Feste Des Lebens Und Der Kunst, Eine Betrachtung Des Theaters Als Hochsten Kultursymbols ( Festival of Life and Art: a Consideration of Theater as the Highes Cultural Symbol

Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs, 1900. Large 8vo, thick gray wrappers with title printed in black, flanked with design of gilt flames rising from urns. Slight stain on back cover else fine. Decorative frontispiece with a pair of caryatids bearing faceted crystals, title page, two borders and initial by Behrens. Printed in pale blue, crimson and brown on cream paper. Dedicated to the Kunstler-Kolonie, an artists' colony at Mathildenhohe near Darmstadt founded by Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse, which Behrens joined in 1899. He was a pioneer of 20th century architecture, an industrial designer, and in his earlier career a graphic artist and designer of jewelry, porcelain and furniture. This work is a Jugendstil theater manifesto heralding the advent of the new decorative style and its relation to the theater. It is a critique of the naturalist/realist theater style of the 19th century stage and its illustion of a fixed, single point perspective. Behrens believed that a dynamic theater space should overcome the rigid distinction between actor and audience and sublimate art and culture over raw nature. Building on Wagner's notion of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk), the new theater was to combine all the arts under a single roof, dominated by beautiful speech and movement, elevating art into life. Aynsley, Graphic Design in Germany, page 61:"(Behrens) gave equal consideration to typographic composition, letter initials and illustrations, as well as paper quality and binding." Harvard, Turn of a Century, 108: "Characteristic of Behrens and the Germans is the geometric control of the design with the repetitive curvilinear forms subordinated to a strict framework.". Printed and Pictorial Wrappers. Fine. Illus. by Peter Behrens. Large 8vo.