1

The Realization of the Beautiful: On Henry

van de Veldes Aesthetic Theory
Elie Haddad
The unhistorical (the power to forget) and the super-historical (art and religion) are
the natural antidotes against the overpowering of life by history; they are the cures
for the historical disease. We who are sick of the disease may suffer a little from the
antidote. But this is no proof that the treatment we have chosen is wrong.
Friedrich Nietzsche
1
Henry van de Veldes name is tied in architectural histories to two major issues:
the episode of Art Nouveau, and his role in the 1914 Werkbund debate in
Cologne where he confronted Muthesius on the question of standardization in
design. And although both of these episodes represent foundational positions in
his development, yet they do not in any way give a fair representation of the
complex theoretical path that van de Velde traced throughout his life, and which
appears, as I argue in this paper, to be consistent with a dialectic between
rational conception and empathy that finds its resolution in a peculiar
interpretation of the notion of ornament.
2
This dialectic, with its first element
drawn from the scientific discourses and rationalist philosophies of the
nineteenth century, and its second owing to developments in psychology, found
its resolution in an aesthetic theory where the element of ornament plays an
essential synthetic role.
The organic conception of ornament was in turn based on the notion of the line-
force
3
as its operative principle, a principle that acts as the connecting thread
between the human hand and the material waiting to be brought to life by its
action. Yet this conception of an organic ornament did not appear to play a role
beyond the confines of a personal artistic will, as his writings did not go beyond
the questions of a practical aesthetic to address their related philosophical
consequences.
In fact van de Veldes reading of different philosophical sources from
Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and Souriau went principally towards the specific
considerations of art, without paying great attention to the whole philosophical
system from which they were issued. Yet he was still very coherent in his pursuit
of a practical theory based on the rational and consequent principle of design,
which would not exclude the human subject from its domain. Why then did the
artist turn to philosophical figures like Schopenhauer and Souriau, simply
extracting a reductive interpretation of their theory, rather than relying on the
more practical theories of someone like Viollet-le-Duc, when the notion of
rational conception appears as a closer relative to Viollet-le-Ducs, than to
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Schopenhauers. The question may then be partly explained by the importance
that philosophical theories still played at the beginning of the twentieth century
in any aesthetic theory, which led a practical theoretician like van de Velde to
seek support for his theory directly from philosophical sources.
Before van de Veldes engagement with French and German aesthetics, one
principle source had already shaped or confirmed his intuitions: the English
theorists of the Arts & Crafts movement, and principally William Morris and
Walter Crane. To Morris he owed his reorientation to the field of decorative arts,
while to Crane he owed some of his original ideas, albeit dressed in a different
garb. In fact we find in Crane an early discussion of the constructive line as
well as a comparable interest in the ornamental patterns of early civilizations,
probably inspired by Semper, and detailed discussions of the various aspects of
design including ornament.
4
Yet in contrast to Crane, van de Veldes style of
writing followed less the rational expos, and more the passionate appeals
addressed to a community of enthusiasts or believers, in the manner of Ruskin.
Behind van de Veldes intentional or unintentional disregard of the other
architectural texts that could have also been useful in his early theoretical
foundation may have been his distrust of the debates that circled around
questions of styles, rather than the search for the style. Van de Velde sought
therefore a modern theory that avoided any reference to historical models,
grounding itself on an a-historical foundation. In his theory, rational conception
became this a-historical ground on which artistic activity would take place. Yet it
would be erroneous to reduce all his theory to that simple concept, as rational
conception was van de Veldes stepping stone to reclaim the artwork from the
jumble of historicist contaminations to purify it and denude it of all excesses.
Nietzsche, whose influence was perceptible on van de Veldes writings,
5
most
succinctly expressed this contemporary revulsion against historicism when he
said:
The excess of history has attacked the shaping power of life; it no longer
understands how to utilize the past as powerful nourishment.
6
It was therefore necessary to break out of this condition by simultaneously
confining oneself to an a-historical horizon where history is momentarily
suspended, as well as bringing artistic activity closer to the realm of religion, the
other supra-historical faculty that is capable of lending existence the character of
something eternal. Van de Velde may have misunderstood this religious
dimension in Nietzsche as an appeal to morality, which is very clear in his early
theoretical formulations; while later it reappears in the notion of empathy, a close
relative to Nietzsches idealization. Against this Nietzchean background, we
can better understand van de Veldes subsequent turn to a metaphysical
perception of the artistic work as pure form, still conceived on the foundation
of rational conception. The desire for a more basic form, in the sense of
answering to functional needs, was superseded by the necessity of reaching
beyond this temporal present towards a metaphysical realm where the
depreciating effect of time on things would be countered by the ideal of the
eternal.
