The article presents the results of a study carried out within the framework of the research project “Architectural Image of the Motherland: Budapest, St. Petersburg, Harbin. European and national ...(local) aspects in Russian and Hungarian architecture - a comparative study of the turn of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries.” Based on a review of research literature and field surveys conducted by the author in the summer of 2023, a systematic picture of the Art Nouveau architecture in Harbin was compiled. The main stages in the evolution of the style as identified in the study are reflected in the cityscape of distinctly bounded districts.
Art Nouveau was a style for a new age, but it was also one that continued to look back to the past. This new study shows how in expressing many of their most essential concerns – sexuality, death and ...the nature of art – its artists drew heavily upon classical literature and the iconography of classical art. It challenges the conventional view that Art Nouveau’s adherents turned their backs on Classicism in their quest for new forms. Across Europe and North America, artists continued to turn back to the ancient world, and in particular to Greece, for the vitality with which they sought to infuse their creations. The works of many well-known artists are considered through this prism, including those of Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley and Louis Comfort Tiffany. But, breaking new ground in its comparative approach, this study also considers some of the movement’s less well-known painters, sculptors, jewellers and architects, including in central and eastern Europe, and their use of classical iconography to express new ideas of nationhood. Across the world, while Art Nouveau was a plural style drawing on multiple influences, the Classics remained a key artistic vocabulary for its artists, whether blended with Orientalist and other iconographies, or preserving the purity of classical form.
Architect Aleksander Saša Laslo (Celje, 1950 – Zagreb, 2014) was one of the leading historians of Croatian twentieth-century architecture, with a research scope centered on the city of Zagreb. Its ...aim was to investigate the processes of modernisation, tracing the evolution from high historicism and eclecticism through Art Nouveau to proto-functionalism and New Building (Ger. Neues Bauen, Cro. novo građenje) – viewed through building spatial-organisation, construction, and then inevitably form. Laslo’s interest, of course, extended beyond the mere physical structure of the building to wider social, economic, and cultural context, and dynamic knowledge exchange with Central Europe during that time, within which Laslo positioned the architecture of Zagreb. Methodologically, since the very beginning in the early 1980s, Laslo relied on exhaustive research, cataloguing, and contemporary research of Central European architecture. To mark the tenth anniversary of the death of this prominent researcher of Zagreb’s architectural heritage, this paper provides the first review of Laslo’s work, highlighting its comprehensiveness, integrity, and scientific method.
Esta investigación aporta nuevos datos para la interpretación de la historia construida de los Pabellones de la Finca Güell, desde su construcción en 1884-1887 hasta nuestros días. El artículo ...clasifica y ordena la documentación existente en torno a este conjunto diseñado y construido por Gaudí en forma de fotografías, filmaciones, cartografías, levantamientos, proyectos, a menudo dispersa en diversas fuentes, y las contrasta con las observaciones de las catas realizadas durante la elaboración de los proyectos de restauración por los arquitectos autores del texto. La información reunida y cruzada de las diversas fuentes y confrontada con la realidad ha permitido la elaboración de una cronología precisa de las acciones llevadas a cabo en torno a estos edificios, detectando y corrigiendo incluso algunas fechas atribuidas incorrectamente a ciertas fotografías, lo que permite afrontar las obras de recuperación del conjunto con mayor conocimiento de causa.
Style called Art Nouveau appeared in the last quarter of the XIX century in Austria-Hungary and quickly spread throughout Europe. This style has reached the heyday in Russia in the end of the ...1890s-1900s. The object of classic Art Nouveau style characterized by the asymmetrical facades, the almost full abandonment of historical decorative elements, the extensive use of the plant ornaments, and other characteristic feature was considered in this paper on the example of the F.P. Efremov`s mansion in Cheboksary, Russia. The project of building reconstruction was also proposed.
By the end of the 20th century, a new specific form of tourism was presented to the world by the name of architourism. Architecture, in a general sense, is science and the art of projecting and ...shaping buildings or, i.e., interior and exterior architectural space. Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia, located on Pannonian Plain, is famous for its incredibly rich historic and cultural heritage. There are various styles of architecture dominating the city itself, among which is the ever-present Art Nouveau in the Hungarian style. Novi Sad has fewer monuments and buildings erected in this style, as opposed to Subotica, but they are very high-quality and distinctive. Some influential architects had worked in that period in Novi Sad, and on top of that list was Lipot Baumhorn, responsible for the Synagogue, Menratova palace, the palace of "Vojvođanska banka", followed by Karolj Kovač, Đerđ Kopecki, Imre Frensek, Geza Markuš, Frđeš Špigel, Bela Peko, and others. This paper aims to emphasize the cultural-historic influence of buildings in the Art Nouveau style as a significant form of tourism.
A landmark account of architectural theory and practice from acclaimed philosopher Roger Scruton Architecture is distinguished from other art forms by its sense of function, its localized quality, ...its technique, its public and nonpersonal character, and its continuity with the decorative arts. In this important book, Roger Scruton calls for a return to first principles in contemporary architectural theory, contending that the aesthetic of architecture is, in its very essence, an aesthetic of everyday life. Aesthetic understanding is inseparable from a sense of detail and style, from which the appropriate, the expressive, the beautiful, and the proportionate take their meaning. Scruton provides incisive critiques of the romantic, functionalist, and rationalist theories of design, and of the Freudian, Marxist, and semiological approaches to aesthetic value.In a new introduction, Scruton discusses how his ideas have developed since the book's original publication, and he assesses the continuing relevance of his argument for the twenty-first century.
The Laurens Château at Agde in the Hérault department is an outstanding example of the decorative eclecticism that was in fashion around 1900, and its bathroom, designed by the Parisian artist ...Eugène-Martial Simas, can be seen as an ideal example of the paradoxes of Art Nouveau. It is a unique decorative ensemble, conceived in a rational manner based on the union of art and industry. Simas, who was primarily a theatrical designer, was attracted by the industrial arts. For this hygienic bathroom designed to honour the blessings of water, he made ample use of the products manufactured by the Sarreguemines glazed earthenware factory and by the Paris metalworking firm of Fontaine. But the presence of tiling and metalwork created by the leading lights of the ‘Art dans Tout’ movement (Félix Aubert, Alexandre Charpentier) seemed to cast the owner of the chateau, Emmanuel Laurens, in the role of some forgotten aesthete from the Midi. This is to ignore the important part played by local decorators and designers, perfectly aware of the latest fashions likely to appeal to the bourgeoisie keen on expressions of a certain modernity. And in its theatricality, this ceramic interior in fact expresses a subtle kind of symbolism in keeping with the spiritual theories of Laurens, the somewhat obscure ideas of a man who was an Occitan speaker and a great admirer of mythical Cathar asceticism, in which water had important purifying virtues. The 1898 bathroom can be seen then as the first act in the foundation of a place dedicated to Nietzschean excess, emerging from fin-de-siècle Christian esoterism.