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A Short History of The New Art

William Morris, Alexander Koch and the Arts and Crafts Movement

In May 1897, the German architect Alexander Koch called for “the need of a complete integration of all artists, architects, sculptors, painters, and technical artists. They all belong intimately together in the same place, each thinking individually, yet working hand in hand for a larger whole.” This appeal was published in the first issue of the journal Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, which almost immediately became the voice of a new movement in the visual arts. The statement using approximately the same wording as the First Proclamation of the Bauhaus, which it

preceded, however, by twenty-two years, was largely the outgrowth of Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, whose aim Walter Crane defined as “turning our artists into craftsmen and our craftsmen into artists.” No single person had been more influential in the re-awakening of interest in the decorative arts during the nineteenth century than William Morris. Almost every Art Nouveau designer acknowledged a debt to him. Born to a wealthy British family, Morris was one of the first to recognize that the flood of goods produced because of the advances of the Industrial Revolution all too often lacked artistic merit. From furniture to books, Morris decried the lowly state of the design arts, and contended that the urban environment need not be filled with such downright ugly objects. Propelled by his beliefs, Morris dedicated his life to bettering the quality of British design. An important influence on Morris’s attitude towards the arts was the work of the English writer John Ruskin (1819–1900). Ruskin, an English author, poet and artist, most famous for his work as art

critic and social critic, and for his writing on the architecture of Venice, also swayed Morris with his assertion that the decorative arts —the name given to objects that may be beautiful but whose primary function is utilitarian, such as furniture or wallpaper— were the most important expression of creative individuals because they affected the mundane visual environment more than the fine arts of painting and sculpture. In this respect, the decorative arts were credited with not just the ability to “prettify” the urban world but also to lead to an actual transformation of modern society that benefited people’s lives in all respects. He asserted that industrial society had squelched the independent creativity of workmen. He contrasted this impoverished state with an idealized vision of medieval society, which Ruskin believed had represented a golden age of creative work because skilled design was at that time an integral part of the handcraft production of goods. Around 1890, Morris’s type of subdued, harmonious design was termed the “Arts and Crafts”

style, a term still used broadly to describe a variety of unadorned, often geometrically structured, decorative art objects and architecture from the late nineteenth century. The term also refers to Ruskin and Morris’s idealization of a medieval system of small-scale production whereby the designer of the work was also skilled in its production.

“I do not want art for a few any more than

education for a few or freedom for a few.”

-William Morris

William Morris, Alexander Koch and the Arts and Crafts Movement

In May 1897, the German architect Alexander Koch called for “the need of a complete integration of all artists, architects, sculptors, painters, and technical artists. They all belong intimately together in the same place, each thinking individually, yet working hand in hand for a larger whole.” This appeal was published in the first issue of the journal Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, which almost immediately became the voice of a new movement in the visual arts. The statement using approximately the same wording as the First Proclamation of the Bauhaus, which it

preceded, however, by twenty-two years, was largely the outgrowth of Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, whose aim Walter Crane defined as “turning our artists into craftsmen and our craftsmen into artists.” No single person had been more influential in the re-awakening of interest in the decorative arts during the nineteenth century than William Morris. Almost every Art Nouveau designer acknowledged a debt to him. Born to a wealthy British family, Morris was one of the first to recognize that the flood of goods produced because of the advances of the Industrial Revolution all too often lacked artistic merit. From furniture to books, Morris decried the lowly state of the design arts, and contended that the urban environment need not be filled with such downright ugly objects. Propelled by his beliefs, Morris dedicated his life to bettering the quality of British design. An important influence on Morris’s attitude towards the arts was the work of the English writer John Ruskin (1819–1900). Ruskin, an English author, poet and artist, most famous for his work as art

critic and social critic, and for his writing on the architecture of Venice, also swayed Morris with his assertion that the decorative arts —the name given to objects that may be beautiful but whose primary function is utilitarian, such as furniture or wallpaper— were the most important expression of creative individuals because they affected the mundane visual environment more than the fine arts of painting and sculpture. In this respect, the decorative arts were credited with not just the ability to “prettify” the urban world but also to lead to an actual transformation of modern society that benefited people’s lives in all respects. He asserted that industrial society had squelched the independent creativity of workmen. He contrasted this impoverished state with an idealized vision of medieval society, which Ruskin believed had represented a golden age of creative work because skilled design was at that time an integral part of the handcraft production of goods. Around 1890, Morris’s type of subdued, harmonious design was termed the “Arts and Crafts”

style, a term still used broadly to describe a variety of unadorned, often geometrically structured, decorative art objects and architecture from the late nineteenth century. The term also refers to Ruskin and Morris’s idealization of a medieval system of small-scale production whereby the designer of the work was also skilled in its production.

“I do not want art for a few any more than

education for a few or freedom for a few.”

