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Article: A Glorious Jungle of Art Nouveau.(exhibition at National Gallery of Art)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- October 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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An exhaustive exhibition exploring the myriad roots and persuasions of Art Nouveau comes this month to Washington's National Gallery of Art.
Many artists have claimed to ride a wave of the future. Usually this has to do with arrogance and a somewhat overblown idea of what an artist supposes himself to be. In the case of Art Nouveau, the claim (though it was never made quite like that) would have been legitimate. Begun in the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was the first movement in art expressly aimed at "improving" (i.e., manipulating) a mass society; to that end it covered almost every genre--from painting and sculpture to architecture and all sorts ...