One can posit here a movement in three phases, from the world of inanimate
matter to the world of animate forms, then to the world of eternal forms. The
The Realization of the Beautiful
3
passage from the first phase to the second would happen through the projection
of the human will into the object to be createdthat is, through empathythe
ornamental line acting as the principal agent of this synthesis between empathy
and rational conception. The passage to the last stage would be the exclusive
property of the purest forms where the agent of synthesis, the line, totally
dissolves into the structure of the thing created. In a rather surprising move, the
Greek temple, this historical model par-excellence was presented by van de
Velde as the ultimate example of this condition:
le Temple Grec! - comme une cration palpitante, se dressant devant nous, de l'aveu
de Ruskin, 'infaillible, resplendissante, clairement dfinie et matresse d'elle-
mme'!
7
Within pure forms, ornament ceased to play a major role as the means of
animating the form as well as a catalyst of the synthesis, yet this only happened
after the dissolution of ornament into the form itself, its coincidence with the
form rather than its elimination. Only much later, did van de Velde concede to
a deliberate abstention from ornament, an abstention that would in his view
prepare for the reawakening in the edifice, the object, or the human body of a
sovereign ornament realized through the diverse play of proportions and
volumes, animated by a rhythm that carries and transports like a musical
sentence or a poem.
8
The line which carried the energy of the human being into the work, expressively
animating it, was now more latently absorbed into the internal structure of the
thing, leading to an idealized organic conception of the work of art which
coincided with his idea of the eternal forms. Eternity was defined as the moment
when form realized this equilibrium of internal forces, a moment where
ornament was reduced to its essential:
It is these activities that seem to have provoked the form, fixed its aspect. The
modifications, of which the form is the last consequence, reached an end at the
moment that these internal forces neutralised their energy, in a perfect equilibrium
of effects and causes. This moment becomes, as of that instant, eternity!
We could conceive forms that realize this equilibrium, without the help of
ornament, and these are the most perfect forms. In their simplicity, they have
realized a linear scheme constituting in-itself and without any complementaries, a
perfect eternal ornament!
9
It is important to stress the last sentence of this statement where the author
explicitly reaffirmed that such eternal forms have realized a perfect eternal
ornament. Van de Velde had somewhat modified his earlier positions when he
criticized the elimination of ornament as a denial of life itself, akin to the
artificial life one lives in a convent, where men and women live in constant
negation of their function and gender, and as an expression of a decadent ideal,
that which posits the renunciation of life as a condition of sanctity, that which
sees only in death the remedy to all injustices.
10
The concept of form became thus impressed by, or transformed into, the ideal of
a transcendent, yet still organic, beauty where the dissolution of ornament into
form was now seen as the highest level of resolution. The medium of translating
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this ideal into form remained nevertheless the human hand of the craftsman or
the artist, and not the standardized process of a machine.
Thus the line-force remained the principle of individuation even in such cases
where ornament naturally dissolved into the structure of the thing. Not a
geometric, or intellectually mediated line, but a visceral line that draws its
energy from the human hand which traces it and transmits this energy into the
object thus created. This line simultaneously manifests the will of its engraver
and responds to the material on which it is engraved. It is clear that the most
immediate instances of such a relationship could be found in the hand-crafted
objects, in van de Veldes own designs for vases and other objects, as well as in
the furniture that responds to the human body and its movement. But he also
attempted with various degrees of success to translate this into architecture.
There, the response of the object to the human being who moves in it, may be
mediated through the means of an ornament which acts simply as a means to
appropriate space; and his Manuscript on Ornament
11
offered its most telling
illustration, the action of the cave-dwellers who incised, scraped, and coloured
their cave walls with a frenzy that recalls Nietzsches Dionysian spirit. Yet van
de Velde realized in practice that the process of building could not simply be
reduced to that, and that the shaping of architectural form was subject to other
technical factors. Principally, it was the rational conception of things that
prevailed in such circumstances, leaving the possibility for a few forms to attain
that higher degree of perfection, forms that could resolve this dialectic of
empathy and rational conception by simultaneously expressing their principle of
individuation and resolving their functional and utilitarian tasks.
