Un Art nouveau pour le peuple. De « l’art dans tout » à « l’art pour tous »

Abstract

During the period of the blossoming of Art Nouveau, France, like Great Britain and Belgium, witnessed a lively development of social art. In intellectual circles, the leading personalities militating for an art for the people were the architects Frantz Jourdain, Charles Plumet, Louis Sorel, Léon Bénouville and Henri Sauvage along with the writers Octave Mirbeau, Henri Cazalis (alias Jean Lahor) and Roger Marx. Associated in groups such as the «Groupe des cinq » or «L’Art dans tout », these architects tried in vain to participate in the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris, presenting models of workers’ housing which were both salubrious and elegant. In 1903, at the Exposition de l’habitation, Bénouville, Lavirotte and Plumet, associated with Selmersheim, presented some housing pavilions, organised around a central hall, according to English conceptions, built out of industrial materials and furnished by the architects. No orders were forthcoming from workers’ associations, and Plumet ’s model finished up as a holiday home. Bénouville built houses at Beauvais, Epinal and Bogny, all of them equipped with a workshop for family handicraft work, and based on the idea of popular education through art, under the guidance of the family head, the father. This same crusade, organised in the Société nationale de l’art à l’école, a society for the teaching of art in schools, also invited teachers to join in the mission.