Opening address for Open Air Museum De Lakenhal: 100 Years after De Stijl

1 June 2017

The first issue of the journal De Stijl was published in Leiden in October 1917. In that same month the people of Leiden celebrated for the 343rd time the end of a six-month siege by the Spanish. Once liberated, the starving inhabitants of Leiden fell upon the hutspot – a Dutch dish of mashed carrots and potatoes – that the Spanish had left behind, and welcomed their allies – known as the geuzen – who came with white bread and herrings. It may not have been clear in 1917, but the liberating movement that was De Stijl has turned out to be just as momentous as the Leids Ontzet – the ‘Relief of Leiden’.

Leiden became the birthplace of De Stijl due to a combination of circumstances. The originator and driving force behind the journal, Theo van Doesburg, moved here from Haarlem in December 1916 to be with his mistress Lena Milius, who had found a job here. They married here on 30 May 1917, precisely a hundred years and two days ago.

Painter and poet Theo van Doesburg already had a modest career behind him at that point. He was known mainly for his art criticism and his lectures. When the First World War broke out in August 1914 he was mobilised and sent to the Belgian border. In the prevailing atmosphere of loss and ruin, made worse by the incessant noise of gunfire, he soon became an artistic radical. His work was influenced by a rapid succession of modern artists – Kandinsky, Cézanne, Matisse – as well as the Cubists and Futurists. He was a man of boundless ambition. During this time he left his wife for the daughter of the family with whom he was billeted, Lena Milius.

Van Doesburg lived in Leiden for four and a half years, from December 1916 to April 1921, during a crucial period for modern art and for his own development. I would estimate that he produced 20% of his work that is still in existence in this town. It was here that he developed the principle of gradual abstraction, taking a natural subject, such as a naturalistic view of Blauwpoortsbrug bridge and abstracting it in phases into a composition of rectangles in primary or secondary colours. A method that still appeals to this day. In the 1920s it was a huge inspiration to Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres-García, who caused a furore with it back in his home country. Van Doesburg produced some famous compositions in Leiden, including both versions of Card Players, The Cow and Rhythm of a Russian Dance. It was here that he produced his first designs for stained glass windows and colour schemes for interiors and exteriors, in collaboration with architects and future De Stijl members like J.J.P. Oud, who also lived in Leiden, Jan Wils and Robert van ‘t Hoff. Here, he developed his skills as a graphic designer, designed a font that is still in use today, as well as the legendary second design for the journal De Stijl, which was used from the fourth volume in 1921 onwards. It was in Leiden that he discovered Dada. His architectural aspirations also awakened here, with the design for a Monument for Leeuwarden on which he collaborated with Jan Wils. That design captures in a nutshell his views on architecture, which he saw as a form of functional sculpture.

The cultural climate in Leiden at that time was explored in a 1999 exhibition and book entitled The Dawn of Modern Art at Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal. Van Doesburg was a well-known figure on the Leiden art scene from the word go, with his lectures on the latest developments in art. On 29 December 1916, for example, at In den vergulden Turk, he hosted an ‘intimate evening’ at which he gave poetry readings and explained the difference between subjective and objective poetry – between personal emotional expression and the new sound poetry. Together with Oud, he founded an art club – The Sphinx – which staged an International Exhibition in early 1917. The exhibition included work by Leiden and Dutch artists working in both the modern and traditional style, with work by Van Doesburg himself alongside that of Harm Kamerlingh Onnes and Laurens van Kuik, for example. The international element referred mainly to the work of two war refugees (the First World War was still being fought): the Czech Emil Filla, who worked in a Cubist style, and the Expressionist Hungarian artist Bela Czobel. Despite his missionary zeal, however, Van Doesburg did not succeed in turning Leiden into a hotbed of artistic innovation.

De Stijl was a journal, not a group, though it was a movement. Theo van Doesburg was its only editor. Artists and architects would join the journal, either briefly or for a more extended period. During the years of its existence De Stijl became a platform for many, often opposing, ideas on what the new art should be like. But in its Leiden years it was above all a mouthpiece for Piet Mondrian’s theory of the New Plasticism or Neoplasticism, with which De Stijl is usually associated. From the start, the New Plasticism focused on developing a new style in which all artistic disciplines would come together on an equal basis to form a harmonious balance of opposites.

This ‘total art’ was designed to inspire life. Its watchwords were austerity and modesty, and it expressed the power of the mind over nature. In its outward appearance the New Plasticism can perhaps best be illustrated by three objects: a classic Neoplastic painting by Mondrian from the 1920s with geometric blocks of primary colour, plus white and grey, and black lines; a chair designed by Rietveld around 1919, with its geometric forms and elementary structure; and the model of the Maison d’Artiste produced by Van Doesburg and Cor van Eesteren in 1923.

