Art Nouveau Architecture

Anne Anderson

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781785007682
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: History of Architecture

Distinguished by their lavish sculpture, metalwork or tile facades, Art Nouveau buildings certainly stand out. Art Nouveau buildings are unique, audacious and inspirational. Rejecting historic styles, considered inappropriate for an era driven by progress, architects and designers sought a new vocabulary of architectural forms. Their vision was shaped by modern materials and innovative technologies, including iron, glass and ceramics. A truly democratic style, Art Nouveau transformed life on the eve of the twentieth century and still captivates our imaginations today. Beautifully illustrated, this book explains how the new style came into being, its rationale and why it is known by so many different names: French Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil, Viennese Secession, Catalan Modernisme, Italian Liberty and Portuguese Arte Nova. It covers the key architects and designers associated with the style; Victor Horta in Brussels, Hector Guimard in Paris, Antoni Gaudi on Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna, Odon Lechner in Budapest and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow. There are detailed descriptions and stunning photographs of buildings to be found in Brussels, Paris, Nancy, Darmstadt, Vienna, Budapest, Barcelona, Milan, Turin and Aveiro. Finally, it covers the decorative arts, stained glass, tiles and metalwork that make Art Nouveau buildings so distinctive.

Chapter One

New Art for a New Century

BEFORE CONSIDERING INDIVIDUAL architects or buildings, this introductory chapter considers some key themes. How did the new style come about and how can we define it? Art Nouveau, literally the New Art, went by different names in different countries. Individuality is the key factor, with each architect pursuing his own agenda and creating his own style. The New Art was an artistic movement rather than a stylistic straight jacket. Peter Behrens (1868–1940), a leading German architect and designer, declared ‘the style of an era does not mean specific forms in a specific form of art . . . each art form is a mere contribution to the style. Yet a style is the symbol of an overall feeling, of an era’s attitude to life, and is only visible within the universe of all the arts’¹.

In other words, to understand the aims of the New Art we must examine all aspects of life at the close of the nineteenth century. Buildings cannot be studied in isolation but embedded in the culture that created them. The desire to respond to modern life can be tracked through all the arts, literature, music, painting and sculpture as well as architecture and the so-called decorative or applied arts. Many architects took a holistic approach, as they believed art, in the broadest sense of the word, enhanced life.

International exhibitions and a plethora of new magazines devoted to the arts allowed artists and architects to keep abreast of new developments. They enabled an international dialogue. The New Art was shaped by many factors especially Japonisme, an interest in all forms of Oriental art. When opened to trade with the West in 1853, Japan was not industrialized. Many admired Japanese society: to Western eyes their culture successfully integrated art and life, with beautiful objects (ceramics, lacquer work, textiles) used daily.

On the eve of the twentieth century, artists wanted to create art forms that were relevant to the times and to widen the definition of art to encompass objects used daily. The concept of design was born, that utilitarian objects should be stylish as well as functional. The architect widened his remit to include all aspects of a building and its interior. Homes were to be beautiful, as the goal was a ‘Life lived in Art’.

A Style for Modern Life

From many strands, a New Art arose; ‘a movement, a style, a way of life, a culture, an enterprise that belonged to modern times’². The New Art articulated the pressures of modern life, particularly the rapid changes taking place in society due to new technologies and the increasing emancipation of women. Traditional male and female roles were brought into question; female sexuality, a taboo subject, became a hot topic. The New Art responded to rising nationalism, an identity crisis having been brought about by industrialization, urbanization and internationalism. A crisis in conventional faith led to many seeking alternatives, spiritualism and mysticism. As a cultural phenomenon the New Art dared to break with convention: this was the shock of the new.

Architects and designers were united by the mission to create a modern style that expressed the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. The divisions that separated the different genres of art, painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative or applied arts were torn down. Architects now engaged in all facets of design, from window catches to wallpapers. Structure and ornament were conceived as an entity.

This New Art was both a local and global phenomenon, as seen in the myriad alternative terms coined at the time. It is known as Art Nouveau in France and Belgium. Jugendstil, literally ‘youth style’ in Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. Munich, Vienna, Berlin and Budapest witnessed a Secession, a younger generation breaking away from traditional institutions. In Italy, Stile Liberty expressed Italian unification (Risorgimento), while in Catalonia Modernista architects were driven by a desire to forge an identity distinct from Castilian Spain. Clearly these different terms do not simply reflect linguistic alternatives; German Jugendstil is stylistically very different to Belgian/French Art Nouveau, while Catalonian Modernisme is framed by local, nationalistic imperatives.

Origins

The sources for the stylistic evolution of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil can be found in later Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist paintings, especially those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–98); the later wallpaper and fabric patterns of William Morris (1834–96); the graphic designs of Walter Crane (1845–1915); Japonisme; and the craft revival. As a leading spokesperson for both the Arts and Crafts and the New Art, following Morris’ death in 1896, the role of Crane was crucial. His designs for illustrated books, notably Flora’s Feast A Masque of Flowers (1889), and his wallpapers, Woodnotes (1887, V&A) and Fairy Garden (1890, V&A) are often identified as ‘proto-Art Nouveau’. Peacock Garden (1889) won a Gold Medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Now acknowledged as the pre-eminent Art Nouveau architect, Belgian architect Victor Horta (1861–1947) was familiar with Crane’s books and wallpapers, providing a link between London and Brussels. Horta’s l’Hotel Tassel (1892–93) is recognized as the first expression of the new architectural style. His ‘biomorphic whiplash’ epitomizes the curvilinear vocabulary associated with Belgian and French Art Nouveau. Brussels, rather than Paris, is seen as the ‘cradle’ of the New Art.

Crane, ‘Triton’s spear’, Flora’s Feast A Masque of Flowers, London: Cassell & Co., (1889).

Horta, l’Hotel Frison, Sablon, Brussels (1894).

Eiffel Tower, entrance to the Exposition Universelle, Paris (1887–89).

Trade card for Stollwerck’s Chocolate, Palace of Electricity, Exposition Universelle, Paris (1900).

In France, a turning point was reached at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. The Eiffel Tower encapsulates a new era of iron and glass, materials that were transformed from utilitarian into beautiful architectural forms. These materials, already commonplace for railway stations and warehouses, were now daringly used in civic and domestic buildings. Iron provided not only the structure but also the embellishment in the form of balconies and awnings. Ceramics were used both externally and internally, and stained glass brought colour and light. The defining technology was electric light or ‘artificial sunshine’; some six million light bulbs were used at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.

Breaking with the Past?

All the New Art movements shared one priority, the desire to come up with something fresh that broke with rehashed historical styles that were seen to be both outmoded and inappropriate. According to Franco-German entrepreneur Samuel Siegfried Bing (1838–1905), the originator of the term l’Art Nouveau, innovators were driven by ‘the hatred of stagnation’ that had paralysed art for the best part of the century³. Historicism, which saw the revival of architectural styles as diverse as neo-Romanesque and neo-Rococo, had dominated the mid-nineteenth century; the famous Ring in Vienna exemplifies this architectural melange with a neo-Attic parliament (1874–83, Theophil Edvard von Hansen), a neo-Gothic city hall (1872–83, Friedrich Schmidt) and a neo-Renaissance opera house (1861–69, August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll). In the era of ‘Iron and Glass’, a period often referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution (c.1870–1914), such architectural forms seemed entirely misplaced.

von Hansen, Parliament, Ringstrasse, Vienna (1874–83).

Schmidt, City Hall, Ringstrasse, Vienna (1872–83).

While all agreed that historic styles were no longer relevant to modern life, it was still possible to learn from the past. Horta argued one should ‘study the past as much as one can, to discover its acquired truths, the fundamental principles, to use them as part of a common heritage of knowledge’. But ‘he had no right to copy’⁴. Horta would have consulted the publications of French architectural theorist, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), who spent his life studying Gothic architecture. His firsthand knowledge came from restoring many iconic buildings damaged during the French Revolution: Notre-Dame de Paris, Amiens Cathedral and Carcassonne. Viollet-le-Duc’s encyclopaedic Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture 11th–16th century) (1854–68), which contained a wealth of exact structural data plus extensive design analysis, provided the intellectual impetus for the French Got...