The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art – Henry van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept

one of the three virtues of good architecture as formulated by Vitruvius. But long
before the Pruitt-Igoe explosion, architectural theorists such as Gottfried Semper
had started to look at the evolution of “technical and tectonic arts” 2 as a liberation
from primary, directly material-bound forms.
The Haze of the Carnival Candles
Gottfried Semper’s evocation of Karnevalskerzendunst, the “haze of the carnival
candles” as the “true atmosphere of art” sounds like a call for liberation from the
material-tied firmitas of Vitruvian theory. Semper emphasized the interplay between
between reality and illusion in a frequently quoted footnote in his magnum opus,
Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder praktische Ästhetik (Style
in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or Practical Aesthetic): “The spirit of the masks
breathes in Shakespeare’s drama. We meet the humor of masks and the haze of candles,
the carnival spirit … in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.” 3 Semper seemed to echo his
friend Richard Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk—however, in contrast to
Wagner, he moved beyond the singular artwork to emphasize the integration of arts
under the guidance of architecture, which was exemplified for Semper less by the
musical drama than by the architectural monument. In his essay “Vorläufige Bemerkungen
über vielfarbige Architektur und Skulptur bei den Alten” (Preliminary
Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity, 1838), Semper
used his favorite metaphor of the textile, as a networked, interwoven way of cultural
production when he commented that “formerly all the fine arts cooperated closely
on monuments of every kind, harmoniously and powerfully assisting one another,
woven into a well-proportioned whole.” 4
For Wagner, it was the flowing, evolving character of music that helped it to overcome
the burden of materiality. Semper, too, spoke of the need of annihilating the
material in the work of art: “The destruction of reality of the material, is necessary
if form is to emerge as a meaningful symbol, as an autonomous human creation.” 5
This liberation from matter resulted in an interest for theatricality and for mimetic
strategies, as put forward in the concept of Stoffwechsel (metabolism or material
transformation).
The “haze of the carnival candles,” a mixture of hot air and smoke that scatters light
and obscures the clarity of vision, is a modern dream of returning to an earlier, less
intellectual, more material state of consciousness. It was described by Friedrich
Nietzsche as the “haze of the unhistorical” in his essay “Vom Nutzen und Nachteil
der Historie für das Leben” (The Use and Abuse of History for Life), the second of
his four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (Untimely Meditations), published in 1874:
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