New horizons
Why the Art Nouveau architecture of Brussels is enjoying a renaissance
Art Nouveau was the first great architectural movement of the machine age. Nowhere was it more popular – or controversial – than in the Belgian capital, where its style helped define a nation
Words: Adrian Mourby
WHY WOULD SOMEONE buy an Art Nouveau house just to demolish it? That is exactly what happened at the beginning of the Art Nouveau movement, when Belgium’s new decorative art form was considered too secular for 19th-century tastes.
Today we look upon Art Nouveau as graceful and sinuous, geometric and sexy, its columns frequently topped off with the faces and torsos of men and women of infinite beauty. What could anyone object to in such a style?
Art Nouveau began in Brussels but it was quickly adopted across Europe, being known by many different names – Jugenstil, Liberty, National Romantic, Młoda Polska (“Young Poland”) and Sezessionsstil to name but a few.
The movement particularly took root and flowered in new countries or in countries struggling to free themselves from the dominant culture of an old imperial power. Helsinki and Prague used Art Nouveau to help define Finland and the Czech Republic. Riga, Budapest and Zagreb broke with the past in a similar way. In Brussels the style was not needed to help shake off an old colonial power – this small country had been an independent kingdom since 1830 – but it did help express the Belgians’ newly emergent sense of national individuality.
It was fortunate that there was wealth in the Kingdom of Belgium, for the craftsmanship of Art Nouveau did not come cheap. Europe, anxious that its newly created buffer zone between France and Germany should thrive, had awarded Belgium lucrative African colonies. Brussels expanded rapidly. Between 1893 and 1905 thousands of new houses, shops bars, cafés and restaurants went up across the Belgian capital, the vast majority of which were in the new style. Today over 2,000 remain, making Brussels, even more so than Prague or Helsinki, Zagreb, Budapest or Riga, the Art Nouveau capital of Europe.
But it was not just synchronicity that caused Brussels to embrace Art Nouveau. True, money was pouring in at the same time as the art form became fashionable. True, King Leopold II announced his intention to expand the Belgian capital at the same time that Belgian architects were developing their revolutionary new style, but there is something in Art Nouveau that suits the Belgian temperament. It is not bombastic like the neoclassical Ringstrasse in Vienna, nor is it mechanistic like the Art Deco skyscrapers of 1930s New York. Art Nouveau builds on a human scale; its lines are graceful and sensuous. It sought to use modern developments in building technique, particularly in the use of metal and glass, to express beauty rather than overawe or intimidate. Its representation of the human form, though idealised and frequently soulful, is never remote. It’s worth saying also that Art Nouveau always endowed the human form with compassion. Think of its women, as painted by Alphons Mucha; heavy–lidded, sensual, soporific creatures. Art Nouveau rarely attempts saints, angels or divinities and that suited the mindset of late 19th-century Belgium. This new country had suffered greatly in the past for other people’s religious wars. Like the great flowering of humanist painting in 17th-century Amsterdam, the new Belgians wanted people and beauty in their art, not gods.
It’s not surprising then that Art Nouveau had its detractors among more religiously-minded Belgians. One Catholic opponent actually bought a house by Victor Horta, Art Nouveau’s leading light, and demolished it to make his protest heard.
Horta is a good person to start with. A native of Ghent, he designed the world’s first Art Nouveau building, the Tassel House (Rue Paul-Emile Janson), for a Belgian professor of geometry in 1893. Horta’s own house (Rue Americaine) – now a museum of Art Noveau – is another good example. It was built between 1898 and 1901 and displays all the characteristic traits of the style – curves, organic free-flowing lines, ambitious use of glass and scrolled ironwork.
Not only is it beautiful – it’s something no previous generation would or could have attempted.
Horta didn’t just build houses, although there is no shortage of those if you take a walk round the new suburbs of Cinquantenaire, Saint Gilles and Forest, the Louise Quarter and Ixelles Ponds. The Waucquex department store (Rue des Sables), now turned into the Belgian Comic Centre, is one of his complexes, as is L’Innovation department store (Rue Nevue).
He also designed the Wolfers building (Rue d’Aremberg) and grand public edifices such as the Brugmann Hospital, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the Pavillion of Human Passions and the railway station’s Halle Centrale.
YOU COULD SPEND a whole day in Brussels just following a Horta trail but that would be to ignore the tranche of other architects who followed in his wake: François Hemelsoet, who built houses in the Louis Bertrand area, Ernest Blerot, who put his stamp on domestic architecture in the Louise Quarter and the “Three Pauls” (Hamesse, Vizzavona and Hanker), who designed houses in the Saint-Gilles area.
