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Art Nouveau presents a new overview of the international Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau represented the search for a new style for a new age, a sense that the conditions of modernity called for fundamentally new means of expression. Art Nouveau emerged in a world transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and increasingly rapid means of transnational exchange, bringing about new ways of living, working and creating.
This book is structured around key themes for understanding the contexts behind Art Nouveau, including new materials and technologies, colonialism and imperialism, the rise of the 'modern woman', the rise of the professional designer and the role of the patron-collector. It also explores the new ideas that inspired Art Nouveau: nature and the natural sciences, world arts and world religions, psychology and new visions for the modern self. Ashby explores the movement through 41 case studies of artists and designers, buildings, interiors, paintings, graphic arts, glass, ceramics and jewellery, drawn from a wide range of countries.
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One
1. The 19th-century Roots of Art Nouveau
2. A New Style for a New Age
3. Sites of Art Nouveau: New Forms of Exhibition
4. Designers and Manufacturers: How Art Nouveau was Made and Sold
5. Art Nouveau on Paper: Print and Graphic Art
6. Art Nouveau Patrons and Networks
Conclusion: Art Nouveau in Vienna
Part Two
7. The Power of Nature
8. The Global Reach of Colonialism
9. Visions of Other Worlds and Hopes for the Future
10. Psychology, Sex and the Modern Self
11. Dream Spaces: The Art Nouveau Interior
12. New Art for a Changing World
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Charlotte Ashby
Summary
Art Nouveau presents a new overview of the international Art Nouveau movement. Art Nouveau represented the search for a new style for a new age, a sense that the conditions of modernity called for fundamentally new means of expression. Art Nouveau emerged in a world transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and increasingly rapid means of transnational exchange, bringing about new ways of living, working and creating.
This book is structured around key themes for understanding the contexts behind Art Nouveau, including new materials and technologies, colonialism and imperialism, the rise of the 'modern woman', the rise of the professional designer and the role of the patron-collector. It also explores the new ideas that inspired Art Nouveau: nature and the natural sciences, world arts and world religions, psychology and new visions for the modern self. Ashby explores the movement through 41 case studies of artists and designers, buildings, interiors, paintings, graphic arts, glass, ceramics and jewellery, drawn from a wide range of countries.
Foreword
A new study of the Art Nouveau movement, focusing on key themes in aesthetics and culture, and based around 65 international case studies of Art Nouveau works by artists and designers.
Additional text
Fresh and original in its approach, this study provides a comprehensive overview of Art Nouveau that considers the movement’s origins in imperialism and networks of global trade alongside its links to the emerging discipline of psychoanalysis, the concept of the “New Woman”, and new patterns of patronage in the arts. By casting formal innovation and experimentation as profoundly entangled with the social, political, and economic transformations of fin-de-siècle society, Art Nouveau promises to forever change the way that we understand this movement and its relevance to our own historical moment.
