An early springboard for rock art was the fin-de-siècle pre-eminence of decorative Art Nouveau from the decadent, erotic Symbolist movement. Art Nouveau first raged across Europe and America in the 1890s, appearing in architecture, furniture design, silverware, jewelry, wallpaper and illustration. It was a decorative art based on a naturalistic depiction of mainly vegetable forms-writhing tendrils, sinuously stylized flowers, convoluted lettering.
Art Nouveau served as a powerful inspiration for its rediscoverers of the Sixties. Psychedelia was in many ways the grandchild of the romantic/sinister fin-de-siècle decadence – both movements appearing as reactions to dehumanized, mechanized, industrialized urban society and both saturated in drug experiences and mysticism.