Whereas the organic presented the first stage of this activity where the animation
of form transformed the rationally conceived objects into organic artifacts, the
ideal of pure forms characterized the second stage where the mere organic was
superseded by the resolution of the dialectic of form.
12
As mentioned, van de Veldes primary model of such an organic ideal form was
the Greek temple where the line-force did not manifest itself in the decorative
patterns, but as a material line in the curves of the stylobate and the entasis of the
columns, that is as the expression of latent physical forces mediated by the
human spirit. In such examples, ornament is transformed into a con-structive
element where the un-ornamented appearance, in his opinion, appears as the
logical consequence of the coincidence of structure and form, or to put it
differently, of the dissolution of appearance into essence. There, the structive-
linear element appeared as the transmutation of the earlier empathic line, or as
its analog in material form. In one of the sections of his major theoretical
collection Les Formules de la Beaut Architectonique Moderne, van de Velde
had given an explanation of this structuring function of ornament, with
connotations that recall both Btticher and Semper:
Ornament thus conceived completes the form, it acts as an extension to it and we
recognized the sense and the justification of ornament in its function!
This function consists in "structuring" form and not in "ornamenting" it, as we are
tempted to commonly understand it. Without the support of this structure, on which
the form adapts itself as the envelope of a flexible cloth on its frame, or the skin on
the bones; the form would become altered or would completely collapse!
The Realization of the Beautiful
5
The relations existing between this "structural and dynamographic" ornament and
the form or the surfaces, appear so intimate that the ornament seems to have
determined the form! This determination enters into the natural order of things
which considers that the clothing and the dressing have substituted for the structure,
for the internal frame!
13
This idea was more elaborately developed in the Manuscript on Ornament where
the structuring role of ornament was exemplified by the activity of body
tattooing, as well as that of the primitive engraving on the cave walls. In both
cases, the structive-linear ornament was interpreted as a binary function which
simultaneously ornamented as it structured the form, this may be understood in
simpler terms as the function of manifesting the internal order of a form by
expressing it externally, thus raising the internal order to the level of an external
phenomenon.
This ornament, van de Velde further clarified in another text, was also the
image of the internal play of forces that we feel in all forms and materials.
These ideas may be seen in lineage to the tradition of metaphysical idealism that,
after Schiller, attempted to resolve the opposition between reason and emotion.
Schiller had proposed his own aesthetic synthesis that connected mans sensual
drive and instinct to his intellect. Croce thus summarized this concept:
The man who plays, i.e. contemplates nature aesthetically and produces art, sees all
natural objects as animated; in such a phantasmagoria mere natural necessity gives
place to the free determination of the faculties; spirit appears as spontaneously
reconciled with nature, form with matter.
14
Schopenhauer, in his own way, also tried to reconcile spirit and nature, by
positing the whole world of nature, the world of objects, as conditioned by the
subject, and both objects and subjects as simply the general forms of the world.
Van de Veldes own version was based on a more spontaneous, intuitive and
practical theory. In his practical theory, ornament also appears to resolve the
dualism of subject and object, of artistic will and rational conception by
manifesting the objects common properties with the rest of natures creations, as
well as with the human spirit. Underlying all these different phenomena, van de
Velde saw one common factor: force. It is this same force, which in some
aspects mimics Nietzsches will-to-power, that he referred to at the end of the
Manuscript, as he concluded:
Our efforts have tended towards re-uniting with a tradition of life considered as a
phenomenon, its most pure and unchanging expression being force, our efforts have
tended to re-connect with a tradition of beauty elevated above contingencies and
naturalistic aspects, and perceived through the supreme order and harmony of
organized forces.
15
This supreme order and harmony of organized forces may be the other
terminology for what he understood as the organic will-to-power. The
Manuscript on Ornament above all reconfirmed this organic aspect of the
artwork, bringing it all the way back to the pre-historic human activity found in
cave art. The artist, or the form-giver, by infusing the artwork with his energy,
animated the forms into living manifestations of the represented beings. This
basic human urge is the same that permeates the act of creation on the human
F A B R I C A T I O N S Vol 13, No 1, June 2003
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body in the form of tattooing, the same that orders and animates the most ideal
forms, as in the Greek temple, and the simplest forms such as the farmers tools.
