The Wave: Walter Benjamin's Lost Essay on Jugendstil

Author(s): Georges Teyssot

Source: AA Files, No. 61 (2010), pp. 23-37
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546063 .
Accessed: 15/06/2014 03:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Architectural Association School of Architecture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to AA Files.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Wave
Walter Benjamin's
Lost Essay on Jugendstil

Georges Teyssot

[The] French capital ...a kind of interior in the open air.

Hannah Arendt, 'Walter Benjamin', 19681

Jean Delville, L'Amourdes antes, 1900

Musee d'lxelles, Brussels

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 With The Man with theBroken Nose, Auguste Rodin gave form to an
animated face 'full ofmotion, full of disquiet and crashing waves',
wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in his seminal essay on the sculptor.
Rodin's art, he argued, departed from classical canons that favoured
monumental stillness (gravitas) over movement (celeritas), insofar
as 'there was always motion in nature', and any art that would
'present a faithful interpretation of nature could not idealise a
motionlessness that existed nowhere'. For Rilke, even in ancient
cults, which preferred hieratic gestures, itwas possible to discern
-
this celeritas for example, in 'the restlessness of living surfaces ...
likewater within thewalls of a vessel'. A similar kind of gesture could
also be found in the effigies of the gods, 'like a fountain rising
from the stone and then falling back again, covering itwith innumer?
able waves'.2

In this lyrical vision of the sculptor's art, it is always a universe in

flux that is captured, frozen and crystallised. However, whether this
is achieved through the lapidary quality of archaic art or by the flow?
ing lines of Jugendstil, thewave always seems to be the single point
-
of reference a symbol of life and death and of a material ebb and 1. Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin,
Bertolt Brecht: Zwei Essays (Munich:
flow.3 For art nouveau and Jugendstil, themetaphor of the breaking
RPiper,i97i),p54.
wave also offered a remarkably clear representation of the artistic 2. Rainer Maria ftllke,Auguste Rodin (New
volition or kunstwollen with which authors such as Rilke were so York: Archipelago Books, 2004), p 41.
- 3. See Roger-Henri Guerrand, L'art nou
familiar not least in the case of Rilke, since he had written a critical veau enEurope, with a preface by Louis

report in July 1898 on the 'new art' in Berlin inwhich he commented Aragon (Paris: Perrin Tempus, 2009
on Henry van de Velde's [1965]).
furniture: 'everything is in plain wood, every?
4. Rainer Maria Rilke, Die neue Kunst in
thing is light, quiet, healthy. Every movement is a heavy swell, a Berlin,written for the reopening of
stress The move? Berlin's Keller & Reiner art gallery,
rhythmic compensation between and resistance...
and published later in theWiener
ment swings as if in strong hinges... Every line lives its lifeuntil the Rundschau. See Rainer Maria Rilke,
end.'4 Such a balance between stillness and strain seemed to allow ?L'artnouveau ? Berlin*, CEuvres en
prose, Ricits et essais, edited by Claude
the artist to restore a kind of unity, reconciling all the disparate ele? David (Paris: Gallimard, 1993),
ments of a work of art. pp 691-94

Henry van de Velde, poster for

the food company Tropon, 1898
? Landesmuseum f?r Kunst und

Kulturgeschichte, Westf?lisches
Landesmuseum, M?nster

24 AA FILES 6l

^^^^

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 This theme had already appeared in Notizen zur Melodie der
Dinge, unpublished but dated 1898, inwhich the poet, then search?
ing for the underlying, vital harmony in things and forms, argued
that 'onemust extract the rhythm of thewaves from the roaring tur?
moil of the sea, and free the vital line... from the confusion of day-to?
day speech'.s In another text from the same period, Rilke asserted
that art,more than any other worldview (religious, scientific ormeta?
physical), translates life in the form of an extended line, 'part of a cir?
cumference adopting the form of a straight line, because its radius is
infinite'.6 Titled '?ber der Kunst', this textwas published in three
parts between November 1898 and May 1899 in Ver sacrum, the
review founded by Gustav Klimt in Vienna in January 1898. There,
Rilke tried to lay the foundations fora new understanding of art. But
above all, itwas his encounter with Rodin's ceuvre in 1902 that led to
a refinement of his aesthetic vocabulary, and to his idea that the

defining challenge fora sculptor was inmodelling a surface inwhich

each contour and vibration bore witness to a life. The sculptor's
engagement with concrete materials inmodelling tangible things
directed Rilke towards completely new paths in his own literary
work, revealed most notably inhis DuinoElegies (1922) and Sonnets to
Orpheus (1922), where the dynamics of line and surface reappear:
'Aspire to transform... /that generative spirit,master of earth and all
therein, /holds nothing dearer than the pivot point of the evolving
line.' Formany poets, and especially forRilke, inspiration is equated
with respiration: the invisible takes form and transforms itself into a
general respiratory process: 'Breath, you poem beyond all seeing!... /
Lone wave, whose gradual sea /am I;... /Do you know me, you breeze,
so full of spots /hitherto mine?'? Thus the poem literally transmutes
into breath, while an Orphic breeze {Atem in German) wafts around
the atmosphere. Through this verse, and at the very outset of the
twentieth century, Rilke also inaugurated the rediscovery of the cru?
cial,modern issue of atmosphere, inwhich the question of airwould
be dealt with from both qualitative and quantitative points of view,
in science as well as in conscience.8
Rilke, along with Stefan George (the poet and translator of
Charles Bauderlaire), was part of the literarybaggage of the young
Walter Benjamin. Rather surprisingly, Benjamin met Rilke during 5. Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Notes sur la
melodie des choses', ibid,p 692.
his year-long stay inMunich in 1916, when they both attended uni?
6. Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Sur l'art, 1', ibid,
versity seminars given by Walter Lehmann, a scholar of Aztec pp 677-83, quotation on p 678.
7. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and
mythology.9 However, neither these encounters between the two The Sonnets toOrpheus, 11,12th and ist
writers nor their subsequent brief epistolary relations ultimately sonnets, www.hunterarchive.com/
mattered so much as their common interest in French literature and fileS/Poetry/SonnetsToOrpheus.html.
8. See Peter Sloterdijk, 'Air/Condition',
art. Because what established a link between the experiences of the -
inSph?ren in Sch?ume, Plurale
two German writers is that both of them chose Paris, chiefly in order Sph?rologie (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp,
to perfect their education, but also in order to look for (and follow) 2004); also inPeter Sloterdijk, Terror
- from theAir, trans.Amy Patton and
their vocation be itRilke, with his Notebooks ofMalte Laurids Brigge Steve Corcoran (Cambridge, ma: mit

