Villeroy & Boch and Franz Ringer, Jugendstil Design Teacup and Saucer, 1912, stoneware with painted and molded decoration, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Ellen Palevsky Cup Collection, gift of Max Palevsky, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA.
Organized by LACMA’s Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Apostles of Nature: Jugendstil and Art Nouveau explores the popular late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century style known as Art Nouveau in France and Jugendstil in Germany. Inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement, which celebrated craft in an age of advancing industrialization, as well as by Symbolist and Romantic painting, Japanese prints, and folk art, European artists developed a style characterized by highly decorative forms drawn from nature, with curvilinear, serpentine lines and daring whiplashes of color. Art Nouveau quickly spread beyond France and Germany, influencing a range of artistic movements and artists’ groups, including the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte in Austria.
Despite disparate goals, approaches, and materials, Art Nouveau artists across Europe were unified in their desire to make beautiful things, and to make life more beautiful in turn. This exhibition brings together more than 50 objects from across the museum’s collections, including prints, posters, books, decorative arts, and textiles, to illustrate the movement’s efforts to create integrated, total works of art, or Gesamtkunstwerke, that would bring aesthetic ideals to bear on everyday modern life.
In the late nineteenth century, European artists and designers came together to develop a style characterized by highly decorative forms drawn from nature, with curvilinear, serpentine lines and daring whiplashes of color. They were inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement, which celebrated craft in an age of advancing industrialization, as well as by Symbolist and Romantic painting, Japanese prints, and folk art. Called Art Nouveau in France and Jugendstil in Germany, this style became associated with a range of artistic movements and artists’ groups, including the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) in Austria. Reaching the height of its popularity around 1900, Art Nouveau in many ways embodied the contradictions of a time of great transition. Some sought to imbue Art Nouveau with a strong sense of national identity, while others viewed it as a universalizing European style. The movement was also split by differing attitudes toward handmade craft versus mass production, and by the question of Art Nouveau’s intended consumers, with lesser-quality objects made for the general public existing alongside those fashioned as luxury items for an elite clientele. Despite their disparate goals, approaches, and materials, Art Nouveau artists were unified in their desire to make beautiful things, and to make life more beautiful in turn. This exhibition brings together objects from across the museum’s collections, including prints, posters, books, decorative arts, and textiles, to illustrate the movement’s efforts to create an integrated, total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk, that would bring aesthetic ideals to bear on everyday modern life.
Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha became synonymous with French Art Nouveau after the overnight success, in 1895, of a poster he designed for a play featuring the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha, who had moved to Paris in 1887, was born and raised in what is now the Czech Republic, a region with strong folk art and craft traditions that were the source of many of the artist’s stylistic signatures. He integrated ornate motifs into everything from restaurant menus and calendars to jewelry, theater sets, and advertising posters that often featured glamorous, semiclad women. Mucha’s rise coincided with—and was no doubt fueled by—a dramatic increase in poster production in France and across Europe, where the visual landscape of major cities was transformed by signs of conspicuous consumption.
The Wiener Werkstätte
Founded in 1902, the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) grew out of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists who broke with the conservatism of the Association of Austrian Artists in 1897 to create art more responsive to their time. Directly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, architect Josef Hoffmann and designer Koloman Moser established workshops for all manner of decorative and applied arts, including metalwork, bookbinding, leatherwork, wood and lacquerwork, and architecture. They opposed mass production, insisting on exquisite objects handmade by skilled craftsmen. Before the Werkstätte dissolved in 1932, its artists had designed ceramics, typefaces, textiles, women’s fashions, and domestic interiors, examples of which had been shown at the most significant exhibitions of the early twentieth century. Despite their constant financial struggles, they created a model for uniting art and craft that would inspire other European workshops such as the Bauhaus.
Carl Otto Czeschka
Carl Otto Czeschka was one of the leading artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, which he joined in 1905. His designs signaled a shift in the Werkstätte’s style, retreating from the spare geometry favored by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser and moving towards a more decorative, folk art–inflected sensibility that tied them closer to Art Nouveau. Czeschka was multitalented, creating designs for furniture, metalwork, textiles, and jewelry, although he is perhaps best known for his graphic design. His illustrations for Franz Keim’s version of the Nibelung saga, Die Nibelungen, show stylized soldiers, knights, and royalty enmeshed in decorative pattern and ornament, arrayed across the page as in a sculptural frieze. Czeschka also contributed to the Werkstätte’s major commission in Brussels, the Palais Stoclet, and designed many of the whimsical program books of the Cabaret Fledermaus.
