Art Nouveau

Rating:
Summary: Treatment of the works of Art Nouveau designers and artists
Review: Ms. Costantino has produced another well illustrated book on design; however, she strives to cover too much territory in the text while also trying to make the work accessible to those unfamiliar with Art Nouveau.

Ms. Costantino covers Art Nouveau in two chapters: The Applied Arts and Architecture and Interior Design with a concluding chapter summarizing Art Nouveau's influence on contemporary design. In general, the two chapters are organized by treating separately the contributions to Art Nouveau of the major artists and designers of each country. Sometimes the transitions from one designer to the next are abrupt. Subchapter headings would help with these transitions.

Also, Ms. Costantino occasionally references important works: e.g. August Endell's Elvira Studio or Arthur Mackmurdo's Wren's City Churches; without providing illustrations, so essential to understanding their significance. Or in the case of mentioning W. Benson's metalwork being exhibited at the opening of Siegfried Bing's newly renovated store without explaining the importance of Bing or his store, it is easy to see how the significance of the reference could be lost to readers unfamiliar with his role in Art Nouveau.

The work does, however, contain crisp, clear color illustrations of major works of architecture, jewelry, metelwork, and furniture as well as outstanding pieces by lesser know Art Nouveau designers and for this reason alone is a valuable work.

The book is written as an introductory work for those new to Art Nouveau yet Ms. Costantino's desire to be thorough results in occasional lapses to obscure and inadequately explained references which may at times confuse those not familiar with Art Nouveau.

Despite these occasional lapses, Ms. Costantino provides us with excellent descriptions and explaination of the far-reaching influence and significance of the major works of the designers and artists of Art Nouveau. Particularily delightful is the treatment of lessor known though equally important artists and their works.

Rating:
Summary: Elegant book on an elegant style
Review: The term art Nouveau encompasses a style of architecture, figurative and applied arts that flourished in the last decades of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. During the final decade of the 19th century Western society was being transformed radically. The automobile, photography and the rise of psychoanalysis were just three elements that contributed to this change.

Costantino's book examines the sources of Art Nouveau in the English Arts & Crafts Movement, in Expressionist painting and in Symbolist poetry. These forms were themselves a reaction to rapid industrial development. Art Nouveau is seen by many as the expression of the last vestiges of a unity in European culture and the continuous interchange of ideas within it. It is a flowing style characterised by a love of detail, pattern and texture.

This work profiles the remarkable figures that gave style and shape to the movement, including René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Antonio Gaudí and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It is a dazzling visual record of the ebullience and breathtaking variety of the objets d'art produced in this lively and elegant era.

My favourite plates here include Edvard Munch's painting Madonna, Fernand Khnopff's The Caresses Of The Sphinx, Gustave Klimt's Female Friends and Music plus a leaded glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Aristide Maillol's tapestry Concert des Femmes and Jules Chéret's 1893 poster for the dancer Loïe Fuller at the Folies Bergère.

The chapters are titled A Changing Society, Introducing A New Style, Graphic Design and Photography, Architecture and Interior design, The Applied Arts, Painting and Sculpture, a Far-Reaching Style. This beautiful book with its more than 300 illustrations concludes with a chronology, a bibliography and an index.