Chapter 11 – Art Nouveau

Introduction, 196

The influence of ukiyo-e, 196

Art nouveau, 200

Chéret and Grasset, 201

English art nouveau, 205

The further development of French art nouveau, 209

Art nouveau comes to America, 214

Innovation in Belgium and the Netherlands, 220

The German Jugendstil movement, 224

The Italian pictorial tradition, 228

Key Terms (in order of appearance; the first page number of their appearance is listed)

  1. Ukiyo-e, page 196.
  2. Tokugawa period (1603–1867), page 196
  3. Shogun, page 196
  4. Emaki, page 196
  5. “The floating world,” page 196
  6. Edo, page 196
  7. Surimono, page 198
  8. Yellowbacks, page 198
  9. Mount Fuji, page 198,(Fig. 11-5)
  10. Japonisme, page 200
  11. Art nouveau, page 200
  12. Historicism, page 200
  13. Anachronistic, page 200
  14. French symbolist movement, page 200
  15. Afficheurs, page 201
  16. Chérettes, page 201,(Fig. 11-11)
  17. Jules Chéret Museum, page 205
  18. “Coloring-book style,” page 205, (Fig. 11-14).
  19. The Studio, page 205,(Fig. 11-15)
  20. “The black spot,” page 207,(Fig. 11-21)
  21. The Yellow Book, page 207
  22. Rodolphe Salis’s Le Chat Noir, page 209
  23. La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Era), page 209,(Fig. 11-26)
  24. Le style moderne, page 213
  25. Le style Mucha, page 213
  26. L’art nouveau, page 213
  27. Jugendstil, page 213
  28. Sezessionstil, page 213
  29. Stile floreale or stile Liberty, page 213
  30. Modernismo, page 213
  31. Nieuwe Kunst, page 213
  32. Archetypal, page 213
  33. Combinaisons ornementales (Ornamental Combinations), page 213, (Fig. 11-39)
  34. GE (General Electric), page 214,(Fig. 11-41)
  35. Harper’s magazines, page 214, (Figs. 11-42 and 11-43)
  36. Bradley: His Book, page 217, (Fig. 11-49)
  37. Chapbooks, page 217
  38. Chapbook style, page 217,(Fig. 11-50)
  39. American Chap-Book, page 217,(Fig. 11-50)
  40. Cercle des XX (Group of Twenty), page 220,(Fig. 11-59)
  41. Driehoeken bij ontwerpen van ornament (Triangles in the Design of Ornament), page 224, (Fig. 11-66)
  42. Theosophy, page 224
  43. Batik, page 224
  44. Klingspor Foundry, page 226, (Fig. 11-77); see also (Fig. 12-29)
  45. Eckmannschrift, page 226,(Fig. 11-77); see also (Fig. 12-29)

Key People and Their Major Contributions (in order of appearance; the first page number of their appearance is listed)

