Texto 03; Elie Haddad ''the Realization of the Beautiful''

1The Realization of the Beautiful: On Henryvan de Veldes Aesthetic Theory

Elie Haddad

The unhistorical (the power to forget) and the super-historical (art and religion) arethe natural antidotes against the overpowering of life by history; they are the curesfor the historical disease. We who are sick of the disease may suffer a little from theantidote. 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 inCologne where he confronted Muthesius on the question of standardization indesign. And although both of these episodes represent foundational positions inhis development, yet they do not in any way give a fair representation of thecomplex theoretical path that van de Velde traced throughout his life, and whichappears, as I argue in this paper, to be consistent with a dialectic betweenrational conception and empathy that finds its resolution in a peculiarinterpretation of the notion of ornament.2 This dialectic, with its first elementdrawn from the scientific discourses and rationalist philosophies of thenineteenth century, and its second owing to developments in psychology, foundits resolution in an aesthetic theory where the element of ornament plays anessential synthetic role.

The organic conception of ornament was in turn based on the notion of the line-force3 as its operative principle, a principle that acts as the connecting threadbetween the human hand and the material waiting to be brought to life by itsaction. Yet this conception of an organic ornament did not appear to play a rolebeyond the confines of a personal artistic will, as his writings did not go beyondthe questions of a practical aesthetic to address their related philosophicalconsequences.

In fact van de Veldes reading of different philosophical sources fromSchopenhauer to Nietzsche and Souriau went principally towards the specificconsiderations of art, without paying great attention to the whole philosophicalsystem from which they were issued. Yet he was still very coherent in his pursuitof 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 theartist turn to philosophical figures like Schopenhauer and Souriau, simplyextracting a reductive interpretation of their theory, rather than relying on themore practical theories of someone like Viollet-le-Duc, when the notion ofrational 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 importancethat philosophical theories still played at the beginning of the twentieth centuryin any aesthetic theory, which led a practical theoretician like van de Velde toseek support for his theory directly from philosophical sources.

Before van de Veldes engagement with French and German aesthetics, oneprinciple source had already shaped or confirmed his intuitions: the Englishtheorists of the Arts & Crafts movement, and principally William Morris andWalter 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 differentgarb. In fact we find in Crane an early discussion of the constructive line aswell as a comparable interest in the ornamental patterns of early civilizations,probably inspired by Semper, and detailed discussions of the various aspects ofdesign including ornament.4 Yet in contrast to Crane, van de Veldes style ofwriting followed less the rational expos, and more the passionate appealsaddressed to a community of enthusiasts or believers, in the manner of Ruskin.

Behind van de Veldes intentional or unintentional disregard of the otherarchitectural texts that could have also been useful in his early theoreticalfoundation may have been his distrust of the debates that circled aroundquestions of styles, rather than the search for the style. Van de Velde soughttherefore a modern theory that avoided any reference to historical models,grounding itself on an a-historical foundation. In his theory, rational conceptionbecame this a-historical ground on which artistic activity would take place. Yet itwould be erroneous to reduce all his theory to that simple concept, as rationalconception was van de Veldes stepping stone to reclaim the artwork from thejumble of historicist contaminations to purify it and denude it of all excesses.Nietzsche, whose influence was perceptible on van de Veldes writings,5 mostsuccinctly expressed this contemporary revulsion against historicism when hesaid:

The excess of history has attacked the shaping power of life; it no longerunderstands how to utilize the past as powerful nourishment.6

It was therefore necessary to break out of this condition by simultaneouslyconfining oneself to an a-historical horizon where history is momentarilysuspended, as well as bringing artistic activity closer to the realm of religion, theother supra-historical faculty that is capable of lending existence the character ofsomething eternal. Van de Velde may have misunderstood this religiousdimension in Nietzsche as an appeal to morality, which is very clear in his earlytheoretical formulations; while later it reappears in the notion of empathy, a closerelative to Nietzsches idealization. Against this Nietzchean background, wecan better understand van de Veldes subsequent turn to a metaphysicalperception of the artistic work as pure form, still conceived on the foundationof rational conception. The desire for a more basic form, in the sense ofanswering to functional needs, was superseded by the necessity of reachingbeyond this temporal present towards a metaphysical realm where thedepreciating effect of time on things would be countered by the ideal of theeternal.

