Karel Teige: De Stijl and Dutch Modernism

Few places have faced a tougher battle against prevailing conservatism and passéism than Holland in relation to modern cultural views. The Dutch audience is not very receptive to novelties; they do not love revolutions and sudden changes; they are, on the whole, a people living through immediate experiences, content, cheerfully puritanical, and prudent. Impressionism had a resounding success here; presumably because it seemed to blend with the native national tradition of the old Dutch school, which previously influenced the Barbizon School in France and which manifested itself in the lyrical paintings of Jongkind, directly preceding impressionism.
Alongside impressionism, which in the works of the Maris brothers reaches a complete dissolution of form, working on the border of the 19th and 20th centuries are Josef Israels, Derkinderen, Johan Thorn-Prikker, M. E. Bauer, and Jan Toorop. At that time, a fascination for the artistic crafts and applied arts awakens in Holland, arriving from England; painters create glass paintings, frescoes within architectural frameworks, and turn to the work of enamelists. This fundamental inclination towards architectural painting is indeed indicative and will later manifest itself in its purest form in the practice of the group "DE STIJL." Jan Toorop is an innovator of his time. He works with stylized drawing and subordinates his mural paintings to the discipline of architecture, does not recognize the painting as such, and strives for his frescoes to be a suitable, harmonizing complement to the building. His paintings in Berlage's stock exchange building are of eminent contemporary significance. He is closely followed by W. van Konijenburg, even more architectural; harsher, more planimetric, and mannered. — This fundamental departure of early Dutch modernism from pure painting to forms applied in any way to architecture is caused by the strong architectural movement that began to awaken in Holland around 1900 under Berlage’s leadership and soon took a leading position, in contrast to the explosive, almost mad and genius individuality of Vincent Van Gogh, who worked in southern France, completing impressionism and thus initiating a period of synthetic expression. He opens the path to color. Although this expatriate was not recognized in Holland until posthumously and almost involuntarily, he nevertheless had a significant impact on Dutch art with his colorful richness as well as his moral-religious pathos and social sensibility, which continues in various ways in these directions. It is appropriate to mention several names here: J. J. Isaacson, a religious painter, Kees van Dongen, who settled in Paris, a direct follower of Matisse, with a taste for the mundane and erotic content, Jan Sluijters, skillfully composing his erotic themes with sharp color contrasts, Mathieu and Piet Wiegmann, painters of proletarian life; further M. Leu, Jaap Weygand, H. F. Ten Hopt, J. W. Havermans, Piet van Wijinaaerdt, Arnout Colnot, J. Schwarz, D. H. W. Filarski, W. Schuhmacher. Before the war, Dutch painting was marked by cubism, fauvism, and expressionism, which were rather dissonantly connected. Lodewijk Shelfhout paints landscapes from southern France, standing between Cézanne, Van Gogh, and early works of Braque; Leo Gerstl, H. F. Bieling, and Louis Saalborn experiment with cubism, into which Otto van Rees and Adriana van Rees-Dutilh introduce literary and decorative elements. The late painter Jacoba van Heemskerck, a collaborator of "Der Sturm," brings this decorative expressionist character into compositions of mosaics and stained glass windows — after which the group "DE STIJL" comes to the fore, claiming a leading position for young Dutch creation among European production and advancing modern views with admirable boldness to their extreme consequences. The leadership completely shifts into the hands of architects.
Against the constructive tendencies and material sobriety of Berlage’s approach, an opposition rises in the movement grouped around the magazine Wendingen under the leadership of H. Th. Wijdeveld, which acknowledges that Berlage established the foundations for a healthy development of architecture but declares for the freedom of imagination, individualism, and a departure from strict principle and objectivity in construction work, embracing traditional, romantic decoration. It is the Dutch equivalent and delayed echo of "Jugendstille." Here and there, we acknowledge that it has performed some useful and important experiments. Architects J. M. Louwirks, C. L. Blaaun, C. De Bazel, P. L. Kramer, De Klerk, L. M. van der May, Margarete Kropholler, H. A. van Anroij, L. M. van der Wlay, J. F. Stael, and the most notable W. M. Dudock are members of this faction.
