Modern Art, Day 19
6 March 2013
The Nabis, Art Nouveau
Paul Serusier, “The Talisman/Landscape: The Bois d’Amour [Forest of Love],” 1888
 follower of Gauguin
 showed painting to other artists in hope to create a movement of anti-naturalistic painting that dealt more with
emotions
 saw society as too materialistic, crass, and vulgar
 called themselves the Nabis (greek for prophet)
Maurice Denis, “Splashes of Sunlight on the Terrace,” 1890
 Nabis liked the idea that their art was decorative
Whistler, “Arrangement in Grey & Black, No. 1 (“Whistler’s Mother”),” 1871
Whistler, Peacock Room, “Harmony in Blue and Gold,” 1876-77
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Whistler, “Nocturne in Black & Gold,” c.1874
“I ask it [the price of the painting]
for the knowledge of a lifetime”
Said the picture’s meaning
depends on who looks at it
Whistler won, but got only 1
farthing in damages which meant
paying for the trial almost
bankrupted him
“To those who early in life rid
themselves of the friendship of
the many”
Not a Nabi painter
Denis, “April,” 1892
 Nabi
 very ethereal, lots of intellectual elitism in this group
 complete withdraw from participation in the Salon and society with their art; consider themselves the
stewards of purely beautiful art
 use thick plaster-like blocks of color
Vuillard, “Interior: The Artist’s Mother and Sister,” 1893
 Decoration is so important, the patterns in the painting overwhelm the figures and the sister almost
disappears into the wallpaper
Pierre Bonnard, “The Nursemaid’s Promenade (The Screen),” 1899
 part of Nabis
Bonnard, poster for La revue blanche, 1895
 very decorative
 means “the white review,” emphasizes purity of their style of painting
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Johannes Toorop, “Delfst Slaolie,” 1894
 ad for salad oil
 using sex to sell
TL, “Divan Japonais,” 1893
Toulouse-Lautrec (TL):
characterizing nature of scene with
distortions and unnatural shapes
emphasis on the strange and
peculiar; was more comfortable
with the rejects of society since he
himself was a “freak” due to his
disease that made him very short
TL celebrates the eccentricity of
people
Divan Japonais: poster for
nightclub, means Japanese box
images of femme fatale here
Art Nouveau, aka Jugendstil, Modern Style, Modernismo
 focused on fin de siècle, embraces the handmade and eschews the industrial, factory-produced
Victor Horta, stairs in Tassel House, Brussels, 1892-3