The Triumph of Art Nouveau Paris Exhibition 1900

The Paris world exhibition of 1900 was the apotheosis of nineteenth-century industrial aspirations and achievements, placed in a fairyland setting constructed in ironwork and lit by electricity. It was the triumph of Art Nouveau as an official style and of the electric lightbulb as a decorative emblem. Philippe Jullian takes the reader on a tour of its many sections in a handsomely illustrated book which combines a serious appraisal of the works of art included in the exhibition with an ironic survey of the weirder contributions. Nearly every nation had its pavilion – mock Elizabethan for the English, the Russian Kremlinesque, a village complete with mountains for the Swiss. There were entertainments and cafés of every sort for the crowds that poured in from the new Métro. Oscar Wilde favoured the Egyptian one.