Signpost 3: Paris - Art Nouveau Quintessence

Like Prague and Brussels, in the 1890s Parisian architects and city planners were concerned with poor urban living conditions. And like Victor Horta, they had a growing interest in using new building materials and decorative motifs that would improve dwellings and aesthetically move away from the past. Paris would give the style its name and some of its most enduring creations. In fact, viewed from the 21st century, much of Art Nouveau design could be considered consummately French. Ironically, in 1900 some French art critics were suspicious, thinking it not French at all. A professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts wrote: “The style, very composite, is a mixture of Gothic and Japanese, of rustic and super-refined, which came from England having passed through Belgium . . . I’d ignore all this if in the future, by a series of transformations, it would achieve a French appearance.”

At the end of the 19th century, Hector Guimard was one of Paris’s most innovative architects. He visited Brussels in 1894 and brought Victor Horta’s influence to his work. Unlike Horta’s upper middle class clientele, Guimard designed apartments and homes for the middle classes that were neither too expensive nor extravagant. Yet like Horta, he used modern construction materials to create open interior spaces allowing for more light and air and that he decorated with bright colors. The Castel Béranger was Guimard’s first radical design and first expression of the flowing organic style inspired by Brussels. The apartment building’s exterior was an eclectic concoction of surfaces, elevations, and decorative elements. He included an inner courtyard to bring more light to the apartments. Inside the entryway’s swirled gate, the visitor enters a space constructed of ceramic tiles and iron that is a cross between a cave and a garden. Eventually Guimard had his office in Castel Béranger and true to the age, he designed beautifully-carved furniture to compliment the interiors.

Entrance Gate, Castel Béranger,

Hector Guimard, 1895 - 98

Desk, Hector Guimard, 1909

Photo Credit: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

In 1898, Guimard received a commission that transformed Paris’s cityscape while intersecting with the burgeoning public transportation system: the Métro station. He developed a system of standardized, prefabricated iron parts that could be assembled in varying configurations to suit each location. The green-patina, bug-like designs gracing numerous entrances opened in time for 1900 Exposition Universelle and became abiding symbols of fin-de-siècle Paris.

Métro station, Hecto Guimard, Rue de Rivoli, Paris

Architects like Horta and Guimard were central to the movement; however, in many respects Art Nouveau was primarily a decorative arts phenomenon. The term Art Nouveau originated with the art dealer and trendsetter Siegfried Bing, who opened his Maison de l’Art Nouveau in 1895 with a distinctly global outlook. His gallery sold prominent French artists, sculptors, and designers such as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, glassmaker Emile Gallé, and jeweler René Lalique. He also imported the work of important international artists including Morris & Co., Louis Comfort Tiffany, Aubrey Beardsley, and works from American potteries such as Rockwood and Grueby. In addition, he collected and sold Japanese prints which he showed alongside modern art, feeding the European appetite for Asian art. Following the English Arts and Crafts tradition, he hired young designers like Eugène Gaillard and Georges de Feure who designed furniture and textiles. Craftsman actually built the furniture in an atelier beneath the gallery. Bing’s gallery was essential to the dissemination of Art Nouveau and its artists.

Entrance to La Maison de l’Art Nouveau, Paris, 1895

Photo credit: By Édouard Pourchet (1848-1907) - libressavoirs.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38742706

The French had always considered themselves the preeminent purveyors of decorative arts and style. Art Nouveau had its origins elsewhere but that didn’t mean the French couldn’t catch up. In 1900, they opened the Exposition Universelle in Paris with the political and cultural purpose of reestablishing dominance in arts and design. Previous international exhibitions in the 1890s had featured Art Nouveau artists and works. Louis Comfort Tiffany, for example, gained an international reputation for his glass at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. However, the 1900 Paris exhibition was the first event to revolve around Art Nouveau architecture and design, While many national pavilions were classical or traditional—the British built a Tudor mansion fit for Henry VIII—the French, Belgians, and other nations centered their creations on modernity. Multiple buildings and pavilions, including the main gate, exhibited the style’s organic ornamentation on non-traditional facades. Belgian architect Gustave Serrurier-Bovy built the spectacular Le Pavilion Bleu restaurant whose fretwork structure looked more like exoskeleton than walls.

Le Pavilion Bleu, Gustave Serrurier-Bovy, 1900

Decorative arts were equally prominent. Belgium, Austria, Germany, and of course, France featured decorative arts and art in the modern style. Czech artist, Alphonse Mucha, designed advertising for the exhibition. The Decorative Arts building displayed the glass of Emile Gallé and Daum Frères, the jewelry of René Lalique, the ceramics of Jean Carriès. Louis Comfort Tiffany won the grand prize for his Favrile glass display anchored by a massive punchbowl at the entrance. Siegfried Bing had his own pavilion, appropriately named L’Art Nouveau. The pavilion’s visitors walked through complete rooms that Bing commissioned from national and international designers such as Georges de Feure and Henry van de Velde.

Punch Bowl with Three Ladles, Tiffany Glass & Decorating Co., 1900

Photo credit: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

French critics may have argued that Art Nouveau wasn’t sufficiently French, but nearly 50 million visitors at the exposition experienced it as completely modern. The exposition’s influence radiated throughout Europe as those visitors returned home. The extant exposition buildings and Métro stations along with many other exteriors and interiors remain quintessentially French. Paris today is unimaginable without them.