Art Nouveau as social art: The modern democratic aesthetic of Parisian worker housing, 1894--1914.

摘要

Parisian Art Nouveau, the local expression of an international movement in architecture and design between 1890 and 1914, ideologically and chronologically coincided with groundbreaking legislation to create low-income housing. While the bulk of classic twentieth-century architectural history addresses Art Nouveau as an elite, sinuous art form, this paper highlights, by contrast, its profound social consciousness. Holistic design, structural rationalism, and functionality characterized the restrained, consciously modern aesthetic. Art nouveau and art social, used interchangeably, signified the goals of reform, education, and equality, in theoretical opposition to "art for art's sake." Because the architectural center suffered the hygienic and housing crisis acutely, Paris was the nexus of debate and experiment surrounding the moral implications and definition of the new typology. Through organizations such as the International Society for Popular Art and Hygiene and the leadership of theorists Roger Marx, Henri Cazalis, and Frantz Jourdain, architects embraced worker housing as one means of fostering "art in everything, everywhere, and for everyone.";The domestic environment became the symbol of rational identity and an index of well-being, denoting in turn French insecurity in a competitive European marketplace; the struggle to redefine values and strengths in the face of modernity; and the desire to reassert Paris as the international arbiter of the avant-garde. Art Nouveau attempted to reconcile the extremes of paternalism, eugenics, and socialism. Housing was at once a control mechanism and a tool to uplift and educate the masses. This paper demonstrates how the philanthropic Worker Housing Group and 1903 Housing Exhibition exemplified the tension between theory and practice in the effort to infuse social ideals into modern architecture. Although Art Nouveau failed to disseminate affordable art to all, its architects were among the first to address the imperative of economical, standardized, hygienic worker housing, as broadly applied in habitations a bon marche and garden city construction into the inter-war period.