Die Belebung des Stoffes als Prinzip der Schönheit (1910) Henry van de Velde
In this article from his collection Essays (1910), the painter, architect and designer Henry van de Velde addresses the aesthetic effect of materials. He assumes that no material is beautiful by itself (p. [163]), but has “exciting effects on our senses” (ibid.) only through artistic treatment. Wood, metal, stones and jewels owed their “peculiar beauty” to the life imprinted on them by “the enthusiastic passion or sensitivity” (ibid.) of the working artist. And yet such an enlivening of the material could evoke sensations “from the slightest stimulus to complete drunkenness” (ibid.). This enlivening treatment produces a specific “interplay of light and shadow” (p. [170]) as well as certain “windings” (p. [171]) of the lines delimiting the emerging object. Moreover, it tends towards dematerialisation: “Let us observe the dematerialisation of stone, from the pyramid to the Parthenon, from the castle to the cathedral, in which it seems to reach a climax, which allows the cathedral to realise the miracle of lifting the stones of which it is composed high into the clouds as if they had no weight at all. […] From the seemingly coarse, barren linen, we observe the slow emergence of lace. […] Glass and ivory gradually divest themselves of all corporeality to such an extent that they are transformed into fragile, delicate skeletons whose only flesh is the light that plays around them” (pp. [175–76]).
Kai Bucholz
Hochschule Darmstadt
Henry van de Velde. “Die Belebung des Stoffes als Prinzip der Schönheit.” In Henry van de Velde. Essays, 5–21. Leipzig: Insel, 1910.