The Charm of Art Nouveau

The elaborate asymmetry and organic, viny images of Art Nouveau are as associated with Paris, Barcelona, Brussels and Riga as colorful onion domes, monochrome block-style apartment buildings and towering Stalinist skyscrapers are associated with Moscow. As the traditional preserve of the Old Russian heritage, the Russian capital hardly seems the place for much modernist European architecture.

But the joy for those just returned from a European vacation, or longing to be, is that the capital has some nice Art Nouveau surprises: tucked away amongst Moscow's characteristic architectural cacophony is a rich bounty of Art Nouveau. Spotting it only requires a stroll through some of the city's quietest streets and a bit of squinting at the skyline.

Moscow's Art Nouveau hot spot is unquestionably the Gorky Museum (Malaya Nikitskaya Ul., 6). Unlike some house-museums of famous Moscow writers, this one has no chance of boring even those who cannot name a single title of Maxim Gorky's works. With a bulging marble staircase that looks perpetually as if it is melting, wood paneling etched with spindly roses, monstrous stai­ned-glass windows, and more, the mansion offers a fair number of surprises, a dreamy confectionery of Art Nouveau's best that Gorky himself, who was settled in the house by Stalin, absolutely despised.

The museum (originally the Ryabu­shinsky Mansion) was de­signed by the king of Moscow Art Nouveau, Fyodor Schechtel (1859-1926), whose legacy of not only private houses but also a multitude of functional city buildings largely survives, and some of it, like the Yaroslavl train station, still serves its original function.

The train station, whose tall roof could be from a Russian fairy tale, is reportedly Moscow's busiest. Its traditional Russian motifs mark the station as Neo-Russian, a Russian offspring of Art Nouveau. The distinctive main building of the Tretyakov Gallery, designed by Viktor Vasnetsov, is also considered Neo-Russian.

Art Nouveau is known for its surprising details, and Moscow's version offers a good share. Imaginative human faces, vines, flowers, curves and curlicues can be spotted on facades throughout the area between the Kremlin and the Garden Ring, with key streets being Arbat, Spiridonovka, Ostozhenka and Myasnitskaya.

Another prime example of Mos­cow Art Nouveau is the Hotel Metropol (Teatralny Proezd, 1/4). The crowning representation of the secular luxury of the rich of the day, the thoroughly Western European hotel is but a short walk from the Kremlin and the staunch nationalism it symbolized. Elaborate mosaic panels designed by artist Mikhail Vrubel cap off the hotel's rhythmic façade and are only barely discernable from street level. A step inside reveals a rich interior that is also replete in fin-de-siècle décor.

Vrubel, with his haunting deep-purple and gray images of mythical women and demons, is perhaps the most distinctive of the many Russian Art-Nouveau artists. The Tretyakov Gallery exhibits a strong selection of his works, whose shimmering colors are truly appreciable only in person.

In its heyday, the Art-Nouveau mood flooded Moscow, with Art-Nouveau porcelain, wallpaper, furniture and stained glass imported and snapped up in mass. Many a Russian advertisement or sign was designed with the style's flamboyant embellishments. The style was largely popularized and propagated by the Mir Iskusstva ("World of Art") magazine, whose chief editor was Sergei Diaghilev, mastermind of the famous Ballets Russes.

Near the end of his career, Schech­tel re-designed the Moscow Art Theater (Kamergersky Per.) in a mo­dernist design that was in tune with its founders' desires for non-distracting simplicity. To this day, the theater's seagull insignia and signature typeface are printed in their original Art-Nouveau style.

By Alisa Ballard