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Art Nouveau: More Furniture and Big Names. Season 2, Episode 37.
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This episode we examine some more pieces of furniture and get into some of the 'who' and 'where.'
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Transcript
00:00:21
Speaker
All
Introduction and Art Nouveau Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
right. Welcome back, folks. Yeah. Coming at you with episode 37 of the American Craftsman podcast. In continuation of the Art Nouveau period. Yeah, we're going to wrap it up.
00:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, doing a three episode this time. It's, you know, it's a lot of artists and stuff. Yeah. And you know, what comes next is traditional revival. Huh. Surprising. So that might be another brief foray as well, because there's definitely some of these periods have less relevant info than others.
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah. And then of course there's modern and that wraps up the, that wraps up our series. Really? That's it. That's it. Huh. Yeah. I'm sure not missing one more in there. Yeah. This is 37. We should be ending. We'll call it 38. There should be a 48. Um, yeah, because, um, periods.
00:01:33
Speaker
There was one that was Sheridan that had, he was mixed there. That was a period that was covered under what was the same, uh, what was the period of, uh, Chippendale? Um, I dunno. Yeah. 12 periods of American furniture. Was just called Chippendale, was it? No.
00:02:02
Speaker
Oh, maybe it was. Let's see.
00:02:07
Speaker
12 periods of American furniture were early American, colonial, Pennsylvania Dutch, federal, Sheridan. So federal introduced Sheridan, then was American empire, Shaker, Victorian, arts and crafts, Art Nouveau, where we are now, then is just traditional revival and post-modern and post-modern.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yes. That's 12. So we just skipped Sheridan. Yeah. Sheridan. We went over to empire. Yeah. Yeah. Federal. Federal. Yeah. He was in the same. Yeah.
00:02:49
Speaker
I thought we did four episodes on Sheridan for some reason.
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00:02:53
Speaker
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00:03:49
Speaker
They also sell festival accessories. So your domino accessories, your router accessories, stuff like that. You want to save 15%, head over to their website, use our coupon code American Craftsman and help support them, help support us. Yeah, it's a good deal. Yeah. All right. So moving on into, excuse me, the Art Nouveau. Where do we leave off? We find ourselves in the Netherlands.
Art Nouveau in the Netherlands: De Stijl
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
I've always been confused about where the Netherlands is. Yeah, it's Holland, I guess. Right? Yes, that's where vesting is made. Oh, yeah, that's right. How come they just don't say Holland? I don't know. Why do they call it the Netherlands?
00:04:43
Speaker
We need, we need to know. And then what do they call like, uh, isn't there another name for that area? Scandinavia, like Scandinavia, like Finland and Norway or some something. Sweden, maybe. Yeah. Make your mind up up there in Northern, Northern, uh, Europe.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, that northwest corner there is a little bit wacky. Yeah. In Netherlands, in the Netherlands, Art Nouveau was called the steel. I guess the style. That's my guess. It was the leading furniture creator was architect
00:05:29
Speaker
Hendrik Petrus Berriage, and he denounced the 19th century, this is the 1800s, as the century of ugliness, I quote. You don't know nothing about the 2000s. He wrote, when you observe the interiors of homes, you can only shudder at the bric-a-brac, the new call in interior.
00:05:56
Speaker
That's all we need. More outspoken designers like that. Now, Borlage designed several notable buildings, including the Boers van Borlage. This is late 1800s, 1896 to 1903, in his distinctive geometric constructivist style.
00:06:25
Speaker
One of his doctrines of furniture construction was to respect the nature of the material. All right. Get behind that. He refused to shape wood into curving forms, since wood, he said, should not be treated as if it were metal. I mean, wood is more natural. I mean, metal doesn't naturally have any shape. It's like a freaking. I mean, if you look at a tree, it's got plenty of curves. Yeah.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's only straight because that's the way the Sawyer's cut it. Right. And metal is like a freaking vein of ore inside of some other rock. So the decoration on his pieces were provided through metal ornaments, but even these disappeared and his chairs and other pieces became wholly geometric.
00:07:20
Speaker
The definitive transition of the nature-inspired Art Nouveau furniture to the geometric, purely functional, the steel, came in 1917 in the furniture of Gerrit Thomas Reitfeld, particularly the red and blue chair. And there it is, the red and blue chair. It is reminiscent of the Bauhaus style, isn't it?
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess starting to lean towards that Danish modern kind of stuff. It's interesting. I mean, it looks like a sculpture. Looks like something like a six year old made out of blocks. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like, um,
00:08:08
Speaker
an interpretation of like an Adirondack and a Morris chair and a real minimalism sort of artistic. It's got a real like Mondrian thing going on. Yeah. I mean, I like the flat arms. Interesting. The red and blue chair. Yeah. I don't like it.
00:08:40
Speaker
So that's what's going on up there in the great Northwest. While in Italy, we have Steela Liberty in Turin and Milan. The Steela Liberty took its name from Arthur Lansby's Liberty and the story founded in 1874 in London, Liberty Department Store.
