Patrick Bade
Art Nouveau

Patrick Bade - Art Nouveau

- So on the left we have Claude Debussy, great French composer, seated in front of a very Art Nouveau wallpaper. And on the right is an autograph that he signed to a beautiful young girl with blonde hair, and he’s written out the opening melody of his piano piece, “La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin,” “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”. And as you can see he’s made the stave lines wave like the girl’s hair. And the melody undulates like hair as well. If there could be such a thing as an Art Nouveau composer, it would be Debussy. Oh, I was going to play you that. Let see, yes, you want to hear that, don’t you? Here is the opening bars of… Here are the opening bars of, “Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” So you hear how the melody gently undulates. So, yes, as if there could be an Art Nouveau composer, it would have to be Debussy. And I’m going to play you one more very famous opening, I suppose his most famous, and most influential, piece of orchestral music, the “Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un Faune,” inspired by a poem by Mallarme. And we hear a flute melody that once again undulates. So on the left here is the Maison Tassel in Brussels, by Victor Horta, who can, I think, be credited with creating the fully developed Art Nouveau style. He introduces the whiplash line that’s so characteristic of the style. And on the right is the entrance to the Castel Beranger in Paris, designed just three years later, as we shall hear. Hector Guimard went to Brussels and he picked up the style from Horta and he brought it back to Paris with him. Now we use, in the English speaking countries, the term Art Nouveau, it just means new art, and that derives from the name of a shop that was opened in Paris in 1895 by a man called Siegfried Bing. Well he wasn’t French, with a name like that you may guess, he was actually a German Jew and he was open to all forms, new kinds of art.

He wasn’t particularly dedicated to what we call Art Nouveau, he also sold sculptures by Rodin, he sold paintings by Pissarro, and various kinds of art that we wouldn’t associate with the Art Nouveau movement. But he also promoted the decorative arts. Now Art Nouveau has different names in different countries. And, interestingly, at the time, the French often called it le moderne style. It’s the French and the English at their usual game of blaming each other for everything. You probably know that French letters, contraceptives, the French word is . And to take French leave is . So Art Nouveau has, as I said, different names in different countries. In Germany it’s Jugendstil, in Austria it’s Sezessionstil, in Italy it’s Liberty Stile. And there were less flattering names for the style as well, it was called the the noodle style, the metro style, and in Germany it was the , the Belgian tape worm style. What is interesting is that everybody blamed Art Nouveau on a neighbouring country except perhaps Belgian, they couldn’t, ‘cause they really did introduce it. But so the English blamed the French, the French blamed the English, the Germans blamed the Belgians. And it was always seen, I think, by traditionalists as something alien and foreign. There was a French critic called Arsene Alexandre and he violently criticised the Art Nouveau style and he said it was a mixture of English, German, and Jewish influences designed to undermine the good taste of French culture.

Of course, when in doubt, always blame the Jews. And it took off very rapidly and it spreads from Brussels to Paris, and then all around Europe. And it got a lot of criticism at the time, it was very much mocked. You can see a caricature on the left-hand side that is mocking the exaggerations of the Franco-Belgian version of the style. And you can see a caricature from the magazine “Jugend,” it’s a Munich magazine that actually gave its name to the style in Germany, of healthy young women who drink from the Jungbrunnen, it’s double, it’s a pun there 'cause Jungbrunnen is the fountain of youth, and they come out looking like Klimt’s on the other side, all kind of distorted. So it starts in Brussels, moves very quickly to Paris, and from Paris it moves to Nancy in France, and it’s taken up in various forms all around Europe. And I like to compare it to a virus that mutates, 'cause wherever it goes, it changes. And it changes quite radically. So you’ve got, they called the Nancy French Art Nouveau on the left and you’ve got Glasgow Art Nouveau, Mackintosh, on the right. They don’t really… They’re so different that they don’t really, you have to try quite hard to find common denominators between them. And it of course finds its most extreme and extraordinary version in Barcelona in the work of Gaudi. But today I’m going to stick to the Franco-Belgian version of the style as this talk is part of a series on French history and culture. Now what you can say about Art Nouveau in all its forms everywhere is that it is a reaction of the historicism that had dominated the 19th century.

