Victor Horta and his Art Nouveau

by Michelle Nott

One hundred fifty years ago, a self-proclaimed genius in architecture and design was born. His name was Victor Horta. Rumor has it that he was an intolerable man. But, personality flaws aside, his brain created some of the most noteworthy buildings of the 20^th century.

For the past seven years I have been walking in Brussels and admiring the random facades that whisper, “Look over here. I am Art Nouveau.” Out of careless walks around a pond or down a street, I find myself privileged to see such extraordinary examples of art. Every architectural style brings its own calm or intrigue to its structure, but Art Nouveau seems to be foremost art...that happens to create an incredible and durable living space.

For years, actually until Horta became a professor himself, architects had to study first fine art and then just extend their studies for six more months to earn a degree in architecture. So, at that time, architects just dealt with the look of a structure and left the actual building to the builders. Horta felt this way of thinking was very wrong. During his own studies, he won a scholarship to study under any architect he wanted. He chose Gustave Eiffel – who wasn't an architect at all but an engineer. His choice was disputed but he stood firm saying that Eiffel worked in steel and that was the building material of the future.

All of Horta's houses could still be standing today if they had never caught fire or been torn down. The one flaw in Horta's philosophy is that each house should be completely designed to suit the living habits of its individual inhabitants. In theory, this idea was great. As for its “resale value”, not so much. At least not in the early part of last century. Nowadays, a mere visit to the Solvay home on Avenue Louise can cost 800 euros. Needless to say, the value of any of his Art Nouveau homes are now certainly through the stain-glassed roofs.

Like any great art movement, Art Nouveau is a revolution against tradition. The “nouveau” aspect is influenced by several trends of the 19^th century. The Pre-Raphaelites illustrated romantic, fantasy-like scenes with bright colors. Japonism produced flat, woodblock prints with no shadows. Symbolism went against naturalism and realism, creating spiritual, decadent, even morbid works of art. Finally, the aesthetic movement in design had itself also been influenced by Japanese lines and colors. Wrapping all these attributes together and picking out the most functional of each, Horta became one of the most amazing and acclaimed architects of his time...until WWI.

Horta wanted to build homes using only natural materials and methods. He wanted everything to be functional. He originally worked in such a way to provide his services to a more humble clientele. Then, he realized just how much the wealthier population would spend on his expertise. He not only designed the homes, but also the furniture down to the hinges on the doors, and had to approve any home decor the owners wanted to acquire. He personally designed many Tiffany stained-glass for his clients. After receiving the hand-drawn sketch of a lamp or window in New York, Tiffany would create it, take it apart, number each piece, and send it all back to Brussels to be reassembled. Once WWI came and went, however, the money did not flow as freely and Art Nouveau's popularity diminished. Already by 1922, one of his first houses was destroyed.

Between about 1893 and 1911, Art Nouveau triumphed in the architecture and design world. Although interest in the movement slept for many decades, the 1960s psychedelics woke it up again. The 150 year anniversary of Horta seems like a fitting time to look back and forward at what Art Nouveau can bring to today's and tomorrow's architects and art enthusiasts. 
For information on the Horta Museum, refer to the article At the Home of Victor Horta.

For more information on Art Nouveau and where you can see it in Brussels, you can refer to the following links:

ARAU

Brussels Official Website for Tourism and Congress

La Maison Cauchie

Worldview by Leonard Freed at Le Musée de la Photographie

by Michelle Nott

 

When people ask me what I miss about America, I think really hard. New York City, I reply. Logically, the publicity poster for the latest temporary exhibit at Le Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi immediately caught my attention.

The black and white scene of men in gray-toned suits and one wide-striped tie seduces me to walk down Wall Street in 1950 style. Leonard Freed is the photographer. The exhibit is “Worldview” and runs until May 2011. Leonard Freed's view of the world started, indeed, in New York City. The year was 1929. Born of Russian descent into an Hasidic Jewish family, Freed wanted to explore his origins and what they could mean to him.

Entering into the exhibit, the first photographs clearly place the viewer in New York City. Jewish children and teachers look out from their schools, from their lives. Freed catches their regard so that they catch ours. Simple visitors through his lens, we can sense the emotion that provoked the shot, the angle, the moment that left in a flash.