00:09:06
Speaker
It's funny that the Italians name their. Yeah, after an Englishman. Yeah, their style after. And the Liberty Department Store specialized in importing in importing ornaments, textiles and art objects from Japan and the Far East. With a name like Liberty. Yeah.
00:09:29
Speaker
An important center of the new style was the city of Turin, which in 1902 hosted a major expo, Torino, 1902. The expo was devoted to the international decorative arts of the new century. Grand Torino. Yeah, we don't really have anything like that anymore, do we? Do they do these expos? Yeah, KBIS.
00:09:57
Speaker
I guess the dominant figure in Italian furniture design and star of the 1902 turn exposition was Carlo Bugatti, the father of the celebrated automobile designer Ettore Bugatti.
Carlo Bugatti's Artistic Furniture
00:10:15
Speaker
His pieces of furniture were in exactly the opposite of the geometric and functional furniture of the Jugendstil and the Vienna secession. They were essentially works of sculpture and decoration. Their function, whether as a chair or cupboard or a dining room table, was entirely secondary. I put the exclamation point there.
00:10:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, his works included the snail chair, wood covered with painted parchment and copper, and an extraordinary sofa of wood and parchment decorated with paint, fringe and encrustations of brass. The spaces for seating were almost entirely hidden by the decoration. Check out the snail chair.
00:11:09
Speaker
That's it. Where? That I know. It's that's it on the left now of this. Yeah. Like this does not look like a chair. Hmm. I, I, when I, I didn't realize that was the snail chair either. I was expecting something else. Yeah. Um, I guess it kind of reminds me of a snail. It, it's,
00:11:36
Speaker
It's hard to even tell what material it's made out of. Yeah. It's almost like a stool with a back, right? Yeah. Hard to explain. Bugatti, you got to look up his stuff. Uh, let's look at a Bugatti sofa.
00:12:12
Speaker
I see why this, uh, style fizzled out real quick. Oh my God. Cause this is, it looks like it's made out of trash, basically. Oh no. Like found objects. You mean like, it's like a hubcap. Okay. We got some tassels here. We found these little things in the garbage and tacked them on there. This, uh, it's like,
00:12:38
Speaker
It's like two individual seats that are like circular with a bench suspended in the middle. It's the weirdest looking thing. I mean, it really looks like a piece of folk art. Yeah.
00:12:57
Speaker
Like some you see like Burning Man, you know how they like they come together these weird vehicles. Yeah. Looks like. Yeah. Like you might see this like one of the chieftains in a Mad Max movie sitting on top of this. Yeah. It does have a little bit of like an African kind of like throne. Yeah. Yeah. Or even maybe like Aztec. Mm hmm.
00:13:29
Speaker
That's wild and very weird. To see that that's lumped in with Art Nouveau. Let's see the Bugatti desk.
00:13:44
Speaker
Oh, God, I didn't think you're getting worse. That desk is pretty bold. It looks like the desk falls down. It looks like the the writing area, which is just like a piece of stone, a round piece of stone. So, yeah, I guess some of that's parchment.
00:14:11
Speaker
copper, wood. I mean, it's entirely sculptural and almost doesn't appear as a piece of furniture at all. And if we, if you get really close to it, I'm not sure the craftsmanship is all that great. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to tell. It's a hundred years old. Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
It looks like really a crazy thing you might find in Pier one. Yeah, I could see that. Like some of that like weird stuff. I like home goods. It's like this gaudy kind of made in Malaysia or something. Yeah. Like pulls from all these different styles. Like something that would be in like the fifth element. You know that movie? Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:10
Speaker
like some kind of like weird like desert based alien. Yeah. I'm out of, I mean, this, this is some of the craziest stuff we've seen and it's like that. It's not even a desk. It's like something that would sit against the wall. It's got a mirror for the back. And it just happens to have like a little like round 18 inch thing that folds down that you could potentially write on. Right. Like something about as big as you would put like an answering machine on or something answering machine.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good point of reference for all you old timers out there. You're old enough to remember answering machines. You don't remember. You're too old to remember how big they were. I still have an answering machine. Oh my God. That's right. You only have voicemail now, right? Yeah. But for home phones, do they? I've had that for 10, 20 years. Oh yeah. I don't trust it.
00:16:06
Speaker
All right, we're still talking about the Italians. Coming off of Bugatti's unique designs, we have Eugenio Cuarti of Milan was another figure of note in the Italian style.
00:16:21
Speaker
After an apprenticeship in Paris and working a brief time for Carlo Bugatti, he opened his own shop and atelier, which is a studio, and produced models which won recognition at both the Antwerp Exposition of 1894 and the first Turin Exposition in 1892. He enlarged his firm in 1904 and produced furniture for important Italian clients.
