The correspondence of the arts in a Fin de Siècle Magazine. The “Livre d’Art” at the crossroads of Modernism

The main topic of this article is the history of a rare and precious French magazine of the late Nineteenth century, in which a vivid and crucial discussion about arts and their inter-relation grew the more and more intense in the short space of four years (1892-1896). The “Livre d’Art” was first conceived as a simple booklet to be distributed to the spectators of the experimental plays of the ”Théâtre d’Art”, but it soon became a sophisticated art object, which merged figurative and poetic art in order to create a mutual relation of authentic correspondence among them, thus overcoming the wagnerian idea of Gesamtkumstwerk. We are then going to focus on the second series of the Livre d’Art (1896), that exhibits a new tendency towards Modernism and Internationalism, opening towards Belgian, German and English artistic and literary movements, such as Jugendstil and Arts and Crafts, but opening also to contemporary theatre aesthetics, publishing i.e. Jarry’s Ubu Roi