Still in the 1950s, Freed's worldview expands to Belgium via Germany where he was working, He witnesses the mining catastrophe of Marcinelle (1956) near Charleroi, a shocking event in Belgium's memory. From a discreet distance, his photographs frame the mourning of the widows and of the children. Two-hundred fifty coffins line the streets. A woman prays at an open window. Families weep. Freed captures the experience as emotion rather than as a news report. He never did considered himself a photojournalist.

 

Back in New York City in the 1960s, he uses his lens to discover from where people come, where they are and where they may go. He catches festive moments at office parties, white men and women dancing with cocktails. Their smiles are so wide, I could almost hear the jazz in the background. Down on the streets, Harlem's children play in fire hydrants washing the heat and their troubles away for a cool moment. Other young boys are playing tough while men are handcuffed in the backseat of squad cars. A year later, Martin Luther King, Jr. drives by after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. By the late 1970s, a woman police officer plays, what looks like “Duck, Duck, Goose”, with a group of children on a Harlem street. Freed traveled but came back to his city. He looked within and around himself in search of who he was by where he was. He believed the subject of his pictures was always him.

Leonard Freed's camera has caught history without trying to report on it. Freed took pictures of what he saw, what anyone could have seen. But, his talent and regard immortalizes the emotion in the movement, that blink of the flash.

As much as I love New York City and would go back at a moment's notice for a walk through Central Park, down through Soho or over to Brooklyn, I know its positives and negatives result in many shades of gray. But, the energy for which the streets are so famous are also the breath of life in the Worldview exhibit. That breath luckily blew Leonard Freed where he needed to go as well.

 

More information

Besides the Leonard Freed exhibit, two other temporary exhibits are also worth the visit: Simon Lueck, the Once and the Future Queens and Fernand Dumeunier, Le Visage et L'Esprit.

Since the mines closed in the second half of the last century, Charleroi is not much to see. However, the Belgian government has given money to the surrounding region and most notably to its photography museum. The collection makes it one of the most important photography museums in Europe.

Le Musée de la Photographie

Avenue Paul Pastur 11 (GPS Place des Essarts)

6032 Charelroi (Mont-Sur-Marchienne), Belgium

32 (0) 71/43 58 10

info@museephoto.be

Open Tuesday through Sunday 10am – 6pm

Admission fees include permanent collection and exhibits:

6 euros for general, 4 euros for seniors and groups, 3 euros for students and the unemployed.

Free for children under 12.

Free the first Sunday of each month.

Light snacks and drinks are available in the museum café.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) at the Grand Palais, Paris

by Michelle Nott

Claude Monet will be at the Grand Palais in Paris until January 24, 2011. Most art lovers have already heard this months ago when it opened in September. But, have they gotten their tickets yet? With just a couple months left, now is the time to get on line and in line for the biggest Monet exhibit ever. Oddly enough, Monet has been much more acclaimed by Americans and by the British than by his own fellow Frenchmen. Parisians, French, Europeans, anyone on the continent or who can get here should take advantage of this extraordinary display of life and color and light.

The first room initiates the visitor to Monet' s beginnings as a child and then as an artist, as a husband and then as a father. His personal and professional foundations are rooted in Normandy. Throughout his work, he never loses sight of who he is or where his inspiration lies.

The visitor will experience so much more of Monet than what floats on the lilipads. Those greenish, bluish, water plants can be found on every mug, dorm room poster, and tote bag from here to eternity. But, Monet was much more than the decorative artist of current, general opinion.

After spending his childhood in Normandy, Claude Monet would travel to Fontainbleau like many artists of the time, into Paris, back to Normandy, to the Mediterranean, to London and to Italy. He also did magnificent portraits and classic still life paintings. His brush strokes were quick in some scenes, long and drawn out in others. In all, he painted life into objects and people via his mastery of light and color.

His search for light and its variations led him to paint series. Monet either went back to the same location at the exact same time of day to paint the exact same subject; or he would paint the exact same subject from the exact same location but at different times of the day. The beauty in his idea invites the viewer to enter into a day, or simply into a moment and feel the sunshine or the surrounding fog.

Only in the last room of the exhibit does the visitor get a good look at Monet's lilipads. He painted these in the last years of his life. The immense, mural-sized Nympheas were left to France with the stipulation that they would not be displayed until after his death. However, Monet fans will still need to take the short walk over to the Orangerie to see those.