One can posit here a movement in three phases, from the world of inanimatematter to the world of animate forms, then to the world of eternal forms. The

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passage from the first phase to the second would happen through the projectionof the human will into the object to be createdthat is, through empathytheornamental line acting as the principal agent of this synthesis between empathyand rational conception. The passage to the last stage would be the exclusiveproperty of the purest forms where the agent of synthesis, the line, totallydissolves into the structure of the thing created. In a rather surprising move, theGreek temple, this historical model par-excellence was presented by van deVelde as the ultimate example of this condition:

le Temple Grec! - comme une cration palpitante, se dressant devant nous, de l'aveude Ruskin, 'infaillible, resplendissante, clairement dfinie et matresse d'elle-mme'!7

Within pure forms, ornament ceased to play a major role as the means ofanimating the form as well as a catalyst of the synthesis, yet this only happenedafter the dissolution of ornament into the form itself, its coincidence with theform rather than its elimination. Only much later, did van de Velde concede toa deliberate abstention from ornament, an abstention that would in his viewprepare for the reawakening in the edifice, the object, or the human body of asovereign ornament realized through the diverse play of proportions andvolumes, animated by a rhythm that carries and transports like a musicalsentence or a poem. 8

The line which carried the energy of the human being into the work, expressivelyanimating it, was now more latently absorbed into the internal structure of thething, leading to an idealized organic conception of the work of art whichcoincided with his idea of the eternal forms. Eternity was defined as the momentwhen form realized this equilibrium of internal forces, a moment whereornament was reduced to its essential:

It is these activities that seem to have provoked the form, fixed its aspect. Themodifications, of which the form is the last consequence, reached an end at themoment that these internal forces neutralised their energy, in a perfect equilibriumof effects and causes. This moment becomes, as of that instant, eternity!

We could conceive forms that realize this equilibrium, without the help ofornament, and these are the most perfect forms. In their simplicity, they haverealized a linear scheme constituting in-itself and without any complementaries, aperfect eternal ornament!9

It is important to stress the last sentence of this statement where the authorexplicitly reaffirmed that such eternal forms have realized a perfect eternalornament. Van de Velde had somewhat modified his earlier positions when hecriticized the elimination of ornament as a denial of life itself, akin to theartificial life one lives in a convent, where men and women live in constantnegation 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 whichsees only in death the remedy to all injustices.10

The concept of form became thus impressed by, or transformed into, the ideal ofa transcendent, yet still organic, beauty where the dissolution of ornament intoform 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 orthe artist, and not the standardized process of a machine.

Thus the line-force remained the principle of individuation even in such caseswhere ornament naturally dissolved into the structure of the thing. Not ageometric, or intellectually mediated line, but a visceral line that draws itsenergy from the human hand which traces it and transmits this energy into theobject thus created. This line simultaneously manifests the will of its engraverand responds to the material on which it is engraved. It is clear that the mostimmediate instances of such a relationship could be found in the hand-craftedobjects, in van de Veldes own designs for vases and other objects, as well as inthe furniture that responds to the human body and its movement. But he alsoattempted 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 bemediated through the means of an ornament which acts simply as a means toappropriate space; and his Manuscript on Ornament11 offered its most tellingillustration, the action of the cave-dwellers who incised, scraped, and colouredtheir cave walls with a frenzy that recalls Nietzsches Dionysian spirit. Yet vande Velde realized in practice that the process of building could not simply bereduced to that, and that the shaping of architectural form was subject to othertechnical factors. Principally, it was the rational conception of things thatprevailed in such circumstances, leaving the possibility for a few forms to attainthat higher degree of perfection, forms that could resolve this dialectic ofempathy and rational conception by simultaneously expressing their principle ofindividuation and resolving their functional and utilitarian tasks.