From the 1830s until about 1890 every major public building in Europe was in some kind of historical style. But by 1890 in art magazines critics were saying, “Well why does a railway station,” or a pumping station, that’s what we have here, St Pancras railway station on the left and a pumping station in Islington, “Why do they have to be dressed up in historical fancy dress? Can’t we have a style for our own age, a new style, an Art Nouveau?” The one solution that was suggested was a sort of practical one, that the structural elements should really form the decoration. Instead of applying decoration that’s been borrowed from historical buildings use the functional elements of the building and exaggerate them and use them in an ornamental way. We’ve got two examples here, both actually by Belgian artists, Serrurier-Bovy on the left hand side, this is a cafe that was in the Paris World Exhibition, and a tobacco shop in Berlin by the Belgian architect designer Henry van de Velde. The other suggestion was instead… Oh, this is really a very nice slide 'cause this is the Gare du Nord, which is four minutes walk from where I’m sitting now. And you can see that the station itself, which dates in the middle of the 19th century, is in a very classical style, you can see the columns, and the classical figures, and so on. In front of it we have one of the famous metro entrances by Hector Guimard, and he’s looking at the plant world for inspiration and looking at also at the structure of plants. Now there is three terms, French terms, which are in common usage that overlap with one another but all have a very specific connotations. Art Nouveau is a style that starts in the 1890s and it’s at its height for about 10 years.

There is also the term, fin de siecle. Fin de siecle means end of the century and it has connotations of decadence, sickness, overt preciousness. It’s got quite sinister connotations, fin du siecle. And quite a lot of Art Nouveau is also, I would say, fin de siecle. Here are two examples of things that are exquisitely beautiful but at the same time quite sinister. And so a lot of Art Nouveau, you’ll design, decorative arts, you’ll find things, snails, reptiles, insects, things that are not necessarily very nice but made into something exquisite. This lovely Lalique brooch here, on the right hand side, with wasps on it. Well Art Nouveau it may have been born in Belgium but it has a lot of its roots in England, in the English Arts and Craft style, William Morris and so on. But when Art Nouveau happens, in continental Europe, the English on the whole don’t like it, they have a rather Brexit-y attitude towards it. And in 1900 at the Paris World Show a philanthropist bought a whole collection of continental Art Nouveau furniture and gave it to the V&A and it was put on display in the V&A and it got a horrified reaction. There was a letter sent to “The Times,” a public letter signed by many critics and artists completely rejecting this continental Art Nouveau style as something un-English and something corrupting. And one of the main reasons was that the Arts and Crafts movement in England was committed to truth to materials, that you respect the material you’re using.

And it was felt that pieces like these, there’s the Guimard settee on the left hand side and the music stand by Alexandre Charpentier on the right, that they were not treating the wood respectfully. That making wood look as though it’s something malleable, of course wood is not malleable, you can’t twist it and shape it. Well I suppose you theoretically could, with with bentwood chairs. But these pieces have… They’ve been drawn, maybe sometimes furniture makers would even, or the designers rather, would model the pieces in wax or clay and then you hand it over to the craftsman who actually makes it in wood. But wood is a hard material that is not essentially malleable. There are some purists even today who think that the best Art Nouveau is always in materials that are malleable, they’re either liquid or soft when they’re being formed. And even in England, where Art Nouveau was generally rejected, you can find a lot of metal work made in Birmingham, or a lot of houses of the Edwardian period around 1900 will have metal mounts, keyholes and so on that are fully Art Nouveau. And of course the great Art Nouveau success in England was the store Liberty’s that produced a lot of brass, silver and pewter Art Nouveau objects. So many of these were exported to Italy that Italy gave the term Liberty Stile to Art Nouveau in Italy. Another thing I think you can say about Art Nouveau is that it’s a feminine style. This is of course very subjective, but I would say like Rococo, which is a curve linear style. It’s a style which is inspired by womens’ bodies, the softness and the curves of the women body. That’s actually a Hungarian piece on the right hand side. And of course Tiffany vases is American. And on the left, one of the most popular stars in Paris of the 1900’s, she had what the French called , the fashionable profile.

