Cultural Mobility in the Interwar Avant-Garde Art Network

Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands

Michał Wenderski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351027885
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

This book explores the issue of cultural mobility within the interwar network of the European avant-garde, focusing on selected writers, artists, architects, magazines and groups from Poland, Belgium and Netherlands. Regardless of their apparent linguistic, cultural and geographical remoteness, their mutual exchange and relationships were both deep and broad, and of great importance for the wider development of interwar avant-garde literature, art and architecture. This analysis is based on a vast research corpus encompassing original, often previously overlooked periodicals, publications and correspondence gathered from archives around the world.

1 Polish, Belgian and Dutch Avant-Garde Formations, their Mutual Contacts and Cultural Mobility within the International Network of Groups and Periodicals

Avant-garde formations from Poland and the Low Countries were parts of an international, cross-border network of groups and magazines. Within this network, magazines and artists from Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands were related to each other, not only via other formations (e.g. French or German), but also directly, based on personal contacts between particular representatives of given groups. Such relationships enabled numerous interactions and mutual, reciprocal exchanges of texts and reproductions of works of art and architectural projects, which left numerous tangible traces in the magazines, correspondence and other publications analysed in this study. Thus, besides an overview of chosen magazines and formations from Poland and the Low Countries, as well as international initiatives where Polish, Dutch and Belgian artists played important roles (see Plate 1), this chapter also provides a thorough description of the contact and relationships between those formations and their representatives. Throughout the chapter, the nature and the extent of Polish–Dutch and Polish–Belgian relationships and cultural mobility within the avant-garde network will be explored and illustrated. Details of Polish, Belgian and Dutch contributions identified in the analysed periodicals are also listed in four tables in the appendix.¹

1.1. Interwar Avant-Garde Formations of Dutch, Belgian and Polish Provenance

The Dutch avant-garde is often associated with De Stijl [The style] – a journal that forwarded new ideas on the visual arts, architecture and literature published in Leiden, Scheveningen and The Hague between 1917 and 1928, with its final issue in 1932 (in commemoration of its late editor; a total of 76 issues). The founders of De Stijl, whose articles and works were presented in the first issue from October 1917, were Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, Antony Kok, J.J.P. Oud and Vilmos Huszár (the designer of De Stijl’ s logo and cover). Although his artistic accomplishments are often questioned, especially in comparison to other De Stijl artists such as Mondrian, Oud or Kok (cf. Tuijn 2003: 21–24), Van Doesburg played a very important role on the Dutch avant-garde scene. He was an active organiser, theoretician and inspirer, and had a major impact on the Dutch-speaking avant-garde network. Van Doesburg ran the magazine and his abilities allowed the publication to last so long. Yet, at the same time, his difficult personality strongly marked his relationships with the other founders and often led to antagonism and conflict.

De Stijl was far from being a coherent or homogenous artistic collective. Throughout the years, the journal had a number of contributors (among others Cornelis van Eesteren, Gerrit Rietveld and Georges Vantongerloo), but cooperation with most of them did not last long, mainly due to interpersonal animosities with Van Doesburg. This is explicitly reflected in Vantongerloo’s letter to Michel Seuphor from 1950:

. . . n’oubli jamais que; V;d.Leck, Mondrian et Vantongerloo sont trois individus bien distinctes qui n’ont rien de commun avec le titre De Stijl ni avec De Stijl. Leurs traveaux sont trop individuels. V.Doesburg c’est servit de ces trois individus pour lancer et pour sa propagande personnelle. Cette vérité est telle que l’on a jamais considéré V.D. comme artiste mais bien comme propagandiste.²

[. . . don’t ever forget that V[an] d[er] Leck, Mondrian and Vantongerloo are three separate individuals who have nothing in common with the title De Stijl or with De Stijl. Their works are too individual. V[an] Doesburg used these three individuals to launch and for his personal propaganda. The truth is that we never considered V[an] D[oesburg] as an artist but more as a propagandist.]

The disagreements began almost as soon as the launch issue. The first manifesto of De Stijl, published a year later, was not signed by two of its six initiators, namely Oud and Van der Leck. Two of those who were signatories of the manifesto, architects Jan Wils and Robert van’t Hoff, had already left the group by the following year, and J.J.P. Oud’s friendship with Van Doesburg came to an end in the course of 1921 after the latter submitted colour solutions to Oud’s housing project Spangen in Rotterdam. Initially the cooperation between Oud and Van Doesburg went smoothly but major differences in the perception of architecture between these two artists soon surfaced (Esser 1990: 124) and following Oud’s departure in 1921 De Stijl no longer boasted any architects among its members. In spring 1922 Van Doesburg met the young Cornelis van Eesteren (Blotkamp 1990: 33–34) who replaced Oud and worked with Van Doesburg.

The relation between Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian was also marked by constant disputes and arguments. Their viewpoints and interests gradually grew apart when Van Doesburg, in contrast to Mondrian, became fascinated with the fourth dimension. As a result Van Doesburg began to publish under his pseudonyms (I.K. Bonset from May 1920 and Aldo Camini from July 1921) so that he could continue his polemic with Mondrian who remained unaware of Van Doesburg’s alter egos. In 1922/23 fundamental differences appeared between Mondrian and Van Doesburg and in August 1924 they agreed to no longer meet and correspond only if necessary (Blotkamp 1990: 27–35; White 2009: 71). The maelstrom within the group was depicted in a table of “Principieele medewerkers aan De Stijl” [Principal contributors to De Stijl] published in a special issue commemorating the tenth anniversary of De Stijl in 1927. Alongside factual contributors to De Stijl, it also names Van Doesburg’s two pseudonyms.

