Join leading expert, Paul Greenhalgh, as he examines the relationship between Art Nouveau and nature – a key theme in his new book Art Nouveau: The Architecture of Modern Life, published by HENI.
It is widely known that the Art Nouveau style was based in nature, with its designers seeing nature as their main inspiration.
Yet the way that nature was understood and used by the 1890’s generation was different from anything that had gone before. Perceptions of nature were changing as the theory of evolution shifted the position of our species. By the closing decade of the 19th century, nature was no longer thought to be a different domain from that of humanity – a separate garden, or even divine elemental force, that people inhabited – but rather, humanity itself was now understood to be ‘natural’ and a part of the same story as the fauna and flora that surrounded it. Art Nouveau designers strove to represent that change.
Additionally, the European experience was transformed through the age of empire with the arrival of hitherto unknown plant-forms imported from climes in Asia and Africa. This impacted designers and led to a novel vision of the natural world an internationalised naturalism underpinned Art Nouveau, the first self-consciously Modern vision of design.
Professor Paul Greenhalgh is a specialist on the art and design of the Modern period. He has written widely on Art Nouveau and curated several exhibitions including the major survey Art Nouveau 1890-1914, which toured internationally (2000-01). He has held positions as Head of Research at the V&A Museum, London; President and Director at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich; and Inaugural Director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, London. He was born and raised in Bolton, and is a proud Lancastrian.
