Art Nouveau and Art Deco
Art & Design · Key Stage 3 · The School
Art Nouveau: nature's curves
ART NOUVEAU ran roughly from 1890 to 1910. It took its forms from nature: flowing plant stems, flower petals, insect wings, long flowing hair. These became curving, sinuous lines. Almost nothing about it is straight or symmetrical. It appeared in posters, buildings, jewellery and furniture right across Europe, often with clear, deliberate asymmetry.
Art Deco: the machine age
ART DECO ran roughly through the 1920s and 1930s. It took its forms from geometry and from new industrial machines. Think bold zigzags, sunburst patterns, strong symmetrical shapes, and sleek curves that suggest speed. Where Art Nouveau celebrated nature, Art Deco celebrated the machine age directly. It appears in famous buildings, posters and everyday objects from that era.
A shared context, opposite responses
Both movements grew out of a fast-changing world. But they responded in opposite ways. Art Nouveau reacted against mass production. It celebrated handmade, organic, natural forms instead. Art Deco came only a couple of decades later, and did the opposite. It embraced industry and technology head-on. It celebrated exactly the machine-made, geometric precision Art Nouveau had turned away from.
Given an unfamiliar poster, ask one question: are the lines curving and natural, or straight, angular and symmetrical? A design built from flowing plant shapes, uneven curves and natural imagery is Art Nouveau. A design built from bold geometric shapes, sunburst or zigzag patterns and strict symmetry is Art Deco. A famous Paris metro entrance, with its iron plant-stem lamps curling upward, is a clear Art Nouveau example. A famous American skyscraper, with its stepped, geometric, symmetrical front, is a clear Art Deco example. That one question — curved and natural, or geometric and symmetrical? — sorts almost any example from either movement correctly.