HSTARC2: Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau is an international style of art and applied art that was quite known during 1890-1905. The word Art Nouveau is a French word for “new art” which is also known as Jugendstil in German. This type of art is characterized by organic and flowing curvilinear forms such as floral, plants or enclosed curved lines. This style is very popular in Europe and the British Islands like France, Belgium, Austria, Spain and Hungary. It is considered as an important transition between the historicism of Neoclassicism and modernism.
Art Nouveau is considered as a total style because it includes a hierarch of scales of design. It includes architecture, interior design, visual art, and decorative art which include jewelry, furniture, textiles etc. The philosophy of the style indicated that it is a way of life because of how it is inspired by daily happenings.

In architecture this type of art could be seen on hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches and doors. Decorative moldings could also be an example because most of it is developed into plant-derived forms. It is modernized by architectural designers such that they use very stylized organic forms such as seaweeds, grasses, insects etc.

Two- dimensional Art Nouveau could be painted, drawn and printed in forms such as posters and magazines wherein curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids and flatness of visual plane could be seen. This type of art could also be seen applied on glass arts and ceramics.