Art Nouveau Research Articles

Орнамент и содержание: сюжет и смысл «Поцелуя» Густава Климта

The article examines the most famous work of the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt — The Kiss. It analyses the insufficiency of the existing, most common both in academic and popular culture interpretations of this painting as an abstract image of lovers, a kind of “yin and yang” or the struggle and unity of the male and female opposites. For the first time in Russian research, evidence of a specific plot of The Kiss is provided. Based on the artist’s career, then-contemporary literature, the context of the creation of the painting, and its figurative and symbolic content, the plot of the painting is identified as the meeting of Ariadne and Dionysus on the island of Naxos. This, in turn, reveals the semantic content of The Kiss not as an abstract “icon of love” or the image of gender relations, as universally perceived, but broadly — as a symbol of the fullness of life in general, correlating, on the one hand, with the programs of R. Wagner and F. Nietzsche, and on the other hand, with the aspiration of Art Nouveau to the ultimate modernity. As a whole, The Kiss reconciles the conditional avant-garde of modernity with strict academicism, being a capacious and emotionally charged variation on a classic theme, performed in the current artistic language. At the same time, in the context of the artist’s own path, The Kiss, due to the reversal of the plot about Theseus and the Minotaur, which was put on the poster of the first Secession exhibition, becomes a sign of overcoming the crisis of 1905 associated with the failure of the artist’s Faculty paintings and the break with the Secession.

Sigmund Freud, 19 Berggasse, Vienna. André Breton, 42 Rue Fontaine, Paris

Sigmund Freud, 19 Berggasse, Vienna. André Breton, 42 Rue Fontaine, Paris

European Exhibition Poster of the 1890s in the Context of the Development of Art Nouveau

The purpose of the study is to highlight the specific features of the European poster of the 1890s. of the time of its formation on the example of the line of exhibition posters (art posters) of the leading directions of the Art Nouveau style. Methods of research. During the writing of the study, a historical and cultural approach was applied and a systematic approach was used for art-historical, stylistic, and comparative artistic analysis. The scientific novelty consists in conducting an overview art analysis of the exhibition posters of the leading European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Poland) in comparison with the generalized regularities of the French posters of the period of the 1890s. It was determined that the posters for author’s, personal and group art exhibitions have unique features, and it was outlined all distinctive features of this type of artistic production. The work of the «Glasgow Four» (C. R. Mackintosh, J. G. McNair, the Macdonald sisters) in the field of linear direction posters and the works of other authors were considered. Features of linear organization and individual floreal elements in the posters of German-Austrian Secession artists (F. von Stuck, L. von Hoffmann, P. Behrens, G. Klimt, K. Moser, J. Olbrich and others) were identified on the occasion of various level exhibitions in Munich, Berlin, Vienna in the 1890s. The parameters of the formation of the national and romantic trend in the exhibition poster of Polish artists F. Wygzywalski, Y. Mehoffer, J. Bukowski, and T. Aksentowicz were determined. Visualization techniques were analyzed, taking into account the specifics of the poster and general stylistic trends in the art of those years. Considerable attention was paid to highlighting the regional features of poster design in the specified countries, as well as the features of the authors’ individual style within these regional models. Conclusions. In the general cultural and historical context of the time, the exhibition poster was an important component of the formation of national trends in the artistic style of the time, primarily floreal, linear, national-romantic. Reflecting the stylistic guidelines of the time, the exhibition poster, aimed at a wide audience, contributed to the formation of a holistic artistic vision as a manifestation of the cultural and artistic guidelines of the specified period.

The Era of Joy. Advertising Poster of the 1860s-1890s as a Continuation of the Laughter Culture of the European Middle Ages

