Henry van de Velde: Love – I Believe
This dual confession does not contradict each other in anything, and yet they stand against each other in that one requires natural activities, while the other is of a passive nature. It is possible that the waiting method is no longer suitable for today's society, and that a person who openly proclaims what they love will succeed in capturing people fighting the struggle of life more than a person who proclaims their faith; it has been proven that contemporary society publicly expresses its faith in matters and ideas that it does not love or no longer loves, whether in the philosophical or material field. For one could count on the fingers how many things society believes in and simultaneously loves. Love has withdrawn the hand it once placed in the hand of faith, thereby depriving faith of all strength. Thus, the inexhaustible spring has dried up, and this unfortunate state will last as long as love does not bring forth new treasures for its impoverished sister.
Love has the power to elevate faith, for we cannot love where we do not believe. We can trustingly accept everything from love, and we can fully believe in someone who loves; we cannot rely on faith without testing it, and we cannot love someone who provides us only with faith. In the field of architecture and the decorative arts, it has long been impossible for us to believe in the necessity and reality of the functions of various construction elements, such as columns, pediments, metopes, and cornices, which we have inherited from ancient styles.
In antiquity and in styles based on antiquity, the symbolism of ornamentation had the purpose of being precisely a symbol and meaning itself, whether depicted by an eagle, ram, wreath, or trophy; it has certainly lost its persuasiveness for us. ...
We, who are honest, declare that we can no longer love the architecture and decorative arts that do not even attempt to cover their own distrust in the concepts of construction and ornamentation that they exclusively use. Here springs forth all good and all evil; all the good we can expect from architecture and decorative arts, using only the elements they love because they also believe in them; all the evil by which we have been struck by accusations that we are barbarians who destroy everything, and fanaticized, limited rebels.
It is known what a degrading decline experts lacking love and denying faith have brought to architecture and decorative arts. In the third quarter of the last century, we fell to the lowest level of taste and impotence. When my generation of manly years reached maturity, it had a crushing feeling that it lived in the midst of people of clouded intelligence who played with organic elements of architecture like children with building blocks, who piled columns and arches, pediments, and cornices without any meaning or reason and without any consequence. Even today we feel with horror that we were in a madhouse, and that we looked upon the soulless occupations of people whose brains were paralyzed; with the stubbornness of madmen, they insisted on the effort to adorn everything that came to their hands, a tangle of ornaments, flowers, and naked female figures. We opened windows and doors and called for reason to free us because we felt horror at such a burden, at all those bodies and flowers, at such a direction in art; we were terrified of the future.
It certainly seemed that such a call was new and revolutionary; after all, it happened at a time when it was considered the best praise if it was impossible to recognize what a building or object actually represented. A stool should not seem like a table, a wardrobe like a wardrobe, a vase like a vase, a bowl like a bowl; a theater, a station, a bridge should have such an appearance that no one thought it was actually a theater, a station, and a bridge. Today, the demands we present here seem to us self-evident: “Every object has its logic and its justification for existence; in this sense alone, its form and construction must be understood.” “It is necessary for these forms and constructions to adjust and conform to the actual use of the material you have chosen.” “If you are driven by the desire to refine these forms and constructions, yield to that desire only insofar as you can preserve and respect the right and the actual appearance of these forms and constructions.”
These articles of faith proclaimed rather a reborn faith than a new faith; they were the foundation of a new style as well as the foundation of the Greek style in its flourishing. And yet they would not have succeeded in captivating humanity had humanity not sensed from them all the power of love that accompanied our efforts to solidify this faith. And what kind of love was that? Love for the creations of nature, love for the cult of beauty in things that nature created based on its innermost laws; precisely that love which has the greatest power over humanity.
In our greatest despair, we called for help and salvation from the eternal law of rational beauty; and at the moment where once people knelt and proclaimed their Credo, at that moment our lips found their Amo, this Amo that lies in the knowledge that everything we love is connected by a single thread and that all beauty springs from a single source!
Love has the power to elevate faith, for we cannot love where we do not believe. We can trustingly accept everything from love, and we can fully believe in someone who loves; we cannot rely on faith without testing it, and we cannot love someone who provides us only with faith. In the field of architecture and the decorative arts, it has long been impossible for us to believe in the necessity and reality of the functions of various construction elements, such as columns, pediments, metopes, and cornices, which we have inherited from ancient styles.
In antiquity and in styles based on antiquity, the symbolism of ornamentation had the purpose of being precisely a symbol and meaning itself, whether depicted by an eagle, ram, wreath, or trophy; it has certainly lost its persuasiveness for us. ...
We, who are honest, declare that we can no longer love the architecture and decorative arts that do not even attempt to cover their own distrust in the concepts of construction and ornamentation that they exclusively use. Here springs forth all good and all evil; all the good we can expect from architecture and decorative arts, using only the elements they love because they also believe in them; all the evil by which we have been struck by accusations that we are barbarians who destroy everything, and fanaticized, limited rebels.
It is known what a degrading decline experts lacking love and denying faith have brought to architecture and decorative arts. In the third quarter of the last century, we fell to the lowest level of taste and impotence. When my generation of manly years reached maturity, it had a crushing feeling that it lived in the midst of people of clouded intelligence who played with organic elements of architecture like children with building blocks, who piled columns and arches, pediments, and cornices without any meaning or reason and without any consequence. Even today we feel with horror that we were in a madhouse, and that we looked upon the soulless occupations of people whose brains were paralyzed; with the stubbornness of madmen, they insisted on the effort to adorn everything that came to their hands, a tangle of ornaments, flowers, and naked female figures. We opened windows and doors and called for reason to free us because we felt horror at such a burden, at all those bodies and flowers, at such a direction in art; we were terrified of the future.
It certainly seemed that such a call was new and revolutionary; after all, it happened at a time when it was considered the best praise if it was impossible to recognize what a building or object actually represented. A stool should not seem like a table, a wardrobe like a wardrobe, a vase like a vase, a bowl like a bowl; a theater, a station, a bridge should have such an appearance that no one thought it was actually a theater, a station, and a bridge. Today, the demands we present here seem to us self-evident: “Every object has its logic and its justification for existence; in this sense alone, its form and construction must be understood.” “It is necessary for these forms and constructions to adjust and conform to the actual use of the material you have chosen.” “If you are driven by the desire to refine these forms and constructions, yield to that desire only insofar as you can preserve and respect the right and the actual appearance of these forms and constructions.”
These articles of faith proclaimed rather a reborn faith than a new faith; they were the foundation of a new style as well as the foundation of the Greek style in its flourishing. And yet they would not have succeeded in captivating humanity had humanity not sensed from them all the power of love that accompanied our efforts to solidify this faith. And what kind of love was that? Love for the creations of nature, love for the cult of beauty in things that nature created based on its innermost laws; precisely that love which has the greatest power over humanity.
In our greatest despair, we called for help and salvation from the eternal law of rational beauty; and at the moment where once people knelt and proclaimed their Credo, at that moment our lips found their Amo, this Amo that lies in the knowledge that everything we love is connected by a single thread and that all beauty springs from a single source!
The English translation is powered by AI tool. Switch to Czech to view the original text source.
0 comments
add comment