This is who famously had a 38 inch bust and a 14 inch waist. So these very exaggerated curves are very typical of the Art Nouveau style. This is an illustration of ladies of the night, ladies of easy virtue, at the bar of the very Art Nouveau nightclub Maxims. And the wealthy gentlemen would go and pick up the ladies at this bar, and I’ll tell you a bit more about that later actually. And, again, so the look of women around 1900, this is the fashionable shape for a woman in, say between 1890 and about 1910, with very exaggerated curves. That’s Colette, great writer, on the right hand side. And you can see these curves as they’re partly produced, of course, by just by the way she is posed, the way she is standing, but also they are produced by corsetry and padding. And hair, hair is a very essential inspiration, I could say, of the Art Nouveau. Women’s hair that is. And it is enormous amount of hair fetishism in the art of the fin du siecle at the beginning of the 20th century. My theory is it’s because respectable women, you never saw them in public with their hair down. Their hair was always constrained, it was always up or it was in plaits, or it was in a bun, or it was under nets and so loose hair like this was incredibly exciting for a lot of men like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Debussy, Degas, or Mucha, Munch, all terrific female hair fetishists. And two famous literary examples, so “Pelleas and Melisande,” the scene, probably the most famous scene in the play, in the opera, is when Melisande leans out of the window of a tower and her hair falls on top of Pelleas, and George Rodenbach, “Bruges-La-Morte,” where the hero is very much a hair fetishist and he keeps his dead wife’s hair as a memento in his house and eventually murders his new mistress by strangling her with his dead wife’s hair. And hair very important, decorative motif in the… This is again designed by Mucha.

And you can see how, again, the female body is actually incorporated into this chair and this vase. And this whole theme of the femme fatale and female sexuality is very big at this time. This is Munch’s “Madonna.” Currently this very print is on show in Paris in the big Mucha show, it’s a lithograph and dates from the mid to late 1890s. And so it’s really about female sexuality, but it’s a moment of sexual ecstasy, an orgasm, it’s also the moment of conception. You see a little sort of Art Nouveau border with decorative wiggly sperm cells whizzing around, and the foetus that has been conceived, which is also a kind of death figure. Now if one woman could be said to exemplify the ideals of Art Nouveau it would have to be the American dancer, Loie Fuller, who had an enormous vogue in the years round 1900. She was tremendously successful and inspired all the artists of the period. She came from America. She was clever and entrepreneurial. She wasn’t really your idea of a great dancer, she was very short and dumpy and not really a dancer at all. But she had this wonderful idea of extending her very short arms with long sticks. And she draped herself in a silk tent and she rolled around the stage waving her arms, creating these lovely curvilinear shapes and she had a team of up to 20 electricians who created wonderful, luminous colour effects. And she really took Paris by storm. Now she was smart enough to realise there was probably limited mileage in this act and that people are eventually going to get bored with her whirling around the stage with her sticks.

So she befriended Marie Curie, who you can see here in the middle, and she went to her and she said, “Marie, will you make me permanently radioactive so I don’t need to pay the the electricians ‘cause I’ll glow in the dark.” So Marie Curie had to warn her against that and say it would not be very advisable. This is the special theatre constructed for Loie Fuller at the Paris World Exhibition of 1900. And here she is. There is film of her, actually, if you go onto YouTube. She inspired an enormous number of artists. I mean, she danced for Rodin, these are figures of her. The one on the right hand side is actually an electric lamp, there’s a light bulb hidden inside it, by an artist called Raoul Larche. And more images of her by Jules Cheret on the left hand side. I think was the only one who saw a slightly funny side of her act. This is, you know, with her little stumpy legs sticking out from underneath the whirling silk, on the right hand side. The other huge sensation of the Paris World Fair of 1900 was the stall of Rene Lalique. Now 1900 you can say was really the apotheosis of the style. On the right-hand side is by the Swiss artist Felix Vallotton and it shows all the people crowding around the display of Lalique. And on the left is part of the balustrade of these beautiful insect women that guarded the display. And so… Oh, yes, when I was talking about these three terms, I mentioned two of them. Art Nouveau is the style, fin du siecle is a kind of mood at the end of the century, and the third term is Belle Epoque.

Belle Epoque is the period 1890 to 1914, rather like the term it was invented in retrospect, after the First World War, people looking back to what life was like before the First World War and how wonderful it was. So Belle Epoque has connotations of luxury, comfort, really all kinds of enjoyment and wonderful living before the the First World War. So these pieces of jewellery by Lalique, I think they cover all bases, don’t they? And they definitely are Nouveau in style, they’re definitely fin de siecle because they’re a bit sinister, and they’re also extremely self-indulgent and luxurious, so they’re also Belle Epoque. Exquisite, exquisite craftsmanship. For me these are some of the loveliest and most fascinating pieces of jewellery ever created. There are diamonds there, as you can see, but he tends to rely more on semi-precious stones, moonstones, and opals, and so on, than he does on the diamonds and the emeralds. And often, as I said, quite sinister. I mean you’d make quite a statement, I think, if you turned up to a party wearing this kind of gear. Now as Art Nouveau goes around Europe, I’ve already mentioned how it changes its character. And even though its origin was in a reaction against historicism you’ll find that wherever you go in Europe it picks up a local flavour, partly based on historical precedent in that country. That they would look back in that country to earlier historical periods where you get organic or colinear decoration. So in Norway and Sweden Art Nouveau often has sort of viking elements, in Scotland and Ireland it can have Celtic elements, and in France in particular there’s often a strong flavour of the Rococo, or the Louis XV style.

