The Nabis

Who are the Nabis?

From the second half of the 19th century, a group of friends and painters aged around twenty formed the Nabis group.

The term Nabi means “prophet,” “inspired,” in Arabic and Hebrew. This name was chosen largely out of self-mockery, because according to the painter Maurice Denis: "it was a name which, vis-à-vis the workshops, made us initiates, a sort of secret society with a mystical appearance and proclaimed that the state of prophetic enthusiasm was habitual to us.” As “prophets”, the Nabis intend to renew the art of their time.

Among the pioneers of the group at the end of the 1880s, we can cite: Paul Sérusier, Félix Valloton, Paul-Elie Ranson, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. They are united by a common and innovative research which places the question of decoration at the heart of their concerns. Everyone has a nickname, a sign of their belonging to the group. Pierre Bonnard is the very Japanese Nabi (a direct allusion to his interest in Japanese art). Paul-Elie Ranson is the more Japanese Nabi than the more Japanese Nabi. Paul Sérusier is the Nabi with the gleaming beard. Maurice Denis is the Nabi of beautiful icons, and Édouard Vuillard, the Nabi zouave. Like a secret society, the Nabis meet in Ranson's workshop which they call "the Temple". They also invented a coded language. For them, an “icon” is a painting, a “bourgeois,” an ignoramus. They sign ETPMV: “in your palm, my verb”.

The Nabis do not constitute an isolated movement in their time, quite the contrary. They are influenced by the English Arts & Crafts Aesthetic Movement. In the 1860s, this movement was already questioning the decorative arts. In turn, the Nabis want to create decorative art in keeping with their times: very optimistic and dynamic.

They arrive at the end of the 19th century, a moment when art shifts more towards abstraction, towards symbolism, and detaches itself from the naturalism of the impressionists.

The beautification of everyday life.

The Nabis artists rejected impressionism, too realistic for them. They then advocated a new, revolutionary art that would beautify everyday life, an art that would abandon classic easel painting to create decorative works on interior supports: screens, stained glass windows, fans, tapestries, ceramics. They demonstrate that utilitarian objects can also accommodate beauty. They have a desire to create modern decor for modern everyday interiors. They want to put art in everything, and thus create art accessible to all, in the form of objects reviewed and re-designed by artists. The Nabis transmit to us an embellished vision of life, a beauty in everyday life. For example, they create prototypes of very cheerful wallpapers. In addition to this desire to beautify life, the Nabis decompartmentalize art, bringing artists and craftsmen together to create a new environment. The Nabis are among the first artists to work from their memory and their imagination, at the expense of the real settings.

They draw their inspiration from medieval tapestries and adopt ancestral techniques such as tempera. But they are also interested in Japanese Art Nouveau, to create contemporary scenes in a modern decor.

The Nabis and Japonisme: an encounter between Japan and the West.

At this time, the Nabis were fascinated by Japanese art. They then collect the prints and the crepe used to package the goods. They are interested in Japanese textile art and patterns. In addition to the search for exoticism, Japanese art influences the style of the Nabis. The painters adopted the simplification of forms, the taste for sinuous lines for silhouettes, the abandonment of perspective and depth, and bright colors. They also retain the vertical formats of kakemono. The themes are also renewed. We capture fleeting impressions of moments of daily life. The Nabis thus represent their loved ones, in scenes of daily life.

The Nabis and Symbolism

The symbolist aesthetic dominates the painting of the Nabis. As Maurice Denis writes, symbolist aesthetics is “this poetry of intuition, this art of evoking and suggesting, instead of recounting and saying, this integral lyricism that poets and artists strive to to convey in their works. »

The decor no longer describes a reality, it reinvents it.

Vuillard addresses the theme of interiors in his decorative panels. Its interior decorations evoke the interiority of people, most often that of the sponsors, as a sort of double of themselves. It is not an internal mirror of reality, but an interpretation.

The motif of the woman among the Nabis.

The motif of women is omnipresent in the work of the Nabis. Women are subjects of inspiration, muses, idealized women. The Nabis express in their works a certain tension between the representation of a charming femininity intended to be pleasantly contemplated, and the possibility of autonomous action in women. In certain works by Bonnard, women are represented both as elegant muses, modern inspirations but also figures of modernity, such as Misia, pianist and patron of many artists, praising La Revue Blanche ( cultural and artistic publication of progressive opinions).

Despite the revolution that this movement brought, this enchanted parenthesis lasted only ten years (1888-1900). The Nabis group dissolves and each artist pursues their own path.

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