Art Nouveau: The New Beauty

As the century waned, a new aesthetic emerged that would define Belle Époque visual culture. Art Nouveau—the "new art"—rejected both academic tradition and industrial ugliness. Its sinuous lines, inspired by natural forms, appeared everywhere: metro entrances, jewelry, posters, furniture, buildings.

Hector Guimard's Paris Métro entrances, installed beginning in 1900, brought Art Nouveau to the masses. Their organic iron forms, like giant plants emerging from underground, transformed utilitarian infrastructure into urban poetry. Not everyone approved. "They look like vegetables having nightmares," complained one city councilor. But Parisians quickly adopted them as symbols of their modern city.

The movement encompassed all decorative arts. René Lalique transformed jewelry from mere display of precious stones into miniature sculptures. His dragonfly women and orchid hair combs turned their wearers into living Art Nouveau artworks. Émile Gallé's glass vases seemed to capture flowers in eternal bloom. Louis Majorelle's furniture curved and flowed like growing wood.

Women played crucial roles in Art Nouveau's development. The dancer Loïe Fuller, American-born but Paris-adopted, created performances that embodied the style's flowing lines. Manipulating yards of silk with hidden poles while colored electric lights played across the fabric, she became a living artwork. Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, and countless others tried to capture her ephemeral art in permanent form.

Sarah Bernhardt, the era's greatest actress, commissioned Art Nouveau's finest artists. Alphonse Mucha's posters for her performances defined the style's graphic arts. Georges Fouquet designed her jewelry. She herself sculpted and painted, exhibiting at the Salon. When critics dismissed her visual art as "amateur dabbling," she responded: "I am a professional in everything I undertake."