Whereas the organic presented the first stage of this activity where the animationof form transformed the rationally conceived objects into organic artifacts, theideal of pure forms characterized the second stage where the mere organic wassuperseded by the resolution of the dialectic of form.12

As mentioned, van de Veldes primary model of such an organic ideal form wasthe Greek temple where the line-force did not manifest itself in the decorativepatterns, but as a material line in the curves of the stylobate and the entasis of thecolumns, that is as the expression of latent physical forces mediated by thehuman spirit. In such examples, ornament is transformed into a con-structiveelement where the un-ornamented appearance, in his opinion, appears as thelogical consequence of the coincidence of structure and form, or to put itdifferently, of the dissolution of appearance into essence. There, the structive-linear element appeared as the transmutation of the earlier empathic line, or asits analog in material form. In one of the sections of his major theoreticalcollection Les Formules de la Beaut Architectonique Moderne, van de Veldehad given an explanation of this structuring function of ornament, withconnotations that recall both Btticher and Semper:

Ornament thus conceived completes the form, it acts as an extension to it and werecognized the sense and the justification of ornament in its function!This function consists in "structuring" form and not in "ornamenting" it, as we aretempted to commonly understand it. Without the support of this structure, on whichthe form adapts itself as the envelope of a flexible cloth on its frame, or the skin onthe bones; the form would become altered or would completely collapse!


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The relations existing between this "structural and dynamographic" ornament andthe form or the surfaces, appear so intimate that the ornament seems to havedetermined the form! This determination enters into the natural order of thingswhich 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 wherethe structuring role of ornament was exemplified by the activity of bodytattooing, as well as that of the primitive engraving on the cave walls. In bothcases, the structive-linear ornament was interpreted as a binary function whichsimultaneously ornamented as it structured the form, this may be understood insimpler terms as the function of manifesting the internal order of a form byexpressing it externally, thus raising the internal order to the level of an externalphenomenon.

This ornament, van de Velde further clarified in another text, was also theimage 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 sensualdrive and instinct to his intellect. Croce thus summarized this concept:

The man who plays, i.e. contemplates nature aesthetically and produces art, sees allnatural objects as animated; in such a phantasmagoria mere natural necessity givesplace to the free determination of the faculties; spirit appears as spontaneouslyreconciled with nature, form with matter.14

Schopenhauer, in his own way, also tried to reconcile spirit and nature, bypositing the whole world of nature, the world of objects, as conditioned by thesubject, 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 andpractical theory. In his practical theory, ornament also appears to resolve thedualism of subject and object, of artistic will and rational conception bymanifesting the objects common properties with the rest of natures creations, aswell as with the human spirit. Underlying all these different phenomena, van deVelde saw one common factor: force. It is this same force, which in someaspects mimics Nietzsches will-to-power, that he referred to at the end of theManuscript, as he concluded:

Our efforts have tended towards re-uniting with a tradition of life considered as aphenomenon, its most pure and unchanging expression being force, our efforts havetended to re-connect with a tradition of beauty elevated above contingencies andnaturalistic aspects, and perceived through the supreme order and harmony oforganized forces.15

This supreme order and harmony of organized forces may be the otherterminology for what he understood as the organic will-to-power. TheManuscript on Ornament above all reconfirmed this organic aspect of theartwork, bringing it all the way back to the pre-historic human activity found incave art. The artist, or the form-giver, by infusing the artwork with his energy,animated the forms into living manifestations of the represented beings. Thisbasic human urge is the same that permeates the act of creation on the human


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body in the form of tattooing, the same that orders and animates the most idealforms, 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 acomprehensive order. This drive towards an all-inclusive totality which seekscommon links between disparate manifestations of forms from tools to templeswas a characteristic of other conceptions in the nineteenth century, in reaction tothe analytical and mechanical epistemologies of the previous century. GeorgesGusdorf characterized this as a trans-empirical form of knowledge that sought tooffer an alternative model of reality, inspired in large part by the Romantictradition and its rapprochement with nature. This Romantic tradition defined anorganology which is inspired by the dynamics of fluidity, of the continuousmetamorphosis of a vital becoming.16 It is this dynamic that explains van deVeldes particular interpretation of the Greek temple and other Classical forms,and indicates a phenomenological dimension in van de Veldes thought, whereform in its various appearances is seen as manifestations of a single underlyingidea.

This attempt to posit an organic order that regulates the different manifestationsof form marks the theoretical distinction between Henry van de Veldesconception and Alois Riegls. Although they both placed an emphasis on the roleof the will in artistic creation, Riegls Kunstwollen did not go so far as to stressthis vital relation to the human body, this dynamic order of form. For Riegl, theartistic will remained by and large tied to an intellectual activity, whereas van deVelde stressed its separation from the intellect and its connection to a moreinnate, organic drive.