(1910) or Benjamin, with his major opus, The Arcades Project. In Press, 2009), pp 71-106.
9. Walter Benjamin, 'Curriculum vi',
choosing Paris as their home and place of study, theymade the citya quoted by JeanMichel Palmier, Walter
site of alienated modernity, simultaneously uninhabitable, welcom? Benjamin: Le chiffonnier,l'Angeet lePetit
Bossu (Paris: Klincksieck, 2006), p 134.
ing and impenetrable, whose secrets and enigma had to be immedi? 10. Hannah Arendt, 'WalterBenjamin', in

ately revealed. Even during his first trip in 1913, Benjamin was able Men inDark Times (NewYork: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1983); the quote is
to perceive the French capital in a way that anticipated his later
fromHannah Arendt, Viespolitiques
-
vision as a city lived in 'aswe would inhabit the confines elsewhere', (Paris: Gallimard, 1986), pp 270-71.
11. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
a kind of inner space 'in the open air'.10
trans.Howard Eiland and Kevin
In section S of The Arcades Project, dedicated to Jugendstil,
McLaughlin, on the basis of the
Benjamin writes that 'Perhaps an attempt should be made to extend
German volume edited byRolf
Tiedemann (Cambridge, ma: Belknap
the scope of this inquiry up to the threshold of thewar, by tracing the Press ofHarvard University Press,
influence of Jugendstil on the youth movement {Jugendbewegung].'11 1999), P 552

AA FILES 6l 25

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 As much as an indicator of epistemological ambition, this is an auto?
biographical note and a hint at Benjamin's own upbringing. At the
age of 12, the young Benjamin was sent to the famous Haubinda
school in the Th?ringen countryside, where he stayed for two years,
between 1904 and 1906, before returning to his old school in Berlin,
passing his university entrance examinations there in 1912.
According to Benjamin, itwas at Haubinda that 'the grains of his
future life were planted'.12 A text fragment from around 1913
describes theHaubinda landscape. Above villages and forests, 'on a
very gentle hill, there is a manor house... what they call a half-tim?
bered house.' From there, 'handsome teenagers came down wearing
red caps... Tomorrow, the young people will go fora walk in themost
hidden places of this landscape.'13 For a time theHaubinda Institute
was run by Gustav Wyneken, an adherent of the Reformp?dagogik
movement, promoting a progressive education.1* In deliberate con?
trast to the existing authoritarian Prussian educational model, the
aim at Haubinda was to integrate into a conventional education a
series of outdoor pursuits that included gardening, walks through
themeadows orwoods and naked lake and river swimming, soaking
up the virile rural atmosphere.15 Benjamin feltparticularly at ease in
this school 'in the country',which offered freedom atwork, life in the
12. JeanMichel Palmier, op cit,pp 59-60.
open air, naturalism and active participation in cultural debates.16
13. Walter Benjamin, Fragments
Characteristic of Haubinda (and of other reformmovements in
philosophiques, politiques, critiques,
the same period) was an acknowledged homoerotic atmosphere,17 littiraires, edited byRolf Tiedemann,
Hermann Schweppenh?user, trans.
and Benjamin was by no means unaware of the ambivalence of the
Christophe Jouanlanne and Jean
Jugendbewegung in which he actively participated until 1915.18 Francois Poirier (Paris: puf, 2001),
pp 245-46.
Moreover, he would also have been familiar with other male-domi?
14. JeanMichel Palmier, op cit,p 61.
nated groups at the time, such as the Wanderv?gel ('Wandering 15. Bruno Tackels, Walter Benjamin: Une
vie dans les textes (Arles:Actes Sud,
Birds'), an organisation for adolescent boys dedicated to group hik?
2009), pp 43-44; regarding the photo of
ing. In associations like these, all typically founded shortly after the nudists bathing in theHaubinda insti?
turn of the century, the young men practised folkloric rites based tute see Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin
(London: Reaktion Books, 2007), p 21.
around hiking, camping and an almost religious celebration of 16. Marino Pulliero, he desir d'authenticity:
nature, expressed through kitsch 'medieval' ceremonies, a lot of tra? Walter Benjamin et Vheritage de la

ditional sing-songs and the new rallying cry, ('Heil!'), with which they Bildungallemande (Paris: Bayard, 2005),
pp 30-31.
greeted each other. These pursuits and rituals were essentially those 17. See Marino Pulliero, ibid,p 473; and
JohnAlexander Williams, Turning to
of a neo-romantic anarchism, amplified by a virulent xenophobia Nature inGermany:Hiking, Nudism and
and a latent anti-Semitism.1* Decorating their periodical reviews Conservation, 1900-1940 (Stanford,
with engravings in a style similar to Jugendstil, and celebrating ca: Stanford University Press, 2007),
pp 123-45.
a mythical Volkskultur inspired by Wilhelm Heinrich RiehFs
The Waldschule at Charlottenburg, 18. Bruno Tackels, op cit,p 45.

cosmology, the Wanderv?gel exalted the values of an agricultural 19. JeanMichel Palmier, op cit,pp 107-10.
Berlin, c 1900

A German Wanderv?gel hiking group,

1897

26 AA FILES 6l

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 world and vanishing craft traditions and took a fierce stand against
conventional educational models as much as theirmore general ani?
mosity towards cities and industry. Their Utopian project was to
'defeat capitalism through hiking', as Benjamin noted with a certain
wry disdain.20
a
life?
Though the ambitions of the Volkskultur may have provoked
certain derision, this period was of the utmost importance in the
development of Benjamin's thinking, with the two youthful move?
ments - the Jugendstil in the arts and theJugendbewegungin a social Rudolf Bosselt, bronze inkwell, 1901
- Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich
and political context appearing to him as two sides of the same
coin.21 Impelled by the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Frank Wedekind,
as much as by the youth-inspired philosophical ideals of Friedrich
Nietzsche, the period would also become one inwhich the power of
Eros and Sexus would come to the fore.As a key figurewithin this cul?
tural milieu, Benjamin produced a text titled 'Die singende Blume
oder die Geheimnisse des Jugendstils' ('The Singing Flower or The
Secrets of Jugendstil'), ofwhich only fragments dating from around
1930 survive. This essay seems to have been intended as an analysis
Rudolf Bosselt, bronze jewellery dish,
of a story titled Tagebuch einer Verlorenen {Diary of a Woman Gone
1901, courtesy eth-bau, Zurich
Astray), published in 1905 in Berlin byMargarete B?hme, accompa?
nied with a 'comprehensive inventory of sexual commerce, from
matchmakers to gigolos'. Benjamin hoped to draw the secret of this
text andits incipient sexuality out of the reform movement: 'the
Jugend inMunich [the review founded by Georg Hirth in 1896] was

probably themost important newspaper of thismysterious emanci?