00:16:51
Speaker
His work was much simpler in style than that of Bugatti, but he also sought to create unusual forms and materials and delicate designs from inlays of brass and abalone shell. Uh, I guess I don't have any pictures of his stuff. I just had, you know, it was just his little,
00:17:16
Speaker
That's good. Cool. Yeah. That's real interesting. Um, it looks like arts and crafts furniture to me. None of it looks like what we've seen as far as, um, you know, the main examples of art nouveau. I could see this. Yeah. Almost like those legs are federal, right? Yeah. Not much on, uh, party.
Modenisme Movement in Barcelona
00:17:51
Speaker
In Spain, moving next door from Italy, we have the Modenisme in Barcelona, and the Modenismo movement in Catalonia, which produced the most original designs led by architect Antonio Gaudí. The furniture designer Gaspar Homar, Mesquita. Oh, Homar Desmesquita, that's his name.
00:18:20
Speaker
designed furniture that was inspired by natural forms featuring the curving lines of the French and Belgian Art Nouveau with touches of Catalan historic style. Let's see some examples of Gaspar's work.
00:18:44
Speaker
Interesting. It's sort of like, uh, I don't even know what kind of piece of furniture this is. Like, uh, it's like a hutch. Yeah. This looks very art nouveau to me. The definitely the inlay, the marketry inlay of, you know, plants, but up top it gets a little, uh, I mean that carving is, is kind of traditional.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah. You know, the grapes, the grape leaves, those, those spires. I mean, it's, it's, it is unique. I do like the beveled glass here. Yeah. Yeah. The beveled leaded glass, which is not something I've seen before. Goudy.
00:19:39
Speaker
It's got some interesting curves to it too, where you don't necessarily see them in other pieces, the way the top section is stepped back, but it's attached with this bowed rail, I guess. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
And here's a mosquito. Wow. Is this a bed? Um, you know, is that a footboard and a headboard or is that? Looks like, yeah, maybe. Must be. They just have it on this small thing too. And look at that little table off to the side. Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
So this reminiscent of Chippendale style carving. And what are those, what are those inlays like? Is that somebody on a horse? Uh, yeah. He's like horse rearing, dabbing somebody down here or something. Playing a dragon.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, this is a sword here interesting some monograms I like that chair. Yeah, I mean it's really uh
00:21:33
Speaker
It's so light. The legs and everything in the back. It's, it's, you know, the legs are gently curved and they're very thin. There's another piece by a mosquito. Oh, who's that remind Jeff? Uh,
00:22:04
Speaker
Uh, well, if I look at the back, like Sheridan, yeah. But you know, like that, not the round, uh, flowers, but that, that S curve kind of reminds me, uh, of that period and even the top rail, maybe more like a hippo white. Yeah.
00:22:36
Speaker
It's funny because these things are so different and they're all classified under Art Nouveau.
School of Nancy and Hector Guimard
00:22:44
Speaker
Well, folks, this is the time you've been waiting for. We're going to discuss the School of Nancy, right? In France, as in Belgium, some early Art Nouveau furniture was designed by architects.
00:23:05
Speaker
After a visit to the hotel, in Brussels, Hector Jumard created the first Art Nouveau apartment house in Paris, the Castel Verenger, a curious mixture of Gothic revival and Art Nouveau elements.
00:23:29
Speaker
He also began designing sets of furniture with the naturalistic curves and decoration that were characteristic of the style. This was good. Guma, Jumad declared, that which must be avoided at all cost is anything that is continuous. Nature is the greatest builder and it makes nothing that is parallel and nothing that is symmetric.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's just that's like not true. No, not true at all. I mean a leaf even is is symmetrical, isn't it? Yeah.
00:24:11
Speaker
Jumod's furniture made for his own and other residences highlighted the curving natural forms and perfectly matched the architecture. So let's see some examples of Jumod. Now this is the school of Nancy, remember? Wow. That's pretty cool. That it's cool. It's wild. It's like a cat house, like one of those cat playhouses up on the wall. Or is that a mirror? I don't know.
00:24:46
Speaker
Uh, it looks like it's a door. Is this like a little, is this a reflection of something or is that a panel that has like fabric on it or something? I mean, it's, it looks like, I mean it really resembles without
00:25:13
Speaker
imitating a tree of some sort, right? Like, um, I mean, it's completely asymmetrical. It's got some really wild elements. I really liked the hand rails, the arm rails or what, you know, the, the curve in them, uh,
00:25:41
Speaker
that little shelf at the top. I like the, I like the, the, the, the rail and the front underneath the seat. I mean, I like that. There's a lot to like here and it's very, very wild looking without being too crazy. I mean, it's, it really
00:26:07
Speaker
walks that line between a normal piece of furniture and having these. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Could you have that in your house? My house? No.
00:26:20
Speaker
The one thing is like the, the padding on the back is straight up and down and it looks like a 90 degree angle with the seat. And there's not a lot of padding there. It doesn't look like it'd be the, the most comfortable thing to spend a lot of time on. Oh yeah. I feel like benches inherently are not something that are meant to, you know, really be sat in. All right. Let's see what else you got from this dude.
