Notes
- Nietzsche , Friedrich . 1949 . Thoughts Out of Season New York : Liberal Arts Press . p 77.
- 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 See Elie Haddad, ‘Henry van de Velde on Rational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament’, unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1998.
- 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.
- Crane , Walter . The Bases of Design London : Bell . 1898; and Walter Crane, Ideals in Art, New York: Garland, 1979.
- 1992 . Recit de ma Vie Paris : Flammarion . In his memoirs, Henry van de Velde painted himself as one of those first converts to Nietzsche's message. After entering the circle of friends that formed around the philosopher's sister, Elisabeth Förster-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 Förster-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 Nietzsche's influence on van de Velde, see Haddad, ‘Henry van de Velde on Rational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament’, Chapter 2; and Henry van de Velde, Part I & II, and 1995.
- Nietzsche , Friedrich . 1995 . Unfashionable Observations Stanford : Stanford University Press . p 63.
- 1978 . “ Les Formules de la Beauté Architectonique Moderne ” . In “The Greek Temple!-like a palpitating creation, rising before us, in Ruskin's own confession, ‘infallible, resplendant, clearly defined and master of itself’!” Bruxelles : Archives d'architecture Moderne . Henry van de Velde, p 18.
- 1979 . Déblaiement d'art Bruxelles : Archives d'architecture Moderne . Henry van de Velde, ‘Le Nouveau’, 1929, reprinted in, p 93. [my translation]
- Van de Velde, ‘Le Nouveau’, p 93. [my translation]
- Aperçus en vue d'une Synthèse d'art, Bruxelles: Monnom, 1895, p 21.
- ‘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 Henry van de Velde, 2, (June 2003): 119–138. See also my own commentary on The Manuscript in the same issue on pages 139–166. 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.
- 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 Einfühlung, 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.
- Van de Velde, Les Formules, p 65. [my translation]
- 1978 . Aesthetic, As Science of Expression and General Linguistic Boston : Nonpareil . Benedetto Croce, p 285.
- Van de Velde, Manuscript on Ornament.
- Gusdorf , Georges . 1982 . Fondements du Savoir Romantique Paris : Payot . IX,. See Chapter XI.
- 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 . 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 Bötticher, gives a more nuanced reading of Wagner's work, which attempts to base itself properly within the discourse of aesthetics initiated by Bötticher, Semper, Schmarsow and others. See Werner Oechslin's ‘The Evolutionary Way to Modern Architecture: The Paradigm of Stilhülse und Kern’ in Harry Francis Mallgrave (ed), pp 363–410.
- For a discussion of this important project, see Gunther Stamm's ‘Monumental Architecture and Ideology: Henry van de Velde's and Harry Graf Kessler's Project for a Nietzsche Monument at Weimar, 1910–1914’ in Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiednis, 1975, pp 303–342.
- Van de Velde, Manuscript on Ornament.
- In the manuscript titled L'Étapes, Oct. 1953, FSX 145. Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Bruxelles.
- Van de Velde, ‘Le Nouveau’, p 93.
- 1971 . The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan, 1918–1937. London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson . Harry Kessler.