The exhibit is well worth the ticket price, the train ride (or plane ride), and day out in Paris. To read a more in-depth description of the exhibit, please refer to Monet in Paris.

Once you have your ticket, get to the Grand Palais before the specifically-printed time in order to get in line. Yes, there is still a line but certainly not as long as the line for visitors without tickets (which can literally take hours to get to the door). Once through the security screening, check your coat to the right and proceed to the left. I highly recommend the audio-guide, which is available in many languages. Children can also take advantage of a specific, age-appropriate audio-guide although only available in French.

Musée Hergé in the Heart of Belgium

by Michelle Nott

Less than a half hour drive south of Brussels, tourists and Belgians alike arrive in the university town of Louvain-la-Neuve. In this pedestrian town, visitors rise from the underground parking lot of the Grande Place. And by the end of 2011, the Hergé fan will be able to walk a few steps over to the cinema to marvel (hopefully) at Steven Spielberg's and Peter Jackson's cinematic portrayal of Tintin with all his friends. Until then, let's walk in the opposite direction, behind the shops to Rue du Labrador (previously Boulevard du Nord).

Down the bridged pathway, pedestrians face a mural of Tintin. But, he's not looking at them. His gaze looks ahead of himself, ahead of the crowd, forward and above. Each step accept sthis invitation and approaches until the painting is hovering over heads, until the visitor is peering up at Tintin in the exact position he is looking onward. Entering underneath him into le Musée Hergé, the Hergé fan, or soon-to-be-one, is not just in for a day-out. This is an adventure.

The museum is cleverly designed to bring the visitor into the world of Hergé's “bande dessinée” (comic strip in French). To begin, the museum patrons take the free audiophones available in English, French, Dutch, German or Spanish. They then enter the elevator. Fans will recognize the exterieur checkered design as the rocketship from Destination Moon (Objectif Lune, 1953). The doors slide open and the lift takes off to the third floor.

Boum! The music of Charles Trenet sways the visitors into the early 20^th century. Not surprisingly, the artist and writer George Remi often incorporated music into his work, even in comic strip form. And Hergé? That is indeed him, his intials in the reverse order (RG) are pronounced in French as Her - gé.

Hergé started very young drawing in his notebooks, as so many young people do. As a boy, Hergé was a devoted Boy Scout. Understandably, his first strip is about a scout named Totor published in Scouts Catholique de Belgique. His scout days gave him a taste and love of adventure and camaraderie. Little Totor even experienced the U.S., traveling to Texas to meet his aunt and uncle which was interrupted by encounters with gangsters and American Indians. This first room of the tour is decorated with a history of Hergé's most beloved works, from Totor the Boy Scout (1926) to the street kids Quick and Flupke (1930) until Marlinspike Castle (Les Aventures au Château Moulinsart, 1963).

Hergé was an artist of many talents. The second room demonstrates Hergé's background in print, illustration, typography, and advertisements. Working in advertisements, he created “L'Atelier Hergé Publicité”. His experience in print ads gave him an appreciation for vivid colors but also white space and typography. All of which can be seen as influences in his own drawn strips.

From this rather dim room, the visitor steps out into the hallway, brightened (on a sunny Belgian day) by the large windows to the left. To the right, the visitor can peer down to the entrance hall and take in the impresive black-checkered design of the “rocket ship” elevator. The geometric walls are painted in a similar solid color pallette as in his albums. The same white birds, enlarged here, fly upon their two-dimensional sky.

The third room in the visit introduces Tintin's “family”. In glass displays, visitors can familiarise themselves with the main cast of characters. Descriptions and drawing from the different stories analyse each friend and foe distinctly. First and foremost, Snowy (Milou in French) is Tintin's faithfull partner. This particularly white fox terrier often comes out a hero in Tintin's escapades. For a good laugh, Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond in French) are the perfectly clumsy detectives who are just talented enough to pursue the wrong criminal. Professor Calculus (Tournesol in French) may have a hearing problem and be easily ditracted, but he is nonetheles a genius. Captain Haddock is the rugged yet tender partner. These traits paint him to be possibly the most human of all the characters, not to mention his appreciation for whisky. The one feminine touch to Hergé's series is Bianca Castiofore, the opera singer diva of the group. Visitors will continue to meet other characters as they proceed from here to the fourth room.