Behind this anthology of different creative forms lies the desire for a
comprehensive order. This drive towards an all-inclusive totality which seeks
common links between disparate manifestations of forms from tools to temples
was a characteristic of other conceptions in the nineteenth century, in reaction to
the analytical and mechanical epistemologies of the previous century. Georges
Gusdorf characterized this as a trans-empirical form of knowledge that sought to
offer an alternative model of reality, inspired in large part by the Romantic
tradition and its rapprochement with nature. This Romantic tradition defined an
organology which is inspired by the dynamics of fluidity, of the continuous
metamorphosis of a vital becoming.
16
It is this dynamic that explains van de
Veldes particular interpretation of the Greek temple and other Classical forms,
and indicates a phenomenological dimension in van de Veldes thought, where
form in its various appearances is seen as manifestations of a single underlying
idea.
This attempt to posit an organic order that regulates the different manifestations
of form marks the theoretical distinction between Henry van de Veldes
conception and Alois Riegls. Although they both placed an emphasis on the role
of the will in artistic creation, Riegls Kunstwollen did not go so far as to stress
this vital relation to the human body, this dynamic order of form. For Riegl, the
artistic will remained by and large tied to an intellectual activity, whereas van de
Velde stressed its separation from the intellect and its connection to a more
innate, organic drive.
In his own practical work, van de Velde was not as able in translating this theory
into form, and as such, he may have appeared stuck in the stylistic impediments
of his Art Nouveau phase. This partially explains the inconsistencies in his
design approach to different problems as well as the ambiguous relationship
between his writings and his architectural projects, an ambiguity that was not
unusual in that specific time and context.
17
Figure 1: Dynamographic Patterns, Studies of Weimar Workshop
Courtesy Henry van de Velde Archives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.
In fact, the experiments to which van de Velde subjected his students at the
Weimar School appear to run against his projected aim, for they illustrate the
development of patterns or types of so-called dynamo-graphic ornaments, which
The Realization of the Beautiful
7
negate this spontaneous engagement of the subject in the object, reducing it to
the production of patterns. (fig 1) Similarly, the early manifestations of
ornamentation, as in the Folkwang Museum (fig 2) do not show this organic
conception of the work of art, rather they simply cover the inner structure with
an organic appearance, answering more to Sempers theory of Bekleidung than to
his own theoretical premises. Most of his practical work in fact failed to
demonstrate his theoretical position, for they either fell into a more decorative
ornamental activity as in the Folkwang Museum, or into a normative rational
conception as in the case of the Hohenhof (fig 3) and other domestic projects of
1908-1914. Other works avoided altogether this issue as they were caught in
another problematic, as in the case of the Nietzsche Memorial (fig 4).
18
Figure 2: Folkwang Museum, Hagen, Stair Detail.
Photograph Elie Haddad.
Figure 3: Hohenhof Villa, Hagen.
Courtesy Henry van de Velde Archives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.
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Figure 4: Nietzsche Memorial, project, unrealized.
Courtesy Henry van de Velde Archives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.
A hint of this possible interpretation in his own built work of the period may be
read in the Villa Esche of 1902-4, with its suggestive details. Villa Esche was
van de Veldes first construction on German soil. A large house built for the
wealthy industrialist Herbert Esche in one of the plush suburbs of Chemnitz in
1902, it stood as a monument on the hill from which it overlooked the
surrounding landscape (fig 5). The quasi-symmetry of the plan is not reflected in
the elevations which present a more complex appearance due to the different
articulations on each side. In one part of the house, the balcony detail at the back,
the inner organs of the form manifest themselves outwardly in an expressive
play of forces (fig 6). Here, one can read the play of structural lines carrying the
balcony through this statement that we find in the Manuscriptyears
laterwhere van de Velde speculated on the relationship between line and
body:
[...] the action of determining [body] contours is more effective and the line which
engages these surfaces can only, it seems to me, roll itself, and in this case it
replaces the structure. In rolling itself, it has concentrated and stored the energy that
becomes itself the guarantor of the invariable permanence of form.
19
This statement appears like an accurate description of the role played by linear
elements in this specific building, where the line effectively acts as a structuring
element mediated by, as well as mediating the body it engages. The flexing
curves that suspend the balcony are in fact syntactical elements that respond to,
as well as underline, the physical forces. This simple response can be contrasted
with other parts of the same building where a more conventional tectonic
prevails.
