Art Nouveau Style Notes

Horse-Chestnut and Bronze Age Art: A comparison of sculptural qualities by Julian Hamer

There are certain qualities peculiar to the art of earlier peoples who lived intimately with nature. In particular I am considering the art of the European Iron Age in relationship to forms that occur in nature.

The horse-chestnut grew in profusion in the English forests and on the village greens near to where I was raised as a child. I also have several small horse chestnut trees in my own garden that I planted myself from conkers. I am choosing the horse-chestnut as my example because I have a fondness for that particular tree. The examples and comparisons that I want to show between Celtic art and the growth expression and formations visible on the horse chestnut are evident and easily discernible everywhere in other deciduous trees.

In the artistic expression of their craft work the Celts appear to have followed intuitively the forms and formative processes found everywhere in nature.

Below are shown three examples of Celtic art expression worked in bronze. For comparison are also shown pictures of the formative shapes at different stages in the growth cycle of the horse-chestnut. The Celtic craftsmen have artistically and instinctively shaped and formed the metal after the formative activity in the leaf scars, buds and natural metamorphic expression. The shapes, growth scars and dynamic metamorphosis of plant life is vigorously expressed in sculptural form by the work of the Celtic craftsman.
It is interesting that until pre-European Industrial revolution times and in country places of England up until the years of my early childhood there were still country craft folk whose work did not show the modern distinction between art and craft. It was typical not only that a very functional farm wagon be constructed for practical work but that it also was beautifully proportioned, colored and even had rope molding carved along the edges. A century ago in English country places any common trade also required artistic expression. Roof Thatching is a revived example of this. The work was not merely a skilled and utilitarian trade but included graceful art expression as well.
As a young man I went to live with an Austrian family near Innsbruck in the Tyrolean Alps. They owned a country hotel, which they wanted to enlarge to accommodate the burgeoning tourist industry. The construction was a multi-room extension and the entire family and half of the village artisans were working on the project. It was quite something for me to be working alongside all those old world artisans, rural specialists in different skills and trades. Those men all lived and worked according to certain "rules of thumb". There was an unwritten code according to which beautiful houses had been built with pride to endure through centuries. These men were not merely constructing a utilitarian product but worked artistically. It was not enough to build something and rush onto the next project; small details were included with very good craftsmanship that earned the artisan self respect and esteem from his peers.

The change from graceful and lively craftsmanship to training without artistic sensibility is a historically recent separation. It can be readily determined from artifacts that earlier peoples had no such distinction and that their artistic form expression was based upon an instinctive intimacy with the formative forces of nature.

The reoccurring question as to what defines Art and why there is so much confusion as to what Art is.
I steep myself in the wonder of it and begin to appreciate the essential quality; the pure and gracious nature of its expression and the dawning recognition of the nature of that quality of expression becomes breathtaking.
If I look at an artwork and detect that same quality then I recognize it to be art. If it is not of the same spirit but is well fabricated it is likely to be wholesome craft.
Some very good compositions, collages and so on are often good craft but do not necessarily embody that sublime quality. They are enjoyable for the good craftsmanship and skillful composition but the essential nature and content is not authentic art. What I have seen in nature is not recognizable in this work.
The composition and skill of craftsmanship are the means of expressing art and not art itself. Frequently in the confused art scene of today this distinction is muddled and craft is displayed as the art itself. Sometimes even bad craft is displayed as art. What is really a student exercise in learning the language and skill needed as a means of expressing art is displayed as art. It is a pretence and a counterfeit masquerading as art.
The essential quality that can be appreciated through silently allowing the expression of nature to speak for itself is the measure by which true art can be recognized.
Nature is the guide and example. I do not mean that art should copy nature but embody an essential quality of the same value. This puts art in a whole other realm from craftsmanship and confusion between the two melts away to the degree that the sublime in nature has become recognized and familiar.

Fine Art as a means of revealing that which would be otherwise invisible to the senses.

I think that Fine Art is the expression of an otherwise invisble content through the highly developed and skillful use of a craft. That painstakingly developed skill of craft is the language by means of which something otherwise intangible might be shown.
Seen in this way, Art is the masterful use of craft skills to express a specific content that cannot otherwise be revealed in the medium itself. To the degree that this expression is successful determines not only the quality but also the authenticity of the work as art.
True artistic work reveals something that would otherwise be invisible to the senses.
In the hands of a master, the concept of sound for example can be portrayed through painting or sculpture, movement or the craft of writing, to a deaf man. When skillful craft achieves this dimension of articulation it moves the work beyond itself to the level of art.
Recognizing true art also makes it easier to differentiate and recognize a particular media when it has been misnamed. The work of Joseph Beuys for example is usually more theater than sculpture. His craft skill is theatrical. This recognition helps avoid an otherwise hostile reaction to his work when it is termed sculpture so that it may then be seen and evaluated for what it is: theatrical diorama.

The Pack by Joseph Beuys

The Art Nouveau Impulse - Comparisons within the style

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy - Red narra and ash with copper and enamel mounts

I enjoy and I am often intrigued by art nouveau furniture even if it is not always a flawless expression of a style but rather a variation on a theme testing limits and possibilities. There were many designers and artisans working within the impulse and just as with modern design, the possibilities were endless and the results varied enormously. Sometimes the pieces were ponderous and overbearing even for that period of time when stand-alone cabinetry was more common than today. This chunkiness would not do for our modern homes and contemporary taste.

The beautiful piece shown above is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. It is by Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (Belgian, 1858 - 1910) Note the metal work with enamel and the glass-fronted top display cupboards that also have glass on the sides.

Within this experimentation and creativity some art nouveau style pieces did not quite work from a design or construction point of view. But that is what happens when furniture is composed of complicated curves. My own style is a modern departure from Art Nouveau and traditional woodworking purists are horrified when they see the way I have to bend and change the rules of traditional construction.

The delightful Battlo Bench Antoni Gaudi - Mediterranean oak shown below actually has from a design point of view, an incongruous combination of asymmetrical form and symmetrically shaped legs. But this piece is enormously popular and I have seen it sold as a reproduction for as much as $16,900.

The Battlo Bench designed by Antoni Gaudi

This incongruity of style and context is architecturally typified by the beautiful wall sculpture, formally the facade of the Elvira Studio in Munich, Germany. The building is a non-descript block that is thoroughly utilitarian and has no relation the sculpture whatsoever. Yet, while this beautiful sculptural relief was seemingly stuck on the front of a building with which it bore no design or form relationship, it must still have been an amazing eye-catcher.

August Endell - Facade of Elvira Studio, Munich 1897-98 Now demolished

In my own furniture that is a modern interpretation of art nouveau I strive to ensure that the entire piece is a unified composition. This is far more pleasing than details and decorations that are merely applied to a piece as an after-thought and have nothing to do with the whole. In nature this would be as if a goat had chickens feet or some other ridiculous combination.

Ceilings at Bellesguard - Barcelona

When I first visited Barcelona to study the work of Antoni Gaudi I was delighted to see the plaster ceiling work in some of the buildings. It was truly three dimensional sculpture.
Then one day I walked off a street into the foyer of a four story building where the doors were open. Inside I discovered another beautifully sculpted plaster ceiling that was not by Gaudi at all although contemporary and of the same impulse.

Antoni Gaudi - Ceramic Tile Roof

The other important thing to do in Barcelona is to look up!