New art in the capital

Our nation’s capital has put on many a grand and glorious and
exceptional art show in the past 15 years or so. Blockbuster exhibits
— producing lines stretching around the huge National Gallery and
extending for many a block. The Vermeer and Van Gogh shows made the
national news and drew crowds from around the world as well as from the
50 states. Presidents and school children, art lovers and just plain
Joes who never dream of setting foot in an art museum came to stare and
came away awed.

A show like the Vermeer a couple of years back was literally a once
in a lifetime chance to see nearly all of that great 17th century Dutch
master’s work collected under one roof before being returned to private
collections, like that of the Queen of England, or to world class
museums, like that of Vienna, to remain steadfastly in place for maybe
another century or two.

Well, the National Gallery has done it again, kicking off the fall
season with true panache. So what if George W. and Al Gore are on a
tight seesaw? What if Jerusalem is exploding with an imminent threat of
a major Middle East war? Or democracy is returning to Serbia by the
sheer will of the people of that country?

Art Nouveau has hit Washington, D.C., with the grandest, most
glorious, giddiest art show anyone could wish for. And, not so
incidentally, the exhibit is the largest and most comprehensive on the
subject ever organized. More than 350 masterpieces in painting,
sculpture, graphics, glass, ceramics, textiles, furniture, jewelry, and
architecture culled from twenty-two countries are featured. And every
last one of them is a masterwork, no question about it.

A Paris Metro entrance by Hector Guimard, one of the 141 installed as
subway entrances between 1900 and 1913 (of which 86 are still standing
today — since 1978, the French have classified them as “Monuments
Historiques”), was bought by the National Gallery, thanks to a gift from
Robert P. and Arlene R. Kogod. When the exhibition completes its run in
Tokyo, July 2001, the intricate cast-iron entrance will be placed in
front of the Art Nouveau revival pavilion leading to the grand fountain
and reflecting pool in the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden later
that same year.

What could be more fitting than to start off a new millennium with
the most complete examination of an innovative style that quite
literally swept through the world, each country bringing something of
its own culture and art to it. International it may have been, yet
American artists and architects in cities as diverse as New York,
Buffalo, Boston, Cincinnati and Chicago eagerly took to it. America’s
great architect Frank Lloyd Wright adapted and interpreted in his own
highly individual manner many of the designs unique to Art Nouveau.

Coming as it did after a good half century of fairly stolid, sober,
serious architecture and design, the impact of Art Nouveau — New Art —
was dazzling. Artists and designers followed the sinuous and sensuous
curves of nature. They gloried in luxuriant female forms. They were
inspired by the engravings of Japanese work, the richness and subtlety
of Oriental silks and brocades. The ornate arabesques of Islamic art
caught their fancy and were interpreted in diverse manner.

The National Gallery show organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London concentrates on eight cities where Art Nouveau took root in a
big way: Paris, Brussels, Glasgow, Vienna, Munich, Turin, New York and
Chicago. Not to take anything away from the remarkable work to be found
in these cities, it seems as if one particularly rich source of Art
Nouveau has been slighted. Now, the catalogue — and a very handsome
and detailed catalogue it is too, nearly 500 pages filled with sumptuous
photographs and richly informative text — comes up short on one score:
Budapest.

Actually, the chapter on Budapest is perfectly accurate, as far as it
goes, but just having been last year to the Hungarian capital where
practically every day I would come upon yet another extravagantly exotic
example of what the Hungarians term Eclectic Style, I can’t help feeling
this gem on the Danube had been sold short by the organizers. A hundred
years ago, Budapest was the fastest growing city in Europe and one of
the largest and richest cities in the world. At the time it had the
largest stock exchange, its greatest parliament building and continental
Europe’s first underground rail system (ahead even of New York, which
did not yet have a subway.)

Hungary at that time — pre-World War I — was three times its
present size, including much of present day Romania, Slovakia, Croatia
and southern Poland. It also was Europe’s great pleasure capital. It
boasted a school of architecture that left its mark on Budapest with an
extraordinary number of wonderful buildings which came from Art Nouveau,
or as the Hungarians called it, Secession or Eclectic — a style which
tends to be far more florid and Moorish in tone than the Art Nouveau of
the West.

All right, so Budapest got shortchanged and you’re going to have to
make a trip to Hungary to see for yourself — not a bad thought though:
the exchange rate is nifty, the city’s stunning, you get the Danube
(sorry, it’s gray, not blue) quality music, beautiful women if that sort
of detail interests you, and you’re only an hour’s drive from Vienna or
Prague if you want to delve deeper in Eastern Europe. But above all, go
for the Eclectic. You really won’t regret it. In the meantime, try to
get to Washington and enjoy Art Nouveau heading into its second
hundredth year.