  1. Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–94),page 196, (Fig. 11-1)
  2. Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764), page 197
  3. Suzuki Harunobu (c. 1725–1770), page 197
  4. Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753–1806), page 197,(Fig. 11-3)
  5. Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), page 197, (Fig. 11-5)
  6. Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858), page 198,(Figs. 11-6 and 11-7)
  7. Matthew C. Perry, page 199
  8. Samuel Bing (1838–1905), page 200
  9. Baron Victor Horta (1861–1947), page 200
  10. Jules Chéret (1836–1933), page 201,(Figs. 11-8through 11-11)
  11. Eugène Grasset (1841–1917), page 201, (Figs. 11-12 through 11-14 and 11-33)
  12. Eugene Rimmel, page 201
  13. Charles Gillot, page 205
  14. Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898), page 205, (Figs. 11-17 through 11-19)
  15. Walter Crane (1845–1915), page 207
  16. Charles Ricketts (1863–1937), page 207,(Figs. 11-22 through11-24)
  17. Georges Auriol (1863–1939), page 209, (Fig. 11-39)
  18. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), page 209,(Figs. 11-25 through 11-29)
  19. Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859–1923), page 209,(Figs. 11-30 through 11-32)
  20. Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), page 211, interchangeably with l’art nouveau. His stylized hair patterns (Figs. 11-34through 11-38)
  21. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), page 213
  22. Emmanuel Orazi (1860–1934), page 213
  23. Louis Rhead (1857–1926), page 214
  24. William H. Bradley (1868–1962), page 214, (Figs. 11-44 through 11-46)
  25. Ethel Reed (b. 1876), page 217, (Fig. 11-53)
  26. Edward Penfield (1866–1925), page 218,(Figs. 11-54 through 11-56).
  27. William Carqueville (1871–1946), page 218,(Fig. 11-57)
  28. Maxfield Parrish (1870–1966), page 218,(Fig. 11-58)
  29. Henri Clemens van de Velde (1863–1957), page 213,(Figs. 11-60 through 11-62)
  30. Privat Livemont (1861–1936), page 222, (Fig. 11-64)
  31. Gisbert Combaz (1869–1941), page 222,(Fig. 11-65)
  32. Chris Lebeau, page 224,(Fig. 11-67)
  33. Jan Toorop (1858–1928), page 224, (Figs. 11-68and 11-69)
  34. S. H. de Roos, page 224, (Fig. 11-70)
  35. Hans Christiansen (1866–1945), page 226, (Figs. 11-72 and 11-74)
  36. Peter Behrens (1868–1940), page 226,(Figs. 11-73, 11-75 and 11-78)
  37. Otto Eckmann (1865–1902), page 226,(Figs. 11-76 and 11-77)
  38. Adolfo Hohenstein (1854–1928), page 228, (Fig. 11-79)
  39. Leopoldo Metlicovitz (1868–1944), page 228, (Figs. 11-80 and 11-81)
  40. Giovanni Mataloni (1869–1944), page 228,(Fig. 11-82)
  41. Marcello Dudovich (1878–1962), page 228, (Fig. 11-83)
  42. Franz Laskoff (1869–1918), page 228,(Fig. 11-84)
  43. Leonetto Capiello (1875–1942), page 228,(Figs. 11-85 and 11-86)