Utility, rationality, and logic, the principles governing Berlage’s creations, are again emphasized by his pupil Berlage’s student J. J. P. Oud. Oud is entirely a son of his time, a time of science, social transformation, and freedom of thought, which futurism and cubism have brought a new sense of life and modern vigor. Here Oud finds the foretaste of a new dynamic painting, a connection between cinematography and static images, and a transition to monumental architectural painting. The contemporary deep, aesthetic, and spiritual transformation leans from natural and organic
" imitation → " pure creation
" limitation → " space
Oud builds new architectural and artistic production consistently on an industrial, technical, and scientific basis. He demands the application of all the good achievements of technical progress (iron, concrete, glass, artificial stone, artificial coverings, machine-made serial components). The question of apartments and houses is a question of utility, thus primarily an industrial problem; further a question of hygiene, and lastly an issue of art and aesthetics.
He vehemently denies decorative artistic crafts and advocates unromantically and unsentimentally for machine serial production. He knows that new elementary forms have been born in industry, that the achievement of absolute utility has simultaneously and almost automatically arrived at modern beauty. Industrial art (cars, steam yachts, men’s and sports outfits) is characterized by a refined sense for the charm of material, clarity of strict form, and surface, unadorned color purity. The idea of modern beauty does not coincide with decoration. It is questionable whether decoration; the demand of primitive and barbarous people, is a general human constant. But modern art undoubtedly negates it. Ornament is merely a remedy for constructive helplessness, a fig leaf for form. Modern beauty rests on proportions and rhythm. The decline of ornament and architectural detail is connected with the degeneration of handicrafts. — Iron construction with the capability of resisting maximum forces with a minimum of material (walled construction), glass, concrete, with a unified conception of bearing and non-bearing parts, and horizontal distribution gives modern buildings an immaterial visual characteristic, a suspended appearance, a certain transparency, creates empty rather than full spaces, and injects an open element into architecture.
These principles, whose earlier counterparts can also be found in the theories of Wagner and Loos, Oud consistently applied in his construction practice. Until now, the social significance of the residential building has been little recognized. The individualistic decorative architecture was satisfied with front-facade solutions. Oud's rationalism, significantly informed by the example of F. L. Wright, who established the standard for residential buildings in America, sees an absolute necessity for typification. He constructed, especially in Rotterdam, a series of workers' houses, whose lives are turned inward, to gardens and playgrounds in the middle of the block, where terraces and balconies of apartments open, while staircases and accessories are placed at the front of the street. He most often uses flat roofs, which, as it is evident, fully correspond to the rainy climatic conditions of the Netherlands.
For Dutch modernism, the relationship between architecture and painting and sculpture is characteristic.
Oud emphasizes that new architecture does not apply, that is, does not subordinate other artistic disciplines, but organically includes them. Initially, Dutch modernism indeed aimed merely at application: we can still consider Doesburg's tiles and windows in Oud's buildings as such. Only later is painting definitively liquidated, and architecture organically adopts its fundamental element: color. Dutch modernism encompasses color architecture not in a decorative sense, as it reigned, for example, in our country after the war: color was arrived at through material. The desire for elegance presupposes the use of perfect, highly refined material: glass, the sparkle of light bulbs, the smoothness of metal, steel, nickel, raw brick — all this gives color to architecture. Doesburg ultimately utilizes color in facades and in interiors to harmonize spatial proportions, to express spatiotemporal relationships. — The departure from decorativeism often leads modern architecture to abandon color: working mostly only in white and gray; color is placed in abeyance as a decorative element. However, are not the cars and transatlantic ships, which in many respects serve as examples of architecture today — colored architectures? It could certainly be argued against Doesburg's practice that exterior polychromy destroys, shatters, or disarticulates the overall impression, disrupting the desired unity. Color is perhaps more appropriate in the interior, where large areas of color can architecturize space and not in a decorative function. The attempts by Fernand Léger and Csaky exhibited in 1923 at the "Salon des Indépendants" in Paris, as well as Léger's interior of the chemical laboratory for L'Herbier's film (L'Inhumaine) was a mistake: chaos of color shapes, which became neither ornament nor formed another organic unit. A new problem arises here: architectural painting, fundamentally distinct from previous frescoes and wall paintings. After the initial attempts by Léger and Gleizes, who created monumental geometric compositions of strong architectonic quality, Mondrian, and especially Doesburg, continue with a consistent and straightforward solution to this problem.
