I'm not really a "fan" of most things Art Nouveau. Just as with the Rococo, which I also don't particularly admire, I certainly recognize and appreciate the artistry of it, applaud the wonderful, imaginative design and beautiful craftsmanship. It's just that I usually find the sinuous lines, the flowing forms just too "soft", somehow unstable, even slightly vulgar. These caught my eye, though, because of the clear influence of Japanese prints - decades earlier an inspiration for many of the Impressionists, and obviously still potent - the storytelling, and the sense of motion so deftly captured. But more than anything I was drawn to the elegant representation of - very au courant - period fashion. (With the stylistic consistency of the decorative elements of the ladies' toilettes, I feel fairly safe in assuming they were the work of the artist's imagination.)
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I will admit that when I was very much younger I was slightly more appreciative of both periods. During the height of my childhood craze for Marie Antoinette and all things Versailles, I'm sure I made little distinction between le style Louis XV and le style Louis XVI. And for some while I had a poster of this painting by de Feure on my apartment wall. I think I was twenty-one at the time.
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| La Voie du mal / The Path of Evil, 1895. |
De Feure comme Lautrec et Mucha, ils étaient des représentants du style art nouveau.
ReplyDeleteLe japonisme faisait fureur dans les salons d'art qui promouvaient le style art nouveau.
En 1890, l'art nouveau apparait en France à l'epoque de la prospérité de la fin de siècle,
après des périodes de grande pauvreté conséquence de la guerre franco-prussienne de
1871-1872 au cours de laquelle les allemandes exigeaient des réparations paralysantes.
-Beau Mec à Deauville