Henry
Van der Velde’s influence on this time period could not have been accomplished
without Willy Finch. In 1982, these two
created a decorative art movement that paid it’s respects to the English Arts
and Crafts Society through their painter’s group, Les XX. After awhile of work, they slowly became less
associated with the industrial arts and were more recognized along the fine
arts. Through this experience, Van der
Velde had the opportunity to present a series of lectures.
At the turn of the century,
technologies from science and industrialization warped the modes of
transportation, economy, and commercialism. From these technologies, sprang a
new malleable material. Iron would change the flow of the architect’s pen from
short, acute, symmetrical floor designs hindered by stone’s structural
capabilities into fluid, naturalistic motions upon which art and architecture
would enter into the interior. According to William Curtis, “Art Nouveau
artists rejected historicism, but they could not altogether reject tradition,
for even the creator intent on producing new forms will rely, in some degree,
on old ones.” [1]
The proportionality and symmetry from what stone columns and flying buttresses
offered could not nearly harbor the industrial and proletariat programmatic
necessities of the 19th century.
Haussmann’s attempt to breathe life
and, quite literally, air back into Paris at the beginning of the century
proposed a fresh canvas for urban façade design. The storefront and its
adjacent sidewalk would become the new medium for which the social stage would
lay. It brought forth colorful public characters, such as the Flâneur. This
patron would meander through the streets and accomplish nothing but simply
existing in space. Their main stoop from which they observed the rush of the
crowds was from the thresholds of department stores.
The Parisian street front was only a
dynamic forum for the public, but also an organizing system for a new housing
movement. When the grand avenues were carved out from the preexisting medieval
township, numerous households that had stood for generations were displaced.
Luckily for the new commercial avenues, persons were not exiled to the
countryside, but elevated to housing located above stores and public spaces.
This kept customers nearby and revenue in the new industrial age flowing. The
economic prosperity influenced people to renovate their individualistic
surroundings in the domestic home.
Running parallel to the metamorphosis
of Parisian urban fabric was the inevitable change of the typical household
architecture. Now that man had to strike out of the familiarity of his home and
trudge exposed to the factories, weaving together the nurturing threads of the
proletariat’s home was imperative.
Art Nouveau architect, Henry Van de
Velde was a supporter that the house was “an expression of the personality.”4
His specific contribution included the idea that while traditional architecture
forms are created to contain a space, the new technology of iron has the
quality of malleability and should work to redefine the idea of ornamentation.
With his furniture, such as his work, Chair in 1896, the ornamentation
begins to be incorporated with the overall form and functionality instead of
being an entity standing alone.
One last Art Nouveau architect worth
mentioning that contributed a multitude of work is Hector Guimard. Along with
the Eiffel Tower, his subway thresholds have become a recognizable symbol of
Parisian architecture. Similar to Horta’s faith in Viollet-le-Duc’s theory of
exposed structural architecture, Guimard also believed in the truth of a structure’s
form being on display. He pushed the subject even further and was not afraid to
use structural ironwork as an educational tool about the new technology. Taking
this art to the public realm, Guimard wanted to expose iron to the utilitarian
high-traffic streets, yet was careful not to deny it a naturalistic exuberance.
Guimard’s work is said to be infused
with a dash of Gothic Rationalism, perhaps from the influence of Viollet-le-Duc
or the respectable nature of Guimard as a historian. However, it is far from
being stuck in the past, and can appear futuristic even today. The webbing of
the Paris Métro radiates upwards and outwards calling attention to ones
surroundings while providing adequate definition as an isolated passage to the
underworld.
These three men, Guimard, Horta, and
Van de Velde, set benchmarks for these foreign and overwhelming technologies of
glass and iron. Within these benchmarks, principles of Art Nouveau were
massaged and procured and would go on to define a thoughtful and naturalistic
style. Instead of unengaged ornamentation, wall motifs ran seamlessly into
three dimensional railings, columns, and even furniture. The artist’s fluidity
cradled structural loads in Horta’s private residences, emphasized a threshold
to the Paris Métro by Guimard, and faded from the foreground of furniture into
the background of a room’s composition by the hand of Van de Velde.
The
underlying forces behind Art Noveau can be narrowed down to a few basic
concepts. The first, the one that most
people immediately notice, the flowing organic form. This imitation of nature was definitely vital
to the success of this period. Not only
did many pieces possess this organic form, but it also served a purpose. It must not only be for ornamentation, but
also be absolutely necessary to holding the piece together, many times even
structurally. The third and final thing
was clearly an obsession. All of these
artists took this new concept and ran with it.
They designed everything from the structure, to the ornamentation on the
wall, to the clothes people would wear in these spaces. Hector Guimard, Victor Horta, and Henry Van
der Velde were three influential people of this time and were under the
influence of Art Nouveau at it’s peak.
Hector
Guimard was one who took France by storm with this movement. He had a serious commitment to the ideology
of Viollet le Duc. He “integrated the
new decorative principles into a coherent architectural style”1. Guimard was provided with the opportunity to
design the School of Sacre Coeur in Paris and the Maison Coilliot in
Lille. The illustrations alone from
these buildings inspired many architects and designers to incorporate these
ideas into their own work. Guimard found it necessary to carry the analogy
between metal structure and plant form further than any other architect of his
time.
Architecture
was a passion of Victor Horta in which he received Beaux-Arts training. With this training, he mixed a neoclassical
style with Viollet-le-Duc’s rationalism and constructed a series of houses
throughout Belgium. He received many
commissions from domestic clients who shared his socialist views. Some describe his style as a “whiplash style
in France and abroad. [By] rejecting historical styles and embracing new materials,
Horta laid the foundations for modern architecture."
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