pation movement which inhabits the tone of this verse'. Recalling
the allegorical figure of the flower (something he borrowed from
Stefan George's 1897 book of poems, Jahr der Seele), Benjamin con?
tinues: 'In the flower, the idea of perversion is linked to that of youth.
Only then did we understand the very heart of Jugendstil...
Emancipation is linked to perversion.'22
On 6 June 1929, in a letter to his friend Gershom Scholem,
Benjamin declares that he isworking on a study on Jugendstil; an
announcement he in a letter to Hugo
later reiterates von
Hofmannsthal.23 However, in terms of the study itself, the only
remaining traces are a series of notes titled 'Schemata und Glossen
zum Jugendstil', dated 1930-31 and published inFragments, as well
as annotations collected in Section S of The Arcades Project and a
brief digression on Jugendstil in 'Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth 20. Walter Benjamin, Fragments, op cit,
p 113, inspired by thework of one of
Century', written inMay 1935 for the Institute of Social Research.2*
his friends, the philosopher Erich
With the help of a little contextual exploration, however, itmight be
Unger, Politik undMetaphysik: Die
to reconstruct lost essay on in which Theorie. Versuche zuphilosophischer
possible Benjamin's Jugendstil,
Politik (Berlin, 1921).
he aimed to theorise the possibility of an 'open air architecture', a 21. Michael Hau, The Cult ofHealth and
kind of environment 'in the open', where air and water would Beauty inGermany: A Social History
become controlled and conditioned (a terminology that introduced 1890-1930 (Chicago, il: University
of Chicago Press, 2003).
a characteristically twentieth-century lexicon). As much as anticipat? 22. Walter Benjamin, Fragments, op cit,

ing a future condition, Benjamin's study established an archaeology

pp 188-90.
23. Walter Benjamin, The Complete
of the experiments explored by the Jugendstil and, through this,was
Correspondence, 1928-1940, edited
able to go back in time and deal with nineteenth-century arts from byGershom Scholem and Theodor
- a W Adorno, trans. Nicholas Walker
Baudelaire to the caricaturist J J Grandville century that the (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University
author knew quite well, and one he makes frequent reference to in Press, 2001).
24. Walter Benjamin, 'Paris: Capital of the
Berlin Childhood: 'I lived in the nineteenth century like a mollusc liv?
Nineteenth Century' [1935], inMichael
ing in its shell, and that century now lies in front ofme, hollow like Jennings (ed), The Writer ofModern
an empty shell.,25 Life:Essays onCharles Baudelaire
(Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press of
What Grandville pioneered (and what the surrealists were later Harvard University Press, 2006),
able to play upon) was the idea that in a nineteenth-century society PP 30-45.
25. Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood
which idealised progress and comfort, a general feeling of discomfort Around 1900 (Cambridge, ma: Harvard
-
seemed to prevail a sensation of disquiet later famously diagnosed University Press, 2006).

AA FILES 6l 27

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 by Freud as unheimlich ('uncanny'). Before then, the traditional bour?
geois interiorwas a place ofmelancholy, where ennui became crys?
tallised.26 Grandville's art,which unnerved Baudelaire so much, led
the poet to imagine a domestic space subverted by a series of optical
distortions so as to become the place of unease par excellence:
When I read Grandville's work, Ifeel rather uncomfortable, as ifI
was inan apartment where disorder would be organised systematically,
where ridiculous cornices would stand on thefloor, where paintings
would appear distorted by optical manipulations, where objects would
hurt themselves on angles, where furniture would hold itsfeet in the air
and where drawers would bepulled in instead of out27
The metaphor of the inverted table is a recurrent one in
nineteenth-century literature, for example in Balzac's novel The
Government Clerks** while in a famous passage inDas Kapital, titled
'The Fetish-Character of Commodities and its Secret', Karl Marx
describes the self-transformation of the industrially manufactured
object from a commodity into a 'phantasmagoria', with a 'mystical
character':

But as soon as it[the table]emerges as a commodity, itchanges intoa 26. Theodor WAdorno, Kierkegaard:
Construction of theAesthetic
thingwhich transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its legs on (Minneapolis, mn: University of
theground, but, in relation toall other commodities, itstands on itshead Minnesota Press, 1989).
27. Charles Baudelaire, CEuvres completes,
and evolves out of itswooden brain grotesque ideas,far more wonderful
supervised byClaude Pichois (Paris:
than ifitwere dancing of itsownfree will.2* Gallimard, La Pleiade, 1975), vol 1,
The transfiguration of commodities into 'magical objects' in this P558.
28. Honore de Balzac, LesEmployes (Paris:
period can also be observed in the proliferation ofWorld Fairs. At the Gallimard, 1985 [1849]), p 105; en.
same time, the discomforts suffered by industrial civilisation wikisource.org/wiki/The_Government_
Clerks
formed the subject of Grandville's book, The Petty Sorrows ofHuman 29. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/

Life (1843), which offered a number of cartoonish misadventures works/1867-ci/index.htm.

30. Petites miseres de la vie humainepar
prompted by themisuse of various industrial objects and technical Old Nick etGrandville (Paris: H Fournier,

gadgets.30 And just as Grandville influenced Baudelaire, so Benjamin 1843).

JJGrandville, Petites miseres de la vie

humaine, Paris, 1843

JJGrandville, Un autre monde, Paris,

1844

28 AA FILES 6l

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Hans Ludwig Habich, bathroom, took his cue from the poet, once again taking from Baudelaire's
Darmstadt, c 1902 The Double Chamber the theme of reverie,which he saw as spreading
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich
through the nineteenth-century interior like an atmospheric cloud,
Detail of painting inHabich's
animating and metamorphosing furniture so as to transform
bathroom by Karl Schmoll von
the tables and chairs into endlessly flexible, stretching, yawning,
Eisenwerth, Idyll on the Sea, c 1902
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich extending limbs:
In a text that anticipates Jugendstil, Baudelaire sketches 'A room
that is like a dream, a trulyspiritual room... Every piece offurniture is
of an elegant form, languid and prostrate, and seems to be dreaming;
endowed, one would say, with a somnambular existence likeminerals
andvegetables.31