This is actually not Art Nouveau, what you’re looking at, this is actually an engraving, as you can see, a design from the 18th century by Meissonier. Furniture by Georges De Feure, certainly Art Nouveau but looking back to the golden age of French furniture of the 18th century. Ah, this extraordinary object. I’ve been talking about it quite a bit this week. This was a piece of furniture that was specifically constructed for the use of King Edward VII. As I said, we were staying in the Hotel Edouard VII on the Avenue de l'Opera that was the private residence of Edward VII for his very frequent visits to Paris, where he went, as people did, many Brits in those days, to misbehave. It was convenient for him because the hotel on the Avenue de l'Opera was a short waddle for him, he was a very overweight by this time, across the Avenue de l'Opera to the Rue Chabanais, which runs parallel to it, and where there was the most luxurious brothel in Paris called Le Chabanais. And they kept this wonderful siege d'amour for the use, specific use, of King Edward VII who’d become so obese that it was very difficult for him to have sex in the usual positions that the young ladies had to climb up this thing and be lowered on him. So what style is this? Well it certainly refers back to the 18th century, with elements from the Louis XV style. You could describe it as a , but with its curves and its rhythms I would say it very definitely belongs to the Art Nouveau period. Oh, here is Edward VII with his siege d'amour. It doesn’t really bear thinking about what he did in it. Another key, key influence on Art Nouveau, of course, is Japan.

And you may think, “Oh, yes, these are typical European Art Nouveau objects. Of course they must be Art Nouveau.” No, they’re not, they’re actually early 19th century Japanese objects that were acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The most famous of all Japanese prints, the Hokusai wave, on the right hand side. And this is a French plate of the 1890s in the Art Nouveau style that’s picked up Hokusai’s stylization of the sea. We can also see Art Nouveau rhythms in the paint surface of many paintings of this period. If you, this is a detail of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Actually, of course, it’s before, just before, the birth of the Art Nouveau style, 'cause Maison Tassel is 18, with its colinear forms, its whiplash line, that’s 1893, and this painting is 1889, so it’s four years earlier. So you could say, “Yes, is this Van Gogh…” You know, as is often the case with great artists, is he anticipating something? I think probably the similarity, the sort of Art Nouveau look to it is partly that he’s also been looking very much at Japanese wood cup prints like the one on the left. Gauguin, around this time also, end of the 1880s, around 1890. Very interested in the decorative arts. That’s a Gauguin ceramic. And the flattened forms and strong contours of this style that he calls synthetism. Again, anticipating Art Nouveau, like this Henry van de Velde tapestry. And you can… This swirling curvilinear rhythms, you can see it in very desperate works as Boldini, “Portrait of Marquise Casati” on the left hand side. And, of course, Munch’s, “The Scream” that dates from 1894, so exactly contemporary with the birth of Art Nouveau. And there is an interesting interaction going on, I think, between fine arts and decorative arts.

This is a Mucha, it’s a poster advertising cigarettes, and it’s a rather cheeky, I think, or parody almost, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s, “Beata Beatrix.” It’s memorialising his wife, Lizzie Siddall, who died from an overdose of opium. And it’s a kind of , a kind of love death, isn’t it, the Rossetti. You can see the scarlet dove drops the poppy into her hands and her head is thrown back. It’s a moment of ecstasy, and it’s also the moment of death. But a bit cheeky of Mucha to borrow this image just to reverse it, but borrow it. It’s the moment, the little moment of ecstasy on the smoker’s face when they take their first longed for huff on the cigarette. So back to the beginnings, this is the very first fully Art Nouveau building. This is Victor Horta, the Maison Tassel, in Paris, 1892-1893. Another factor of Art Nouveau is that it flourished in important industrial and commercial centres. Brussels, of course, was an absolute boom city in the 18th, in the late 19th century. And he’s, the Art Nouveau designers, what they use, in their architecture anyway, they use industrial materials and methods, cast iron, glass. These are more interiors by Horta in Brussels. Wonderful thing to do is to go to Brussels and do an Art Nouveau tour, particularly of all the houses in the inner suburb of Uccle. So in 1895 the architect Hector Guimard goes to Brussels and he sees the work of Guimard and he’s blown away by it. And he goes back to Paris and he designs this apartment block in the west of Paris called the Castel Beranger. And so this was a really astonishing building for Parisians when it was completed in the late 1890s. Nothing else looked like this in Paris, it was completely new. It’s been recently restored and it looks pretty wonderful, pretty amazing. It’s all those things, isn’t it? It’s Art Nouveau, it’s certainly fin de siecle. I always feel that it could be inhabited by the Addams family, it’s a tiny bit sinister, and also very luxurious and very Belle Epoque.

