All language subtitles for Sex and Sensibility The Allure of Art Nouveau 1080p BBC

As the 19th century was
drawing to a close,

a luxurious, new style was taking
Europe by storm.

This was the fin de siecle,

the glamorous, decadent but also
anxious end to the 19th century,

and the style was Art Nouveau.

Merci.

Art Nouveau grew out of the dark,
restless energies

of the industrial city.

In the age of Darwin and Freud,

it was fixated with nature,
sensuality and sex.

In the space of a decade or so,

Art Nouveau went from being
nowhere to everywhere.

Lapped up by the burgeoning
middle classes of Europe,

it was mimicked and mass produced.

What began as a revolution in the
name of truth, beauty and nature,

ended in derision,
decadence and decay.

In this series, I'll be visiting
the great cities of Europe,

where the work of visionaries
like Emile Galle,

artists like Gustav Klimt and
entrepreneurs like Arthur Liberty

blossomed all too briefly.

Paris at the end
of the 19th century

loved its bullet-straight
boulevards,

its imposing monuments and
classically inspired architecture.

But beyond the grandeur,
the population had exploded

from half a million
to 2.5 million people by 1900.

Those elegant boulevards
were gridlocked with horses,

carriages and crowds.

Things needed to change.

The city planners came up with
a radical solution.

Le Metro, ladies and gentlemen!

Typically Paris,
typically Art Nouveau.

The good citizens of Paris
were shocked.

Entrances like bat wings,

sinuous metals, sensuous curves.

It was a bold declaration
of the new art for the new century.

The first Metro entrances
appeared just in time

for a massive celebration in Paris,

the World Fair of 1900.

It was when the city would show off
its cutting-edge new style.

At the heart of the fair were
two huge buildings,

standing opposite each other, the
Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.

This is Le Grand Palais.
It's exquisite, isn't it?

It's beautiful, substantial,

one of the biggest and best
exhibition spaces

you'll find anywhere in the world,
never mind Paris.

You'd love it.

Unfortunately, I'm not going there.

I'm going to Le Petit Palais,
the small palace over here.

Perhaps they were boasting
to their foreign visitors.

"In France, this,
all 16,000 square metres of it,

"is what we call small."

Bonjour. Monsieur Chazal,
je m'appelle Stephen.

Merci, monsieur.

'Gilles Chazal is director
of the Petit Palais.'

Can you give me some idea of the
sheer size of the exhibition

in terms of Paris? It was a great,
big event, wasn't it?

It was an international exhibition.

It was of course a very,
very famous event.

It was from this place to La Tour
Eiffel... To the Eiffel Tower.

Yes, yes and along the River Seine.

It was absolutely incredible and it
was a discovery for the public,

to look after artworks,
but also engines and so on.

Also, it was a change of century,
so it was a very great moment.

Designed to showcase the very best
of modern art and industry,

the World Fair was France's
manifesto for the 20th century.

There were moving walkways
and a grand electricity hall.

Over 60 countries exhibited
and 50 million people visited.

It was the party to end all parties,

and Art Nouveau was
the guest of honour.

Around the city, the dramatic
jewellery of Rene Lalique,

the organic forms of
Emile Galle's glass

and the alluring femme fatales
of Alfonse Mucha

dazzled the Paris crowds.

With all its marble
and mosaics and gilt and glass,

this was an opulent luxury
showroom for Art Nouveau,

but it was much more than that.

It also held up a dazzling mirror
to French hopes and fears

at the turn of the 20th century.

Paris was overcrowded, filthy

and simmering with anti-Semitic
tensions.

At the World Fair, Art Nouveau
was at the height of its popularity,

and for a brief moment it
seemed like an antidote

to the ugliness of the modern age.

But on the cusp of the 20th century,
how did this upstart new style

threaten to upstage the conservative
ranks of traditional French design?

It was only five years
before the 1900 World Fair

that Art Nouveau had begun to emerge

from the licentious
bohemian quarter of the city.

In 1895, Montmartre,

the playground on the edge
of the French capital,

had become a magnet for artists

looking for inspiration
and excitement.

Degas and Toulouse Lautrec painted
the local prostitutes and dancers,

and they became emblems
of the city's sexual freedom.

Decadent, licentious, drug-fuelled,
absinthe-soaked -

there was a downside, as well,
of course,

but it was here in Montmartre
that the artists of the day,

the avant-garde artists
earned their stripes.

Of all the artists who set the scene
for Art Nouveau,

Charles Baudelaire was
the most subversive.

In 1857 he shocked Paris
to its breeches

with his first volume of poetry,
Les Fleurs Du Mal.

It's all there in the title,
really, isn't it?

The Flowers Of Evil.

He was fascinated
by the dark side of nature...

..and human nature.

Sex, death, vampires, lesbians,

and all this at the same time
as Anthony Trollope

was writing Barchester Towers.

It was in the back-street drinking
dens and hash joints of Paris

that Baudelaire's ideas
about nature and art

were handed down to
Art Nouveau designers.

Louise, what is Baudelaire
telling us about nature?

He embraces all that's
artificial, you know,

he vaunts the merit of
artificiality over nature,

and that's the beginnings of
decadentism, if you like,

a rejection of naturalism
and of its values.

Is that because science
and industry was giving us so much,

one day we could tweak nature
if it suited us?

Yeah, there's a desire
to improve on nature.

To take it, to work on it,

and to do something better
and something different.

And this leads us into decadence,
it leads us into Art Nouveau.

The dancers and performers
from Paris' nocturnal world

embodied these dangerous new ideas.

Like moths to a flame, Art Nouveau
designers were drawn to these women.

And none was more nocturnal
than the divine Sarah Bernhardt.

She was Art Nouveau's ultimate muse.

Bernhardt was celebrated
as the greatest actress of her day,

as much by herself as anyone else.

The word bohemian could almost
have been invented for her.

Amongst her many lovers
she counted crowned heads of Europe.

It's even said she slept
in a coffin,

believing that playing dead
might improve her tragic roles.

Baudelaire would have
been proud of her.

Just look at Sarah there, reclining
on her chaise longue with her fan,

her eyes imploring, no, demanding,

that you give her
your full attention.

And that dog at her feet represents
fashionable Parisian society,

writers, poets, artists
for whom Sarah was a muse.

But look deep into Fido's eyes.

I think he's seen things
in the boudoir

no animal should be exposed to.

Sarah was about to play a new role

in the Paris debut of Art Nouveau.

It was Christmas Day 1894.

Sarah needed a poster to advertise
her new play, Gismonda.

But who to turn to?

Alfonse Mucha was a Moravian artist

who'd worked his way across Europe
to study art in Paris.

He really wanted to be
a fine artist, not a commercial one,

but he was living hand to mouth.

Then he was approached to create
the Gismonda poster.

He put his ambitions on hold
and got to work.

This is Mucha later in life,

but today it's his grandson John
and John's wife Sarah

who take up the story.

The first poster of Art Nouveau.

Well, it's the first poster that
Mucha did for Sarah Bernhardt, yes.

This is indirectly the first step

to actually make art available
to the general public,

you no longer have to be rich.

How did it come about?

It came about

in a most extraordinary way,

because what happened
was that Mucha,

who was a struggling artist
at the time,

was doing a favour for a friend,

he was correcting some proofs
at the printers,

and it was at Christmas time so
everybody else was off on holiday,

and suddenly the manager
of the printers came rushing in.

Sarah Bernhardt had said
she had to have a new poster

for her re-presentation
of Gismonda in the new year

and she wanted it now.

So there was no-one else to ask,
so Mucha got the ask.

So the printer went on holiday,
came back from holiday

and said "Where's the poster?"

And Alphonse presented this
and the printer had a fit.

Why did he have a fit, John?

He'd never seen anything
like this, nothing.

Sarah Bernhardt wanted to see it,
so it was rolled up

and the printer took it
to Sarah Bernhardt.

Alphonse was depressed
because, you know,

he thought he'd made
a terrible mistake.

Almost immediately, a message
came back from Sarah Bernhardt

that she wanted to see Mucha,
so he went to her boudoir,

with a very heavy heart,

because he thought he was
going to get a bollocking,

and this is in Alphonse's own words,
I mean, true historical fact,

she got up, embraced him and said,

"Mr Mucha,
you have made me immortal."

You know, she might have been
in her 50s

and have done all sorts of things,
but when she was on stage,

she was this woman with a vision,
with a purity in her heart.

What Mucha did was that
he saw Sarah Bernhardt

and he made her look the way
she felt and wanted to be seen.

And that's what he's communicating,

is who she saw herself as.

Then she immediately signed him up
for a six-year contract.

This was like a lightning
from blue sky.

Mucha's Gismonda
captured the moment.

The nouvelle woman was born.

He crowns the divine Sarah
with stylised flowers.

Using pale muted shades rather
than bold primary colours,

he revolutionised poster design.

The poster appeared
on the 1st January 1895

on the streets of Paris.

It caused a sensation
from the get-go.

This was the first public
declaration of the new art

in the French capital.

The public went wild for the poster.

As quickly as Gismonda was put up,
she was taken down again.

Bill stickers were followed
and bribed to hand her over.

Mucha became an overnight success.

He moved to a swanky new studio,

where he experimented with
the new art of photography.

And he took this wonderful series
of photographs of his models.

His new women have definitely
burnt their corsets, haven't they?

They stare back at you,
brazen and proud of their bodies.

He produced this book,
Documents Decoratifs,

a bible which later spread Mucha's
style around France and Europe.

Well, these are a bit more candid
than those Sarah Bernhardt pictures.

They're beautiful, graphically
ahead of their time,

and also, I suppose one has to say,
quite risque for the 1890s.

Some of these girls are very demure,

they seem to merge with the wildlife
they're pictured alongside,

the flowers, but others, like this,
dare I say it, hussy here,

definitely have a bit of "come into
the garden, Claude," about them.

What my mother might have called
a bit forward.

Champagne,

cigarettes,

Mucha discovered that sex
could sell anything.

It could even sell holidays
on the newly-developed Riviera.

And the selling point
was the nouvelle woman,

the icon of Art Nouveau.

The growing middle class was
learning to love spending its money

in bars and restaurants

and the new department stores
that were springing up everywhere.

It was spend, spend, spend.

There was a plethora of new products
on the market,

and every one of them
needed to be advertised.

In the new age of mass advertising,
mass production

and mass consumption, Art Nouveau
was itself mass produced.

Mucha made Art Nouveau de rigueur,
fantastique, formidable.

Wow, or even, mon dieu!

What about this place?

When Georges Fouquet inherited

his father's exclusive
jewellery business in 1895,

he wanted some of that Mucha magic.

He started designing jewellery
with him,

and commissioned Mucha
to create a shop

that would indulge his clients'
taste for Art Nouveau luxury.

Can we go back in time?

It's Paris, you're a man of means,
you've got a few bob, or francs,

and you want to impress
that special person in your life.

Well, this is where you come,
this jewellery shop,

for that piece, that rock,
for a special occasion.

Maybe a birthday, a Valentine,
an anniversary.

But over the decades,
what is quite clear

is that the shop itself,
the jewellery shop, is the true gem.

It's the gift that goes on giving.

In this shop, Mucha used
the full Art Nouveau palette,

curves inspired
by the natural world,

feathers, gilt, finery.

Every inch of it
decorative and sensual.

Sex and Art Nouveau were intimate,
promiscuous bedfellows.

Look at the figure up here.

A beautiful, almost classical pose
at first, but then notice,

her arms are behind her head,
emphasising her splendid bust,

and even a modern haircut.

She is the femme fatale,
a classic symbol of Art Nouveau.

And imagine presenting your femme
fatale with this Fouquet brooch.

Now, that would put a smile
on her face.

In its early days, Art Nouveau
was still the preserve

of the rich bohemian elite
of the city.

Amongst them was an ambitious
and talented young designer

who would embrace the new style
and revolutionise jewellery design.

When the great society jeweller
Rene Lalique

was beginning his career in Paris
in the 1870s,

jewellery wasn't about design.

It was all about the bling,
about the rocks.

And not just any rocks - diamonds.

Diamonds as big as the Ritz
in Paris.

Lalique changed all that.

He's probably better known today
for his glass designs,

but he trained as a goldsmith

and built his reputation on his
pioneering Art Nouveau jewellery.

These days, you have to go to
museums to see his precious pieces.

'Philippe Thiebault is curator
in chief at the Musee d'Orsay,

'and he has the key
to the Lalique jewel box.'

Hello, Philippe, I'm Stephen.
Nice to meet you.

Very nice to meet you.

I see you have an interesting
object in your hand.

'Before Lalique, valuable
jewellery was produced by artisans

'from precious metals and gemstones.

'The bigger the rocks, the more
desirable and valuable the piece.

'Lalique turned all that
on its head.'

So it's a piece by Lalique,
it's a hairpin in horn.

Horn? So that's cheap...

It's very, very cheap,

and it's a characteristic
of the art of Lalique,

because Lalique was
not very fond of expensive material.

When he chose materials, it was
not for the price of the material,

but for the colour,
the texture of the material.

So with Lalique, it wasn't
the gemstones in the jewellery,

it was the design,
that's what added the value.

Yes, yes. It's a very naturalistic
piece, you know.

It is engraved to imitate,
to suggest, the angelica.

It's a plant, you know.

And here you have little diamonds

to suggest the reflections
of the sun on the plant.

Right. It's a very lovely piece.

And the gentleman who bought this
from Lalique,

he would be buying this
for his wife?