Elsewhere, in a prefiguration of atmospheric architecture,

Baudelaire comments on 'all these phantasmagorias', these 'fluid
architectures' built 'with the vapours, themarvellous structures of
the impalpable', the great majority of which he could contemplate
from his open window.32 Evoking the 'forests of symbols' in
Baudelaire's The Flowers ofEvil, Benjamin later sees the elucidation
of a floralmotif as central to the 'flower-gazes' of Jugendstil, the art
ofwhich, he writes, 'wins back symbols'.33
If at first Benjamin expressed a negative opinion on what he
-
called the Jugendstil which, depending on the country or region,
was also called Modern Style, 1900 Style,ArtNouveau, Stile Liberty or
even Wellenstil ('Wave Style') - itwas because he considered such a
movement to be a 'repression' of technology, for the reason that 'its
recourse to technological motifs arose from the effort to sterilise
them ornamentally'.34 Another factor in Benjamin's opposition was
that he was following the arguments of Adolf Loos, who questioned
the role of ornament in the context of theWiener Werkst?tte,35 as
well as Sigfried Giedion's somewhat simplistic formulations, unit?
ing approaches diametrically opposed (such as Le Corbusier's free
-
plan and the Raumplan of Loos whose oeuvre he otherwise
ignored). With Jugendstil, Benjamin believed, the bourgeoisie 'con?
ceals its alibi... innatural history';36however, later and elsewhere, he
31. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen:
acknowledged that the bourgeoisie would start 'tomeasure the con? LittlePoems inProse, trans.Keith
ditions ...of itsdominion over nature' by integrating technical forms Waldrop (Middletown, cn: Wesleyan
University Press, 2009); see v: The
in architecture. The way his views on this developed is confirmed by Double Chamber', inWalter Benjamin,
his following comment: 'The life of flowers in Jugendstil: you can The Arcades Project, op cit,p 553.

draw an arc stretching from The Flowers ofEvil over the flowers-souls 32. Ibid.
33. Ibid,p558.
of Odilon Redon', through to Proust's floral eroticism, before com? 34. Ibid,p557.
35. Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime:
ing back again to 'the perverse flower-glance' in Redon's phantas? Selected Essays, edited byAdolf Opel
magoric paintings.37 and Michael Mitchell (Riverside, ca:

Benjamin is looking here for a genealogy that, starting with Ariadne Press, 1997).
36. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
Grandville's caricatures and continuing with Baudelaire's symbols,
op cit,p 226.
would lead not only to the sinuous forms of Jugendstil, but to the 37. Ibid,pp556-59.

AA FILES 6l 29

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 technical rhetoric of futurism and further to the allegories of surreal? 38. Marleen Stoessel, 'Dans ledemi-jour:
lememe et le semblable', inHeinz
ism.38As part of this surrealist absorption of Jugendstil, in 1930
Wismann (ed),Walter Benjamin etParis
Salvador Dali, inspired by his contempt for Le Corbusier's purism, (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1986),
launched a rehabilitation of art nouveau in built form as 'realisa? P438.
39. Salvador Dali, 'L'?ne pourri', inLe
tions of [solidified] desires'.39 Similarly, in a 1933 issue ofMinotaure, Surrealisme au servicede la revolution
Andre Breton stressed the closeness of drawing, sculpture and medi (Paris: JCorti, July1930), p 12, cited in
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
umistic painting, and the ability to recognise in each 'the same
opcit,p 547.
delight in the never-ending curve, whether it be a growing fern, or 40. Andre Breton,Minotaure:Revue artis

ammonite or embryonic curl'.4?Having also been influenced by the tique et litteraire,nos 3-4,1933, cited
inWalter Benjamin, ibid,p 549.
surrealists in this regard, Benjamin could not help but note the 41. DolfSternberger, 'Jugendstil:Begriff
und Physionomie', inDie neue
analogies between theMarxian and the Freudian fetishes with the
Rundschau 45,11 (9 September 1934),
architecture and furniture produced around 1900, such as van de PP 255~71> cited inWalter Benjamin,
Velde's desks and Victor Horta's cabinets. Underpinning all of this ibid,p 550.
42. Ibid,p 549.
research was Benjamin's intention towrite an essay on Jugendstil,
but this ambition took something of a knock when a study by Dolf
-
Sternberger on the same subject was published in September 1934
a study that Benjamin quotes more than once in The Arcades Project:
'Everyhouse appears ... to be an organism which expresses its inte?
rior through its exterior, and van de Velde unmistakably betrays ...
themodel forhis vision of the city of characters'.^ Sternberger him?
self continues with the idea that 'If the city is a garden full of freely
growing house-organisms, it is not clear what place man would
occupy in such a vision, unless he is caught within the interior of this
-
plant life,himself rooted and attached to the soil land or water'.
Benjamin, however, opposed such a thesis, and the idea that a house
was a plant-like organism inwhich one could take refuge from the

devastating power of industry: this was too simple a negation,

because it did not precisely dichotomise the relationship between
plant-like art and technology. Sternberger, in contrast, appreciated
the kind of decor that modelled itself on the naturalistic mollusc
shells or radiolaria illustrated in 1899 by Ernst Haeckel in the
coloured engravings to his book, Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms
ofNature):
Just as pieces offurniture gravitate toward one another ...so itseems
that walls, floors and ceilings are possessed of a peculiar power of
attraction. Increasingly,furniture isbecoming untransportable, immov?
able; it clings towalls and corners, sticksfast tofloors, and, as itwere,
takes root*2

For Sternberger, fixing artworks onto walls to create a Jugendstil

interior delivers them from the fatigue of being only useful bywith?
drawing them from the commodities circuit, in the process liberat?
ing them from a condition of being perpetually renewable: 'The
whole permanent content of the house is thus removed from
exchange, while the inhabitant himself loses the power to move

Das neue Kunff-Prinzip inder

-
modernen Frauen Kleidung.
Von Prof.fienrypan de Velde.
Henry van de Velde, masthead for an
article on The New Artistic Principles
inModern Women's Clothing', 1902
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