But he’s most famous, Guimard, for designing the entrances to the Metro system, which opened in 1900 in time for the Paris World Exhibition, and there are still many of these surviving. And they became so famous, and so controversial, that the Art Nouveau style was sometimes called the Stile Metro. Some people loved them, but they were also very much mocked and a lot of people hated them. In fact, they’re very functional these entrances. They’re like a Lego set. They’re made from industrially produced elements that can be fitted together in any way you want. As you see, each one is actually different and is in order you can… Here are some of the individual elements of them. Because they were designed so that they could be put together to fit whatever space was available all over Paris. And he is also, for a few years, quite a prolific designer. This is a shop, it was originally a ceramic shop in Lille, that still survives. This is the wonderful Castel Henriette, sadly demolished in the 1960s. As I said, there was a big reaction against this style later, after the First World War. A lot of people thought it was in the worst possible taste. The other most important figure, as far as French Art Nouveau is concerned, is Mucha. And so the style, as well as being called the Stile Metro, after Guimard, you sometimes see it at this period referred to as Le Stile Mucha, or Mucha as the French would pronounce it. He was actually Moravian, he’s from what is now the Czech Republic.

He arrived in Paris in the early 1890s and was scraping a living as a jobbing illustrator. Then in 1896 he had his lucky break. The great Sarah Bernhardt was in a new play called “Gismonda” that was opening just after Christmas in 1896 and they needed a poster. And because of the Christmas holidays they couldn’t find anybody and Mucha happened to turn up at the printers and they said, “Well do you think you could do this?” And so they gave him a ticket to see the play and pretty well overnight or within a day or so, he came up with this poster and it was an absolutely sensational success. It really hit the spot. And people were out at night with razors to cut down the posters. Sarah Bernhardt, who was quite entrepreneurial, realised she was onto a very good thing and she signed a contract with Mucha so that she could buy and actually sell his posters. She made a lot of money out of that. And he became her personal designer for the next six years and produced these wonderful, wonderful posters in a variety of roles. As you can see here. You could, of course if you want to buy the big posters you can at auction for very large sums of money. But actually there were small versions, which are just as beautiful, exactly the same colours, in lithography were produced for the series, “Les Maitres de l'Affiche”. And you can find these in Paris, and well they’d still cost you a few hundred euros but they’re affordable. And he was also designing costumes, this is Mucha, for, and jewellery, how about this? God, you’d certainly make a statement wearing a bracelet like this that he designed for Sarah Bernhardt.

And he was a very busy man between 1896 and about 1904 when he left Paris to go to America. And he had his particular ideal female type, like many male artists, particularly in this period, think of Geri, or Renoir, they have their type that they depict again and again. Great hair fetishists, as I said. And I suppose you could say sex always sells, doesn’t it? A pretty girl can be used to sell or promote almost anything, whether it’s cigarettes, although of course it was not the done thing for women to smoke in public in 1900. And he’s using a pretty girl and flowers to advertise the railway link to Monte Carlo, the relatively new railway link that took you down to the Mediterranean. And very prolific designer of jewellery. And as well as working with Sarah Bernhardt he had a close working relationship with the jeweller Fouquet. And he designed both the exterior and the interior of Fouquet’s jewellery shop, which was conveniently opposite Maxims where, as I said, the , the ladies of the night propped up the bar. And I suppose the idea was that wealthy gentleman would buy them a drink and dinner, and would no doubt have their evil way with them, and then they, or presumably later would have their evil way with them. But they could nip across the road to Fouquet’s to buy a bracelet, or a necklace, or a piece of jewellery to pay their way with these young ladies.

