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Art Nouveau 1890-1914, edited by Paul Greenhalgh; pp. 496. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000, $75.00.
In 1903, a select group of British architects, artists, and designers convened to discuss the influence of a new stylistic trend on international design. The symposium "L'Art Nouveau: What Is It and What Is Thought of It?" sparked heated debate over what many of the participants regarded as a passing continental vogue, lacking the meaning and the aesthetic significance to become an enduring style in Britain. As a result, the comments of forty prominent artists were published in The Magazine of Art in the following year. Walter Crane feared that the new style lacked national relevance, observing that "[n]o style or form of art is of any use unless the designer or decorator has something of his own to say in it." Others held harsher views. Architect C. F. A. Voysey disdained the characteristics of Art Nouveau as a "debauch of sensuous feeling," stating that it was "not worthy to be called a style," while sculptor Alfred Gilbert dismissed the whole movement as "Absolute nonsense" (The Magazine of Art 2 [1904]: 211-12).
Yet, contemporary European designers and dealers assigned a seminal role to England in the development of Art Nouveau. Siegfried Bing, who had opened the gallery "L'Art Nouveau" in Paris in 1895, attributed the original impetus of the style to British innovation, claiming that the "initial movement [... I began in England, under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites and the ideas of Ruskin," and was then "carried into practical affairs by the admirable genius of William Morris" ("L'Art Nouveau,"...