Art Nouveau

The erotic nature of many Art Nouveau works is one of the most prevalent features of the style. Nowhere is it more abundantly seen than in small-scale sculptural or decorative arts objects such as ink-wells, carafes, centrepieces, candelabra, lamps and figurines - the kind of objects that were disseminated widely and could be brought into any middle-class household. The eroticism of these objects is made all the more complex by their utility and domesticity. They often demand physical engagement: furniture or carafes where the handles are naked women that must be grasped; vessels that metamorphose into women inviting touch; lamps that provocatively pose women in suggestive positions. These erotically charged objects, unlike most sculpture, demand contact.

The theme of objects fulfilling a sexual need was not a new one, although it found particular resonance in the fin de siècle. In Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novel Venus in Furs, Severin describes his lust for an inanimate sculpture of Venus: 'I love her madly, passionately with a feverish intensity, as one can only love a woman who responds to one with a petrified smile. Often at night I pay a visit to my cold, cruel beloved; clasping her knees, I press my face against her cold pedestal and worship her'. The de Goncourt brothers wrote of the erotic fascination of their Rococo objects, developing an overtly sexual and torturous relationship with them: Jules recorded his dreams of 'raping a delicate young woman who resembled one of his rococo porcelain figurines. Edmond wrote of caressing his Clodion statuette as if her stomach and neck had the touch of real skin'. The fetishistic concentration on the erotic potential of the object is implicit in much Art Nouveau.

Leopoldo Metlicovitz, 'Simplon Tunnels Internationale Ausstellung', 1906. Museum no. E.405-1982
Leopoldo Metlicovitz, 'Simplon Tunnels Internationale Ausstellung', 1906. Museum no. E.405-1982
Although many Art Nouveau objects were mildly erotic, some were much more direct and in some instances pornographic. Rupert Carabin produced some of the most explicit objects of the period. His chair of 1898 plays with the physical restraint of the body. A bound female is made to support and envelope a presumably male user. It is a vision of erotic subjugation that is powerfully disturbing. Some objects, such as Max Blondat's door knocker designed for a Parisian brothel, employ a more humorous symbolism. The knocker, a nude female figure, like that in Carabin's chair has a specific use. She peers into the interior of the brothel while simultaneously signifying the pleasures to be obtained within. Many Art Nouveau decorative arts objects manipulated the female body to create different and often playful symbolic narratives.

The scale of the production and dissemination of these kinds of objects denoted a widespread 'taste for the erotic', not only among upper-class and aristocratic collectors of the more explicit and expensive objects, but also by the middle classes, concerned to achieve the height of modern decorative style in their homes. During this period the erotic briefly came to denote the modern.