Het werd mij steeds duidelijker dat hier sprake was van een onaangetaste, zeer authentieke situatie, die zou ophouden te bestaan op het moment dat mevrouw Schröder zou overlijden. ttet huis als monument zal blijven bestaan. Maar het Rietveld-Schröderhuis, bewoond door mevrouw Schröder als historisch document, als synthese van een levenshouding en de verbeelding ervan in de architectuur zal ophouden te bestaan. Om iets van die unieke situatie en de betekenis ervan vast te leggen en op te tekenen, nam ik mij voor om samen met Lenneke Büller (die mij vaak vergezelde bij bezoeken aam mevrouw Schröder en mij sinds een jaar bij produkties assisteert) hiertoe een scenario voor een documentaire te ontwikkelen. Ik hoop dat dit stuk de aanzet kan zijn tot realisering ervan synopsis naar mijn mening moet zo'n documentaire worden samengesteld uit de volgende drie essentiele elementen; - het moet een impressie zijn van het huis, van het interieur en van het exterieur, toen en nu; opdracht, ontwerp en realisering moeten aan de orde komen, het programma van eisen en de haalbaarheid ervan, de invloed vsai mevrouw Schröder op de vormgeving en de organisatie van het huis; de eisen die het bewonen ervan aan haar stelde; - de documentaire moet ingaan op de situatie anno 192*4-; aan de orde moet komen hoe het Schröderhuis zich verhoudt tot De Stijl en wat internaationaal gezien de reakties op het huis waren; - duidelijk moet worden welke positie het Schröderhuis inneemt binnen Rietveld's oeuvre; Rietveld's opvattingen over licht, reflektie en kleurtoepassingen zouden in het programma verwerkt moeten worden (in relatie met de opvattingen van andere Stijl-leden hierover); er moet vastgesteld worden wat het huis betekent voor de ontwikkeling van de moderne architectuur» De diverse onderdelen moeten op de meest geschikte wijze worden uitgewerkt; dat zal voor een deel bepaald worden door de presentatievorm die gekozen wordt, en voor een ander deel door wat de ingrediënten van zo'n programma zijn» Ik denk aan een presentatievorm die instaat is tot een collage-achtige projektietechniek (waar dat nodig is), maar die tegelijkertijd rustig en rechtlijnig het onderwerp kan behandelen.
Sommige aspecten zullen optimaal gepresenteerd kunnen worden met gesproken commentaar; andere beter m.b.v. interviews (met mevrouw Schröder, Van Eesteren e.a.), terwijl bijvoorbeeld Rietveld's opvattingen over licht, reflektie en kleurtoepassingen een puur beeldende oplossing kunnen krijgen (projektietechniek). toepassing een dergelijke documentaire zou van betekenis kunnen zijn voor: - het Ministerie van CRM in het algemeen .^bLs historisch document; - voor het Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller zou zo'n programma een wezenlijke aanvulling kunnen zijn op hun presentatie van de tentoonstelling 'De Stijl 1917-1931, visions of utopia' van het Walker Art Center komend najaar; - voor de Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg als documentatie van een monument en i.v.m. de bescherming van het huis; voor het Nederlands Documentatiecentrum voor de Bouwkunst als historisch document van de architectuurgeschiedenis; - voor de Gemeente Utrecht en de Stichting Rietveld-Schröderhuis in verband met de exploitatie van het huis, wanneer het eens voor het publiek toegankelijk zou worden. Fraik den Oudsten Amsterdam, 18 maart 1982
ART VIEW jf t°0 HILTON KRAMER »—I cj De Stijl Is 90- L * • £j>urveyed in an lExtraordinary ÏMr.I Ight» T"^ 1*1 * 1 * M Exhibition > ? Serf sof Minneapolk For the large public that nowadays takes a keen interest in the history of modern art, the most Important event currently occurring in this country is the definitive exhibition called "De Stijl: ISI7-. v mm 1931, Visions of Utopia,l' which has just opened at e the Walker Art Center. It has been 30 years si nee the late te Alfred H. Barr Jr. devoted an exhibition to this Dutch if avant-garde movement at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the interim, much new information on the ' movement has come to light, and an even greater signifi-v cance has come to be ascribed to its achievements. Clear-. ly, the time had cotae to take a fresh look at these achieve-1 ments, and this is what the Walker has nrrw done, both in the exhibition organized by Mildred Friedman, the museum's curator of design, and in the accotnpanying book that Mrs. Friedman has edited for the occasion and that wiii long serve as a Standard