Chapter 11 – Study Questions

Multiple Choice

  1. During Japan’s Tokugawa period, the country adopted an official policy of national seclusion. This was a time of economic expansion, internal stability, and flourishing cultural arts. The entertainment districts of major cities were called “the floating world,” and became the focus of inspiration for many artists. The earliest Japanese ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) were ______depicting these entertainment districts of urban Japan.
  2. lithographic prints
  3. screen paintings
  4. stone engravings
  5. copper reliefs
  6. Katsushika Hokusai apprenticed as a woodblock engraver before turning to drawing and painting. During seven decades of artistic creation, he produced an estimated thirty-five thousand works that spanned the gamut of ukiyo-e subjects, including album prints, genre scenes, historical events, illustrations for novels, landscape series, nature studies, and privately commissioned prints for special occasions called surimono. He is perhaps best known for ______, his series of prints that depicts the external appearances of nature and symbolically interpret the vital energy forces found in the sea, winds, and clouds surrounding Japan’s famous twelve-thousand-foot volcano.
  7. Hokusai Soga
  8. Famous Places in Edo: A Hundred Views
  9. Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaido
  10. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
  11. Although art nouveau artists did not use a historicist approach to their designs, they were influenced by past as well as contemporary art. All but one of the examples below were influences on art nouveau. Which does NOT belong? ______
  12. Japanese decorative designs
  13. the rococo style
  14. Celtic ornament
  15. Assyrian motifs
  16. Jules Chéret, the father of the modern poster, featured beautiful young women in his posters. At a time when options for women were limited, these self-assured, happy women were depicted enjoying life to the fullest, wearing low-cut dresses, dancing, drinking wine, and even smoking in public. Dubbed ______, these female archetypes became the new role model for women in the late Victorian period.
  17. Victorianettes
  18. “fallen women”
  19. Chérettes
  20. les enfants terribles
  21. Upon viewing Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations in a new edition of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, ______was so angry that he considered legal action because he believed Beardsley had vulgarized the design ideas of the Kelmscott style by replacing the formal, naturalistic borders with more stylized, flat patterns.
  22. Walter Crane
  23. William Morris
  24. Jan Toorop
  25. Edward Burne-Jones
  26. In 1894, Oscar Wilde’s Salomé received widespread notoriety for the obvious erotic sensuality of ______’s illustrations. Late-Victorian English society was shocked by the celebration of evil, which reached its peak in an edition of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. Banned by English censors, it was widely circulated on the Continent.
  27. Eugène Grasset
  28. Charles Ricketts
  29. Jan Toorop
  30. Aubrey Beardsley
  31. There is an affinity between the posters and prints of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and his friend and sometime rival, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Steinlen’s first commissions were drawings for ______. He had a mania for cats and during the 1880s and 1890s became a prolific illustrator. His radical political views, socialist affiliations, and anticlerical stance led him toward asocial realism, and he chose to depict poverty, exploitation, and the working class.
  32. the Moulin Rouge
  33. Le Chat Noir
  34. the actress Sarah Bernhardt
  35. theprinter Charles Verneau
  36. On Christmas Eve 1894, the young Czech artist Alphonse Mucha was at the Lemercier’s printing company correcting proofs for a friend when the printing firm’s manager burst into the room, upset because the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt was demanding a new poster for the play Gismonda by New Year’s Day. Mucha was the only artist available, so he received the commission. He used the basic pose from an earlier poster of Bernhardt in Joan of Arc that had been done by ______.
  37. Jules Chéret
  38. Eugène Grasset
  39. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
  40. Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
  41. During an 1895 visit to the Boston Public Library, Will Bradley studied the collection of small, crudely printed books from colonial New England called chapbooks. These inspired a new direction in graphic design that became known as the chapbook style. All of the following traits except one apply.Which does NOT apply? ______
  42. Caslon types with wide letter spacing
  43. a mix of roman, italic, and all-capital type
  44. yellow covers
  45. sturdy woodcuts and plain rules
  46. Many trademarks of art nouveau origin have been in continuous use since the 1890s, such as those of General Electric and Insel-Verlag, both of which are characterized by ______.
  47. geometric ordering of space
  48. being contained in squares
  49. the use of sans serif type
  50. swirling organic lines
  51. A member of the Flemish Group of Twenty, Henri van de Velde had enormous influence on design and architecture. His only poster design was for Tropon, ______, for which he created labeling and advertisements in 1899. Rather than communicating information about the product or depicting people using it, van de Velde engaged the viewer with symbolic form and color.
  52. a salad oil
  53. a concentrated food supplement
  54. a coffee concentrate
  55. a cocoa powder
  56. In his teaching and writings, Belgian designer Henri van de Velde became a vital source for the development of twentieth-century architecture and design theory. He taught that all branches of art share a common language of form and are of equal importance to the human community. He demanded ______. He saw ornament not as decoration but as a means of expression that could achieve the status of art.
  57. appropriate materials, functional forms, and a unity of visual organization
  58. machine-made objects that appeared to be handmade
  59. abolishing the past and starting anew
  60. a lot of decoration and ornament
  61. The Dutch book design style of Nieuwe Kunst spanned roughly the fourteen years between 1892 through 1906. After 1895, mathematics was seen as a creative source in itself, with symmetry and rationalism each playing a part. Some of the special qualities of the movement’s book design are described below. Which one doe NOT apply? ______
  62. unpredictable
  63. eccentric
  64. geometric
  65. illustrative
  66. One of Dutch designer Jan Toorop’s biggest sources of inspiration was ______, which can be seen especially in his use of silhouette, his linear style, and the forms, expressions, and hair styles of his female figures.
  67. Renaissance era use of space
  68. Javanese culture
  69. geometry
  70. medieval illustration
  71. While German Jugendstil shared common characteristics with French and English art nouveau, one distinction was that it reflected the German interest in ______, as can be seen in the blending of contradictory influences in Eckmannschrift by Otto Eckmann.
  72. medieval letters
  73. landscapes in deep space
  74. value gradients and shading for volume
  75. traditional figurative subjects
  76. The new art had different names in different countries. Which of the following was NOT one of them? ______
  77. Nieuwe Kunst
  78. Jugendstil
  79. Sezessionstil
  80. Surimono