Maybe not, maybe not.
Well, this is Paris.

Many men went to Lalique,

and they asked for jewels for a lady.

"Can you make something for my
special friend," that kind of thing?

Yes, yes.

What about Lalique,
how did he feel about women himself?

Lalique, I think...

We know that Lalique did love
many women during his life,

had many mistresses in Paris
and London, everywhere,

and it's the reason why he
is a good designer of jewels,

because I think he loved
very much women.

Some of his pieces are erotic.

We have a box, and you will see
at the centre, a naked woman,

and she opens her cloak...

Her cloak? Yes.

And so around her,
you have young men, also naked.

They are completely dazzled
by the nudity.

Are they? They're falling away,
the shock, thrilled.

It's like a goddess, you know.

She is like a butterfly,
or maybe like a bat.

Because bats and butterflies
were very appreciated

by the artists of Art Nouveau.

Lalique created dramatic jewellery
about women, for women.

His world, like so much of
Art Nouveau, is a no-man's land,

where the woman reigns supreme.

Lalique's fascination with natural
forms of all kinds wasn't unusual.

Collecting and categorising nature
was the great obsession of the time.

To study insects close-up,
Lalique came here to Deyrolle,

the cabinet of curiosities,
in the St Germain district of Paris.

This extraordinary bestiary
is really a trophy cabinet

of what was going on
in the late 19th century.

There was an explosion
in international travel,

in collecting, in taxidermy,
in botany.

This kind of stuff was brought home
by gentlemen in their swag bags.

In the middle of the 19th century,

Darwin's radical new theories
about evolution

and man's place
in the natural world

exploded established beliefs.

Nature, savage nature,
red in tooth and claw.

This was a new battleground
between religion on the one hand

and science on the other.

For designers,
it was a badge of modernity,

a new way of understanding
the world.

They brought nature into Paris.

But they did so on new terms.

For designers like Lalique,
nature was there to be embellished.

The lily was there to be gilded.

Swarms of insects,
clouds of butterflies, birds, bats,

they all buzzed and flapped
around Lalique's work.

In fact, if it hadn't
all looked so beautiful,

it might have been
like a Hitchcock film.

This is the art of metamorphosis.

Birds, insects and women dissolve
in and out of each other

in weird and wonderful ways.

Nature's sensuous, but sinister.

It's blue skies
and bumblebees one minute,

and bats at bed-time the next.

Lalique may have used cheap
materials,

but his jewellery was lavish
and dramatic -

perfectly designed
for the dim electric lights

of Paris' nocturnal world.

This is the world-famous
restaurant Maxim's.

Sarah Bernhardt
and the literary crowd

partied here till the early hours.

Entrepreneur Eugene Cornuche
redesigned it in Art Nouveau style

in 1899 for the World Fair.

He knew that Art Nouveau,
famous artists

and a ready supply of courtesans
could turn his investment into gold.

Today it has the feel
of an upmarket bordello.

They say every man who came here
arrived with a woman,

but it was never his wife.

You can practically hear the violins
soaring away,

the booming laughter and gossip
of the politicians

and the artists and actors
and painters who came here,

and the tinkling laughter
of their new muses or courtesans.

Pierre Andre, thank you so much
for letting me see Maxim's.

You are very welcome
in this incredible place.

It is incredible, isn't it? It is.

With its mirrors and gilt,

the spiral staircase.

It is a symbol of what we call
in France La Belle Epoque.

It really represents

such a dream in people's minds

that it stays from that time,

and it's still today the same.

Maxim's was Art Nouveau.

Is there a sense that
the normal rules didn't apply?

Once you stepped over the doorway
of Maxim's... Absolutely.

The only rules correct
in such a place

was elegance and glamour.

In Maxim's, many times
we had writers, novelists...

Like Marcel Proust,
did he come here?

Of course, he came many, many,
many times. Sarah Bernhardt?

And Sarah Bernhardt, who was
one of our best clients.

It was really the place where you
had to come to see and be seen.

It showed exactly all the taste
they had at that period,

and the best was all around
Art Nouveau.

Maxim's sensuous curves

and women in their gardens of Eden -

they play on the idea of innocence,
purity, and, of course sin.

There are mirrors absolutely
everywhere in here.

It's like a hall of mirrors
from a circus.

Or maybe something a bit seedier,
a bit kinkier,

a little bit more sinister.

In 1899, Maxim's typified

much of the Art Nouveau
that was being created.

Fashionable and extravagant,

it had come to represent
fin-de-siecle decadence and excess.

But there is another side
to this story.

If you think that Art Nouveau

is all exquisite vases
and curly furniture,

well, you couldn't be more wrong.

Amongst the Art Nouveau designers
at the 1900 World Fair,

at least one felt that the new style
had a more serious mission.

His stand featured
a working furnace,

and surrounding it,
a display of glass vases.

They were all dedicated to a cause

which exposed a seismic rift
in French society.

The designer behind this display
was Emile Galle.

Emile Galle was the troubled
genius of Art Nouveau,

he was creative, an innovator,
an entrepreneur.

He was also a passionate believer
and campaigner for social justice.

That, in the end,
would cost him dearly.

Emile Galle is one of the most
fascinating characters to emerge

in the story of the French arts in
the latter part of the 19th century.

He was absolutely a man of his time,
and in that respect,

is a key figure in the story
of Art Nouveau.

Philippe,
what sort of a man was Galle?

Very complex personality,

a poet, one might say,
a philosopher, a dreamer,

who found his medium,
particularly in glass.

A man with very diverse interests,

he was a great botanist,
he had a strong political agenda,

he was a liberal
with a tremendous social conscience.

Emile Galle was also
an industrialist,

who built from an
inherited family business

a very substantial and successful

glass, furniture
and ceramics factory.

With his master craftsmen,
Galle created stunning prototypes,

while on the workshop floor,
designs were mass produced

for a hungry market across France.

Art and industry went hand in hand.

So he was experimenting to develop
different techniques,

colouring and texturing the glass,

creating effects
within the mass of the glass,

layering colours
and cutting back with acid

or engraving to achieve cameo
and other effects.

He ended up really being capable
of making pieces of glass

of a technical complexity
that had never been achieved before.

Engraved with quotations
and dedications,

his exhibition pieces go
way beyond the purely decorative.

The magic of them is that as well as
being virtuosities of glassmaking,

they are always imbued with
this magical poetic quality

which is his signature.

He would evoke nature,
he would evoke the cycle of life.

He would draw you
into a piece of glass

and somehow you could
become lost in it.

And you would be as enthralled as
if you were looking up at the stars.

You sort of lose a sense of scale
within his pieces.

He was truly an artist.

Galle's view of nature was a complex
but also a very honest one.

Yes, he could do blue skies
and dragonflies,

but he also appreciated what
was rank, decaying, dying.

He'd have been just as happy here
on an overcast autumn afternoon

as he would have been
at the height of summer.

Like Baudelaire, Galle was trying
to find a new language

that could express the realities
of modern life and death.

I've come to the Ecole de Nancy
museum in Galle's home town.

At the end of the 19th century,

Nancy became a power house
of Art Nouveau design.

In 1901, Galle formed
an association of local designers.

They included the furniture designer
Louis Majorelle

and glass designers
Antonin and Auguste Daum.

Today they're big names
in their own right,

but Galle was the true visionary.

Now, this is your real Galle McCoy.

This is the stuff that everybody
loved, his lamps.

Obviously echoing the flowers
in the field, the bloom up here,

but what's very interesting about it
is he was trying to show nature

as she really was,
not just spring, not just bounty,

but also autumn
when everything dies and dries up.

So beneath these buds of poppies
about to burst,

at the bottom of the plant, these
tendrils, these withered pieces

of the plant, the leaves clinging
to it, won't be here much longer,

soon to be blown away.

One of the vases that Galle
exhibited at the 1900 World Fair

is here at the museum.

It is called Les Hommes Noirs,
The Dark Men.

A collaboration with the artist
Victor Prouve,

it tells a story of injustice
that threatened to destabilise

the government and the country's
fragile peace

at the turn of the century.

This vase was dedicated to one man,
Alfred Dreyfus.

In 1895, Dreyfus,
a Jewish army officer,

was sentenced to life imprisonment
for treason on the basis

of documents that had been faked.

In a humiliating ritual, his badges
of rank were torn from him

and his sword was broken.

Dreyfus, we know that he screamed,
"I am innocent,"

but it was so loud nobody
could hear him, you know.

So this small man was just
standing alone against

all the anti-Semitic screams,
you know, "Death to Dreyfus,"

"Death to the spy, death to
the traitor, death to the Jew."

It was really a very, very violent
moment he had to go through.

The anti-Semitism that had been
simmering for decades in Paris

now exploded.

The daily anti-Semitic paper
La France Juive stoked the hatred.

This whole Dreyfus affair
cast a very long shadow here
in France, didn't it?

Yes, it did.

The concern was the Dreyfus affair
came to such a point

that they thought France
would be threatened,

the republic, the democracy,
or the republic...

Really? It could bring down
the whole government?

Exactly. It came to such a climax
of anger and passion.

The streets in Paris became very
animated with the Dreyfus case.

So it really divided everybody.

It split the whole country.

Some artists took a stand.

The novelist Emile Zola famously
attacked the government

with his open letter, J'Accuse.

Les Hommes Noirs was Galle's
J'Accuse in glass.

The dark men symbolise
French hypocrisy and injustice.

The words on the case ask,
"From where do you come?"

"We come from beneath the earth."

When Galle returned to Nancy
after the 1900 World Fair,

he paid a high price
for his defence of Dreyfus.

He was ostracised by his neighbours
and friends,

and his business suffered.

He was defending an innocent
against the army, against the church

and against the justice.

Since he was involved
in this Dreyfus affair,

he had lost a lot of customers, the
business was not working very well,

so maybe he was a bit upset
about the future for his wife

and his daughters,
and the future of the factory.

As he was the only one who was
designing for his factory,

what would happen next?

What would become of Galle?

Do you think, later in his life,
Galle regretted the position

he took over the whole
Dreyfus affair?

It's hard to tell, but he was
so deeply always involved

in those cases
that he was defending.

So I think he regretted it
only on the commercial side

because of the lack of orders,
of commands,

that came after
the Great Exhibition in 1900.

But when he was quoting authors
like Victor Hugo,

he said, "Art is like a weapon
to defend your ideas."

Soon after the World Fair,
Galle found out

that he had another battle to fight.

Galle was about to die,
he knew he was dying,

so he put a lot of this sadness,

this melancholia,
in all his creations.

This is the very last piece of
furniture that he produced

in his factory before he died, and
it made really a very strong effect

on the people here.

What do you think he's
trying to say in this?

It's dawn and it's night-time,
the bed, but you could look at it

particularly as the work
of a dying man,

as about life and death, in fact.

Yes, that's it, exactly.

Galle used the symbols
of the butterflies

and they represent, with the central
egg, they represent birth,

the beginning,
and they are full of hopes.

But then at the end of the day,
they are dead.

And on your back,
you can see just above your head,

this night butterfly, the sphinx,

which is slowly falling above you,
and it means death.

He is dying and his wings
are closing on your head.

It has to make you think of what
you make of your life, I think.

Tragically, Galle didn't live
to see Dreyfus exonerated in 1906.

He died two years earlier,
but in the last years of his life

he'd created some of his most
powerful and moving pieces.

Galle had exposed a fault line
in French life

at the turn of the century,

but there was a lot more
where that came from.

With the population explosion came
crime, overcrowding, poverty.

There was disquiet
on the streets of Paris,

and the city needed to find
new solutions.

For a young architect who was out
to make a bit of a name for himself,

a bit of a splash,
the time was ripe for trying
something utterly different.

Hector Guimard was a young architect
with an ego as big as his talent.

Important projects came his way
when he was still in his 20s,

and in 1896, when Guimard was not
yet 30, he designed the building

that would cement his reputation
for bravura, style and ambition.

His mission was to create
not just a radically different

sort of building, but a template
for a new form of communal living.

Sebastien Cord
is an architect himself

and a resident of Castel Beranger,
Guimard's most celebrated building.

To see the real Guimard magic you
have to get inside the curly gates

to the communal courtyard within.

So you see the courtyard?
Stunning, yeah.

Guimard was really young
when he built this.

Security code? Yeah.

How long have you lived here?

About five years.

Must be fantastic, since you're
in the business of architecture,

to live here. Look at that!

From here you can see
the building is asymmetrical,

a crime against architecture
in classically proportioned Paris.

Your eye doesn't get bored of it

because there are different
contours to it.

That's interesting
in the work of Guimard.

It's architecture and art
with curving lines.

And the glass up there
is beautiful, isn't it?

Is that all original?

Yes.

'Guimard said the logic of nature
is impeccable,

'and at Beranger,
his visual language is the sea.

'The windows repeated on every floor
are stained into voluptuous waves.'

I love these kind of sponge-like
bits of stone,

they look like sea sponges,
don't they? Is that the idea?

We call it mouliere in French.

'Red brick,
anathema to traditionalists,

'butts up against whole stones
and engineered stone too.'

Very different to the other
buildings I've been seeing in Paris,

the kind of Haussmann buildings,
isn't it?

Yes.

'It's Guimard's signature ironwork
that gives the building

'its Art Nouveau character and wit.'

It's incredible.

'Why the long face?

'These sea horses press their noses
to the walls for good reason.'

It has a structural function also.

Does it? It's holding the wall up.
Yes. That's good to know.

