Design

The standard rap on Art Nouveau, as I remember from my student art history books, is that it was a short-lived (roughly 1890-1905) hiatus between the historic revival styles of the nineteenth century and the true-blue modernism of the Bauhaus. Art Nouveau was largely pooh-poohed,, written off as an aesthetic dead-end that sprang full-blown from the (feverish) artistic imaginations of architects and designers such as Antonio Gaudi, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, the young Peter Behrens, Louis Comfort Tiffany and (though he is usually not included in this company), Louis Sullivan. The problem for art historians is that the sinuous decorations of the style obviously have little to do with the abstract minimalism of the Modern Movement.

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I met Saul Bass and his wife Elaine in 1994, at a design conference in  Aspen. He was a sweet man, but I remember being rather in awe of him.  Bass (1920-1996), a graphic designer, had elevated the opening credit sequence of movies into a miniature art form. His credits included the titles (and sometimes the posters) for The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, and Around the World in 80 Days—where the opening sequence was actually at the end. Most of the title sequences were animated,

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