00:26:51
Speaker
Wow. That's cool. It looks very similar to, uh, that Spanish dude. These little lily pads up here. Yeah. So it's like, uh, another hutch kind of thing. Yeah. A hutch with the top section, sort of almost looking like it's perched on like branches. Yeah. It's like being lifted up by vines.
00:27:21
Speaker
Look at the sculpting in these doors. Yeah. The asymmetry. You know, this has this thing here gone over here. Right. Right. I like that. I like the base that it's sitting on. Yeah. I really like this.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah. I would love to like present something like this, which takes so much time. Oh no. I mean, I want to see what their, what their reaction would be. There's no way we could produce something like this and, and make a profit could be, yeah. This costs a hundred thousand dollars to build. No easy way to do any of this really. No.
00:28:16
Speaker
Every element is, you know, unique and handmade. And yeah, everything is hand shaped, you know, I mean, imagine trying to do this. Yeah. Just this door with this little divided light, but it's a curved, all blended into itself. Let's see if we can even see. Wow. There's a joint there. Yeah. Right here.
00:28:47
Speaker
Mitre door. So they, you know, they glue it up and then just curve it, you know, sculpt it. That's crazy. Like none of the, like the corners, like the top corner is not even a, you know, a sharp corner. It's like pillowed almost.
00:29:15
Speaker
Look at the work around like the handles and everything. It's crazy. Wow. Wow. Like who built it? That's what I want to know. I mean, he designed it. Did he build it? Let's see his chair.
00:29:45
Speaker
Well, it's definitely the same style, but so much more understated. Yeah. I guess you can only do so much with a chair. Yeah. I like the top. I like the shape of that top, you know, with the padding there. Is that like a motorcycle seat? Um, you know, is that leather with like, yeah, this is this or leather. Yeah. Excuse me. Um,
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, embossed. Is that what they call it? Embossed leather? I think so. Embossed leather or whatever. Embossed, yeah. I mean, I really dig the curves of the work. Oh, look at that. Look at all of the carving and sculpting. Insane.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah. I'm, it's, I'd love to see the other chairs in that set. I mean, to see what the difference is between each individual chair, like how close are the, right. Do the craftsmen try and mimic one, you know, chair to the next?
00:31:03
Speaker
So that's Hector Bumard, Jumard, G-U-R-I-M-A-R-D out of Paris. Other notable French designers included Henri Bellerie de Fontaine, who took his inspirations from the neo-Gothic styles of Viollet des Les Dukes.
00:31:34
Speaker
Um, sorry, uh, unless you're really well informed, you probably never heard of these guys. Um, but this is all about discovering new stuff. Yeah. Sticking out of your bubble. Yeah. This is definitely pushing us out of our comfort zones. And, uh, Edward Colonna.
00:31:55
Speaker
who worked with art dealer Siegfried Bing to revitalize the French furniture industry with new themes. Their work was known for abstract naturalism, its unity of straight and curved lines and its Rococo influence. That kind of sums it up. The most unusual and picturesque French designer of early art nouveau was François Ruppert,
00:32:22
Speaker
Carabin, a sculptor by training whose furniture featured sculpted nude female forms and symbolic animals, particularly cats who combined art nouveau elements with symbolism.
00:32:39
Speaker
Uh, another influential Paris furniture designer was Charles Plumet. Through his work, the old vocabulary and techniques of classic French 18th century Rococo or just, yeah, is that right? Did I add an extra co Rococo furniture were reinterpreted in a new style. The Nancy school.
00:33:03
Speaker
Oh, just getting to the Nancy. Yeah. Well, that was the lead up to the Nancy school. Those were the Nancy boys. Yes. An important center for art. Nouveau furniture design and manufacture was in Nancy in Eastern France, where Louis Majorel had his studios and workshops and where the alliances day industry, the art later called the school of Nancy had been founded in 1901.
00:33:31
Speaker
Designers base their structure and ornamentation on forms taken from nature, including flowers and insects, particularly the dragonfly, a popular motif in Art Nouveau design.
00:33:45
Speaker
And there you go. Majurel especially used the water lily, an Egyptian symbol of eternal nature, which often appeared in sculpted and gilded bronze in the hardware and decoration of furniture. And Jumar was using that water lily motif as well quite a bit. Majurel made nature the central element, calling it a collaborator worthy of attention.
00:34:16
Speaker
But he also insisted that the structure of the furniture should be clearly recognized. Unlike who? Bugatti. And that the beauty of a piece of furniture came not only from its decoration, but from its elegant lines and correctly correct proportions. Give it to the Italians to make it gaudy.
00:34:40
Speaker
Wow. That, that reminds me of that, um, that armoire that we liked so much, except, you know, it's a little bit, uh, definitely flouncy. Yeah. Super low slum bed.
00:35:01
Speaker
It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really high back headboard, though. Yeah. A lot darker than a lot of the other art nouveau stuff. Yeah. And, you know, it's gilded. Yeah. I have those gold elements. Here's another Marjorail bed. Wow. That's pretty cool.