I believe another unusual thing
is that all the apartments

are roughly the same size?

It wasn't big apartments
for the rich. Exactly.

Every level have the same height.

You don't have the rich
at the first level

and the poor people at the top.

'Really breaking with tradition,
Guimard dared to create

'an apartment block that ignored
the social hierarchy of Paris.

'At first, the neighbours
called this Castel Deranger,

'and when you step in to
the building's vestibule,
you can kind of see why.'

That's incredible.
It's really like a cave, isn't it?

Yes, it's designed like a grotto.

It's a masterpiece of the building
made by Guimard.

Just the gateway is remarkable.

It's marvellous.
Really original, in fact.

It's like a harp.

A harp?

These are the strings
and you can kind of pluck them.

That's rather beautiful, isn't it?

Maybe not the way I'm doing it,
but it could be.

'All the geometry of the structure
is submerged in iron curves

'and undulating plaster, as if the
building itself were made of water.'

So these are meant to look
a bit like trees, are they?

Yeah, it's like trees
going from the grotto.

It's like a piece of a garden
but also with water...

Like an undersea garden.

It's quite strange.

Yes, it's like Neptune's garden.
Yes.

'For many years, the full beauty
of this weirdly wonderful entrance

'was hidden under countless
coats of gloss paint.

'Sebastian's just completed
the painstaking task of returning

'Castel Beranger to how Guimard
intended it to be.'

That's great, isn't it? Yes.

It's a pleasant way
to enter in the building.

It is.

Pardon, monsieur.

'As the space where residents would
meet and greet each other,

'it's the heart of Guimard's
masterplan for convivial
urban living.'

Here she is with her French bread.

That's what we should have done.

I didn't kiss you. Maybe later!

Let's see how things go. After!

OK, after you.

'Guimard moved in here himself,
enjoying his bachelor lifestyle

'and his celebrity.

'A tireless self-publicist,

'he sent out postcards of himself at
home with his watery Art Nouveau.'

With an award under his belt
for Beranger, Paris was his oyster.

As the city was preparing
for the 1900 World Fair,

he landed the commission
that would make him immortal.

The city was in gridlock.

The Metro, a new railway fit
for a new century was being built -

under the ground.

And Guimard was asked to design
the Metro entrances

to add a final decorative flourish
to this fantastic new-fangled way

of getting about.

He was a controversial choice,

but in time, Parisians warmed to his
flamboyant version of Art Nouveau.

This is Port Dauphine, Guimard's
finest surviving Metro station.

It's en route to
the Bois de Boulogne,

the woods on the outskirts of Paris,
and that seems rather appropriate,

because emerging from the station
is like leaving a thicket
of iron trees.

Guimard brought nature and art into
the very heart of the modern city.

Salvador Dali described
his designs as

"those divine entrances to the Metro
by grace of which one can descend

"into the region
of the subconscious."

Guimard's station, which is actually
metallic and dense and brittle,

in this wooded setting, shape-shifts
into a giant moth or bug

with its gossamer wings,
its many, spindly limbs

and those questing,
probing antennae.

He chose cast iron to create
drooping stalks and rising branches.

And glass, a vulnerable material
for a busy urban structure,

seems to be draped over
the iron skeleton.

Guimard designed 141
station entrances,

each on a variation
of four basic templates,

as well as a loose interpretation
of the letter "M" for Metro.

The Metro entrances,
redefining the city,

seemed like the portals
to the future.

But when the 1900 exhibition
was all packed up, the harsh light
of the 20th century started todawn.

This dining room was designed for
an apartment in Nancy in 1902

by Eugene Vallin,
an associate of Emile Galle.

I've got a theory that
this wasn't made by men.

I think it's the work of a species
of hyper-evolved bee.

I mean, look at the curves
everywhere.

It's as though they looked at what
we did with metal and straight lines

and rejected it and everything
was masticated out of royal jelly.

Bit freaky for you?
Bit acid trippy?

Well, consider, it would be lovely
to come here to dinner once,

maybe for a week.

But every day?
You would start to feel like Kafka,

who, shortly after this was created,
would pen Metamorphoses.

And that was the problem -
it was too curly, too decorative,

too dark, too much.

When it arrived in the dining rooms
of the middle classes,

the Bohemian elite
lost their taste for it.

Like all fashions, Art Nouveau
became a victim of its own success.

Like a fickle lover, the city that
had once embraced the style

turned against it in the 1920s.

The wonderful Fouquet jewellery shop
was dismantled,

and was reconstructed
in the Musee Carnivalet in Paris

just 23 years ago.

Even the iconic Metro entrances
didn't escape the cull.

Port Dauphine is one of just three
glass entrances that have survived.

Sadly, when Art Nouveau dramatically
fell out of fashion,

all the others were
ruthlessly hacked down.

79 original Guimard designs
have been lost,

and Art Nouveau was forgotten
until the last decades

of the 20th century.

Today the Metro
and Paris go hand in hand again

and the city treasures
its Art Nouveau heritage.

The old love affair
has been rekindled.

Next time, the roots and hidden gems
of Art Nouveau in British cities,

set against a backdrop of scandal
and depression,

when artists and designers
were on the front line

of sexual and social change.

It's sleek, geometrical.

A vision of aluminium and glass.

It's the last place you'd go
looking for Art Nouveau, isn't it?

Isn't it?

This is the Sainsbury Centre
for Visual Arts

on the outskirts of Norwich.

Home to the art collection
of the British retail dynasty,

the Sainsbury family.

It's also home to the
Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau,

one of the largest and finest
private collections in Europe.

Art Nouveau emerged
at the turn of the 19th century

from the restless energies
of the industrial city.

In the age of Darwin and Freud,

it was fixated on nature, sex,

and the newly-liberated woman.

In less than a decade
it went from nowhere to everywhere.

And then disappeared completely.

This week I'm in Britain
where the decadence of Oscar Wilde

and Aubrey Beardsley
scandalised the nation.

Where the sensuality of exotic
foreign influences met the genius

of British craftsmanship to create
a wholly unique moment in design.

And as brand names
such as Liberty's went global,

an extraordinary hidden gem took
shape in the crook of a Surrey hill.

Imagine this, the Thames,
in the 19th century.

Steam ships take our products
all over the world and return

with treasure troves of art and
design from the Empire and beyond.

It was a dazzling time,
full of progress and change,

but there were also
more ominous undercurrents.

Not for nothing is Joseph Conrad's
Heart Of Darkness, published 1899,

opening on the waters of this river,
foul and pestilential.

These days, the river banks are
the preserve of hedge fund managers

but back then only artists
could be persuaded

to find their accommodation
along its shores.

They believed that our burgeoning
industrial cities could be reformed

by a beauty revolution.

For Art Nouveau designers,
that began with an event

that changed the story of
19th century British design.

In 1854, an American fleet
of seven ships and 2,000 men

sailed into the harbour of Nagasaki.

After centuries of isolation,

Japan was forced
to open her borders to trade

and Japanese goods
started flooding into Britain.

Collected avidly by artists,

these goods inspired a new approach
to British design.

New patterns, flowers, plants,
birds adorned their work.

There was a new delicacy,
a new sensuality.

Japan was seen as everything
that the West was not.

Exotic, sensual, uninhibited.

In London, James Abbott McNeil
Whistler painted women in kimonos

hinting at the sensuality
beneath the silk.

An American who had lived
in France and Russia,

Whistler was a troublemaker
with a modern international agenda.

He harnessed Japanese style
to a movement that insisted that

art had no social or moral agenda.

Art was for art's sake.

A new cult of beauty was born.

There was a whole new style
of sensuousness

amongst the Avant Garde.

It was called the Aesthetic Movement

and I've come to find out about it,
where else,

but on the sun-kissed boulevards
of Shepherds Bush, West London.

Mmm, they're nice!

Hello, Peter. Wow. Do you like
my flowers? Lovely. I'm Stephen.

Hi, how do you do?
These are for you.

Thank you very much.
They're beautiful.

'Design historian Peter Fiell
has spent years

'lovingly reconstructing a room
in the Aesthetic style.'

Oh, this is fun, isn't it?
This is great, Peter.

I feel we should both
slip into some kimonos.

Don't know how you feel about that.
I only just met you.

We've got sunflowers.
I suppose we have. Fantastic place.

I notice there are some sunflowers
here, like the ones I brought you.

Yes, well,
as you probably gathered,

having gifted me
those beautiful sunflowers,

one of major motifs, you know, of the
Aesthetic Movement is the sunflower

and it literally represents
the sun and warmth and...

Beauty? Beauty.

And you see these motifs recurring
time and time again.

'With their exotic sunflowers
and irises,

'peacocks and cranes,

'ebonised furniture and willow
patterns, the Aesthetes made a break

'with the dense briars and brambles
of traditional British design.'

This is what Oscar Wilde meant

when he talked about
the house beautiful, wasn't it?

It was critical to be seen
as a connoisseur of beauty

and, ultimately, as someone
who had refined good taste.

'Whistler and his friend,
the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde,

'held court in Japanese-inspired
rooms like this one,

'also sharing other foreign ideas

'that they brought back from their
frequent trips to bohemian Paris.

'Their scandalous ideas about sex,
death and art were beyond the pale

'of God-fearing Victorian society.'

Thank you for these flowers again.
It's my pleasure. They look nice.

Tell you what, it needed something
in here, didn't it? Yes!

I'll put them right behind you here.
That's the perfect spot.

'In 1894, a new disciple joined
the ranks of these Aesthetes.'

An iconoclast,
brandishing a bold new art,

he captured the avant garde spirit
of Paris

and the sensuality
of Japanese design.

The illustrator Aubrey Beardsley

was the first exponent
of Art Nouveau in Britain.

He was one of the first anywhere.

He burst on to the London scene
at the tender age of 19.

His career would be meteoric,
dazzling, uncontrollable,

and over far too soon.

The teenage Beardsley heard
that Wilde was writing a play

about the biblical temptress Salome.

He produced an illustration on spec

in the hope that he might
impress Oscar and his publisher.

In it, Beardsley transforms
the sinful Salome

with whiplash curves
into a femme fatale.

Here she is clasping the severed
head of saintly John the Baptist.

The blatant sensuality
and amorality of this image

rivalled anything
from bohemian Paris.

Wilde was duly impressed
and Beardsley was commissioned

to illustrate the first English
edition of Salome in 1894.

His drawings were startlingly new.

They were sensuous.
They were international.

They were Art Nouveau.

Beardsley is, I suppose,
the most distinctive,

most extraordinary young illustrator
that we've ever had in England.

This is called the Peacock Skirt

and it's probably the most celebrated
from Beardsley's set of designs.

People would have thought
this was very shocking at the time.

It absolutely exemplifies
the way in which he'd found

a new way of representing
a literary subject.

There's no suggestion
of the background.

He cuts to the chase, as it were.
It's just about the figures.

That's the sort of thing he learnt
from looking at Japanese prints.

It's also, in a way, stylistically
what we now call Art Nouveau,

except that Beardsley was not trying
to do exactly the same sort of thing.

He knew what was going on on the
continent but he was, actually,

to a great degree, ploughing
his own furrow here in England.

'Beardsley's whiplash curves
came to define his unique

'Japanesque version of Art Nouveau.'

And this famous whiplash line here,
apart from anything else,

that's extraordinarily difficult
to do, isn't it, I would imagine?

Just to have the elan and the
confidence just to dash that off.

This is something he excels at,

which is this kind of extraordinary
calligraphic energy.

He is the great master
of drawing with a pen.

And for people who haven't
done that themselves,

that's no mean feat, is it?

You don't just produce
one of these swirls.

It is actually very difficult
to create a drawing

of this kind of faultless technique.

Beardsley's penmanship, if you like,
the actual craftsmanship

of working with, remember,
a spluttering pen dipped in ink...

'In the finely-drawn
decorative details of his work,

'Beardsley's mischief
and subversion plays out.

'The devil is
certainly in his details.'

Look closely at those candlesticks.

Yes, they are
what you think they are.

The publishers actually jokingly said

you had to look at everything through
a microscope and upside down

in order to make sure he hadn't
smuggled in some kind of indecencies.

Is it the art of a young man? As you
get older, do you get more cautious?

I think he moved in a circle of
youngish, quite revolutionary

artists and writers
who enjoyed teasing the public.

Cocking a snook, if that's
the phrase I'm looking for.

Absolutely. It is exactly the word.

'To the London arts establishment

'he was the amoral, alien
enfant terrible of his day.'

The Studio Magazine,

the international bible for avant
garde design founded in 1893,

featured Beardsley's work and
reproduced his Salome illustrations.

His Japanesque figures
and decorative curves,

distributed all over the world
in the magazine,

were absorbed into Art Nouveau
as it emerged on the continent.

Beardsley had arrived.

This was the age of the dandy.

It was the time when what you said,
the cut of your jib,

the colour of your button hole,
the name of your tailor,

all these things counted
for at least as much

as what you actually DID in life.

'Matthew Sturgiss
is Beardsley's biographer.'

Hello, you must be Matthew.
I'm Stephen. How are you?

Very well, thanks. Fancy a haircut?
Well, why not?

Matthew, how important
was image to Aubrey?

Was image crucial to him?

Hugely important.

Really both as a reflection
and a projection of his art.

He delighted in witty bon mots.

He dressed beautifully.

He was conscious too,
of his extraordinary physique

and that became
part of his public persona.

'Beardsley's strange haircut
and dandified garb

'were cultivated for effect
but it wasn't all artifice.

