The Political Sources of Art Nouveau - Jocelyn A. Bailey

The Political Sources of Art Nouveau

How were political and social concerns in late nineteenth century France manifested in movements for craft reform? Abstract The following essay is an articulation of the political drivers of craft modernism in finde-si?cle France, and an assessment of the effectiveness of craft modernism as a cultural policy, and as an industrial policy. Two policies that, as often happens, turned out to be somewhat contradictory. The political concerns of the Third Republic led to two overarching strategies ? of responding to the threat of international industrial competition, and the construction of a new French identity ? which played out through policies for craft reform. But the brand of French identity favoured by the Third Republic was ultimately at odds with developing a national culture of mass manufacture. The conclusion reached herewith is only partial, as we will go on to see, and in part this is due to the incompleteness of information available in secondary material. The impact of political life, and an understanding of policy, seems absent from many accounts of the movement, although not all. This would merit further exploration, particularly of original source material.

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Images

Emile Gall?, Vase, 1896

Georges de Feure, Suite, c.1900

Interior, Fouquet Jewellery Boutique, 1901 (Mucha and others) Hector Guimard, Paris Metro, 1899 - 1905

Rene Lalique, Dragonfly brooch, c.1897-98

Alfons Mucha, Job Cigarettes, 1898

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Introduction Recent academic work on the fin-de-si?cle Art Nouveau movement as it unfolded in France ? the curvaceous, organic, feminine style that permeated posters and advertising, jewellery, furniture, glassware, interior design, and Parisian metro station architecture, to name but a few instances, and which indelibly stamped its mark for French identity abroad ? has begun to position it within broader initiatives for craft reform and industrial improvement during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Indeed, having been pinned for many years to a highly specific style and limited number of practitioners, a re-examination of its first mention in France, in the context of Siegfried Bing's Gallery, L'Art Nouveau, reveals the intention to inspire a movement of renewal in the fine and decorative arts. Writing in the Architectural Record in 1902, Bing said,

...it was simply the name of an establishment opened as a meeting ground for all ardent young spirits anxious to manifest the modernness of their tendencies, and open also to all lovers of art who desired to see the working of the hitherto unrevealed forces of our day.1

This first hand admission of its dual purpose ? supporting the avant-garde, and prototyping a new form of industrial process ? gives permission for historians to place what became a recognisable and marketable style within a far grander mission. Thus, historians of Art Nouveau as a period style have, over the last century, opened out their perspectives, from pure stylistic and formal analysis, to the broader social and cultural context. Gabriel Weisberg's bibliography of design reform, 1885 to 1910, provides a useful overview of the thematic expansion.2

A handful of examples demonstrate this evolution clearly.

Nicholas Pevsner in 1936 treats Art Nouveau, somewhat dismissively, as `the transitional style between historicism and the modern movement'.3 Stephan Tschudi Madsen in 1955 takes a similar approach, looking at the development of the style across Europe, although

1 This extract from the Architectural Record is reproduced in Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-si?cle France: Politics, Psychology and Style, University of California Press, Berkeley/ Los Angeles/ Oxford, 1989, p281 2 Gabriel P. Weisberg, and Elizabeth K Menon. Art Nouveau: A Research Guide for Design Reform in France, Belgium, England, and the United States, Garland, New York/ London, 1998 3 As quoted in the introduction of his 1973 revision of this earlier text: Nicholas Pevsner and JM Richards, eds., The Anti-Rationalists: Art Nouveau Architecture and Design, 1973

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his approval of, and interest in, the movement is greater.4 Both historians belong to the school of art history which views stylistic development as an internally motivated lineage, a steady marching progress, where the main activity for the historian consists of tracing the passing of ideas between autonomous artists ? the evidence consisting of what may be gleaned through formal analysis of the objects themselves.