30 AA FILES 6l

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

43- /6tf,p550.
44. Henrik Ibsen, TheMasterbuilder.
ADrama inThree Acts, trans. JohnW
Arctander (Minneapolis, mn: W Kriedt,
1893).
45. MarleenStoessel,oprir,p438.
46. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
opcit,pss7.
47. Henry van de Velde, Reck de ma vie, 1,
1863-1900: Anvtrs,Bauteiles, Paris,
Berlin,with commentary byAnne van
Loo (Brussels: Versa; Paris:
Flammarion, 1992), p 197.
48. Henry van de Velde, Recit de ma vie, 11,
1900-1917: Berlin,Weimar, Paris,
Bruxelles, with a commentary byAnne
van Loo (Brussels: Versa; Paris:
Flammarion, 1995), pp 153-58
49. Ibid, pp 352-63.
50. LievendcCautcr, The Birth of
Pleinairism from the Spirit of the
Interior*,inFrancoise Aubry and Jos
Vandenbreeden (eds), Horta.Art
Nouveau toModernism (Ghent: Luidion,
1996), pp 13-26; Leon Ploegaarts, 'Van
de Velde and Nietzsche', inAlexandre
Kostka and Irving Wohlfarth (eds),
Nietzsche and an Architectureof our
Minds (Los Angeles, ca: Getty Research
Institute, 1999).
51. Henry van de Velde, opcit, vol 11,1900
1917. P113
52. lbid,vo\ 1,1863-1900, p 249.
53. See Claude Quiguer, frm/ntxet
machines de 1900: lectured'unt obses?
sionmodern style (Paris: Klincksieck,
1979). P 26, and PatrickWaldberg, Eros
Modern Style (Paris: Jean-Jacques
Pauvcrt, 1964).
54- DerKuss, engraving incoloured wood,
Pan 2,Berlin, 1898, p 117.
AA FILES 6l 31
This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM
around freelyand becomes attached to ground and property/43The
artworks therefore occupy a liberated interior,which presents itself
as a testing ground on which traditional boundaries - decorative
-
arts, industrial art, sculpture, architecture, etc become blurred. As
a consequence, 'art in everything' is established as the keyword of a
quest for a house for the new man (a quest articulated particularly
clearly by the architect Halvard Solness, building 'modern homes' or
'homes forhuman beings', in Ibsen's 1892 play TheMaster Builder)."
Allowing for a hybridisation of different trades, these arts nouveaux
also allowed pictures to leave their frames. The interior,accordingly,
begins to articulate itself through the arrangement of various deco?
rative panels: fresco, mosaic, wallpaper, tapestry, printed fabric,
enamelled stoneware tile or polychromatic brick. The play of these
different planes generated itsown specific tectonics, created by the
reduction of the artworks onto their flat surface. Another procedure
involved making the frame itself come alive, which then becomes
loaded with sculptural potential, proliferating and growing like a
protuberant vegetable.45
For Benjamin, casting a glow over this decorative interplaywas
Nietzsche's Zarathustra, which 'appropriated ... the tectonic ele?
ments of Jugendstil, in contrast to itsorganic motif, insofar as all of
Nietzsche's works are characterised
by 'the predominance of the
hollow form over the filled form'.46Further attesting to the strength
of this connection, the prophet Zarathustra's rhythmof pauses and
silences was seen to find an echo in the scansion? of voids and inter?
- an
vals in art nouveau alliance seemingly made binding in 1900
when van de Velde entered into an association with Count HP
Harry
Kessler to edit a lavish edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra forLeipzig's
Insel Verlag.47 Nietzsche's (infamous) sister, Elisabeth F?rster liar
Nietzsche, also commissioned van de Velde to install the Nietzsche
archives at a villa inWeimar in 1903.4* On Kessler's initiative, the
architect would later become a member of the committee for
the erection of a memorial to the philosopher (forwhich he would
-
make several designs in 1912 most of them, itmight be said,
rather unattractive).4' Through episodes like this it seemed as ifa
- or -
Nietzscheanism rather a Zarathustrastil swept through the
- even van
thinking and ideas of the period50 de Velde, inwords ifnot
inhis own monuments, appropriated the philosopher's sensibilities
in defining drawing 'as a spontaneous manifestation of the gesture
which carries away our whole being, merging with it, shaking it...
like a sail in thewind.'51 Illustrations by Peter Behrens {top) and
A
Some short while earlier, in 1898, van de Velde returned to that
other Nietzschean trope - the alternating play of solids and voids - in
Henry van de Velde {bottom) for van de
Velde's article on contemporary female
dress, 1902; courtesy eth-bau, Zurich
his observation to Count Kessler and the critic Julius Meier-Graefe
that any line should necessarily receive a complement, so as to create
'female and male lines penetrating each other'.52 Art nouveau, in this
way, came to be defined as an erotic artpar excellence. As emblem to
this eroticism, Peter Behrens hung a copy of his 1898 work DerKuss
(TheKiss) on thewall of his living room inDarmstadt. First published
as a coloured engraving in the revue Pan, the picture shows the faces
of two women opposite each other, as ifmerging in a mirror.54 In
order to enhance the concentration of narcissistic ego, theirmouths
meet in a kiss, while all around them the frame is filled with their
rhapsodic, tangled locks (an intertwining that quickly became art
nouveau's dominant motif). In Darmstadt during the same period,
-
Behrens who had the habit of introducing himself as der
-
Lebensk?nstler (the 'artist of life*) created a desk light in the form
of a female figure, in which the effigy holds a transparent shell.
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 A source of life, the woman illuminates the darkness with organic
55- Stanford Anderson, Peter Behrens
light.ssThe literature of this time is similarly inundated with visions and a New Architecturefor theTwentieth
of universal procreation, culminating in those of the ever renewed
Century (Cambridge, ma: mit Press,
-a
cycle of living substances recurrent theme taken up again inOtto 2000), pp 27-43.
56. Otto JBierbaum, Taunsfl?tenlied f?r
J Bierbaum's poem 'Faunsfl?tenlied', dedicated to Behrens and Peter Behrens', inIrrgartender Liebe
illustrated by the painter Heinrich Vogeler: 'Sing, flute, your prayer (Berlin-Leipzig: Tusel Verlag, 1901),
of lust/This is life's sacred sense.'56 p 352, cited inClaude Quiguer, op cit,
P90.
The idea of lust soon spread after 1900, but was transcended (and 57. Linda Dalrymple Henderson, 'Vibratory
of as a Modernism: Boccioni, Kupka and the
briefly desexualised) into the concept 'ether' (itself later taken
Ether of Space', inBruce Clarke and
synonym for 'space')57. This singular idea of a charged and envelop? Linda Dalrymple Henderson (eds),

ing atmosphere helped to figure the imponderables now seen to be

From Energy toInformation:
Representation inScience and
lingering in the air (notably the fascination at the time with mag? Technology,Art and Literature (Stanford,
netic waves). More generally, itwas also through the idea of the ether CA: Stanford University Press, 2002),
pp 126-49.
that one could conceptualise that determinedly modern characteris?
58. Henry van de Velde, 'Die Linie', in
View of the Vestibule of the 'House of tic, transparency, so as to invest the design of the nineteenth-century Die Zukunft, Berlin, vol 40, no 49,6
Power and Beauty', German section interior not only through thematerial question of how to use iron or September 1902, pp 385-88; Hans
of the International Exhibition on Curjel (ed), Zum neuen Stil (Munich:
Modern Decorative Art, Turin, 1902
glass in building, but how to represent and contain certain energies. Piper, 1955), pi8i.
eth-bau, Zurich In his essay on the line ('Die Linie', 1902), van de Velde claims that 59. Christoph Asendorf, 'Bodies inForce
Courtesy
Fields: Design Between theWars', in
'the line is a force' and that lines are able to translate 'latent forces Bruce Clarke and Linda Dalrymple
which wait impatiently before transforming themselves into Henderson, op cit,pp 195-212.
60. DolfSternberger, Panorama oder
action'.s8 Itwas from this linear source that van de Velde felt able to
Ansichten vom lgjahrhundert
-
derive the physical manifestation of life's vital forces in particular (Hamburg: Ciaassen, 1938), p 33,
cited inWalter Benjamin, The Arcades
those which integrated imperceptible phenomena such as vibra?
Project, op cit,p 559. According to
tions or x-rays. As a consequence, from then on, the interior Adorno, the content of Sternberger's
becomes read as a permeable space where x-rayed bodies can act book *wasstolen from [Ernst] Bloch,
fromBenjamin and frommyself, and
within a field of competing energies.59 Similarly, inPanoramas of the his 'conceptual structure is incredibly
Nineteenth Century, published in 1938, Sternberger observed that mediocre'. See Christoph G?dde and
Henri Lonitz (eds), GretelAdorno and
'thefin-de-siecle cult of the nerves ...maintains this telegraphic Walter Benjamin: Briefwechsel, 1930
image',60 and dominates interpersonal relationships (thus also 1940 (Frankfurt,Suhrkamp, 2005).

