L’ecole De Nancy In French Art Nouveau

My dissertation explores the art reform process of Ecole de nancy from 1901 to 1914.During these fourteen years, the Ecole de Nancy experienced different stages of development. This dissertation describes the exploration of "Le style modern" by the members of Ecole the, taking art ideas of the main members as the center concepts, and the art practice in different stages as a clue. At the turning of the century, under the background of transition from the traditional society to industrial society, Emile galle who was a local artist of Nancy established the Ecole de Nancy. This art organization was committed to revitalize the French decorative art. The members of Ecole de Nancy drafted a common statute named "Articles of Association of the Ecole de Nancy". In this statute, they declared that they had created a style of ornamentation and this style can represent their period.Actually,in order to create a modern style which would reflect the spirit of new era as well as the French characteristics, they kept on trying new design methods and new ornamental language.During their art reform practice, an important problem must be solved by the members of ecole.The problem was not only how to reflect modern life, but also to express the unique culture of France. By analyzing the development history of the Ecole de Nancy, we can find that the modern transformation of their design was achieved mainly through three differentaspects.Firstly,they attempted to establish the relationship between past and present by exploring the origin of French history.They sought the cultural identity from tradition,then they constructed modern visual language on the basis of the cultural identity.Secondly,they intended to awake national consciousness through their design.This nationalism directly related to the Franco Prussian War. In order to evoke the conception of "nation" and "home"amongspecific groups,they gathered national identity by frequently emphasizing their Gaul ancestor,and using symbolic patterns and icons in their design works.The last but not the least,fronting the strong impact of the orient art,they wanted to reconstruct the French art under the worldwide cultural context.During the process of the members of Ecole de Nancy gradually expanding their design ideology and design language,these three problems did not exist independently,but often overlapped or intercrossed each other.Through restructuring and adjusting these problems in different levels,they finally implemented a French culture identity by visual language.My dissertation analyses the artistic practice of Ecole de Nancy from three different directions, and begins with the design works of the typical members of Ecole de Nancy in different periods to unfold the evolution of their design ideology. With the purpose of finding out how they balanced the different forces to solve the perplexing contradiction, and get rid of historical eclecticism shackles during the transformation of century. Then how they reconciled the different types of art and culture to extract a modern style which based on natural form and reflected the French cultural temperament at the same time. What the members of Ecole de Nancy pursued was not only the modern language of design form, but also the communication between visual design products and users or viewers in spiritual level, which was a more emotional appeal rather than a pure rational deign. They attempted to improve the social status of decoration art, and give decoration art more important cultural affection. Nowadays, what they have done in the art reform movement still has its positive significance.With the outbreak of the World War I, Nancy was seriously influenced by the war.Then, Ecole de Nancy withdrawn from the stage of history.But a large number of works created by the members of Ecole de Nancy,still made Nancy the second center of Art Nouveau movement. What the most praiseworthy for Ecole de Nancy was that they wanted to express French cultural temperament by modern design language.This kind of thinking and exploration may provide some references for Chinese contemporary designer who are trying to express Chinese cultural temperament by their own works.