The resultant form is not so much an a-priori model as it is a result of an
expression of forces that lift and carry the balcony above the ground, without an
exaggerated defiance of gravity. In this sense, rationality acts as a check to the
possible excesses of an empathic urge that could severe the relationship of form
to its inner structure, and thereby undermine its organic nature. One could draw
The Realization of the Beautiful
9
the parallel between such articulations and the expression of structural elements
in Gothic architecture, the only difference being that aesthetic empathy acts here
to express an individual will which does not lend itself to a translation into a
collective system.
Figure 5: Esche Haus, Chemnitz.
Courtesy Henry van de Velde
Archives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.
Figure 6: Esche Haus- Detail of Back.
Photograph Elie Haddad.
F A B R I C A T I O N S Vol 13, No 1, June 2003
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This interpretation of the line-force as an empathic expression of the individual
will does not imply its necessary restriction to specific parts of the building; to
the contrary this limitation here seems to be a result of the artists hesitation at
this early phase of his architectural career, and the constraints of building
technologies. Van de Velde did not therefore attempt to apply this action to the
rest of the building; the balcony detail thus played the role of the dangerous
supplement which threatened to overtake the otherwise static form, but
remained under check. It recalls the similar effect of the Greek builders recourse
to entasis, specifically as read by van de Velde in the case of the Greek temple,
not as an optical correction but as an expression of the inherent dynamic of
forces:
Entasis, that is the swelling of the shaft of the column under the weight of the
architraves and the masses that it has to carry; the recourse to the line as an
expression of this swelling, irrefutably attest to the elasticity and the reality of the
play and the law of weight and resistance.
20
The objective of the artist therefore, through these formal experiments, was to
realize the elasticity and the reality of the play of forces acting within the inert
masses. The means to simulate this play was through recourse to empathy, which
is the projection of the same reality of play that animates a body in movement.
Van de Veldes resistance to the simplifying discourse of Sachlichkeit, while
proclaiming his own version of a rational conception of form, may be better
understood in the light of his attempts which still affirmed the need to create an
architecture of the present following the principles of great art throughout the
ages. His quest for the origins of art coincided with his search for the eternal, but
an eternal that does not withdraw from the world. In Nietzsches footsteps, his
vision of the eternal was that of the forms which run throughout the course of
history, from Paleolithic cave art to the Greek temple, to the Gothic cathedral
and contemporary engineering works, all animated by the same spirit. This is
evident in his later essay, Le Nouveau, where he clearly expressed his revulsion
at the obsession with novelty in forms, in which he himself confesses to have
been carried away at one point in time.
21
In this essay, van de Velde clarified the
underlying thread that he perceived under the different manifestations of form,
throughout the different epochs of human history, which, as his friend Harry
Kessler recorded in his own memoirs,
22
van de Velde had simply discovered that
there always existed only one sort of architecture underneath the different
epochs, which beneath the wrapper of various successive styles had always had
the same objective in mind: the realization of the beautiful.
The Realization of the Beautiful
11
Notes
1
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, New York: Liberal Arts Press,
1949, p 77.
2
This paper is based on my PhD dissertation on this topic. See Elie Haddad,
Henry van de Velde on Rational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament,
unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1998.
3
See the seminal essays by Henry van de Velde, Die Linie in Die Zukunft,
Berlin, 6 September 1902, pp 385-388; and Prinzipelle Erklarung in
Kunstgewerbliche Laienpredigten, Leipzig, 1902.
4
Walter Crane, The Bases of Design, London: Bell, 1898; and Walter Crane,
Ideals in Art, New York: Garland, 1979.
5
In his memoirs, Henry van de Velde painted himself as one of those first
converts to Nietzsches message. After entering the circle of friends that
formed around the philosophers sister, Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, which
included Harry Kessler and Eberhard von Bodenhausen; van de Velde had
the possibility to consult firsthand some of Nietzsche's original works in the
philosopher's archives, the interior of which he would be commissioned to
redesign later. The first book that van de Velde mentioned in the order of his
readings of Nietzsche was Zarathustra, which coincided with his formative
period. Already in Brussels, most probably, he had acquired his own copy of
the anthology of Nietzsche's writings translated into French. After his
relocation to Weimar and the close friendship he was to develop with
Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, he would have been consequently informed of
the totality of the philosopher's works. He even claimed in his memoirs to
have been instrumental in convincing the philosopher's sister to publish Ecce
Homo, for which he eventually designed the cover. For a discussion of
Nietzsches influence on van de Velde, see Haddad, Henry van de Velde on
Rational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament, Chapter 2; and Henry van de
Velde, Recit de ma Vie, Part I & II, Paris: Flammarion, 1992 and 1995.