And so the group gathered around the magazine "De Stijl," which arose in 1916 initially under the leadership of J. J. P. Oud and now Theo van Doesburg, formulates the main theses of modern artistic aesthetics (neoplasticism) derived from the basis of constructivism.*)
The De Stijl Movement.
The tension and competitive spirit between the groups De Stijl and Wendingen have already brought a decisive victory to the former. In one of the volumes of Taut's "Frühlicht," Dr. Adolf Behne astutely characterized the future prospects that are opening up widely for this group. The resistance against tradition, whim, prettiness, and decor is here brought to a peak. Dutch modernism stands here at one of the foremost and most advanced places of contemporary artistic production and its pursuit of the lawfulness of artistic expression against anarchic individualism proceeds in parallel with modern authors from Russia and Germany: indeed at a significant international congress in Düsseldorf in May 1922, an opposition led by Doesburg, Lissitzky, and Hans Richter, editor of the journal "Go," adopted the slogan Constructivism as the guideline for elementary creation. (See "De Stijl" IV, 4, 8.)
The overcoming of decorative and unsocial production, which is essentially painting and sculpture, does not mean for these innovators to foster the artistic industry. They know that there is no true creation in the sense of general utility and health, therefore in the sense of style, as long as there are no objective and concrete tasks. “As long as individuality dictates the tone, it is merely art” (Hans Richter). They are aware that creation occurs only in the area of life, that it has significance only there; amidst everyday and practical life are issues that require the intervention of active logical creative workers. Methodicity, clarity, precision, simplicity, and straightforwardness are their gauge of modern beauty, rationality, consistent thinking, discipline, and economy are the fundamental prerequisites of creation. They construct an exact aesthetic of utility. The objective and principle of spiritual creation is, after all, the same as the principle of natural creation:
from mass — function,
from material — force (organized force).
There is a call for construction and order. Purity of elements. A non-decorative standardized type of construction, correct anatomy and layout is a prerequisite for architecture. Architecture is the organizing of building resources (material, space, color, and light) into a clear real unity. Everything that disrupts this unity (decoration, wall paintings, sculpture in the interior) destroys architecture.
NEOPLASTICISM. As we indicated at the beginning, orthodox cubism has never actually existed in Holland, as angular, scenographic paintings are not cubism. The plane has become the fundamental element of new Dutch painting and on it problems of modern painting have been addressed with iron logical consistency, until it eventually led to its outright negation. The traditional framed table painting appeared to Doesburg and Mondrian as problematic very early. They tried to transfer multiple spatial relationships into the plane and sought an inner full resonance of painting with architecture. They recognized that perspective and chiaroscuro, generating visual illusions, contradict this. Naturalistic landscape painting in perspective breaks through the wall, while geometric composition can give it harmonious monumentality. Fernand Léger also noted that “the painting is the opposite of the wall; it captures space and the person living in it.”