work of reference on the sub-5 ject. The result is a major contribution not only to our un-derstanding of De Stijl itself but to our appreciation of the entire European avant-garde in the period between the ;V two World Wars. Al as, as often seems to be the case these days, this ex-I hibition will not be coming to New York. Arrangements < could not be worked out with any of the appropriate museums. The show remains on view in Minneapolis through i March 28, and will then be seen at the Hirshhom Museum in Washington from April 20 to June 27. In the late summer and early fall, it will travel to The Netherlands, where many of the crucial loans to the exhibition originated and ?f where it will be divided between two museums. the Stede-! - li jk in Amsterdam and the Kroller-Muller in Otterloo (both r from Aug. è to Oct. 3). Of all the movements of the 20th century, wrote f. George Keard Hamilton in his Pelican history of modern European art, "De Stijl has seemed the most doctrinaire and at first glance the least accessible, yet ultimately and Theo van Doesburg's "Card Players" (1916-17) in the De Stijl exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis—"a principal animating force" paradoxically it may have been the most influential." Like certain other avant-garde movements of the period. De Stijl — which in Dutch toeans, simply, The Style — reachsd beyond painting and sculpture to embrace architecture, furniture, typography and the design of everyday objects. It even attempted at times to include literature and music in its program. lts aim was nothing less than — in the words of the Dutch art histoi ian Hans L. C. Jaffé — "the formation Of a new sïyiê of life." This, of course, De Stijl did not achieve. When new styles of life ca me to Europe in the 30's and thereafter. they came as the result of social and political forces that lay far beyond the power of De Stijl, or Indeed of any other art movement, to either initiate or forestall. Yet, De Stijl did succeed in exerting an enormous influence, all the same. Mr. Hamilton was certainly not wrong about that. It profoundly altered the way we think about art and about the ent're realm of visual culture in advanced Industrial societies. The governing ideas of De Stijl may have been doctrinaire— it is, after all, in the nature of utopian ideologies to Continuedon Page 36 . \
/ / JE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1982 ART VIEW De Stijl Is Surveyed in Minneapolis Continued from Page 29 be inhospitable to alternative modes of thought—and at times even hermetic. But this has nat prevented these ideas from haring aii enduring appeal. More than half a century aft er the dissolu-tion of De Stijl as a cohesive move-ment, there is still no shortage of painters and sculptors, architccts and designers and planners, and critics and tbeorists who look to De Stijl as a source of wisdom and inspiration. Even the larger public that remains ignorant of its doctrines has proved to be remarkably susceptible to its stand-ards of taste. If, for example, we now find it perfect! y natural—and even inevitable— for painters and sculptors to base their work cm pure geometrical form, for ar-chitects to design buildings based on the principles of geometrical modular construction and devoid of extraneous ornament, and for designers to employ white and grays and unmixed primary colors in the decoration of our houses and places of business and in the manufacture of household objects and office equipment, then we may be said to have assimilated a good deal of the thought and taste that De Stijl intro- duced into the modern world. • De Stijl's ambitions we re grander and more metaphysical, to be sure, than ours are likely to be today. For in its headier moments. De Stijl set out to achieve a dream of utopian perfectkm that would transform earthly life into • model of spiritual harmony and order. This is something that few of us nowadays entertain any illusions •bout, and even fewer look to painting or architecture to achieve for us. But we have nonetheless found much to use, even if for more modest pui-poses, • in the visual program that De Stijl created to implement its utopian ideal. Like other groups of its kind. De Stijl was initially composed of individual artists — painters, architects and designers — who differed much among themselves. Its greatest talent was Piet Mondrian, a painter of genius whose interests were