Twentieth century Modernism eventually killed Art Nouveau but Modernism could certainly not have existed without Art Nouveau having already questioned Classicism, the dominant art expression in Europe until the late 19th century. Art Nouveau first came into prominence around 1890. The recent exhibition at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, Art Nouveau Revival 1900.1933.1966.1974, was dedicated to the revival of Art Nouveau 1933 onwards, related in part to its dovetailing with Surrealism, Dadaism, Salvador Dali, Clovis Trouille, Gaudi and Alvar Aalto. It is this later relationship with what is now known as Scandinavian design, that I thought interesting, though the exhibition didn’t go into great details of this aspect.

Art Nouveau was the world’s first consolidated movement in the history of design, where an expression filtered down from the gallery to the kitchen and into the homes of the rich and the not so rich. It was also the world’s first truly international movement, felt in the United States all the way to Japan through Belgium and Spain. It was so popular that despite being clubbed to death, so many times, it kept on resurging as a panacea to design practices (springing up in the years of the exhibition’s title). Its first spell of a short 15 years saw it famously adapted in Guimard’s curving, foliate and extant Paris metro street signs, to the porcelain company Rosenthal’s Art Nouveau teapots.

But what tickles me always is a question about my favourite school of design: if the Art Nouveau movement hadn’t become such an acceptable part of our aesthetics, would Scandinavian design have leveraged itself to such prominence? In the 1930s the young Finnish architect Alvar Aalto created his starkly simple, sinuous, free flowing, expressive shapes, reminiscent of the most abstract creations of Art Nouveau. This master of organic design paved the way for many creators, including Isamu Noguchi with his now famous Table basse ‘IN 50’ in 1944. Both their designs remain ever popular till date. Their success lies in the simple fact that they offer a great balance between the preservation of craft materials and traditions with standardised mass production.

Aalto started off with designing cantilevered birch and plywood furniture in the early ’30s. He was no doubt inspired by Marcel Brauer and the Bauhaus movement but the difference was that while Brauer did his in steel, Aalto preferred wood, abundant in his native Finland. Thus in 1931, he made the Paaimio armchair in laminated birch and plywood, cantilevered, sinuous, elegant and very comfortable. But it’s in his 1936 Savoy vase of mould-blown glass, manufactured by Iittala that one sees the neatest melting of rationalism with organic forms to the fullest. This design was so popular that it too is produced in many colours and finishes till date. The free-flowing, almost mutating form was used in layers in the 1938-39 Ensemble Kukka, a set of four plates and bowls that when stacked resembles a blooming flower. This natural plant shape was cleverly and simply adopted by Tapio Wirkkala in his funnel-shaped blown glass Vase Kantarelli (1946-47).

An important factor that undoubtedly led to the discovery, and eventually the prominence of the Scandinavian aesthetic, were the World Wars. Adoption of design in the years of post World War I suffering necessitated an aesthetic that was at once soothing visually and democratic in availability and pricing. In 1939, at New York’s World Fair, with the theme ‘The World of Tomorrow’, many countries chose to show their technological prowess. But Sweden showed undulating furniture made in birch by the likes of designer Bruno Mathsson. Alvar Aalto designed the Finnish pavilion, and very quickly the Scandinavians became the talk of the town and the kings of domestic furniture.

This began a trend that culminated in the hey-day of Scandinavian design, which was by now here to stay and its calm, sinuous organic lines continued shaping it for decades after. Popularity meant that serial production came into being as the demand for Scandinavian furniture from the UK and the US soared. This increase in demand meant a further foray into new modelling techniques and synthetic materials, so hitherto impossible designs came into the market. Take Eero Saarinen’s 1948 chair, Womb, for instance. Constructed of a fibre-glass shell with foam around it, its cocooning, ergonomic shape would not have been possible without the technique of fibre-glass moulding. Its unique and thoroughly comfortable shape in turn set a trend for lounge chairs that we see everywhere today from living rooms to airport lounges. (Indeed it was the Scandinavian company SAS which was one of the first to introduce business class flying). This movement also resulted in my favourite couch, the Ball chair (Eero Aarnio 1963), a swivelling, humungous, ball-shaped chair with padded interiors that doubles up as a telephone booth when you need to have a quiet phone chat.

But any mention of Scandinavian design is incomplete without reference to organic design, and this exhibition devotes an entire room full of chairs to it. Organic design flourished from 1930-1960. This was unfortunately the last time in modern design that we saw a cohesive, clever adoption of common principles for architecture and what goes in it – furniture, art glass, silverware, lighting, textiles and more. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Houses are the immediate images that come to mind with their flat horizontal lines and sleek furniture. But I simply can’t shrug off the 1923 Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

The architecture of the Imperial Hotel, in local volcanic Oya stone, is described as Maya Revival Style (Maya as in pre-Columbian Maya civilisation). In the loose shape of a Mesoamerican pyramid, as much in harmony with Tokyo’s existing architecture as the I. M. Pei designed glass pyramid is to the Louvre today. But the important thing is the cohesiveness of design – the chairs, tables, stacked rectangular column lighting right down to the rugs. Every detail was designed by him and was a total work of art. The hotel unfortunately was foolishly gutted and its façade now lies at the open air architecture museum Meiji-mura near Nagoya and the lighting often makes it to design auctions worldwide.

Keeping within this spirit of design totality, architect and designer Eero Saarinen similarly introduced chairs in sculptural forms and flowing lines (most famous for his Tulip chair, a version of which was used on the sets of Star Trek) and tested his belief in organic design in the TWA terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in 1962. This was perhaps the last evidence and another temporary adieu to a comprehensive organic belief. The wholehearted political adoption of Le Corbusier’s principles pulled the plug on this latest adaptation of what started as the Art Nouveau form. But Art Nouveau simply means ‘new art’ and as we have seen in the past, and partly through the Muséed Orsay exhibition, it has the capability to mutate and re-emerge at critical moments. Perhaps post-crisis 2010 is this moment. Philippe Starck – are you listening?

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