00:35:35
Speaker
This thing's also kind of hard to describe. I like this piece back here. Yeah. The side table. Yeah. It's like a little chest of drawers almost. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of curves. Yeah. It's like some real quilted and then this like abalone inlay. Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker
I mean, there, there's almost no straight line on any of this furniture, right? I mean, just the, on the bed, just the, the top of the, of the, you know, the side rails that only for a portion of it. Yeah. Pretty cool.
00:36:31
Speaker
Besides furniture, Majorel collaborated with the glass manufacturing down on the design of lamps and other glassware. In keeping with the spirit of the arts and crafts movement, he also established a factory making furniture in series for less wealthy clients.
00:36:51
Speaker
He used machines for the first phase as a manufacturer, but all the pieces were finished by hand. I mean, that bed and those tables, that had to be like, custom. Oh yeah. There's nobody, no machine stuff on that.
00:37:11
Speaker
Other notable furniture designers of the Nancy School included Eugene Valline and Emil Andre, both architects by training and both designed furniture that resembled the furniture from Belgian designers such as Porta and van der Velde. We were not a big fan of van der Velde's chair. No. Which had less decoration and followed more closely the curving plants and flowers.
00:37:39
Speaker
All right, so we're getting into the US. I guess that's the Nancy School. Majorel was the main proponent and component of the Nancy School. It was a little varied, I will say. I couldn't quite put my finger on what the Nancy School was all about, except if we look at those beds as a major component.
00:38:10
Speaker
So what's going on in the US during the Art Nouveau period?
Charles Rohlfs and American Art Nouveau
00:38:17
Speaker
In the US, new furniture design at the beginning of the 20th century was largely inspired by the British arts and crafts movement, which in turn inspired the American arts and crafts movement, the craftsman style, and then following that mission style.
00:38:34
Speaker
One designer who introduced Art Nouveau themes was Charles Rolfes in Buffalo, New York, whose designs for American white oak furniture were also influenced by motifs of Celtic art and Gothic art with touches of Art Nouveau in the metal trim applied to the pieces. Let's check out a Rolfes chair. Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah, a fumed white oak.
00:39:02
Speaker
Um, these are metal, I guess it could be. Yeah. Or maybe, maybe it's not a, well, this would be copper or something like that. How would you describe this chair to our many listeners? Um,
00:39:26
Speaker
The base kind of looks almost like a small little table and then it has the splat is like three inches wide and then it flares out to, you know, whatever, maybe eight inches at the top, but it's very tall. Like a trumpet shape, almost. Yeah. Like, you know, the chair, a whole chair might be five feet tall.
00:39:48
Speaker
It's yeah, it's pretty cool that I see exactly what you're saying with the base, the seat part looking like a table. Yeah. Like a little, uh, you know, it's like a little half round. Like a little entry table you might put against the wall, but it's faced the other way. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm liking these high back chairs. I noticed. Yeah.
00:40:20
Speaker
The most famous Art Nouveau designer was Louis Comfort Tiffany, best known for his lamps, jewelry, and stained glass. He also designed some chairs and other pieces of furniture. I didn't know that. Me neither. Some of the chairs were overloaded with decoration and embroidery, but others were finally made and discreetly decorated with geometric inlays in the wood.
00:40:45
Speaker
And although Frank Lloyd Wright is not considered an Art Nouveau architect, the early furniture he designed strongly resembled the geometric furniture of the Vienna secession and other late Art Nouveau movements of the same period. We certainly saw that influence that the Glasgow school had on him.
00:41:08
Speaker
So let's talk about the Vienna secession. It's an art movement closely related to Art Nouveau, formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors, and architects, including Joseph Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, and Gustav Klimt.
00:41:34
Speaker
Just the idea of that is kind of cool. Like, you know, we have our little social circle. Imagine like starting something like, you know, getting together with the half a dozen people. We know we're going to start this like school of thought and design and everything we're going to do is going to, um, promote this style.
00:42:01
Speaker
Yeah, people are doing that these days, just not with art. It's kind of cool to think about. I guess because there are all these things that already existed, like they resigned from the association of Austrian artists. So they're already a part of this association. These associations and guilds and everything, I guess, exist.
00:42:28
Speaker
So to start one of your own, I guess is it's not, um, as a, you know, innovative as it, I would think of it in today's day. There's no establishment to rebel against now in terms of, you know, anything formal.
00:42:46
Speaker
Yeah. They were, they were protesting against the support for more traditional artistic styles. Um, their most influential architectural work was the secession building designed by, uh, Ulbrick, Joseph Maria, Ulbrick. Oh, that's, this is the building. Okay. Yeah, it's in Vienna. Yeah. Yeah. Very, to me, very art deco. Right. It,
00:43:16
Speaker
It's very like rectangular at the, at the bottom. And those, those like turrets or something that come up around the ball. No windows at all on the front. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess what happens is they, they start this school, this association,
00:43:45
Speaker
and they're all working in their trade. And what comes up is, um, a job, a potential job and people submit their designs. Let's say like, you know, the Vienna is going to build this, uh, you know,
00:44:06
Speaker
you know, municipal building of sorts. And so everybody submits their design. And then if they happen to win, then they, they have this, you know, had a steam behind them and they, they can now promote their, their school of thought.