-William Morris

Eastern Influence The manner in which Japanese artists rendered the figure —relying on black contour lines which they combined with short, fluid strokes to produce details in the face— was widely copied in France. Stylistically speaking, the bold passages of flat color arranged in asym-metrical compositions, which lack any three-dimensional perspective spaces, combined with fresh, crisp linear elements, were all adopted by European graphic designers. This Asian influence led many European artists to reject the three-dimensional shading with light and dark, called modeling, which had been a fundamental part of European drafts-manship since the Renaissance. Here was a completely new esthetic expression in which each Western artist could find inspiration for his own individual style.

Eastern Influence The manner in which Japanese artists rendered the figure —relying on black contour lines which they combined with short, fluid strokes to produce details in the face— was widely copied in France. Stylistically speaking, the bold passages of flat color arranged in asym-metrical compositions, which lack any three-dimensional perspective spaces, combined with fresh, crisp linear elements, were all adopted by European graphic designers. This Asian influence led many European artists to reject the three-dimensional shading with light and dark, called modeling, which had been a fundamental part of European drafts-manship since the Renaissance. Here was a completely new esthetic expression in which each Western artist could find inspiration for his own individual style.

New Type One of the most important developments in the history of graphic design was the mechanization of typesetting, which first occurred in the United States dur-ing the 1880s. Two industrial machines, the Linotype and the Monotype, allowed typesetters to work with a punch keyboard that directly controlled machinery for casting hot-metal type. The Linotype could produce an entire “line of type” set and justified, while the Monotype used two separate machines to produce hot type character by character. Handset typography was rendered obsolete by these inventions almost overnight, although it was still often used for specialized publications that required the most superior typesetting aesthetic. At the same time as these revolutionary inven-tions, American type producers underwent a series of price wars and consolidations. Eventually, in 1892, twenty-three type foundries joined in a corporate trust called the American Type Founders Association. ATF, as it was known, sought to set standardized price for type, as well as control the copyrights for new typefaces, which up to that point had been widely pirated. Among the most famous new faces controlled by ATF was Franklin Gothic, designed by the renowned American type designer Morris Fuller Benton.

Franklin Gothic was produced to meet the high demand for sans serif faces, and in a wide variety of sizes and weights to serve the consistently expanding advertising industry in the United States.

The typeface called Auriol was designed in 1901 by Georges Auriol for the Deberny & Peignot foundry. Auriol combines elements derived from Asian cal-ligraphic scripts, such as the gestural flourishes and the variable thickness of each line, with the languid elegance of the Art Nouveau.

The curvilinear Art Nouveau style was taken to an extreme in Otto Wisert’s typeface called Bocklin, designed in 1904 and named after an influential Jugendstil painter.

New Type One of the most important developments in the history of graphic design was the mechanization of typesetting, which first occurred in the United States dur-ing the 1880s. Two industrial machines, the Linotype and the Monotype, allowed typesetters to work with a punch keyboard that directly controlled machinery for casting hot-metal type. The Linotype could produce an entire “line of type” set and justified, while the Monotype used two separate machines to produce hot type character by character. Handset typography was rendered obsolete by these inventions almost overnight, although it was still often used for specialized publications that required the most superior typesetting aesthetic. At the same time as these revolutionary inven-tions, American type producers underwent a series of price wars and consolidations. Eventually, in 1892, twenty-three type foundries joined in a corporate trust called the American Type Founders Association. ATF, as it was known, sought to set standardized price for type, as well as control the copyrights for new typefaces, which up to that point had been widely pirated. Among the most famous new faces controlled by ATF was Franklin Gothic, designed by the renowned American type designer Morris Fuller Benton.

Franklin Gothic was produced to meet the high demand for sans serif faces, and in a wide variety of sizes and weights to serve the consistently expanding advertising industry in the United States.

The typeface called Auriol was designed in 1901 by Georges Auriol for the Deberny & Peignot foundry. Auriol combines elements derived from Asian cal-ligraphic scripts, such as the gestural flourishes and the variable thickness of each line, with the languid elegance of the Art Nouveau.

The curvilinear Art Nouveau style was taken to an extreme in Otto Wisert’s typeface called Bocklin, designed in 1904 and named after an influential Jugendstil painter.

Art Nouveau Postcards The fin-de-siècle artists already seemed to sense that combination of art and publicity that would later be categorically exploited by the futurists and by Depero when they used the advertising potential of postcards not only to earn money in the market-place, but also to promote their art. It was no accident that commercial artists and book and magazine illustrators were in the majority among postcard designers and that postcards were often used to publicise works of graphic art, from illustrated books to ‘ex-libris’ slips, or the production of workshops, groups or artists’ colonies working in dif-ferent countries in Europe.

Art Nouveau PostersSome Art Nouveau artists and critics hoped that the art of the poster would enliven the often grim streets of urban Paris. This movement, called art à la rue, took up the cause of everyday working people espoused by William Morris, and like Morris, believed that the design arts could have more of an impact on society than simple beautification. The architect Frantz Jourdain, who wrote frequently on the subject, asserted that accessible art works on the street, especially posters, could bring art to ordinary people and help uplift their aesthetic, as well as moral taste. Like many thinkers of this era, Jourdain thought that a rise in aesthetic knowledge would naturally lead to more important changes in society that would bring about a better life for working people.

