Art Nouveau : Paris, Bruxelles, Barcelone, Londres

by Thomas Hauffe

Des années 1890 jusqu'en 1910, un mouvement artistique se développe à travers toute l'Europe. En France comme en Belgique, on le nomme l'Art nouveau.

En opposition à l'académisme, les artistes préconisent le retour aux méthodes de production artisanale et le mélange des arts nobles (peinture, sculpture) et mineurs (art décoratif). Ils sont également à la recherche d'une cohérence globale entre l’œuvre, son usage et le lieu de son exposition. Ils puisent leur inspiration dans la nature, reproduisant des lignes fluides et organiques et ont recours à de nouvelles technologies et matériaux développés par l'industrie. Vous explorerez dans cet ouvrage tous les domaines touchés par l'art nouveau : architecture, peinture, mobilier, graphisme et joaillerie. Vous y trouverez également une présentation des plus grandes figures de ce mouvement : Henry Van de Velde, Antoni Gaudi, Hector Guimard, Mucha…

Genres: Design, Art

516 pages, Paperback

Published August 13, 2020

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first volume of the 3-volume subseries on Art Nouveau in Könemann’s large-format coffee table book series. Like other books in the series, it features just a bare-bones text, but the text comes in 6 languages and does provide a useful introduction to the topic. While the title mentions just three cities, the volume goes well beyond that. The first four sections actually focus on the UK – covering quite extensively pre-Raphaelites and the Arts & Crafts movement. The “Paris” part has about 30 pages about Paris Art Nouveau architecture but then goes wide, covering porcelain, furniture, glass, jewelry, Japonism, and posters – with two sections focused on Nancy rather than Paris. Brussels also starts with its famed architecture but then covers furniture and posters. Barcelona section is devoted to Catalan Modernisme, but focuses mostly on the architecture of Gaudi (130 pages cover it really extensively with a lot of details), but then allocates 48 pages to Domemech, Liceu, and graphics. Photos are excellent, and altogether, 515 pages of the book provide very good coverage of Art Nouveau objects in these 3 regions. The only problem in this book is the use of space – while for presenting architecture, furniture, and posters, the use of large format pages is great, ceramics and jewelry are too large and waste a lot of space. But since the book is also available in a much smaller flexible format, this poor design was apparently a necessity.

[Deborah Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous sized plates to enjoy and relish the intricate thought and creativity behind this artistic expression.