the decorative effects and narrative theatricality of Art Nouveau were rejected by Modernists, the power of light in the orchestration of space and experience design continued to resonate. The curtain wall of glass was the hallmark of Modernism. It flooded interiors with natural light as well as articulating the absence of supporting walls that steel-framed buildings no longer needed. But architects like Mies van de Rohe and Le Corbusier did not flood buildings with light indiscriminately. They created journeys through the initial encounter with the building, low porches, spiral staircases and roof gardens, and they animated surfaces with contrasting textures and materials that stimulated the senses of the visitor. The break between Modernism and the Art Nouveau that preceded it rested on the primacy of the mass produced over the hand crafted. But there were elements that persisted. A sense of craftsmanship continued to exist within the industrial through the use of alternating surfaces and textures: rough brick and shuttered concrete alongside smooth stucco, lustrous chrome and bright plastics. This persistence is unsurprising when we consider the role played by Art Nouveau designers in educating the next generation. Le Corbusier studied architecture in his native Switzerland with Charles l’Eplattenier (1874–1946) a painter and architect who strove to create a Swiss version of Art Nouveau. He, like Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, was also a pupil of Behrens. Frank Lloyd Wright was a draughtsman in Sullivan’s office, while Alvar Aalto studied under Saarinen’s partner Armas Lindgren in Helsinki. Saarinen and his wife, the textile artist Loja Saarinen (1879–1968), taught a generation of American craftsmen and women at Cranbrook, Michigan. Though these designers would go on to be known for their work in glass, steel and concrete, their sensitivity to materials, form and the intimate architectural experience reveals the values that shaped their early education. This afterlife represents the success of Art Nouveau. Though it was a movement of comparatively short duration, it succeeded in breaking the conceptual dominance of Historicism. The Romans had looked to the earlier civilization of the Greeks and subsequent European cultures had looked back to antiquity and, latterly, to the Gothic for guidance on the forms their art and design should take. Art Nouveau represented a new impulse to consider materials, technologies at the heart of alternative principles of design. The search for new solutions and new authorities was, by definition, not stable. New solutions could not be new twenty years down the line. What was exciting and fresh could not remain so when it had been picked up and reproduced, often subject to degraded standards of execution, by commercial builders and manufacturers. Competing visions representing modernity and tradition, the national and the transnational and the rational and spiritual were, for a brief period, sustained in fruitful tension. These tensions did not disappear as the twentieth century progressed, but hopes for a reconciliation diminished. Artists and designers increasingly lent their weight on one side or the other. Art Nouveau, as a movement, had sought to humanize modernity and maintain the human and affective scale, while embracing new technologies and grappling with the realities of a complex, urbanized world. Whether in celebration or resistance to this world, artists and designers sought to create new forms of beauty that addressed individual subjectivities. Light, colour, materials, forms and imagery were inventively employed in pursuit of this address.

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The desire to maintain this connection with audiences and to reconnect isolated individuals within collective experiences or communities of making continued to resonate through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Expressionism, Surrealism and later Abstract Expressionism continued to address viewers emotionally and viscerally by means of colour, suggestive imagery or the afterimage of the artists’ action on canvas. Architectural Expressionism and theatricality continued to manifest in architectural practice long after it had been excised from architectural rhetoric. Monumental cultural buildings, in particular, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilboa, that seek to address visitors visually, atmospherically and auditorily, continue the tradition of inventive and affective Art Nouveau design. The legacy of Art Nouveau is also sustained into the present through the preservation and exhibition of the work of Art Nouveau artists, architects and designers. From the 1970s onwards, groups of passionate individuals have battled to save local examples of Art Nouveau, restore them and open them to the public. The immense popularity of these sites has become a conservation challenge of its own, as thousands of people visit from around the world each year. Similarly, artists of the period, many of whom fell into obscurity, are being recovered and exhibited. These works speak to contemporary audiences because the challenges they sought to address regarding the loneliness and ugliness of the modern world remain our challenges today. It did not prove possible, then, to heal the world through beauty and good design. But the efforts to do so, in all the myriad forms they took, remain resonant today.

