[image description: The metal bas relief in a gilt frame. The face of a regal dark-skinned woman. Her deep green patinaed hair holds the suggestion of flowers and her translucent tiara might be the wings of insects. Text reads, “Elisabeth deVigne the small god of Art Nouveau, 254.”]
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She moves in natural, naturally, and in architecture, cultivated and constructed, a design of such towering beauty that none who look upon her can find the will to look easily away. She is a timeless god, for all that the thing she represents had its time, its shining moment at the center of the stage. But when that moment passed, the art it had inspired remained, in lush curves and glorious asymmetry.
She is a god of open spaces and irregular lines, a sense of motion caught in spiraling shapes, beautiful and perfect. Her most faithful live beautiful lives. She can’t offer them much more than that, but beauty she provides in plenty, and it feeds them, body and soul, as little else could have done.
She knows she’s lucky. Most gods of artistic movements fade much more quickly than she has, and while her time might end tomorrow, she will fade knowing she was grand for much longer than anyone expected.
She was perfection, in her day.
She still is, now.
Lee Moyer 