Cinema By Design - Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History

Art Nouveau thrived from the late 1890s through the First World War. The international design movement reveled in curvilinear forms and both playful and macabre visions and had a deep impact on cinematic art direction, costuming, gender representation, genre, and theme. Though historians have long dismissed Art Nouveau as a decadent cultural mode, its tremendous afterlife in cinema proves otherwise. In Cinema by Design, Lucy Fischer traces Art Nouveau's long history in films from various decades and global locales, appreciating the movement's enduring avant-garde aesthetics and dynamic ideology.

About the author

Lucy Fischer is a Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of eleven books, including Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema and the Female Form (Columbia, 2003); Body Double: The Author Incarnate in the Cinema (2013); and Art Direction and Production Design (2015). She has held curatorial positions at The Museum of Modern Art and The Carnegie Museum of Art.

Summary

Cinema by Design traces Art Nouveau’s long history in films from various decades and global locales, appreciating the movement’s enduring avant-garde aesthetics. Lucy Fischer explains why an art movement embedded in modernist sensibilities can flourish in contemporary film through its visions of nature, gender, sexuality, and the exotic.

Report

"A leading scholar in so many fields within cinema and media studies, Lucy Fischer demonstrates and celebrates here - intellectually and passionately - a topic that she owns: the architectural and design world of cinematic art nouveau." Timothy Corrigan, coeditor of Essays on the Essay Film

Product details

• Authors: Lucy Fischer, Fischer Lucy
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.03.2017
• EAN: 9780231175036
• ISBN: 978-0-231-17503-6
• No. of pages: 288
• Series: Film and Culture Series; Film Culture; Film and Culture Series; Film Culture; Film & Culture (COUP); Film & Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Art history; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre; Art Nouveau, ART / History / General, DESIGN / History & Criticism, DESIGN / Graphic Arts / Commercial & Corporate, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, History of Art, History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -, Industrial / commercial art & design, history of design, PERFORMING ARTS / Film / History & Criticism, Film Theory & Criticism, Design, Industrial and commercial arts, illustration, Film history, theory or criticism, Art & design styles: Art Nouveau