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INDEX

Abbéma, Louise  114 AEG  60, 76–8, 125, 220, 221 Aesthetic Movement  2, 3, 17–20, 29, 39, 50, 53, 59, 65, 67, 84, 121, 139, 163, 170 architecture Austria  117, 119–21, 199–202, 206–8 Belgium  130–3 Britain  11–16, 18–19, 61, 63–5, 164, 169–71, 204 Catalonia  25–9, 41, 205–6, 210–11 Czechia  211–12 education (see education) experience of (see psychology) Finland  202–4 France  56–8, 100, 132 function  11–15, 26–7, 29, 32–6, 55, 57, 121, 130–3, 135, 196, 202, 204, 212, 221–3 Germany  51, 65, 74–6, 129, 132–7, 220–3 glass (see glass) Hungary  29–32, 41 India  31, 150–2 Mexico  212–14 Modern Movement  224 Namibia  216–18 Russia  107, 196–9, 209 style (see style) technical innovation  15, 28, 34, 55, 120, 130, 196, 218 Turkey  210, 214–15 United States  32–6, 41, 161 use of stone  12, 15–16, 26–8, 131, 203, 211, 216 Arnau, Eusebi  205 D’Aronco, Raimondo  210, 214–15 artist collectives and workshops Ahmedabad Woodcarving Company  161 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society  64–5, 138 Compton Pottery Company  168 Darmstadt artists’ colony  52, 74–6, 92, 104, 125 Deutsche Werkbund  76, 210, 220–3 Glasgow Four (‘spook school’)  137–8

Guild of Handicraft  46, 60–7, 70, 74, 87, 167, 171 La Libre Esthétique  46, 155 L.C. Tiffany & Associate Artists  67, 68, 161 Les XX  43–7, 50, 80, 89, 100, 117, 148, 155–7, 178–80, 193 Munich Secession  42, 46–9, 59, 73, 87, 117, 118, 125, 134, 136, 179, 180, 222 Salon Rose-Croix  179, 180, 191, 193 Silver Studio  65–6 Skærbæk School for Artistic Weaving  104 Société des Artistes Indépendants  43 Sztuka  164 Talashkino artist colony and workshops  101, 105–7, 150, 167, 168 Tiffany Studio  60, 67–72, 99, 101, 213 United Workshops  52, 74, 76 Vienna Secession  91, 117–23, 189, 197, 201 Wiener Werkstätte  65, 123–4, 199 World of Art  91, 105–6, 117 Art Nouveau and dance  58–9, 89, 119, 120, 123, 161, 165, 185, 188 definition of  1–2 and literature Baudelaire, Charles  79, 80, 86, 139 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor  18 Huysmans, Joris-Karl  79, 80, 82, 90, 139, 177, 196 Ibsen, Henrik  177 James, Henry  178 Maeterlinck, Maurice  45, 177, 193, 200, 201 Mallarmé, Stéphane  139, 179 de Montesquiou, Robert  114, 196 Pater, Walter  18, 29, 39 Proust, Marcel  114 Przybyszewski, Stanisław  185, 188 Rilke, Rainer Maria  177, 178 Rossetti, Christina  180, 181 Scheerbart, Paul  222

248

I NDEX

Strindberg, August  177–8 (see also Symbolism movement) Tagore, Rabindranath  18, 152 Vanor, Georges  179, 180 Verhaeren, Émile  45, 46, 80, 179, 193 Wells, H. G.  194 Wilde, Oscar  85–7, 97 Zola, Émile  18 and music  1, 3, 38–9, 42, 43, 45, 46, 64, 80, 119, 163, 172, 178, 196, 202, 206 van Beethoven, Ludwig  122, 123 Berlioz, Hector  39, 40 Debussy, Claude  44 folk song  4, 211 Mahler, Gustav  123, 204 Orfeo Català  210 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai  197 spaces for  26, 28, 29, 68, 196, 199–202, 208, 210–11 Wagner, Richard  121–3 and philosophy  4, 6, 18, 23, 50, 163, 172, 183, 186, 192 Bergson, Henri  83, 178 empathy theory  24, 134, 136, 196 Indian  151 Lipps, Theodor  134, 136 Monism  83, 136 Nietzsche, Friedrich  178, 181, 188 Nordau, Max  187 Simmel, Georg  83 Weininger, Otto  187, 190 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  119 Arts and Crafts movement  1–3, 7, 44, 60, 65, 84 international influence  52, 61, 67, 92, 108, 124, 145, 149–50, 152, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161, 204, 221 materials and techniques  16, 64, 66 morality and philanthropy  17, 61, 164, 167, 169, 171 and the past  12, 16, 73 Augspurg, Anita  134, 136, 138 Baillie Scott, Mackay Hugh  65, 74, 104, 195, 201–2, 204, 219 Bakst, Leon  92 Balšánek, Antonín  211, 212 Barney, Natalie Clifford  114, 141, 186 Baudelaire, Charles, see Art Nouveau, and literature Beardsley, Aubrey  80, 84–7, 92, 114, 152, 154, 171, 219

