thedreadvampy:stillness138:petrichoriousparalian:tella1985:artist-refs:thepeoplesrepublicofheaven:TH
thedreadvampy:stillness138:petrichoriousparalian:tella1985:artist-refs:thepeoplesrepublicofheaven:THANK YOUI’m still confused ._.Art Nouveau is flowing like nature. Art deco is rigid and looks more man made.deco = geometricnouveau = organic^^^because of that, usually deco makes use of symmetry, while art nouveau, being indeed more natural and flowy/organic, doesn’t use symmetry that much. The two doors/gates are a good example of this!Where it does get confusing is styles like Scots Nouveau (Charles Rennie Mackintosh et al) which, while they do have a strong naturalistic vibe and a lot of nature imagery, are a lot more angular and concerned with geometry, symmetry and abstraction. CRM is one of The Big Nouveau names and a foundational influence and his stuff looks like thiswhich like. It’s still clearly Nouveau - it’s using long, delicate lines that aren’t poker-straight, flowing forms, natural imagery, etc - but you could be forgiven for mistaking it for deco, with its very stylised geometric forms and symmetrical composition.Here’s his contemporaries and friends, the MacDonald sistersAgain we’re seeing geometrically abstracted natural forms, a combination of symmetry and asymmetry, and a cleanness, minimalism and very considered set of lines.Art Nouveau is a very broad church with a lot of different variants and I think the modern idea of Nouveau is very French and American - above we’ve got Mucha (French), Eiffel (French), I don’t know who the door is but the lamp is Tiffany (American) - which is very detail-orientated and full of delicate, fluid, organic lines, but there are other styles, and even French Art Nouveau also includes illustrators like Toulouse-Lautrec using much more minimal stylesas well as painters like Klimt and Mucha using much more decorative patterning and mixing abstracted and realistic stylesThe key is what they’re trying to achieve - Nouveau is going for fluidity and a handmade/organic aesthetic - it may use geometry and symmetry, it might be highly decorative or very simple, but the lines and shapes are meant to flow together and feel natural and living. Deco on the other hand is meant to be sort of staccato - it’s supposed to have energy and feel not just manmade but buzzing with newness and progress, so the lines take sharp turns, break into each other, and generally feel a lot more uhhhh I’m trying to think of a more positive term than jarring, because jarring isn’t quite right - it’s energetic, is the point. So you see a lot more sharp angles, closed shapes, interactions between curves and sharp angles, and overlapping forms, and a lot less fluid lines, long smooth parallels, naturalistic curves and so on. It’s also a lot less likely to be directly representational - even abstracted nouveau at is usually directly referencing floral or human shapes, whereas Deco is often just about pure geometry, and where people are represented they tend to be broken into shapes (like the example painting above, which is very much about picking out the shapes making up the woman’s body and dress)There’s a lot there to unpick as well about time and place - Art Nouveau peaked in pre-war Europe and was a part of the bohemian modern art movement of the time centred in places like Berlin and Paris and building off the Arts and Crafts movement and the apprehension of increasing mechanisation, whereas Art Deco developed in France around WW1 and peaked in France and America in the interwar period when people were on a big kick for moving forwards, onwards and upwards. So the motives and the times sort of show through, not least in that imo a lot of Deco draws heavily on the more architectural and designery end of Nouveau (especially CRM) -- source link