Art Nouveau: 1890-1914 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810942194 ISBN 13: 9780810942196

Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc, 2000

Synopsis

A lavish volume created to accompany a major museum exhibition considers the popular and influential style of Art Nouveau and includes a wealth of illustrations as well as rare period photographs showcasing all mediums from Tiffany lampshades to Lalique jewelry.

About this title

Review:

Art Nouveau, the innovative style that flourished during the two decades at the turn of the 20th century, transformed European and American art forms and has come to symbolise the era known as the fin de siècle. Appearing almost out of nowhere, this noxious, erotic movement left its wayward mark from Paris to Prague, New York to Barcelona, and vanished almost entirely with the onset of World War I, to be replaced by the overtly modernist Art Deco, its geometric lines a direct counterpart to the curvilinear shapes of the "naughty nineties".

Paul Greenhalgh's exquisite Art Nouveau 1890-1914, accompanying a glittering retrospective at London's Victoria & Albert Museum, examines the labyrinthine coils of this decadent epoch and culture and all its manifestations--architecture, painting, textiles, jewellery, sculpture, poster design--placing each firmly in the context of a variety of vibrant urban centres which include Helsinki, Munich , Moscow, and Glasgow. Art Nouveau grew--in profusion--out of the late Victorian period, a social, cultural and political time of transition, which has been summed up as an era of "spiritual anxiety". It reeked of languid, indolent sexuality at every turn, from the posters of Alphonse Mucha, the paintings of Gustav Klimt and the jewellery of Lalique and was embraced by the leading figures of the period--Antoni Gaudi, Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The astonishing array of material produced so feverishly from the 1890s onward is rendered in superb visual reproduction in Greenhalgh's book, and it is a fitting companion to the largest exhibition of this flamboyant movement ever to have been shown in the UK. --Catherine Taylor

About the Author:

Paul Greenhalgh is President of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He was previously Head of Research at the V&A. In April 2000 he curated the exhibition Art Nouveau 1890-1914 at the V&A, and later in Washington and Tokyo. His publications include Ephemeral Values (1988), Modernism in Design (1990), and Quotation and Sources from Design and the Decorative Arts 1800 - 1900 (1993).

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N Abrams Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0810942194
• ISBN 13: 9780810942196
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Greenhalgh Paul