Spielberg was not far off target choosing to do a movie based on a Tintin comic book album. In fact, the manner in which Hergé created his adventures, square by square, can also be seen as similar to filmmaking. The visitor will discover how German science fiction movies and American film actors influenced the stories and characters in Hergé's strips, notably in Jo & Zette & Jocko. Also, Dupont and Dupond are not surprisingly similar to the other slapstick pair of the early 20^th century, Laurel and Hardy. In fact, the black on white design accentuates the characters while minimizing the background to thin, fragile lines – all the better for comedic gaffs. This room proves Hergé's admiration for many aspects of film.

Continuing back through the “family drawing room”, the Hergé fans find a large chandelier directing the tour down a staircase. The immense light fixture is created by round portraits of 228 Hergé characters! A few couches and lamps decorate the area at the bottomof the stairs as well as a long murale of a New Year's greeting card made of all the personalities who can be seen throughout Hergé's repertoire. The audiophone presents an interesting explanantion of the composite of these characters.

A red carpet directs the visit into the laboratory. The patrons are face to face with the shark submarine from The Treasure of Rackam the Red (Le Trésor du Rackam le Rouge, 1945). In this particular story, Professor Calculus prouves himself to be far from the reputaion of an “absent-minded professor”, but of an actual genius. Throughout the laboratory, the guest learns that Hergé had the interest of bringing science to the level of the average reader. For example, in his way, he presented the notions of space and aeronautics in Shooting Star (1942) and Moon Objective (1953), respectively. He even went so far as to have the rocket model from Moon Objective approved by the scientific author, Ananoff, who published L'Astonautique in 1950. Hergé continues his pedagogical role to his public by eventually introducing Professor Calculus' “Tips and Tricks” column, explaining science to his youngest readers. The science behind the storylines then leads the visitors to the adjoining display of the artistic procedure and techniques behind his creations.

Back out on another red carpet, the museum patrons find a treasure of their own, like climbing into Tintin's attic or that of any child growing up with Tintin toys and games. Hergé took real relics (objects and/or photographs) from various places – the Congo, Egypte, China, Peru, Columbia, etc. - to inspire Tintin's adventures. Most of such objects were found in other museums, including the Louvre. The spirit of these objects or creative impressions of which have come full circle by finding a place in Hergé's museum. Reality, in this sense, enters fiction which in turn, encourages the discovery of truth.

From the bridge one floor up from the lobby, visitors are surrounded by the same geometric, pastel walls but now one floor down. Tall trees stand the heighth of the museum's three-story windows and the sunshine (on a sunny day in Belgium – and it was this day) brightens the visitor's path.

Studios Hergé is the next exhibit. The techinques, research, and history all involved in Hergé's creations come together here at the replicated desks of three of Hergé's associates, Bob De Moor, Jacques Martin and Roger Le Loup. Not only do Hergé fans get an idea of all the work and collaboration involved in producing a comic book album, but also all the fun. The audiophone and the description by various displays recount how Hergé would literally act out scenes for the other artists to draw. The author and artist dedicated years of himself to his literary and artistic endeavors. He not only created characters, but he grew as well with them. The evolution from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929), for example, to Tintin au Tibet (1958) via The Blue Lotus (1935) illustrates for the reader an equal evolution in style and sensitivity – a natural human progression.

The final exhibit room is a tribute to the man born George Remi and remembered as Hergé. His personal character and heart made him one of the most respected and loved writers and authors of the 20^th century. The testimonies of fans of all ages, of all walks of life, of all cultures attest to his importance for generations to come.

Le Musée Hergé

Rue du Labrador, 26

1348 Louvain-la Neuve

Belgium

tel: 0032. 10. 455. 777

info@hergemuseum.com

www.hergemuseum.com

Opening hours

Everyday 10 am to 6 pm,

closed Mondays, Jan. 1, May 1, Nov. 11 and Dec. 25

A special exhibit runs until February 27, 2011 showcasing trains in Tintin's adventures. By sitting in a wooden replica of a train car, patrons peer out windows portraying each a train scene from a Tintin story while watching a publicity video done by Studios Hergé in 1980 for the SNCB (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Belges).