BOOK REVIEWS

L’Art nouveau, la révolution décorative. La Pinacothèque de Paris, 18 April 2013 to 8 September 2013. For many, familiarity with art nouveau does not extend much beyond the well-known ‘Le Chat Noir’ cat poster or the incidental voluptuous Mucha-girl with pouty lips and flowing locks symbolizing a season or promoting some brand – both images one can find on a variety of cards, cups, key holders, and similar paraphernalia in many a Parisian tourist shop. Perhaps in response, the Parisian Pinacothèque, a small and relatively new private museum on the posh Place de la Madeleine, hosted in the summer of 2013 L’Art nouveau, la révolution décorative – the ‘first retrospective’ of (French) art nouveau, as the tagline read.1 The show was part of a double feature; in its second building the Pinacothèque hosted Tamara de Lempicka, Queen of Art Déco, which shall not be reviewed here. As the museum’s website proclaimed, ‘art nouveau was everywhere’ around the turn of the twentieth century. It was a ‘total art form’ and famous artists such as Horta, Gaudi, Guimard, Lalique, Klimt, and Ruskin created works in the style, it is claimed (notwithstanding the fact that Ruskin, for one, is not usually associated with art nouveau). Now with this ‘first’ retrospective – although properly speaking it is the first retrospective in Paris since 1960 – the Pinacothèque apparently aimed to put art nouveau back on the map and accord it the revolutionary status it so obviously deserves. To this end, the museum drew upon the expertise of renowned art nouveau specialist Paul Greenhalg, director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia; as well as the Arwas Collection and the Robert Zehil Collection, both private collections of masterpieces assembled by art dealers, from which the majority of the two hundred works shown derived. Although the exhibition was fairly decent in size, it seemed rather small, an unfortunate side effect of the low ceilings on the building’s first floor (where the show started), and the somewhat cramped Modernist Cultures 10.1 (2015): 119–134 © Edinburgh University Press www.euppublishing.com/journal/mod

Modernist Cultures

Fig. 1. René Lalique, Boucle de ceinture, c. 1900. Gold, silver and emaille. Robert Zehil Collection, Monte Carlo, Monaco. © Robert Zehil, Monte Carlo, Monaco © ADAGP, Paris 2013.

organization of the spaces on both floors. All the rooms are interior; there were neither windows nor large open spaces. On the first floor, the sense of smallness was emphasized by the way many of the objects were exhibited: placed on canvas backgrounds in low, dimly lit square recesses behind glass, frequently a bit below eye level. This created an atmosphere of intimacy, which, in itself, is suitable to the style, which prominently included objects for intimate and private spaces, such as home furniture and jewellery. The majority of objects displayed on this floor were also of relatively small size, such as plates, vases, and jewellery. However, the atmosphere seemed rather stifled and old-fashioned, even. Besides the stuffiness of the somewhat cramped spatial organization, the rather out-dated static display – objects set in vaguely lighted wall-set boxes, only accompanied by some minimal information on small cards, requiring one to peer in and infer their apparent preciousness for one’s self – created an atmosphere bordering on the underwhelming. One was left guessing at what distinguishes one plate from another, how extraordinary the Lalique jewellery (fig. 1)

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Book Reviews

Fig. 2. Daum Frères, Aubépines en fleurs, c. 1905. Glass. h. 28.8cm. Robert Zehil Collection, Monte Carlo, Monaco. © Robert Zehil, Monte Carlo, Monaco.

is with regards to craftsmanship and originality, among other things, or whether the beautiful vases shown (fig. 2) are unique pieces, or should, for instance, be considered illustrative for art nouveau pottery and glasswork more generally. Such rather amateurish touches as a hand-corrected printout stating that the art nouveau lamps would be lit between 7 and 7.30pm only added to the less than professional atmosphere, and did little right by the actual art works on display, which were often of high quality as well as beautiful. Obviously, the Pinacothèque is a private museum, which had to bring in expertise from outside, and obviously they drew upon private collections, but

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Fig. 3. Eugène Grasset, Affiche pour le Salon des Cent, 1894. Stencilled paper. 64.2×50.2cm. Private Collection. © Arwas Archives. Photo Pierluigi Siena.

the quality of those collections in combination with the academic qualifications of the guest curator did lead one to expect something professional and less, well, private. The second part of the show, in particular where it continued on the ground floor, was a bit more spacious, although the space was still divided into separate rooms. Moving on to larger formats, sculpture, drawing, painting, lithographs and posters, and furniture, the show touched upon most of the different art nouveau media. A decent collection of lithographs and posters was on show (figs. 3 and 4), which were displayed in rows above one another in one room – a success, as it gave the opportunity to compare the posters in one glance, immediately giving an idea of the colours and lines of art nouveau, and of the evolution of the style (graphically, at least). However, some insight into how much such advertisements were part of daily life and penetrated visual culture at the time (which they did) – something which could have been accomplished by, for instance,