Behrens, Peter  60, 72–9, 87, 91, 93, 125, 171, 221, 224 Benois, Alexandre  105, 106 Bergson, Henri, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy Bernhardt, Sarah  57, 108–14, 141, 186, 200 Besant, Annie  172, 174 Binet, René  56 Bing, Siegfried  54–5, 70, 97–105, 113–15, 125, 133, 138, 149, 157, 219 Blavatsky, Helena  172, 173 Boari, Adamo  212–13 Brinckmann, Justus  101–4, 115 Brussels, Belgium  2, 42–4, 52, 54, 75, 100, 130–3, 139, 146, 156, 180, 193 Burne-Jones, Edward  84 ceramic architectural  30–2, 34–5, 41, 75, 169–70 art  38, 46, 67, 79, 101, 102, 104, 106, 165, 211 East Asian  17–20, 102 porcelain  17, 102, 139 Zsolnay factory (see Zsolnay factory) Chéret, Jules  46, 89, 90, 186 Chicago  34, 212, 213 World Fair (1893)  52, 71, 99 Claudel, Camille  178, 179, 182–4 colonialism  144–5 Belgian Congo  43, 130, 133, 144–9, 151 and botany  15, 32, 130, 213 British empire  30, 53, 144, 149–51, 154, 215 Dutch East India  44, 53, 154–8 economics of  6, 98, 115, 141, 143, 158–61 education (see education) French empire  52, 144 German empire  216–18 museums  147, 149–51, 154 and raw materials  29, 63, 64, 108, 142–3, 158 slavery  6, 25, 52–3, 142, 147 Spanish empire  25, 144, 205 treaty ports  17, 145 Colonna, Édouard  54, 103 Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish  144, 151, 152, 160, 161 Crane, Walter  46, 155 Darmstadt, Duke Ernest Louis of  60, 65, 74, 104 Darwin, Charles  22, 23, 186 Darwinism  82, 130, 173 nature (see under nature)

I NDEX

Denis, Maurice  46, 83 Diaghilev, Sergei  105, 106 Dijsselhof, Gerrit Willem  155 Domènech i Montaner, Lluís  205, 210, 211 Dresser, Christopher  33 Dreyfus Affair  113 Driscoll, Clara  68–72, 137, 138 education architecture  25, 38, 61, 137, 216, 224 art  21, 84, 105, 156, 188 colonial  4, 149–51, 159, 161 design  29, 30, 33, 37–8, 61, 68, 76, 88, 93, 102–4, 223, 224 in Paris  21, 23, 32, 33, 42, 96, 107, 138, 165, 183, 184, 191, 197 of the public  4, 12, 16, 29, 37, 61, 164, 168–9 women (see women) electricity  7, 59, 172 light  57, 58, 125, 135, 185, 197, 208 technologies  34, 57, 76, 77 empathy theory, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy; psychology, experience of space Enckell, Magnus  191–2, 219 Endell, August  51, 74, 129, 133–6, 219, 221 evolution, see under nature exhibitions Ein Dokument deutscher Kunst, Darmstadt  74–6 exhibition societies (see under artist collectives) International Art Exhibition, Munich (1897)  50–2 International Colonial and Export Exhibition, Amsterdam (1883)  155 Salon exhibition, Paris  21, 38, 40, 42, 109 and transnational exchange  6, 7, 21, 30, 37, 38, 53, 91, 101, 102, 115, 157, 159, 189, 214–15, 218 Vienna Secession First secession exhibition (1898)  118–19 VIII secession exhibition (1900)  123, 193, 201 XIII secession exhibition (1902)  189 XIV ‘Beethoven’ exhibition (1902)  122–3, 197, 208 XVII exhibition (1903)  190 Werkbund exhibition, Cologne (1914)  210, 220–3

249

World’s Fairs  37, 38, 42–3, 52, 67, 115, 145, 157 Antwerp (1894)  146 Brussels-Tervuren (1897)  146–8 Chicago (1893)  71, 99 Paris (1900)  52–9, 69, 101, 102, 106 fairy tale  59, 107, 196–8, 200, 208 Fénéon, Félix  45, 89 de Feure, Georges  54 Finch, Willy  46 de Forest, Lockwood  161 Freer, Charles Lang  20 Freud, Sigmund  207–8 Fuller, Loïe  58, 119 furniture Austria  202 Belgium  46 Britain  62 Czechia  212 Finland  204 France  40, 54–5, 100–3 Germany  51, 65, 75 Gaillard, Eugène  54, 55 Gallé, Émile  24, 38–41, 114, 138, 139, 141, 142, 219 galleries, see also museums Arts and Crafts gallery  157 dealers  19, 20, 43, 49, 83, 97, 101 Grosvenor Gallery  43 Maison de l’art Nouveau  54, 97, 99–100, 102, 105, 114, 133, 157 La Maison Moderne  101 Gaudí, Antoni  24–9, 36, 41, 107, 114, 130, 171, 219 Gauguin, Paul  46, 83, 165 Geddes, Wilhelmina  210, 215–16 Gesamtkunstwerk  50, 51, 107, 121–3, 139, 181, 195, 211, 214 Raumkunst  123 glass art  38–40, 67–72, 79, 101, 138, 142, 143, 202 enamel and plique-à-jour  63, 67, 139, 140 glass pavilion, Bruno Taut  222–3 roofs and roof-lights  15, 55, 56, 120, 130–1 stained glass  67, 69, 99, 121, 131, 132, 164–6, 176, 196–9, 204–6, 211–13, 215, 217 table glass  62, 67, 75