This gorgeous, gorgeous interior still exists and it’s been reconstructed in the Musee Carnavalet where I was with my group just a couple of days ago. That should be high up your list, I think, of places to visit in Paris. This is the shop of Julius Meier-Graefe. There were, the two most important shops for promoting the Art Nouveau style in Paris, interestingly, were both Germans and that was noted by French nationalists and viewed with great suspicion. As I said, Siegfried Bing was Jewish. In fact, Julius Meier-Graefe apparently wasn’t, but people generally assume that he was. Now, restaurants. Paris is full of the most gorgeous restaurants and I’m feeling a bit replete having tried out quite a few of them in the last week with my group. And so the years around 1900 were a golden age of restaurant interiors and luckily most of these very lavish Art Nouveau restaurants still exist in Paris. This is Julien , where the food, I would say is, yeah, so it’s fine. Fine, it’s not exceptional, but you don’t go there really for the food, you go there for this extraordinary Art Nouveau interior. Here’s another view of Julien. This is Vagenende on the other side of the river, on the left bank. This is the lady’s room, this is the lady’s toilet. Sadly I have never seen it, much though I’d love to. Always worth getting up in drag to go in there to see it. This is the ladies toilets in another luxury establishment, . Now within France there are two main centres of the Art Nouveau style, Paris itself with Guimard and Mucha as the big stars, and then there is Nancy. And that, I recommend a very nice thing to do, you could spend a weekend in Nancy, or even a day, actually, you can see a lot in Nancy.

And the two big stars of the are Emile Galle and Louis Majorelle. This is Emile Galle, quite known for his glass, his ceramics, and his furniture. So as best of all he’s known for the glass and he developed this cameo technique where you have cased glass, you have layers, two different coloured layers of glass, and then it’s acid etched so that it creates an effect very similar to a carved cameo shell. And he also produced a lot of furniture. And the furniture of both Galle and Majorelle is distinguished by its heavy dependence on plants, natural forms, the natural world and exquisite quality floral marquetery, as you see in this fire screen and this table. And these are pieces by his, the other great Nancy, designer, Louis Majorelle. I’m going to finish with two buildings that are rather exceptional, a church and a synagogue. This is the church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre, which is towards the top of the mountain of Montmartre. So it’s right behind me, if I walk for 20 minutes, or half an hour, I would get there. And it’s a very famous building for its importance in the history of modern architecture. Any general history of modern architecture will mention it and illustrate it. It was designed in 1894 by an architect called Anatole de Baudot and it was the first building in the world to be made out of, to be constructed in reinforced concrete. It took several years to build. I mean the reason for it was in fact that Montmartre was a very poor section of Paris and there simply wasn’t the money to construct a building of this size by conventional means.

And as money was very short, also the construction of the building was spread out over some years. And apparently the local inhabitants they’d never, this huge kind of skeleton of reinforced concrete was really alarming to them and there was even a local petition to have it demolished. Here is the exterior of the church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre. And here is the interior. And the building I want to finish with is the last architectural masterpiece of Hector Guimard. And it’s the absolute last gasp, you could say, of the Art Nouveau style in Paris. It dates from 1913, just before the First World War. Guimard married a very wealthy woman, she was American and she was Jewish. I’m not sure if he was, I think, I’m not, I don’t think he was, but presumably his Jewish wife was a factor in him being commissioned to build this synagogue which is in the Marais. The wonderful curvy, undulating facade. Now by this time actually Art Nouveau was completely passe, people had moved on. The Art Nouveau star, the Art Deco star was already developing by 1913. And this is, I would say, compared to the very flamboyant buildings I’ve shown you already by Guimard, this is certainly more restrained. But I think it’s a very elegant, beautiful building.

I’ve walked past it for years, dying to get in it, but it’s a very, I think it’s a Hasidic sect who run this synagogue and of course trying to get into any synagogue in Paris is a problem, there are always huge security issues. If you want to go into the synagogue of the Victoire, which is the biggest one, it’s like airport security to get into it. But I just had a glimpse into it once and that thrilled me. I was happened to be with a group from the London Jewish Cultural Centre and we were walking around the Marais and the door happened to be open, and there was actually a service going on inside. And there was an elderly Hasidic man outside and there was a very charming, very attractive lady in the group and she went up to him and she persuaded him, and really amazing actually, to allow us to just walk in and stand at the back and see the interior. This very beautiful interior of this synagogue in the Marais. Right, so that is it for today and I’m going to look at the… At this.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you Monty for your nice wishes. in France. I’m not sure what that is about.