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Book Reviews

Fig. 4. René Paul-Hermann, Affiche pour le Salon des Cent, 1895. Colour lithography. 64.7×47.7cm. Collection Victor et Gretha Arwas. © Arwas Archives. Photo Pierluigi Siena.

including historical photographs of the time showing such posters on buildings and streets – would have been a welcome addition to this room. Moving from the public to the private sphere, the last room focused on furniture. Although the amount of furniture displayed was rather limited, the exhibited pieces were relevant, interesting, and quite beautiful (fig. 5); and accompanied by some brief but to the point information on the most important (French) ateliers. The majority of works shown (on both floors) was of French origin and the show insistently emphasised the Frenchness of art nouveau. This may in part have resulted from the focus of the private collections which supplied the objects for this exhibition, and/or other private

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Fig. 5. Louis Majorelle, Chair, 1903. Sculpted wood. 105×74×64cm. Private Collection, London. © Arwas Archives.

sponsors. The show gave the impression that art nouveau was a rather exclusive French affair – which, although not historically correct (art nouveau was a distinctly European trend with its roots outside of France), aligned with the show’s objective to be a retrospective of French art nouveau. However, it rather contradicted the international name-dropping on the museum’s own website, and even a French retrospective cannot properly pass by the movement’s international context. There was little to no mention of the British Arts and Crafts movement, an important impetus to art nouveau, or of Jugendstil, as art nouveau was known in German-speaking contexts, or the (Wiener) Secession, as it was known in Austria. Incorporating illustrations of, information about, or otherwise references to at least some non-French art would have served to provide some indication of art nouveau’s internationality and global success. But visitors had to look hard or in

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Book Reviews vain for works by famous and non-French artists such as Klimt, Gaudi, or Van de Velde with which the website and advertisements lured the visitor. In this way alone the exhibition failed to show that art nouveau was ‘everywhere’. And even if ‘everywhere’ were only in France, neither the limited highlighting of Paris and Nancy as artistic centres, nor the fact that art nouveau was a ‘total’ art form – indicated by the range of objects – really illustrated how in its heyday the style came to encompass almost all the material aspects of cultural life. The shows provided only the merest indication of the audiences of art nouveau, who saw it and where, who bought it, where was it placed in the home and why, how precious was it, and how this style evolved to cater to such different audiences as those encountering advertisement posters or the subway stations by Hector Guimard, and those able to afford a Lalique belt-buckle (fig. 1) or Majorelle chair (fig. 5), for example. Perhaps for fin-de-siècle (French) audiences art nouveau was indeed ‘everywhere’ but that, as well as the fact that art nouveau was experienced by many as exceedingly modern and, indeed, revolutionary, remained underexposed. Although all the essential elements of art nouveau’s Modernist cultural agenda were touched upon – including ‘the role of nature’, ‘exaltation of sense and sensuality: eroticism’, ‘mysticism and the modern world’, and commercialization (‘vendre le nouveau style’) – the information provided (in the form of explanatory cards on the walls), while relevant, was just too brief and too general to really provide insight into why art nouveau was so revolutionary, why it rose so quickly to such immense success across Europe to flourish for a brief period of time, and how it should be positioned with regards to modernism. Other important aspects of modernity, such as industrialization, technological progress, and globalization, were merely hinted at in a brief film fragment of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. And finally, while women were included as topic and muse – both Loïe Fuller and Sarah Bernhardt receive an explanatory cardboard sign of their own, besides the art works referring to them (fig. 6) – the gender angle inherent to art nouveau’s celebration of nature, femininity, sensibility, and eroticism was hardly explored, nor was the important role women artists played in, for instance, British art nouveau or the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. All in all, even though one could clearly tell that considerable thought had gone into the concept behind the show and its theoretical framework, the show’s execution was simply too meagre.

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Fig. 6. Bernard Hoetger, Loïe Fuller, 1901. Bronze with brown patina. 27×34×27cm. Private Collection, London. © Arwas Archive. Photo Pierluigi Siena. © ADAGP, Paris 2013.

The catalogue, a modest-sized coffee table book of images with only a brief and generalizing introduction, can perhaps be taken as symptomatic for the exhibition as a whole. For all that the Museum made use of such notable experts and collections, the focus upon France, limited range of objects shown, lack of contextualization, and generally unsympathetic way of displaying the works and cramped organization of rooms, ultimately made the exhibition rather static, unexciting and quite sterile. A shame and missed opportunity, certainly, considering the fact that material was exciting and beautiful, and that the art style under discussion was in fact revolutionary in many ways. Dr. Tessel M. Bauduin Radboud University, Nijmegen DOI: 10.3366/mod.2015.0101 Note 1. ‘Art nouveau, at la Pinacothèque de Paris, from 18 April 2013 to 8 September 2013’, Pinacothèque de Paris http://www.pinacotheque.com/index.php?id=852 (accessed 1 October 2014).

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