Art around 1900: why a new style?
In the 1800s, many architects copied past styles: Greek temples, Gothic churches, Renaissance palaces. Factories also made cheap, badly designed copies of decorations.
Around 1890, young artists wanted something new and modern that belonged to their own time. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and by Japanese prints, they started a style with many local names: Art Nouveau (France, Belgium), Jugendstil (Germany), Secession (Austria, Central Europe), Modernisme (Catalonia), Stile Liberty (Italy). It lasted until about 1914.
Key features of Art Nouveau
- Whiplash line: a long S-shaped curve that bends like a cracking whip or a plant stem.
- Nature motifs: lilies, irises, vines, peacock feathers, dragonflies, swans, waves. (A motif is a shape repeated in a design.)
- Flat, decorative surfaces with outlines, often learned from Japanese woodblock prints.
- The "new woman": graceful women with long, flowing hair in posters and paintings.
- New materials: iron, steel and glass, bent into curves; stained glass, mosaics and ceramic tiles.
- Total work of art (German: Gesamtkunstwerk): the architect designs the building, furniture, lamps, door handles and even cutlery in one style.
- Crafts are art: jewellery, glass, posters and furniture are as important as painting.
Important artists and works
- Victor Horta (Brussels): town houses with iron stems and curling staircases.
- Hector Guimard (Paris): green cast-iron metro entrances shaped like plants.
- Antoni Gaudí (Barcelona): wavy stone houses and the Sagrada Família church.
- Alphonse Mucha: posters of women framed by flowers and halos.
- Gustav Klimt (Vienna Secession): gold, patterned paintings.
- Louis Comfort Tiffany and Émile Gallé: glass lamps and vases. René Lalique: jewellery.
- Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Glasgow): tall, straighter, elegant furniture.
- Stanisław Wyspiański (Kraków): flower-patterned stained glass and decorations.
Late Art Nouveau in Vienna and Glasgow became more geometric, which led towards modern design and later Art Deco.
Symbolism and early Expressionism
Painting around 1900 also turned away from showing the world exactly as it looks.
Symbolism
Symbolist artists painted dreams, myths, feelings and mysteries, not everyday life. An image stands for an idea: a sphinx for mystery, a closed eye for the inner world. Examples: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Arnold Böcklin, Jacek Malczewski.
Proto-expressionism
"Proto" means "early". Some painters started to bend shapes and use strong, unreal colours to show emotion: fear, loneliness, excitement. Vincent van Gogh's swirling skies, Edvard Munch's screaming figure on a bridge and James Ensor's masks prepared the way for Expressionism after 1905.
Organic architecture
Organic architecture means buildings that live in harmony with nature. The idea was named by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
- The building fits its site: low houses that follow flat prairies, or a house built over a waterfall.
- Natural materials: wood, local stone, brick, shown honestly.
- Forms from nature: curves, shells, trees, flowers. Gaudí made columns that branch like trees.
- The inside and outside flow together, with big windows and open plans.
- Every part, from the plan to the furniture, belongs to one whole, like a living body.
Later architects such as Alvar Aalto continued it. Today's eco-architecture (green roofs, natural light, local materials) shares many of these ideas.
Try it
- Pick a plant at home (a money plant, a tulsi stem or a flower). Draw it with one long flowing line, without lifting your pencil. Then repeat it to make a border pattern: that is an Art Nouveau motif.
- Design a poster title for your school event using letters that bend like stems.
- In the 3D free-play step, set the curve to 0 and then to 100%. Which one feels like Art Nouveau?
Key formulas and definitions
- Dates: about 1890–1914
- Names: Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, Secession, Modernisme, Stile Liberty
- Features: whiplash line, nature motifs, iron & glass, total work of art
- Symbolism = ideas, dreams, myths; Proto-expressionism = emotion through strong colour and bent shapes
- Organic architecture = building in harmony with site, natural materials and forms
Worked examples
1. A metro entrance has green iron posts that curve up like stems and end in lamp "buds". Which style?
Art Nouveau: nature motifs, whiplash curves and bent iron (like Guimard's Paris entrances).
2. An architect designs a house and also its chairs, lamps, carpets and door handles. What idea is this?
The total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk): one style for the whole design.
3. A painting shows a pale woman with closed eyes among strange flowers, meant to stand for sleep and death. Which movement?
Symbolism: the image stands for ideas and feelings, not everyday reality.
4. A house is built over a waterfall, made of local stone, with terraces that reach out over the water. What kind of architecture?
Organic architecture: the building fits its natural site and uses natural materials.
5. How is Art Nouveau different from Art Deco?
Art Nouveau (c. 1890–1914) uses soft, flowing plant curves. Art Deco (1920s–30s) uses bold geometric shapes, zigzags and straight lines.
Common mistakes
- Calling any old decorated building Art Nouveau. Copies of Greek or Gothic styles are historicism, not Art Nouveau.
- Mixing up Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Nouveau = flowing plant curves (c. 1900); Deco = geometric (1920s–30s).
- Thinking Art Nouveau is only painting. It covered architecture, furniture, posters, glass and jewellery.
- Thinking organic architecture just means a building made of wood. It means the whole design fits nature and its site.