This article aims to study the influence of urban advertising on the formation of urban society’s positive mood in France at the turn of the 20th century. The focus is on the heyday period of circulation graphics, which was the result, firstly, of the improvement of printing techniques by the middle of the 19th century and the appearance of lithography, which made it possible to repeatedly replicate advertising samples. Secondly, it was the result of the intensive increase in trade, industrial production and the number of product consumers, for whose attention manufacturers competed. In addition, by the 1890s, a generation of advertising masters had formed, in particular, the poster masters who skillfully used the features of the new creative form and attracted the attention of art critics. This refers to the era of Jules Cheret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Eugene Grasset, Adolphe Villette, Alphonse Mucha and others. An important aspect of this study is the research of the connection between the advertising poster of the Art Nouveau era and the laughter culture, which, according to M.Bakhtin, made a key contribution to the formation of the modern society’s thinking, as well as the concepts of the grotesque and the comic in the interpretation of the Russian writer and philosopher and Charles Baudelaire, a French poet and publicist. Consideration of poster communication from the standpoint of Bakhtin's theory is an original method. The artistic basis of this study is the poster heritage of artist Jules Cheret, the leading master of European printed advertising graphics of the second half of the 19th century. The concept approbation is carried out on the material of La Plume literary magazine, namely, issue No.110 of December 1893, which was entirely devoted to the art of the advertising poster. This article discusses six critical essays on Jules Cheret’s creative work. Their authors are E.Mendron, K.Huysmans, F.Champsaur, Roger Marx, Ivanhoe Rambosson, Raoul Serta. All translations of text fragments are made by the author of this article.

Digital Technologies Role in the Preservation of Jewish Cultural Heritage: Case Study Heyman House, Oradea, Romania

The Jewish architectural heritage is and will remain an integral part of the local cultural heritage, but part of it still needs to be discovered, rehabilitated, maintained and valued. For Oradea, a Central–Eastern European city, this challenge is very specific because the Jewish communities before World War II were very strong and prosperous and because of the current desire to assert the city in the tourism market through urban regeneration. The Jewish community of Oradea had an important representative in Éva Heyman, a child of the Holocaust, nicknamed “Anne Frank of Transylvania”, which became famous. At the age of 13 years, Éva Heyman kept a diary during the Jewish ghettos in Oradea. In addition to the diary, her story is about the house where she grew up, built in the Art Nouveau style at the center of Oradea. Even though this house is of inestimable value from an aesthetic and cultural point of view, very little is known among the local population. Moreover, it is not listed as a historical monument, and its current state of preservation is precarious. With the increasing importance of preserving cultural heritage and computer graphics development, the digitization of historical buildings began to be used more and more for evaluation, preservation and promotion. This paper attempts to highlight the story of Éva Hayman and the house where she grew up. The paper further presents the innovative methods by which it is desired to achieve the presented goal for this architectural jewel. The results show that three-dimensional digitization methods are powerful tools for preservation and use for the benefit of the general public, education professionals, administrators and investors, art historians, restorers, etc., who are concerned with the collection preservation, exploration and mediation of the Jewish cultural heritage.

The Role of Stained Glass in the Sacred Visual Semiosis of Religious Buildings in Crimea

The subject of the study is the role of stained glass in the visual semiosis of religious buildings in Crimea. The object of the study is the stained glass decor of the sacred architecture of the Crimea. The research uses the methods of cultural (hermeneutic and semiotic) and artistic (idiographic and structural) analysis of stained glass art in the sacred space of Crimean architecture, the method of analysis of previous studies, the method of synthesis in conclusions regarding the development of stained glass in the Crimean cult architecture. In the study, the authors considered the following areas of the topic: the development of stained glass art of the Crimea in sacred architecture; the meaning of color and subject symbols in stained glass compositions of religious buildings of the Crimea. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. Stained glass art, more precisely, its subject component, is not authentic for the Crimea, it appears in the decor of residential and public buildings during the late XIX century, the beginning of the eclecticism of Art Nouveau and imitation of Gothic and Byzantine models. Colored glass in earlier periods decorated the windows of well-to-do houses of representatives of various Crimean ethnic groups, however, stained glass as a phenomenon was not characteristic of sacred structures. 2. Due to its geographical location, Crimea is a multicultural and multi-confessional territory, where various religious trends developed: ancient pantheism, Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Protestantism with the colonization of Catherine's time, Islam, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism. Stained glass windows in religious buildings of various faiths, in addition to decorative function, play a symbolic role, conveying through color, symbolism of abstract and object forms one or another sacred meaning. 3. A special contribution of the authors to the study of the topic is the cataloging, art history and cultural description of examples of stained glass art in the sacred architecture of the Crimea. The scientific novelty of the study is that the authors for the first time carry out an ontological analysis of stained glass art in the sacred visual semiosis of the Crimea and analyze its semiotic aspects.