250

I NDEX

de Goncourt, Edmond  39, 114, 196 gothic, see style Goudstikker, Sophia  134, 136, 138 Green, Elizabeth Shippen  80, 87–8, 137 Grunow, Gertrud  223 Güell, Eusebi  25, 26 Guild of Handicraft, see under artist collectives and workshops Guimard, Hector  55 Haeckel, Ernst  83, 136, 185 Hansen, Frida  103, 104 Havell, Ernest Binfield  151, 152, 154, 161 Havelock Ellis, Henry  186 Helbing, Ferenc  94 Hevesi, Ludvig  200 Hishida Shunsō  153 Hoffmann, Josef  117, 123, 124, 190, 199, 200, 202, 220 Holme, Charles  91 Huszka, Jósef  96 Hutheesing, Muggunbhai  161 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, see Art Nouveau, and literature Impressionism  21, 43, 44, 46, 48, 73, 105, 165, 184 Itten, Johannes  223 Japan art  11, 17, 21–2, 73, 85, 129, 142, 153–4 craft  67, 91, 102, 103, 108 in Europe and America  17–22, 39, 40, 49, 65, 73, 85, 87–9, 97–101, 104, 125, 139, 161, 165 Japonisme  19–20, 153, 155, 158, 160 kakemono  104, 154 Nihonga  153, 160 pan-Asianism  153–4, 160, 161 Jeckyll, Thomas  18, 20 jewellery consumption  87, 109, 111, 114, 141, 142 diamond  63, 67, 139, 141–3 in exhibition  46, 101 glass, enamel (see glass, enamel) Guild of Handicrafts  46, 62, 63, 65, 139 Lalique  113–14, 138–43, 223 Mucha  113, 165 Tiffany Studios  67 Jewish patronage antisemitism  101, 113–14, 124–5, 199

Bernhardt, Sarah (see Bernhardt, Sarah) Bing, Siegfried (see Bing, Siegfried) Fürstenberg, Pontus and Göthilda  23 Marks, Murray  19 Rathenau, Emil  125 Waerndorfer, Fritz (see Waerndorfer, Fritz) Wittgenstein, Karl  119–20 Jones, Owen  96 journals L’Art moderne  42–4, 54, 78, 80, 133 Dekorativ Kunst  101 Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration  74, 91, 92, 94 Le Japon Artistique  98, 101, 104 Journal of Indian Art and Industry  150 Jugend  47, 80, 104, 125 Magyar Iparművészet  29, 91–4, 203 Mir Iskusstva  91–3, 105–6 Pan  73, 91, 101, 104 Revue blanche  83 Le revue des arts décoratifs  54 Simplicissmus  125 The Studio  65, 86, 87, 91–3, 124, 154, 201 transnational exchange  44, 91–4, 104, 124, 138, 154, 201 Ver Sacrum  91, 92, 117–19, 137, 193 Życie  164 Kandinsky, Vassily  174, 175 Key, Ellen  204 Khnopff, Fernand  179–81, 184, 219 Kipling, John Lockwood  149–51, 161 Klimt, Gustav  117, 118, 122, 123, 152, 171, 194, 219 Klinger, Max  123 af Klint, Hilma  164, 172–5, 184, 223 Koch, Alexander  74, 76, 92 von Krafft-Ebing, Richard  186 Krohn, Pietro  102, 161 Kupka, František  174, 175 Lalique, René Jules  113, 114, 130, 138–43, 223, 224 Lechner, Ödön  29–31, 41, 151 Lemmen, Georges  44, 46 Lessing, Julius  103 Les XX, see under artist collectives Lethaby, William  170 Leyland, Frederick  18–20 Liberty  65, 66 Liberty, Arthur Lasenby  65

