ART NOUVEAU: Posters, Illustration and Fine Art R. ORMISTON & M. ROBINSON Book Number: 77860 Product format: Hardback The term Art Nouveau encompasses many artistic forms. It embraces fine art, graphic art, architecture and the decorative arts and has strong, pure colour. The general consensus is that its origins lay in the ideology and aesthetic of the British Arts and Crafts movement, and that it was manifest as a style between 1894 and the outbreak of the First World War. It has been given different name-tags: Morris Style, Glasgow Style, Métro Style and many more. In line with the many name-tags, Art Nouveau spread itself across many countries. Artists, designers like Bonnard, Munch, Mackintosh, Privat-Livemont, Berthon, Grasset, de Feure, Vallotton, Serusier and Gauguin and architects did not set out purposefully to identify their work as 'new art' yet they adopted common traits associated with the movement, which resulted in the creation of a wide-ranging fusion of aesthetic and philosophical ideas, the notion of a new art for a new and progressive age. The influence of Japanese prints, which became available in Europe from the 1850s, were also integrated into what we now recognise as this particular style. For instance, the masterful Katsushika Hokusai, Kitagawa Utamaro and And? Hiroshige inspired European artists to include many elements of Japanese design in their work. Art Nouveau is also often associated with the opening of a gallery in Paris by Samuel Bing, who commissioned Tiffany to create stained-glass windows for the building, as well as selling his glassware. The year 1900 saw the apogee of the style at the Exposition Universelle, where Bing had his own pavilion with graphics, fine art and designed objects displayed by many of the most famous practitioners of what had become a movement, including Alphonse Mucha, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Lalique. Probably the most notable exhibits at the exposition were the entrances to the Paris Métro - the new underground train system. They symbolized the style in their curvilinear 'whiplash' lines and the references to exotic birds and foliage. What is certain is that this gorgeous book gathers together for readers an embarrass de richesses, a cornucopia of artistic delights that they will want to browse through again and again. We found it hard to tear ourselves away. 192 pages 29.5cm x 28.5cm reproduced in gloriously bright colours. Published price: £20 Bibliophile price: £8.00

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