1896 saw the birth of the Vienna Secession, led by Gustav Klimpt and a number of other artists. They resigned from the Association of Austrian artists because of the orientation towards traditional historicism. The Vienna Secession was a precursor to Art Nouveau and also Art Deco, and in its own way provided a foundation for Modernism. The group built a building named after their movement in Vienna, and it featured what soon became their defining symbol; a leafwork dome of gold. Joseph Olbrich was the one to design and build the construction, but it was artists such as Klimpt who took the golden leaf motif and made it iconic for the Secession, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The movement did not have a specific style, however, and that was the point - it was truly modern in the sense that they wanted to create a new style that had nothing to do with historical influence. The phrase "to every age its art, to every art its freedom" is emblazoned on the doorway of the Secession building, and it sums up their views nicely.
Klimpt's work is linked to Freudian psycho-analysis in that Klimpt uses recurring visual symbols as an allegory to bridge the space between himself and the audience - he also draws upon myth and his work has a dream-like quality to it. Klimpt's representations of female sexuality in particular were seen as highly offensive, and he had a preoccupation with the female figure.
The Secession paved the way for Art Nouveau, a movement with a similar decorative style that was named after Siegfried Bing's gallery 'Maison de L'art Nouveau' in Paris. Art Nouveau had distinctly different subtypes depending on where it was geographically, but a good way to describe the overall feel of Art Nouveau is to draw on a description published in 'Pan' magazine of Hermann Obrist's piece 'Cyclamen', which has "sudden violent curves generated by the crack of a whip." Hence, the term "whiplash" is frequently applied to the characteristic curves employed by Art Nouveau. They were also influenced by movements other than the Vienna Secession, known to draw upon the 17th Century auricular style that you can see in Dutch silverware of the time.
Art Nouveau is also modernist in its erotic and sexual content, often pervasively pornographic, and its here that sex is used to advertise products for the first time. Chromolithography provided possibilities for mass communication that did not previously exist, and as a result advertising became an important staple in society. Among the artists to use sexually explicit material were Fritz Erier and Aubrey Beardsley. There was also a crystallization of attitudes towards homosexuality and androgyny at the time, with Oscar Wilde's trials of 1895 making him a martyr for some. Art Nouveau existed against a rapidly changing social backdrop, and late 18th to early 19th Century French novelist J.K. Huysmans described sexuality as fluid in 'A Rebours', and his supposedly decadent work perfectly sums up the atmosphere of change that pervaded the time.
Art Deco followed this movement and embodies many of Art Nouveau's qualities, including the distinctive "whiplash" and streamlined curves. The movement was named in 1926 following a retrospective exhibition called 'Les Annees 25', which was held at Le Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. This was a commemoration of an earlier Exposition in 1925 that featured a range of unconnected styles and sources, including Cubism and Bauhaus. It differed from other movements at the time because it did not have a social philosophy or manifesto - Art Deco was purely decorative, and in this way it personified the Hedonism and love of beautiful things that followed the rigorous restraints of the First World War. It responded directly to the new age of the machine and to the invention of substances such as plastic, bakelite and chrome, and it was also luxurious and a sumptuous style characterized by individually-produced luxury goods. The 1925 Exposition had a major effect on art in the United States, and the American contribution to Art Deco is known as 'Streamlining'.
Streamlining used clean lines and strong curves and was applied to the lines of cars, architecture and furniture, and also various mass-produced goods such as fridges and radios.
Historian Bevis Hillier defined Art Deco as "an assertively modern style (that) ran to symmetry rather than asymmetry, and to the rectilinear rather than the curvilinear; it responded to the demands of the machine and of new material (and) the requirements of mass production."
Modern aviation, electric lighting, the radio, oceanliners and skyscrapers were all sources of inspiration; however it was not only strictly modernist developments that drove the aesthetics of Art Deco. The visual style itself is based on mathematical and geometric shapes, some of these being influenced by so-called 'primitive' arts from Africa, the Middle East, Ancient Egypt, Aztec Mexico and also some Greek and Roman art. As travel became popular, African safaris became a trend and animal skins, ivory, mother of pearl and tortoiseshell began to appear in the home. After the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, Egyptian visual motifs adorned everything.
The movement was an opulent style in reaction to the forced austerity of the First World War, and it made use of new materials such as aluminium, lacquered and inlaid wood as well as trapezoidal, zigzagged and jumbled forms. It was influenced by other movements such as decorative Cubism and Futurism. Some of the finest surviving examples of Art Deco can be found in Cuba, particularly in Havana. Another example would be Brazil, in Goiania and cities like Cipo, Irai and Rio de Janerio, and also Copacabana. South Beach in Miami Beach, Florida, has the largest collection of Art Deco architecture remaining in North America. Finally, the Empire State Building is perhaps the most prominent example of Art Deco architecture, designed by William Lamb in just two weeks. He used earlier designs for the Reynolds Building in North Carolina and the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a basis. The building was designed from the top down and, even today, is a prolific building and a reminder of the changes to modernist art that Art Deco, Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession brought about.
