Art Nouveau…Who Knew?
- At March 21, 2017
- By katzp
- In Thoughts On Art
- 0
The more I learn about the history of art, the more fascinating it becomes.
This post links you to a brief article on the Art Nouveau Movement of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
English designer and businessman, William Morris, is the person credited with being the philosophical father of the movement.
He described Art Nouveau’s main goals this way:
“To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.”
Simply put, I interpret this to mean:
If you have to MAKE something and you have to USE something, why shouldn’t it be beautiful as well as functional?
What a concept!
Of course, there were and are many different ideas about what constitutes beauty and good design. Central to the early Art Nouveau works were inspirations from nature – curling vines, tendrils, and other organic forms.
Aubrey Beardsley, Gustav Klimt, and Louis Tiffany (he of the stained glass lamps) are some of the more well known artists who played with these ideas and contributed to the movement.
Hector Guimard, who designed the entrances to the Paris Metro stations introduced for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, created one of the best known examples of Art Nouveau still alive and well today.
Hope you have as much fun reading about this period in art as I did.
PS – It’s fun to think that when I was drawn to sketch this Paris Metro light standard, that I was actually inspired by Art Nouveau efforts from a century before.