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New Exhibit Shows Off Best of Art Nouveau

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: One hundred years ago the design world was turned upside-down by a radical departure from all that had come before. The public hated this modern look.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Those sentiments are long gone, and today Art Nouveau is regarded by many as a golden age in the arts.

CNN's Kate Snow takes us to a major exhibition in Washington that shows off some of the very best of the genre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Paris, 1900, the World's Fair, the turn of a century and the recognition of a new artistic style known simply as Art Nouveau.

PAUL GREENHALGH, EXHIBITION CURATOR: L'Art Nouveau is very much about all of the different arts, right through domestic arts, jewelry, metalworks, relics (ph), glass, furniture, wall coverings, and so on. It's not just about painting and sculpture.

SNOW: "The Dragonfly Woman" by Rene Lalique crowns the entrance to the new exhibit at Washington's National Gallery of Art and captures the spirit.

GREENHALGH: She's exotic, she's quite sexy, I have to say. She's very much to do with nature. It's about human beings fusing with nature and becoming part of the natural world.

SNOW: Nature is one influence, but artists of the period also borrowed from history.

GREENHALGH: They lived in a complicated age, these designers, when kind of everything was available for the first time, and they really went shopping in the history of art, not only in Europe but outside of Europe as well.

SNOW: From Celtic art to the Vikings, the Orient, and Rococo, Art Nouveau was restless, and, some thought, disturbing.

GREENHALGH: It was powerfully hated for much of the 20th century, because it is so kind of in-your-face.

SNOW: Art Nouveau sought to interpret a new urban age. GREENHALGH: We're looking at a complete Metro station. These were built for the original Metro stations in Paris.

SNOW (on camera): How difficult was it to get it here to Washington?

GREENHALGH: There are a lot of people still in therapy because of this station.

SNOW (voice-over): It wasn't easy to put a face on Art Nouveau. Art historians disagree on what it was, when it was, and what it meant. For seven years, curator Paul Greenhalgh gathered a collection from 22 different countries.

(on camera): How do you know that something is, quote unquote, "Art Nouveau"?

GREENHALGH: I think the easiest way to spot Art Nouveau is these curling, swirling lines.

SNOW (voice-over): But in different cities, Art Nouveau took on different looks.

(on camera): This is quite a feat. You brought in an entire room.

GREENHALGH: Yes, we shipped an entire British tearoom across the Atlantic to show people what a total environment would be like.

SNOW (voice-over): In Glasgow, Art Nouveau meant tight geometric lines.

GREENHALGH: The thing about Art Nouveau is that as much as anything, it's an outlook. It's not just how things look, it's also about attitude to life.

SNOW: In Vienna, Gustav Klimpt set the tone.

GREENHALGH: So here we are in the new world.

SNOW: And in the United States, the exhibit highlights New York's Louis Comfort (ph) Tiffany and Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The crowds are fascinated by a style that raised eyebrows 100 years ago. In London, the exhibit drew the largest crowds in the history of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The National Gallery of Art hopes to repeat that success.

Kate Snow, CNN, Washington.

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PHILLIPS: And if you happen to be in Washington, you can catch the free exhibition at the National Gallery of Art through January 28. After that, the show moves to Tokyo. O'BRIEN: And if you want to find out more, check out the Web site you see on your screen, that's at www.nga.gov, where you'll find out all about it with related links.

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