I NDEX

Liljefors, Bruno  21–3, 42, 105, 138 Lindgren, Armas  203, 224 Lipps, Theodor, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy literature, see Art Nouveau, and literature Luksch, Richard  188 Luksch-Makowsky, Elena  178, 184, 188–91, 194, 197 Macdonald, Frances  130, 137–40, 184, 194 Macdonald, Margaret  199–202 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie  137, 199–202, 219 Maeterlinck, Maurice, see Art Nouveau, and literature Mallarmé, Stéphane, see Art Nouveau, and literature Malyutin, Sergey  105–7 Mamontov, Savva  105, 106 Maus, Octave  43, 44, 46, 54, 55, 133, 193 Meier-Graefe, Julius  87, 100, 101, 193 metalwork iron  16, 26–7, 55, 56, 131–2, 146, 170, 204, 211, 214 jewellery (see jewellery) pewter  66 silver  62–7, 146 Minne, Georg  45, 191, 193, 194 Morris, William  16, 25, 30, 46, 60–2, 64, 79, 84, 92, 168 Moser, Koloman  117, 119–21, 123, 124, 137, 199, 200, 207 Mourey, Gabriel  54, 55 Mucha, Alfons  90, 111–13, 138, 165, 212, 219 Munch, Edvard  184–8, 191, 219 Munich, Germany  2, 50, 73, 111, 125, 130, 134–7, 188 Secession (see under artist collectives) museums British Museum  170, 216 (see also galleries) colonialism  147, 149–51, 154 design reform  37, 61, 93, 102 Hamburg Museum of Applied Arts  98, 101–4 Hungarian Museum of Applied Arts  29–32 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York  98, 142 Oxford Museum of Natural History  11–17 South Kensington Museum  30–1, 33, 38, 39, 102, 149, 151

251

Talashkino estate museum  106 transnational exchange  71, 78, 98, 102, 105, 124, 145, 151, 196 music, see Art Nouveau, and music Muthesius, Hermann  76, 204, 221 Nabis  83, 99, 100 Nancy, France  2, 24, 38–40 nationalism  61, 125, 145, 168 America  36, 67 Belgian  43 Catalan  25, 26, 41, 205–6, 210–11 Czech  52, 211–12 Finnish  204 folk culture  30, 31, 106, 107, 129, 158, 163, 197, 198, 211, 219 French  38, 39, 53–5, 83, 113–14 German  46–7, 92–4, 223 Hungarian  29–30, 32, 52, 92–4 Indian  151–4, 159, 161 Japanese  153, 154, 160, 161 Mexican  212–13 Norwegian  104 Polish  163, 165–7 Russian  52, 105–7 Swedish  21, 22 Turkish  214 Naturalism  21, 22, 48, 73, 152, 165, 180, 183 nature biosciences  15, 22, 32–3, 38, 40, 45, 82, 83, 136–7, 145, 146, 181, 190, 192 botanical gardens and glasshouses  4, 15, 130, 213 (see also Darwin) evolution  22, 82, 83, 136, 173, 178, 194 in Japanese art  17, 22, 40, 49, 98, 104 life-force/vitalism  46, 55, 58, 83, 119, 134–6, 148, 149, 156, 173, 174, 183, 189, 194, 204 as a motif  1, 7, 15–16, 21–3, 32–3, 35, 36, 40, 41, 49, 58, 67, 69, 81–3, 104, 119, 120, 125, 133, 135, 136, 138–9, 142, 148, 155, 165, 176, 196, 208, 211, 213, 219, 222 as a structural model  14–16, 32–6, 129–30, 133 Nietzsche, Friedrich, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy Oakley, Violet  88 Obrist, Hermann  49–51, 74, 134, 136, 221 Okakura Kakuzō  153, 160–1

252

I NDEX

Olbrich, Joseph Maria  74, 117, 119, 120, 135, 215, 219 painting and drawing Austria  118–20, 122–3, 189–91, 200–1 Belgium  45–6, 80, 132, 146, 149, 179–81 Britain  18–20, 137–8, 169, 170 Catalonia  29 Czechia  212 education (see education) Finland  191–3, 204 France  42, 55, 57, 82, 83, 89, 90, 100, 101, 105, 109, 179 Germany  42, 46–9, 51, 221 gesso  169, 170, 201 Impressionism (see Impressionism) India  152–4 Japan  17, 21, 153–4 Mexico  213 murals  51, 55, 100, 120, 122–3, 132, 146, 169, 170, 200–1, 204, 212 Naturalism (see Naturalism) Netherlands  156–7 Norway  184–7 Poland  164–7 Russia  105–7, 188, 197 Sweden  21–3, 173–6 Symbolism (see Symbolism movement) United States  88 pan-Asianism, see Japan Pankok, Bernhard  51, 74 Paris  2, 31, 40, 80, 112, 157, 196, see also exhibitions, World’s Fairs education in  21, 23, 32, 33, 42, 96, 107, 138, 165, 183, 184, 191, 197 exhibiting in  20, 21, 43, 44, 67, 180, 193 Salon des Beaux-Arts  38, 42, 50, 53, 67, 90, 99 and transnational exchange  20, 21, 39, 43, 93, 97–9, 102–7, 111, 133, 139, 142, 151, 165, 166, 179, 187, 197 Pater, Walter, see Art Nouveau, and literature Paul, Bruno  74, 125–6, 138 Peladan, Joséphin  179 periodicals, see journals philosophy, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy photography aid to art and design  22, 138, 163, 180 documentary  4, 147, 205 photomechanical reproduction  59, 79, 80, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93