Piet Mondrian continues where Picasso stopped in 1914. He paints abstract compositions. He recognizes no forms other than the square and rectangle, which are, for him (as they were earlier for the Russian suprematist Rodchenko) the prime elements of visual art. Straight lines and primary colors. Some kind of motionless silence of balance. “Achieving human balance is the goal of all creation.” The painting is entirely non-dynamic, firmly static, whose stability, accommodating instincts and spirit, is achieved by taking vertical and horizontal lines as a basis. The right angle is a typical angle. It suffices to look around, and we discover that modern man lives amidst rectangular things. While slanting is fundamentally unstable, non-structural; hence impressionism, expressionism, and futurism give the impression of fragmentation and chaos. Abstract and spiritual geometric shapes are the most humane, most universal standard. Sensory and emotional states are a lower degree, and art, according to neoplasticism's theories, does not excite the senses and feelings, as emotional excitement is the opposite of desired balance and must be constructively harmonized in an abstract symphony of spatial relationships. Instead of semblance, the painting professes essence; instead of proximity, certainty occupies the space, instead of tone, pure, declared color. Form does not exist in itself; the painting is given only by the relation of forms. Therefore, impersonal elementary shapes, squares, and rectangles were chosen. Thus these flat, non-objective compositions cease to be paintings. They are undoubtedly a grammatical rule of composition.
Against such aesthetic opinions, it is worth noting several objections. The attempt of this painting activism to ensure that painting harmonizes with architecture was without perspective, which pierces the integrity of the wall, and to ensure it does not destroy the logical power of architectural space, in short, the pursuit of pure architectural painting is certainly in many respects justified and internally consistent; but the question remains where else these wall non-objective compositions of squares and rectangles can lead than to decoration, even if to decoration monumentally and non-decoratively composed; and indeed, architecture today rightly refuses any decoration, thereby defending itself against any rapprochement and combination with painting and sculpture, which, of course, does not mean it would completely renounce working with color. Even when these compositions are used as colored glass windows or floor tiles, it is still an unacceptable decoration. The principle of making no distinction between free and applied art is still a remnant of the times when applied art enjoyed a moral credit. If, as is felt today on many sides, painting is genuinely condemned to abandon the traditional form of the table painting, one must embark on the path of pure poetry, rather than decoration (poetry applied unorganically and without reason to the skeleton of the construction). Non-objective compositions that are Orphic, neoplastic, and suprematist can only be a temporary stage of developmental exploration, a significant lesson, but not a solution to today's crisis. It is clear that art is nothing but the result of coherent and honest professional work. The table painting is one of the conventions that no longer conform to current demands. The formative visual art is not yet necessarily pictorial form. In the West, in France, cubists seem to make the last attempts to stabilize the painting, while modern Russian artists resolutely negate it as a relic of individualistic culture from the Renaissance. Confusion and chaos of the transitional period persists.
Alongside the most consistent pictorial compositions of Mondrian, other modern Dutch painters solve the problem of the new painting in various ways. They all remain faithful to the plane: geometrically, mathematically precise compositions by W. Van Leusden, who is now entirely dedicated to architectural work, B. van der Leck compares his figurative epic drawings, scenes from proletarian life according to the ways of ancient Egyptian non-perspective paintings, Peter Alma can be seen as a Dutch equivalent of George Grosz: he paints revolutionary scenes with generously primitive lines, full of eloquent social pathos. Here, as in Germany, Russia, and partially in other countries, we see an analogous situation; painting follows two paths: constructivism, which through non-objective compositions arrives at the negation of the painting and, if it does not occasionally get caught up in some artistic industry delusions, ultimately leads to architectural work or purely optical film; and on the other hand, a new realism, primarily tendentious and politically charged picture-making, the revival of caricature, journalistic drawing, and posters.

It is natural that the authors of the group "De Stijl," abandoning the traditional table painting, transitioned to architectural work through the interior. We said that the architectural applications of non-objective pictorial compositions as wall paintings, stained glass windows, tiles, etc., were a decorative, applied art mistake. However, in the interior, it was primarily about resolving space. Dutch and Russian authors understand space quite differently than French cubists. For them, it is not at all a pictorial problem, which does not mean that it could not be organized with a flat color. Space is not for sight; it is neither pictorial nor buildable: we live within it. One cannot organize a wall as a pictorial surface, nor can it be painted with compositions and decorations. Whether we adorn the wall or hang a painting on it is indifferent. In both cases, we disrupt the architectural order. Modern architectural space, while negating the wall and opening a variable plan system, cannot tolerate any paintings, as it is not a picture that can be transposed into a plane, but a piece of the world, which is a four-dimensional, time-space continuum. The wall is best animated by a window, functioning like a periscope into the world. The balance of architectural space must certainly be flexible so as not to be disturbed by pieces of standardized serial office furniture, chandeliers, radiators, telephones, electric clocks. It is not a painted coffin, nor a cage. It was certainly not correct to produce overly artistic furniture for modern dwellings, entirely excluding serial production due to its non-standard form, as suggested by Rietveld and W. Huszar. We observe the same misunderstanding here as in the furniture-making practice of the Weimar Bauhaus, which is, by the way, heavily influenced by these Dutch models. The artist-architects often forget here that furniture is purely a technical thing and that production practice should aim solely at functional improvement and increasing economy, supported by detailed inventions. Cupboards "Innovation," Thonet's standard chairs, travel trunks, and the like are more modern furniture than many architects' designs.
