Astral Codex Ten

Art Nouveau

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Art Nouveau

Article

Art Nouveau is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between October 04, 2021 and October 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “people really like Art Nouveau”; “the old Art Nouveau stuff”; “Cathedral windows, Art Nouveau, Art Deco”. It most often appears alongside Art Deco, 20th century, 23andme.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: October 04, 2021
  • Last seen: October 04, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
October 04, 2021 · Original source
I got a new place recently and have been looking for furnishings. Sometimes I look at people’s furniture Pinterests. If Pinterest is any kind of representative window into the soul of the modern furniture-enthusiast, people really like Art Nouveau. Typical pictures that people pin will look like this:
I’m harping on furniture because it avoids a lot of the complicating factors in architecture. There isn’t some vague collection of “elites” making our furniture decisions. It’s a pretty free market! There are lots of normal middle-class people spending big chunks of money on furniture, lots of them really really like the old stuff, and the old stuff is still either unavailable or unaffordable. It seems like it used to be affordable - it wasn’t just kings and dukes who had the old Art Nouveau stuff - but for some reason that’s changed. I think Baumol effects offer a tidy explanation here, and if we use them to explain furniture, then they start looking really attractive for architecture.
I want this one to be true, because it exonerates our civilization. If we could make things like the Art Nouveau furniture above, or the Taj Mahal, relatively cheaply and easily, then the question of why we aren’t doing that demands an answer. If it’s just a quirk of basic economics, then our civilization is fine, and maybe we can hope that stoneworking technology advances to the point where we can do this kind of thing again cheaply.
A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows
May 30, 2022 · Original source
I love stained glass. Not so much your usual suburban house stained glass with a picture of lilies. The good stuff. Cathedral windows, Art Nouveau, Art Deco. Why did we stop doing that? I blame the conspiracy.
Inline links: the conspiracy
But I already chose my Darwin picture, and I want an Occam picture in the same style. What happens if I tell DALL-E that it should be Art Nouveau?
The old “add Art Nouveau” trick didn’t help much, but after trying a lot of things, I noticed that all the previous examples had people’s names. Maybe having a historical figure grounds it in the sort of stained glass windows people made during the figure’s time period?
Quests And Requests
November 03, 2023 · Original source
An acquaintance who does have influence with hundreds of women and a great plan to solve the scaling problem has expressed interest in addressing this problem once she’s done with other projects, and I wouldn’t want a less qualified person to yank it away from her. I don’t know if I have permission to give more details. This one is less a request for people to step up and incubate this project so much as trying to produce common knowledge of all of this and be open to anyone who wants to start coordinating. 7. A foundation to promote classical art and architecture Skills needed: art/design knowledge, social skills, administrative/entrepreneurial skills Budget: Some large amount of money from an outside funder, some large amount of your time? Payoff: A more beautiful world Poll after poll shows that Americans prefer classical art and architecture, here used as a catchall term for styles that old-fashioned, ornate, symmetric, elegant, etc - eg neo-classical, Gothic revival, Art Nouveau, Art Deco. In the rare cases when someone builds something like this, people love it and it becomes an instant tourist attraction. But 99% of the time, we get the same Brutalist cubes, modernist blobs, starchitect crumpled paper, or lowest-common-denominator five-over-one apartments. I’ve been trying to figure out why for a while. Some of it is cost, some of it is regulation, and some of it is elite opinion. But every so often someone successfully builds something classical and proves that it’s still possible in theory: As far as I know, proponents of classical architecture don’t have an aegis organization the same way charter city proponents have CCI or pro-progress types have Roots of Progress. Plenty of billionaires complain about the decay of art and architecture on Twitter, so there must be money available for something like this. All it needs is a founder. An classical architecture aegis organization would: Talk with architects, city planners, construction companies, and end clients to figure out what the major barriers to older architectural styles are.
Inline links: crumpled paper, trying to figure out why for a while, CCI, Roots of Progress
If all of this is too ambitious, come up with a roadmap for how to start with small achievable victories and build up to cathedrals and concert halls. For example, maybe we should start by getting someone to produce the sort of Art Nouveau furniture everyone wistfully lists on their Pinterest before grudgingly accepting reality and buying IKEA. If that works, we can leverage what we’ve learned and the publicity we’ve gained to start working on bigger targets.
Inline links: the sort of Art Nouveau furniture everyone wistfully lists on their Pinterest
Followup: Quests And Requests
November 10, 2023 · Original source
For example, here’s a guide to distinguishing Art Nouveau from Art Deco.
Inline links: here’s a guide to distinguishing Art Nouveau from Art Deco
Against The Cultural Christianity Argument
October 04, 2024 · Original source
I am no fan of medieval theocracy. But I do have a weakness for the 1880 - 1930 period of fin de siecle culture, Art Nouveau, economic liberty, and progressophilia. This period wasn't very religious - Nietzsche had already declared God dead in 1882. But the Cultural Christians would argue that such a flowering of culture and optimism could only happen within a generation or two of a Christian society. It (they would argue) contained the seeds of its own destruction, doomed to degenerate into our current postmodernist brutalist whatever. If I want the 1890s back, I shouldn't advocate the (mostly classically liberal) positions of the 1890s. I should advocate for Christianity, the only ideology under which something like those positions can be stable.