Archive for the ‘aesthetica’ Category

Una delle più controverse vexata quaestion nella storia dell’Arte fin dè siècle, è costituita dal rapporto tra il cosiddetto estetismo, vera e proprio fondamento teorico ed estetico, e gli sviluppi dell’estetica della linea Art Nouveau. In più: se si considera la Secessione austriaca in particolare, costituisce un punto cardine della definizione dell’estetica secessione l’influenza delle produzioni di Kunstgewerbe della scuola di Glasgow, e di Rennie Mackintosh in particolare, e delle raffinate illustrazioni in bianco e nero di un Aubrey Beardsley o di un Selwyn Image su produzioni che spaziano dalla Kunstgewerbe Schule di Vienna fino all’estetica Wiener Werkstaette. Tuttavia, a mio avviso, rimane da indagare quanto, anche da un punto di vista teorico, un ulteriore contributo d’oltre Manica sarebbe stato destinato ad esercitare un definitivo e determinante influsso sui fondamenti teorici della Secessione Viennese. In particolare, rilevo come due dei maggiori teorici dell’Art Nouveau austriaca, Hermann Bahr e Ludwig Hevesi, conservino questo particolare legame teoretico con i fondamenti dell’Estetismo inglese.

Leggo e traduco Ludwig Hevesi, il quale, nella fondamentale raccolta di articoli e saggi brevi intitolata “Acht Jahre Secession” scrive:

La Vereinigung Bildender Kuenstler Oesterreich è principalmente una Kampfgesellschaft (una Società Guerriera) che conserva come proprio campo di battaglia l’Arte stessa. E tale battaglia non si connoterà di sterile polemica, ma, al contrario, sarà come suo proprio una finalità artistica. Quella di risvegliare gli occhi delle masse e far sì che essi si aprano e contemplino e comprendano gli sviluppi dell’arte giovane.

Le masse diseducate alla fruizione ed al riconoscimento del gusto, alla appercezione del bello. La Secessione non costituisce, dunque, un elemento di polemica o rottura con la tradizione del passato, con una estetica ritenuta vetusta e superata. La Secessione ha come proprio un fine meramente estetico, proponendosi come veicolo di una sensibilità sconosciuta, come una sorta di sileno pronto ad elettrizzare, talvolta scandalizzando, i dormienti ed assuefatti occhi dei più, per consentir infine loro non solamente di apprezzare la nuova arte, ma soprattutto di liberare la naturale umana tendenza al godimento del bello.

Ancora Hermann Bahr, in “Secession”:

Se si considerano le secessioni di Parigi e Monaco, risulta evidente come quelle siano in deiretta contrapposizione alla Vecchia Arte in nome dell’Arte Giovane e Nuova. In questo senso si potrebbe dire che essa promuove uno scontro fra modernità contro la tradizione, o più modestamente: giocare una lotta per una nuova tecnologia, o innovazioni ancor non accettate: un tentativo, la moda di oggi contro la legge eterna. Ma pur sempre una controversia nelle arti. Entrambi gli avversari volevano servire la medesima cosa, la bellezza mediante l’unico mezzo con cui la potevano comunicare. Artisti  contro altri artisti. E ‘stata una battaglia delle scuole, le dottrine, di temperamento. Tutto questo non ci appartiene. Noi non argomentare contro la tradizione, dato che non ne abbiamo nessuna. Non è tra l’arte antica e nuova, non intendiamo discutere su come cambiare l’arte.  Al contrario, la Secessione si interesserà dell’arte stessa. L a nostra associazione dirime ogni dubbio, "rinuncia alla battaglia contro il vecchio, ed essa stessa rinuncia a chiamarsi moderna. Ill punto vero sarà il seguente: "contro i meri produttori, noi vogliamo essere artisti! Questa è tutta la controversia: o Business o l’arte, è la questione della nostra secessione.