more metaphysical than social. Its principal animating force, however, was Theo van Doesburg, a painter, designer and writer who was the very archetype of the avant-garde promoter and publicist. It was van Doesburg who con-ceived of the magazine that gave De Stijl its name, who enlisted artists from other countries — among them, El Lissitzky and Hans Richter — to join in its activities, and whose death ia 1931 marked the end of the group's existence. Among the others allied witli Mondrian and van Doesburg in varying de-grees of commitment were Gerrit Rietveld, the designer of the so-called Rietveld-S chroder House in Utrecht that survives as the principal classic of De Stijl architecture, and the crea-tor of the painted modular furniture that remains the movement's main cantribution to that branch of design; the architects Jan Wils, Robert van't Hoff and J. J. P. Oud, who proved to be early defectors from the movement; Bart van der Leek, a painter of re-markable gifts who defected even earlier; Vilmos Huszar, a painter and designer who is certain to be one of the 'De Stijl put faith in art as a medium of social and spiritual . 4 i redemption.' major "rediscoveries" of this exhibi-tion; Georges Vantongerloo, the Bel-gian painter and sculptor who partici-pated in the founding of De Stijl and proved to be yet another early defec-tor, and Piet Zwart, another of the gifted designers to be assodated with thegroup. The work of all of these and other participants in De Stijl's many-sided activities is traced in this exhibition with a scope and an attention to detail that has never before been equaled. If only for its comprehensive representa-tion of paintings by Mondrian, Van i Doesburg, van der I-eck and Huszar, ? this exhibition would have to be con-sidered a major event. (We are able to j see for the first time, for example, both the figurative and the abstract versions of Van Doesburg's 1916-1917 "Card Players" paintings—a key mo-h ment in the evolution of De Stijl's pic-htorialstyle.) • ti But architecture, interior design, itiurniture and typography are also ac-jcorded their full share of attention. a The Rietveld-Schroder House is (jiarticularly wel! documented, and so • is Mondrian's Paris studio in the 20's i— an interior design ed according to the strictest De Stijl principles. (Even Mondrian's white easel has been in-cluded.) And there are several splen-did architectural reconstructions in this exhibition, the most important being the interior of the Café Aubette in Strasbourg for which Van Doesburg enlisted the collaboration of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and her husband Jean Arp. By the time the interior of the origi-nal Café Aubette ca me to be created ta 1926, the De Stijl movement could scarcely be said to exist as anything but an idea in van Doesburg's mind. But its influence was aiready wide-spread, and in the years to come it would grow even stronger. The radical program of purification it origmaily set for itself — its insistence on strict geometrical forms and on primary colors as the only permissible vehicles for a truly "spiritual" and "univer-sal" vision — would be modified and even abandoned. Yet, the essential ethos of the movement, which postu-lated an ideal relationship bet ween our visual environment and our ethica! standards, would continue to inspire a great many talents that had nothing to do with De Stijl itself. • To understand the impulse that set this movement on its course and kept it going for more than a decade, de-spite profound disagreements among its members and the detections of some of its leading talents, it has to be remembered that, like Dada and certain other avant-garde groups of the period, it originally emerged as an expression of nioral recoil from the horrors of World War I. It was the catar clysm of the war that inspired De Stijl's utopian aspirations, and the dis-illusionments of the post war period that sustained its ambition to create, as it were. an alternative world. De Stijl was never really politic®!, however. Although its first manifesto consigned "the individual" to the past and upheld "the universal" as the basis for a new culture, this was essen-tially an esthetic and even mystical program rather than a political idea. Not the least of its many appeals, indeed, was the faith that De Stijl placed in art as a medium of social and spiritual redemption. In the end, of course, it asked much more of art than art alone can ever give us. Yet, in a century that has been riddled with poison-ous ideologies and repugnant visions, what a clean, sweet siriell this particu-lar movement has left behind even for those who remain slceptical of its claims. And what a splendid monument this movement has been given in the Walk-er's extraordinary show. In every detail of its selection and installation, "De Stijl: 1917-1931, Visions of Utopia" fs an exemplary exhibition. and will certainly be iooked upon for a long time to come as the event that gave us an essential account of the movement and its diverse roster of artists and vi sionaries. I