Мавританські мотиви у творчості академіка архітектури О. М. Бекетова

In the 18th – early 19th century, in the architecture of Europe, the fashion for Orientalism began to appear, but this process started to gain real strength in the second half of the 19th century during the spread of the so-called neo-styles. The certain creative tribute to the enthusiasm for oriental motives was given by the most famous Kharkiv architect – academician of architecture O. M. Beketov. In 1895–1910 he designed and built on his yard space in the village of Profesorskyi Kutochok (now a district of the Crimean city of Alushta) the complex of summer cottages by the sea in the eclectic style, but with the clear preference for the architectural forms of the oriental look. The center of its composition was the two-storey six-room manor house with the asymmetrical balcony (oriental-type veranda), open terrace, two loggias and compact interior plan system. In the same spirit, for his brother-in-law D. O. Alchevskyi, the artist made the project of the two-storey city mansion with the corridor-suite plan system, which was built in 1896–1897 in Kharkiv on Sadovo-Kulikivska Str., 7 (now Darvina Str., 13). Based on the historical and art history analysis, it can be confidently asserted that the buildings of O. M. Beketov’s dacha in Alushta and the city mansion of D. O. Alchevskyi in Kharkiv were built together using the techniques and forms of Moorish architecture of the 8th–13th centuries and Crimean Tatar architecture of the 14th–18th centuries. It is important that in the process of their design and construction, O. M. Beketov was able to create graceful, charming, almost fabulous architectural images in the best traditions of Morisca. The author creatively applied the plasticity of the architectural elements of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, the Giralda minaret in Seville, the Palacio de Pena in Sintra, Portugal, which bizarrely and, at the same time, organically harmonized with Iraqi, Crimean Tatar and purely European architectural forms. In addition, in his creations, O. M. Beketov significantly strengthened the eclecticism characteristic of Moorish architecture with elements of Art Nouveau, only adding modernity and extraordinary expressiveness to the architectural image of houses. The design and construction of these buildings for their time was carried out at the highest level, which makes it possible to confidently include them in the circle of the best old mansions of Alushta and Kharkiv. In addition, O. M. Beketov’s dacha is one of the important architectural dominants of Profesorskyi Kutochok, and D. O. Alchevskyi’s mansion, from the urban planning point of view, very successfully closes the perspective of Kulykovskyi Descent in Kharkiv. Both buildings are monuments of architecture, perform weighty urban planning functions, and need protection and periodic restoration.

Beardsley Movement in the Russian Silver Age Culture

The article dwells on the phenomenon of Russian Beardsleism, which was formed by the influence of the works and personality of the English graphic artist Aubrey Beardsley on the Russian intellectual society at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. Being the brightest representative of English aestheticism and Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley became a champion of the ideas of new art for Russia. In his homeland, Aubrey Beardsley managed to make a real revolution in the field of illustration and book graphics, separating them into independent elements of creativity and raising the art of graphics to a completely new, unprecedently high level. No less revolutionary was the behavior of the artist — Aubrey Beardsley turned his life into art, postulating innovative aesthetic and philosophical aspirations by his very appearance. The worth of his personality was undoubtedly comparable to the worth of his works, and one became inseparable from the other. Thus, the very image of Aubrey Beardsley became a symbol of the Art Nouveau era, containing a lot of complex concepts. Therefore, no wonder that the sphere of influence of this master in Russia was extremely wide — not limited only to the field of graphics, it extended from new artistic methods up to the lifestyle and demeanor. The significance of Beardsleism in the Russian artistic life of the turn of the centuries is also indicated by its scope — the most prominent figures of the Silver Age, such as S. Diaghilev, L. Bakst, N. Feofilaktov, and rather obscure A. Silin, A. Arapov and M. Durnov — both those and others experienced a significant influence of Aubrey Beardsley on their works and life.