La secessione dunque si propone portatrice di un nuovo modo di concepire l’arte, ancor più ed ancor prima di un nuovo modo di fare arte. E per i secessionisti, lo scontro esiziale è tra l’artista al solo servizio della Bellezza, ed il commerciante, al soldo di mecenati più o meno interessati, schiavo delle imposture del gusto borghese. Non è l’arte ad essere vecchia, al limite lo è l’artista, caduto nell’oblio della bellezza, non più in grado di lasciarsi avviluppare dall’estatico abbraccio della bellezza, potere eccitante e taumaturgico. Eco del campione dell’estetismo, Pater Walter, il cui pensiero è posseduto e veicolato dalle parole dell’Epicureo Mario:

Tutto questo è servito, come ha capito in seguito, in una sola volta a rafforzare e purificare una vena certa di carattere in lui. Sviluppare l’ideale, pre-esistente , di una bellezza religiosa, che MArio accumunerà in futuro con lo splendore meraviglioso del tempio di Esculapio, come si rese conto su di lui quella mattina della sua prima visita – Si è sviluppata in questo un ideale legame con un vivace senso del valore della salute mentale e corporea. E questo riconoscimento della bellezza, una estetica che mediante il bello veicolato dai sensi dona  salute al corpo, una sorta di influsso moralmente salutare, liberando le tendenze meno desiderabili o pericolose di alcune fasi del pensiero.

In a famous essay entitled “Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition”, the art historian and philosopher of art Erwin Panofsky takes in exam the influences of the influencing Latin motto “Et in Arcadia Ego” in the history of art. In particular, the essay of Panofsky is centered on the figure of the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and his influencing painting “Les Bergers d’Arcadie".

The Latin sentence itself is a sort of recurring Motto in Latin literature:

The first appearance of a tomb with a memorial inscription (to Daphnis) amid the idyllic settings of Arcadia appears in Virgil’s Eclogues V 42 ff. Virgil took the idealized Sicilian rustics that had first appeared in the Idylls of Theocritusand set them in the primitive Greek district of Arcadia (see Eclogues VII and X). The idea was taken up anew in the circle of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the 1460s and 1470s, during the Florentine Renaissance

Taken by Wikipedia, voice “Et in Arcadia Ego”

In the history of visual art, we encounter the this theme in a painting by Guercino:

Quite surprisingly, Panofsy in his essay takes into consideration, as first insight, one of the latest interpretation of the theme, due to the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds:

Reynolds explained the presence of the Latin sentence as a sort of memento of the ineluctability of death. He also reported that even  King George III who had seen the painting said, "ay, ay, death is even in Arcadia."

The point here gives to Panofsky the opportunity to clarify the meaning and interpretation of “Arcadia”:

in the imagination of Virgil, and of Virgil alone, that the concept of Arcady, as we know it, was born— a bleak and chilly district of Greece came to be transfigured into an imaginary realm of perfect bliss. But no sooner had this new, Utopian Arcady come into being than a discrepancy was felt between the supernatural perfection of an imaginary environment and the natural limitations of human life as it is.

Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego & the Elegiac Tradition”

The literary and allegoric myth usually associated with Arcadia depicted the simple mannered delights of “Arcady”, a dreaming folk is seeking to retreat from the pressures and complexities of urban life, in a pastoral country. Likewise, her warriors were seen as wild and uncouth highlanders who would rush headlong into battle wearing only the skin of wolves, bears or sheep (Paus. 4.11.3, cf. 8.1.5). Polybios, himself an Arcadian, calls his fellow countrymen “primitive” (4.21.2), while Strabon, a non-Arcadian, describes them as “wholly mountaineers” (8.1.2). Although this simplicity of the Arcadian character was to be idealised by Roman poets, the Arcadians did not possess an equal reputation for intelligence. Juvenal calls a blockhead an “Arcadian youth” (7.160), and even as late as the third century AD we witness Philostratos describing the Arcadians as “the most boorish of men” who lived in “squalor” (VA 8.7.12).

Contrasting to this, somewhat distorted, literary description of Arcadia, the presence of a grave and, then , of Death. Again Panofsky:

The phrase Et in Arcadia ego can still be understood to be voiced by Death personified, and can still be translated as "even in Arcady I, Death hold sway," without being out of harmony with what is visible in the painting itself.

Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego & the Elegiac Tradition”

Death is everywhere, and mortality a condition which affected also the most naive shepards of Arcadia:

Thus Poussin himself, while making no verbal change in the inscription, invites, almost compels, the beholder to mis-translate it by relating the ego to a dead person instead of to the tomb, by connecting the et with ego instead of with Arcadia, and by supplying the missing verb in the form of avixi or fui instead of a sum. The development of his pictorial vision had outgrown the significance of the literary formula, and we may say that those who under the impact of the Louvre picture, decided to render the phrase Et in Arcadia ego as "I, too, lived in Arcady," rather than as "Even in Arcady, there am I," did violence to Latin grammar but justice to the new meaning of Poussin’s composition. Poussin’s Louvre picture no longer shows a dramatic encounter with Death but a contemplative absorption in the idea of mortality. We are confronted with a change from thinly veiled moralism to undisguised elegiac sentiment.

Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego & the Elegiac Tradition”

The illustration of Aubrey Beardsley for the third volume of “Savoy” contrasts totally with the Poussin’s view of Arcadia. Here, the vision and concept itself of Arcadia, as described by Panofsky, is completely superseded. The Beardsley’s Arcadia has nothing in common with the retired and pastoral environment of the literal common place. Here Arcadia looks just like an English garden, in which strange and exotic flowers are presents, in which a dandy gentleman can walk as in an aesthetic Wunderkammer. It could be the garden of a Des Esseintes or, ante litteram, the Garda Lake’s residence of Gabriele D’Annunzio. This is definitively not the field of a sort of quite Eden on Earth, rather the decadent aesthetic and exotic beauty of a Villa’s Garden.

The dandy gentleman depicted here, is not facing the grave with the astonished and dreaming attitude of the Poussin’s shepards; here the dandy, who believes in the Total Work of Art, looks like he faces the Death represented by the grave challenging her, without necessarily being frightened nor surprised by the grave’s presence in his Garden. And he is not driven by a fool braveness, rather than the aesthetic and decadent belief on Beauty, she who will win everything, including Death.

Other visual artists who worked on the same subject include:

Giovanni Francesco Barbierini detto il Guercino (1591-1666)
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
Laurent de la Hyre (1606-1656)
Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781)
Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788)
Richard Wilson (1714-1782)
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
Léon Vaudoyer (1803-1872)
Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)
George Wilhelm Kolbe (1877-1947)
Augustus John (1878-1961)

 

Sometimes I feel that the time really flows accordingly to the concept of time of the Greek mythology. Sometimes I really feel that that eventually it could be true, at least as far as history of art is concerned.

We are descending from the Classic Greek Art, in which the human beings, and specially their bodies, were constructed after the artistic ideal, and the artistic ideal after the daemonic (aka supernatural) essence. The Greek artist conceived her composition as a sort of representation of the daemonic perfection, depicting bodies who eventually were actual representation of that ideal. And the idealistic art should represent a model to which the real human beings tend to approximate, in order to tend toward the upper nature of the daemons. The concept itself of KaloKagathia, the marriage between the Beauty and the Good, was symptomatic of this attitude: the ideal beauty should be paradigmatic of an ethic social behavior, thus pushing the ethic attitude to copy the perfection (ideal) of the work of art. In other terms, social should have been a sort of imitation of the perfection of the art. Notwithstanding Plato.

The Platonic revolution, assigned to the art the infamous role of copy of the copy, copy of the Nature which was considered copy of the upper Metaphysic world of the Eidolon (Ideas). This was so impacting that basically the art production which followed was conceived as an imitation, at least, of the Nature. Being inspired, the naturalistic artist should take inspiration from the beauty of the nature, a mirror of the divine perfection. On the other hand, the plein-air painting of the Impressionists tended to impress on the canvas the momentum, the impression coming our, again, from a Nature conceived as a source of inspiration.

The fault came with the Symbolism, at the end, a sort of Nietzschiean Return to the Origin, to the Source, finally. How should be considered the Symbolist attitude toward Nature then ?

After having read Alfred Kubin’s sole roman, “Die Andere Seite” I was walking in a street, in a small village in northern Italy.

People continuously walking around a tower. At the upper of the tower, a clock which seems to attract all the people, and the people not being able to escape that fatidic attraction.