00:44:28
Speaker
I guess that that's what's lacking today. Is anybody with an identifiable point of view that could be traced back to, you know, a school of thought? Yeah, I guess it doesn't say what it was used for. I guess it was their building, like. That's a session. That's where they met. Huh.
00:44:59
Speaker
What's the you see the second image? It's the it's the ball close up of the ball. It's all leaves. Yeah, they call it the Beethoven Free or Beethoven
Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze
00:45:12
Speaker
Freeze. I think that was designed by Clint, Clint. Yeah. The only features the Beethoven Freeze by Gustav Klimt, one of the most widely recognized artworks of secession style, a branch of Art Nouveau. Finance by Carl.
00:45:30
Speaker
Wickenstein. So he had a patron. Interesting. Oh, yeah. It was the secession building was designed by Ulbrich as a venue for expositions of the group. So they had some dough behind them. Yeah. Because that was not just a little clubhouse. No.
00:45:57
Speaker
In today's day and age, it would be a multimillion dollar building, probably. Oh, yeah, you're talking tens of millions. Yeah. They had an official magazine, which is called Versacrum, which is Sacred Spring in Latin, and it which published the highly stylized and influential works of graphic arts produced by the group. Let's see some examples of secession graphic art.
00:46:26
Speaker
Now this is pretty risque for the time, isn't it? Yeah. It's a black and white. It looks like a block print of a nude woman, a crazed nude woman holding down a man. What would, what do they call those? A succubus? Could be a succubus. Could be. Doesn't look like he can't tell if he's enjoying what she's doing or not. I know.
00:46:57
Speaker
But you could imagine the stir that this caused. Yeah. And back in the first episode, we referred to macabre and erotic. Oh, that was called vampir. Yeah. 1899. And this is Beethoven, Klimt, Beethoven, Fries. So this, this is weird. What the hell?
00:47:28
Speaker
This is by Klimt. It looks like. It's like some Salvador Dali kind of. Yeah, it's bad trip. It does look like bad LSD trip artwork. Really kind of odd juxtaposition of like all down here. Like.
00:47:56
Speaker
Docker imagery. Yeah, there's like a big gorilla snakes. These are intertwined snakes. Yeah, which actually I didn't notice when I was zoomed out. Yeah.
00:48:16
Speaker
Some, you know, human bodies. Very bizarre. I don't know what kind of drugs they had back then, but this is sort of like a zombie kind of looking women. It is odd. Is there like some Medusa kind of things with snakes in their hair? Yeah. Yeah. Got this bare chested woman with a big beer belly.
00:48:43
Speaker
The Beethoven Freeze by Klimt. K-L-I-M-T. Gorillas got like crazed eyes, dead white eyes with maybe one little pinprick of a pupil on the one side. And he's missing a lot of teeth. I got some kind of little ghoul down here. Yup. Skull.
00:49:13
Speaker
Very weird. Ah, man. Google, what kind of drugs was Klimt on? Yeah. So in 1905, the group itself split. When some of the most prominent members, including Klimt, Wagner and Hoffman resigned in a dispute over priorities.
00:49:40
Speaker
But it continued to function and still functions today from its headquarters in the secession building. It's cool. In its current form, the secession exhibition galleries independently led and managed by artists. The motto of the secessionist movement is written above the entrance of the pavilion of the secession building. To every age, it's art. To every art, it's freedom.
00:50:07
Speaker
All right. I can see that. And the photo of the secession building is probably one of the same ones there. We got the front shot. Yeah. I want to know where that freezes. I think that was just a painting. Oh, just the link looked like in the, in the tech, in the hyper-tech link. It said, it said freeze, but they also called this Beethoven's freeze. Yeah. Huh.
00:50:35
Speaker
I think maybe that's just what he named the piece of art. Because, yeah, it's graphic art. Okay. Unless this is middle wand. Oh, Beethoven Free is a middle wand. This might just be like a sub category. Yeah. So, secession furniture.
00:50:58
Speaker
Succession architects often design furniture to accompany their architectural projects, along with carpets, lamps, wallpaper, and even bathroom fixtures and towels. So you can have your house designed by the same guy that designs the toilet paper holder.
00:51:19
Speaker
The furniture presented by the secession at the 1900 Paris Universal Expo was particularly praised and won international attention for its creators, including Elsa Unger and Amelia Zago.
00:51:37
Speaker
All right, so the secessionists, they're movers and shakers. Later in the movement in 1902, the architect Otto Wagner designed chairs using modern materials including aluminum combined with wood to match the architecture of his Austrian postal savings bank building. Let's check out the Wagner chair. Yeah, so it is called Beethoven-Fries middle wand.