Modern architecture, as understood by T. van Doesburg and his collaborator C. van Eesteren, suppressing the distinction between interior and exterior with their open system through the breaking down of the wall, is based on the latest achievements and discoveries of theoretical and practical sciences, on energy advancements (as it does not regard matter as a passive material, but as a state of certain energy), and on the new theorems of non-Euclidean geometry of Reimann. These abstract theories of pure analysis do not, of course, rest purely on logic; geometric intuition intervenes here. Doesburg accepts the spatial theories of Henri Poincaré, explained in the treatise: "Pourquoi l'espace a-t-il trois dimensions," roughly outlining these principles: Space is a three-dimensional continuum. It is relative. Laplace demonstrated that nothing in the world would change if everything suddenly shrank a hundredfold, as he considered proportions to be absolute. He substantiated this with the fact that we can be transported to another corner of the universe through Earth's rotation without noticing movement in space. In reality, however, the measure that informs us about it is the measure of the fourth dimension: chronometer. Poincaré asserts (according to the geometry of Analysis Situs) that space could be tilted at angles and deformed in any continuous way according to any law; if our scales deformed equally, we would not notice the changes. Space, considered independently of our measurements, has neither metric nor projective properties, but only topological properties, with which qualitative geometry of analysis situs deals. It is amorphous, that is, it does not differ from another space that could be derived from it through any continuous deformation. Amorphous space is the only space independent of our measures and its only property is that it is a three-dimensional continuum. Poincaré addresses the problem of the fourth dimension only partially in agreement with Bergson's concept of duration and simultaneity. Quite differently, these problems are defined today by Einstein. He places time in the same position as space. Time changes according to changes in space; there are infinitely diverse times and no general time. The consciousness of time lasts only in change and perceives its change only in relation to another system that changes faster or slower. Under the dark word: space, we cannot imagine anything and we must reduce it to a large hollow volume with respect to some reference body. Form is not independent of the size of the object, and proportions are not absolute at all.
The geometry of Poincaré, Reimann, and Einstein's theory of relativity open perspectives that fascinate the modern spirit. At the same time, alongside the old, existing mechanical science and technique, a new technique is emerging today that of tension, of invisible movements, remotely influencing forces and notions of speed today unimaginable, inserting time into spatial dimensions. The consequences flowing from here for aesthetics are far-reaching. Art opens up new, time-space areas both in architecture and in film. Moreover, the denial of form resulting from this means the end of existing artistic formalism. Form is given by function; it is its means and does not exist outside of it. Functionalism replaces formalism. Monumentality is given not by dimensions but by the relation of one object to another.