In his own practical work, van de Velde was not as able in translating this theoryinto form, and as such, he may have appeared stuck in the stylistic impedimentsof his Art Nouveau phase. This partially explains the inconsistencies in hisdesign approach to different problems as well as the ambiguous relationshipbetween his writings and his architectural projects, an ambiguity that was notunusual in that specific time and context.17

Figure 1: Dynamographic Patterns, Studies of Weimar WorkshopCourtesy Henry van de Velde Archives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.

In fact, the experiments to which van de Velde subjected his students at theWeimar School appear to run against his projected aim, for they illustrate thedevelopment of patterns or types of so-called dynamo-graphic ornaments, which


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negate this spontaneous engagement of the subject in the object, reducing it tothe production of patterns. (fig 1) Similarly, the early manifestations ofornamentation, as in the Folkwang Museum (fig 2) do not show this organicconception of the work of art, rather they simply cover the inner structure withan organic appearance, answering more to Sempers theory of Bekleidung than tohis own theoretical premises. Most of his practical work in fact failed todemonstrate his theoretical position, for they either fell into a more decorativeornamental activity as in the Folkwang Museum, or into a normative rationalconception as in the case of the Hohenhof (fig 3) and other domestic projects of1908-1914. Other works avoided altogether this issue as they were caught inanother 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 beread in the Villa Esche of 1902-4, with its suggestive details. Villa Esche wasvan de Veldes first construction on German soil. A large house built for thewealthy industrialist Herbert Esche in one of the plush suburbs of Chemnitz in1902, it stood as a monument on the hill from which it overlooked thesurrounding landscape (fig 5). The quasi-symmetry of the plan is not reflected inthe elevations which present a more complex appearance due to the differentarticulations 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 expressiveplay of forces (fig 6). Here, one can read the play of structural lines carrying thebalcony through this statement that we find in the Manuscriptyearslaterwhere van de Velde speculated on the relationship between line andbody:

[...] the action of determining [body] contours is more effective and the line whichengages these surfaces can only, it seems to me, roll itself, and in this case itreplaces the structure. In rolling itself, it has concentrated and stored the energy thatbecomes itself the guarantor of the invariable permanence of form.19

This statement appears like an accurate description of the role played by linearelements in this specific building, where the line effectively acts as a structuringelement mediated by, as well as mediating the body it engages. The flexingcurves that suspend the balcony are in fact syntactical elements that respond to,as well as underline, the physical forces. This simple response can be contrastedwith other parts of the same building where a more conventional tectonicprevails.

The resultant form is not so much an a-priori model as it is a result of anexpression of forces that lift and carry the balcony above the ground, without anexaggerated defiance of gravity. In this sense, rationality acts as a check to thepossible excesses of an empathic urge that could severe the relationship of formto its inner structure, and thereby undermine its organic nature. One could draw


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the parallel between such articulations and the expression of structural elementsin Gothic architecture, the only difference being that aesthetic empathy acts hereto express an individual will which does not lend itself to a translation into acollective system.

Figure 5: Esche Haus, Chemnitz.Courtesy Henry van de VeldeArchives, La Cambre, Bruxelles.

Figure 6: Esche Haus- Detail of Back.Photograph Elie Haddad.


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This interpretation of the line-force as an empathic expression of the individualwill does not imply its necessary restriction to specific parts of the building; tothe contrary this limitation here seems to be a result of the artists hesitation atthis early phase of his architectural career, and the constraints of buildingtechnologies. Van de Velde did not therefore attempt to apply this action to therest of the building; the balcony detail thus played the role of the dangeroussupplement which threatened to overtake the otherwise static form, butremained under check. It recalls the similar effect of the Greek builders recourseto 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 offorces:

Entasis, that is the swelling of the shaft of the column under the weight of thearchitraves and the masses that it has to carry; the recourse to the line as anexpression of this swelling, irrefutably attest to the elasticity and the reality of theplay and the law of weight and resistance.20

