Art Nouveau Cities of the New Century Episode 1 Brussels Victor Horta

What is the Belgian Arnavaux style? You have two moments. You have the moment of creation from 1893 to 1902. All those ingredients put together made Brussels ready for something completely new. There has always been a little bit of mystery of why it happened so suddenly. So Benjamin, one of the interesting questions about Arnavaux for me is its origins and where it begins and many of us internationally consider that this is the place that really comes to completion into its finest form in Brussels first. Why do you think that is? I think it happens in Brussels because Brussels was the city of a very young country without any strong identity where there was much more freedom for people to buy or to order a house made by a very bold architect. Secondly, also, it was a real cradle of modernity, a crossroads with influence coming from Germany, from United Kingdom and from France. And thirdly also, there is in Brussels a very individualistic way of making a house. The first and most important thing is a family house, a private one, for ages. And that freedom, that of course economic prosperity, which is also quite important in that regard, all those ingredients put together made Brussels at the age of the 1890s ready for something completely new. So we're saying a number of factors came together which made it all possible. And a generation of young architects came to the fore and developed this style led by Victor Horta. Tell us about Horta and why he was, what, 32 when the Tassel House was made. He was very young. But it's so mature, it's so complete and his own home. Extraordinary. Yes. There has always been a little bit of mystery of why it happened so suddenly in 1893 with the Tassel House. Because with other architects you can see directly on archives the influence, with Horta it's quite different. But we very often forget that he had only one goal, which is to personalise architecture. If we would have said to Horta during the 90s, you were a nouveau architect, he wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. Because his goal was on basis of the tradition, on basis of the reading of Villers-le-Duc, to make something different which couldn't be related to any style, but which was in terms of architecture very rationalist and in terms of ornament and decoration very personal. So you're saying, and it's fascinating when we look at the cities where Art Nouveau came to fruition after Brussels, but most of them had a reason. They were in cities and countries which were new or maybe challenged from outside. But Art Nouveau seems to have been a vehicle for expressing what a city was about, a new city, for example. It's the case in Brussels, because in fact, Brussels, you can compare it with other cities like Barcelona or Glasgow in terms of prosperity. But the big difference is, first, it's the capital of a very young country. And the King Leopold II said, no, we have Belgium, we have to invent Belgians. So this lack of centralization, this lack of pride, there is no heaviness from the past. It gives much more freedom to do something different in architecture, but not only also if you look at the exhibition of art during that time of the artists in Belgium, but even more important, the artists from abroad were invited in Brussels, either from the United Kingdom, either from France, like Van Gogh and Gauguin, etc. All those things put together made it ready to welcome new impulse from a foreign country and make space for genuine expression and new expression. It seems to me also in here and in many other houses, the skill level is so high, it's quite shocking that you move from stone to metal into wood with a smooth Arnavaux line, which is incredibly difficult to achieve. The skilled craftsmen working together, it's like Horta was an orchestrator pulling together the skills he had around him. There's one other point which clearly is powerful here as well, and the use of nature by all these architects and typically Horta as well. They determined that nature was going to be at the heart of their modernism. Again, where does that come from, do you think? Was it already a presence in Brussels, the idea of nature and modern art? I think, I mean, nature has been imitated already by the Egyptians, so it's something you find in architecture and ornament for ages. The difference in the 19th century is that it is not the nature as a representation that is interesting, but it's the nature as an expression of an Indian energy, of a growth. This is why it's a dynamic and abstract nature. The best way to describe it is what he said to Hector Guimard, a French architect, he said, what interests me in the plant, it is not the flower, but the stem. It's almost impossible in this house to know exactly from which flower, which plant the line or the design come from, because he did a very, very big work of stylization before to get to the right thing. That's a fascinating point. It's not the flowers, it's the stems where they derive the line from. Tell me, the last decade of the 19th century, evolutionary theory was completely by this time embraced, especially by modern thinking people, progress, human progress, the progress