I was in that street, the same street as the one described and illuminated several times by Kubin. And I felt myself while I was reconstructing that street, and looking at that tower as per my influenced by Kubin eyes. I was able then to force the outside nature to my own vision. And my vision wasn’t a copy of the Kubin’s one; simply, I was using his same vocabulary, using which I was able to (re)describe the Nature. Once again, Daemon Triumphavit …

 

I was impressed, reading the essay on the Italian Liberty architecture by the authoritative art historian Rossana Bossaglia, by the her concerns regarding the development of an Art Nouveau (Liberty, as the movement is known in Italy) architecture. In particular she complained about the lack of a real innovative research of new forms in architecture during the Art Nouveau period in Italy as was the case, for example in Belgium or in Spain.  Accordingly to Rossana Bossaglia, the problem with the Italian Art Nouveau architecture is the lack of a very meaningful research on the forms in the building’s own structure, thus relegating all the evocative suggestions of the Art Nouveau’ Lines to the decorative elements on the façade. In other terms, in Italy, accordingly to Bossaglia, the development of the national Art Nouveau style lacked a personality such as Victor Hortha in"Belgium, Odon Lechner in Hungary, Otto Wagner in Austrian or Anton Gaudi in Spain, thus limiting to very few examples the very contribution of Italy to the development to the international modernist style.

Anyway, even stated the lack of an outstanding personality or a school master, in Italy we could experience a very development of the know-how, of some techniques which are nevertheless impacting over the progression of the Art Nouveau style and technique. A brief digression here regarding the relationship between the style and the technique. In classical point of view, the work of art represents an ideal wedding (chemical ?) between technical skills, inspiration and personal style. The technique element, the Greek tekné constitutes a world of potential and possibility with which the artist could fully express his or her own feelings or inspirations. The point here is that classically an artist could really produce a work of art only after having mastered the expressive technique of his own artistic field. I have well printed in my head the words Arnold Schönberg, who in his theoretical masterpiece, Armonienlehere, complained that his fellows and disciples must know very well and master all the classical composition techniques prior to try any subsequent engagements into the new dodecaphonic arrangements. Giving life and form to a work of art (informing, using aesthetic terminology, a work of art) means basically mastering a technique at the same level which permits to a poet to fully express the complexity of his poetry and inspirations just after, and only after, having a deep knowledge of the language (including the possibility of providing complex images as consequence of mastering a complex vocabulary).

As far as the development of the Stile Liberty, the national declination of Art Nouveau in Italy, is concerned, one of the most exiting an fundamental contribution of the Italian artists at the turn of the century is due to their outstanding improvement of the iron workmanship techniques. Walking through some streets in Milan gives exactly the idea of the outstanding level that the technique of iron decorations reached during the turn of the century in Italy.

Artists such as Alessandro Mazzucotelli, Carlo Rizzarda or Umberto Bellotto, maybe not so known as other champions of art nouveau such as Alphonse Mucha or Gaudi, were eventually able to push to the extreme the ornamental possibilities of iron. Iron structures developed in other countries, of course: In the fin de siècle Barcelona or Paris, iron structures were used in architecture, sometime not just as decorative elements rather than as fully structural ones.

Anyway the technical level reached by the Italian artists permitted to create ornaments which present decorative ornaments with a very fitomorphic feeling. Moreover, seems that the researches for an art which could be overcharged by the same explosive mystic strength of Creative Nature, an art which could be able to mimic not the  naturalistic elements rather than the very inner force of the Nature itself, these researches boosted by improving these new techniques.

The expressive potentiality of an art as a mirror of the symbolic aspect of the nature was significantly improved by a technique which could release the flexibility potentiality of the metallic materials. The researches of Mazzucotelli and the other Italian artist of the iron constituted not just a technical step forward in the direction of fitomorphic ornament: they constituted also an improvements of its symbolic dictionary.

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HERE

Bruxelles constitutes a sort of capital city of the new style. The Belgian capital was the city where, at the beginning of the last decade of the XIX Century, the new concept of architecture of the Line, developed by architect such as Victor Horta, Paul Hankar, Gustave Strauven, Armand Van Waesberghe, beyond others; the city where the symbolism in painting began to widespread trough the entire Europe after the works of the artistic society such as Les XX and La Libre Esthetique; the city where the Austrian Workshop Wiener Werkstaette designed and realized maybe the most complete example of Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Work of Art) ever realized.

The central common concept of these realization in Bruxelles has to deal with the concept of Symbol. Compared to other form of meaning, the symbolic is characterized by an inner energy movement and an external complexity. Considering the meaning in literal sense, it stays in a one-to-one relationship with one sign. Even in case of plastic art, dealing with allegoric representations, the relationship between an image and its meaning is based over an accepted iconic vocabulary (as in the baroque glyphs and gryphon style, for example) and thus quite easily recognizable by who share that vocabulary. Allegory is then possible to be translated into other term, into other vocabulary using the meaning’s bridge.