Across Europe, normalization of international constructive style is emerging today. It is the work of laboratories and factories, as this style is born from collective disciplined work, not from romantic ecstasies or aesthetic speculation. Society's and spiritual movements of the time proceed in parallel within interrelated contexts. Berlage proclaimed already 15 years ago that the life philosophy of the age will be the equality of all people, and that political and economic transformation must be completed so that spiritual evolution can mature. In this harmonious stylistic international cooperation, modern Dutchmen have set themselves the task of developing a solid basis for new aesthetics through experimental and unspeculative means. By limiting themselves in this way, they left the technical question of modern architecture to French and American engineers. They demand new technical inventions for their skeletal structures of suspended character, new materials that provide the greatest effect with minimal use. They define the architectural art (in the words of architect Mies v. der Rohe) as a spatially conceived temporal will. They wish to extract form only from the essence of the task and purpose using the means of their time. Color in architecture has no decorative functions; it is material just like glass, concrete, iron. From the new aesthetics, whose guidelines they found in painting, they transition to material realizations. The exhibition in Paris in the autumn of 1923 at the gallery “L'effort moderne” (Léonce Rosenberg) showed the Western world the results of the collective work of this group of architects (Doesburg, Eesteren, Leusden, Huszar, Mart Stam, Wils, R.van t'Hoff, Mies v. d. Rohe, Rietveld), which promises to open the way to modern constructive creation. The new beauty is impersonal and scientific.
Theo van Doesburg is truly the discoverer of new realms and an enthusiastic pre-fighter of the modern movement. He indeed possesses all the qualities of a leading, agile spirit. He founded magazines and groups (De Stijl in 1916), a keen aesthetician and art theoretician, he laid out his program, often in an apostolic tone of manifesto, in a series of revue articles as well as in books "Classique-Baroque-Moderne" and "Drie Voordrachten over de nieuwe beeldende Kunst." He proclaims the necessity of consensus on the elementary means of creation, revision, the lawfulness and generalization of these means, from which style will emerge. He does not recognize artistic individual whims and exclusivity; style obligates both artists and non-artists, work, activity, thought, and feeling. He substantiates his interpretations ethically and socially. The new art, which ceases to be art in the traditional and academic sense of the word, is an organization of life’s work and shapes life as a totality. A radical separation of architecture from sculpture and painting ensues; architecture, having overcome the concept of form in the sense of an aprioristic type, adopts color as an elementary means for expressing chronospatial relationships; thus the new painter does not color the surfaces of the canvas, but harmonizes color within the realm of chronospatial reality.

Doesburg, an ardent promoter of modern trends from constructivism and neoplasticism to Schwitters’ Merzkunst and J. K. Bonset's neodadaism, with whom he runs a small journal "Mecano," which is a sister organ of "De Stijl." In "Mecano," we often see contributions from the francophonized Romanian Tristan Tzara, the leader of the Dadaists, whose influence, it seems, is decisive in this publication; it prints ribemont-dessaignes, Kurt Schwitters, Pierre de Massot, C. van Eesteren and W. Huszar, painter Peter Reuhl, Bonset (paintings and constructive poems) and Mme Petro van Doesburg. Dadaism, the movement of free fantasy, which does not recognize truths, laws, order, and discipline, liberated from the shackles of purposeful logic and causality, is a cheerful counterpart to rigorous constructivism. It reflects the dual face of the era, its paradox: order — freedom, constructivism — dada.
While Europe was devastated by the whirlwind of the world war and plunged into complete political and spiritual helplessness, in happy Holland, spared by its foresighted neutrality, and in the newly consolidating Russia, one of those simple ideas was born that safely point the way to a new world. The idea of abandoning the outdated, surviving artistic forms, denying the romantic concept of “art,” and starting anew from constructive work based on scientific achievements. Advantageous economic circumstances allowed young Dutch architects intensive work. In a few years, over a hundred exemplary modern buildings arose here, while modern architecture in France, Germany, and the Czech Republic is largely forced to remain drawn on paper due to the circumstances. Happy Holland becomes, through the works of its architects, a new Greece and, sometimes hosting foreign architects (Mendelsohn), is the true homeland of new architectural art.

*) On Dutch modern architecture see: A. Behne: Hollandische Baukunst der Gegenwart, Wamuths Monatshefte VI, 1-2. Behne in Frühlicht. L. Hilberseimer on Oud in Kunstblattu 1923, 10, F. M. Hübner Neue Kunst in Holland (Klinghardt & Biermann Verlag), O. Starý: Moderní názory o architektuře., Stavba I, J. J. P. Oud: O budoucím stavitelství a jeho architektonických možnostech. Stavba I. 10.