Twenty years ago, I was struck by Art Nouveau's popularity among male homosexual aesthetes, for whom neither it nor Beardsley had to be revived, since they had never been forgotten. In every star, style, or art work celebrated by these Alexandrine homsexuals, there is always a secret hermaphroditism. So with Art Nouveau, the most epicene style since Mannerism. Art Nouveau, unlike Islamic patterns, is not value-neutral. But then, nothing in art is value-neutral.
Style is always a shadowy emanation of assumptions about nature and society.
Art Nouveau subliminally expresses the Decadent world-view. Rooms or buildings undulate with curvy rythms, sexual subversions of western will, which since Egypt has based its monoments on the stable, foursquare directionals of the male chest. Mainline western architecture has a rational organization unshared by Hindu temples, with their mazelike warrens and swarming surfaces. Gaud 's Art Nouveau rooms and caves are archaic with female swellings. Art Nouveau is active but sterile.