Signpost 1: London - Le Style Anglais
English artists, designers, and architects started to grapple with the idea of design reform from the middle of the 19th century as a reaction to the practices and products of the industrial revolution. The Arts and Crafts movement and the Aesthetic Movement rejected the over-ornamented, sometimes nonsensical, and “unbeautiful” output of contemporary manufacturers and tastemakers. They also eschewed historicist styles that relied on French and Italian precedents, turning to England’s native Gothic and Tudor styles and to the craze for Japanese art which began in the 1860s. Simplicity and purity of form were meant to vanquish over-stuffed furnishings and heavily-tasseled drapery. Flora and fauna were key design elements, yet they took on a flattened, abstracted form rather than a naturalistic depiction.
Vase, William de Morgan, 1895
Photo credit: Victoria & Albert Museum
In 1882, while lecturing on the decoration of houses, Oscar Wilde told an American audience, “Why, I have seen wallpaper which must lead a boy brought up under its influence to a career of crime.” Although it might sound like a typical Wildean witticism, the statement actually hewed to the opinions many design reformers. They believed they could cure the social ills wrought by the industrial revolution by educating the public on how to surround themselves with beauty. They believed that good design, as they defined it, would improve lives.
William Morris, the most prominent leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, had a significant influence on Art Nouveau designers. His socialist political views informed his design practice. He emphasized craftsmanship by recreating medieval techniques in specialist workshops to better align the worker with his craft and ostensibly improve the worker’s health and welfare. He believed that all the arts were equal and that all people should be able to enjoy them, not just the rich. Most importantly, he would inspire contemporary and future designers with his supreme draftsmanship, particularly in the way he rendered flattened flora and fauna onto textiles and wallpapers.
Acanthus wallpaper, William Morris,1875
Photo credit: Victoria & Albert Museum
While sharing the exultation of beauty with the Arts and Crafts movement, the Aesthetic Movement emphasized the philosophy of “art for art’s sake”, disengaging art from morality and politics. Only the sensation and reaction derived from an experience with art mattered. It both elevated the importance of an individual object but also divorced it from “style”. Eclecticism was welcome and inspiration was wide ranging. Aesthetic artists drew on sources from the Middle East, Hellenistic and Roman history, the Pre-Raphaelites, and especially Japan. In 1893 Aubrey Beardsley created illustrations for the publication of Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé. His drawings are considered the first widely-disseminated works of Art Nouveau design. He brought together the fluidity of Arts and Craft design and the hedonism of Aestheticism. He borrowed the flattened, organic forms of William Morris but layered them with the exoticism and eroticism of his androgynous figures.
J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan from Salomé, Aubrey Beardsley, 1893
Photo credit: Victoria & Albert Museum
Despite planting the seeds, a fully-realized Art Nouveau movement never grew in England, although you can find evidence of it in a number of cities, notably in a few famous pubs like London’s Blackfriars and Liverpool’s Philharmonic. English designers, like William Morris, wanted to reform the present by looking to the past not the future. In addition, the perceived decadence and amorality of Beardsley, Wilde, et. al., was perhaps more than many Victorians could tolerate. Many Europeans architects and designers borrowed the sinuous, nature-based forms of English design to invent their version of modernity. Ironically, they called it le style anglais.