Later, texts and exhibitions began to consider other external influencing factors ? such as the taste for Japonisme,5 the impact of the Dreyfus Affair, and the activities of the Parisian art dealer and gallerist, Siegfried Bing.6 In 1989, the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and the Comit? Colbert (in an alliance reminiscent of early American patronage of Art Nouveau work) staged an exhibition of French decorative arts 17891989, which situated Art Nouveau within a specifically French evolution of design over a two hundred year period.7

In the same year, Debora L. Silverman published what now seems to be the definitive work on the period ? drawing on developments in politics, psychology and feminism to set out a holistic analysis of French fin-de-si?cle fine and decorative arts.8 Her book is dedicated to, and inspired by the example of, Carl Schorske, who performed much the same service for the history of Viennese fin-de-si?cle arts. In 1996, Jeremy Howard took up the European argument again, building on Madsen's earlier work, but looking further afield ? in particular further east ? than Madsen had ventured, to show that Art Nouveau went far beyond the dominant centres of Western Europe.9 Also in 1996, Leora Auslander published an exploration of the changing relationship between power, style, and the function of taste over the course of the nineteenth century in France, which deprioritises `Art Nouveau' in favour of a more detailed picture of widespread consumption habits.10

4 Stephan Tschudi Madsen, Sources of Art Nouveau, New York, 1955 5 For example Gabriel P. Weisberg, Cleveland Museum of Art, Rutgers University Art Gall?ry, & Walters Art Gall?ry (Baltimore, M. (1975), Japonisme: Japanese influence on French art, 1854-1910 [exhibition catalog], Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art. 6 Kenneth Silver wrote about two concurrent exhibitions on Bing, and the Dreyfus Affair, which took place in the late 1980s in New York, in his article, "The Other Fin de Siecle", in Art in America, December 1987, pp104-111. 7 Catherine Arminjon, & Cooper-Hewitt Museum, L'art de vivre: Decorative arts and design in France 1789-1989, Thames and Hudson, London, 1989 8 See footnote 1 9 Jeremy Howard, Art Nouveau: International and National Styles in Europe, Manchester University Press, 1996 10 Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1996

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Silverman's book ? which is more like several books in one ? is fascinating and incomparably valuable for its detailed delving into original source material (parliamentary debates, contemporary art journals, newspaper commentary), and wideranging analysis of fin-de-si?cle intellectual life. It is also one of very few accounts that addresses political factors. Although Silverman and one or two other analysts of Art Nouveau are clearly well-versed in political and industrial history, there are still some interesting omissions.

If one were to ask whether the Third Republic administration developed measures for craft reform as an active government policy to improve industrial competitiveness, or as a nationalist cultural policy, the answer would be only partially apparent in existing secondary literature. Further, it is not clear whether this is an academic blind spot, a question that has fallen between disciplines, or because the answer is more or less `no'. Silverman's survey contains a detailed exposition of the relation between politics and craft reform, however her argument focuses on the ideological appeal of decorative arts to the Third Republic, and higher-level machinations to elevate the decorative arts within the academy. Practical steps the state may have taken to improve the wider artisanal, or even industrial, workforce, are harder to identify.

It is the political context of Art Nouveau (using the term to denote the wider movement for renewal and unity in the arts and crafts) that this essay will develop, partly because it frequently seems incomplete. Historians of art, politics and industry perhaps rarely have the opportunity to collaborate, however in the case of craft and design ? which sit at the boundary of the arts, industry and commerce ? looking across disciplines is important.

Some cross-disciplinary topics seem to meet greater favour. For example, the study of Expos cannot help but acknowledge the role of politics. Or, analysis of the `rise of the consumer' has recently become a popular prism through which to view fin-de-si?cle culture.11 The introduction to Weisberg's abovementioned research guide states that `the struggle to create affordable, artistic room interiors decorated with inexpensive yet wellcrafted objects led to the era of design reform.' While this is necessarily a generalised comment that must serve to cover four different nations, in the context of France it is

11 See journal article: Philip Nord, `Labour, Commerce and Consumption: Studies in Market Culture in Nineteenth Century France', in Radical History Review, 37, 1987, pp82-92

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