Tags
Amsterdam, Architecture, Art Nouveau, Design, модерн, Jugendstil, Leiden, Moscow, Oleg Karlson, Secession, Wrought Iron, Zhukovka
The other day, after I accidentally surfed into a 2012 Art Nouveau building in Amsterdam, I figured it would be interesting to have a discussion about whether today’s architects are able to accurately design Art Nouveau objects.
The facade of Haarlemmerdijk 140 looks, if you move your head real fast, like a genuine Art Nouveau building. But keeping your head still reveals that it is not authentic. The tile panels, for one thing, are actually painted on wood. But also the flowers on those painted ’tiles’ are not delicate enough to be the real thing. And the wood is, I don’t know, not the right color? And there’s something just not right with the proportions of all that wood.
Vischmarkt 25, Harderwijk
Same story when we look at the 2007 Art Nouveau facade I discovered earlier in Harderwijk. It is too heavy to be the real thing.
So I decided to do a little investigating…
I searched and searched… and found there are only a few examples of modern Art Nouveau in The Netherlands.
These two are Leiden townhouses designed by 24h Architecture. They don’t actually call them Art Nouveau houses themselves, but other people do (here, here & here)! And I see how this has flowing lines and looks organic.
But to me, this is NOT Art Nouveau.
Not even close!
Then I went searching outside The Netherlands, all the way down to Moscow. Above two pictures show an interior design by Daria Grigorieva. Do you see what I mean when I say the proportions are not right?
Latvian Yuri Moshan’s website shows designs that are getting closer, but unfortunatley, he’s not consistent. He’s the first designer who’s got the whiplash right though…
All examples were basically the same and I was just about to conclude that today’s architects and designers don’t have ‘it’ anymore…
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And then there was Oleg Karlson.
Karlson (born 2 April 1956) and his design team worked on this Moscow estate from 2003 till 2009. They accepted the commission as a kind of professional challenge and began the project by studying books about Art Nouveau. They toured Europe, studying Art Nouveau architecture, at the same time taking a great interest in collecting and restoring furniture of this time.
As the estate was to be built in Zhukovka (a wealthy Moscow suburb), right between two houses of prize-winning architect Ilya Utkin, the bar was set extremely high. Karlson and his architects needed to get inside the heads of well-known Art Nouveau masterminds and crack the design principles of Art Nouveau in order to pull this one of! And boy, did they get it right!!!
Conclusion: There are architects who still have what it takes. Oleg Karlson is living proof.
But why then, do we not see more high quality modern Art Nouveau? Is Karlson the only brilliantly talented architect in the world? Or is it, besides extreme talent, also a matter of budget?
Source
24h Architecture
About Oleg Karlson
Èpital – Epoxy Materials
Moscow Art Nouveau Apartment
Orin – Polyresin Ornaments
Russian Architects: Oleg Karlson
The Autumn Salon – Natural Elegance
Website Oleg Karlson
Yuri Moshan’s Art Studio
About Art Nouveau 
Ken je dit voorbeeld?
http://www.velgol.ru/portfolio/villa-liberty/
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Had not seen this one yet! Thank you very much for this link. The Moscow architects are Dmitry Valentinovic Velickin, born 4 mei 1959 & Nikolai Golovanov born 15 augustus 1959. Is it a coincident that these architects also studied in Moscow? This is their website http://www.velgol.ru/
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Wat een prachtige impressie is dit: Latvian Yuri Moshan op de link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mQQRDtstVx8
Het was 100% genieten van Art Nouveau zoals het is bedoeld. Subliem!…
Jan Willem Boezeman
(Dordrecht Monumenteel)
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De Oost-Europeanen lijken dat nog íets beter in de vingers te hebben:
http://www.zubkovy.com/vseObjekti.html
http://www.liveinternet.ru/journalshowcomments.php?jpostid=77962848&journalid=2129370&go=prev&categ=0
http://www.liveinternet.ru/journalshowcomments.php?jpostid=91464669&journalid=2129370&go=prev&categ=0
Jalf Flach http://www.rondom1900.nl – Kenniscentrum – rondom1900
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Thanks for the links Jalf. It appears that the best modern Art Nouveau architects are based in Russia. Any idea why?
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Well it is indeed very interesting discussion!
First I want to answer on a question in comments. I live in Russia and maybe this interest is more obvious for me)
I think the interest to Art Nouveau (Modern as we call it here) is that high is because it’s the style of the time of fame and glory of Russian Empire. And now people here feel kind of nostalgia of the last years before World War I and Revolution nightmare. Also Art Nouveau is a style of private estate. Big russian businessmen and patrons of art first had housed built in this style. As you probably know there was no business in USSR so now the new businessmen have no history and no traditions so they’re looking back to the beginning of XX century to the golden age of russian business. And last but not least now in Russia there are people who have enough money for such a costly projects.