Peter Behrens, table lamp, Darmstadt,

1902; photo ? Ruhl & Bormann

Cover of themagazine Deutsche Kunst

und Dekoration, 1901
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

View of the bathroom in Peter Behrens'

house in Darmstadt, with fixtures by
Volk&Wittner(Strasbourg),
1902
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

32 AA FILES 6l

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

61. DolfSternberger, ibid;Georg Simmel,
'Die Grossst?dte und das Geitesleben',
inBr?cke und T?r (Stuttgart:K F
Koehler, 1957), p 227. The idea became
popular at the time that neural life (das
Nervenleben) would behave similarly to
electric grids in large cities, and that
failures and short-circuitswould lead to
neurasthenia or other neuropatholo
gies. See Andreas Killen, Berlin
Electropolis: Shock,Nerves and German
Modernity (Berkeley, ca: University of
California Press, 2006).
62. Christoph G?dde and Henri Lonitz,
op cit.
63. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 74.
64. FrankWedekind, The First Lulu, (New
York and London: Applause Theater
Books, 1994).
65. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 75.
66. Ibid,p 79.
67. Walter Benjamin, 'R?ckblick auf Stefan
George'; cited inClaude Quiguer, ibid,
pp 79-80.
68. Ibid,p 146.
69. Dolf Sternberger, 'Jugendstil:Begriff
und Physionomie', inDie neue
Rundschau 45 (9 September 1934),
PP 255_71; Dolf Sternberger, ?ber den
Jugendstil und andere Essays (Hamburg:
Claassen, 1956), pp 25-26.
70. FrankWedekind, Mine-Haha: Or on the
Bodily Education ofYoungGirls, trans.
PhilipWard (London: Hesperus, 2010).
AA FILES 6l 33
This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM
alluding to the 'life of nerves' in the metropolis as Georg Simmel
described it in 1903). As with everything, Benjamin picks up on this
nervousness, adding that 'along the characteristic line of Jugendstil,
the nerve and the electric wire often met', establishing an inter?
esting montage inwhich 'the organic and the technical world come
into contact'.61
In his celebrated of 2 August 1935, Theodor
letter to Benjamin
Adorno wrote that 'In place of interiorityJugendstil put sex... only in
sex could a private person encounter himself not as interior, but as
an actual body of flesh and bones.'62 Whereupon he quotes Ibsen,
Maeterlinck, d'Annunzio and Wedekind. Itwas the German play?
wright Frank Wedekind in particular who staged a furore of vitality
and satisfaction of carnal desires through his character Lulu (even if
this meant infringing social and theatrical conventions in the
* ? ?
process).63 By submitting themselves to the primitive and elemen?
> ?:
tary forces of Eros, Wedekind's characters hoped to find relief from
their angst, even if this led them towards destruction and death.64
Trampling on bourgeois moral standards, this dynamic, vital urge
-
incarnates itselfas allegory that of a possible mediation with natu?
ral and original forces.65 Lulu, the most haunting character in
Wedekind's plays, is not an individual, but an allegory for desire.66
And again, as mirror to this cultural context, Benjamin defined
Jugendstil as a 'regression which, from social reality, leads to the bio?
logical and natural realm', and whose instrument iswoman.67 But
what type of woman does he mean? As shown in Claude Quiguer's
brilliant book, Femmes etmachines de 1900, Lulu, as the quintessen?
tial 1900 heroine, is at one extreme a fatal regenerator of desire, at
another only pale and fleshless, fading away almost into nothing?
ness.68 In his own 1934 study, Sternberger also underlined this incor?
poreal aspect in Jugendstil art:
The bare body made of bones, flesh, muscle, skin, nails and hair,
seems tofade, seems todilute itself in thedesire which energises every?
thing, before being absorbed by that movement of universal growth...
But even these bodies ofyoung girls, thesefine, thin,almost emaciated
bodies... are always directly connected with the image of an astral body;
theyare all bodies of souls.**
All these youthful, diaphanous creatures exhibit their charms on
tapestries and stained-glass windows from the period. In particular,
there seemed to be a fondness for fairies dressed inwhite, dream?
like evocations tip-toeing across floralmeadows or clearings, the vir?
ginal whiteness of their appearance always set in contrast to the
darkness of the
surrounding
forests. Likewise, inWedekind's story
Mine-Haha (1903), a copy of which Benjamin owned, the narrator
writes of the idealised physical education she receives in a girls' fin?
ishing school set in themiddle of a large park: 'We felt ourselves in
our legs and feetmore than in our eyes and fingers. Of none of the
girls do I remember her way of talking. I only remember how they
walked.'70 Situated behind a high perimeter wall, the finishing Rontgenphotographie (x-ray
photography), 1899
school (described in terms very similar to that of the Haubinda
Institute) presents itself in the form of a heterotopy with a distinct
'eroto-topicaP aspect, where, in the protected sphere of the institute,
- -
girls and boys be theyActive or real create the conditions fora free
education beyond the censoriousness of puritan morality.
The erotic atmosphere emanating from these colleges, Utopian
and at the very least ambiguous, was captured most obviously in the
graphic work of Fidus of Hugo H?ppener,
(the pseudonym 1868
1948), an artist whose symbolist engravings evoke a playful and
erotic universe, where naked girls dance round a moonlit garden,
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 and where boys raise their arms in 'prayer to the sun' {Lichtgebet).71 71. Wolfgang de Bruyn,Fidus: K?nstler
alles Lichtbaren (Berlin: Schiler Verlag,
Bdnridi Pogeler*Worpswede Alluding to these works, Benjamin stresses that 'Jugendstil forces 2001).
the auratic. Never has the sun worn a more glorious aureole; never 72. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
was the eye ofman more radiant than with Fidus.'72 op cit,p 557.
Looming large 73. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 195.
within these somewhat hackneyed art nouveau figures was the lily 74. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,

