Art Nouveau

Not sure exactly what our discussion is about, so here goes. My favorite artists from the Art Nouveau are: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, William Bradley, and Alphonse Mucha. Overall, the period was saturated with over-stylized decorative organic line, erotic (mainly feminine) imagery, and most notably experimental type. This period seems to signify when typography really broke out of its shell and began breaking some of the pre-existing barriers that type was bound to. Almost every typeface out of the Art Nouveau period is bold, decorative(especially the serif based fonts), and typically colorful. Most of the examples in the book depicts an era when advertising first began to tap into eroticism and sensuality particularly in its usage of the female nude. I also derive that this was an era of drunken debauchery and prostitution(ie: Absinthe and "Can-Can Girls"), way to go 19th century.