'His gauntness was the result
of incurable tuberculosis,

'though not even the gravity
of that condition

'stopped his searing humour.'

He once said that, you know,
I'm so affected,

even my lungs are affected.

But he knew he didn't have long,
so he had to make an impact?

Yes, I mean, from childhood

he'd suffered with tuberculosis

and he realised that time
was likely to be short.

I think that did lend an intensity
to his work

and the way he worked.

'Beardsley's intense ambition,
mischief and hunger for attention

'were a lethal combination.'

Matthew and I have come to
the Cadogan in West London,

a hotel that would play
a crucial part in the unravelling

of Beardsley's brilliant career.

Would Wilde and Beardsley
have taken tea together?

Were they friendly?

What was the nature of their
relationship, would you say?

Wilde was the older figure.

He was some 20 years
Beardsley's senior.

He was the great artistic
personality of the age,

and Beardsley was ever an iconoclast

and although he admired Wilde
enormously,

he also enjoyed poking fun at him,

undermining him,
pricking his pretensions.

It's extraordinary. You know,
at first sight what you have here

is a fantastic draughtsmanship,

and, at the same time,
the sensibility of Viz magazine.

Is that fair?

There is certainly
an element of that.

I mean, Wilde complained that
some of the details were like

the naughty doodles
that schoolboys introduced

into the margins of their copybooks.

Wilde had good cause
to be suspicious.

In his play, Salome,

Wilde had compared the moon to
a fat, pleasure-seeking old woman.

But in one of Beardsley's
illustrations,

he gives the moon Wilde's features.

Beardsley, as being someone in the
inner cultural circle of the time,

would have known rumours circulating
about Wilde's double life,

his attraction
to the homosexual milieu,

and so the notion of him being
a bad drunken woman

searching everywhere for lovers

would have carried
a certain sort of resonance.

And in a way, that was dangerous
information to be being leaked out.

In 1894, Beardsley co-founded an
arts journal called The Yellow Book

to celebrate new writing and art.

As art editor, he had the freedom
to develop his unique style.

Tragically, this startling talent
was about to be eclipsed

by a scandal that traumatised
19th-century Britain and Europe.

For nearly four years,

Wilde had been having an affair
with Lord Alfred Douglas

who was 16 years his junior.

In 1895, Douglas' father,
the Marquess of Queensbury,

left a card at Wilde's club
calling him a sodomite.

Wilde sued Queensbury for libel,
but it backfired.

Queensbury's allegation was upheld

and Wilde was charged with
gross indecency.

Now, Oscar Wilde's room
is down here, 118.

This is where he had
his exquisite collar felt

the day the rozzers came to
pick him up on charges of indecency.

Beardsley's Yellow Book
comes back into the story here,

with tragic consequences.

Everybody wanted to be in it
and most of them were,

with the notable exception
of Oscar Wilde.

The Yellow Book
was consciously modelled

on the most provocative French
fiction of the day -

cheeky novels coming in from
the continent in yellow wrappers.

On 5 April 1895, two arresting
officers led Wilde out of the hotel.

Under his arm was a yellow book.

It was actually a copy of one
of the aforesaid French novels

but nobody noticed or cared.

Journalists reported
that Wilde had left the hotel

with a copy of
Beardsley's Yellow Book.

The loathing for Wilde
was so intense

that a crowd took it upon themselves

to go round to Beardsley's
publishers and put the windows out.

His boss, in a panic, fired him.

Not one but two great careers
and lives were blighted.

Wilde was sentenced
to two years hard labour.

The fallout from the scandal
across Britain was devastating.

And how important
was the Wilde trial?

We hear in the news
that such-and-such a case

is the trial of the year,
the trial of the century,

but that really was
a huge case, wasn't it?

I would say that it's probably
not possible to exaggerate

the importance of
the Oscar Wilde trial in 1895.

It traumatised British
and specifically English culture,

transformed the atmosphere in London
and really did jump out at the time.

It upset the entire nation.
And I would say, in effect,

made practicing as an advanced
or an Avant Garde

and Art Nouveau designer or artist

extremely difficult in England
after that time,

because Wilde was loosely and
broadly associated with that world.

How influential was Beardsley?

How deep did it go?
How pervasive was it?

Well, we would say that Beardsley
was probably absolutely key

for the style, paramount in fact.

There are lots of English
movements around

in the last quarter
of the 19th century

and Beardsley pulls everything
together to create

what is going to become Art Nouveau.
He is the first one to do that.

And the key - the signature,
I suppose - is the whiplash line.

That strange tensile shape

that everybody picks up on
incredibly quickly

and becomes the dominant image
of the late 19th century

in architecture and design.

Despite his wit and bravura style,

Beardsley had crossed a line
that he couldn't come back from.

After the Wilde scandal,
he was vilified

and his art
forced under the counter.

He worked for Leonard Smithers,

an infamous publisher
of literary erotica.

Smithers commissioned Beardsley
to illustrate Aristophanes' play,

Lysistrata,
about a community of women

who deny their husbands
their conjugal rights.

Beardsley had nothing to lose.

But then, just three years
after the Wilde scandal,

tuberculosis finally claimed him.

Beardsley was just 25 years old.

His shocking version of Art Nouveau
had become

the style that dare not
speak its name.

But that didn't mean it had gone
altogether. On the contrary.

The whiplash curve had got under
the skin of British designers.

So they took those curves...

and then added
something of their own.

A spray of Celtic mist,
just a hint of medieval mystery

to create a version of Art Nouveau
that was uniquely British.

While Beardsley had looked to Japan
and France for his ideas,

this more polite version
of Art Nouveau

drew on British craft traditions

and on the influence of one man
in particular.

William Morris - craftsman,
poet, publisher, designer,

socialist,
all-round Victorian visionary.

He was the driving force
behind Arts and Crafts,

one of the most influential
movements in all European design.

In his quest for beauty,

Morris invoked the power of nature
and our medieval past.

Arts and Crafts may have been
inspired by British history,

but Morris was fighting
for a brave new future,

one in which beauty
triumphed over industry.

It's hard to believe now,
but back in Morris's day,

even here, in Hammersmith,
the Thames was polluted and ugly.

In fact, it's one of the things
that Morris and his cohorts

wanted to change, because
their art, their design

wasn't just about
prettifying houses.

It was also about revolution.

It was changing the world
one wallpaper at a time.

In the 1890s,
the middle-aged Morris

used to take his daily
constitutional here along the Thames

to visit his close friend
and fellow socialist,

the publisher Emery Walker.

Hello, are you Helen? I am, yes.
I'm Stephen, very nice to meet you.

Do come through.
Thank you, I'd love to.

'Helen Elletson
is the curator of Walker's house.

'Full of Morris's designs,
it's still a testament

'to the Arts and Crafts vision.'

And this is just as it was, is it?
It is, yes, just as it was

in the Walkers' day.

There's a real sense of peace
in here, isn't there?

It's incredible.

What's really striking as a visitor,
and what I really like,

is I expected a lot of it

to be behind glass and velvet rope
and "do not touch".

It's not like that at all.

It has more the feel of a private
home, a time capsule, actually.

It is a family home,
it was lived in until 1999,

unchanged since the Walker family
lived here.

They were great friends and
William Morris in fact said his day

wasn't complete without
a sight of Emery Walker.

That's a lovely tribute from one man
to another, isn't it? Definitely.

Yes, they used to meet
each other regularly

to talk about printing,
their shared interest in politics,

literature,
so they were very close together.

Morris's hand-printed designs,
with their roses,

briars and brambles,
celebrate an historic England,

a far cry from Beardsley's
exotic whiplash curves.

Morris was very much inspired
by the English countryside.

He wanted to go back to the way
things were done properly,

the traditional craft methods.

Because, going back
to his social beliefs,

he really felt that
if you had something beautiful

in your home it would
influence your quality of life.

Was he a bit of a champagne
socialist, as we might say today?

Or maybe it's a mead socialist,
harking back to medieval times?

In the sense that,
he was all about giving

beautiful quality products
to everybody,

but in practise it was only the
middle classes who could afford it?

There is that contradiction
with Morris

and he had the best people
working for him

and the best materials that
went into making the items.

The only way of bringing down
the price was to bring in

some form of mass production
and factories and machines,

and that was
what Morris was against.

He disliked the Industrial Revolution

and what it was doing
to people's lives.

Morris's vision was
a potent force in British design

at the turn of the century,
especially in the south of England.

When the work ethic and historicism
of Arts and Crafts met

the sensual curves of Art Nouveau,
something magical happened.

You won't find this extraordinary
chapel in art history tomes,

but it's a hidden gem
created by Mary Watts,

one of the unsung heroines
of British Art Nouveau design.

It's screened by these beech trees

and tucked in the crook
of a Surrey hill,

but you can just hear the motorway,
you'd never know it was here.

It's like a Victorian mausoleum

to the legendary, immemorial
figures of Albion.

You half-expect that bell
to start tolling at any minute,

and for these incredible,
half-true figures

to rise up and answer
the call of their nation.

You get a sense here in this
churchyard of the sleep of England,

the spirit of England.

Mary designed this extraordinary
chapel in 1895

when she moved here
from London with her husband,

the celebrated Victorian painter
George Frederick Watts,

who was 32 years her senior.

Mary had been his student.

She idolised him,
calling him "signor"

as a mark of respect
and deference.

For the first
years of their marriage

she lived in his shadow in the
society of London's great and good,

but when the couple built a house
just down the road from here

in Compton, Surrey,
she really came into her own.

Look at this lovely sun-dappled,
enchanted and enchanting frieze

on the front of the chapel.

Look at these very English-looking
maidens got up as angels

and it's a light slumber
as they preside over classic

Christian and British virtues
of courage and patience.

But everywhere the scene is enfolded

by this riot of Art Nouveau motifs.

They're enclosed in this thicket
of curvy, sinuous lines.

The peacock is displaying
his feathers,

a great chain mail behind him,
and there are these knotted vines

which veer off in all directions,
their arrow-headed points.

Mary was a member of something

called the Home Arts
and Industries Association

that was founded
on the Arts and Crafts principle

that anybody could learn
our ancient craft skills.

She held Thursday evening
terracotta classes

for the local villagers to make the
exterior decorations of the chapel,

finally completing them in 1898.

This is an early form of socialism,
if you like, set in clay,

because Mary Watts, although she
was the guiding artistic brain

behind this and did
a lot of the work herself,

was leading the common people, the
everyday folk of Compton in Surrey,

guiding their hands
through the process.

So what you see here
is an Arts and Crafts sensibility

but the languishing sensuality
of Art Nouveau.

And if you think the outside's
impressive, prepare yourself...

This is dumb-striking.
It's not what I expected at all.

It's a kind of fairy grotto
or secret cave,

as if some strange druid Celtic sect
had been walled in here

and these were their folk memories

that they were implanting
on the walls.

At the same time it's like a crazy
prog-rock version of heaven.

If you had all the early Genesis LPs

and your time was up,
this is your Nirvana, to mix bands.

Just this splendid explosion

of vines and drapes and fronds.

It's also got this great sensuality,
these writhing plants.

What could be more earthy?

It's a Christian mortuary chapel,
but there's something almost pagan

and pre-Christian about it.

I don't know whether
to light a candle

or cover myself in woad
and dance naked.

Hello, Rebecca, how are you?
I'm Stephen.

Do come in and join me.
It's chilly, isn't it? It is, yes.

Very nice to meet you.
Now, what have you got there?

I've got a photograph of my
great-grandmother. May I handle it?

You may, yes. This is my
great-grandmother, Alice Jacobs.

So that must be Mary?

That's Mary,
the designer of the chapel.

So this place has a special family
connection for you, doesn't it?

It does, yes. I've been
coming up here all my life.

And because it's so extraordinary
and a little bit secluded,

it could almost be as if
your great-grandmother

had just stepped away from here.
Do you have that sense?

Absolutely, yes. Definitely. It
just hasn't changed over the years.

You can come in here
and definitely feel

like you were here 100 years ago.

I love it.

And I actually think
it's quite life-affirming.

Which is odd, considering
it's a chapel of rest, isn't it?

Yes, but I don't think the Watts
saw death as a bad thing.

Watts painted pictures
of death as a young woman,

not as a scary old crone.

After years of hard work,

the chapel interior was finally
completed in 1904,

the year Signor GF Watts died.

Mary survived him
by another 34 years

and went on to establish
the Compton Pottery

with her local craftsmen.

The chapel was little known
in her time,

but with these terracotta pots,

Mary's unique version of Art Nouveau
reached a much wider audience.

They were admired
and sold to the masses

by an influential family friend,
Arthur Lasenby Liberty.

Liberty, who'd built a global empire
of department stores

at the end of the 19th Century,

was the key figure
in the mass production and spread

of this British version
of Art Nouveau.

By the beginning
of the 20th Century,

the very name Liberty had become
a byword for the style.

This is Liberty's department store
in the West End of London.

With its half-timbered
Tudor-bethan facade,

it's managed to persuade
tourists and shoppers alike

that it's quintessentially English
and that it's been here forever.

That's wrong on both counts.

Liberty was
a humble warehouse manager

when he opened his own shop in 1875
using a loan from his father.

With his canny knack
for spotting a cultural trend,

he became the art lover's retailer.

First an importer
of exotic decorative arts,

he soon began retailing the work
of British designers

under his own name.

The famous Liberty peacock print
is still popular today.

Selling silks, clothes, rugs,
jewellery and furniture,

Liberty's empire quickly expanded.

