"... that would surely be nothing like the old one. The style’s wavering contours conveyed sensations of constant movement, persistent instability, uncertain boundaries, and inevitable change. By the time its popularity began to wane—around 1910, when it was replaced by a reactionary resurgence of Neoclassicism—the globe had been figuratively encircled in its seductive embrace."
Writes Martin Filler in "Whips and Vines Martin/Recent books and exhibitions reveal that behind its undulating lines and swirling excesses, Art Nouveau was far more complex and nuanced than we once believed" (NYRB)(reviewing 6 books about Art Nouveau).
And then Art Nouveau was so popular in the 1960:
Sixty years ago Art Nouveau came to be seen once again as excitingly rebellious by the proponents of a youthful counterculture who emphasized its joyous sensual abandon. That can be discerned in such Sixties favorites as the tornadic ceramic-inlaid architecture of the Catalan Antoni Gaudí, the kinky black-and-white drawings of the British Aubrey Beardsley, the refulgent multicolored glassware of the American Louis Comfort Tiffany, the curlicued bentwood furniture of the Austrian Thonet brothers, and the radical white-on-white interiors of the Scottish couple Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, all of whom again found acclaim after their reputations had languished through decades of posthumous oblivion....
This 60s-looking thing — "The Kiss" by Peter Behrens — is from 1898:
Posts
13 comments:
1898, and 1978.
I've recently come across in the thousand pages of https://archimaps.tumblr.com/ some Louis Sullivan building decorations from that era which are similar but more distinctive and less dated to my eye. What a shame his style fell from fashion or just became too expensive to execute. Anti-Bauhaus yet still modern.
Tl:dr, but what the hell is this hogwash?
I'm a big fan of Art Nouveau, particularly Alphonse Mucha. Tempted to subscribe to read the rest, but I must admit I'm a lot more interested in the original works and their creators than I am in the 60's fondness for them
My dad and I had interesting, wide-ranging conversations as I became a teenager and on into adulthood. I considered him then, and now, as one of the smartest people around. When I was about 15-years old, in the midst of a childish burst of a 'things are different now' rant, he, rather pensively, mused that he wished he could 'plug' his brain into the wall outlet and 'download' his life-lessons learned, that I might, at the very least, not make the exact same mistakes, but rather, brand new ones.
What "art nouveau" reflects is that there exists - to man's shame - the never-ending cycle of re-learning the WHAT and the HOW and, most importantly, the WHY of culture and society.
Or, shorter, Solomon was right: there is nothing (in human nature) new under the sun.
By the time its popularity began to wane—around 1910, when it was replaced by a reactionary resurgence of Neoclassicism—the globe had been figuratively encircled in its seductive embrace.
We must have slept through that art history class.
Or maybe the world slept through that era.
Wasn't modernism was already in the air in 1910?
Didn't the world change "on or about December 1910"?
And why "on December"?
Everything old is new again, perhaps rediscovered. Still, diversity of individuals, minority of one. Any other conception is a denial of humanity.
I think it was revived in the '60s because of the psychedelic similarities.
Groovy...
Gustav Klimt has some good interesting stuff, and some bad.
Who's the 'we' in "Art Nouveau was far more complex and nuanced than we once believed"?
One of my regrets from our trip in '19 was that we didn't have time in Prague to visit the Mucha Museum. There was a whole 'nother side to the man, exemplified by his series "The Slav Epic."
Then, back from Europe just in time for lockdowns, and we couldn't see the Mackintosh exhibit in Nashville.
Art Nouveau's soundtrack would be an arabesque, or something by Satie.
Well, that sent me off on some tangents! First, I found the Project Gutenberg e-book about Aubrey Beardsley, including many of his illustrations:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50171/50171-h/50171-h.htm
In the text at the beginning, there was this sentence:
And he attained, to the full, one certainly of his many desires, and that one, perhaps, of which he was most keenly or most continuously conscious: contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional beauty, the fame of Yvette Guilbert or of Cléo de Mérode.
So, naturally, I went looking for Cléo de Mérode, who I had never heard of before, and found out that she was probably the first celebrity and the first woman whose photograph was circulated worldwide. Fame is fleeting, especially more than fifty years after her death. Still, she was a great beauty. I found a video on YouTube of Beauties Of The Past Brought To Life, with vintage photographs colorized and then animated. Very cool!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_b_zNZw-M
Post a Comment