THE NEW YORK Art: 'De Stijl: 1917-31' At the Walker Center Br. K; y kr Ui | P Mf m Sof ff pi I' Si I' k 8' | e fik ht i E' By HILTON Special to The N< MINNEAIGUS — One of the most important art movements of the 20th century — De Stijl, which originated in the Netherlands during the darkest 'period of World War I and has wieldcd a considerable influence on avart-j garde art and design ever since — ls the subject of a major new exhibition at the Walker Art Center. Organiztsd by Mildred Friedman, the curator of design at the Walker, the exhibition — called "De Stijl: 1917-31, Visions of Utopia" — will remain on view in Min-n^poiis through March 28, and will toen travel to the Hirshhorn Museum bi Washington (April 20-June 27) and ' tó museums in Amsterdam and Otter-loo, the Netherlands (Aug. 8-Oct.3). It wpll not be seem in New York. This is the most compreheasive sur-Vey of De Stijl art and design we are ! likely to see in our time. It includes f some 275 paintings, drawings, archi-tectural plans and models, stair.ed-glass windows, photographs and ex-amples of fumiture and graphic art. thus embracmg the entire range of De " Stiji's many-sided activities. In addi-. tilcm to securing mar.y rare loans from Djutch coHections, including works by Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld and other leading art-iats of the movement, the Walker has • also recreated a number of historie ar-i cjiiitectural interiors for the exhibition. • It was De ;Stijl — which in Dutch -means simpty "The Style" — that es-tabtisheC the coovention of orthogonal (right-angled) form and the banish-? nient of aïl but primary colors (red, - yallow and blue plus black, white and gray) as the esthetic staples of abstract painting, and the use of the geo--metricai module and primary colors in S«rchitectuxal and interior design. ^These radical innovations in the very concept ol painting and architecture .pijoved to have far-reaching conse-quences in virtually every sphere of visual culture in the advanced indus-trial societ les of the West. ." !t was primarily in painting — and móst especially in the paintings of ' Mondrian and van Doesburg — that the movement had its esthetic begin-nings, and vet the origins of De Stijl are not easily separated from the ar-' cWtecturai ferment of the period. ' Whereas the painters derived their ' impetus from Cubism, which they set oujt to simplify and rationalize into a "syjstem of strict geometrical form and pu,re color, the architects derived their , inspiration from — among other. sources—the early work of the Ameri-cah architect Frank Lloyd Wright, m. KRAMER wYoikTimes which plactd a similar emphasis on geometrical rigor. From the outset of the movement, there were disagreements about the priority to be given to one or another of its varied interests. Mondrian, by far the greatest of the painters In the group, appears to have had little interest in architecture, for example, and another early convert to De Stijl, the painter Bart vpn der Leek, soon re-coiled from the emphasis pl acedon absolute abstraction and promptly de-fected. It was van Doesburg, a painter, designer and writer of remarkable talent and energy, who was largely responsi-ble for galvanizing De Stiji's diverse interests and differing points of view into a. coherent program, and it was he who in 1917 fbunded the magazine that gave the movement its name. It was also van Doesburg who spread the word of De Stijl % ideas and activities to other avant-garde enclaves, estab-lishing contacts with Dadaists, Con-struedvists and other groups in the 1920's:. • Wbat is especially remarkable ln this exhibition is the way it allows the visitor to follow every twist and turn ln the fast-paced development of this movement right up to the time of van Doesburg's