Anna, it feels as though
we're in an Eastern bazaar here.

We're not, though. Where are we?

We're in the Liberty
carpet department,

but, actually, that's
one of the departments

that very much reflects

Liberty's origins
as an oriental importer

when he first started in 1875.
Liberty was an entrepreneur.

He knew that he couldn't
stay in the same style.

He needed to grow his business,
and he was one of the early people

to sell products that we would
now describe as Art Nouveau.

So what do we have here
in your book of swatches?

Well, let's have a look and see.

Here we've got a very typical
Art Nouveau Liberty style.

Why is that Art Nouveau?

The stylised flowers.

There is that sort of...
You can't quite see it on here,

but I know that the repeat
has that sort of movement.

The famous wavy lines?
Yes, which is very Art Nouveau.

And it has that sort of feel
of hand block printing,

to look as if it's been done by hand.

We have another one,
which is quite weird, I think.

That's quite different,
at first sight, to the last one,

but this is still Art Nouveau
you'd say?

I think that's still Art Nouveau,

and it's still doing that
sort of shape.

These Art Nouveau fabrics with their
Arts and Crafts handmade look

became the pinnacle
of bohemian taste.

With Liberty, you could have
the Art Nouveau dress, the rug,

the chairs, even the garden pots.

Liberty actually got all
the top designers to design for him.

That, I think, shows what
a charming person he was

because he didn't credit them.

He paid them,
but he wouldn't have credited them,

because he sold his designs
as Liberty designs.

He was an entrepreneur.

That's a mixed blessing for them.

They're getting the pay,
but not the credit.

History has forgotten them, rather.

Well, I have no idea
who's designed this,

because, yes, that's gone,
that history.

Which is frustrating for you?

Very frustrating for me.
It must have been rather frustrating

for the person who designed it!

One of Liberty's most important
anonymous designers

was the painter and teacher
Archibald Knox.

'Patch Rogers, a guardian
of the Liberty legacy,

'has some Knox treasures
to show me.'

And you've brought somebody to look
after it? That's very serious.

Hello, I'm Stephen.
Very nice to meet you. Hello, sir.

How are you? Good.

'Knox grew
up on the Isle of Man,

'a tiny island in the Irish sea.'

Inspired by its ancient
Celtic crosses,

he designed Art Nouveau silver
and pewterware for Liberty

that was characterised
by a Celtic twist.

So what about this clock, Patch?

It's got a playful quality,
hasn't it?

It has. It's got that slightly
kind of animated look,

I think, and I think Knox was
drawing inspiration very much

from his Celtic origin.

Being on the Isle of Man, he would
have studied the Celtic crosses

in the cemeteries and churchyards

and was drawing inspiration from
that. I mean, it looks like a cross.

With his marketing nouse,

Liberty gave these designs
faux historical names -

Cymric silver and Tudric pewter.

Other designers worked
on the ranges,

but Liberty spotted Knox's
outstanding talent

and worked closely with him.

This is the earliest piece,
this is about 1899.

You have the sort
of cleanness of the silver

and then you have these applied
handles, in a very organic,

sinuous line, giving you that
very much Art Nouveau feel.

You also had the rivets, which was
a way of showing craftsmanship.

The silver pieces were handmade,
but not by Knox himself.

The pewter, designed by Knox
to mimic the handmade look,

were actually machine-made, a crime
against Arts and Crafts principles.

But with his lower production costs
and a big retail market,

Liberty was laughing
all the way to the bank.

How did he market them?
Through mail order, catalogues.

Obviously through the store,

but at the time,
you had stores in Paris

and other places as well. I think
there was one in Buenos Aires.

Right, so the mail order was the
internet of its day? Absolutely.

As the catalogue says,

"Designed and worked exclusively
by Liberty & Co."

Smart.

The ranges were so successful
that in Italy

Art Nouveau became
known as Stile Liberte.

Knox's career, not surprisingly,
took a different course.

He stayed friends with the Liberty
family, but he was a retiring man.

Never publicly credited
for his designs in his lifetime,

he ended his days unknown,
back on the Isle of Man,

painting watercolours.

His tombstone reads
"Archibald Knox, artist,

"humble servant of God
in the ministry of the beautiful."

I'll raise a pewter tankard to that.

Other retailers wanted to cash in
on Liberty's Art Nouveau success.

When Harrods was redesigned in 1902,

the owners hired
a fashionable young ceramicist

to give their meat hall
the new look.

Born in Barnsley
and trained as an architect,

William Neatby worked
with Doulton's tiles

and borrowed from the medieval
churches of his Northern childhood

to create this extraordinary frieze.

This is a kind of idyllic scene
of an Arcadian Albion

that never quite was,

a 19th-Century view
back to medieval England.

It's almost like the storyboard
for a panto

because they have
this 19th-century view

of how the medieval Briton dressed,

its doublet and hose,
nice dinky little pixie boots,

lovely hats, but they're
all spotless and pristine.

You have to love the whimsy
and nonsense of this.

In Neatby's panto of rural life, the
happy hunter always bags his duck.

Neatby's brilliance lay
in the graphic quality of his work

which complimented its surroundings
rather than competed with them.

Neatby spares us the horror
of Bambi's death scene

so we don't have that distasteful
thought in our heads as we stand

at the counter and pay for
the weekend joint.

Morris and Beardsley must be
chuckling in their graves.

Chicken anyone?

Many shopping arcades were thrown
up at the end of the 19th century

and Neatby's colourful ceramic
schemes became a popular

cutting-edge adornment
to the new retail experience,

as here in Norwich.

If you were part of Norfolk's
fashionable society then this arcade

was the place to see and be seen
and maybe splash the cash.

You wanted something to attest
to your taste, to your sense of

what was hip and happening so why
not pick up Art Nouveau fabrics,

perhaps a nice piece of
silverware from Liberty's

or maybe even get
the fireplace tiled

with Doulton's finest ceramics,
that was the thing to do.

Neatby was head of architectural
tiles at Doulton's ceramics

when its Art Nouveau ranges
were selling like hotcakes.

Most of them have been torn down
from fireplaces and doorways now,

but this arcade
preserves some of that legacy.

Today, Art Nouveau remains
highly collectable

and can secure huge
prices at auction.

I've come to central London to visit
auctioneers Christie's

who are putting on a sale.

There are more fancy goods
in these parts

than you can shake
a silver-topped cane at.

Small wonder the antiques trade,
as practised around here,

is at its most luxuriant,
its most subtle, its most refined.

Hello, Colin.

Good afternoon, Mr Smith.

Here's a fine range of Knox pieces

with their Celtic Art Nouveau
swirls.

And glass by the great French
designer Emile Galle.

But the Art Nouveau story
also played out in Scotland.

Silver Apples of the Moon
by the Glasgow-based artist

Margaret MacDonald
was created around 1912.

It's a example of what's been called
"Scotto-continental" Art Nouveau.

Catchy.

It's a lot that I personally
am passionately in love with.

If I could take it home I would,
I absolutely love it.

What can you tell me about the
Art Nouveau quality of this work?

Very much,
we have a fascination with nature

and the human relationship
with nature.

The woman metamorphoses from a berry
to a trout, to a woman,

then dissipates into nature again.

Also, there's a deep underlying
mystery about the work.

But also we have this
sense of the bejewelled maiden,

but actually, very much, she's
the femme fatale at the same time,

which you can pick up
in the slightly spooky hands.

Very spooky actually.

They're very skeletal and elongated

and just the positioning of them
is quite... Quite haunting.

Yes.

And there's a good reason why this
lot is raising pulses at Christie's.

MacDonald's work is actually rather
rare and the last time a piece

of hers came to sale,
it changed auction history.

The White Rose and
the Red Rose was estimated

at between £200-300,000.

But actually on the day the bidding
war was fierce and very exciting.

The sale room held its breath
and The White Rose And The Red Rose

finally realised 1.7 million,

which was very, very exciting...
That's extraordinary!

..and a world record.

During her lifetime,
Margaret MacDonald

was derided in Britain far more
than she was appreciated.

She worked in the shadow of
her more famous husband,

the Art Nouveau architect and
designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

They met
when they were both studying

at the old Glasgow School of Art
in the 1890s.

Along with her sister, Frances,
and her husband, Herbert MacNair,

they were known as "The Four".

This is the Hunterian Art Gallery
in Glasgow -

during a period of
intense collaboration in the 1890s,

The Four designed these posters.

The long, stylised figures

were inspired by Aubrey Beardsley
illustrations,

which they'd seen
in The Studio Magazine.

But the press
went in with their hatchets,

dubbing their strange new style
"the Spook School", and it was

the two women, Margaret and Frances,
who got most of the stick.

One pundit even wrote
a witty verse about them.

"Would you witness a conception of
the woman "really" new

"without the least deception
from the artist's point of view.

"See the Art School exhibition
in the Rue de Sauchiehall,

"They don't charge you for admission
for they haven't got the gall."

Margaret and Frances struggled to
get work but Charles and Herbert

had day jobs with
a local firm of architects.

Charles started work on the design
that would immortalise him -

the Glasgow School of Art,
as we know it today.

Mackintosh's masterpiece,

and the pinnacle of what
we now know as the Glasgow Style.

Mackintosh, quite rightly,
takes the sole credit for

this astonishing building,
but the groundwork for the style had

been laid during his collaboration
with The Four.

Here are those long Japanese forms
again -

and Art Nouveau decorative
flourishes,

but Mackintosh elevates them to the
towering scale of a Scottish castle.

This is such a theatrical space,

with the gallery
and the lighting effects.

Rennie Mackintosh was
a real architectural impresario.

He cast such a shadow

it would be difficult for anyone
to emerge from it.

And Margaret never did
quite manage to.

After their marriage in 1900,

her collaboration with Charles
intensified.

They moved to a smart new town house

which they redesigned
in the Glasgow Style.

Today you can find it
at the Hunterian Art Gallery,

just as if the couple
had got up and left it

to go out
and buy some oatcakes.

Now, remember the art school,
and look at this...

Walking through this intimate space

I feel like Goldilocks
when the three bears were out.

I keep expecting the Mackintoshes
to come back with their groceries.

The couple created this
as a home in 1906,

but also as a showcase
for their style.

Here's that long Japonesque shape
again in the chairs

and the writing desk, but now
there's a new motif -

the Celtic rose that's become

an emblem of the Glasgow Style
and of the city itself.

It's tremendously pristine,
isn't it? And calm and minimalist

and rather soothing,
as if perhaps a fresh drift of snow

was banked up
against the windows.

But this was Glasgow,

one of the great industrial centres
of the world.

Within earshot, factory hooters were
going off, steam locomotives

hammering to and fro, and on
the Clyde, the noise of the rivets

being punched into the steel hulls

of the ships
that dominated the world.

But you'd never guess
any of that was going on

from the sanatorium hush
of this space.

For them, it was a refuge,
a spotless, germ-free environment

in which they could be together and
celebrate their love

and, as lovers have done through
all eternity,

shut out the rest of the world,

almost hermetically in this case.

Margaret worked in metals
and fabrics

but I've come to talk to
Pamela Robertson,

curator of the gallery,
about the panel above the fireplace.

Isn't this the panel

that went for nearly
two million quid not so long ago?

Well, actually it's not.

It's not? Oh.
It looks very like it,

but the one that was at auction is
a duplicate version of this one.

This one came to the university
through Margaret MacDonald's family.

And then the other version,

which was owned by a great Viennese
collector, Fritz Waerndorfer,

and went through his family
and then out into the open market,

and that was sold at auction
for that world record price.

What about this panel?

I mean, first of all is this how
Margaret intended us to see it?

Largely, yes.

I mean it's astonishing, given that
it's made of gesso,

a sort of plaster-based medium
and is very fragile,

that we see it pretty much intact.

'During her lifetime, Mary's
innovative decorative panels

'made a huge impact on
continental Art Nouveau.'

The May Queen, exhibited in Vienna
in 1900, impressed

the golden boy of Viennese Art
Nouveau, Gustav Klimt himself.

He struck up a friendship with
the Mackintoshes,

and particularly with Margaret.

And the unlettered eye might say
this reminds me

a lot of Klimt, but actually
the artistic boot's on

the other foot there really,
isn't it?

I mean she influenced him,
is that right?

There was a bit of a dialogue
but I think you can certainly say

it started with her
and Mackintosh's work

when they both exhibited large-scale
decorative gesso friezes

in Vienna at the
Eighth Vienna Secession Exhibition.

And that notion of large friezes
facing each other across a room,

decorative, as this panel is,

certainly had a profound influence
on Klimt

and his later decorative work.

Two years after The May Queen,
Klimt created the Beethoven Frieze,

the first of his
own decorative panels.

Despite her connection to Klimt,

one of the giants of
20th century Art Nouveau,

Margaret MacDonald is
still not widely appreciated

in Britain outside the gilded world
of art galleries and auctions.

Speaking of which,
it's the day of the Christie's sale.

Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh,
Silver Apples Of The Moon.

I point out that this is on vellum,
and not paper.

Lot 68 will open at £30,000...

The couple never received

the recognition in Glasgow that
they won on the continent.

Charles' last commission in
his home town was in 1906.

They moved to London in 1914
and then to France

but their fortunes never looked up.

Margaret didn't work after 1921

and when she died her entire estate
was worth only £88.

Any more? At 85, still with you.

90,000.

95,000.

And selling at £95,000.

No more? 95,000.

It's yours.

How times have changed.