The Maison d’Artiste embodies one of De Stijl’s ideals: it translated the dynamism of modern life into an ideal building in which time and space are interwoven. The house a 360-degree structure. In other words, it has no front or back or sides. The design defies gravity with its cubic spaces that push outward in all directions in a spiral movement. There are no floors or load-bearing walls, merely support points, allowing entire walls and windows to be slid into new positions as required. Perhaps the most important thing about it is that it allows a composition of coloured planes to be created in the model. Van Doesburg regarded colour as the foremost means of expression. The model had a huge impact when it was first presented in Paris in 1923, and it was much discussed and illustrated. However, just two years later, in 1925, the model was lost, though this only seems to have added to the mythical proportions of its importance and its inspirational impact.

The reconstruction at one-fifth of the originally intended size that is on display here has been made possible by Mick Eekhout, emeritus professor at TU Delft, working in collaboration with students from several years. He came to the conclusion that Van Doesburg and Van Eesteren defied gravity in such a way in this 1923 model that they were 90 years ahead of technology. It took that long before there was any prospect of their design being executed. Thanks to Eekhout’s work, we can now take in the impact of this trailblazing design, and realise that the designers wanted above all to develop a plastic architecture, because they felt it was more important to satisfy spiritual needs than functional and materialistic needs.

There is another reason why Maison d’Artiste is so extraordinary. It is the result of harmonious collaboration on an equal basis between representatives of two very different disciplines: a painter and an architect. De Stijl was also a reaction against the power of the architect over art and design in architecture, and in that sense the journal was rebellious. The battle between artist and architect has certainly left its mark over the past century, and it does not appear to have been settled yet, for the architect is still boss. Van der Leck made an impassioned plea in De Stijl for painters to be given the flat surface, the plane. Fernand Léger repeated the cry in the 1930s: architects, give us walls. But architects paid little heed. Van der Leck received a refusal from Berlage, Léger from Le Corbusier. Berlage, Le Corbusier, Oud and an entire legion along with them replied: only on our terms, and it was they who pointed out the places where painters were allowed to do their thing. Are things any different these days? I fear not. Painters with ideas about colour or painting in architecture still have very little say. The use of colour in buildings is a loaded issue because colour lends the atmosphere in the building character, rather than the neutrality that is generally the goal. From that perspective, this exhibition is both a manifestation of alternative power and an act of resistance.

The architecture of this exhibition consists of walls positioned in the same formation as a section of an early painting by Mondrian featuring short horizontal and vertical lines, Composition in line (Second state), 1916-1917. Twenty spatial artists have come together to create a homage to De Stijl. The participating artists all have a number of things in common. They want universality, art that is understandable to all, and they find this in the strength of their own visual idiom, which flies in the face of fashion and, transcending place and time, has a direct impact without the need for prior knowledge. They want to transcend visible reality in their art and they certainly do not set out to imitate nature, even though it sometimes provides a starting point.

In contrast to De Stijl, which was something of a male bastion, both female and male artists feature in this exhibition. Their individuality now serves collective action, which takes the form of shared research, exchange of ideas and contributions to magazines, for example. In taking this common approach, some have even deliberately excluded from the work their own personality as an artist, and all of them subscribe to the rule of equal collaboration between the different disciplines. These artists are on a quest for clarity, reducing the visual means (such as colour and non-colours) and submitting to certain rules. They are certainly not out to create any new dogmas – the lesson of De Stijl has been well and truly learnt! – but the positions they take are designed to prompt discussion, to ensure there is continual development and change.

Their positions are informed by a positive desire to connect art and life. Some artists do so by cherishing austerity, calm and rhythm as symbolising the absence of chaos, while others, in the tradition of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, hope to contribute to a new form of society, by explicitly involving design and graphics in their work, for example. They are also out to create added value for society by allowing art to function in an architectural context. It is therefore no surprise that, with views like this, these artists feel a connection with so many aspects of De Stijl and deliberately set out to continue what it started in their own way, and with pride.

The work of the artists exhibiting in this Open Air Museum is worth seeing because it connects echoes of De Stijl with important new elements. By ignoring the dogmatism of De Stijl, but viewing its strong points with an open mind, they use it as a source of inspiration for continuous change and development. Unlike many of their De Stijl predecessors, these artists are not theoreticians, though they are strongly focused on intuitive communication. This forges a deep relationship between principles of design and art without imposing any hierarchy on the different disciplines. At the time of De Stijl this proved to be a dead-end, when for example the decorative arts were forced into a subordinate role. The freedom today’s artists enjoy is without doubt partly a result of a realignment of hierarchies in art and art education. Most of the artists in this exhibition do not come from a purely art background, but have for example worked in fashion, textiles and graphic design.

Finally, communications are of course much better now than they were at the time of De Stijl, though there were three postal deliveries a day. Continuous exchange of ideas and the staging of events at short notice, anywhere in the world, have become commonplace. I hope sincerely that this eventually helps to introduce more colour into architecture.

Evert van Straaten Former director of the Kröller-Müller Museum and co-author of De Stijl 100 jaar inspiratie. De Nieuwe Beelding en de internationale kunst 1917-2017, Zwolle, Waanders Uitgevers