Architecture
Victor Horta
(Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, till 5 Jan)
Exuberant trend-setter
Martin Bailey
Victor Horta, the architect of swirling lines, is being honoured with an exhibition in Brussels, the city where he built his finest projects. His Tassel House, designed for a friend and completed in 1893, is now celebrated as the earliest Art Nouveau building in Europe. Based on forms inspired by nature, its exuberant design was to set the trend for a decade, spread- ing a style right across the continent, from Barcelona to Budapest.
The best way to appreciate Horta's work is not to start at the exhibition, but at his own home and studio, which is now a museum. Set in Saint-Gilles, then on the southern outskirts of Brussels, his house in the rue Americaine was designed in 1898 and completed three years later. The architect could hardly have created a more stunning advertisement for his skills. The dramatic central staircase is a masterpiece, its metal banisters twisting their way up to the curved skylight, where two irregularly shaped mirrors reflect into infinity. Every- thing is painstakingly designed, from the graceful, but comfortable door handles to the radiator at the foot of the stairs, dar- ingly placed upright on a marble pedestal and looking like an abstract sculpture. It is also a very personal house, expressly made for its occupants (among the fittings is a small pissoir ingenuously incorporated into a cupboard in the master bedroom, ready to be swung open for nocturnal use).
A century on, the Horta House retains its atmosphere, and is filled with his furni- ture (much of it from his other buildings). The use of wood imparts a warmth to the rooms, the natural lighting (some of it fil- tered through coloured glass) is ever changing, and the curving lines give a unity to the design. It is difficult to imagine any- one ever wanting to leave this welcoming home. But in 1919, on Horta's return from his enforced war-time stay in America, he sold up and moved. The house seemed too small, but, equally important, Art Nouveau was now out of fashion and no respectable architect wanted to be seen living in such a passé place. In Horta's new home, designed by his fellow architect Alphonse Balat, the geometric forms of Art Deco predominate over sinuous curves.
By this time Horta had already begun work on the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the building where the current exhibition is being held. Although not completed until 1928, the palace is arguably Europe's first major multi-purpose arts centre, centred around a sculpture hall. It is still a popular venue for concerts, plays, films, meetings, exhibitions, eating and drinking, and its flexible spaces have proved remarkably adaptable. The decor is striking, with an elegance that it is not overbearing, and although there are curves, gone are the swirls of Horta's earlier years. At the time it was quite innovative, particularly in the use of reinforced concrete and its open- plan design. The interweaving of galleries and chambers, stairways and inclines, con- jures up Piranesian images.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts has been used for the Horta retrospective as both 'exhibi- tion space and space on exhibition'. This is the reason given why the 12 galleries are relatively sparsely filled, so the artefacts do not detract from the architecture. But this Detail of dining-room in the Horta Museum unduly purist approach means that the show seems a little thin, and one longs to see more examples of his work, particularly his suites of furniture. Nevertheless, there are fascinating pieces — a magnificent table with a top made from a slice of petri- fied tree trunk, a large bronze ink-pot with such extravagant flourishes that it seems almost alive, a 1902 dining-table complete with a hidden telephone for summoning the servants to bring on the next course, and architectural plans for a hospital mor- tuary and autopsy room.
The Horta exhibition is also a reminder of the masterpieces which have been lost. In the largest gallery, heavy slabs of darkly weathered carved stone have been dumped in an apparently random arrangement on two massive wooden pallets. One consists of stones from the façade of the Aubety House, one of Horta's finest Art Nouveau buildings, which was quite unnecessarily demolished in 1950. The other pallet holds relics from the Maison du Peuple, a bold Art Deco glass-and-iron building designed as the headquarters of the Socialist Party and which was torn down as recently as 1965. Moss has grown on the stones, mak- ing them look as if they might have come from some neglected cemetery. Their pres- ence in Horta's own Palais des Beaux-Arts is a silent testimony to the destruction of these two magnificent buildings.
The Brussels exhibition encourages us to look at Horta in a new light, by seeking to resurrect his later work. Art Nouveau is already firmly back in fashion (as can be seen from the Japanese tourists thronging the Horta Museum), but his projects from the inter-war years have generally been regarded as a step backwards towards con- servatism and academicism. The show puts forward a different interpretation, suggest- ing that Horta's later work was just as revo- lutionary. According to the exhibition organiser Frangoise Aubrey, after the first world war 'his exuberant urge for decora- tion made way for serene control'.
Appropriately, the final stop on any Horta architectural tour is where many for- eign visitors get their last glimpse of Brus- sels, the Gare Centrale. Horta started work on the design in 1912, but progress was slow and two world wars intervened. It remained unfinished on his death in 1947 and it was not completed for another five years, with the design modified by Maxime Brunfaut. Few travellers rushing through the crowded station hall notice the archi- tecture, probably just remembering the gloomy and dank platforms underground. Only the strong lines of the entrance hall still give a taste of its Art Deco origins. With its undistinguished exterior, the Gare Centrale now appears to merge into the anonymous post-war architecture which dominates so much of central Brussels. By his final years, Horta was losing his touch. It is Brussels's loss that Horta did not com- plete the station at the height of the Art Deco period.
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