After Margaret MacDonald's death
in 1933, it seemed like the last

of British Art Nouveau had gone
with her,

but our story doesn't end there.

It was 1966, Beatles,
Carnaby Street, Flower Power.

So who do you suppose
the V&A dedicated

a prestigious exhibition to?

None other than the pioneer of
Art Nouveau in this country,

Aubrey Beardsley himself.

That's right. He was reinstated as
an icon of trendy, happening London.

Victorian Britain associated
Beardsley's sensuous curves

with degeneracy, but in the sexually
liberated '60s, they chimed

with the swirling psychedelia
and with the hippie movement.

Gerald Scarfe, himself
a child of those days, is today

the celebrated political
caricaturist of The Sunday Times.

He acknowledges his own debt
to Beardsley,

the once defamed pioneer of
Art Nouveau.

This one I did for The Sunday Times
of Stalin here.

I picked up really on Beardsley's
ability to have these very,

very fine lines and these dramatic
blocks of colour which, you know,

picks that drawing up.

But this, I hope, does have
some sort of impact because he was

part of my consciousness at that
time and people compared me

to Beardsley, so I was extra
interested and wondered why.

So that whack of black
I sort of learned from him.

That was, you know,
a good way to do it.

'When Beardsley was
the talk of the town again in 1967,

'Scarfe was commissioned
by the New Statesman to create

'a caricature of the iconoclastic
illustrator, and this is where

'viewers of a sensitive disposition
should please avert their eyes.'

Well, I mean, in
true caricaturist style,

I have exaggerated everything.

I have exaggerated Beardsley's
exaggeration.

And I think, you know, that may have
to be censored for the BBC.

But, I am pretty certain that will
have to be, that bit there.

There we are, darling Aubrey.

When Scarfe was in
his Beardsley phase in the 1960s,

a wealthy and influential couple,

on the crest of this new wave
of Art Nouveau,

started a collection of their own.

At the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich,

the team is preparing to put it
on show.

It was collected by Sir Colin
Anderson and Lady Anderson

over a period of years,
starting in the '60s,

which classically is
when a lot of the contemporary,

the great Art Nouveau collections
started coming together.

There was a big revival then,
of interest?

Huge revival. I always think it's
based on the Beatles' lyrics.

A lot of the Beatles' album covers
used Art Nouveau.

It was big revival
alongside pop art.

And at the beginning
of the 21st century,

the significance of the style is
being reassessed again.

The main point, I think, in a way,

is to rescue Art Nouveau
from the 19th century and show it

as being the first modern style, the
first attempt self-consciously by

designers in England and in Europe
to make something modern -

the modern age really begins
with these designers

and what they were up to.

It's hard to exaggerate now

just how bold and ambitious
Art Nouveau was in its heyday

just over a century ago,

when a more insular society was
wary of anything

too cosmopolitan, too foreign.

Art Nouveau was the first
truly international style,

bridging the old century
and the new.

These days, we understand that for
a design movement to be successful

it has to be global,
it has to be international,

and we recognise that "foreign" and
"new" aren't dirty words.

Next time,

I'm in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt
and a gang of rebellious artists

won their artistic freedom
and transformed the city in

an art revolution that was sealed
with a kiss.

As the 19th century drew to a close,

a radical new style
swept across Europe.

Victorian rectitude
was washed away

as bohemian artists unleashed a wave
of curling, sexual, sensuous art.

Smog-filled cities were splashed
with colour and vitality

as idealistic architects put nature
at the heart of the metropolis.

And nymph-like women
were adored, adorned

and finally allowed
to let their hair down.

This revolutionary new style
was called Art Nouveau.

It blossomed when ideas met artists,

in Paris, London,
Brussels and Glasgow.

But it was the idealistic artists
of Vienna

who had the most intense
and passionate affair

with the new style.

This city was home
to an amazing combination of art,

ambition and intellectualism.

Its cafes and salons were a ferment
of radical politics,

sexual deviancy
and blasphemous ideas,

and in this hothouse bloomed
some of the most beautiful works

of Art Nouveau
the world has ever seen.

This story of Viennese Art Nouveau

is a story of beauty
in an ugly time.

A city that discovered psychology

just as it was having
a nervous breakdown.

An artistic rise and fall.

And what was meant to be a prelude
turned out to be a finale.

MUSIC: "Waltz No 2"
by Dmitri Shostakovich

You know, every year millions of us
come here to Vienna

to look at Klimt's The Kiss.
It's an absolute tourist must.

Do you like that? Yes.
Yeah, it's good.

For most
on the Viennese tourist trail,

it's all kiss and no tell.

But there's so much more than Klimt.

There was the architect,
Otto Wagner,

whose decorative buildings
transformed the city.

There was the designer,
Josef Hoffmann,

whose exquisite geometric patterns
redefined Art Nouveau.

And there was an eccentric
supporting cast of renegade artists.

Together, they dared
to take on the establishment

and won their creative freedom.

The whole world flocks to Vienna
to see the fabulous Art Nouveau,

and what's more, everybody gets
to take a little bit home

with them too, in the shape of
a fridge magnet, a dish towel

or some souvenir like that.

Klimt Barbie, anyone?

No?

But to go home with a deeper
understanding of the art

and the city, we have to leave
the gift shop behind,

and ask ourselves,
"Who were these eclectic artists?

"What caused an old European city
to embrace a radical new style?"

Well, the story begins with
a bizarre catalyst in the 1880s

When a terrible tragedy,

a right royal scandal,

forced the city to re-examine
its precious Viennese values.

Let me take you back to
the days of Old Vienna.

Once upon a time...

January 1899, to be precise...

Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to
the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire,

went for a walk in these woods
with his lover.

They never came back.

It was complicated.
His lover wasn't his wife.

Rudolf was in an arranged
aristocratic marriage but unhappy.

No, she was the teenage Baroness,
Marie Vetsera,

who adored her Prince.

But their affair ended in horror.

He took out a gun
and murdered his mistress

before turning the weapon
on himself.

GUNSHOT

The death of the Crown Prince
triggered a cultural crisis.

Vienna was shocked to its very core.

Thinkers and artists,
like the designer Josef Hoffmann,

architect Otto Wagner and painter
Koloman Moser, met in the cafes

and bars and wondered
what had happened

to the city's moral compass.

It was a seismic scandal
in a turbulent time.

And the shockwaves made
the traditional Viennese values

look increasingly fragile
and old-fashioned.

There was a very stifling
conventionality,

a very, very stifling official
culture, this imperial rigidity.

The picture of the Emperor
everywhere, overlooking every room.

But at the same time, you know,
there were...

People simply exercised
their life choices,

but that had to be away
from what is admitted publicly.

You were not supposed to
touch your wife in public,

but you could
have a lover somewhere

installed in a little apartment,
as long as it didn't become public.

So there was a sort of
institutionalised hypocrisy.

The imperial identity
was very important,

but it was really a paste-on,
it was a facade, if you want.

You had to have the official facade
that was not questioned,

and what you did behind it was your
own business. It was up to you.

Behind the facades,
the city was daring

to question
its long-held assumptions.

Shouldn't Viennese art
be celebrating sensuality,

rather than denying it?

Should its artists not be
more honest about psychology,

sex and death?

After all,
in other European capitals,

artists were daring
to try something new.

La Belle Epoque-era Paris

was in the thrall of what
they called l'Art Nouveau.

In Glasgow,
Charles Rennie Mackintosh

was designing his inspirational
School Of Art.

And with new printing presses
rolling,

influential art journals
from across the continent

made their way back to the banks
of the Blue Danube.

Viennese artists were desperate
to waltz to a new beat.

C'mon people, get with
the programme. It's the 1890s.

The age of mass rail travel,

popular printing presses
and international exhibitions.

Do you come here often?
You're a lovely mover.

An idea could take off in Europe

and sweep through the continent
in literally months.

In many ways, Vienna's artists
were the last to arrive

at the Art Nouveau Ball.

Because there was one seemingly
insurmountable hurdle...

The all-powerful committee of the
Association of Austrian Artists.

Or as it was known locally,
Das Kunstlerhaus.

Such was the stranglehold
of the Kunstlerhaus over Vienna

in those days, that if you were
an artist,

you couldn't get your stuff
into an official exhibition

without their explicit say-so.

The Kunstlerhaus curated all
the major art shows in the city,

and always chose ceiling-to-floor
classic historic art

by Austrian artists.

Safe. Traditional.

Boring!

There was no room for experiments
and new styles were rejected.

In the coffee houses,
revolting young artists fumed

at the lack of freedom, and vowed to
storm the Conservative Kunstlerhaus.

This is where Art Nouveau was born
in Vienna, in April, 1897.

A group of harrumphing young artists
turned up here at the Kunstlerhaus.

And they said,
"We've had enough of your boring,

"stultifying establishment.
We're seceding from it."

And so begat the Secession.

It was a pivotal moment
for Viennese art.

The Secession would
change everything.

This famous photo shows
some of the original Secessionists.

They include Emil Orlik,

a graphic illustrator who'd worked
for the prestigious Pan magazine.

Carl Moll, who at this point
was an idealistic painter,

but would end up a fervent Nazi,

and Maximilian Kurzweil,

a painter who would later succumb to
the same fate as the Crown Prince,

when he shot his lover
and then himself.

They may have looked confident.

The picture makes them look like
some obscure, cool indie band.

But the Secession was a huge risk.

Without the Kunstlerhaus,
the Secessionists had nowhere

to exhibit, no commissions,

and risked artistic ridicule.

They desperately needed
a credible figurehead,

so they approached the rising star
of Viennese art

and asked him to act
as their president.

Gustav Klimt became the best known,

the most celebrated
painter in Art Nouveau,

but he began life as just another
late classic historical artist.

The young Klimt began painting
in the 1880s,

initially churning out
the sort of establishment art

cherished by the great and the good.

Like this ceiling panel
in the Burgtheater.

And by the way, check out the figure
towards the back,

in the beard and the ruff,

looking slightly off.

That's a rare self-portrait
of the young Gustav Klimt.

But in 1892, Klimt was traumatised

by the death of his beloved
brother and of his father.

He rejected conservative ideas
and began to explore a new style.

A couple of years later, he was
commissioned by Vienna University

to paint four inspiring
ceiling panels.

Sadly the original paintings
were destroyed by the Nazis,

and we're left with these
black and white copies.

But you can still see how radically
Klimt's style was changing,

infused with sex, death and
the European spirit of Art Nouveau.

The University hated them,
but Klimt didn't care.

He was up for the fight,

and agreed to become
president of the Secessionists.

In many ways,
Klimt was an odd choice.

He was notoriously taciturn,

not a man you'd turn to
to voice an opinion in public.

And he was making
a very comfortable living

with commissions from the Viennese
establishment and the state.

But this was different. This was
about art. It was about freedom.

And so taking a huge
professional and personal gamble,

he simply turned his back
on the establishment

and became
president of the Secessionists.

One of the first things
Klimt and the gang did

was to publish
their very own art journal.

It gave them a platform to air
their Secessionist principles,

their liberal views

and their breathtaking graphic work.

They called it Ver Sacrum.

Ver Sacrum - sacred spring.
It really means fountain of youth,

with all the connotations
of energy, youth,

vitality and sexuality
that that expresses.

And there's something of that
in the cover plate.

And what we have here
is a young plant,

bursting out of the pot
it's kept in.

And it's a way of saying, I suppose
quite a polite way of saying,

"Sod you lot.
We're doing our own thing from now,

"we won't be confined by what's gone
before and by what you're used to."

This is the closest thing
that the Secession,

the Viennese Art Nouveau,
had to a manifesto.

And the fact that the artists
and writers were donating their work

for nothing is all part
of the spirit of Ver Sacrum.

Art is what counts,
not bourgeois values like money.

Not putting things in the bank,
but things for eternity,

things of ethereal spiritual value.

And basically they were attracting
contributions

from the outstanding artists
and writers of the time,

and of course from Klimt,
a mainstay of Ver Sacrum.

And in the first ever edition,
they declared...

"We want to bring art
from abroad to Vienna,

"not for the sake of artists,
intellectuals and collectors alone,

"but to educate the great mass
of the people

"who are receptive to art.

"And for this we turn to you without
distinction of status or wealth.

"We do not recognise any distinction
between higher art and low art,

"between art of the rich
and art for the poor.

"Art is the property of everyone."

Some of the people who contributed

were still recognisably
in the historical tradition,

but there's no doubt that they were
all moving towards the Art Nouveau,

as we now understand it.

Except they didn't call it that.

Instead they co-opted a German word,
Jugendstil, meaning "youth style".

Jugendstil was Vienna's
unique contribution

to European Art Nouveau.

There were influences from Japan,
from France,

disparate elements
built upon one another.

Like all European Art Nouveau,
Jugendstil was sexual.

Dare I say it, even a little bit
playful and camp.

There was no hierarchy.

Craft and graphic art
were as important

as the painters and sculptors.

And in Vienna,

the curves owed as much
to geometry as they did to botany.

But ultimately there were
no rules or diktats,

as the Secession was founded on
the principles of artistic freedom.

I wanted to show you this special
one painting by Wilhelm Bernatzik.

He's one of the founding members.

So whilst works by artists
like Wilhelm Bernatzik

might look quite traditional
to the modern eye,

the dissent is in the detail.

And this painting represents

one aspect which was very important
to the Secessionists.

It was a new beginning in art,

and what they wanted to express
is inner feelings

which have been suppressed
very much.

So it's not a naturalistic depiction

of things which we can find
in the landscape,

but it's about the inner feeling
which comes out

when you contemplate this scene.