woman, with her exaggerated purity tempered by an eroticised

op cit,pp 556-59
75. See Max Klinger, Die druckgraphischen
repressed sensuality.73 Rehashing something of a cliche of his own, Folgen (Heidelberg: Edition Braus,
Benjamin saw these qualities as a defining characteristic in prosti? 2007); Frederik Leen (ed), Fernand
Khnopff, 1858-1921 (Ostfildern-Ruit:
tutes, lesbians and pale virgins, because all these women 'like a
Hatje Cantz, 2004); Eva Mendgen, Franz
priest, steer clear of For
fertility*. Benjamin, this issue was so impor?
von Stuck: The Art ofPersuasion

tant that he repeated it: 'The extreme point in the (Tettenweis: Franz von Stuck
technological Geburtshaus, 2002).
organisation of the world is the liquidation of fertility.The frigid 76. Gabriela Christen, FerdinandHodler:
woman embodies the ideal of beauty in Jugendstil.' He then goes on Unendlichkeit und Tod-Monumentale
Frauenfiguren inden Z?rcher
to describe his own typology of 1900 womanhood,
defining three Wandbildern (Berlin: Reimer, 2008).
bCUTSOieKUNST themes (or schemata) bywhich these types appear in literature: the 77. See Juliette Laffon (ed), Isadora Duncan,

UNb LEKORffTION 'hieratic theme* (viaMallarme up to Stefan George), the 'theme of 1877-1927: Une sculpture vivante (Paris:
Paris-Musees, Actes Sud, 2009);
perversion' (from Baudelaire toOscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley), Kimerer L LaMothe, Nietzsche's
Dancers:Isadora Duncan, Martha
and finally the 'line of emancipation' (from The Flowers ofEvil via
Cover of a magazine Graham and theRevaluation ofChristian
illustrating the
work of Heinrich Vogeler at the artists'
Ibsen to Zarathustra).7* It is possible to distinguish a reflection of Values (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

these three schemes in visual art. The hieratic aspect, for instance, 2006).
colony ofWorpswede, April 1902
78. Heinrich Vogeler was a painter and
Zurich
Courtesy eth-bau,
reappears inMax Klinger's Penelope (1895) or in the faces of various architect who gained fame through

Medusas, such as those by Fernand Khnopff or Franz von Stuckes his drawing, The Beautiful Melusine
(undated) or through his painting
The perverse trend can be found in the paintings by Giovanni
Spring(iBs8). He was one of the
Segantini and Ferdinand Hodler,76 as well as in sculptures and build?
founders of a colony of artists in
Worpswede in the north-east of
ings by Hermann Obrist and August Endell, while emancipation Bremen, which was also frequented
manifests itself in the dance performances of Loi'e Fuller and byRilke, who wrote several textson
Isadora Duncan, true 'sculptures Vivantes1,77and in the artworks of Vogeler. See Heinrich Vogeler, Zwischen
Gotik und Expressionismus-Debatte:
Fidus and Heinrich Vogeler.78 SchriftenzurKunst und Geschichte,
edited by Siegfried Bresler (Bremen:
Donat, 2006); Cornelia Baumann and
Vera Losse, Heinrich Vogeler und der
Jugendstil(Cologne: DuMont, 1997).

Heinrich Vogeler, The Fable ofMelusine,

engraving from a drawing in pen,
c 1902; courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

Heinrich Vogeler, Dreams, engraved

drawing in pen, c 1902

Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

Heinrich Vogeler, title page of a

magazine issue, with an accompanying

text on his work by Rainer Maria Rilke,

April 1902; courtesy eth-bau, Zurich

34 AA FILES 6l

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Clockwise from top:

Ferdinand Hodler, Truth //, 1903

Kunsthaus, Zurich

Heinrich Vogeler, title page ofWir sind

die Sehnsucht, 1902

Postcard of Isadora Duncan from 1903

Peter Behrens, DerKuss, 1898

? Museum f?r Kunst und Gewerbe,

Hamburg

Within this taxonomy, and alongside Behrens* own emblematic

intertwined kiss, another figure that came to define Jugendstil was
that of the impossible couple, the lovers locked in a kind of contigu?
itybut without any actual bodily contact.79 The resulting juxtaposi?
tion of gestures and looks is perhaps best illustrated by the painting
Uamour des ?mes (Love of theSouls, 1900), by the Belgian symbolist
Jean Delville. Benjamin found the same symptoms of closeness
|QHH|| (lim.
Vi^ without consummation in Ibsen: 'Motif of infertility:Ibsen's women
characters don't sleep with theirman; theygo "hand in hand" with
them to encounter something terrible.'80The corresponding geome?
try of Jugendstil is of a conjugality only through proximity, also
understood through that other art nouveau leitmotiv, Sehnsucht, var?
iously translated as longing, nostalgia, regret or aspiration, a cate?
gory that was simultaneously moral and aesthetic, lyrical and visual.
The verb sehnen (to long for somebody or something) is one that in
German describes the tortures of a soul shaken by repressed desires,
the violent effects ofwhich generate a powerful source of energy.81 It
was this energy that drew the attention of a number of Jugendstil
commentators, notably Sternberger, who, in evoking the image of
the couple platonically united but living separately, considered such
a sehnen as capable of generating abstract vibrations or even 'graphic
waves' filling empty space.82 The interior, in this way, becomes a

receptacle for a heady atmosphere of humours, affections and feel?

writers, among
ofLife (1891), which evokes an architecture
79- Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 178.
80. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
op cit,p 556.
81. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 185.
82. Dolf Sternberger, 'Jugendstil:Begriff
und Physionomie', cited inWalter
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, op cit,
P550.
83. EdithWharton, 'The Fullness of Life',
inRW B Lewis (ed), The Collected Short
Stories ofEdith Wharton, vol 1 (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968).
and the societal confusion and awkwardness that generates
ings,
this atmosphere a subject fora number of artists and
soon becomes
them Edith Wharton in her short story,The Fullness
of frustrated aspirations:
But I have sometimes thought that a woman*s nature is like a great
house full of rooms: there is the hall, throughwhich everyone passes
going in and out; thedrawing room,where one receivesformal visits; the
sitting-room,where themembers of thefamily come and go as they like;
but beyond that,far beyond, are other rooms, thehandles ofwhose doors
are never turned; no one knows theway to them,no one knows whither
they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits
alone and waits for afootstep thatnever comes.83
For Wharton, as for so many other frustrated 'bourgeoise', the
female body is like a great house inwhich certain rooms remain
-a
unexplored resignation to the idea of abandonment bywhich the
aristocratic enfilade of rooms leads only to hysteria, and thatmost
secret room, the sancta sanctorum, always remains symbolically

