Passage A
In the late nineteenth century, the Art Nouveau movement sought to break down the traditional hierarchy between the fine arts (painting and sculpture) and the decorative arts (furniture, glasswork, and metalwork). Proponents of Art Nouveau argued that a domestic interior should be a cohesive work of art—a gesamtkunstwerk—in which every structural detail, from the banister to the wallpaper, harmonized with the building’s overall organic aesthetic. By elevating functional objects to the status of high art, they aimed to democratize beauty, believing that daily interaction with artisanally crafted surroundings could elevate the moral and spiritual life of the average citizen.
Passage B
Conversely, the early twentieth-century proponents of Functionalism, spearheaded by the Bauhaus school, viewed the domestic space through a more industrial lens. While they also rejected the distinction between fine and applied arts, their solution was not to artisanalize the everyday, but to industrialize it. For Functionalists, the beauty of a chair or lamp resided in its utility and its suitability for mass production. They argued that Art Nouveau’s organic curves were decadent, costly, and ultimately elitist, since hand-carved furniture could only ever be enjoyed by the wealthy. True democratization of design, they claimed, could only be achieved when machines produced high-quality, standardized goods accessible to all social classes.
Based on the passages, which of the following statements best describes how the proponents of Art Nouveau (Passage A) and the proponents of Functionalism (Passage B) differed in their attempts to democratize design?
- ABoth groups agreed that mass production was the only viable method to distribute high art, but they disagreed on whether the designs should use organic patterns.
- Art Nouveau proponents believed that average citizens would benefit from living among custom, artisanally crafted environments, whereas Functionalists argued that true accessibility required standardized, machine-produced goods.Answer
- CArt Nouveau proponents wanted to restrict artistic home design to the upper classes, while Functionalists aimed to make high-quality design available to all social classes.
- DArt Nouveau proponents argued that utility should be secondary to organic curves, while Functionalists believed that visual beauty had no place in the domestic interior.