Early Art Nouveau in Belgium. The dark power of associations, etnocentrism and colonisation
Although Art Nouveau as a style enjoyed a brief but intense success in Western architecture and interior design, its introduction and spread did not occur uniformly across the entire spectrum of architectural typology.
In Belgium, Art Nouveau became the artistic component of an elite group of progressive liberals and socialists, serving as an expression of ideological renewal and an alternative to established styles. In Brussels, where the new style was coined in 1893 by early realizations by Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, the Maison du Peuple, commissioned by the Belgian Workers’ Party and built in 1896-1899 after the design of Horta, was a manifesto for the combination of these stylistic, typological, and ideological innovations.
The introduction of Art Nouveau in Antwerp, an important port city and one of the pillars of the young state’s economic growth, followed this Brussels example with the construction of the people’s house of the liberal cooperative ‘Help U Zelve’, built in 1899-1901 to a design by Jan Van Asperen. This building manifested a program of social renewal through a working-class and pastoral iconography in the mosaics of the facade, combined with references to old and new cornerstones of society: the belfry and the train station.
At the same time, the Antwerp Zoo built a banquet hall complex (1895-1897) with a wing on the station square in Art Nouveau style, one of the most monumental and remarkable achievements in the city. The modern visual language of this façade was in keeping with the concept of the zoo as a contemporary architectural type and its function as a center of bourgeois social life, but contrasts with the Belle Époque eclecticism of the complex’s front façade. The explanation for this choice of style therefore lies not only in the architectural type, but also in the cultural associations between Art Nouveau and an alternative reality, visualised by the untamed and mysterious nature, with its hardly explored secrets.
A few years earlier, these associations had resulted in the design of the Congo Exhibition in Tervuren, designed by Hankar and other luminaries of Belgian Art Nouveau, as part of the 1897 World’s Fair in Brussels. In both realizations, Art Nouveau proved to be a fitting stylistic vehicle for projects with a colonial and etnocentric orientation.
