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Introduction:
Tastemaking in the Age of Art Nouveau: The Role of Siegfried Bing
by Gabriel P. Weisberg
With the assistance of Edwin Becker, Curator of Exhibitions, Van
Gogh Museum |
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With the recent symposium at the Van
Gogh Museum (January 13-14, 2005) during the run of the exhibition
L'Art Nouveau: The Bing Empire, the importance of Siegfried
Bing in framing the debate about what constituted good design for
home interiors forcefully came to the fore. Bing's role as a tastemaker,
as a connoisseur, as a sponsor of young creators at the outset of
a new era, was clearly illustrated. His ability to find new talent
in numerous countries throughout the world was given prominence. Bing's
successes in sponsoring new design, especially through his gallery,
influenced countless designers who saw that by uniting eastern and
western sensibilities, "art as decoration" could improve
design for home environments and break the stranglehold of tradition.
The fact that these ideas were initiated during the era of large-scale
redeployments in artistic design reveals that Bing was central to
the entire art nouveau era. |
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While Bing
has been the subject of earlier investigations, including the more
concise 1986 exhibition dedicated to his work, there now appear many
new avenues of research for continued study of his career and his
influence on others. The recent symposium demonstrates this quite
well. At the same time, what is also apparent is the fact that no
great cache of documents has been unearthed, anywhere, that would
provide a fuller picture of the manner in which Bing conducted his
business. Bing remains, today, just as much a personal mystery as
he was forty years ago when concerted research into his career and
business began. While much work has been done on his myriad activities
with artists, and while objects he sold all over the world have been
found, we remain in the dark about Bing's deeply felt motivation and
we are incapable of chronicling all his business activities with certainty. |
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Yet, the papers from the symposium
that we are publishing here suggest various ways in which research
on Bing and his period can be conducted now and in the future. My
own essay, "Lost and Found: S. Bing's Merchandising of Japonisme
and Art Nouveau" considers Bing's marketing strategies. It outlines
the ways in which his sponsorship of Japanese art provided a direction
to his and other Japan lovers' experiments in the applied arts. For
Bing, as much as was the case with such noted designers as Henri Vever,
the jeweler, or P.A. Isaac-Dathis, a textile decorator, or Bing's
colleague, and later friendly competitor, Julius Meier-Graefe, Japan
was the creative stimulus. Since Bing knew how to promote Japanese
art through exhibitions, catalogues, flyers, and other promotional
means, the discovery of new people that he reached, and organizations
to which he belonged, such as the Japan Society in London, suggest
avenues that can still be followed in order to find deeper wells of
influence and promotional expertise. Only by continuing to piece together
the disparate documentation pertaining to Bing's business empire,
no matter how seemingly innocuous the documents might be, will we
be able to assess the scope of the Bing organization at a time when
it was trying to effectively assert itself internationally. |
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Bing was always partial to artists,
most likely because he was a creator at heart. Trained in the manufacturing
of porcelain, Bing was sensitive to the ways in which the talents
of creators could be used to his own advantage. Henri Somm, the printmaker
and symbolist watercolorist, is an excellent case in point. Somm's
work, which humorously depicted Japan as the newest fad with which
to attract a feminine clientele, served as the starting point for
Bing‘s promotional campaign that put his shop, its goods, and
the dealer himself in the forefront by utilizing new techniques of
the graphic arts and of advertising. Elizabeth Menon's essay, "The
Functional Print in Commercial Culture: Henry Somm's Women in the
Marketplace," concentrates on Somm's advertising prints and reveals
how Bing located artists who could help his cause. Continued research
in this area may locate other artists with similar ties to Bing while
providing insight into the reasons why he selected given artists who
could help his business. |
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Bing's dealing in Japanese art also
influenced better known artists, such as Edouard Vuillard. As Vuillard
was exposed to the Japanese prints and screens that Bing sold and
saw them collected by wealthy connoisseurs, ideas from these objects
were gradually assimilated into his own work. In their essay, "Crisis
and Revolution in Vuillard's Search for Art Nouveau Unity in Modern
Decoration: Sources for The Public Gardens," Annette Leduc-Beaulieu
and Brooks Beaulieu convincingly show how Bing's flair for the subtle
and the harmonious in Japanese art could influence a French artist
to create on the walls of a Parisian apartment a full scale appreciation
for or transference of eastern ideas to western spaces. Vuillard,
under Bing's stimulus, impressively demonstrated in his works how
Japanese art became the dominant element in the creation of "art
as decoration." |
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How Bing worked with outside firms
in Europe and in the United States is also fertile ground for exploration.
Partial to selling objects made by other companies and obtaining a
commission on the objects he sold, Bing adroitly worked out favorable
business relationships with various firms. He was thus able to market
the newest goods in the most remote sections of Europe. A case in
point is Bing's working relationship with Louis Comfort Tiffany. Martin
Eidelberg's article, "S. Bing and L.C. Tiffany: Entrepreneurs
of Style," carefully documents how this relationship evolved,
where it went and when it ended, conclusively showing that both men
had the same goals: to become tastemakers for their respective countries.
This essay goes far toward becoming the definitive piece on the Tiffany/Bing
relationship. |
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Dealers, or shop owners in other
countries such as Belgium and Holland, also responded to Bing's example.
Marjan Groot's essay charts this new territory, suggesting that there
were other shops dealing with objects for home interiors that reached
the needs of a public audience at the same time as Bing's shop did
in Paris. Groot's essay, "Siegfried Bing's Salon de L'Art Nouveau
and the Dutch Gallery Arts and Crafts," suggests that Bing was
not alone in his desire to rejuvenate home decoration; she investigates
a shop similar to his that catered to a public eager to renew the
décor of their home environment. His shop served as an example
for other such ventures, thus stimulating the trade for objects of
luxury and quality. Bing's L'Art Nouveau demonstrated that a shop
could be a place where informed consumerism flourished. |
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From all of these articles one
impression comes into prominence: Bing had few competitors in his
time willing to put the weight of one's own personality, and considerable
fortune, behind the quest for design reform. While there were commercial
shops such as William Morris & Co., or Liberty's in London,
it was Bing's shop that became synonymous with an entire international
movement. In this he was both a pioneer and a visionary. He knew
how to reach the public while at the same time gaining support from
museum professionals around the world. Importantly, he was also
a voice for quality in the visual arts and for internationalism,
as his global strategies and his openness to the ways in which museums
could visually educate their audiences, provided substance and clues
for the future. Continued research into Bing's activities and the
artists he valued will only continue to affirm his public role as
that of a tastemaker. |
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