Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau was a visual arts and craft movement that started about 1890's. It is viewed by some as the first real attempt to create a modern style. Its influence can be found in painting, sculpture, jewellery, metalwork, glass and ceramics. Drawing on history, nature, symbolism and craft movements from around the world, Art Nouveau design found its expression in domestic objects and its style was

• sinuous, elongated, curvy lines
• the whiplash line
• vertical lines and height
• stylised flowers, leaves, roots, buds and seedpods
• the female form - in a pre-Raphaelite pose with long, flowing hair
• exotic woods, marquetry, iridescent glass, silver and semi-precious stones

Aubrey Beardsley
One of the first Nouveau creaters/artists Beardsley described his work as ‘fresh and original'.
Reading into his short life its definitely an intersting one......Suffering from tuberculosis that eventually killed him at the age of 25, Beardsley was a public as well as private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair." Beardsley was meticulous about his attire: dove-grey suits, hats, ties; yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a morning coat and patent leather pumps. Maybe some say a homosexual as well as maybe having sexual encounters with his own sister!
Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

Also working along side Oscar Wilde for his play Salome


Messalina and her Companion 1895 from the collection A Book of Fifty Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley detailing the nightlife of Messalina (d.AD48) the wife of the Roman emperor Claudius (10BC-AD54). She was notorious for her sexual appetite and in this book Beardsley was ask to illustrate her nightly excursions from the Imperial Palace to work as a whore in a local brothel.
         


'Mackintosh meets Beardsley


Charles Rennie Mackintosh - architect and designer of furniture and jewellery

Was said to be influenced by Beardsley also......

Massive influence in the home and also as a Scottish architect...... as well as a wide selection of jewellery!



Martyrs School, Glasgow



Glasgow Herald Building

Mackintosh poster for the opening of the fine arts in Glasgow exhibition

more examples of posters

  

www.scotcities.com/mackintosh

Casa Batlló is Antonio Gaudi's most famous Art Nouveau building in Europe

In the home.......

Colour schemes - are quite muted and sombre and became known as 'greenery yallery' - mustard, sage green, olive green, and brown. Team these with lilac, violet and purple, peacock blue. Mackintosh experimented with all-white interiors.

Wallpaper - designs are highly stylised flowers, particularly poppies, water lilies and wisteria; branches, tendrils, leaves, stems, thistles, pomegranates; peacock feathers, birds and dragonflies.A

Lighting - Tiffany lamp is a type of lamp with a glass shade made with glass designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, very much an art nouveau look

http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/design/period_artnouveau

Film

Robe worn in Titantic

dresses with art nouveau prints by prada, mara hoffman and tib

i

Hector Guimard- Paris Metro

Harrods food hall tiles

door/glass 

  

http://www.architectureartdesigns.com/

I do love the clean fresh look in these interiors