- This is the first book dedicated to this highly popular art form and will show about 275 color images, far more than the sum total of sculpture in all the generalist Art Nouveau Books
- Artists featured include Sarah Bernhardt, Maurice Bouval, Rupert Carabin, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Charles Korschann and Raoul Larche
- Accompanies an exhibition to be held at the Macklowe Gallery, New York, from 9 November- 31 December 2011
Dynamic Beauty: Sculpture of Art Nouveau Paris is the first book to seriously explore French Art Nouveau sculpture and the aesthetic and cultural climate that gave rise to it. Paris in 1900 marked the first time that the walls began to break down between the 'fine' and 'decorative' arts. Artists were as influenced by Symbolist poetry as by Japanese design, and fascinated by eroticism in equal measure to their excitement about the new technology of electric light. Aided by the Collas machine, artists and foundries created sculptures in various sizes for a newly emergent upper middle class that was paradoxically eager to live in both the modern world of the automobile and the ancien monde of collecting.