Module: 20th century design and culture Lecturer: Sandra Draskovic 2014 Raffles International Institute

1. BIRTH OF MODERNITY
LESSON 3: ART NOUVEAU STYLE
MODULE: 20TH CENTURY DESIGN AND CULTURE
RAFFLES INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE MONGOLIA
LECTURER: SANDRA DRASKOVIC

2. Art Nouveau means for
“new style” in French
Style developed in
response to industrial
revolution
and art and craft
movement.
•Door Handles, Stained
glass
•The Vegetal Curve
Dynamic beauty of the
banister
•The Slender Iron Pillars
•The coiling patterns of
the mosaic floors.

4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
-General dissatisfaction with traditional
architectural forms of the 19th century
-Starting point for research on the new ways of
expressions.
-New styles appear with the growth of
industrialization, progress, increasing
urbanization
-Idea to provide affordable, well-designed, mass
produced goods and use factory workers and
new technologies. Mechanization enables mass
production and imitations of luxury products and
‘art’ became affordable to everyone.

5. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
-Philosophical background - people should be
surrounded by beautiful products
-Art Nouveau became a ‘total style’,
-Style included a wide array of sectors and
application:
architecture, jewelry, lighting, printed
fabrics, furniture, glassware, decoration, househ
old silver and other
utensils, wallpaper, typography and graphic
design etc.
-“Art should be a way of life!”
-concepts: “true to materials”, “honesty of
construction”

6. DIFFERENT NAMES 
•Art Nouveau (France, Belgium)
•Jugendstil (Germany)
•Nieuwe Stijl (The Netherlands)
•Modern Style or Liberty style (UK and Italy)
•Arte Nova (Portugal)
•Modernismo (Spain)
•Secession (Austria)
•Secesija (Croatia, Slovenia)
•Stil Modern (Russia)

7. Art Nouveau developed over a large geographical area,
there are considerable differences between the local
varieties.
Common characteristics:
1. Striking belief in the future
2. Optimistic view on the world
3. Aversion to symmetry (Japanese influence)
4. Flowing (moving) lines
5. Motifs and patterns based on flora & fauna
6. Glazed tiles and ceramics interspersed with brick
7. Hard, light colored materials
8. Use of modern techniques and materials (large glass
surfaces, stained glass, reinforced concrete, cast iron &
steel)

8. ART NOUVEAU
• There were no style that can adequately express the
new era (remember first attempts: Luis
Sullivan, Chicago s chool, Viollet le-Duc …) so architects
and designers turned to the models provided by
NATURE.
• Art Nouveau was born 1893. when Victor Horta
designed house for Emile Tassel in Brussels
• New themes in painting, new types of
presentations, new formal language of
ornamentation, two and tree dimension appearance of
vegetal forms (petals, leaves, flowers, threes…) joined
with new building materials: iron, steel, glass, concrete
and traditional materials: brick, stone, marble

9. 1. The flowing (moving) lines
are the best known characteristic of Art Nouveau.
They are supposed to express the emotion of the
new movement. The lines can be found in
balconies, banisters, facades, furniture etc.
2. The motifs and patterns based on flora & fauna
are usually long-stemmed, gracefully stylized plants
and flowers – such as
lilies, callas, irisses, poppies, rosebuds –
swans, peacocks, dragonflies, egg
shapes, clouds, water and slender female figures
with long hair and long flowing dresses.
MOTIVES

10. 2
1Slender pillars

11. 1
Curving door handles

12. 1

13. 1
Vegetal sweep on the banister

14. 1
Vegetal sweep on the chair
Pre Art Nouveau chair
designed by Arthur Heygate
Macmurdo in 1882.
Mackmurdo traveled with
Ruskin in Italy and worked
with William Morris

