Art Nouveau vs Les Nabis
アール・ヌーヴォー / ナビ派
Art Nouveau comes from Historical Styles and Les Nabis from Fin de Siècle Art. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Art Nouveau
Joins letters, figures and ornament into one flowing, plant-like line.
Les Nabis
A group of painters who called themselves prophets, setting out from the declaration that a picture is essentially a flat surface covered in a certain order. They extended interiors and daily life into decorative panels, lithographs, book illustration and stage design, dissolving the boundary between fine and applied art.
| Art Nouveau | Les Nabis | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1890s–1910s | 1888–1900 |
| Family | Historical Styles | Fin de Siècle Art |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Botanical curves / Ornamental frames / Female figures / Muted natural colors | Compositions conceived as decorative panels / Reversals of pattern and ground / Harmonies of muted intermediate tones / Subjects of interiors and daily life |
| Best used for | Speaking of craft and handwork · Leading with beauty and narrative | Designing the walls of a home or shop as a continuous field between picture and wallpaper · Series of illustrations, endpapers and prints that take the everyday interior as subject |
| Type | Curvilinear serifs or hand lettering | Soft, slightly irregular serifs or hand-drawn titling woven into the pattern |
| Composition | Vertical formats, frame compositions, a central figure | Tall panel formats; figures embedded in wallpaper-like pattern until motif and ground trade places |
| Material | Dusty greens and gold, line work, paper texture | Muted intermediate tones—dusty rose, olive, ochre—on matte, absorbent surfaces |
| Caution | Stock vine ornaments stay superficial. Carry the line through the whole composition. | Matching figure and pattern too closely turns the picture into plain wallpaper, and who is doing what disappears. Sink the figure in, but keep its contour readable. |