00:52:04
Speaker
You can get a poster over for five books. There's no information on it, though. It's a wild bit of artwork. I want to know like the part of Beethoven-Fries. Okay, the Beethoven-Fries is a painting by Gustav Klimt on display in the secession building of Vienna, Austria.
00:52:28
Speaker
I see. Yeah. It's on, it's on the top of a wall charcoal graphite, black, red, and colored chalk, pastel case in colors, gold, silver. So that's a milk paint, gold, silver, guilt, stucco applications, mother of pearl buttons, brass, uniform buttons, mere fragments, ground glass, brass, curtain rings, upholstery nails, semi pressure stones on mortar render over read matting.
00:52:57
Speaker
Here we go. This is interesting. In 1901, Klimt painted the Beethoven frieze for the 14th Vienna secessionist exhibition in celebration of the composer and featured a monumental polychrome sculpture by Max Klinger.
00:53:14
Speaker
meant for the exhibition only the frieze was painted directly on the walls with light materials after the exhibition the painting was preserved although it did not go on display again until 1986 Beethoven frieze is on permanent display in the Vienna secession building in a specially built climate-controlled basement room the frieze is large standing at seven feet high with a width of 112 feet wow the entire work weighs four tons oh my god
00:53:41
Speaker
Left wall. I guess this is what he has labeled these. Left wall. The yearning for happiness. The sufferings of weak mankind. Their petition to the well-armed strong one to take up the struggle for happiness impelled by motives of compassion and ambition. You have like a guy in armor and there's some people sort of
00:54:14
Speaker
Begging him to. Uh-huh. I love all of the, the, the meaning behind all this stuff that the artist is really, you know, he's not just doing the, you know, the, the painting. He's got all of this behind him that he's taught, trying to imbue and display. Middle Wars is what we were looking at. The hostile forces.
00:54:43
Speaker
Typhius, the giant, against whom even gods fought in vain, his daughters, the three Gorgons, who symbolized lust and lechery? In temperance and gnawing care, the longings and wishes of mankind fly over their heads.
00:55:08
Speaker
Right wall, the yearning for happiness is assuaged in poetry. The arts lead us to the ideal realm in which we can all find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love. An acquire of angels from paradise, joy, lovely spark of heaven's fire, this embrace for all the world.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah. So you could see the right and the left have, you know, much more, um, I'll say positive connotations.
00:55:43
Speaker
Well, the left, no, it's more of like a progression. Left wall, the yearning for happiness, the sufferings of weak mankind, their petition to the well-armed strong one to take up the struggle for happiness impelled by motives of compassion and ambition. And the middle wall is the hostile forces and the right wall is the yearning for happiness is assuaged in poetry. The art leads us to the ideal realm in which we can all find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love.
00:56:13
Speaker
Interesting. It is. Very, very bizarre. I mean, it's big. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what else? You mentioned the name Max Klinger. You know the show MASH, right? The TV show MASH. Oh yeah. The guy that used to dress up like a woman to get a discharge. I really only know it by name.
00:56:39
Speaker
His name was Matt. His character's name was max clinger. I wonder, you know how sometimes this guy looks familiar. Yeah. Writers, you know, pull stuff out of history and it's their own inside joke. Beethoven freeze. Look it up. Oh yeah. It's, it's definitely worth educating yourself on. So this is Otto Wagner's chair.
00:57:08
Speaker
Well, after looking at that Beethoven frieze is pretty underwhelming to be, to be frank, but it's aluminum and wood. Yeah. And it looks like maybe some type of upholstery. Yeah, definitely. I like that the back legs are turned 45 degrees. Like somebody's doing something they're not supposed to up there. Is that aluminum just like a strap? Yeah. Oh, that's kind of cool.
00:57:40
Speaker
It is cool. Reminiscent of, you know, kind of like the round chair, the Wagner round chair, not the same Wagner, but. Yeah. You see some Asian influence there, like, you know, the bamboo kind of thing. Yeah.
00:58:04
Speaker
In 1905, Joseph Hoffman produced an adjustable back chair, which reflected the more geometric forms of the late secession. Yeah. Talk about macabre. Looks something they strap you to in the insane asylum. It looks like, yeah, one of the, it looks like kind of like a
00:58:30
Speaker
an old fashioned wheelchair, you know, but made out of metal. Um, it does look very institutional in a medicine kind of way. Right. Not in a Spartan kind of way, but in a futuristic dystopian way. I like, Oh, I'm sick. I, this looks like a nice inviting chair to sit in. It looks like, no, like you're getting going in this chair against your will.
00:58:58
Speaker
It's painted black. It's, it's really, um, it's fun. It's fun in a, in a weird kind of way. This is a cabinet by, uh, Albrecht who, um, designed the secession building. Oh, I liked that.
