L'Art Nouveau- en Paris!

Having recently traveled to one of my most dreamed about destinations, I am pleased to report that Paris, France is still quite as romantic as all the movies imply and as fairy tale inspired as a Disney Movie. Floating down the Bateau Mouche one night allowed my imagination to go in all different directions, but what inspired it the most was not the French music playing in random cafés, nor the scent of flowers in the air as we boated past, but the architecture.

The curvature of embellishments on many of the buildings within the heart of the city reminded me of a few French fairy-tale movies I treasured growing up. Outside of the city, the Palace of Versailles was incredible in its ornate decoration, but those styles aren’t solely unique to France. One style that isn’t unique either, but quite characteristic of France is Art Nouveau. (French for “New Art”)


If you’d like to sample a taste of Art Nouveau in Paris, you can start as you get off the Metro by just admiring the curvaceous green “Metropolitain” signs spread throughout the city. This flamboyant style originated at the turn of the 20th century, (1890-1905) and is seen as an “important bridge between the historicism of Neoclassism and modernism”. Basically, it was a style that connected two important eras in the art world, but is important in its own right, as it had itself a very strong flavor.

Siegfried Bing was an important character in the story of Art Nouveau in Paris. He opened up a gallery in 1895,”L’Art Nouveau”, and the fame of this gallery was made world-wide during the 1900 Exposition Universelle. There he presented “coordinated- in design and color- installations of modern furniture, tapestries and objets d’art.” Because these objects became so associated with the style itself, the movement took on the name of Bing’s gallery to become the most commonly used term for the entire style.

There are many descriptions of Art Nouveau, and since I’m terrible at trying to describe things, I’ll list a few here that I found in my research:

“Such decorative "whiplash" motifs, formed by dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines in a syncopated rhythm, are found throughout the architecture, painting, sculpture, and other forms of Art Nouveau design.”
- Wikipedia

“Because of typical flat, decorative patterns used in all art forms, Art Nouveau obtained a nickname 'the noodle style' in French, 'Le style nouilles'. Visual standards of the Art Nouveau style are flat, decorative patterns, intertwined organic forms of stems or flowers. Art Nouveau emphasized handcrafting as opposed to machine manufacturing, the use of new materials. Although curving lines characterize Art Nouveau, right-angled forms are also typical…..

Principal subjects are lavish birds and flowers, insects and polyformic femme fatale. Abstract lines and shapes are used widely as a filling for recognizable subject matter. Purposeful elimination of three-dimensions is often applied through reduced shading.”
-www.huntfor.com/arthistory

Art Nouveau was often considered to be a response to the great physical changes of the Industrial Revolution. Because so many things were starting to be mass produced, Art Nouveau, in a sense, became an effort to make the decorative arts a more esteemed way to express style. More emphasis was placed on “applying the highest standards of craftsmanship and design to everyday objects”, and that included using new materials of the time, like cast iron. Designers felt that there should be a consistency between all works of art, creating a harmony so that even things like buildings and furniture, clothes and jewelry could all flow together as one work of art.












Art Nouveau was more than a style, it was more a way of thinking. Paris embraced it, as so many other important European cities did, and its significance as a style, even a hundred years later, is that is has many reincarnations and effects on the style of today.