Jugen
Founded by Georg Hirth in 1896, the periodical Jugend (Youth) was published weekly in Munich until 1940. Jugend quickly became the namesake of the artistic and literary movement known in Germany as Jugendstil and elsewhere as Art Nouveau, although the style of works included in Jugend varied widely. A number of artists became indelibly associated with the magazine, in particular Hans Christiansen, who designed a number of iconic covers with audaciously vibrant palettes and seductively rendered female figures in mythical surroundings. Other key Jugendstil designers also contributed, including Bruno Paul, Richard Riemerschmid, and Otto Eckmann, filling the pages of Jugend with abstracted floral designs and curved lines that framed literary and critical texts.
Despite disparate goals, approaches, and materials, Art Nouveau artists across Europe were unified in their desire to make beautiful things, and to make life more beautiful in turn. This exhibition brings together more than 50 objects from across the museum’s collections, including prints, posters, books, decorative arts, and textiles, to illustrate the movement’s efforts to create integrated, total works of art, or Gesamtkunstwerke, that would bring aesthetic ideals to bear on everyday modern life.
In the late nineteenth century, European artists and designers came together to develop a style characterized by highly decorative forms drawn from nature, with curvilinear, serpentine lines and daring whiplashes of color. They were inspired by the British Arts and Crafts movement, which celebrated craft in an age of advancing industrialization, as well as by Symbolist and Romantic painting, Japanese prints, and folk art. Called Art Nouveau in France and Jugendstil in Germany, this style became associated with a range of artistic movements and artists’ groups, including the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) in Austria. Reaching the height of its popularity around 1900, Art Nouveau in many ways embodied the contradictions of a time of great transition. Some sought to imbue Art Nouveau with a strong sense of national identity, while others viewed it as a universalizing European style. The movement was also split by differing attitudes toward handmade craft versus mass production, and by the question of Art Nouveau’s intended consumers, with lesser-quality objects made for the general public existing alongside those fashioned as luxury items for an elite clientele. Despite their disparate goals, approaches, and materials, Art Nouveau artists were unified in their desire to make beautiful things, and to make life more beautiful in turn. This exhibition brings together objects from across the museum’s collections, including prints, posters, books, decorative arts, and textiles, to illustrate the movement’s efforts to create an integrated, total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk, that would bring aesthetic ideals to bear on everyday modern life.
Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha became synonymous with French Art Nouveau after the overnight success, in 1895, of a poster he designed for a play featuring the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha, who had moved to Paris in 1887, was born and raised in what is now the Czech Republic, a region with strong folk art and craft traditions that were the source of many of the artist’s stylistic signatures. He integrated ornate motifs into everything from restaurant menus and calendars to jewelry, theater sets, and advertising posters that often featured glamorous, semiclad women. Mucha’s rise coincided with—and was no doubt fueled by—a dramatic increase in poster production in France and across Europe, where the visual landscape of major cities was transformed by signs of conspicuous consumption.
The Wiener Werkstätte
Founded in 1902, the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) grew out of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists who broke with the conservatism of the Association of Austrian Artists in 1897 to create art more responsive to their time. Directly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, architect Josef Hoffmann and designer Koloman Moser established workshops for all manner of decorative and applied arts, including metalwork, bookbinding, leatherwork, wood and lacquerwork, and architecture. They opposed mass production, insisting on exquisite objects handmade by skilled craftsmen. Before the Werkstätte dissolved in 1932, its artists had designed ceramics, typefaces, textiles, women’s fashions, and domestic interiors, examples of which had been shown at the most significant exhibitions of the early twentieth century. Despite their constant financial struggles, they created a model for uniting art and craft that would inspire other European workshops such as the Bauhaus.
Carl Otto Czeschka
Carl Otto Czeschka was one of the leading artists of the Wiener Werkstätte, which he joined in 1905. His designs signaled a shift in the Werkstätte’s style, retreating from the spare geometry favored by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser and moving towards a more decorative, folk art–inflected sensibility that tied them closer to Art Nouveau. Czeschka was multitalented, creating designs for furniture, metalwork, textiles, and jewelry, although he is perhaps best known for his graphic design. His illustrations for Franz Keim’s version of the Nibelung saga, Die Nibelungen, show stylized soldiers, knights, and royalty enmeshed in decorative pattern and ornament, arrayed across the page as in a sculptural frieze. Czeschka also contributed to the Werkstätte’s major commission in Brussels, the Palais Stoclet, and designed many of the whimsical program books of the Cabaret Fledermaus.
Jugen
Founded by Georg Hirth in 1896, the periodical Jugend (Youth) was published weekly in Munich until 1940. Jugend quickly became the namesake of the artistic and literary movement known in Germany as Jugendstil and elsewhere as Art Nouveau, although the style of works included in Jugend varied widely. A number of artists became indelibly associated with the magazine, in particular Hans Christiansen, who designed a number of iconic covers with audaciously vibrant palettes and seductively rendered female figures in mythical surroundings. Other key Jugendstil designers also contributed, including Bruno Paul, Richard Riemerschmid, and Otto Eckmann, filling the pages of Jugend with abstracted floral designs and curved lines that framed literary and critical texts.