True/False

1.Ukiyo-e refers to an art movement beginning in the seventeenth century and ending in the nineteenth century, a time period when Japan actively sought trade with Western European countries. _____

2.In Japan, ukiyo-e practitioners were considered mere artisans, but they captivated European artists, who drew inspiration from their calligraphic line drawing, abstraction and simplification, flat color and silhouettes, unconventional use of black shapes, and decorative patterns. _____

3.The late-nineteenth-century Western mania for all things Japanese is called japanned ware. _____

4.Unlike contemporary literary artists, visual artists working in the art nouveau style rejected realism in favor of the metaphysical and the sensuous. _____

5.Eugène Grasset, like his rival Jules Chéret, incorporated exuberant women in his poster illustrations. _____

6.The coloring book style of Aubrey Beardsley used a thick black contour drawing to lock forms into flat areas of color in a manner similar to medieval stained-glass windows. _____

7.Although Charles Ricketts’s page designs were influenced somewhat by William Morris, his work tended to be much lighter, more open, and geometric. _____

8.The Netherlands’ relationship with the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) allowed Dutch designers to access the traditional craft of batik. Its introduction as a contemporary design medium was one of Holland’s important contributions to the international art nouveau movement. _____

9.Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec developed a journalistic, illustrative style that captured the nightlife of La Belle Époque (“The Beautiful Era”)—a term used to describe late-nineteenth-century Paris. _____

10.Art nouveau was first seen in America on Harper’s magazine covers illustrated by Will Bradley, one of the two major American practitioners of art nouveau–inspired graphic design and illustration. _____

11.Beginning in 1894, Will Bradley’s work for the Inland Printer and the Chap Book ignited art nouveau in America. _____

12.Ethel Reed became the first woman in England to achieve national prominence for her work as a graphic designer and illustrator. _____

13.Henri van de Velde’s works are early examples of the modernist integration of form and function; their forms communicated their uses objectively and clearly. _____

14.Eckmannschrift, designed by Otto Eckmann, attempted to revitalize typography by combining fraktura with modern type. _____

15.Jugendstilartist Otto Eckmann abandoned painting in order to turn his full attention to the applied arts. _____

16.Jugend, an art nouveau–style magazine popular in Germany, allowed each week’s cover designer to design a different logotype to match his or her own illustration. _____

17.Italian turn-of-the-century posters were characterized by sensuous exuberance and elegance like that of France’s La Belle Époque. _____

Image Identification

I. Identify the designer, title, and date of the following images.

  1. Fig. 11-7 ______
  2. Fig. 11-16 ______
  3. Figs. 11-22 and 11-23 ______
  4. Fig. 11-25 ______
  5. Fig. 11-30 ______
  6. Fig. 11-36 ______
  7. Fig. 11-42 ______
  8. Fig. 11-60 ______
  9. Fig. 11-64 ______
  10. Fig. 11-76 ______

II. Match each of the images shown with the name of its designer.

  1. Fig. 11-3 ____
  2. Fig. 11-5 ____
  3. Fig. 11-11 ____
  4. Fig. 11-21 ____
  5. Fig. 11-34 ____
  6. Fig. 11-46 ____
  7. Fig. 11-71 ____
  1. Jules Chéret
  2. Katsushika Hokusai
  3. Aubrey Beardsley
  4. Alphonse Mucha
  5. Kitagawa Utamaro
  6. Will Bradley
  7. Otto Eckmann

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