Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914

by Henry van de Velde, Katherine M. Kuenzli (Editor), Elizabeth Tucker (Translator)

Overview

The first English collection of writings by Henry van de Velde, one of the most influential designers and theorists of the twentieth century.
 
Belgian artist, architect, designer, and theorist Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) was a highly original and influential figure in Europe beginning in the 1890s. A founding member of the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements, he also directed the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany, which eventually became the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius.
 
This selection of twenty-six essays, translated from French and German, includes van de Velde’s writings on William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts movement, Neo-Impressionist painting, and relationships between ornament, line, and abstraction in German aesthetics. The texts trace the evolution of van de Velde’s thoughts during his most productive period as a theorist in the artistic debates in France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Katherine M. Kuenzli expertly guides readers to see how van de Velde’s writings reconcile themes of aesthetics and function, and expression and reason, throughout the artistic periods and regions represented by these texts. With introductory discussions of each essay and full annotations, this is an essential volume for a broad range of scholars and students of the history of fine and applied arts and ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606067949
Publisher:	Getty Publications
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Series:	Texts & Documents
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Katherine M. Kuenzli is professor of art history at Wesleyan University. Her many publications include the books Henry van de Velde: Designing Modernism (2019) and The Nabis and Intimate Modernism: Painting and the Decorative at the Fin-de-Siècle (2010).
 
Elizabeth Tucker is a translator and editor of scholarly works in art and architectural history.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

"Clearing the Terrain of Art": Henry van de Velde and an Art Theory for the Twentieth Century Katherine M. Kuenzli

Translator's Introduction 35

Henry van de Velde in Translation Elizabeth Tucker

Henry Van De Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914 49

1 Adrien-Joseph Heymans: A Study (1889) 51

2 On the Peasant in Painting (1891) 63

3 Georges Seurat (1891) 69

4 Artistic Wallpapers (1893) 75

5 Clearing the Terrain of Art (1894) 83

6 Remarks on a Synthesis of Art (1895) 100

7 Painting at the Third Exhibition of La Libre Esthétique (1896) 124

8 The Colonial Exposition in Tervueren (1898) 131

9 William Morris: Artisan and Socialist (1898) 135

10 The Artistic Improvement of Women's Costume (1900) 160

11 The Rebirth of the Applied Arts and the Social Movement (1901) 176

12 Declaration of Principles (1902) 186

13 Workshops for the Applied Arts (1902) 208

14 On the Death of Otto Eckmann (1902) 219

15 Giving Life to Matter as a Principle of Beauty (1903) 222

16 Notes on a Journey to Greece (1905) 236

17 On Good Taste (1905) 249

18 The New Style (1906) 252

19 Artists' Workshops (1906) 274

20 The Line (1908) 279

21 Folk Art (1909) 300

22 Art and Industry (1910) 307

23 Rational Beauty (1910) 321

24 Traditional and Modern Christmas Tree Ornaments: The Lauscha Glassblowers at Work (1912) 348

25 A Fountain by Hermann Obrist (1914) 354

26 Counter-Theses (1914) 361

Henry van de Velde: Writings Published 1889-1917 367

Biographical Notes on the Contributors 371

Index 372

Editorial Reviews

A key figure of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture and design, Henry van de Velde’s seminal role and thought has yet to emerge fully from under the shadow, notably, of those who continued his work in Weimar with the creation of the Bauhaus. This volume is a triumph of textual sleuthing, providing a generous selection of van de Velde’s writings that allows scholars and students alike to witness the many facets of this cosmopolitan designer’s interaction with turn-of-the-century reform movements in Belgium, Germany, and France. A figure long reduced to a small set of designs in survey books is here revealed in all his complexity and even contradictions.”

—Barry Bergdoll, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History, Columbia University 

"Writing and speaking fueled the modernist persona and the international career of designer Henry van de Velde. This volume, an essential companion to the existing literature, makes a case for why—and how—he emerged as one of the most significant, and difficult, figures of the twentieth century."
—Amy F. Ogata, Professor of Art History, University of Southern California

From the Publisher

As part of its invaluable Texts and Documents series, the Getty Research Institute has just brought out a collection of twenty-six previously untranslated essays by the Belgian architect and theorist Henry van de Velde, one of the founding figures of Art Nouveau. His writings on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement are especially valuable in illuminating the relationship between those successive British and Continental developments.

The New York Review of Books - Martin Filler