How familiar are you with Art Nouveau? A movement as short-lived as it was influential, Art Nouveau left its mark on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The singular creations it inspired were the fruit of a passionate dialogue between the worlds of art, science, and nature. This talk takes a closer look at the unprecedented exhibition organized by L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris featuring the movement’s radical aesthetic evolution.
The turn of the century was a time of extraordinary creative impetus fueled by the spread of scientific knowledge. Breakthroughs in botany nourished a fascination for living things that artists confronted with the ancient theme of metamorphoses in works such as the winged female figures of René Lalique (1860-1945) and the marine life depictions of Maurice Pillard Verneuil (1869-1942).
Fantastical creatures and realms often tinged with symbolism abounded, inspired by fanciful bestiaries and real or imagined elements of nature. Hybrid, occasionally even monstruous creatures called for a new range of materials including baroque pearls, horn, and enamel.
These novel interpretations of nature also brought poetry to the world, as this talk will reveal in a selection of remarkable works from the hundred pieces on loan from highly prestigious institutions, among them the Musée Lalique in Wingen-sur-Moder, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, Germany, as well as from the exceptional private collection of Albion Art.
Speakers:
With Inezita Gay-Eckel, Jewelry Historian and Lecturer at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts & Paul Paradis, Art Historian and Lecturer at L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts
