Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Critical influences
1 The reform of the industrial arts
Red House,
Bexleyheath
Philip Webb, 1959
Use of iron as an expressive architectural medium the second big influence after Arts and
Crafts
The use of iron dominated the debate between the traditionalists and progressive-positivist
architects throughout the 19th Century in France
Viollet-le-Ducs theories and designs associated iron with the reform of the decorative arts
An idealist decorative movement grafted onto the positivist structural tradition
Viollet-le-Duc: rational core of Gothic architecture is the only true basis for a modern
architecture
Art Nouveau derived the following principles from Viollet-le-Duc:
The exposure of the armature of a building as a visually logical system
The spatial organisation according to function rather than symmetry and proportion
The importance of materials as generators of form
The concept of organic form derived from the Romantic movement
The study of vernacular domestic architecture
His theory and designs became the rallying point for those opposed to the Beaux-Arts, in
France, elsewhere in Europe and in North America
3 Symbolism
Brussels
In 1892 Willy Finch (1854-1936) and Van de Velde inaugurate a decorative art movement based on
Arts and Crafts Society
Van de Velde lectures follow Morris in defining art as the expression of joy in work but recognise
the necessity of machine production a contradiction never resolved
Van de Velde, Werkbund Theatre, 1913-14, Cologne, Germany
Victor Horta
Maison du Peuple,
Brussels 1897-1900 (demolished
1965)
France
Art Nouveau in France closely related
to that of Belgium but without the
socialist, political connotations
1895 German art dealer Siegfried Bing
opens a gallery in Paris called LArt
Nouveau
Van de Velde designed three rooms for
it
Berlage (1856-1934)
Modernisme in Barcelona
(1852-1926)
Glasgow
Vienna
The concepts behind Symbolism and Art Nouveau
strongly influenced by German Romanticism and
philosophical Idealism
This finds expression in the work of the Viennese art
historian Alois Riegel (1858-1905): decorative arts
were the origin of all artistic expression; art rooted in
indigenous culture, not derived from a universal
natural law
This related to the ideas of John Ruskin and William
Morris
Stands in contrast with the ideas derived from the
Enlightenment architecture aligned with progress,
science and the Cartesian spirit
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire this conflict of
concepts underscored by the conflict between the
metropolis (liberal and rationalist) and the ethnic
minorities seeking to assert identity, to whom Art
Nouveau became an emblem of political and cultural
freedom