Now the main question. First of all thank you and all how left comments links for collecting so many examples! I attend lectures about architecture of XIX – beginning of XX century and tomorrow’s lecture will be about Art Nouveau and have almost the same question for the professor)
Why do we not see more high quality modern Art Nouveau? Well probably because real talent is not interesting in creating replica. The Art Nouveau style lived his life and ended up mostly before WWI. So all we can see is copying what is not really interesting in architectural and art way OR as we all see the rising up of the interest to Belle Époque maybe it’s a beginning of a new style which is much more interesting and important. First I heard about it from russian historian of architecture Vladimir Makhnatch. He talked about Neo Art Nouveau. So we can’t compare the examples of the new style with Art Nouveau of XX century because it’s not a copying but rethinking. And maybe there are not so many interesting projects because the process is in the very beginning)
That’s all for now. Hope it wasn’t too boring))))
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Dear Aliona,
Thank you for your interesting comments. When traveling in Croatia, I had a similar idea about the reason why Eastern European architects are still/more skilled in Art Nouveau design. ( http://wp.me/p2Er4r-eg ) Basically my idea was: Art Nouveau ended and soon after that Steel & Concrete Socialist architecture became the standard for many decades. When East European architects were free to design as they liked again, they returned to Art Nouveau (and to Neoclassicism). So they never really moved that far away from Art Nouveau like West-European Architects did. Another fact we should not forget is that in Western Europe Art Nouveau peaked in 1900 and ended with the beginning of WWI in 1914. But in Eastern Europe, Art Nouveau peaked much later and lasted much longer. Do you agree? Or does anyone have another opinion?
I am very much interested in the opinion of your professor and the outcome of your lecture tomorrow. And I hope you are correct when you are saying that we don’t see more Art Nouvea because we are at the beginning of a new design period.
Thanks for reading!
Olga
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Hi, Olga!
Do you speak russian? If it is so I can send you todays lecture)
I’m agree with you. Especially about Neoclassicism. We have SO much of it now and not even a good quality.
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Professor told me what I should have known myself. It’s postmodernism like everything else we have now in architecture. And no metter how close it is to the style anyway architect is just playing with this style and not creating something new. Either it is not a continuation of interrupted because now we have different state of mind, we have different ideas. And architecture is born from the idea. And I’m totaly agree with the last two sentences ‘cos I was thinking about it the whole day yesterday. So we cannot step into the same river twice but we can play with the memory 🙂
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These are really acceptable explanations for the above mentioned questions. This is a worthfull contribution to this discussion. Thank you so much for that!
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I’m very glad you liked it!
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Via e-mail, I have received a letter from someone who has a completely different opinion, but I want to share it with you anyway:
If I can find the time, I intend to try and write up and send to you a fairly abstruse sermon arguing that Art Nouveau, if only by its very name, could only exist in its fullest sense when It was indeed ‘new’. Note that it barely lasted a decade. The so-called Art Nouveau that you commend in your latest post, by Oleg Karlson, to me is ‘retro’, and by that token fake and to be shunned like the proverbial. In fact, I like the two Leiden town houses much better: precisely because they are *not* Art Nouveau (but, if you like, Art Plus Nouveau).
However …
You know how it is. *If* I can find the time …
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I love art nouveau architecture myself, but why should you try to relive the past? I prefer the old stuff and also admire modern architecture!
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I would like to turn the question around: Instead of asking “why relive the past?” I would like to ask “Why not relive the past?” Why not enjoy something that is good? Why not build houses in a style you love? Isn’t everything coming back at some stage? My 13 year old daughter wears clothes today that were fashion when I was young, 30 years ago. And I hear Italo-Disco is coming back on the radio. And I also see new housing projects in 1920s style Nieuwe Haagse School ( http://www.kroondekoning.nl/nl/projecten/detail/dordrecht-123-luxe-half-vrijstaande-won-de-hoven ). We’ve had Neo-Gothic, Neo-Baroque & Neo-Renaissance, and I would welcome a Neo-Jugendstil period! (As long as it’s done correctly!)
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I agree totally with you!
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A neo-art nouveau would be against everything the art nouveau artists believed in. They wanted to end the neo-styles! But of course modern designers and architects are free to use elements of earlier styles. As a matter of fact they have already done so. Take one look at a Verner Panton chair! It’s pure art nouveau in a modern way!
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I agree! I really don’t like throwing out the baby with the bath water just because it’s in the past! Beauty is beauty and some of all is a wonderful thing to me! We are all drawn to different styles and that goes for everything where Art and creativity is concerned, whether architecture or fashion! It’s been with us all along as it should be… it stirs the imagination! Thankful for the genius past and present!