death in 1931. The key paintings are virtually uil here, and so are the plans and models for the key buildings and interiors and the De Stijl fumiture and graphic art that caused a similar revolution in their own sphere of design- The spirit of De Stijl was at once very idealistlc and very practical. To-ward the war-ravaged world it ob-serve.1 at the tiutset of the movement, De Stijl adopted what was indeed a Utopian attitude, and yet it addressed itself to the workaday business of rede-signing the modem urban environment with impressive energy, adapt-ability and imagination. If in the end De Stijl remained as divided as it had been at the outset, with the painters (especially Mondrian) opting for an ideal perfect ion while the architects and designers ac-commodated themselves to more mundane realities, this has more tc> do with the nature of their respect ive media than with the philosophy of the movement. In both spheres, in any case. De Stijl had a powerful impact on the whole course of the modern movement. Thus, in mounting the definitive exhibition of De Stijl, Mrs. Friedman and her colleagues at the Walker Art Center have also shed much new light on the ideas and attitudes that continue to shape artistic thought today. m te
7 DESIGN T/ - www -T! 'Stijl' Is Not Enough Idealism as well as arrogance prompted a small but potent band of Dutch artists and architects to identify themselves as "De Stijl" (The Style) in 1918, during the last ' daysof World War I. "The war isdestroying the old world ..they announced in their first manifesto. "The new consciousness is ready to be realized in every thing, including the everyday things of life." They predicted the rise of a new abstraction, a "pure art" that would wipe the old slate clean. In this sense, they were the first modernists. Led by such brilliant talents as painters Piet Mon-drian and Theo van Doesburg and designer Gerrit Rietveld, they invented many of the cultural icorts that now surround us—rec-tangular, flat-roofed houses; unadorned white walls; spare, streamlined chairs and tables; paintings coro-posed of geometrie fields of bold color—ali testaments to van Does-burg's proclamation that "the object of nature is man, the object of man is style." Now the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is celebrating the movement in "De Stijl: Vision of Utopia," a lavish exhibition that Kas been three years in the making. Funded by the national endow-ments for both the arts and hu-manities, as well as the Champion International Corporation, the gov-ernment of the Netherlands an d ot lier donors, the show will travel to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and finally to Holland it-self. It's a remarkably thorough and instructive display. Mildred Fried-man, the Walker's curator of design, Van Doesburg's plan for walls and ceiling (center) of his 'FlowerRoom' Collectief» Stede!i;>i Van AbOemuseurn. Eindhoven m-1- TT"-jMP-M has painstakingly gathered more than 275 paintings, drawings and architectural models from collections scattered around the world. She has also edited a superb catalog, published by Abbeville Press (255 pages. S39.95, paper $24.95), with essays by leading scholars on every aspect of this opti-mistic and Utopian movement. Fantasie*: But De Stijl was a limited, intensely human movement, as flawed as any quest for Utopia. From the beginning, there were strains within the group. The obdurate Mondrian and the tempestuous van Doesburg quarreled often about the relative importance of painting and archi-tecture. Van Doesburg wanted to transform art into a "tooi of progress" by collaborat- {MjMam • iV'Tiiir'Üi'riiÉhi ilr Photo by Frank den Oudstan Rietveld-Schröder house: Monument to the Utopian prontise of modern ism ing with architects. In his first letter to the architect J. J. P. Oud, he called for a "spiritual equilibrium" between the two professions, offering to en-hance Oud's houses and fac-tories with dazzling "coloristic and formal" schemes. But Oud, a practical man, contin-ually modified van Doesburg's high-spirited fantasies. In the end van Doesburg called off their collaboration. However much the De Stijl group debated and argued and misjudged the future, their work had a consistent look— sleek and bright. Beginning with the early paintings of os ? 