Art Nouveau and Art Deco

Q. What's the difference between Art Nouveau and Art Deco

A. These two movements, while they have much common ground, are quite distinct from one another, though many people mix them up. Both found expression across the board from fine and applied arts to architecture and industrial design and make use of some common motifs.

Q. So, Art Nouveau

A. In the last quarter of the 19th century design began to be influenced by a style which, although incorporating classical shapes, used natural forms for decoration. Its distinguishing feature, in all its forms of expression, was an undulating, asymmetrical line. 'Art Nouveau' (New Art) was the name of a shop that opened in Paris in 1895 to sell modern objects, and the term was soon applied to any building or artefact that bore no trace of period imitation.

Known as the Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria, Stile Floreale (or Stile Liberty) in Italy and Modernismo (or Modernista) in Spain, Art Nouveau was at its height between c.1890 and 1910.

Q. Where did Art Nouveau develop

A. The style originated in Britain, evolving out of the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements, as well as the work of the artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley and the furniture design of Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. Mackmurdo's work in the 1880s was highly influential on the leading advocates of Art Nouveau in Britain: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and C.F.A. Voysey.

Q. Who were the leading stylists in the movement

A. Mackintosh was the most influential designer in Britain, as celebrated for his furniture as for his architecture, which contrasted curves with a rectangular crispness and use of subtle colours. This is seen to great effect in his Glasgow School of Art (1907-9). In his furniture, almost always designed as part of an overall scheme for the decoration of one of his buildings, he liked to treat the wood, staining or painting it. His chairs, like his buildings, typically have a concentrated use of vertical lines combined with gentle curves.

The style soon spread throughout Europe as well as the United States. Among its leading exponents were Gall and Majorelle in France, Horta and van de Velde in Belgium, Gaud in Spain and Bugatti in Italy.

In Austria the Wiener Werkstette - a cooperative of craftsmen founded in 1903 under the influence of Josef Hoffmann - was inspired by Mackintosh rather than following mainstream Art Nouveau ideas. Some followers of the style continued to use traditional furniture-making techniques, others used machines.

Q. And Art Deco

By the end of World War I, a style that had been evolving before 1914 emerged. Known as Art Deco - named after the 1925 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes' in Paris - or Style Moderne, it continued many of the trends found in Art Nouveau, combined with Cubist and Bauhaus influences.

A major difference was favouring the use of machinery and man-made substances rather than purely traditional working methods. Instead of looking back to the mid-18th century for design inspiration, makers in the Deco style turned to the Louis XVI and the Directoire periods of the early 19th century, and reinterpreted them in a modernist manner.

Q. How long was Art Deco around and what characterised it

A. Art Deco was the dominant style throughout Europe and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, and it is characterised by simple, streamlined, geometric shapes, with motifs taken from Indian, Egyptian and Native American traditions, as well as natural forms and nude figures. A monumental example of Deco design is the Empire State Building, but its influence can be found in an item as small as a bakelite ashtray.

For more on Arts & Literature click here

By Simon Smith