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If you have a difficult time (as I did) differentiating between Art Deco and Art Nouveau, you might enjoy this article I wrote on it. There are at least four ke

If you have a difficult time (as I did) differentiating between Art Deco and Art Nouveau, you might enjoy this article I wrote on it. There are at least four key ways to tell the difference: time of creation, curved lines vs. geometrical shapes, organic vs. machinic themes, and Japanonisme influence. https://onthearts.com/p/art-nouveau-vs-art-deco https://onthearts.com/p/art-nouveau-vs-art-deco I actually prefer Art Nouveau personally and wish there were more buildings that adopted the style. It seems like a good pairing for solarpunk architecture. Otherwise, it’s interesting to me how Bauhaus seems to have aged much worse, probably because it’s more similar to modernism, both of which are origins for the “minimal” aesthetic style that is still prevalent. Looking at an old Art Deco or Art Nouveau building feels like peering into a lost world, while Bauhaus isn’t dramatically different from most of what gets built today.

cheeseface 3y ago
A lot of people are old enough to have lived when Bauhaus was ”the modern look.” Hence, it now looks just plain ”old” whereas Art Deco and Noveau look ”classic.”
ljvmiranda 3y ago
They say "art deco is for dwarves while art nouveau is for elves." Forgot where it came from.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Hah, that is a good way to remember it. Wood elves would be even better.
euroderf 3y ago
Art Deco at the office. Art Nouveau at home.
elhudy 3y ago
I don’t mean to sound pretentious but i have a hard time understanding how anyone can have a difficult time differentiating between art nouveau and art deco. The only similarity between the two lies in word “art”.
- keiferski 3y ago
  In that post I explore a few ideas as to why I think this happens. I think it’s more that Art Nouveau gets labeled as Deco. In general though, both are art movements from roughly the same time period with roughly the same basic principles. For someone unfamiliar with art history, it can be confusing in a way that doesn’t happen with say, Medieval vs. Neoclassical architecture.
  - bradknowles 3y ago
    Not the same time period. Art Nouveau started in the 1890s and was exhausted by the time of the start of the First World War (1914). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau Art Déco first appeared in 1910, and became much more popular in the 1920s, after the end of WWI. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco
    - keiferski 3y ago
      Read my comment again. I said “roughly” the same time period. And yes, they overlapped for about a decade and from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with art history and living a century later, that is very close.
      - bradknowles 3y ago
        WW-I was a huge event in the history of this world, and it is a pretty clear divider between those two styles of art and architecture. I wouldn't call pre-WWI and post-WWI "roughly the same time period". Not by a long stretch. The length of time between them is not relevant in this case. What is relevant is the events that occurred between them. Like the pre-atomic age and the post-atomic age. The events themselves in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively short-lived. But their impact on this world greatly exceeded the time immediately before those two events and the time immediately after those events.
        3y ago
pyrale 3y ago
> Otherwise, it’s interesting to me how Bauhaus seems to have aged much worse Could it be that the most acclaimed expressions of art nouveau were the product of a gilded age, while the bauhaus legacy was mostly enacted during the postwar period where speed of rebuilding was more important that quality of buildings?
- keiferski 3y ago
  There was actually a lot more money put into art deco (which happened post WW1) than art nouveau, but yeah bauhaus and modernism certainly flourished in a resource-scarce post-war environment.
- sheepybloke 3y ago
  The other big influence is that a lot of the members of the Bauhaus went to the US to teach, and so they influenced many of the midcentury designers that designed and built the post-war world.
eternityforest 3y ago
To me Art Deco seems to range from Kinda Like Art Nouveau all the way to "I can't Believe it's not Bauhaus". Deco and Bauhaus both seem to sometimes share an excitement towards mass production and materials themselves. Art Deco shows off luxury and wealth, which is not very far from truth to materials. With art Nouveau I notice designs more than materials, unless they're simple natural things like wood, not really giving any sense of technical achievement or extravagance in the actual materials. Bauhaus seems to deliberately design things that would not work without the specific high end materials used, and look out of place if they are scratched, everything is pointing to the raw substance, the craftsmanship, the function, and the level of maintenance, and the design is just a frame. Art Deco doesn't do the minimalism thing the same way, I greatly prefer Art Nouveau, but it seems like both the aesthetic and philosophy of Bauhaus is everywhere. Maybe there's something missing in my personality since I don't quite feel the appeal of simplicity and valuable materials as strongly as some, while the more philosophical types all seem to love it. I think part of the mass appeal of Bauhaus might be because it got popular when tech was worse. You couldn't make a cheap CrapBoard thing and veneer it, unless you wanted it to peel in a week. That still happens, but it's possible to reliability do form, function, and material more separately. Maybe people were tired of crappy goods that broke in a year, and Bauhaus was a way of advertising that you weren't doing that. Now of course, durability seems random, and sometimes people take superficial Bauhaus elements and use them without the deep quality that it was supposed to be about, and it looks bad from the start and then breaks. And we've got cheap synthetic materials that can be incredibly strong if you know how to design with them, although unfortunately they do not survive the trash compactor, when people toss them even though they're perfectly good, because people tend to see things without valuable substance as disposable.