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It all seems to be about proportion. Could it be that the architects who developed the Art Nouveau aesthetic were heirs to a classical based training in which the proportions of Vitruvius still underpinned the overall proportions of their structures? Has anyone, for example, examined a series of elements such as doors, or facades, to see if they fall within the Golden Section?
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Very interesting discussion. I know too little to participate.
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I discovered an official architecture critic (didn’t know that is actually a profession) who has an opinion similar to mine: David Brussat. I have asked him what he thought of our little discussion… Here is a link to the article through which I found him, with my question and his reply below it… http://architecturehereandthere.com/2014/02/27/column-modern-architectures-coup-detat/ Let me know what you think!
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New Dutch building project inspired by Art Nouveau / Jugendstil:
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Stunning!!
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Ik vond nog een mogelijk-toekomstig – pareltje: https://wom-soc.nl/portfolio-posts/lange-beestenmarkt-zuidwal/
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And here is an example from Serbia! Cafe Papillon, designed in 1989 by Károly Gyömbér for Carlo Letich. http://www.artnouveau.eu/upload/magazine_pdf/19_puntdevista.pdf
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Here’s an example from Oklahoma:
http://www.priceypads.com/art-nouveau-masterpiece-5995000/
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Excuse me, but what a dreadful incoherent gathering of style quotations!
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Did you mean in the house in Oklahoma Jalf? I think it is terrible too! But I wanted to share the link here anyways, as it shows that (most of) today’s architects just don’t have it anymore…. (unfortunately) But I’ll keep searching!!!
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In my opinion it is also about the craftsmen available, and time it will take to make a whiplash asymmetrical piece. Architects and designers are also limited by the skill available to them, project time and of course budget. In Russia there are still schools run by the church which teach very skilled carving, for churches. I think these skills then come into the general market. As for the debate on Art Nouveau created now, I agree it will never be the same… we are in Post -Post -Modernist, in a place where architecture is redefining itself.
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This is a new art nouveau design project I have designed. Let others decide if it ‘has what it takes’
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Dear Peter.
Thank you very much for sharing your project with us here! I can see you were inspired by Gaudi for the balconies (Casa Batlló); I think I also recognise the lampposts outside from a MacIntosh design for a church that was never built (Liverpool Cathedral competition of 1901). And I recognise (at 3.57min) the stairs from the Ryabushinsky Mansion in Moscow in your wall panels. Also, (at 4.19 min) I recognise the painting ‘La Dance’ by Xavier Mellery and so on… Am I right?
Clearly, you have studied the period very well and incorporated your knowledge in your design, thus creating a monumental Opera that honours the old masters. Will your project materialise soon? When can we expect the first photo’s?
Please do keep us informed of this extraordinary prestigious project!
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Thank you for your appreciative comments. As you rightly see I do borrow quite liberally. It is all about using what you find elsewhere in the right way and combining not replicating. Classical architects do this so why not art nouveau architects? In fact, the sources you mention, except for the Ryabushinsky Mansion, I was not conscious of – although I look at this work a lot and so they may have influenced me unconsciously. There are other sources you did not mention that I consciously drew on. That is my little secret and so I will leave people guessing. Some of it is entirely original as far as I am aware – especially the main staircase. Although I consciously thought about the stair balustrade for the Ryabushinsky Mansion also for this – but made it rather different. After I had designed it I realised the columns look rather like Egyptian papyrus columns. So you never know what the memory is going to throw up!
As far as being built, I doubt it. The site exists and the project in entirely feasible. I have sent the proposal to the Mayor of Toulouse but not received a reply
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Here is a new project in Utrecht, The Netherlands: Park Zuid Utrecht
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And one more, just around the corner from the previous link: https://www.wonenindepaleistuinen.nl
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And this is a project we discovered in Poland! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1668951543117406.1073741867.212555842090324&type=1&l=f589c92e54
You can watch is here too: http://www.proart.waw.pl/en/projects/willa-secesyjna-pod-warszawa (and click on the arrows).
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Look what’s going on in Shanghai! https://www.designingdisney.com/content/shanghai-disneyland-hotel-and-art-nouveau
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Hi Olga,
Your article perked up my ears as this is a topic I have thought about often.
There are—IMHO— three problems with today’s architects: 1.Ego, 2.They can’t draw, 3. They have no affinity for, or familiarity with, historic styles.
120 years ago all artists were classically trained. They knew their history and they could draw and paint. They’d begin with copying plaster casts, and live from the nude. They drew plants from nature and they were taught to paint. It is highly unlikely that anyone who could not do these things would be capable of mastering the subtlety, complexity and proportions of Art Nouveau.
