T18Ucentury→workshop

ARTS&CRAFTS▶Movement

(1925) «L’Exposition des Arts décoratifs & Industriels modernes.» @MAD–Paris

⇝ Victoria & Albert Museum (Museum of Manufactures, South Kensington), Cromwell Road, Kensington and Chelsea, London, SW7. GB. ☺

«Los temores que se tenían respecto a un desenlace funesto en el estado de D. Antonio Gaudí (...) se han confirmado, por desgracia», informaba el periodico ABC hace 90 años – el 10 de junio de 1926.

The turn of the 20th century, perhaps more than any other period in the history of art, was a time of sexual freedom and decadent extravagance. Art Nouveau reflected this fascination with sexual and erotic identity, particularly female sexuality, in a world beginning to experience the social, economic and cultural liberation of women. Women became the dominant theme of Art Nouveau and the erotic potential of the female body was fully exploited to express many different concerns. Overt erotic imagery filtered into mainstream Art Nouveau art and design from a number of sources. It came from the writings of Symbolists (a group who rejected realism and used symbols to evoke ideas and emotions) and Decadents (who believed in excess, skepticism and delight in perversion); from shunga (erotic Japanese prints); from historical sources such as classical vase decoration or Rococo prints; and with increasing accessibility as the century wore on, from photographic and literary pornography. It was the invention of photography after 1850 that led to a dramatic explosion of pornography. Increasing democratisation and political liberalisation across Europe meant many countries witnessed a growth in the pornography industry. Paris, the capital of 'erotic toleration' and historically the centre of the sex industry, supplied much of Europe with photographic pornography, the majority of which were produced by men. Not only did artists come into contact with erotic photographs but many experimented with the medium, often producing explicitly sexual images of their models. Previously, any form of eroticism was limited to depicting classical nudes such as Venus, but now the Art Nouveau artist tore away this veil of respectability and extended the boundaries of erotic acceptability. Shunga depicted the world of the Yoshiwara and were produced by many Japanese artists including Kitegawa Utamaro (1753 – 1806) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849). Although it is not known how shunga was distributed in Europe, many Art Nouveau artists possessed them, including the Engliah illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsleyand the painter Gustav Klimt. Siegfried Bing, the most significant Japanese art dealer of the period, is known to have sold shunga. Bing was a seminal figure for Art Nouveau, having established the gallery Maison de l'Art Nouveau in Paris in 1895.