There are, however, certain “must sees”. The Old England department store (Rue Montagne de la Court) has a stunning roof line of metal cupolas and a gazebo. It was designed by Paul Saintenoy in 1889 and its façade is entirely made up of glass and metal. The Old England company has moved on and the building is now a museum of musical instruments containing, among other things, prototypes by Adolph Sax, the Belgian who gave us the saxophone.
It’s also worth tracking down Maison Saint Cyr (Square Ambiorix), which was designed by the 22-year-old Gustave Strauven, who was a pupil of Horta. Strauven admired his master’s ability to create stylish buildings in very small spaces and here he structured tiers of balconies and a spectacular circular framing for the topfloor windows across a mere 14-foot façade. The Hotel Metropole (Place de Brouckere) is another delight and the only purpose-built hotel in Brussels decorated in Art Nouveau style (the others are converted houses).
Finally, don’t miss something new on the Art Nouveau scene. Maison Autrique was built by Horta for his friend, the engineer Eugene Autrique, ahead of the seminal Tassel House project. As such it is a piece of transitional architecture in which we can see the 32-year-old architect working his way towards the new art that he was to make very much his own.
Over the last few years, two Belgian comic strip artists, François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, have not only aided the restoration of Maison Autrique but turned it into a bijou Art Nouveau theme park.
THE GREAT FLOWERING of Art Nouveau peaked at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris, at which Horta and his colleagues made a huge impact. Its absolute apogee came two years later at the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna in Turin, where every country in Europe presented its own take on Art Nouveau. Thereafter, there was a slow tailing off. Art Nouveau was a hugely expensive way of building a house. It was also highly individual and European cities were now expanding so rapidly that they needed a style that was more compatible with mass manufacture.
World War I killed off Art Nouveau. Belgium, its home, was overrun and battered by this conflict. Afterwards, Art Nouveau seemed an indulgence and an irrelevance.
In the 1970s, however, it made a comeback when fashion houses such as Biba rediscovered the undulating lines of Art Nouveau and the work of Czech commercial artist Alphons Mucha began to reappear in poster form. Now it has an unassailable place as one of the great original European styles. Belgium woke up to this just in time. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Brussels, in a lamentable bid to be modern, knocked down a lot of its Art Nouveau buildings. Horta’s celebrated Palace of the People went in 1963 but by the 1990s the country had realised their capital contained an architectural treasure house. Thanks to some timely preservation orders, Brussels is now, quite rightly, considered the capital of Art Nouveau.
WHERE TO EAT, SLEEP & DRINK
PLUS WHERE TO SHOP FOR UNIQUE ART NOUVEAU FASHION ACCESSORIES
HOTEL
HOTEL METROPOLE
31 Place De Brouckere, 1000 Brussels +32 (0)2 217 2300; www.metropolehotel.be Room prices from €62.50. Though this splendid Belle Epoque hotel painted over some of its Art Nouveau decoration, the public rooms and caged lift remain a stylish testament to the early 20th century.
RESTAURANT
DE ULTIEME HALLUCINATIE
316 Koningsstraat, 1210 Brussels +32 (0)2 217 0614; www.ultiemehallucinatie.be Redecorated in 1904 by the architect Paul Hamesse, who designed the rooms, interior and furniture.
CAFE
MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS (MIM)
Old England Building, 94 Rue Montagne de la Court, 1000 Brussels +32 (0)2 545 0130; www.mim.fgov.be Admission: €5.
As well as 7,000 musical instruments, MIM contains an indoor and outdoor café inside Paul Saintenoy’s top floor gazebo with magnificent 360° views of Brussels. Open: Tuesday to Friday from 9.30-5.00 and weekends 10.00-5.00.
BAR
LE FALSTAFF
19 Rue Henri Mausstraat, 1000 Brussels +32 (0)2 510 0550; www.falstaff-brussels.be Built in 1903 and located near the old Stock Exchange (Le Bourse), Falstaff has been a leading participant in the Brussels Jazz Marathon.
SHOP
SENSES ART NOUVEAU
31 Rue Lebeau 1000 Brussels +32 (0)2 502 1530; www..senses-artnouveau.com The only shop devoted to reproduction Art Nouveau decorative items and fashion accessories. Open: Tuesday to Saturday 11.00-6.30 and Sundays 11.00-3.30.
For further information, contact the Belgian Tourist Office on +44 (0)20 7531 0390 or visit www.belgiumtheplaceto.be
Photography: Ellen Rooney/Axiom, Martin Child/Getty, Ch Bastin & J Evrard