What kind of things would you say
the Secessionists had in common?

What united all the Secessionists
was the wish to educate the public.

What they wanted is to elevate
taste, elegance, so to say,

so they wanted to bring
in international art.

They tried to confront Austrian art
with international art,

which up to that point
hadn't been seen very much.

As Art Nouveau arrived
from across the continent,

artists like Koloman Moser,
who'd spent years debating

the merits of the style
with his fellow cafe conspirators,

finally had the chance to create
a distinctive Viennese version.

This painting over here,
by Kolo Moser...

And he was the multi-talent
of the Secession.

As you know,
he was a designer of furniture.

He was one of the greatest
graphic designers of the time.

He was one of the major figures
of Ver Sacrum, of the magazine.

And he was a painter.
Many of his paintings

in profile or very frontal,
very simple.

And this reduction is quite
a typical aspect of the Secession.

Another one would be
the square format,

the thin-framed...
aspects of elegance

which were important
to the Secessionists.

What else shall we see?

Let's go over to there. Why not?

Freed from a strict diet
of Austrian historic painting,

the Secessionists eagerly embraced
Art Nouveau.

They experimented with styles,
surface and symbolism

and they explored sexuality,
mortality and human frailty.

Jugendstil was a new art
for a new era.

And when the Secessionists
founded their new movement,

it was so important to them

that they could speak
with different voices.

And that's why you really have
a variety of expressions

in the first years of the Secession.

So, in this regard,
it was really a break

with things that had gone on before.

In 1898, just a year after
they'd seceded,

the artistic rebels, with the help
of a few wealthy patrons,

built a home for the Secession.

And the building was as radical

as the art
it was created to contain.

Significantly, the Secession
building is away from

grandiose establishment buildings
on Vienna's main Ringstrasse.

On the roof, there's a dome

decorated with
3,000 gold-plated laurel leaves.

But there are no windows
looking onto the street.

It's as if the gallery
invites you to step inside.

To look deeper.
To be introspective.

And maybe that's no surprise,
because the architect Joseph Olbrich

said he wanted to
erect a temple of art,

which would offer the art lover
a quiet, elegant place of refuge.

Inside, there was another shock
for visitors.

The Secession was one of the first
white cube gallery spaces,

a sparse layout that in 1898
was a dazzlingly new

and daringly modern idea.

To this day, the gallery is still
devoted to contemporary art.

But you can get a flavour of the
original Secession in the basement,

where Klimt's 1902 masterpiece

the Beethoven Frieze
is on permanent display.

The magnificent Beethoven Frieze is
meant to be read from left to right.

So in the first panel,
these lovely, leggy, ethereal ladies

represent the longing
for true happiness.

And you can see how far
Klimt's come from historicism.

Look at how delicate and sensuous
these women are.

The mood changes
a little further along.

These unclothed figures are
the sufferings of weak humanity

and they're petitioning the knight
in his wonderful golden chain mail,

his armour,
to take on their struggle.

But that's bad news
for him, in a way,

because he has to have
a bout with Typhus,

that King Kong figure in the corner.

And his seconds, if you like,
over there are the three gorgons...

Sickness, Madness and Death.

Typhus is also attended

by Licentiousness, Wantonness,
Intemperance.

What hope is there for us mortals

in this wretched, lousy world
Klimt is suggesting?

Well, here's a clue.
This beautiful woman in gold,

plucking at her lyre,
represents happiness through poetry.

And this is what he's building up to
with his closing finale here.

Our best hope of comfort
and fulfilment on this mortal coil

is in the arts.

Look at these beautiful women.
The gold, the chorus of angels.

And the finest fulfilment
of the arts yet known,

he's almost suggesting,

is the work of Beethoven
and the celestial Ode To Joy.

On the opening night,

Mahler put on a special rendition
of Ode To Joy,

and I can thoroughly recommend
a blast of the old LVB

as you're taking in the frieze.

It really starts to make sense.
Trust me.

MUSIC: "Ode To Joy" by Beethoven

Perhaps most tellingly,

the iconic building was emblazoned
with the most cherished belief

of the whole Secessionist project.

Above the door, in big gold letters,

it reads, "Der Zeit ihre Kunst.
Der Kunst ihre Freiheit,"

which of course translates as...

"To the age, its art.
To the art, its freedom."

So what's that all about, then?

Is it just a load of old guff?

"To the age, its art."

Well, here the young ones,
the Jugendstil, are saying,

"Move over, Daddio.
You've had your time.

"We refuse to be hidebound
by what's gone before."

"To the art, its freedom,"
develops that thought.

It says, "We reserve the right
to pick and choose

"from a smorgasbord of ideas,
new and old.

"This is a new art
for a new century."

Through the pages of Ver Sacrum

and the frequent
Secessionist exhibitions,

Viennese Jugendstil
grew in confidence.

Works by Klimt, Koloman Moser
and Carl Moll

were widely admired and celebrated.

But not everyone was delighted.

When Archduke Franz Ferdinand
visited the Secession exhibition,

he said, "Those rascals should have
every bone in their body broken."

But the Jugendstil kids
couldn't care less.

They were brash, confident
young Viennese artists,

and if the establishment
hated the YVAs,

that only proved
they were onto something.

Their first show pulled in
getting on for 60,000 people.

No wonder they were so bold.

The Viennese art revolution
coincided with

a social revolution in the city.

The population of Vienna
doubled between 1870 and 1900

and as the city expanded,

it gave the architects a chance
to get in on the Jugendstil action.

The most celebrated of them
in the city was Otto Wagner.

With years of experience, ol' Otto
was trusted by the authorities.

But he was also a teacher,
with a radical side to him.

His students included architects
like Josef Hoffmann,

and the man who designed
the Secessionist building,

Joseph Olbrich.

And they seemed to inspire him
as much as he inspired them.

Otto Wagner was known as
the Secessionists' Secessionist,

and when you look at his buildings,
you can see why.

Look at the design, that floral
motif, the ornament of it.

It could almost be a painting
by Klimt of a woman's dress.

The new art and new city
came together

when Otto Wagner designed
the spectacular stations

of the Viennese underground,

including a stop
built for the Emperor himself.

One admirer at the time
said Wagner's stations

were the highpoint of
"function and poetry,

"constructions and decoration."

Secessionist architecture,

with its modern geometric patterns,
was changing the face of Vienna.

But the artists and architects

weren't content
with superficial differences.

After all, they didn't want to
just replace the old facade

with a shiny new facade.

They wanted deeper change.

One word, and it's very good word,
you're going to love it,

sums up the entire
Secession aesthetic.

Are you ready?

Gesamtkunstwerk. Bless you.

It's a Wagnerian concept,
and it means "a total work of art".

Because it wasn't enough to gaze
at Klimt's beautiful paintings.

It wasn't enough to pop into
the Secession exhibitions.

It wasn't even enough
to live in a house

decorated and designed
by Otto Wagner.

No, for the true
Jugendstil experience,

you had to live a life immersed,

surrounded and improved by art.

You needed to live the life
Gesamtkunstwerk.

And that meant infusing your life
with the spirit of the Secession,

from the Beethoven Frieze
to the kitchen cupboard.

Christian, this looks
to my untutored eye

to be a fairly humdrum sort of item.
Why have we stopped here?

At the time it was really
revolutionary for people.

We have artist, which is
Josef Hoffmann, an architect,

who bothers to design a piece of
furniture for a second-class room,

which is the kitchen.

For us today, the kitchen has become
the most expensive room

of the apartment.
But then, no visitor would see.

Also, from a formal aspect,

it was revolutionary, because it has
no traditional decoration on it,

which would be carving or moulding.

So the function and the construction

produces the aesthetics
of the cabinet.

It's all about very subtle details.

Why to waste them
on a kitchen cupboard?

Well, why did they waste them
on a kitchen cupboard?

That's the basic idea
of the arts and crafts movement,

to give the people who were most
affected by the negative aspects

of the industrial revolution
a voice and a beautiful surrounding.

The cabinet was made
by the Wiener Werkstatte,

a collection of Vienna's finest
artists, artisans and craftsmen.

The Wiener Werkstatte - Vienna
Workshop - was founded in 1903

by two of
the original Secessionists.

The always impeccably dressed Josef
Hoffmann, an architect and designer

who began with big,
idealistic ideas

about kitchen cabinets
improving the lives of servants,

and his friend, Koloman Moser,
the great all-rounder

who painted for the Secession
and was instrumental in Ver Sacrum.

They wanted to get away from curvy,
botanically inspired Art Nouveau,

towards a distinctive
new geometric Viennese aesthetic.

In fact, Hoffmann's obsession
with grid-like patterns earned him

the perhaps uncool nickname
Little Square Hoffmann.

Together, Hoffmann and Moser
ran the Wiener Werkstatte,

infusing Jugendstil principles
into the furnishings and objects

of everyday life.

Now, this looks very different.

Can you tell me about this?

OK.
Indeed it is extremely different,

and it marks a period where all
the social idealism is gone,

and it's all about the artist
wanting to realise

his creative idea.

They could have carved this,
you know?

Or they could have made
the inlay out of flowers.

But they chose this very simple band.

And it's about honesty, simplicity.

It didn't matter
if the art was old or new.

They wanted artistic
expression again.

The Werkstatte was proud
of its perfectionism, declaring,

"Better to work ten days
on one product

"than to manufacture ten products
in one day."

Despite Hoffmann's early democratic
intentions, it soon became clear

that it was only the very rich
and the very adventurous

who could afford the Werkstatte's
stamp of perfection.

This egg cup
and the pepper caster...

one of the most
fantastic objects

the Wiener Werkstatte
ever produced.

Really?

Today, again, we take them
for granted,

this individuality of the shape,

but for people at the time,
they must have looked like aliens.

It looks like a flying saucer,
this egg cup,

and no ornamentation on it,
just the cut-out squares.

And this was
an extremely expensive luxury item.

If you bought this, you were
really making a statement

about yourself, or trying to,
is that right?

Yes.

You tried to tell society
that you exist, and that...

It's like what's happening
in New York today still,

that... You ask an interior
decorator to do your apartment,

to make an impact on society,
that you count.

But even for the Viennese
middle class desperate to show off,

exquisite Art Nouveau furnishings
were prohibitively expensive.

Fortunately for
the Wiener Werkstatte,

they had caught the eye
of a financier who had invested

in the Viennese railways,

a man called Adolphe Stoclet.

As a cultured, liberal European,

Stoclet was excited
by Vienna's Art Nouveau.

And he was also very...

very...rich.

When his father died,
Stoclet inherited a fortune.

He and his wife were already
keen on the Secession.

Here was a chance for them
to indulge their passion.

In 1904, they commissioned
Josef Hoffmann

to build them their dream house.

It would be themed and designed
right down to the egg cups.

That's right, it was going to be
a Gesamtkunstwerk.

For the Stoclets,
it was the opportunity

to show off their taste
and their modernity.

Viennese artists
couldn't believe their luck.

Here was a chance to indulge their
wildest excesses, money no object.

It was to be the finest Art Nouveau
building in all of...

TRAIN HORN BLARES

..Brussels.

Because Mr and Mrs Stoclet's dream
location, location, location

was in fact 570 miles from Vienna.

Believe it or not, Brussels was
one of the most exciting

artistic cities
of the fin de siecle.

They were creating the first
Art Nouveau buildings here in 1893,

four years before the Viennese
even plucked up the courage

to start their own Secession.

And just sauntering
through the city,

you see architectural gems
on every corner.

Brussels' Art Nouveau star

was Victor Horta,
whose innovate architecture

pioneered the use of organic curls
and swirls.

Horta designed houses
for nouveau riche Belgians,

with seaweed-like wrought iron.

And he was one of the first
architects to integrate

all-new electric light
into his interior stylings.

This is Victor Horta's house.
It's now a museum to the old boy.

Built in 1898, it's resplendent,
as you see, with light, nature,

organic shapes.

If the Viennese architects
were going to come up with

anything as good as this,
right here in Brussels,

it would be like
the toughest away game imaginable.

The Stoclet Palais
would have to be a masterpiece.

Work began on the Stoclet Palais
in 1905.

Every detail had to be honed,
perfected.

This exhibition shows
the extensive preparatory work,

showcasing the early plans
and sketches.

Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann
designed the building,

and the artists
of the Wiener Werkstatte

furnished the interiors.

For an opulent finishing touch,

the great star of Vienna's
art scene, Klimt himself,

created a huge centrepiece frieze.

It took five long years to complete.

There was to be a unity of style
to every aspect of the building.

It would be a Viennese masterpiece
in the heart of Brussels.

So what's the old pile
like on the inside?

Does that interior
sing like a symphony?

Is that Klimt frieze
all it's cracked up to be?

Sadly, for the public,
for historians,

and yes, even for arts
documentaries,

the house and its contents
are out of bounds,

tied up in a long-running
legal dispute

involving Stoclet's descendants.

So there's nothing else for it,
is there?

But to peek over the fence.

It's the great Miss Havisham
of European architecture,

still dressed up in its finery,
but withdrawn from the world.

The house, garden,
interiors and furnishings

were all conceived
as an architectural whole.

Every detail. The carpet, wallpaper,
glass, silverware, lighting,

furniture and fittings,
was designed and created in Vienna.

The dining room had
Hoffmann silver cutlery, crockery

and 24 matching chairs
covered in reindeer skin.

Even the children's playroom

had a Wiener Werkstatte-designed
frieze on the wall.