In fact, even during Nouveau’s time, there were really only a handful of people who invented, defined and typified the style. Guimard, Horta, Mucha and a few others who were French actually do Nouveau right—as they themselves defined the style. Even back then, the majority of their contemporaries attempting to imitate Nouveau lacked the ability to do so gracefully and perfectly. Few people nowadays seem even to be able to recognize that though many Nouveau-era work has similar curves, that it is not good, accurate, or well-drawn.
Then there were MacIntosh and Gaudi whose work, for want of a better description, has always been called Art Nouveau when in my opinion it isn’t. It’s wonderful and fabulous, but it’s their own style, not truly Nouveau. But if you look at the examples of non-architectural drawings by these men, or the architectural renderings of their own buildings—with vivid landscapes, trees and clouds, and proportionately accurate human figures included for scale—you see that they were not just mechanical draftsmen, they could draw well! Just to mention one stunning example: look at the incredible drawings by Joseph Maria Olbrich!
As an illustrator and graphic designer, I began in the early 1970s with the pencil and brush and then moved in 1990 to the Mac computer. It became quickly evident that the ease with which we could now create sharp, professional-looking work was luring us away from the more difficult process of drawing by hand. The result was thoroughly neat, clean, yet boring work that began to be known by the term “computery.” This syndrome also affects most of today’s architects.
If you were an architect in the 1890s and you began to weary of drawing acanthus leaves and endless curlicues and florid ornament; if you were sick of the Greek orders, and copying from antiquity, you might secede from the old way and help contribute to the “invention” of modernism, as did Olbrich.
But if you were an architect born in the 1950s, you might genuinely admire modernism, but you came to it through impotence, not purely choice. Impotence because you’d have lacked the Beaux Arts training, you never copied plants from nature, and you could only draw by virtue of the T-square and the triangle. Multiply this crippling lack of ability for those born in the 60s and 70s and it is plain to see that they are completely untrained in drawing from life (with its intrinsic demonstration of fine and divine proportion), and all their work is being done on computer, so there is no way in hell they could reproduce convincing Art Nouveau—or simpler Art Deco even.
Technically, however, any modern architect CAN create authentic work in the Art Nouveau style, except for problem Number 1: Ego, that I mentioned above. They want to do it THEIR way, rather than the right way. And unfortunately they can’t tell right from wrong because they haven’t studied the “old fashioned” styles. The fact that they can’t draw is another hindrance but not an insoluble one. The solution is copying and adaptation. When one is learning to draw, one copies, until the lessons are absorbed. If those wishing to reproduce Art Nouveau would pull details from the masters the results might be more convincing.
Then there is the problem of well-constructed buildings that are otherwise thoroughly mundane in design. I see this problem in virtually every new building in my area of Southern California. This problem was described way back by Frank Lloyd Wright who explained that many architects were being replaced by building engineers: “…. By that generous extension of the building crafts into architecture . . . carpenters have become [designers of houses].” That is to say that many of today’s architects are not even artists in any sense of the word; they may only be general contractors.
As someone who has always attempted to replicate illustration styles of the 20s and 30s, I became aware that even the worst illustrator in 1927, by being immersed in the period, had a 1920s style, whereas if I were to try to copy that “look” my work would undoubtedly carry a current feeling, no matter how hard I might try. The only way to avoid this is to copy the old stuff until you really absorb it. I’ve been working toward this my whole life and am occasionally successful.
All that I’ve written above—in an attempt to explain why most current architects and designers cannot accurately imitate Art Nouveau—is a lament for my own difficulty in doing the same. I’ve been studying Nouveau, Deco and such styles of design for years. Although my own Tiny House on Wheels, as such structures come to be called, is designed as a mix of Vienna 1900, Jugendstil, Craftsman, Deco, and me, Another project—a remodel of a Spartan Mansion RV is done in high Art Deco style. I have not attempted Art Nouveau simply because I’m not yet ready to do it well. I believe I will one day get there, and in the meantime, I’m still sketching Nouveau and immersing myself in it! If you are interested, you can see my progress at my website: https://artcraft-tinyhouses.com/
Zavier Leslie Cabarga
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Here is another Russian example: https://www.stels.ru/portfolio/zagorodnye-doma/chastnyy-zagorodnyy-dom-v-stile-ar-nuvo.html
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Kohn Pedersen Fox Revamps a New York Lobby with Art Nouveau–Inspired Glazing to match Lalique windows at the other entrance of the complex.
https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/16779-kohn-pedersen-fox-revamps-a-new-york-lobby-with-art-nouveauinspired-glazing
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