Van de Velde was soon commissioned to construct the Folk wang Museum in Hagen, Westphalia, and the completion of this interesting building in 1902 served to cement his position in Germany as a leader in the new movement. Meanwhile the grand duke of Weimar, whose ambition was to improve artistic instruc tion in his country, offered this task and problem to van de Velde, who accepted and installed his studio in the art school later known as the "Bauhaus." Here he continued to exercise an important influence on the decorative arts of Germany until the outbreak of the World War. His work in Germany culminated in the beautiful and severe theatre built for the "International Art Exposition" at Cologne in 1914.
The first fruition of van de Velde's ideas, however, was not in Germany, but in Paris. There in 1895, Bing, who had for many years maintained a shop for the sale of Japanese prints and other examples of Oriental art, set up an establishment, L'art nou veau, for the display of modern art. At first the work of various artists and craftsmen was assembled, but finding harmonious ensembles impracticable in this way, Bing secured the services of a corps of designers, among whom were E. Colonna, De Feure and Gaillard engaged in production. As has been noted above, four rooms of van de Velde were exhibited here in 1895 and the characteristic curve originated by the Belgian was adopted by Bing as the peculiar motive for Part nouveau. At this time French furniture exhibited a mixture of influences: English arts and crafts, reminiscences of Eastlake, naturalistic decoration and above all a welter of curved lines generally awkward and clumsy. This latter chaos the workers of Bing crystallized into a style by the adoption of the whiplash curve. It was a motive far too subtle to be handled successfully by any except highly talented designers, but it was exactly such individuals that the "Etablissement Bing" had employed, and some of the productions of Colonna and Gaillard stand to-day as unchallenged master pieces of design—masterpieces in which a highly artificial motive was used to produce creations of much charm, that were at the same time guilty of no structural enormities.
L'art nouveau was the sensation of the Paris International Exposition of 1900. Its success was its undoing. The new motives became at once the vogue, with the result that manufacturers in large numbers hastened to gain profit from their popularity. To give the new quality to their production, they called upon designers of all degrees of capacity. Consequently motives re quiring the hand of a master were soon vulgarized and cheap ened and the whole movement reduced to absurd and fantastic exaggerations. L'art nouveau was but an episode in the modern
movement—a brilliant episode, but one based on a decorative motive and not on sound considerations of the vital tendencies of modern life. It had no organic relations with function or structure and from its nature was destined to a short life. At this exposition also Louis Tiffany of New York exhibited his creations in "Favrille-glass" of which the beautiful and subtle colour effects, often iridescent, attracted wide attention.
The jewelry of Rene Lalique was also one of the features of 1900. Employing novel and richly-coloured materials and all the resources of the carver, engraver, and enameller, this prolific artist exhibited numberless examples of brooches, necklaces, combs and other dress ornaments that ran the entire gamut of the curved line and made of jewellery a charming decorative adornment rather than a mere exhibit of costly gems.
One must also note the remarkable efflorescence of the French poster that occurred at a somewhat earlier period. Six artists, Cheret, Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen and Mucha, capti vated the interest of the entire world and carried the art of the poster to a point not since surpassed. (See POSTER.) In 1910 there was an important exhibit of the work of Munich artists and designers at the salon d'autornne in Paris. Viewed from the standpoint of to-day the displays were not brilliant nor wholly consistent, but they were in a number of cases marked by simplicity of structure and of practical quality, at that time rare in the French designs, and they undoubtedly brought to French artists a needed sobering and fresh consideration of fundamentals.
To bring the picture of the movement into perspective it is necessary to turn to the earlier developments in Germany and Vienna. In the years before 190o furniture and decoration in Germany that did not follow the old lines showed a mixture of influences: traces of the Alt-Deutsch of the 'dos and '8os; adapta tions of the English arts and crafts, particularly of the Glasgow school, and some reflection of the curves of van de Velde. In 1899 the grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt invited the Viennese architect Josef M. Olbrich to come to Darmstadt and design the houses of an artists' colony in the suburb of Mathildenhohe. These houses together with an exhibition-building were for the most part built in the following year, and a number of artists, among whom were Peter Behrens, Hans Christiansen, Ludwig Habich and Patriz Huber, became members of the colony. The houses exhibited much variety and novelty of design and while free from conventional architectural motives were marked by sobriety and fineness of proportion.