Stoclet Palace nowadays

The case of the symbol is definitively different. The symbolic representation is not based on any vocabulary. The artist’s own creativity and freedom is capable to create relationship between an iconic image and a particular meaning, choosing the iconographic device in a different manner, time by time. The same subject, the same icon could be depicted with different attitude and then charged with different meaning. The meaning – symbolic (iconographic) relationship in Symbolism is not fixed rather than fluid: Symbol is conceived by the artist within a particular moment, within a particular state of the mind, within a special mood.

Stoclet Palace, details

As a consequence, the interpretation of symbolic art is as complex as its creativity act. More, the interpretation of the symbol is a creative moment per se, when the spectator exploiting his own symbolic heritage he achieved during the time, with previous sensitive experiences, with previous artistic experiences, within his cultural, philosophical, religious, social milieu.  The hermeneutic of the symbolist art spectator should be as complex and rich as the creativity engine of the artist himself, as the act to approach and interpret the symbolic work of art follows the proceed of the artistic production, overcharging the work itself by a plethora of other complimentary meaning. The power of symbol is then complete: it continues to suggest new reading, new interpretation, revitalizing the work of art, providing a beyond-the-time living and inspiring concept of art.

Stoclet Palace, façade details

The key work is complexity. From Latin complicatio, ethimologically the word means “put together several different things”. The movement of complexity happens either when composing a specific work of art, as well as when interpreting symbolically that work. And a further level of realization of a complex art is the so called Gesamkunstwerk, the Total Work of Art. There the complexity is not just realized with the combination (again Latin, combinatio) of meanings rather than with the widespread adoption of a particular style trough the entire composite elements of the work. The stimuli of such a pervasive artistic production achieves the goal of unity in complexity, in which the application of the same style is bound with different declinations of it by the symbolic development of its application. In other terms, this sort of Heraclitean approach provides within the style the eon, the Unity and within the symbolic artistic freedom of its application the multiply meanings.

In Stoclet palace, the expressive power of the Line pervade every single element, from the architecture of Josef Hoffmann, the decoration of the façade with its geometric and clean lines, the inner decoration and furniture design due to the works of Hfmann but also Gustav Klimt, Bertold Loeffler, Carl Otto Czecha, Leopold Forstner, Michael Powolny, Franz Metzner, Koloman Moser.

Stoclet Palace, the roof under restoration

Every single detail, from the decorations to the furniture, from the garden to the kitchen tools, were conceived with a unity of style; every single detail represents a stylistic declination of the line, providing an overall synesthetic for the inhabitants of the villa. Everything in the palace is charged with aesthetic value, every single object represents a key to the Garden of Meanings, the structure, its interiors, its decoration constitute a Symbolic and Aesthetic Forest detached from the everyday, human, villain life.

One should be an aesthete to walk through this Forest and being excited by this trip rather than  scared by it; one should have the same cult of Beauty and of Art as a Des Essaintes or a Gabriele D’Annunzio to fully enjoy the unique experience of an aesthetic life within a Total Work of Art; one should have such a feminine attitude towards the Mysteries to use these tools, to look at these decorations as what they are, single small piece of art. Living surrounded by art without such an aesthetic passion could become a nightmare or an annoying task, such as taking care of old fragile objects.

Considering the actual status of the exterior of the Stoclet Palace, such an annoyed attitude could probably suitably describe what the actual property is feeling towards this Masterpiece. Accepting to live there is accepting to live surrounded by living Suggestions. Entering or, worst, living there is not a task for everyone: paraphrasing Plato, shouldn’t dare to enter there who is not an aesthete …

 

The Aesthetic of the swirling lines constitutes a common element either in the development of Art at the turn of the Century as well as of the so-called Psychedelic Art during the ‘60s and ‘70s. Sinuous lines, symbolic elements and character attitudes, enigmatic and ambiguous expressions, are all elements that the artists of the ‘60s heavily inherited from their fin-de-siécle counterparts.

This artistic relationship sometimes happens just at stylistic level, when the psychedelic artists feel themselves free to be inspired in their works by most of the lines, patterns, shapes of the Art Nouveau poetic:

Sometimes, on the contrary, Art Nouveau or Symbolist Art masterpieces are literally brought into psychedelic style poster, overcharging colors accordingly:

The point here is that this psychedelic revisiting of Art Nouveau doesn’t look inappropriate, stylistically incompatible nor aesthetically inacceptable.

