Art Nouveau

About

Art Nouveau set out to create one modern style for an entire environment, from a façade to a teaspoon, without borrowing Gothic or classical models. Victor Horta's Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1893) let iron tendrils climb its columns and spread across walls; in Paris, Hector Guimard framed the Métro entrances with green cast-iron stalks around 1900. The name came from a Paris design shop opened in 1895.

Typical features are the whiplash curve, lilies, dragonflies and long-haired women, asymmetry, and materials worked to look alive. In Nancy, Émile Gallé made cameo glass and Louis Majorelle furniture sprouting gilt-bronze water lilies. Alphonse Mucha's posters for Sarah Bernhardt wrapped figures in swirling hair and halos. Elsewhere it took other names: Jugendstil in Germany, Modernisme in Barcelona with Antoni Gaudí, and the straighter lines of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Josef Hoffmann in Vienna. It faded by about 1910.