The first true Art Nouveau house was built by Victor Horta in Brussels, Belgium in 1894. Hôtel Tassel is a town house that is technically two separate stone & brick buildings, one on the street side & one on the garden side, connected by a steel and glass framework. The framework’s glass ceiling allowed light into the middle of the town house, a unique arrangement. Horta did all the interior design as well, so door handles, mosaics, stained glass windows and doors, and furnishings all carry Art Nouveau styling.
A year later, Siegfried Bing, a Franco-German art dealer and publisher, helped spread the style to Paris when he organized a exhibition of the up-and-coming new artists that was shown at the Société nationale des beaux-arts. The exhibition was moved and expanded in an art gallery, the Maison de l’Art Nouveau (the House of the New Art) in Paris constructed by another one of the architectural forerunners of Art Nouveau, Henry Van de Velde. Bing had previously been responsible for a magazine, Le Japon artistique, from ’88-‘91 focused around Japanese styles, building that influence as well.
The high point of Art Nouveau was the 1900 World Fair in Paris. The style mixed with the more traditionally French Beaux-Arts style, such as the Grand Palais built for the occasion with a Beaux-Arts façade and an interior Art Nouveau staircase and exhibit hall. Siefried Bing surfaced again when he sponsored a pavilion, Art Nouveau Bing, with six different interiors decorated in … Art Nouveau. In addition, the well-known green “Metropolitan” signs for Paris’ underground were designed specifically for this fair.
Art Nouveau had mostly died out in France by 1905. While the spread of the style was enhanced by new printing technology which allowed Art Nouveau style posters a wide circulation; most artforms, especially architecture, required skilled craftsmanship to achieve a true Art Nouveau look — and in that way, it fell short of the Arts-and-Crafts movement. But it was gorgeous while it lasted, and in that it truly took after nature.