Q: Why was Art Nouveau criticised?

A: Well, various, it was various reasons. I mentioned the fact that in England people felt that it wasn’t true, it didn’t follow the doctrine of truth to materials. Another criticism of it from the Arts and Craft side was that it was too self-indulgent and too luxurious. And I think one of the problems with Art Nouveau was that it is a style, it is a luxury style and when it became very, very popular and fashionable the cheaper, industrial versions of it were pretty nasty. And I think that brought about a reaction against the style. I always, when people say to me, “Oh, I’m going to the flea market in Paris and I’d like to buy something collectible, but my budget is limited.” I always say don’t go for Art Nouveau. Cheap Art Nouveau is nasty Art Nouveau. Cheap Art Deco on the other hand, which is a style with an industrial aesthetic, can actually be wonderful.

Q: What is the earliest manifestation of Art Nouveau?

A: I think quite, you know, I think one can actually for once be quite precise about that and you can say that the first, as I said, the first fully Art Nouveau interior is the Maison Tassel in Brussels of 1893.

There is lots of wonderful Art Nouveau in Prague, Myra, yes. There is a very… Well, there’s lots in Munich, of course there’s lots in Vienna, there’s a lot of it in other, there are a lot…

I’ve not been to the Baltic cities but I’m told there’s wonderful Art Nouveau in Baltic cities. There’s wonderful Art Nouveau in North Africa actually in former French colonial cities like Tunis. And in Russia, as you, as Ina mentions, there are some really extraordinary, quite extreme, Art Nouveau buildings in Russia.

It is… That’s quite correct, that’s Mike and Gillian, that Liberty Stile in Italy is named after the store Liberty’s. In painting and sculpture. Yes, I think, as I mentioned, you can certainly see Art Nouveau elements in the painting of the period but some people would prefer to restrict the style to the decorative arts.

Brass keyholes are there sexual… Oh, I need to think about that, Peter. I think you’re ahead of me there. Sounds like a Barbie doll is Art Nouveau.

I’m not quite sure why I need… That one I do need to think about. How would you compare Rococo to Art Nouveau? I think there are a lot of French Art Nouveau and Belgian Art Nouveau owe quite a lot to the Rococo style with the feminine curvilinear forms. Oh Mary, lucky you reading…

This is Marianne reading “Claudine a l'ecole,” where she gets scolded. Do read… My… Well I think all the Claudine books are absolutely fabulous. I love them. But the “Claudine Married” is my favourite one that’s where she comes to Paris, of course.

This is… Victor’s saying he doesn’t like ar Art Nouveau. Well Mackintosh is a special version of Art Nouveau, as is Gaudi. But it’s a matter of taste, isn’t it? Yes. Well of course there, at Tiffany there’s plenty of Art Nouveau at Tiffany. Louis Sullivan goes through a phase where he uses a lot of very Art Nouveau decoration, but it’s just a short phase in his work.

Thank you, Lorna. You have my approval to speak of the Germans in the Second World War… Well I, yeah, I think nobody would be likely to speak of them in an approving way.

Q: Is the German Bauhaus style Art Nouveau?

A: No, it isn’t.

It’s a good… Well actually what you need to read, Julian, is the Pevsner book, “Pioneers of Modern Design.” I should have said that before. 'Cause Pevsner stresses that in some Art Nouveau, probably not the kind that somebody earlier was saying how grotesque it was. But if you think back to the buildings I shared at the beginning where the structural elements are emphasised. So there is that element in Art Nouveau which actually leads onto the functional aesthetic of Bauhaus. But in most ways I would say that Bauhaus is a big reaction against Art Nouveau.

Q: Was Mucha Jewish?

A: No, he wasn’t.

Q: What is the difference between Art Nouveau and Art Deco?

A: Oh dear, that’s a whole lecture, Herbert. Art Nouveau tends to be organic, it tends to be curvilinear, it tends to be based on nature, it tends to be asymmetrical. Art Deco tends to be symmetrical, and it uses geometric design, it’s more industrially influenced.

I seem to have jumped to the end here. Where was I? That was, that was Herbert, wasn’t it?

Q: Did Mucha design the amazing pharmacy that’s housed in the Carnavalet?

A: It’s not a pharmacy, it’s a jewellery shop. And it is in the Carnavalet.

My tour group? I work for two companies, Martin Randall, and I’m doing a lot this year actually for Kirker. I’m doing an Art Deco tour to Paris for Martin Randall. I think that’s in November of this year.

Was Guell the… Guell of course was the industrialist who was the most important patron of Gaudi. Yes, I think you can… Gaudi you can see as a very special extreme form of Art Nouveau.

Yes, absolutely, Rita, one person’s ugly is another person’s beautiful.

Oh, I’m so sorry… I hope you kept the pieces, Marion, and stuck them back together. Thank you for your kind comments.

Q: Was modernism the way we see that reaction?

A: Well Art Nouveau, as I said, has a role in the development of modernism. But the Bauhaus Modernism was also a reaction against it. The Train Bleu. Yes, the Train Bleu is… Oh, I was very sorry we didn’t get into it on this trip. Train Bleu is so wonderful. You, when you come to Paris you must all go to the Train Bleu. It’s not that expensive, you can get a set lunch for 40 something euros. It is the most over the top, fabulous, amazing restaurant interior in all of Paris. It’s, I would… It’s very… It’s the ultimate in Belle Epoque, really is. Look it up, it’s just dazzling. It’s got a certain Art Nouveau flavour to some of the decoration but I’d describe it as Belle Epoque rather than Art Nouveau.

Hello, Erica, thank you very much. And thank you, Shirley. Thank you all.

My, my… The next tour to Paris that I said will, for me, will be a Martin Randall one. I’m doing lots of tours to different places, Vienna, Milan, God knows what. For Kirker as well this year. I’ve never been to , I’d love to go. It does sound really wonderful.

Netflix’s new version of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” which seems to have a… Yes, I suppose it’s the the same period, isn’t it? I’m not sure what the date, maybe it’s a little bit later.

Ceramics, of course there are lots of wonderful Art Nouveau ceramics. Barbie doll has a very small… Oh, thank you, yes, that’s the reason you’re… I see why you said that.

Q: Did Art Nouveau influence Art Deco?

A: More by way of reaction than direct influence. Art Deco is in many ways a reaction to Art Nouveau.

Gustave Moreau Museum? Not really, 'cause Gustave Moreau is an earlier generation. Gustave Moreau is an influence. Gustave Moreau is again the definition of fin de siecle, overall decadence of the late 19th century. Thank you, Hindi.

Yes, Mucha of course wonderful. And there is, I don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s written Nieuwe Kunst, is the Dutch form for Art Nouveau. It tends to be a bit more restrained, maybe more related to the English Arts and Crafts than the Franco-Belgian version of the style. Art Nouveau buildings in Johannesburg, that would be very interesting.

Q: Is “The Slav Epic” of Mucha you’re talking about?

A: Not really, no. It’s later and it’s not really very Art Nouveau like his posters.

This is Victoria saying that Mucha was Czech and Jewish heritage. I’m not that… He may be, but he was definitely Christian. Thank you, Marianne and Laurie Korngold. What a lovely name to have. I wonder if you’re related to the great composer who I revere and love, Erich Korngold. And I never miss an opportunity to talk about Korngold when I can. Right? I don’t know the name of the Lady Chatterly film.

Q: Are the works by the Pre-Raphaelite artists considered to be Art Nouveau?

A: Not… Certainly Pre-Raphaelite isn’t, that is very complex 'cause there are two types of Pre-Raphaelitism and the first type, the sort of Millais, Holman Hunt, is not Art Nouveau really. And then Rossetti and Burne-Jones develop a kind of Pre-Raphaelitism which is more like continental symbolism, with a capital S, and there are designs by Burne-Jones in particular from the 1870s, so well before Art Nouveau, that already look really pretty Art Nouveau. So it’s a bit of a complicated story that one. Lot of, I’ve never been to Bucharest. I’m sure there must be good Art Nouveau there.

And yes, once again, Kirker. That’s K-I-R-K-E-R. You can look them up on the internet. Martin Randall. Both of those companies will be doing tours with me this coming year.

Yes, the Cafe Budapest has great Art Nouveau. Cafe New York in Budapest. Actually I think I might call it more Belle Epoque than Art Nouveau.

So Laurie’s saying that Erich Wolfgang Korngold is a distant relative.

So I think that’s it for this time, and there’s a gap and then we’ll be onto the jazz age and Art Deco in my next talk for you in a week or so.