The objective of the artist therefore, through these formal experiments, was torealize the elasticity and the reality of the play of forces acting within the inertmasses. The means to simulate this play was through recourse to empathy, whichis the projection of the same reality of play that animates a body in movement.Van de Veldes resistance to the simplifying discourse of Sachlichkeit, whileproclaiming his own version of a rational conception of form, may be betterunderstood in the light of his attempts which still affirmed the need to create anarchitecture of the present following the principles of great art throughout theages. His quest for the origins of art coincided with his search for the eternal, butan eternal that does not withdraw from the world. In Nietzsches footsteps, hisvision of the eternal was that of the forms which run throughout the course ofhistory, from Paleolithic cave art to the Greek temple, to the Gothic cathedraland contemporary engineering works, all animated by the same spirit. This isevident in his later essay, Le Nouveau, where he clearly expressed his revulsionat the obsession with novelty in forms, in which he himself confesses to havebeen carried away at one point in time.21 In this essay, van de Velde clarified theunderlying thread that he perceived under the different manifestations of form,throughout the different epochs of human history, which, as his friend HarryKessler recorded in his own memoirs,22 van de Velde had simply discovered thatthere always existed only one sort of architecture underneath the differentepochs, which beneath the wrapper of various successive styles had always hadthe same objective in mind: the realization of the beautiful.


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Notes1 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 inKunstgewerbliche 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 thatformed around the philosophers sister, Elisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, whichincluded Harry Kessler and Eberhard von Bodenhausen; van de Velde hadthe possibility to consult firsthand some of Nietzsche's original works in thephilosopher's archives, the interior of which he would be commissioned toredesign later. The first book that van de Velde mentioned in the order of hisreadings of Nietzsche was Zarathustra, which coincided with his formativeperiod. Already in Brussels, most probably, he had acquired his own copy ofthe anthology of Nietzsche's writings translated into French. After hisrelocation to Weimar and the close friendship he was to develop withElisabeth Frster-Nietzsche, he would have been consequently informed ofthe totality of the philosopher's works. He even claimed in his memoirs tohave been instrumental in convincing the philosopher's sister to publish EcceHomo, for which he eventually designed the cover. For a discussion ofNietzsches influence on van de Velde, see Haddad, Henry van de Velde onRational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament, Chapter 2; and Henry van deVelde, 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 ofitself!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 Vande Velde's Manuscript on Ornament, Journal of Design History, 16, 2, (June2003): 119-138. See also my own commentary on the Manuscript in thesame issue on pages 139-166.


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Van de Velde worked on the Manuscript text between January 1915 andDecember 1916. He effectively began to collect materials for this work at thebeginning of the First World War in 1914, and then proceeded to write itsmain outlines, which remained in essence unchanged throughout thefollowing years. It was revised continuously up until 1930, at the time ofwhich its publication seemed imminent. One last revision to the finaldocument 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 orinstrument, organic came to connote an association with animate life andnature in the nineteenth century. It crossed into architectural discourse todesignate an architecture that, in the manner of Gothic, would spring up fromthe spirit of a people like a plant from the earth. This organic architecturewould manifest itself as such through this kind of ornament, a lesson that wastaken literally by the first artists of Art Nouveau, yet more subtly by theircounterparts in America, namely Sullivan and Root. Rykwert also tells of anearly association between empathy and organicity. For Johann GottfriedHerder, in the eighteenth century already, organic is the attribute of thecollective unit of society, with understanding between different units ofsociety made possible through Einfhlung, or empathy, which, according toRykwert, 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 Wagnerpresented equal difficulties, as Werner Oechslin clarified in his expose thatthe metaphor of stylistic hull versus kernel borrowed from Btticher, givesa more nuanced reading of Wagner's work, which attempts to base itselfproperly within the discourse of aesthetics initiated by Btticher, Semper,Schmarsow and others. See Werner Oechslin's The Evolutionary Way toModern Architecture: The Paradigm of Stilhlse und Kern in Harry FrancisMallgrave (ed), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity, SantaMonica & 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 HarryGraf Kesslers Project for a Nietzsche Monument at Weimar, 1910-1914 inGentse 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.


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22 Harry Kessler. The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan, 1918-1937. London:

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.


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Texto 03; Elie Haddad ''the Realization of the Beautiful''

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