cheeseface 3y ago

A lot of people are old enough to have lived when Bauhaus was ”the modern look.” Hence, it now looks just plain ”old” whereas Art Deco and Noveau look ”classic.”

ljvmiranda 3y ago

They say "art deco is for dwarves while art nouveau is for elves." Forgot where it came from.

keiferski 3y ago
Hah, that is a good way to remember it. Wood elves would be even better.

euroderf 3y ago

Art Deco at the office. Art Nouveau at home.

elhudy 3y ago

I don’t mean to sound pretentious but i have a hard time understanding how anyone can have a difficult time differentiating between art nouveau and art deco. The only similarity between the two lies in word “art”.

keiferski 3y ago
In that post I explore a few ideas as to why I think this happens. I think it’s more that Art Nouveau gets labeled as Deco. In general though, both are art movements from roughly the same time period with roughly the same basic principles. For someone unfamiliar with art history, it can be confusing in a way that doesn’t happen with say, Medieval vs. Neoclassical architecture.
- bradknowles 3y ago
  Not the same time period. Art Nouveau started in the 1890s and was exhausted by the time of the start of the First World War (1914). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau Art Déco first appeared in 1910, and became much more popular in the 1920s, after the end of WWI. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Read my comment again. I said “roughly” the same time period. And yes, they overlapped for about a decade and from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with art history and living a century later, that is very close.
    - bradknowles 3y ago
      WW-I was a huge event in the history of this world, and it is a pretty clear divider between those two styles of art and architecture. I wouldn't call pre-WWI and post-WWI "roughly the same time period". Not by a long stretch. The length of time between them is not relevant in this case. What is relevant is the events that occurred between them. Like the pre-atomic age and the post-atomic age. The events themselves in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively short-lived. But their impact on this world greatly exceeded the time immediately before those two events and the time immediately after those events.
      - 3y ago

pyrale 3y ago

> Otherwise, it’s interesting to me how Bauhaus seems to have aged much worse Could it be that the most acclaimed expressions of art nouveau were the product of a gilded age, while the bauhaus legacy was mostly enacted during the postwar period where speed of rebuilding was more important that quality of buildings?

keiferski 3y ago
There was actually a lot more money put into art deco (which happened post WW1) than art nouveau, but yeah bauhaus and modernism certainly flourished in a resource-scarce post-war environment.
sheepybloke 3y ago
The other big influence is that a lot of the members of the Bauhaus went to the US to teach, and so they influenced many of the midcentury designers that designed and built the post-war world.

eternityforest 3y ago

To me Art Deco seems to range from Kinda Like Art Nouveau all the way to "I can't Believe it's not Bauhaus". Deco and Bauhaus both seem to sometimes share an excitement towards mass production and materials themselves. Art Deco shows off luxury and wealth, which is not very far from truth to materials. With art Nouveau I notice designs more than materials, unless they're simple natural things like wood, not really giving any sense of technical achievement or extravagance in the actual materials. Bauhaus seems to deliberately design things that would not work without the specific high end materials used, and look out of place if they are scratched, everything is pointing to the raw substance, the craftsmanship, the function, and the level of maintenance, and the design is just a frame. Art Deco doesn't do the minimalism thing the same way, I greatly prefer Art Nouveau, but it seems like both the aesthetic and philosophy of Bauhaus is everywhere. Maybe there's something missing in my personality since I don't quite feel the appeal of simplicity and valuable materials as strongly as some, while the more philosophical types all seem to love it. I think part of the mass appeal of Bauhaus might be because it got popular when tech was worse. You couldn't make a cheap CrapBoard thing and veneer it, unless you wanted it to peel in a week. That still happens, but it's possible to reliability do form, function, and material more separately. Maybe people were tired of crappy goods that broke in a year, and Bauhaus was a way of advertising that you weren't doing that. Now of course, durability seems random, and sometimes people take superficial Bauhaus elements and use them without the deep quality that it was supposed to be about, and it looks bad from the start and then breaks. And we've got cheap synthetic materials that can be incredibly strong if you know how to design with them, although unfortunately they do not survive the trash compactor, when people toss them even though they're perfectly good, because people tend to see things without valuable substance as disposable.