practice of  91, 130, 132, 134, 135 publicity  76, 109, 111, 203 Picard, Edmond  43–5 print illustration  22, 33, 46, 64, 79, 84–8, 90, 95, 106, 136, 154, 155, 163, 170, 174, 193, 215 Japanese  17, 21, 22, 73, 85, 87–9, 135, 153 journals (see journals) Kelmscott press  46, 62, 79, 84, 85 lithography  80, 83, 88, 187 photomechanical reproduction (see photography) posters  46, 47, 77–9, 87–90, 104, 109, 112, 113, 118, 186 typography  78, 79, 84, 112, 118 psychology and the experience of art  18, 21–2, 38, 40, 44, 47, 80–2, 87, 119, 140, 152, 164, 171, 174, 179, 182–3, 200 and the experience of space  24, 26–9, 57–9, 64, 121–3, 134–6, 149, 181, 196, 202–4, 208, 209, 211, 221–5 (see also Art Nouveau, and philosophy; Gesamtkunstwerk) of the individual  2, 4, 8, 130, 177–8, 184, 186, 188, 192 psychoanalysis  207–8 sexuality  2, 8, 48, 59, 73, 84, 85, 113, 114, 119, 130, 134, 138, 140, 174, 178, 184, 186–8, 190–2 Ranson, Paul-Élie  83, 100 Redecker, Gottlieb  216 Redon, Odilon  46, 79–85, 179 Repin, Ilya  197 Riemerschmid, Richard  50, 51, 74 Rigalt i Blanch, Antoni  205 Roche, Pierre  58 Rodin, Auguste  182, 183 Roerich, Nikolai  105, 107 Roller, Alfred  119, 122, 123 Ruchet, Berthe  49 Ruprich-Robert, Victor  32, 33, 96 Ruskin, John  11–16, 18, 25, 27, 30, 32, 37, 92, 223 van Rysselberghe, Théo  44–6, 80, 181 Saarinen, Eliel  202–4, 219, 224 Sargent, John Singer  44 Sauvage, Henri  58

I NDEX

science, see nature; psychology sculpture Austria  121 Belgium  45, 146–7, 193 Britain  15, 151, 170 Catalonia  205, 211 France  109, 113, 182–4 Germany  49, 122, 220, 221 India  151 Secession, see under artist collectives Semper, Gottfried  129 Serrurier-Bovy, Gustave  56, 148 Sert, Josep Maria  55 Sérusier, Paul  83 Seurat, Georg  44, 45 sexuality, see psychology Shekhtel, Fyodor  196, 198–9, 209, 219 Silverman, Debora  6, 113, 145–7, 149 Simmel, Georg, see Art Nouveau, and philosophy Singh, Bhai Ram  150 Smith, Jessie Wilcox  88 spiritualism, see theosophy stained glass, see glass van der Stappen, Charles  146–8 von Stuck, Franz  47–9, 59, 73, 87, 117, 118, 174, 219 style Byzantine  67, 71, 106, 108, 161, 169, 214 Celtic Revival  66, 67, 169–70, 211 Chinese  13, 157, 161, 170 Classical  14, 17, 30–1, 47–9, 56, 118, 120, 131, 146, 170, 198, 213, 216, 218–22, 224 Egyptian  13, 161, 169, 170 Gothic Revival  11–16, 28, 32, 63, 114, 167, 205, 211, 217, 224 Greek  14, 32, 47, 118, 146, 169, 170, 180, 207, 222 Islamic  30, 39, 67, 161, 170, 214–15 japonisme (see Japan) Moorish  56, 205 a new style for a new age  1, 12–13, 23–4, 26, 32, 37, 40–2, 54, 67, 87, 129, 132, 133, 172, 199, 218–19 Persian  31 Renaissance  75 Russian Revival  106, 108, 112–13, 197 Sullivan, Louis  24, 32–6, 41, 72, 129, 169, 224 Sviatopolsk-Chetvertinskaya, Princess Ekaterina  106, 107

