Beauty for Everyone

Art Nouveau lasted barely 20 years but its ambitions were permanent:

• It rejected the separation of fine art and applied design, treating everyday objects as art
• Guimard's Métro entrances made public infrastructure beautiful
• Tiffany's stained glass brought hand-crafted color into ordinary homes
• Gaudí's buildings remain structurally and aesthetically radical over a century later

Art Nouveau died because it was expensive, labor-intensive, and ill-suited to industrial mass production. But its dream — that beauty shouldn't be reserved for galleries, that it should be woven into the fabric of daily life — hasn't died. It just keeps coming back in new forms.