Postcards and posters are the most telling evidence of the attention paid by fin-de-siècle art to the use of means of mass communication as vehicles for aesthetic ideas. This is surely one of the most important, though undervalued, legacies of the period to the later avant-garde movements. It is significant that after the Art Nouveau artists, the futurists, the expressionists, the Dadaists, and the surrealists all reassessed the medium of postcards and posters and used it as means of propaganda.

Art Nouveau Postcards The fin-de-siècle artists already seemed to sense that combination of art and publicity that would later be categorically exploited by the futurists and by Depero when they used the advertising potential of postcards not only to earn money in the market-place, but also to promote their art. It was no accident that commercial artists and book and magazine illustrators were in the majority among postcard designers and that postcards were often used to publicise works of graphic art, from illustrated books to ‘ex-libris’ slips, or the production of workshops, groups or artists’ colonies working in dif-ferent countries in Europe.

Art Nouveau PostersSome Art Nouveau artists and critics hoped that the art of the poster would enliven the often grim streets of urban Paris. This movement, called art à la rue, took up the cause of everyday working people espoused by William Morris, and like Morris, believed that the design arts could have more of an impact on society than simple beautification. The architect Frantz Jourdain, who wrote frequently on the subject, asserted that accessible art works on the street, especially posters, could bring art to ordinary people and help uplift their aesthetic, as well as moral taste. Like many thinkers of this era, Jourdain thought that a rise in aesthetic knowledge would naturally lead to more important changes in society that would bring about a better life for working people.

Postcards and posters are the most telling evidence of the attention paid by fin-de-siècle art to the use of means of mass communication as vehicles for aesthetic ideas. This is surely one of the most important, though undervalued, legacies of the period to the later avant-garde movements. It is significant that after the Art Nouveau artists, the futurists, the expressionists, the Dadaists, and the surrealists all reassessed the medium of postcards and posters and used it as means of propaganda.

The Art Nouveau design styles gradually diminished in popularity between 1905 and 1914... First, There was an inevitable change in fash-ion, as the once "New Art" began to look dated. Designers and members of the public who had once been captivated by its dense ornament found themselves wanting less, not more. Second, the expanding customer base for graphic designers included clients with different needs from those of the entertainment industry that dominated the Art Nouveau period. Early in the twentieth century, more and more companies that had previously eschewed graphic design were feeling the need to present a burnished image and attractive products to consumers. Third, the onset of war between the major European powers in 1914 focused designers' work on furthering nationalist causes.

Jugendstil was a mere instant, a fleeting pause. For all that, it was to prove a pivotal mo-ment, a dividing line, caesura, or even a twilight zone between neo-styles and Modernism, between phantasmagoric and rationalist architecture and between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was a transitional phase, a moment of harmonious fusion and bewildering contradiction. In one sense, it marked the breakthrough of the Modern Move-ment, but in another it was a paroxysm of hyper-refinement at the end of an era —not so much a cut-off point as a synthesis

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June... If it were only the other way!"

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Art Nouveau design styles gradually diminished in popularity between 1905 and 1914... First, There was an inevitable change in fash-ion, as the once "New Art" began to look dated. Designers and members of the public who had once been captivated by its dense ornament found themselves wanting less, not more. Second, the expanding customer base for graphic designers included clients with different needs from those of the entertainment industry that dominated the Art Nouveau period. Early in the twentieth century, more and more companies that had previously eschewed graphic design were feeling the need to present a burnished image and attractive products to consumers. Third, the onset of war between the major European powers in 1914 focused designers' work on furthering nationalist causes.

Jugendstil was a mere instant, a fleeting pause. For all that, it was to prove a pivotal mo-ment, a dividing line, caesura, or even a twilight zone between neo-styles and Modernism, between phantasmagoric and rationalist architecture and between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was a transitional phase, a moment of harmonious fusion and bewildering contradiction. In one sense, it marked the breakthrough of the Modern Move-ment, but in another it was a paroxysm of hyper-refinement at the end of an era —not so much a cut-off point as a synthesis

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June... If it were only the other way!"

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Sources

Art Nouveau: Art and Design at the Turn of the Century. Peter Selz and Mildred Constantine, eds. Museum of Mod-ern Art, New York, 1959.

Graphic Design: A New History. Stephen Eskilson. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007.

Horta: Art Nouveau to Modernism. Françoise Aubrey and Jos Vandenbreeden, eds. Ludon Press, Ghent, 1996.

Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siecle France: Politics, Psychol-ogy and Style. Debora Silverman. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989.

Art Nouveau Postcards. Giovanni Fanelli and Ezio Godoli. Rizzoli, New York, 1987.

Kathleen Lefevre 2008