Art Nouveau began to fall out of fashion during WWI as many critics felt the elaborate detail, delicate designs, often expensive materials and production methods of the style were ill-suited to a challenging, unsettled, and increasingly more mechanized modern world. The Exhibition that officially launched the movementĪrt Deco was a direct response aesthetically and philosophically to the Art Nouveau style and to the broader cultural phenomenon of modernism. Jourdain is famously quoted as saying, "We consequently resolved to return decorative art, inconsiderately treated as a Cinderella or poor relation allowed to eat with the servants, to the important, almost preponderant place it occupied in the past, of all times and in all of the countries of the globe." The plan for a major exhibition presenting a new type of decorative art was originally conceived for 1914, but had to be put on hold until after World War I ended and then pushed back for various reasons until 1925.
One of the major goals of the new group was to challenge the hierarchical structure of the visual arts that relegated decorative artists to a lesser status than the more classical painting and sculpting media. The French state supported and fostered this direction of artistic activity. The group was comprised of both well-known figures such as the Art Nouveau-style designer and printmaker Eugene Grasset, and the Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard, along with emerging decorative artists and designers such as Pierre Chareau and Francis Jourdain.
The Society of Decorative Artists in Franceįrom this desire to move into the new century in step with innovation rather than being held back by nostalgia, a group of French artistic innovators formed an organization called the Societé des Artistes Décorateurs (The Society of Decorative Artists). It was time for something new, something that would shout "20 th Century" from tasteful, modernist rooftops. At the close of a century that saw the Industrial Revolution take hold, contemporary life became very different from a few decades earlier. By the end of the 19 th century in France, many of the notable artists, architects, and designers who had played important roles in the development of the Art Nouveau style recognized that it was becoming increasingly passé.
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