253

Symbolism movement  1–3, 17, 44, 45, 84, 105, 114, 121, 139, 140, 152, 156, 157, 164, 167, 169, 179–81, 185, 191, 192, 218 literary movement  3, 18, 44–6, 50, 80, 82, 86, 177–80, 196 (see also Art Nouveau, and literature; fairy tale; psychology) Tagore, Abanindranath  151–4, 160, 219 Talashkino, see under artist collectives Taut, Bruno  222–3 Tenisheva, Princess Mariia  104–8, 167, 188, 197 textiles Austria  124 Belgium  46, 147–8 Britain  65 Finland  204 France  58, 101, 119 Germany  49–50, 103, 104, 134, 136 Hungary  31 Indonesia  155, 157–9 Japan  17, 19 Netherlands  155, 157–9 Norway  103–4 Russia  106, 107, 197 theosophy  107, 136, 154, 163, 164, 172–3 Thiis, Jens  103, 104, 161 Thorn-Prikker, Johan  157 Tiffany, Louis Comfort  60, 66–72, 99, 125, 138, 142, 161, 213 Tiffany Studio, see under artist collectives and workshops Toorop, Jan  44, 155–7, 194, 219 total work of art, see Gesamtkunstwerk de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri  46, 89–90, 99, 185 transnational exchange  2, 6, 20, 44, 49, 55, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 102, 107, 113, 133, 139, 140, 152, 154, 156, 160, 161, 213, 215, 219, 221, 224 artists collectives (see under artists collectives) colonialism (see colonialism) cosmopolitanism  20, 46, 67, 94, 96, 97, 154, 189, 199, 214 exhibitions (see under exhibitions) journals (see journals) museums (see under museums) Paris (see Paris) Vallotton, Félix  83 van de Velde, Henry  75, 100, 133, 147–9, 193, 221–3 Verhaeren, Émile, see Art Nouveau, and literature

254

I NDEX

Vienna  30, 102, 123, 124, 157, 197, 199, 206, 211, 214 Secession (see under artist collectives) Wiener Werkstätte (see under artist collectives) Vogeler, Heinrich  92 Vrubel, Mikhail  105–7, 197 Waerndorfer, Fritz  123–5, 193, 199–202, 208 Wagner, Otto  206–7 Wagner school  211, 214 Wagner, Richard, see Art Nouveau, and music Watts, G. F.  169, 170 Watts, Mary Seton  164, 167–72, 176, 219 Wegerif-Gravestein, Agathe  157 Whistler, James Abbot McNeill  18–20, 42, 44, 51, 105, 153, 202 Wiener Werkstätte, see under artist collectives Wilde, Oscar, see Art Nouveau, and literature Women artists  87–8, 110–11, 137–8, 167, 172–6, 182–4, 188–91

designers  68–70, 155, 157–8, 167–71, 201–2, 223, 224 education of  6, 68, 88, 134, 137, 167–8, 178, 188–9 femme fatale  107, 147, 153, 154, 188, 190, 191 new women  125–6, 130, 177 patrons  65, 104–14, 125–6, 134–5, 142 performers  58–9, 89, 108–14, 141 as a visual motif  1, 19, 48, 56, 85–7, 89, 90, 100, 107, 112, 119, 120, 123, 130, 137, 138, 140, 147, 153, 178, 180, 183, 187–8, 190–1, 197, 201, 211 the women’s movement  126, 133, 135, 172, 188 Wyspiański, Stanisław  163–7, 219 Yokoyama Taikan  153, 154 Zsolnay, Vilmos  30, 31, 151 Zsolnay factory  30, 125

PLATE 1 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room (1876–7, Freer Gallery, Washington) © De Agostini Picture Library/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 2  Bruno Liljefors, Woodcocks; Red-Backed Shrike; Thrush in Its Nest; Preying Hawk; Sparrows (1888, Gothenburg Museum of Art). Oil on panel and canvas, assemblage in gilded and painted frame, 48.5 × 45 cm © Gothenburg Museum of Art.

PLATE 3  Antoni Gaudí, Palau Güell, detail of central hall (Barcelona, 1886–90) © Frédéric Soltan/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 4  Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos, Museum of Applied Arts, detail of entrance (Budapest, 1893–6) © Lipnitzki/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 5  Emile Gallé, On Such a Night as This (1895, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). Glass, three layers, metallic inclusions (gold and platinum), wheelengraved decoration, 13.3 × 13.5 cm © RMNGrand Palais (Musée d’Orsay)/Jean Schormans.