of the city. I always think that has something to do with this architecture as well, that nature is a force that represents the present and the future, the idea of progress. Does that occur to you that it was in their minds here? Yeah, it was, because Otto worked a lot with Solvay, the Solvay company, and Alfred Solvay had exactly the way of thinking that you described. It was this idea of energy. We have to remember also the sentence of Vandervelde, the other architect, who said, line is a force. This idea coming from Darwinism was very often transplanted, used here in architecture, but also used in some theory and philosophy, for example, how to live together, what is the work of humans, et cetera. It is something which was quite fashionable at the time, and it really probably feed Otto. The other thing which occurs to me, and very few cities are the same, the sheer numbers of buildings in the Art Nouveau style at the time. We have lost many, sadly, but it's hundreds and hundreds. I wouldn't ask you to give us a number, but many hundreds of houses, many hundreds of public buildings, department stores. It absolutely, for 15, 20 years, was a major vehicle for expression here, you would say? Yes, it's a major vehicle because in the Belgian Art Nouveau, in fact, you have two moments. You have the moment of creation, from 1893 to 1902, with Victor Horta as, we might say, the leader, let's say, and then from 1902 to 1914, you have the way the style in Brussels began to contaminate, if I may say, the whole city, with architect who used to work, to be draughtsman for a few months, a few years, because they couldn't stay longer. It was too horrible to work with Horta. And then after, when they began to do the architecture on their own, they would keep working the same style of him, in a way. So it's how the style spread, and at that time, after 1902, it's interesting to know that Horta was rather designing department store, because when you have a store, you need to be modern. If you want to be modern, you need to be in the modern style. And it's at that time, of course, that you had Art Nouveau lines and chocolate box, etc. So then Art Nouveau was a fashion. It means that you can go to visit an architect and say, oh, I don't want a Neo-Renaissance or Neo-Gothic house, let's do an Art Nouveau one, I like this taste. But it's a different kind of movement or a different kind of dynamism than the one from Horta, Encart, and some other from 1893. And when people said, let's do an Art Nouveau building, that meant a modern building. Is that how they understood it? They understood it, yeah. Horta described himself as a modern architect. And yeah, they would do that. But it's interesting to see that from, let's say, 1907 until the First World War, in terms of politics, you had countries stopping looking in an international way. So you have the beginning of something which will end with the war. And at the same time, it's interesting to notice that the fashion evolved not from Art Nouveau. In 1910, it was a kind of very sober Louis XVI style, a little bit German in the way they did it. And for example, in 1910, the world fairs were silversmiths. For one Art Nouveau tea set, they were selling nine Louis XVI tea sets. So the taste was, I think, it's something very hard to understand for us. But in fact, probably, if I want to be more true, I would say that Art Nouveau in Brussels, it's from 1893, maybe until 1905 or 6. And then it fades. Already. But 1902 and after, at that time, already, Brussels was a little bit out. Because what was new at the time was in Glasgow and Vienna. And some Belgian architects completely changed their style and got influenced by Glasgow and Vienna. And even Art Nouveau began to go towards much more sober and simple. Quite geometric. Yeah. And it's the natural evolution of many architects in Europe at the time. So Benjamin, for you, what makes Belgian Art Nouveau particular? What is the Belgian Art Nouveau style? How does it differentiate from other versions of Art Nouveau? I think that the main thing is about architecture. So this way of first wanting to make a new architecture and think about space first. Second thing is what Artur called the practical side, which is the same thing as function, which happened a few years after. And the third thing, which makes it very different, is that the ornamentation they were using, and Artur was using, it's not only about buttoning, but it's about dynamism. And sometimes I'm thinking that this idea of Artur wanting to make things as complex as possible, to have the pleasure to solve it. It is to put movement on the wall with the line, with the ornament. And that's something that he shared with other architects in Belgium at the same time. But he solved it his own way with this very dynamic line, which is like launching energy into the space and the air. Always remember this sentence of Artur, is that the science of building, the knowledge of material, is the support of artistic expression. And that the mastering of space without the color, without the texture, without all those things, would be pointless. So they are bound together. And I think this is why it is still so fashionable and attracts so many people nowadays.