CHAPTER 17 - Notes
[381]. See Malton, J., ‘Art Nouveau in Essex’, Architectural Review, CXXVI (1959), 100-4. For a considerably earlier and more extraordinary example of English work approaching the Art Nouveau, see Beazley, E., ‘Watts Chapel’, Architectural Review, CXXX (1961), 166-72. This chapel at Compton, Surrey, was designed in 1896 by Mary Watts, the widow of the painter G. F. Watts. The inspiration seems to have been predominantly Norse and Celtic.
[382]. See Gout, P., L’Architecture au XXe siècle et l’Art Nouveau, Paris, 1903.
[383]. See Hostingue, G. d’, Le Castel Béranger, œuvre de H. G., architecte, Paris, 1898.
[384]. Both the main façade and the principal interior are essentially the work of Deglane. Louvet and Thomas were more responsible for other elements of the complex structure.
[385]. See L’architecture moderne à Paris, concours de façades, 2 vols, Paris, 1901, 1902.
[386]. See Uhry, E., ‘Agrandissements des magasins de la Samaritaine’, L’Architecte, II (1907), 13-14, 20, plates X-XII.
[387]. I owe my knowledge of this remarkable façade to Martin Kermacy. He was unable to find out by whom and when it was built; it is very probably an early work of Josef Urban, Novotny informs me.
[388]. For another rather independent Scottish architect of this period, see Walker, D. M., ‘Lamond of Dundee’, Architectural Review, CXXIII (1958), 269-71.
[389]. See Scheichenbauer, M., Alfredo Campanini, Milan, 1958.
[390]. See Note [[259]], Chapter [11].
[391]. Among other things, it is Gaudi’s use of forms inspired by primitive architecture that has appealed to later twentieth-century taste. ‘Primitivism’ in painting and sculpture has been of recurrent importance since the days of the Fauves and the Expressionists; a comparable primitivism in architecture has been much rarer, except for Gaudí.
[392]. Except as regards the theories of vaulting exemplified in successive schemes for the Sagrada Familia and his church at Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Gaudí’s technical innovations have been until lately little studied despite the very considerable literature devoted to his work. Research is proving that he made many important innovations in structure over and above those so evident in the crypt—the only portion executed—of the Santa Coloma church. George Collins showed some of the results, as yet unpublished, of the latest studies in an exhibition at Columbia University in May 1962.
[393]. While the mosaic of broken fragments of patterned ceramic on the benches at the Parc Güell suggests Cubist collages and even Dada compositions—notably the Merzbilder of Kurt Schwitters—the handling of the coloured glass on this façade is closer to the paintings of Jackson Pollock and other New York artists of the 1950s.
[394]. A curious continuation, or more accurately revival, of Gaudian modes has of late occurred in Portuguese Africa. See Beinart, J., ‘Amancio Guedes, Architect of Lourenço Marques’, Architectural Review, CXXIX (1961), 240-51.
[395]. Even Gaudí after 1910 produced little, being almost wholly occupied with the slow progress of the Sagrada Familia. Of course, in a sense Horta is another exception; but his success after 1910 was of purely local significance and dependent on his total rejection of the Art Nouveau of his youth. One can only think of the later career of Giorgio de Chirico, still today a success in Italy but ignored by the outside world except when he imitates his earlier work.