Proportions in Salvatore Caronia Roberti Between Theory and Practice

In 1949 Salvatore Caronia Roberti published the volume Introduzione allo studio della composizione architettonica. It is a compendium of his own studies and research came together in his architecture, testifying to the close interweaving of theory and practice. Caronia Roberti was a student of Ernesto Basile, one of the leading exponents of Art Nouveau, a style in which proportions played a marginal place. He later broke away from the Master’s school to attempt a new path in which geometry and proportion constitute the core of his theoretical research. This study aims to highlights the organic nature of Caronia Roberti’s thought, between architectural history and representation, by restoring a little-known book to collective knowledge.

Lviv school of design of the environment 1872-1918: Theoretical principles and their implementation

Formulation of the problem. Teaching the design of the environment, as well as practical achievements in this field of artistic creativity of teachers, students and graduates of Lviv National akademy of arts, have a thorough basis. Lviv school design of interiors has a long history, and the chair of design of the environment of Lviv National akademy of arts is the heir to the traditions and achievements of several generations of Lviv artists. It is important to reveal the process of formation in Lviv artistic design education, the theoretical foundations of the artistic organization of the subject environment surrounding a person, to identify and compare historical levels in the development of works, their technological and stylistic changes in time, investigate the relationship between different artistic techniques and options design at different stages. Analysis of recent research and publications. Important is the study of Alexander Noha on the theme of the Lviv design school. In his book 2001 «Ukrainian art-industrial ceramics in Galicia (1840-1940)» is considered a period of birth and development of industrial design in Lviv [10]. The activities of the architect Ivan Levynskyi and his school, especially in the art of ceramics important for the design of the environment, were covered in collective monographs: 2019 «Ivan Levynskyi. Impulse» [6] and 2020 «Ceramic code of Ivan Levynskyi» [7]. Architecture and design of public spaces in the structure of historical residential building of Lviv on the verge of the XIX-XX centuries became the object of scientific research in articles and in the candidate’s thesis Olga Lysenko [8]. Similar issues (secession design of the entrance spaces of Lviv buildings) are partially solved Yulia Bogdanova and Zhanna Komar in their 2014 book-album «Secession in Lviv» [24]. The analysis of the source base revealed that to date no comprehensive study of the development of the Lviv school of subject-spatial environment design has been carried out. This problem requires a multifaceted and synthetic approach. The purpose of the article: to consider the forming factors, the theoretical principles of the Lviv design of the environment and their practical implementation in 1872-1918, introduce new facts to scientific space, surnames of artists and their works. Study Results. For the first time there is a comprehensive scientific study of the stylistic evolution of the Lviv design of the subject-spatial environment – from the neo-styles of historicism to secession (art nouveau), modernized empire and early art déco. The universal essence of the secession provided it gradually, but continuously growing coverage of various types of creativity and became one of the main formative factors of a subject-spatial design in the capital of Galicia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The article reveals the formative factors of the design of the environment, illuminates the regularities of the emergence and establishment of artistic and design education and practical activities in this area of the creativity. The emergence of theoretical principles of artistic design in Lviv is shown, starting with articles and public speeches of Julian Zachariewicz. The history of Lviv design of the environment is systematized, in many aspects the works of individual artists of different nationalities are analyzed, their previously unknown works, which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, are revealed. In particular, the creative work in the field of design of W. Sadłowski, A. Zachariewicz, I. Levynskyi and his followers, T. Obmiński, M. Olszewski is studied. Getting to know the achievements of leading European art centers, Lviv design school has maintained its independence and originality. The peculiarity of its representatives was the complexity of the polyethnic structure, the multilayer of the topics and motives (the sources of which were diverse aspects of national life and the tradition of everyday life) and in the use of the treasury of regional cultural achievements. Conclusions. The analysis of creativity of artists of the Lviv school design of the environment showed its artistic integrity, revealed a large socio-cultural and artistic significance of objects of subject-spatial design of the period of 1872-1918.The historical change of styles in the design of public and residential interiors of Lviv, the formative factors of design, the achievements of teachers and graduates of the Artistic and industrial school are considered. Until recently, the existing idea of the Lviv art of design was significantly supplemented, and new facts and works were introduced into scientific circulation.

