Art Nouveau

by Alastair Duncan

Overview

With its fluid organic forms and its devotion to beauty in design, art nouveau has enjoyed great popularity, both at its inception and during the modern resurgence of interest and enthusiasm. Alastair Duncan tells the story of its meteoric rise from its origins as a reaction by young artists and designers to the traditionalism and revivalism of the mid-19th-century fine and decorative arts. The new art first made itself felt around 1895, in architecture, furniture, glass, ceramics and the other applied arts, and fell into eclipse after World War I, until its rediscovery in the 1960s. The author recounts the history of this important and influential movement in detail, introducing the main personalities - Galle, Lalique, Tiffany and others - and relating their aims and accomplishments to the background from which the movement emerged.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500202739
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	06/17/1994
Series:	World of Art
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Alastair Duncan was for fourteen years associated with Christie's, New York, latterly as a Consultant. After joining the auction house in 1977, he organized and catalogued a great number of sales devoted to Art Nouveau and Art Deco and nineteenth-century decorative arts. He has acted as guest curator for exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and is now an independent consultant specializing in the decocrative arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the author of many books, including Art Deco Furniture, Art Nouveau Furniture, American Art Deco, and Masterworks of Louis Comfort Tiffany.