Vienna's finest architect,
finest craftsman and finest artist

had finally created
the ultimate Gesamtkunstwerk.

But to this day,
the secrets of the Stoclet Palais

remain locked away.

The most famous
painting in Austria,

the jewel
in Vienna's Art Nouveau crown,

the work which is synonymous
with Gustav Klimt,

was painted in 1908.

It's one of those rare iconic works
of art that needs no introduction.

First of all, I have to say
it's not The Kiss.

When you look at the painting,
you will see it's not The Kiss.

They're lovers.

So, also Klimt named
the painting Lovers.

This is something special.

It's not The Kiss,
it's definitely the moment before.

So this is very important to know.

Whatever you call
Klimt's masterpiece,

standing in front of the original
is an overwhelming experience.

No wonder it's held up as the
pinnacle of Viennese Art Nouveau.

Decorative and fine arts
are intertwined here,

with layers of geometric patterns,

ornamentation and the use
of Klimt's favourite material...

gold.

So the father was a goldsmith,

and Klimt was used to working
with gold.

You can have the polished gold,
you can work with leaf gold,

whatever it is, you know, and with
a shiny one, with not so shiny.

Because he had the knowledge about
the material, so he used it, yeah?

So he was the only one who did it,
more than also the pre-Raphaelites,

because the pre-Raphaelites,
they used the gold as well.

But only
in connection with saints, yeah?

But Klimt changed it completely.

Klimt worked with the idea
of the icon. When you're entering

a church, let's say in Russia
or in Greece, with a lot of icons,

you see those metallic pieces there.

But painted is only
the face and the hands.

And this is what Gustav Klimt
wanted to show, you know.

He's focusing everything
on the faces and on the hands.

And that's it. And the rest is gold,
and this makes it so famous,

and when the tourists... The moment
when they're entering the door here,

it's still. It's quiet,
and they're overwhelmed.

It's definitely a kind of
Klimt Church, which we have here.

What's it like seeing
this painting every day,

as you do,
in your professional capacity?

Can you still see it?

Has it become
like the furniture for you?

Sometimes I really hate
the painting... Do you?

..because you can see it everywhere,
on the umbrella, everywhere,

and I always feel as though

there's something in the painting
which I don't know,

there is another secret which I
didn't realise, and I have to work.

It's always a confrontation
between me and the painting.

Every day I have
these confrontations.

Klimt almost never explained
his paintings.

He lived with his mother
and his sister.

He rarely courted the limelight,
and never married.

But although you might not take
ol' Klimt for a lothario,

oh, bless him, the sensuality
and brazen sexuality of his work

set tongues a-wagging.

Klimt hardly ever painted men.

And when he did,
their faces were averted.

He had countless lovers,
and in the coffee shops of Vienna,

they whispered about the young girls
flitting through his studio.

Of course Art Nouveau had a thing
about bare girls and nymphs,

but Klimt was obsessed
with the female form.

Some of his paintings and etchings
were pure Viennese Viagra

for a certain class
of gentleman collector.

In fact, in 1901,
the Public Prosecutor of Vienna

ordered the latest edition
of Ver Sacrum to be seized

and all copies found, destroyed.

Fortunately,
the court rejected the call

to destroy Klimt's erotic sketches,

and I've come to the storerooms
of the Leopold museum

to look under their mattress.

I mean, to access some of Klimt's
rarely displayed material.

Tell me about this one, Maria.

I'm sure this is one of those
drawings which were created

after Klimt has made love to her,

because her expression
is after orgasm.

And this was unusual

in that he's celebrating
the female sexuality here?

Yes, and that's what was perhaps
shocking for his contemporaries.

Female sexuality was a taboo

and to show a face of a woman

in this...very happy...

circumstances. Orgasmic.

Orgasmic, of course, you say it,
was not usual to see in a picture.

The spontaneous expression
here in the drawing,

you never find in the same way
in the paintings.

One of the few pronouncements
that Klimt did make

was that "all art is erotic".

He's articulating one of
the core beliefs of Art Nouveau,

a movement
that celebrated sensuality.

And it's clear that Klimt
idolised women,

both sexually and aesthetically.

But despite
the flattering treatment,

it sometimes seems that the women
in his work are there

as part of the artist's
own decorative scheme,

rather than as portraits
of living, breathing individuals.

And of course,
from a feminist point of view,

this is terrible, because he had
a very male view on these girls,

and he didn't respect
their individuality.

So, for the feminists,
he is a terrible guy.

But on the other hand,
he is a great artist,

and I think you cannot blame him
personally for this attitude,

because it was so typical
for the time and for the atmosphere

in which he lived,
and in which he created his art.

But with all this wanton sexuality,

all these richly decorated portraits
of smouldering society women,

these opulent ornamental buildings

stuffed with luxurious chairs
and pepper pots,

the sheer decadence of Art Nouveau
made it ripe for criticism.

And it was no longer just
idiotic aristocrats

whinging on
about traditionalism.

The era of mass production
was well under way

and urban life
grew ever more anxious.

Art Nouveau sceptics were emerging.

And none more so than this man,
the eccentric Adolf Loos.

Loos was a vehement
opponent of the Secession.

He spent three years
in the United States,

and came back here to Vienna

enthralled by their much more
practical approach to design.

He was a deep thinker and a man
with a clever turn of phrase.

Herr Loos wrote essays
on every aspect of life.

But his most influential writing
was on architecture.

In Ornament And Crime,

he dismissed the Secessionists' idea
of the craftsman as an artist,

and he declared
ornamentation "degenerate".

In 1909, he finally got the chance

to put these theories into practise,
when he won a commission

in the historic heart of Vienna.

Get a load of this place. This is
the Emperor's Hofburg Palace.

And that's only the back door.

One day a couple of tailors
approached Adolf Loos and said,

"Can you build us a new shop front?
It's got to be opposite the palace."

What would he come up with?

How would he satisfy
the curiosity of the Viennese

for architecture with attitude?

What would the man deliver?

Da-na!

Please yourselves.

At first glance,

you could be forgiven for wondering
what all the fuss was about.

But believe me, when it was
first revealed in 1910,

the Looshaus shocked Vienna.

There was no traditional ornaments,

no nude muscular heroes, no cherubs,

but nor were there florid
Art Nouveau patterns,

gold, curling metal.

To Viennese eyes,
the building was naked.

One wag dubbed it
the house without eyebrows!

That's probably funnier in German.

Inside, the public areas
of the shop combined mahogany,

oak, brass and mirrors
to stunning effect,

while the work areas
were more Spartan.

Loos dismissed the idea
of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Real people didn't need a life
surrounded by art, he said.

What they needed were buildings

that were primarily functional
and simple,

and any superfluous decoration
was an old fashioned idea.

Loos thought it was as savage
as getting a tattoo.

His definition of
modern architecture

was influential and compelling.

Even the Secessionists'
star architect seemed to concur.

Otto Wagner, who originally
designed buildings like this,

ended up producing buildings
like this one.

The era of decoration
was well and truly over.

In the fine arts too,
Art Nouveau was beginning to age.

Nothing illustrates this better
than the emergence in 1909

of the enfant terrible
of Viennese art, Egon Schiele.

At first, Schiele seemed destined

to be the next big thing
in Art Nouveau.

So, Frank, what are
we going to see first?

What have you got up your sleeve?

Well, it's quite
an interesting picture, really,

cos although I would be the last
to say it's a GOOD painting,

it's a very young Schiele.
He was 18 when he did it.

It's called Stylised Flowers.

I don't see that you can describe
this picture at all

without mentioning
Art Nouveau or Jugendstil.

He has turned everything
into a decorative device.

It's ornamental.

But what's really interesting
about it, it seems to me,

is the evidence that it provides

of his interest
in what Klimt was doing.

First of all, you've got
a square format,

of which Klimt himself was so fond.

Secondly, we've got that
central position in the painting.

But then there's the final clincher,
if you like,

which is the use of gold and silver,

actually IN the surface
of the paint,

which of course is taken directly
from those paintings by Klimt.

What was
their relationship like, Frank?

Well, Schiele would very much
have liked it to be

a kind of father/son relationship,
but it was never that.

Klimt obviously liked Schiele.

He admired to an extent
what Schiele was doing.

He helped Schiele
early in his career.

Schiele, on the other hand,
absolutely ADORED Klimt.

So, Frank, is it the case
with Schiele then,

that he's got all these influences
from Klimt,

there's an Art Nouveau period,

but then he's taking art
onwards in some way?

Very much so.

And I suggest we look at
a painting now,

which will demonstrate that
in maybe even a shocking way.

Really, Frank?
Well, we're both consenting adults.

Let's have a look.

Lovemaking. Wow, that is quite
full on, isn't it? It is.

You wouldn't know that was
the same bloke.

No.

And that, of course,
is a self-portrait. Really?

The whole point about this really is

that he makes himself
look like a corpse

and she looks like one
of these rubber dolls that you...

..well, not exactly rubber.
But you know what I'm trying to say.

I have heard of them. Yes. Yes.

He's dealing now with death,
with melancholy,

with extremes of all sorts.

And he's also, of course,
consciously dealing

with what might be regarded
as an impossible subject.

He's using his work
to express something

which is beyond what you can see.

What you can see is merely,
as it were, the veil

which is cast in front
of the true message of the picture.

Schiele is now, particularly
in a painting like this,

concerned with almost everything
BUT the surface.

Frank, where did Schiele's
new direction

and everything else that
was happening associated with him,

where did that leave Art Nouveau?

Was it a bit old hat by now?

It was just losing relevance

and losing importance.

And this sort of thing
was becoming...

..I won't say fashionable

because it never became fashionable
in the same way,

but it was doing
all the interesting new things

which Art Nouveau had
long since ceased to do.

It was the end for beauty,

for ornament, for decadence.

Art Nouveau suddenly felt archaic,

as egotistic Egon
was happy to point out.

It's called The Hermits,
it's dated 1912.

It shows Schiele,

finally out
of the Art Nouveau Jugendstil mould.

There's no going back from this
point? Oh, no. No going back.

It looks as though
Schiele is supporting

the weight of Klimt
on his shoulders.

Klimt looks almost dead.

And I think he's trying
to tell us something.

And what's he trying to tell us?

He's in charge now? Yeah, yeah.

There's poor old Klimt,
on whom he used to rely,

who's now relying on him.

It's quite a bold, even arrogant,
thing to be saying or painting?

It certainly is, but Schiele was,
in terms of modernism,

that much further ahead
than Klimt was.

I do see Klimt as being, as it were,

the end of something rather
than the beginning of something.

He belongs as much to the
19th century as to the 20th century.

There's nowhere else really
for him to go.

The work of Schiele and Loos

heralded the end
for Viennese Art Nouveau.

By 1918, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt
and Koloman Moser were all dead,

and the Austro-Hungarian empire
had ceased to exist.

There's an argument
that the Art Nouveau

that flourished
on the banks of the Danube here

wasn't a new wave, so much
as the last eddies of the old.

True, they banged on
about being young.

They were the Jugendstil, remember.

And they dealt with trendy things
like sex and psychology.

But the whole design movement here

remained essentially the plaything
of the rich and the well-to-do,

and they self-consciously
turned their backs

on the new means of production -
industrial methods.

After the stinging criticisms
of Loos,

the idea of paying a craftsman
to spend ten days

making you an egg cup or a stool
seemed frankly laughable.

With its decadence, decoration
and luxurious prices,

Art Nouveau is as much

the last artistic flourish
of the 19th century

as it is the first
of the 20th century.

Perhaps it's no surprise
that a stylistic movement

founded around the idea of the new
never fully matured.

The style had bloomed in cities

like Vienna, Paris, Brussels,
Glasgow, Prague, Barcelona,

and was built around a myriad of
modern ideas about what art was for.

But just a decade or so
after its spectacular rise,

it died out
throughout the continent.

With the advent
of the First World War,

Art Nouveau's international style
was deemed unpatriotic, foreign,

and disowned by both sides
of the conflict.

And by the 1920s,
Adolf Loos's radical ideas

inspired modernist movements
like the Bauhaus

to reject all decoration
and embrace functionalism.

Fine art was enthralled
to Picasso, Cubism, Abstraction.

For decades,
Art Nouveau was dismissed

by both modernists
and traditionalists.

Its buildings neglected,
its art ignored.

In fact, it wasn't until the 1960s
that a new generation

began to rediscover and celebrate
European art's fin de siecle moment.

And after so much darkness
in 20th century Austria,

celebrating the golden era of Klimt,
Wagner, and the Wiener Werkstatte

has become vitally important
to the image of the city.

Young couples snuggle up
in front of The Kiss.

Tourists learn the story
of the Secession.

And every day,
thousands of Viennese commuters

pass through
Otto Wagner's sumptuous stations.

A multi-million pound
tourist industry

is now built around the story
of the Secessionists.

Klimt, Hoffman, Wagner, Moser,
and Schiele, take a bow.

It strikes me
that Viennese Art Nouveau

was as much about artistic freedom

as it was fancy buildings
and naked ladies.

"To every age its art,
and to the art its freedom."

A century on, that still sounds
like a radical manifesto.

And if we ever lose sight of that,

well, then it really is
Goodnight, Vienna.

# Goodnight, Vienna

# You city of a million melodies

# Our hearts are thrilling
to the strains that you play

# From dawn till the daylight dies

# Goodnight, Vienna

# Where moonlight fills the air
with mystery

# And eyes are shining
to the gypsy guitars

# That sing to the starry sky. #