100 × Congo: A Century of Congolese Art in Antwerp

100 × Congo: A Century of Congolese Art in Antwerp

The ‘Ornament Grammar’ of Neoclassicism in Late Art Nouveau Interiors of Rīga

The ‘Ornament Grammar’ of Neoclassicism in Late Art Nouveau Interiors of Rīga

The Art Nouveau tiles as frames to architecture in Lisbon

The combination of tile with architecture has been used in Portugal for centuries. It achieved a unique level of artistry by the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The use of new colours and modern stylizations were explored during the Art Nouveau period. The tile was used as a frame for architectural features in order to enhance the building. By then all the elements were intended to be harmoniously combined as a whole.
 A span of case studies, chronologically ordered, illustrates the role and evolution of tiles used during this period, when tiles were designed by academic painters or architects. The comparison of projects published, or kept in archives, with the actual buildings led to a new understanding about this artistic period in Portugal and, particularly, in Lisbon and its surroundings.

Unexpected role of prefactors in defects diffusion: The case of vacancies in the 55Fe-28Ni-17Cr concentrated solid-solution alloys

Variations in diffusion rates of simple point defects, such as vacancies and interstitials, are generally assumed to be dominated by energy barriers, as demonstrated for example by the large number of kinetic Monte Carlo studies that rest on constant rate prefactors. While this is mostly correct when energy barriers are well separated from each other, typically in crystals, entropic variations between the local minima and associated activated states become increasingly important as energy barriers of diffusion-mediating-mechanisms get closer, typically in disordered environments. The unexpected slower defect diffusion observed in high entropy alloys, which are characterized by the presence of a large number of different elements in roughly equal proportions, has brought us to revisit the role of prefactors. Combining the Activation-Relaxation Technique nouveau (ART nouveau) and the harmonic approximation for computing diffusion prefactors, we find that vacancy diffusion prefactors in a 55Fe-28Ni-17Cr concentrated solution alloy modeled with EAM empirical potentials can vary by up to six orders of magnitude, at almost constant energy barrier. This variation, mostly associated with changes in local pressure, suggests that prefactor could play a much more important role than previously thought in the defect kinetics of high entropy alloys and of disordered systems in general.

Post-impressionism: implicit salute towards its predecessors

Post-impressionism, as one of the world's most popular schools of art, was focused mostly on its influence on its descendants. However, this paper examines the undiscovered aspect of post-impressionism by giving a perspective on its relations with its predecessors rather than its influence on its successors. It studies the forms and flows of post-impressionist paintings. Comparisons, investigations, and observations were made during the period. It is also reviewed in the thesis about the previous articles on comparisons between post-impressionism and its contemporaries as ukiyo-e paintings. Between post-impressionism and its ensuing schools, such as the art nouveau, these comparisons are made to illustrate the influence. The investigation pointed out that there have always been relationships and similarities between post-impressionism and its predecessors, either implicit or explicit ones. The work could endorse further studies on post-impressionism and break the common sense on post-impressionism that it only had an impact on its posts and was not influenced much by its predecessors.

«Восточные» направления в русской и венгерской архитектуре

В статье рассказывается о трех направлениях ориентальной архитектуры – культовом, дворцовом и парковом. Основной блок посвящен архитектуре будапештских синагог. В качестве примера русского ориентализма приводится феномен черноморских дворцов петербургской аристократии. Анализируется венгерский шедевр парковой ориентальной архитектуры – слоновник в зоосаде Будапешта. Делается вывод о том, что ориентализм повлиял на формирование национальных стилей и способствовал развитию ар-нуво, ар-деко и модернизма.

Pragmatism and Creativity: Patenting the School Art Manifesto from Dewey’s Aesthetic Experience

Abstract An original way to make sense of the aesthetic experience concept – in a Deweyan perspective – is from the Art-Education binomial. After studying the pragmatist philosophical category of Experience in John Dewey, a product of Doctoral theoretical research in education, it was possible to characterize a new art movement: School Art. Hence, this conceptual-theoretical finding will expand a wide range of art movements that emerged between the nineteenth century and contemporaneity: Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Abstract Art, Futurism, Action Painting, and Children’s Art, among many others. However, because of lexical reasons and hoping to achieve greater acceptance among theorists, the so-called School Art will patent from this paper as a neologism named from now on as Artscholarism. Thus, its philosophical-historical foundations, characteristics, and description will be the article’s primary purpose. In that sense, psychological and historical discussions will emerge throughout the paper. In conclusion, the new art movement – Artscholarism – comes from Deweyan thinking and is framed by creativity and a social context.

