ART NOUVEAU: Utopia, Reconciling the Irreconcilable KLAUS-JÜRGEN SEMBACH Book Number: 79588 Product format: Hardback For a fruitful period between the 1880s and the First World War, European and North American culture deferred to nature. With a symphony of flowing lines and organic shapes, Art Nouveau ("New Art") inflected architecture, design, painting, graphic work, applied arts and illustration. Turning to vine tendrils, flowering buds, and bird feathers as ornamental reference, artists pursued not only a linear freedom but also liberation from the weight of artistic tradition and expectation. Highlights include beautiful Tiffany and Gallé vases, the Paris Metro, the plaster designs of Franz Metzner, department stores, door handles, furniture, dining rooms, cartoons, posters, chairs, porcelainware, Macintosh's Art-Lovers House design, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, competition award-winning designs from Wilhelm Schmid, Austrian glassware and more. It is a complex picture of architecture, furniture design and craftsmanship with their corresponding approaches to artistic revitalisation. This fresh Taschen edition considers the style's wider artistic, economic, and political circumstances, as well as its particular flavour in such hubs as Vienna, Glasgow, Munich, Weimar, Brussels, Nancy, Barcelona, Darmstadt, Helsink and Chicago. The Vienna chapter covers the arrival of the Modern Style. Outstanding proponents such as Victor Horta, Antoni Gaudí and Charles Rennie Mackintosh are featured in connection with the cities of their greatest activity. 9.4" x 12.4", 240 pages. New from Taschen. Bibliophile price: £18.00

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