Charles Rennie Mackintosh Essay -- Essays Papers

Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in Glasgow on 7 June 1868. He trained as an architect in a local firm and studied art & design at evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. For 20 years he worked as an architect/designer in Glasgow where all his best known work was created. Much of it is still there today. At art school Mackintosh and his friend and colleague Herbert MacNair met the artist sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald. These four artists collaborated on designs for furniture, metalwork and illustration, developing a distinctive imagery of weird, abstracted female figures and metamorphic lines reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley. Their style earned them the nickname of the 'Spook School' and their work, particularly in England, was treated with suspicion because of its decadent influence of Continental art nouveau. At this time Continental Art Nouveau was frowned upon by art critics. The majority of Mackintosh's work was created, with the help of a small number of patrons, within a short period of intense activity betwe...