EKSPLORASI MATERIAL INSPIRASI GAYA ART NOUVEAU BERTEMU DENGAN IKON INDONESIA DENGAN METODE ATUMICS

History is very essential in design process because to create progress. It requires an understanding of what has already been accomplished. This paper is a learning outcome of history of product design courses in product design of Pelita Harapan University. Art Nouveau is a style that aimed to introduce new art during the 1880s post-industrial revolution in Paris. With its obsession with novelty, Art Nouveau incorporates elements from a variety of cultures, including Japan, Moorish art, nature, and numerous material explorations. Emile Galle, one of the Art Nouveau figures in Paris. He explored and invented numerous new glass techniques such as wheel cutting, acid etching (frosted glass), and glass casing layering. The journal uses of ATUMICS, a method for deriving structured inspiration from artifacts that incorporate technique, utility, material, icon, concept, and shape. The novelty of this journal stems from the combination of two artifacts: the cameo glass technique and an Indonesian icon, the national monument and the rafflesia Arnoldi flower, where the interaction of the two resulted in product design works in fashion accessories. This process demonstrates that the elements that play important role when two artefacts are interacting using the ATUMICS method are technique, relational icon, and concept. Whereas the reciprocal relationship between artifacts on a symbolic level inspires each other in all three dimensions.

The Wagnerian Layer in I. Annensky’s Poetry

Passion for R. Wagner’s music and aesthetic ideas was characteristic of the Art Nouveau culture. At the turn of the XIX–XX centuries, it affected the Symbolist theater and shaped the aesthetic and artistic worlds of many Russian authors. Innokentii Annensky stood apart from the Russian mainstream symbolism. In his letter to E. M. Mukhina, he defined himself as a Wagnerian. The role of Wagner's aesthetics in the symbolist drama has received a lot of scientific attention, whereas its effect on the Russian modernist poetry remains largely understudied. This article introduces the Wagnerian layer in I. Annensky’s poetry. His Quiet Songs and The Cypress Chest appeared to have numerous references to such Wagner’s works as The Ring of the Nibelung, Parsifal, Tristan and Isolde, and Faust. The author analyzed I. Annensky’s poetry and correspondence. The analysis showed that the method of leitmotif composition helped the poet to structure his poetic ensembles. I. Annensky adopted Wagner's experience of combining operas into a tetralogy and used it to unite his own poetry into cycles. This device is especially obvious in the themes of secret love, the God sense, and the search for the ideal in his stand-alone cycles and poetry books.

EMERGENCE OF THE ISTANBUL ART NOUVEAU STYLE OF RAIMONDO D ARONCO: THE TRANSFORMATION FROM THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRY TO THE MINISTRY OF FORESTRY, MINING AND AGRICULTURE AND THE JANISSARY MUSEUM

This study details the transformation of the Istanbul School of Industry (Dersaadet Sanayi Mektebi) building at the Sultan Ahmed Square which was originally built between 1866 and 1868, and now serves as the Marmara University Rectorate Building. Because of the damage caused by the great earthquake of 1894, the building was redesigned by Raimondo D’Aronco between 1894 and 1900 for use as the Ministry of Forestry, Mining and Agriculture, and the Janissary Museum was added to the building. The authors believe that this design is one of the first interpretations of the Art Nouveau movement in Istanbul and reflects its first traces in the Ottoman Empire as genius loci, although it was also interpreted differently by other experts. As known, the Istanbul Art Nouveau later became very popular, especially in residential construction. The present study discusses how the Ottoman local architectural tradition is reflected in Raimondo D’Aronco’s design together with the elements of the Art Nouveau in this building. Since the building is one of the earliest works by D’Aronco reflecting precise dates in this style, it gives us the opportunity to follow the development of his art as well. The drawings of the facade, digitally documented by using a 3D Laser scanner for the first time, additionally provide information on the construction phases as supported by researches.