15. 2

17. Charles R. Mackintosh
Glasgow, England
Emile Galle
School of Nancy, France
Josef Hoffman
Vienna, Austria
Was born in Nancy, was a
French artist who worked in
glass, and is considered to be
one of the major forces in the
French Art Nouveau movement.
His original style characterized
heavy, opaque glass carved or
etched with plant motifs, often
in two or more colors as cameo
glass with experimental
techniques such as metallic foils
and air bubbles.
Was an Austrian architect and
designer of mass cosumer
goods. In Wagner's office, he
met Joseph Maria Olbrich, and
together they founded the
Vienna Secession in 1897 along
with artists Gustav Klimt, and
Koloman Moser. He designed
installation spaces for Secession
exhibitions and a house for
Moser which was built from
1901-1903.
Was a Scottish
architect, designer, and artist.
He was a designer in the post
impressionist movement and
also the main representative of
Art Nouveau in the United
Kingdom. Asian style and
emerging modernist ideas also
influenced Mackintosh's
designs.

18. Josef Maria Olbrich
Vienna, Austria
Hector Guimard
Paris, France
Koloman Moser
England
Was an Austrian architect
and co-founder of the Vienna
Secession. In 1893, he started
working for Otto Wagner. In
1897, Gustav Klimt, Olbrich,
Josef Hoffmann and Koloman
Moser founded the Vienna
Secession artistic group.
Olbrich designed exhibition
building, the famous
Secession Hall, which became
the movement's landmark.
Guimard is often credited
with introducing Art
Nouveau style to French
architecture. Guimard
strongly believed that the
modern architect must
assume responsibility for
designing every element of a
commission, from façade to
doorknob, the creation of
Gesamtkunstwerk, that
is, total works of art.
Koloman Moser became a
towering figure in Viennese
culture and and co-founder
of the "Viennese Secession"
in 1897. His varied work in
interior and graphic
design, furniture, textiles, je
welry, metalwork, glass
objects, book bindings and
earthenware helped usher in
the modern era.

19. Gustav Klimt
“The kiss”

20. Gustav Klimt
“The Tree of Life”, Palais Stoclet, Brussels, 1909
The Tree of life is
an important
symbol used by
many
theologies, philoso
phies and
mythologies. It
signifies the
connection
between heaven
and earth and the
underworld,

21. Alphons Mucha
Czech Art
Nouveau painter
and decorative
artist

22. Art Nouveau
Typography

23. Arts and Crafts Movement
-Arts and crafts exhibition society – Glasgow
-Glasgow “School of Art”
-Linear character and verticality taken from graphic
prints of William Blake, Aubrey Beardsley, Jan
Toorop -Influence of Gothic revival
-Theoretical background “Architecture, Mysticism
and Myth” (1892)
-Traditional approaches and materials such as
stone with it is massive character mixed with
modern materials – iron, glass
-Stereometric, geometric, large “vertical-gothic”
windows, cubic forms, rational,

24. Arts and Crafts Movement
--Influence on Movement from social
intellectual, John Ruskin (1819 - 1900).
-Flexible layout, influenced the work of Mies Van
der Rohe.
-fluid, delicate décor of
arches, entrance, alcoves, stairs, balustrade, interi
or details in wood and metal.
-Combination of simplicity, good design and craft
work.
-Arts and Crafts movement believed that the
industrial revolution had made man less creative as
‘his’ craft skills had been removed from the
manufacturing process.

25. Arts and Crafts Movement influence
"And the great cry that rises from all our
manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace
blast, is all in very deed for this - that we
manufacture everything there except men; we
blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine
sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to
strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living
spirit, never enters into our estimate of
advantages."
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: Volume II
(1853)

26. Arts and Crafts Movement influence
“You must either make a tool of the creature, or a
man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not
intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be
precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will
have that precision out of them, and make their
fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels and their
arms strike curves like compasses, you must
unhumanize them...”
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: Volume II
(1853)

27. Arts and Crafts Movement

28. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

29. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

30. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

31. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

32. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

33. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

34. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

35. Glasgow School of Arts, C.R. Mackintosh

37. Glasgow School of Art Music Room

38. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
House for an Art Lover competition entry, 1901

39. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The Willow Tea rooms - Sauchiehall Street

40. Charles Rennie
Mackintosh
The Willow Tea rooms -
Sauchiehall Street
The Glasgow tea rooms of the
late 19th century were a
phenomena unique to the
city, filling a particular gap in the
market - department
stores, hotels and catering
establishments all addressed the
needs of the leisured middle
class - they offered a place for
office workers and clerks to take
light refreshment during the day.

41. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The Willow Tea rooms - Sauchiehall Street

42. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The Willow Tea rooms - Sauchiehall Street

43. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
The Willow Tea rooms - Sauchiehall Street

44. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
High-backed chair. For the
Luncheon Room, Glasgow 1898-9

45. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintish, doors to the Room de Luxe.
For the Willow Tea Rooms , Glasgow.

46. Charles Rennie Mackintosh Cabinet

47. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Armchair design

48. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Hill House Chair

49. Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Hill House Chair in modern interior

56. Staircase at Red House.

57. Stained glass window at Red House with Morris's motto: Si Je Puis

58. William Morris, The Red House

59. William Morris, The Red House

60. William Morris, The Red House

61. William Morris, The Red House

64. William Morris, The Red House

67. Screen, John Henry Dearle
(designer), Morris & Co.
(manufacturer), 1885-1910.
Arts and Crafts movement
Cabinet, Charles Robert Ashbee,
about 1905

68. Morris & Co Tiles

69. Morris & Co Wallpaper, Nature as Inspiration

70. Morris & Co. Block printed Wallpaper
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/b/video-block-printed-wallpaper/

71. General view of the Green Dining Room, decorated by William Morris
'Chrysanthemum', the
expensive embossed
wallpaper, 1877 Tile panel of 66 tiles

72. Art Nouveau – birth of a style
1893.
Art Nouveau is born when Victor Horta designed
house for Emile Tassel, professor of
geometry, Brussels
Total design:
1. Teardrop shaped
glass panels
2. Curving door handles
3. Vegetal sweep of the
banister
4. Slender iron work
and pillars
5. Coiling patterns of
mosaic floors
6. Bow windows
enlarged

74. Art Nouveau – birth of a style, House Tassel

80. Maison and Atelier Horta, now
the Horta Museum
The interior decoration, the
mosaics, stained glass, and wall
decorations forming a harmonious
and elegant whole, down to the last
detail.

81. Maison and Atelier Horta, now the Horta Museum

82. Maison and Atelier Horta, now the Horta Museum

83. Maison and Atelier Horta, now the Horta Museum

86. Maison and Atelier Horta, now the Horta Museum

87. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIo2VUz9A5c
Victor Horta, Architect & Designer
1. Solvay House, Brussels, 1894-1900
2. Horta House, Brussels, 1898
3. Hôtel van Eetvelde, designed and built 1895 - 1898.
4. Maison and Atelier Horta, designed in 1898,
now the Horta Museum, dedicated to his work.

88. Victor Horta, Architect & Designer
Furniture from Museum D’Orsay collection

89. Victor Horta, Architect & Designer
Peacock cabinet

90. Hector Guimard - France
French architect, furniture designer and writer.
He studied at Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs
in Paris, and in 1885 he entered the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, He visited Brussels in 1895, where he
met Victor Horta, whose Maison du Peuple was
then under construction.
Total design:
1. Ecole du Sacré-Coeur (the influence of Eugène-Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc)
2. Castel Henriette, Paris
3. Chalet La Surprise
4. Paris Metro stations (3 major types)
5. His own house, 122, Avenue Mozart, Paris

91. Hector Guimard - France
He designed three types of Metro station:
1. A basic open one with steps and railings; consists of railings
with decorated ‘shields’ incorporating the letter M and an
iron arch over the entrance which supports an enamelled
sign flanked by ‘stalks’ blossoming into lamps. 90 survived
2. Type with enclosed and covered steps; for example
Abbesses in Montmartre, consists of an iron frame with
decorated enamelled lava panels and translucent wired glass;
a ‘butterfly’ glass roof, supported from a central girder, over-
sails the enclosure.
3. With complete pavilions. Porte Dauphine survives, provides
waiting-rooms and has an enclosure like the second type but
with more ample entrance arches and a roof consisting of
tiered pyramidal sections.

92. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
There have been two major disasters on the Paris Métro, one in 1943 when
an allied bombing raid blew the roof off the station at Porte Saint-Cloud killing
403 people who where sheltering there and another in 1903 when a fire
killed 84 people, most of them at Couronnes station.

93. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 1

94. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 1

95. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 1

96. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 2

97. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 2

98. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 3

99. Hector Guimard – France, Metro
Type 3

100. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger
• It’s a building of 36 flats, located 14 rue La Fontaine in the 16th
district of Paris. It was built between 1895 and 1898 by Hector
Guimard.
• The Castel Beranger’s owner, Fournier’s widow, asked Hector
Guimard, to build something original. After a first scheme of
Gothic style, he finally focused on Art Nouveau style mixing
decorative art and architecture.
• The press and the public didn’t react very well. A violent
controversy happened during the building’s realization which was
even nicknamed ” Castel Disturbed” (« Castel Dérangé » in
french).
• The architect used simple materials (millstone, metal, brick).
The interior decoration: floor, joinery, metalwork, stained
glass, painting, tapestry. He also created furniture on plants and
animal models.

101. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

102. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

103. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

104. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

105. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

106. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

107. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

108. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger

109. Hector Guimard – France, Castel Beranger
1911

110. Hector Guimard – Paris, Hotel Mezzara
1911

111. Hector Guimard – Paris, Hotel Mezzara
1911

112. Hector Guimard – Paris, Hotel Mezzara
1911

113. Hector Guimard – Paris, Hotel Mezzara
1911

114. Hector Guimard – Paris, Hotel Mezzara
1911

115. Hector Guimard – France, furniture design
"For construction, do not the branches of the trees, the stems, by
turns rigid and undulating, furnish us with models?"
1889

116. Hector Guimard – France, furniture design
Vase and Settee
1897-8

117. Hector Guimard – France, furniture design
Side table and cabinet
1904-07

118. Hector Guimard – France, furniture design
Bed and wardrobe
1904-07

119. Hector Guimard – France, furniture design
Bed and wardrobe
1904-07

120. Austria, Vienna – secession
Joseph Maria Olbrich, Austrian architect, cofounder of
Secession in Vienna. In 1897, Gustav Klimt, Olbrich,
Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser founded the
Vienna Secession artistic group. Olbrich designed their
exhibition building, the famous Secession Hall, which
became the movement's landmark.
Work:
• The Secession hall, Vienna
• Residence for Hermann Bahr, Vienna
• Hochzeitsturm and other buildings at Darmstadt Artists' Colony,
Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt
• Department store for Leonhard Tietz, Düsseldorf
• Villa for Josef Feinhals, Cologne, built 1908 and destroyed in
World War II

121. Austria, Vienna – secession

122. Austria, Vienna – secession

123. Austria, Vienna – secession

124. Austria, Vienna – secession, Otto Wagner
• Majolika House – floral decoration, formal language of the
building, cubic forms, massive and monumental, metal details
• Cashier hall Posparkasse, Post saving bank – reducing form to
basic shapes, skylight, glass, iron, repetition, symmetry, free of
decoration, outline, narrow steel support pillars and
columns, arched roof,
• Kirche am Steinhof, Vienna (1903–1907)
• Viennese Wiener Stadtbahn, metropolitan railway system, e.g.
Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station
• Wrote “Thesis of Modern Architecture”, he stated that "new
human tasks and views called for a change or reconstitution of
existing forms".
• Mix of architecture and engineering – “anything impractical
cannot be beautiful”

125. Otto Wagner – Majolika House

126. Otto Wagner – Majolika House

127. Otto Wagner – Majolika House

128. Otto Wagner – Postparkasse

129. Otto Wagner – Postparkasse

130. Otto Wagner – Postparkasse

131. Otto Wagner – Postparkasse

132. Otto Wagner – Postparkasse

133. Otto Wagner – Kirche am Steinhof

134. Otto Wagner – Kirche am Steinhof

135. Otto Wagner – Kirche am Steinhof

136. Otto Wagner – Kirche am Steinhof

137. Gesamtkunstwerk
translated as total work of art, ideal work of
art, universal artwork, synthesis of the
arts, comprehensive artwork, all-embracing art
form or total artwork, is a work of art that makes
use of all or many art forms or strives to do so.
The word has become particularly associated
with Otto Wagner's aesthetic ideals.