AA FILES 6l 35

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 empty.84As a consequence, the inside of middle-class houses was
organised, as it
were, like a patient's body, with rooms as metaphors
for affects. The domestic space, then, was composed of both ero?
genic and hysteriogenic zones, with the effects of Sehnsucht, as the
84. Jacqueline Carroy, 'L'hystdrique,
root of this eroticisation of space, acting through the progressive l'artiste et le savant', inJean Clair (ed),
accumulation of various energies, both organically emitted and arti? L'?me au corps:Arts et sciences, 1793
1993 (Paris: rmn, 1994), pp 455-56.
ficially induced.85 85. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 191.
Similarly, what unites the individual and interconnected 86. Regine Prange, Das Kristalline als
-
Kunstsymbol Bruno Taut und Paul Klee:
episodes of symbolism, art nouveau, expressionism and the crys? zurReflexion des Abstrakten inKunst und
talline works of Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut seems to be the Kunsttheorie derModerne (Hildesheim:

physical transformation of diverse energies into tangible forms.86

Olms, 1991).
87. See Hubertus Adam (ed),Hermann
For example, inHermann Obrist's biomorphic drawing, Phantastic Obrist: Skulptur,Raum, Abstraktion um
Blossom (1896), a plastic crystallisation of an erotic spasm takes 1900 (Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess,
2009), p 94; Erich Franz (ed), Freiheit der
place.87 In the Elvira photographic studio inMunich designed by Linie: vonObrist und demJugendstil zu

August Endell (1896-97), a web of fluid ornaments animates the Marc, Klee undKirchner{B?nen: Kettler,
2007).
facades and the interior.88 In Loi'e Fuller's pavilion built for the 1900 88. See Rudolf Herz and Brigitte Bruns
World Fair in Paris, the sculptor Pierre Roche (together with the (eds),Hof-AtelierElvira, 1887-1928:
architect Henri Sauvage) made walls as wavy as a veil, imitating the ?stheten, Emanzen, Aristokraten
(Munich: CityMuseum, 1985).
movements of the famous dancer's clothes.8* In theHotel Max Hallet 89. See Ann Cooper Albright, Traces of
in Brussels (1902) designed by Victor Horta, brick, stone, wood, Light:Absence andPresence in theWork
ofLoieFuller (Middletown, cn:
Clockwise
fromtopleft: metal and glass all appear as molten, and the rear facade overlook?
Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Jo
ing the garden swells and dilates into three bulging bay-windows to
Anne Birnie Danzker {ed),Loie Fuller:
Hermann Obrist, Fan tastic Blossom,
1896 getanzterJugendstil (Munich: Museum
form a tripartite greenhouse.90 And inM?nchhausen and Clarissa
Villa Stuck, 1995).
Carl Max Rebel, While Longing, (1906), the 'Berlin novel' by Scheerbart,91 the idea of remodelling 90. See Francoise Aubry, L'architecture
enBelgique: art nouveau, art deco &
Darmstadt, 1902
space bymeans of removable partition walls is brought into play.92 modernisme (Brussels: Racine, 2006);
Courtesy eth-bau, Zurich
Integral to each of these Jugendstil exemplars is their allegiance to Francoise Aubry,Art nouveau ?
Carl Max Rebel, The Victorious, 1901 Bruxelles: de Varchitecture ? l'ornemen
the qualities ofmobility and transparency, but underpinning them
Zurich talisme (Brussels: Quo vadis, 2005);
Courtesy eth-bau,
all is also a kind of synthetic hybridisation. This hybridisation fol? Francoise Aubry,Horta, ou La passion de
Gustav Klimt, Die Sehnsucht nach Gl?ck
lowed early twentieth-century experiments in the remodelling of ani? Varchitecture (Bruxelles: Ludion, 2005).
findetStillunginderPoesie {Aspiration 91. Paul Scheerbart,M?nchhausen und
inPoetry),
mal morphology and applied it to architecture, so as to create a kind
for Joy Finds itsConsolation Clarissa, einBerliner Roman (Berlin:
1902; courtesy eth-bau, Zurich of pan-plasticity in built forms understood as alive. The new rules Oesterheld, 1906).

AA FILES 6l
36

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

92. Claude Quiguer, op cit,p 372.
93. Ibid, p 391.
94. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
opcit,p392.
95. Rainer Maria Rilke, Diefr?hen Gedichte
(Leipzig, 1922), p 1 (epigraph), cited in
Walter Benjamin, ibid,p 551.
Research for this articlewas carried
out while Iwas a visiting professor at
the Institute for theHistory and Theory
ofArchitecture (gta), Department of
Architecture (d-Arch), Swiss Federal
Institute ofTechnology (eth), Zurich,
2009. For the illustrations, a special
debt of gratitude isowed toLaurent
Stalder. A firstversion of this texthas
appeared in?kos Morav?nszky and
Albert Kirchengast (eds), Experiments:
ArchitectureBetween Sciences and the
Arts (2010). Many thanks also toDirk
de Meyer forarranging the visit to the
Hotel Max Hallet inBrussels.
AA FILES 6l 37
This content downloaded from 62.122.73.86 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:20:28 AM
governing art and architecture in 1900 were therefore simultane?
ously natural, in abiding by laws of thrust and growth, ebb and flow,
but also fundamentally committed to a certain artifice in creating
- or as
monsters Sternberger put it, 'everythinghere is transforming
into anything'.93
Benjamin eventually tried to come up with an original interpreta?
tion of Jugendstil as 'a first attempt to reckon with the open air. This
birth ofplein air from the spirit of the interior is the sensuous expres?
sion of the situation... Jugendstil is the dream that one has come
awake.'94 Taking this proposition literally, the buildings of art nou
veau should therefore be considered as 'open air architecture', or as
Rilke put it (preoccupied as he was by theWellenschlag motif), that
thewave should form the only canopy: That is the longing: living in a
wave /and have no homeland in time'.95 Such an aspiration is pre?
cisely illustrated by the stained-glass window in the Brussels living
room of the home of the architect Paul Saintenoy. Designed in 1898
by Raphael Evaldre and Henri Privat-Livemont, and titled The Wave,
the window merges the characteristic iconography of breaking surf
and a woman's flowing curls to form a kind of arabesque. All around
this exterior architecture in the interior are integrated radiators,
lamps and light switches, pipes and taps, iron ribs and glazed sur?
faces, lending a plant- and animal-like plasticity to the whole and
introducing a series ofmutations capable of transforming partition
walls into living membranes. By covering the building with a
diaphanous skin, art nouveau makes the envelope crystalline, pro?
viding the astral bodies with an epithelial veil whose transparency
could not but please Scheerbart.
Victor Horta, bay windows at the Hotel
Max Hallet, Brussels, 1902
Photos Georges Teyssot
Stained-glass window by Raphael
Evaldre, based on a drawing by Henri
Privat-Livemont, in the living room
of the residence of the architect Paul
Saintenoy, Hotel Paul Saintenoy,
123 rue de PArbre Benit, Brussels,
1900; photo ? Christine Bastin and
Jacques Evrard
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions