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Le Corbusier, Architect of the Century: Rediscovery of a Seminal Force of Our Age
| Article
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12570 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1987 |
2,158 Words |
| Author
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George Szamuely
George Szamuely writes for Commentary and The Wall Street
Journal. He is a former editor of the Times Literary
Supplement. |
The centenary of the birth of that remarkable architect Le Corbusier is being celebrated by a special exhibition of his work at the Hayward Gallery in London. Le Corbusier was as much a propagandist as an artist; his theoretical pronouncements were as influential as any of his buildings. Rightly, the exhibition concentrates as much on the diagrams that never left the exercise book, the sketches that never left the drawing board, the grandiose plans that never amounted to anything more than the excited talk of the salon as on his completed projects.
More important than anything he built was perhaps his championing the cause of Modernism. Modern art for Le Corbusier was not merely a matter of experimenting with new forms but of creating new symbols that would both express and fulfill the material and spiritual aspirations of modern man. The artist of today, according to Le Corbusier, was to take the place of the religious prophet of yesterday. Having had a privileged vision of the future, it was now his onerous responsibility to make use of his skills at creating beautiful sounds, shapes, and colors to lead the rest of mankind to the Promised Land.
Since of all the arts, architecture was the one most intimately involved in the organization of men's lives, the architect was to be the leader of the citizens of the modern world. The city of the future would have to accord with the spirit of the future - it would be the outward manifestation of the inner essence of the future. "The house...is a machine for living in," Le Corbusier thundered. "It is a machine," he went on, "destined to serve as a useful aid for rapidity and precision in our work, a tireless and thoughtful machine to satisfy the needs of the body: comfort."
But Le Corbusier (1887-1965) was a child of his time. The salvation that he sought in urban planning, others sought and found in the messianic political movements of the Left and the Right in which the figure of the prophet was assumed by the politician instead of the artist. And it was Le Corbusier's confrontation with these eschatological rivals that caused him to revise many of his earlier designs and ideas. By the time he died, many of his followers had become disenchanted with the Master.
Le Corbusier was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in the Swiss watchmaking town of La Chaux-de-Fonds. The family was Protestant. His mother was a musician and his father an engraver of watchcases. He did not adopt the pseudonym Le Corbusier until 1920, by which time he had become the leader of a movement. (The name is a play
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