Art Nouveau/Jugendstil

Another of the styles revived by P.P.S. was Art Nouveau

"Decorative style in architecture, furniture, consumer products, fashion and graphics throughout Europe and the US for two decades from about 1980. Known as Jugendstil ('young style') in Germany and as 'Stile Liberty' in Italy (after the Liberty retail business in London). The significance of Art Nouveau is much greater than an acknowlegdement of its characteristic organic fluidity and floral motifs would imply. It was an important catalyst in setting aside 19th-c. hstoricism and contributed to the early concepts of Modernism. Whilst the roots of the style are complex, there are obvious links with the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, Celtic ornament and Japanese woodcut prints. Although originally trained as fine artists, many Art Nouveau poster designers were quick t exploit the potential of Chromolithography, thus making the style widely accessible. The asymetrical typographic style and ornate forms of typeface associated with Art Nouveau imagery were still apparent thoughout the 1920s , with a late revival occuring the psychedelic 1960s. Influential designers were Jules Cheret, Eugene Grasset and Alphonse Mucha in Paris, Aubrey Beardsly, Walter Crane and the Beggarstaff brothers in England, Louis Rhead and Will Bradley in America, Henry van de Velde and Jan Troorop in Belgium, Gustav Klimpt and Kolomon Moser in Austria and the young Peter Behrens in Germany. (The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, 19)

"Each nation in which it was seeded invested the overall style with its distinct cultural tics and quirks, but there was a shared visual language rooted in the rejection of all things sentimental (Illustration a Visual History, 30)."

"Its practitioners were linked by their shared belief that "the total work of art" was not merely found on canvas or sculpted out of marble, but rather extended to a range of functional products residing in all realms of daily life - the cornerstone of modern design. The ethics (and aesthetics) of Art Nouveau were born in England, a direct descendant of William Morris's Arts and Crafts movement, and migrated to the continent. Originally it was practiced by the likes of Englishmen Arthur H. Mackmurdo, who wed Pre-Raphaelite symbolism to a naturalistic mannerism in his book cover for Wren's City Churches, and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, master of eccentric eroticism. But by 1894 Art Nouveau in France and Belgium crystalized into distinct, unprecendented curvilinear stylistic manifestaion - some-what related to but not as antiquated or decadent as Baroque and Rococo - that derived from popular interest in traditional, naturalitic Japanese design, which was called Japonisme and was inspired by the great Japanese woodcut artists Hokusai, Utamaro, and Kuniyoshi. Indeed, much early Art Nouveau further drew inspiration from Byzantine art and Pre-Raphaelite art, as well as Symbolist painting that fixiated on the spiritual and sensual. With its frequent use of nymphs and devils, Art Nouveau was symbolism personified. Art Nouveau's break from the chains of historical precedent was important not only in its own evolution, but in the development of modern illustration. Artistic cross-fertilization from one country to the next was necessary to build a viable beachhead against the fortress of official art. Actually the underpinning of Art Nouveau was the radical idea that art was imbued in everything functional and applied, from advertisement to architecture. This was expressed through the common visual mannerisms employed in all these objects: curvilinear form drawn directly from natural surroundings. Mindless devotion to the rigidity of the academy was anathema to Art Nouveau. Instead, its progenitors, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, George Auriol, Eugene Grasset, and Alfons Mucha in Paris; Walter Crane and the Beggarstaff Brothers in England; Kolo Moser and Otto Eckmann in Vienna; and Thomas Theodore Heine and Rudlolf Wilke in Germany, fostered an abstracted, sometimes agonizing intricate interpretation of nature. Owing ton what became its typical, sinuously organic ornament, the terms "floreated madness' and "linear hysteria" were used to describe Art Nouveau's extremities (Illustration a Visual History, 30-32)."

"During the heyday of the style, artists, graphic designers, architects, and typographers a surfeit of stylishly distinctive wood and metal typefaces that complemented architectural and interior motifs, and so defined the style and movement. These were delightfully eccentric typefaces that tested the tenets of legibility but were nonetheless rooted in the fundamental of type design - balance, harmony, color (Illustration a Visual History, 34)."