In other terms, Art Nouveau style fits perfectly into a psychedelic aesthetic and till the point the turn-of-the-century art can be considered as the very mainstream of inspiration for the psychedelic artists of the ‘60 and ‘70. This is mainly because some of the feelings and attitudes of the artists during these two periods are commonly shared.

Opening the perception to the mysterious forces hidden within the Nature, and let them come into the stream of the artist’s own feelings; discovering the expressive of the Line, of the draw, of colors, being able to mimic the Nature inner forces trough a passionate Art.

For either the Psychedelic travelers at the end of the 60s as well as for the Symbolist at the turn of the century Art constitutes the preferred way to unveil Isis or, at least, to make love with her …

Nouveau doesn’t mean new.

New refers to some point in time: something is new when in relationship with some other event which could be either older than the previous or different, or better. The concept of “New” could be referred as a quality (in relation with another stuff wich is qualitatively superseded) or as a time relative concept.

On the contrary, Nouveau doesn’t relate to the concept of time, it hasn’t nothing to do with quality, nothing to spare with some other relative point in time. Nouveau is a perpetuum mobile, it is an Heraclitean concept. Nouveau relates to the eternal mutating, a continuous re-generation trough the ways of dynamism and Speed. Nouveau doesn’t refer to something which is older or superseded by its quality: Nouveau, finally, means that what is predicated being Nouveau is overcharged by an inner energy, a mysterious and obscure vitalism which is able to continuously change and regenerate the subject.

Something is Nouveau because it never looses its own impacting energy, because it lacks really essence or being, and consists of pure dynamic mutability. Nouveau is living, ‘cause what could be considered living is exactly the contrary of being, a non-being, thus Nouveau is like a continuously transforming inexplicable symbol. And like a symbol Nouveau’s own definition is constantly re-disposing, avoiding any tentative to clarify, continuously escaping every attempt to bound it into the gate of the fixed written word.

Art is Nouveau when it can’t be defined, continuously burning its own definition. Art Nouveau is a Truth which is burning flame: a Truth which is non-truth.

Art Nouveau is a complex passion described by a furious Line.

Art Nouveau artist is then a suffering daemon who is aimed to an art which is incorruptible. And it is not because it is ontologically placed in a sort of eternal suspension, rather because its own burning flame is infinite as the Fire in Ephesos.

And, moreover, Art Nouveau is still here …

The music relies on fascinating melodies which induce an exciting mechanism in the brain of the listeners: actually, the listener is brought within the work of Art and once there he can feel the ecstasy, at the same time so close and so far from the one that inspired the artist. The dancer is drawing lines in the air with sensuous movements of her feminine (what else ? All of us have a very feminine attitude) furor.

The dancers are performing at the turn of the century over a music composed also at the turn of the century, but of exactly the following one: the performance altogether is develops accordingly between music and dance, an accord without any agreement, an accord over a bridge one century long …

Art Nouveau is so dangerous because it doesn’t care about time: Art Nouveau is now, every time.

 

The word Japonisme is maybe one of the most used one when dealing with Art Nouveau illustration and graphic art. It is quite a common known statement the influence the graphic art produced in Japan in XVIII and XIX Centuries upon the turn of the century art, in particular, book illustration and graphic.

The reception of this Far East tradition was every time mitigated by the personal taste and style of the authors.

Gustav Klimt was quite receptive to non-European styles and artistic traditions. In his painting, the influences of Byzantine art is quite recognizable, while in graphic art he looks at Japanese one. in These vignettes designed for the Secession exhibition Catalogue (VII exhibition) and Ver Sacrum (Volume 1) his style is interpreting the Japanese using large black areas combined with a fluent line, developed on the vertical, as several Japanese wall paper productions. Klimt was able to characterize the facial expression with very few thin lines, once again like Japanese drawing technique:

Dealing with Austria, professor Koloman Moser was also involved with graphic design, mostly in relationship with the artists work craft named Wiener Werkstaette. Again the lines are well evidenced. Anyway, Kolo Moser used a mixture between curves and segment, between fluent (Art Nouveau) and segmented and straight (as many Wiener Werkstaette productions) lines, creating a tension between the dynamism of the first, and the static hieratic of the latter. facial expression recalls the Japanese art too, but in Moser’s work Japonism is mitigated by the stylistic researches on the melting between straight and curves:

 

Once again Austrian Empire, but Hungarian side. Japanese influences are quite evident in Attila Sassy production. He also used large curve areas filled either by black colors or geometric, repetitive patterns. Female bodies, as in his famous “Opium Dream”  are also constituted by white large area, which includes only essential lines to distinguish anatomic elements:

Lajos Kozma was an illustrator, architect and interior designer. He was really a prolific author (see http://www.szecesszio.com/?p=701). As an illustrator, he developed a personal style in which the overall composition followed the orthogonal lines, either vertical and horizontal; the lines of the drawing became very thin and spotted, contrasted with marked and filled ones, providing really the distinction between dream and reality, between the perceived and the quintessential lines of characters coming from other world, either dreams or super-human ones. White spaces which fragmented the lines are here stylistic elements too, bringing the spectator to other dimensions, accessible just trough the art:

Hungarian as well, Imre Simay was an illustrator and a sculptor too. As illustrator, he maturated his own black/white style after the shadow/light atmospheres of some Japanese and Chinese artistic production. Simay’s style is characterized by overcharged darkness, in which human characters act as in a mysterious world, hiding mostly of their bodies, providing to the spectator the sensati
on of mystic and sensual worlds:

Use of the lines, revisited by other two European artists. Jan Toorop, Dutch, stressed to its limits the abstraction function of the curve lines, removing at all all the traits from the face, and providing expressivity just using concentric lines. The reclining head of the vignette below, has enough symbolic power to let the spectator perceive the feelings of the female (again, female by lines) character (reclining head, meditative position of the shoulder, open arms from which come a fluids toward above worlds …). Not by hazard, the vignette came after an article of the prophet of line, Henri van de Velde.

Adolfo De Karolis (aka De Carolis) is one of the most influencing Italian fin-dè-siécle illustrator. He was the preferred by the Commander-Poet Gabriele d’Annunzio and eventually he was chosen by the Vate to illuminate most of his works. Mainly published for the Edition of Treves brother, the vignettes and illustrations of De Carolis show an indubitable neo-classic inspiration. In any case, his styleis far to be considered eclectic, since even the neo-classic lines and themes are revisited by the special turn of the century taste attitude toward melancholy (decadent) and symbolism (that, in case of De Carolis, presents echoes of pre-Raphaelitism):

Finally, in UK, the one who is considered the master of black/white illustration. An author who dedicated his short live and artistic activity to the monochrome illustration, Aubrey Beardsley. Symbolic and erotic elements, styled using large areas, sometimes huge, of black ink. The Black Cap seems just a large ink spot which gains the shape of a sinuous female figure; The famous “Climax” from the Oscar Wilde’s Salome presents a female figure never before so fatale, where the blood exiting from the Baptist’s head has the flexuous characteristics of the Art Nouveau line.

Lucian’s Strange creatures collect together several grotesque figures who inhabited the author own dreams (or nightmares, perhaps …):

Large black areas and flexuous lines are also characteristic of the maybe most influencing American illustrator, William Bradley. He worked as advertising illustrator for private Companies in the States, and for reviews such as The Inland Printer. The Author was often compared to Beardsley (the figures below were published by the British leading fin-dè-siècle art magazine “The Studio”). Anyway, considering the same subject (the masked woman in Bradley’s “Masked Ball” , and the “Lucian’s Strange Creatures) drawn by Beardsley) the American artist lacks the perverted erotic atmosphere which surrounded the Beardsley’s drawing.

The line for Bradley represented not only a decorative element, but an effective way to suggest the sense of dynamism in his drawings. Again, in “Masked Ball” ideally a curved line begins at the top of the second female character’s cap till the back shoulder, a sort of big “S” which is the ideal join with the complex background, decorated with floral elements (which recall the school of Morris) placed and developed with an S-like movement.

Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration was a leading art magazine in Germany at the turn of the century. An article, on Volume 21, presented the works by Julius Klinger as illustrator. Again, the Japanese influences are quite evident (see first illustration, for example, and the decoration of the vest). Long and sinuous lines remark the luscious character of Klinger’s Femme Fatales, even if, as in many German illustrations (see, for example, illustrations for magazines Pan or Simplicissimus) the female figures are often seen under a sort of ironic perspective. C’est a dire, Une belle dame sans merci, but, maybe, just for fun …