00:59:27
Speaker
It's got a very Krenov look to me. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should say Krenov has a very Obric look about him. I like those those lower doors a lot. Yeah, these are shaped. I like these inlays. Mm hmm.
00:59:49
Speaker
It's tall, narrow piece, uh, with like, like the cutout on the sides instead of it being, you know, sort of rectangular. Does that go all the way up to here? Where's that shadow? I think, I don't know. Look, look on the inside. Does it, uh, no, it stops right here. Right. You know, they just,
01:00:14
Speaker
chose to make that shape. Like even the just that whole opening, you know, is there's there are no straight lines in that opening. You know, which really transforms the piece. Yeah. Here's an armchair by Albrecht. Same guy. That's unusual. Yeah.
01:00:51
Speaker
This is back to more of that rectilinear kind of, uh, almost has an ecclesiastical kind of. Oh yeah. That's a good way to put it. Uh, straight, straight arms, you know, like the flat armrests and the, but the back has that trapezoidal kind of shape to it, right? Faceted sort of double tapered spindles.
01:01:22
Speaker
Almost a Morris chair. Look to it. Hmm. Here's a bookcase by, uh, Kolomon Moser. That's our last example. Uh-oh. Wow. That's pretty cool. That, yeah, like leaning more towards the art deco. Mm-hmm.
01:01:57
Speaker
This looks like it's kind of a little bit beat up. Yeah. Look out these doors. Oh, they're taller than the other doors. Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. Let's open that. That's really weird. Yeah. Strange choice.
01:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. It looks like the, the veneers and those things are kind of tired, right? There's a lot of like, um, trumpet shaped, the veneer work, you know, light and dark woods squares. Yeah. Like a square rosette kind of look. Um, sitting on some like golden colors. I don't know if it's,
01:02:52
Speaker
Brass or right brass. Yeah. Legs. Very interesting. So there was 26 pages of Art Nouveau. Yeah. Wow. This episode ran longer than I thought.
01:03:11
Speaker
We're over an hour.
Reflections on Art Nouveau
01:03:15
Speaker
What's your takeaway from the Art Nouveau period? Definitely some interesting stuff. A lot of it is what I associate with Art Nouveau, like the Spanish and the Belgian stuff. Definitely to me is what I always associated with Art Nouveau, those curved, carved sort of forms. Yeah, not even so much the whiplash, but more like the
01:03:41
Speaker
you know, that bench with the little alcove at the top and the two hutches especially. But then like the more rectilinear stuff, the stuff that I would associate with Art Deco I didn't realize was from, you know, some of it was during this time period.
01:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoyed this almost not for a shock value. That's a little bit too strong of a phrase, but there was so much that was like unusual, I'll say.
01:04:23
Speaker
And so I guess the new art, uh, is a great title for it. And, um, you know, like the secessionist, their, their, um, their motto being, uh, you know, uh, every art, you know, time for every art and every art it's freedom. Uh, you could see it. They really were just trying to, um,
01:04:52
Speaker
I guess color outside the lines. Yeah. Way outside the lines. And what started out as something that they wanted everybody to have. You could see how nobody could have this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was true. It was fine art in the true sense of the word, you know, something that's inaccessible to 99.5% of the population.
01:05:20
Speaker
Yeah. And it was interesting to see how like the print medium and, and like what the architecture and the furniture all tried to, you know, sort of, um, be a part of the same artistic direction. Like in that, that, uh, that one of those last chairs, uh, that old brick chair that kind of looked like a, the Morris chair that kind of reminded me of a block print in a way. Yeah. I could see that.
01:05:51
Speaker
So it was interesting in that regard. It was definitely a bit of a diversion for us. But that's what it sort of dictated. That's what the period dictated.
01:06:06
Speaker
Um, I think when we get into, um, traditional restoration, I'm not sure, uh, what that's going to entail. It's probably going to be like, you know, just talking about how they brought back all these styles. It's a 30 year period, which, you know, is, I mean, that's kind of been every,
01:06:26
Speaker
It's almost where we are now, right? Like we almost never left. Every period was almost like a rehashing of the one before and they just tweaked some things here and there.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, take a look at some of these and let us know what you think. Yeah. Again, I say this all the time, but, um, if you, you know, you have the opportunity to just jot down some of these names of the artists or the artwork, it is something that'll take you five, 10, 15 minutes. And it's certainly worth exploring. Yeah, definitely. Um,
01:07:05
Speaker
And if you're interested at all in making furniture or art in any way, there's some inspiring photographs. Oh, yeah. Well, we'll leave you with that and we hope to have you tune in next week. We'll begin into traditional revival, the second to last. Yeah. Of the the periods. It's like 1920 to 1950. Wow.
01:07:34
Speaker
So yeah, if you want to help support the podcast, go get yourself some vesting finished, some bits and bits and leave us a review. Tell your friends you can join the Patreon if you are so inclined. Well, we thank you for listening. Be well out there, folks. We'll see you next week.
01:08:07
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain