How one man sparked an artistic revolution
Art nouveau may sound French, but at its heart was a German art enthusiast who was passionate about Asian art. Siegfried Bing (1838–1905), a Hamburg-born art collector, dealer, patron and critic, played a seminal role in the development of the decorative style that came to be known as Art Nouveau, or “Jugendstil” in the German-speaking world. Now a Munich museum is presenting a major exhibition on this late 19th-century style that spread from Paris and took the world by storm.
Born in Hamburg, Bing came from a wealthy family. Inspired by his father, who had been an industrial decorator of ceramics, Bing decided to enter the art world and moved to Paris to become a specialist in Asian art. After the Franco-Prussian War, he established an Oriental trading business, primarily of Japanese art, and worked as an art dealer and mediator between European and Asian galleries and companies. He could not have picked a better time to do so. Japonism was enjoying great popularity, which culminated with a display at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878. With the mood as it was, Bing’s business enjoyed great success and in the late 1870s he opened an Oriental crafts shop in Paris, called “Maison Bing.”
Shortly afterwards, he decided to further his work by spending a year in Japan, leaving his wife and children behind in France. On his return, he expanded the business, selling both contemporary and ancient Japanese objects. At the end of the 1880s, Bing founded a monthly periodical, Le Japon artistique, and organized a series of exhibitions of rare Japanese art, featuring ceramics and ukiyo-e prints. He became one of the major collectors of Japanese ceramics and prints of his time.
But it wasn’t just an interested public that was taken with Bing’s work. His promotion of Asian art also had an enormous influence on many 19th-century artists, including Vincent van Gogh, who developed a fascination for Japanese prints while in Paris from 1886 to 1888. In fact it was from Bing that Van Gogh bought the many Japanese prints he owned.
With business still going strong, in 1895 Bing decided to open his own gallery in Paris, calling it “L’Art Nouveau.” In his first exhibition he showed works by the Belgian artists Henry van de Velde and Georges Lemmen, as well as stained glass from Paul Ranson, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition was extremely controversial and received bad reviews—little did the critics know that this gallery was soon to give its name to what was to become a hugely popular decorative style.
Now, in a tribute to Bing and his work, Munich’s Villa Stuck museum is hosting what is one of the most comprehensive exhibitions on the emergence of the Art Nouveau style ever to have been mounted. “L’Art Nouveau: La Maison Bing” tells the story of Art Nouveau from Bing’s perspective and features more than 400 objects and works of art that passed through his shop and gallery. These include glassware from Tiffany, painting and sculptures by such artists as Josef Rippl-Rónai, Auguste Rodin and Edouard Vuillard, as well as furniture, ceramics and jewelry by Henry van de Velde, Edward Colonna, Georges de Feure and Eugène Gaillard.
Bing also sold fabrics and wallpaper by William Morris in his gallery—examples are featured in the Munich exhibition— as well as silks from Liberty & Co. in London and metalwork by the English Arts and Crafts designers W. A. S. Benson. The show also reveals the extent to which Japanese art influenced the development of Art Nouveau, featuring beautiful examples of kimonos, fans and masks as well as ceramics and prints.
Villa Stuck is itself a work of art that is worth visiting. The historic rooms have been restored to their former glory and were reopened on March 17 this year after 13 years of planning and restoration.
“L’Art Nouveau: La Maison Bing” was organized in collaboration with the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. The show was conceived by Professor Gabriel P. Weisberg (from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), an expert on Art Nouveau and late 19th-century European art, Edwin Becker of the Van Gogh Museum and Evelyne Possémé of the Musée des Arts décoratifs. <<<