PLATE 6  Théo van Rysselberghe, The Reading (1903, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent). Oil on canvas, 181 × 241 cm © Museum of Fine Arts Ghent, www​.artinflanders​.be, photo Hugo Maertens.

PLATE 7 Charles Robert Ashbee and the Guild of Handicrafts, Pendant in the form of a ship (c.1903, V&A). Enamelled gold, silver, opal, diamond sparks and tourmalines, 7 × 4.8 cm © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

PLATE 8 Louis Comfort Tiffany, Summer Panel for Four Seasons window (1899–1900, Morse Museum, Winter Park). Leaded glass, 103 × 93 cm © Morse Museum.

PLATE 9 Elizabeth Shippen Green, Life Was Made for Love and Cheer for Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 1904. Watercolour and charcoal on illustration board, 79.5 × 48.4 cm © Library of Congress.

PLATE 10 Jules Chéret, Saxoleine poster, 1894. Lithograph © Buyenlarge/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 11  Mikhail Vrubel, Princess Tenisheva: The Valkyrie (1899, State Art Museum, Odessa). Oil on canvas © Heritage Images/ Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 12  Princess Tenisheva and Sergei Malytin, Church of the Holy Spirit, Talashkino, 1903 © Potatushkina/Dreams­ time​.co​m.

PLATE 13  Gustav Klimt, Detail of Beethoven Frieze, A Kiss for the Whole World, 1902. Casein, gold foil, chalk, graphite, plaster © DEA/E. Lessing/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 14 Victor Horta, Tassel House, Entrance Hall (Brussels, 1893–94) © Heritage Images/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 15 France Macdonald, The Pond (1894, Glasgow School of Art) Watercolour and drawing, 32 × 25.8 cm © Glasgow School of Art.

PLATE 16  René-Jules Lalique, Necklace of Black Swans (c.1897–9, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) Gold, enamel, Australian opal, Siberian amethysts, Overall diam. 24.1 cm. 9 large pendants: 7 × 5.7 cm. 9 small pendants: 3.5 × 3.2 cm. Gift of Lillian Nassau, 1985. Acc.n.: 1985.114 © 2021. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/ Scala, Florence.

PLATE 17 Abanindranath Tagore, Tissarakshita, Queen of Asoka (1911, V&A). Chromoxylographic reproduction of original watercolour, 25.2 × 19 cm © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

PLATE 18 Yokoyama Taikan,  Floating Lantern (1909, Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki). Ink and gold on silk, 143 × 51 cm © The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki.

PLATE 19 Stanisław Wyspiański, Chochoły (1898–9, National Museum of Warsaw). Pastel on paper, 69 × 107 cm © National Museum of Warsaw, Marek Dytkowski/NMW.

PLATE 20 Stanisław Wyspiański, Polonia (1893–4, National Museum in Krakow). Pastel on canvas, 299 × 175 cm © National Museum in Krakow.

PLATE 21 Mary Seaton Watts, Watts Cemetery Chapel interior, 1896–8 © Mike Kemp/ Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 22 Hilma af Klint, Childhood (1907, Moderna Museet, Stockholm). Tempera on paper, 322 × 238 cm © David M. Benett/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 23  Fernand Khnopff, I Lock the Door upon Myself (1891, Neue Pinakothek, Munich). Oil on canvas, 72,7 × 141 cm © Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

PLATE 24  Edvard Munch, Evening on Karl Johans Gate (1892, Bergen Museum of Art). Oil on canvas, 84.5 × 121 cm © Photo 12/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 25  Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Ver Sacrum (Self-portrait with son Peter) (1901, Upper Belvedere, Vienna). Oil on canvas, 94.5 × 52 cm © Belvedere, Vienna, Photo: Johannes Stoll.

PLATE 26 Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Adolescentia (1903, Upper Belvedere, Vienna). Oil on canvas, 171 × 78 cm © Belvedere, Vienna, Photo: Johannes Stoll.

PLATE 27  Fyodor Shekhtel, Ryabushinsky House (Moscow, 1900–3) © Shesmax/Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 28  Margarent Macdonald Mackintosh, The Seven Princesses, panel 2 (1903, MAK, Vienna).

PLATE 29 Otto Wagner, St Leopold’s Church, Steinhof, Vienna (1905–7) © 1971 markus/Wikimedia Commons.

PLATE 30 Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Palau de la Música Catalana (Barcelona, 1905–8) © Patrick Landmann/Contributor/Getty Images.

PLATE 31 Wilhemina Geddes, Faith, Karori Crematorium Chapel (Wellington, 1914) © Stuart Park.