6
Friedrich Nietzsche, Unfashionable Observations, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995, p 63.
7
The Greek Temple! -like a palpitating creation, rising before us, in Ruskins
own confession, infallible, resplendant, clearly defined and master of
itself!
Henry van de Velde, Les Formules de la Beaut Architectonique Moderne,
Bruxelles: Archives d'architecture Moderne, 1978, p 18.
8
Henry van de Velde, Le Nouveau, 1929, reprinted in Dblaiement d'art,
Bruxelles: Archives d'architecture Moderne, 1979, p 93. [my translation]
9
Van de Velde, Le Nouveau, p 93. [my translation]
10
Aperus en vue d'une Synthse d'art, Bruxelles: Monnom,1895, p 21.
11
Henry van de Velde, Manuscript on Ornament, unpublished manuscript,
translated and edited by Elie Haddad, and now published in On Henry Van
de Velde's Manuscript on Ornament, Journal of Design History, 16, 2, (June
2003): 119-138. See also my own commentary on the Manuscript in the
same issue on pages 139-166.
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12
Van de Velde worked on the Manuscript text between January 1915 and
December 1916. He effectively began to collect materials for this work at the
beginning of the First World War in 1914, and then proceeded to write its
main outlines, which remained in essence unchanged throughout the
following years. It was revised continuously up until 1930, at the time of
which its publication seemed imminent. One last revision to the final
document was dated 1935.
12
The notion of the organic has a long history. Joseph Rykwert traced it to its
origins in Greek culture. There, from its original meaning of tool or
instrument, organic came to connote an association with animate life and
nature in the nineteenth century. It crossed into architectural discourse to
designate an architecture that, in the manner of Gothic, would spring up from
the spirit of a people like a plant from the earth. This organic architecture
would manifest itself as such through this kind of ornament, a lesson that was
taken literally by the first artists of Art Nouveau, yet more subtly by their
counterparts in America, namely Sullivan and Root. Rykwert also tells of an
early association between empathy and organicity. For Johann Gottfried
Herder, in the eighteenth century already, organic is the attribute of the
collective unit of society, with understanding between different units of
society made possible through Einfhlung, or empathy, which, according to
Rykwert, is first coined by Herder and not Visher. See Joseph Rykwert,
Organic and mechanical RES, (Autumn 1992): 11-18.
13
Van de Velde, Les Formules, p 65. [my translation]
14
Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic, As Science of Expression and General Linguistic,
Boston: Nonpareil, 1978, p 285.
15
Van de Velde, Manuscript on Ornament.
16
Georges Gusdorf, Fondements du Savoir Romantique, IX, Paris: Payot, 1982.
See Chapter XI.
17
The difficulties inherent to the problem of translating theory into practice is
by no means restricted to van de Velde at the time. The work of Otto Wagner
presented equal difficulties, as Werner Oechslin clarified in his expose that
the metaphor of stylistic hull versus kernel borrowed from Btticher, gives
a more nuanced reading of Wagner's work, which attempts to base itself
properly within the discourse of aesthetics initiated by Btticher, Semper,
Schmarsow and others. See Werner Oechslin's The Evolutionary Way to
Modern Architecture: The Paradigm of Stilhlse und Kern in Harry Francis
Mallgrave (ed), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity, Santa
Monica & Chicago: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities
& University of Chicago Press, pp 363-410.
18
For a discussion of this important project, see Gunther Stamms
Monumental Architecture and Ideology: Henry van de Veldes and Harry
Graf Kesslers Project for a Nietzsche Monument at Weimar, 1910-1914 in
Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiednis, 1975, pp 303-342.
19
Van de Velde, Manuscript on Ornament.
20
In the manuscript titled L'tapes, Oct. 1953, FSX 145. Bibliothque Royale
Albert I, Bruxelles.
21
Van de Velde, Le Nouveau, p 93.
The Realization of the Beautiful
13
22
Harry Kessler. The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan, 1918-1937. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.
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