World Art Collections Exhibition
at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia is to feature in the second programme of the BBC’s new documentary series, Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau, to be shown on BBC Four on Thursday 29 March at 9pm. The programme will take a look at some of the spectacular objects in the Centre’s exhibition The First Moderns: Art Nouveau, from Nature to Abstraction to tell the story of Britain’s Art Nouveau heritage. Exhibition curator and Sainsbury Centre Director Paul Greenhalgh was the consultant on the series.
“These programmes on Art Nouveau will bring alive a golden age in art and design. More than this they will showcase the beautiful collection of Art Nouveau objects in our current exhibition, The First Moderns, at the Sainsbury Centre.” – Professor Paul Greenhalgh, Director, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
Sex & Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau is a new three-part series on BBC Four telling the story of the rise and fall of Art Nouveau. Focusing on Paris, Vienna and the UK, journalist Stephen Smith immerses himself in fin de siècle Europe, celebrating the extraordinary creativity of the era. The series explores the sometimes shocking sexuality at the heart of the movement, its radical intention to merge high and low art, and the great, often controversial, characters associated with it.
The second episode explores the less well known story of Art Nouveau in Britain and features objects from the Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition The First Moderns: Art Nouveau from Nature to Abstraction. The exhibition explores the influence of nature on early Modern design, and the move over the years to abstract and geometric forms. It features beautiful works from the Sainsbury Centre’s seminal collection of Art Nouveau and is the first in a new series of exhibitions that place the collections in the context of social and cultural issues.
The exhibition includes masterpieces by the great Art Nouveau designers: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Emile Gallé, Louis Majorelle, René Lalique, Josef Hoffmann, Alphonse Mucha and many more. It culminates with those designers who moved from natural forms to geometric ones: Gerrit Rietveld, Vladimir Tatlin and Marcel Breuer. The exhibition positions these designers as the First Moderns.
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ
For information on regular opening times and admission, call 01603 563199 or visit www.scva.ac.uk
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