138. Emile Galle

139. Emile Galle

140. Emile Galle

141. Josef HOFFMANN
Desk And Chair By Josef
Hoffmann, Ca. 1905

142. Josef HOFFMANN
Desk And Chair By Josef
Hoffmann, Ca. 1905

143. Koloman MOSER and Josef HOFFMANN
Armchair and Set of tables

144. Josef HOFFMANN
1. Rare ceruse barrel armchair
2. Cafe Fledermaus Chair
01 02

145. Josef HOFFMANN
Fledermaus Chairs

146. Josef HOFFMANN
1. Armchairs Pair for Jacob & Josef Kohn
2. Mounted Bowl,1915-19
01 02

147. Josef HOFFMANN
A Fledermaus Settee, Vienna Secession bentwood settee, 1905, and
manufactured by Thonet in 1910.
The bentwood construction features simple, clean lines and plenty of negative
space. The stained ash wood displays a beautiful grain with a deep, rich patina.

148. Josef HOFFMANN
In 1903, he founded
with architects
Koloman Moser and
Joseph Maria
Olbrich, the Wiener
Werkstätte for
decorative arts.
"Sitzmaschine"
reclining
armchair, 1905

149. Josef HOFFMANN
Armchair and Cube
Armchair

150. Wiener Werkstätte
Against this background the members of the
artists’ association ‘Secession’ and Vienna’s
Kunstgewerbeschule, the college of arts and
crafts, founded the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna
Workshop) in 1903.
This became a brand in itself and developed into
a company which marketed not just furniture
and small articles of everyday use made of glass,
ceramics, silver and metal, but also jewellery
and clothing…

151. Wiener Werkstätte,

152. Wiener Werkstätte,

153. Wiener Werkstätte,
Josef Hoffmann

154. Josef Hoffman, Stocklet Palace, Brussels
• The Stoclet Palace (French: Palais Stoclet, Dutch: Stocletpaleis) is a
private mansion built by architect Josef Hoffmann between 1905 and
1911 in Brussels, Belgium, for banker and art lover Adolphe Stoclet (a
wealthy industrialist and avid art collector).
• Considered Hoffman's masterpiece, the Stoclet's house is one of the
most refined and luxurious private houses of the twentieth
century, masterpiece of Gesamtkunstwerk and Vienna Werstatte, a
building of true modernity; an asymmetrical compilation of rectangular
blocks, underlined by exaggerated lines and corners.
• The bronze sculptures of four nude males by Franz Metzner, which
are mounted on the tower that rises above the stairwell.
• Josef Hoffman as his colleagues designed every aspect of the
mansion, down to the door handles and light fittings.
•The interior of the building is decorated with marble paneling and
artworks including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt and murals by Ludwig
Heinrich Jungnickel.

155. Josef Hoffman, Stocklet Palace, Brussels

156. Josef Hoffman, Stocklet Palace, Brussels

157. Josef Hoffman, Stocklet Palace, Brussels

158. BBC Documentary: The Allure of Art Nouveau, France
http://youtu.be/6PHHhmLA8Sg

159. BBC Documentary: The Allure of Art Nouveau, Vienna
http://youtu.be/LFm8HCz-tL8

160. BBC Documentary: The Allure of Art Nouveau, British Cities
http://youtu.be/sog2sEhjRQw

161. BBC Documentary: The Allure of Art Nouveau, Paris
http://youtu.be/PdgNUlI0Vhw