Victor Guimard, “Vase des Blinelles”, MET

Paul Gauguin, “Vessel with Woman and Goat”, MET

Inspired by Art Nouveau and the British Arts and Crafts movement, these artists were trying to do for the decorative arts what Post-Impressionists like van Gogh and Cézanne and Symbolists like Moreau and Redon were doing for painting around the same time: rescuing their medium from stuffy, fussy and vapid forms of bourgeois gentility. They wanted to remake ceramics into a sensually, emotionally and imaginatively vivid art form.