1 r 1 1 •j nnii 1,1 j TT j ? i .m. Private cottaction Oud's drawing for a Rotterdam café: Brave new drinking world 82 Mondrian and van Doesburg, and with the extraordinary "Red/Blue Chair" designed by Rietveld in 1918, the "new consciousness" was very much a monolith. Inspired by the Neoplatonic theories of the Dutch mathematician M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, Mondrian and his colleagues had a mystical faith in geometry, in bold and simple out-lines, in primary colors and. finally—thanks to the postwar industrial renaissance—in the machine itself. They disdained any sort of orna-mentation. Oud designed vast, low-cost housing projects in the !920s, each unit repeating the form, of thé others in assembly-line fashion. His elegant drawing for a Rotterdam café exactly matches the squdre-cut composition of Mondrianjs paintings, and Rietveld's brightly col-ored chair anticipated Mondrian's later works. The Walker is also dis-playing the extraordinary series of elegantly simple furniture pieces by Rietveld that followed the red/blue chair. Rang-ing from a sharply angled end table to a hanging lamp made of bare, nested incan-descent tubes, they are the prototypes for modern furniture. Amazing House: This is the "high" Stijl, j' characterized at its best by a harmonious blend of disjointed, asymmetrical elements. lts masterpiece is surely the amazing house designed jointly by Rietveld and its owner, Mrs. Truus Schröder-Schrader, a painter, in Utrecht in 1924. The Walker has re-created the house with a marvelous series of large-scale color photographs. From the front the house appears to be a series of flat, colorful planes joined together at random. Its spacious upper floor is flooded with light. Sliding panels allow constant change NEWSWEEK/FEBRUARY 22, 1982
NEWSWEEK/FEBRUARY 22, 1982 Tennessee Whiskey • 90 Proof • Distilled and Bottled by Jack Daniël Distillery Lem Motlov», Prop., Inc., Lynchburg (Pop 361), Tennessee 37352 Placed in the National Register of Historie Places by the United States Government. in room style and structure. "The new architecture has broken through the wall," declared van Doesburg, inspired by the Rietveld-Schröder house, "and in so doing his completely eliminated the divorce of inside and out." Alas, the Rietveld-Schröder house now stands as a monument to the promise of modernism, not its reality. In 1924 the house was a daring act in an old neighbor-hood of brown-brick row houses. Si nee tHen, countless copies of it have been dikmped by unimaginative architects into sdburbs everywhere. It is no wonder that the once fresh ideas promoted by De Stijl— and later by the Bauhaus, in a heavier, less colorful way—are currently under severe attack by all the "post-modem" architects. Pastiche: In the end. De Stijl's fondness for geometrie razzle-dazzle turned into a kind of obsession, short-circuiting its early Utopian ideals. Van Doesburg deserted Mondnan's clean-cut harmonies in the mid-1920s when he began to explode his once calm rectangles of color. In a tiny "Flower Room," designed for a villa in Hyères, France, he tumed the rectangles 45 degrees, running them into the corners of the room. On a flamboyant ceiling in the Café Aubette in Strasbourg—reconstruct-ed at the Walker—he openly indulged a "dynamic" diagonal line. The ceiling is a dizzying pastiche of raised rectangular re-liefs. Their lines dart here and there in an attempt to create what he called a "super-material space" beyond mundane architecture. But the ceiling was and is profoundly disorienting. That the café's decor was re-jected by its patronsand painted over within the year is often blamed on public igno-rance, but the truth is otherwise. The cus-tomers knew what the brilliant leaders of De Stijl didn't know. Pure style—divorced from basic human needs like comfort, oma-ment, meaning—is not enough. "The styje," any style, is only the beginning. DOUGLAS DAVIS tveld chair: Sitting in geometry CoHaction StaMi|J« Musaum. Amsterdam JANUARY is the hardest time of year for making charcoal co mellow the taste of Jack Daniël s Tennessee Whiskey. Just to begin, you need a hot cup of coffee and a good wool shirt. Then, you have to go out and chop these big maple logs into Four-foot strips. Stack them in ricks. And burn them into the special r» charcoal that is used for fM mellowing Jack Daniels. It's rugged work in the cold orjanuary. But it accounts for a smooth whiskey, no matter when you sip it. CHARCOAL MELLOWED 6 DROP ó BY DROP
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