be floral!

Art Nouveau was a new style in art, design and architecture that developed in Europe and North America at the end of the 19th century.

It could be argued that Art Nouveau was a response to the Industrial Revolution. Some artists welcomed developments in technology and used new materials such as cast iron in artistic ways. Others thought that mass-produced machine-made goods were shoddy and moved in another direction by making the decorative arts more high brow by applying the highest standards of craftsmanship and design to everyday objects. Art Nouveau designers believed that all the arts should work in harmony to create a "total work of art," or Gesamtkunstwerk: buildings, furniture, textiles, clothes, and jewelry all went together to make up the Art Nouveau style.

Floral, animal, arabesque patterns and female silhouettes are typical motifs of the style. Art Nouveau is typically full of sensuous lines, feminine figures, curly hair, flowery curves and willow leaves, waves and wispy smoke, but it also featured geometric details, colourful shapes.

Art Nouveau, as well as much of turn of the century art, was influenced by Japanese art , but also took visual and conceptual ideas from Celtic, Gothic and Rococo art. Art Nouveau artists and designers refused to make a distinction between the "lower" applied and decorative arts, such as furniture or making or textile design and "higher" fine arts such as painting and sculpture. Following socialist ideas, they wanted an art for everyone, where all objects were beautiful, useful and handmade. They did not completely succeed, as hand production was too expensive for the masses, but their ideals and ideas permeated artistic life across Europe and America.

World War One marked the end of Art Nouveau - the world had changed. The elegance, sensuality, flamboyance of Art Nouveau was going to be substituted by more rational styles as Art Deco and Bauhaus.