Lace Work of Felix Aubert

Illustration: Felix Aubert. lace design, c1904.

In some rspects at least, lace could be said to be a perfect vehicle for the Art Nouveau movement. Its natural affinity to filigree, elegance and fragility lends itself perfectly to the more imaginative and free-flowing elements of the style. This is perhaps why so many designers added to the vocabulary of lace design work during the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century.

To be fair, Art Nouveau created a number of its own regional, national and creatively unique styles and although still broadly known as Art Nouveau in style, the specific regionalism of Europe saw determined differences appearing in Austria, Germany, France, Belgium and other areas as far apart as Finland to Portugal.

Illustration: Felix Aubert. Lace design, c1904.

On top of this was also added the unique qualities produced by the creative element of each designer. Although being affected obviously by their own regional interpretation of Art Nouveau, this did not negate the fact that the individual was to add a distinctiveness that came from personal memory, intuition, observation and understanding that could only be interpreted by that individual.

Art Nouveau, like many decorative styles past and present, used nature as its inspirational starting point. Indeed the style made an issue of its intimate knowledge, even entanglement with the processes, connections and partnerships to be found in the natural world. In this respect, the undulating, overlapping and invasive nature of plant forms for example, were seen as perfect vehicles for a number of disciplines including naturally, lace. 

 Illustration: Felix Aubert. Lace deign, c1904.

The four examples that illustrate this article were produced by the French designer Felix Aubert in about 1904. Although admittedly at the end of the Art Nouveau movements influence, these four designs still carry much of the natural affinity towards fragile filigree that was so much a part of the movements perceived style, one that was readily taken over into the lace craft.

Although Auberts work seems to lend itself, at least in part, to the more formalised nature based decoration to be found in Central Europe for example particularly that found in Austria, there is also a level of intimate delicacy that still maintains a formalisation within a fragile setting that can be found more readily in France and Belgium.

Illustration: Felix Aubert. Lace design, c1904.

There is an element in Auberts work that is reminiscent of pressed flowers or desiccated leaves. Some of the lace work gives the impression that if scrunched in the hand the piece would disintegrate. Perhaps in some ways this is both the strength and appeal of this form of lace work. Some would even see this particular period as being one of the high points, despite the long and relatively varied history of the craft. With such examples as produced by Aubert at the beginning of the twentieth century it is hard to disagree. This late, and very possibly last flowering of lace craft was conceivably one of its most creatively inspiring.

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Landscape and the Creative Artist

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Havellandschaft mit Segelbooten, c1898.

The graphic styled art work shown in these three examples was produced by the German artist and designer Walter Leistikow at the very end of the nineteenth century. The seeming simplicity of the artwork belies the intimate and emotive issues produced for and by the creative artist himself.

Leistikow produced a number of landscapes, both through painting and printing. Although spending most of his adult life in Berlin, the artist produced large sections of his work based on the area in which he grew up. His nostalgia for his childhood landscape gives us remembrances of his own character and memories. His perspective on his own familiar landscape gives these pieces a sense of practical and technical reality as they occupied real spaces in the environment. However, they were also imbued with a sense of his own personal time period and the thoughts and feelings that were associated with that specific mental space. This created an important additional perspective, one of almost dreamlike proportions. The landscapes therefore became both emotional and practical, forging a set of specific parameters in time and space that were of the artists own choosing. 

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Letzte Flugelschlage, 1890s.

In landscape interpretation in general it is perhaps the sense of the manipulation of time and environment that gives artistic creativity its special uniqueness. Whilst an onlooker can no doubt agree that a landscape produced by an artist is a definite, a specific point on the planet that truly exists within the day to day, it is also very much part of the particular and original thought of the artist. The two are not always the same thing and can often diverge and overlap giving the impression that a landscape is both there in real time but also part of an individual's personal, and therefore uniquely manipulated memory, a joining of the physical and the mental.

Sometimes landscape can appear near faultless, as if a photograph. Holding the creative interpretation against the real natural setting sees little difference apart perhaps from the movement of a tree to a better setting, or changing the curve of a shoreline to produce a better effect. However, often it is a matter of emotional content, content that is indelibly wrapped in a number of emotive layers that have to do with issues that are often rooted in a sense of personal belonging, balance, connectedness even with the physical landscape involved. Although these and other issues are not always foreseen by the artist, they are often present in the creative process, and certainly can be seen or felt in the finished piece.

Illustration: Walter Leistikow. Markische Landschaft mit Bauerngehoft und See, c1898.

To observe a landscape interpreted by a creative artist is one thing, to understand the connectedness that that particular artist has imbued into a specific landscape interpretation is another matter entirely. The observer can only be that, an observer. Even if they are familiar with the specific place and even perhaps the time, it will still be a matter of personal emotive issues that colour their own interpretation of the work, rather than a real connectedness with the artist. 

In this way we can admire the landscape work of Leistikow for example, but we can never appreciate the full depth of meaning. We are strangers in an emotional landscape created by the artist, a marriage of one individual to an environment. As long as we are aware of this then it does not really alter our appreciation of the artist's creative work, but it does, in some ways, forever lock us out of the emotionally intimate connectedness that was only his to experience. That he agreed to pass on the more generalised connections to others and in some small way to pass on the experience, is his legacy.

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