Besides De Stijl – which became the primary focus of the post-war avant-garde historiography and became synonymous with Dutch (contributions to) modern art (cf. Jaffé 1956) – the Dutch avant-garde scene was influenced and reflected by other periodicals, including, among others Mécano (1922–192[4]), The Next Call (1923–1926), Het Woord (1925–1926) and Internationale Revue i10 (1927–1929).

The Next Call was published in Groningen by Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman. After some turbulence in his personal and professional life, Werkman established his own magazine which included audacious typographical and printmaking experiments as well as poems and texts. The Next Call had nine issues which were printed in an innovative technique based on Werkman’s experiments with a traditional manually operated printing press. Partly due to financial and organizational obstacles, Werkman made use of a wide range of materials which he came across in his workplace, and in doing so elevating the printing itself to an artistic creative process (Martinet 1995: 7–9).

Even though the character, lifespan and scale of The Next Call differed greatly from De Stijl (the former remained a small local magazine while the latter aimed to become an international well-known platform of the avant-garde), they shared one key similarity: a devoted editor whose persistency and personal energy enabled its creation and functioning. Werkman ran The Next Call – one of the most creative, colourful and cohesive avant-garde journals – practically alone, with only four Dutch artists contributing to it (Jan Wiegers, Job Hansen, Wobbe Alkema and Jan van der Zee, all related to the Groningen-based De Ploeg group). However, he made several attempts to engage more artists and to broaden the magazine’s international reception, which can be seen in his correspondence, journals and a list of addresses to twenty-three magazines and twenty-one artists, serving as the mailing list of The Next Call to a wide range of magazines including Polish Blok and Zwrotnica.

Figure 1 H.N. Werkman’s list of addresses to congenial formations and artists (source: Collectie SMA; WA, inv. nr. 110)

Het Woord [The word]³ was a short-lived magazine published in The Hague by Jan Demets in cooperation with Jan de Vries, Lajos von Ebenteh, Herwarth Walden, Ljubomir Micić and Edgar du Perron. It was an anti-traditionalist, internationally oriented magazine. Its four issues included contributions from several foreign artists – which, besides Walden and Micić, also included Hannah Höch, Vilmos Huszár and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (his earlier unpublished work appeared in the last issue). Initially Het Woord was largely based on the German Metz and Van Doesburg’s publications, but the following issues gained a more Constructivist-oriented character, in line with De Driehoek’s profile. It was also the first Dutch magazine that cooperated with Du Perron (Entrop and Verhoeff 1997: 3–6), and it was in Het Woord where Du Perron decided to kill off his literary alter-ego Duco Perkens and to publish under his own name – Het Woord 2 included Perkens’s fake obituary.

The Amsterdam-based Internationale Revue i10 was led by Arthur Müller-Lehning, who established the journal in collaboration with Oud, Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy. Twenty-two issues of i10 were published featuring a wide range of various articles and works of some former contributors to De Stijl such as Oud, Vantongerloo, Rietveld and Huszár, alongside Le Corbusier, Arp, Behne and Kandinsky. The international orientation of this journal was visible in the scope of its texts written in Dutch, German and French. Notably, none of Van Doesburg’s works or texts were published in i10, due to his personal conflicts with other contributors to i10 (Müller-Lehning 1979: 3). Van Doesburg did however contribute to other magazines, such as Het Getij [The tide; Amsterdam, 1916–1924], De Bouwwereld [The building world; Amsterdam 1902–1924] and Het Bouwbedrijf [The building industry; The Hague, 1924–1947]. Under the pseudonym I.K. Bonset he also published the Dadaist magazine Mécano (1922–192[4]).

Van Doesburg made use of Mécano both as a means to praise his own viewpoints by creating a fake proponent, and as a platform allowing him to express his strong opinions without much restraint and to criticise other artists or movements, as he did for instance in his “. . . waar de maes K en Scheldwoorden vloeien . . .” (Mesens 1923).⁴ Later he planned – unsuccessfully – to launch a new journal Code with Seuphor (see below) and subsequently in 1930 he published the first and only issue of Art Concret [Concrete art] in cooperation with Otto Carlsund, Jean Hélion, Marcel Wantz and Léon Tutundjian. Shortly before his death in March 1931 Van Doesburg got involved (together with Auguste Herbin, Jean Hélion, Georges Vantongerloo and Étienne Béothy) in an international artistic group Abstraction-Création based in Paris (between 1932 and 1936 five issues of Abstraction-Création. Art non-figuratif were published).

The Belgian avant-garde produced a very wide spectrum of little magazines, among others Het Overzicht (1921–1925) , Anthologie du Groupe Moderne d’Art de Liège (1921–1940), 7 Arts. Journal hebdomadaire d’information et de critique (1922–1928) or De Driehoek. Maandschrift voor Konstruktivistische Kunst (1925–1926).

Het Overzicht [The overview] was established in Antwerp in June 1921 by Geert Pijnenburg and Fernand Louis Berckelaers (who later adopted the pseu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Plates
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations of Consulted Institutions and Repositories
• Introduction
• 1 Polish, Belgian and Dutch Avant-Garde Formations, their Mutual Contacts and Cultural Mobility within the International Network of Groups and Periodicals
• 2 Avant-Garde Manifestos and Programmatic Statements — Inspirations, Parallels and Dissimilarities
• 3 "What we do is no imitation, but an effort parallel to ..." — Selected Works of Art and Architecture as Representation of Mutual Influences and Similarities
• Closing Remarks
• References
• Appendix
• Index