In every country, the freshness of using white as a color was a prominent feature of Art Nouveau, especially in the material arts. While the darkness of the Victorians and the Aesthetic Movement is a subject of some debate, as these images show, artists were as one in connecting lightness with modernism in both handmade and industrially produced items. 
The shapes and angles of geometry coexist harmoniously with the familiar curvilinear Nouveau style. ("A line is a force." - Henry van de Velde, c. 1892).
Passing time should not desensitize us to the boldness of Marcel Kammerer's 1909 design for the grand ballroom of the Vienna Hotel Wielser or Antonio Gaudi's use of white in tiles for Water World at Casa Batllo in Barcelona in the same year.
The anonymous photographer of these images of Villa Altesse Aly-Bey Djelal in Cairo suggests the the extent of the style's popularity. Italian architect Antonio Lasciac ((1856-1944), worked for several wealthy patrons in Egpyt, from 1883 forward, beginning with his involvement in a modern urban design for the port city of Alexandria. It was after returning to Italy that Lasciac moved his entire family to Cairo in 1898, so we can date this villa to the early 20th century.
This exquisite calla lily vase created by the Swedish designer Nils Lundstrom (1865-1960) circa 1903. It epitomizes the art Nouveau ideal of an organic form seamlessly inetgrated into a highly stylized object.
6 comments:
I'd like a whole truckload of those white tiles, please. I find them breathtaking.
Yes, yes, yes!
I think it must have been like a breath of fresh air, when the darkness of the Victorians became lighter, whiter, fresher and more organic in the Art Nouveau. I like to think of Art Nouveau as a time of peace, femininity, a move to universal suffrage, tea rooms, tea dresses and flowers.
"A line is a force"...makes for a great title, and a great quote.
Barbara, there's an interlocking set of seven tiles in the collection of the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, of which this is one. I'm sorry I don't know exactly how they got there - whether they were removed from the Casa Battlo and given to the Musee or whether the Casa was destroyed.
Hels, you've reminded me of a contrast between Art Nouveau in the material arts versus painting & graphic arts. Artists like Klimt, for example, give us a very dark view of their day... the double standard, venereal disease, infanticide, child abandonment, etc. The armchair analyst in me wonders if these things fueled a search for light. Beware pop psychology.
Art, I've been saving that quote for the right piece. My knowledge of Budhism is small, but I think of karma as a radiating (perhaps linear) force. Glad it fits.
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