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Art Nouveau: 1890-1914
From the Directors' Foreword: Exactly a century ago, the Victoria and Albert Museum made the decision - controversial at the time - to purchase a body of Art Nouveau works from the Paris Expositions Universelle of 1900. Many of those works, now considered masterpieces, are included in this exhibition and catalogue. These vibrant explorations of materials and techniques were also deliberate attempts to transform the urban, industrial world.
The V&A was a key resource for Art Nouveau designers. Emile Galle, Victor Horta, and Odon Lechner, for example, visited the Museum and were inspired by its collections. The Museum's numerous publications on the principles ofornament and the resources of the National Art Library also had a great impact on the style. Like museums and public galleries, mass publications on art and design were just becoming established features of cultural life. Art Nouveau was thus quintessentially modern in that it was informed by and created through contemporary means.
The Art Nouveau style was also self-consciously international, drawing upon sources throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Some American practitioners, notably Louis Comfort Tiffany, were commercially successful abroad, and Americans garnered their share of medals at the Expositions Universelle in Paris in 1900. As interpreted by architects and artists such as Frank Lloyd Wright, the movement in America set the stage for a modernism that in turn had a great influence on progressive art and architecture in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
496 pages, full of color and B&W illustrations.