The Epic of Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau appears at the end of the nineteenth century, as iron and crowded cities transform building while façades still borrow the faces of the past. Nature becomes the first teacher: Hector Guimard grows the Paris Métro entrances from the pavement, Antoni Gaudí lets stone dream in Barcelona, and Victor Horta turns the staircase of the Hôtel Tassel into a vine of exposed iron. Alphonse Mucha carries art into the street, the house becomes a total work of art, and the movement spreads as Jugendstil and as the Vienna Secession of Klimt and Olbrich. The book asks why so brief a dream never died and finds it still alive in lines that refuse the ruler.