Figure 1: Nature morte à la pile d’assiettes, 1920.
Throughout the 1920s, the notion that architecture was experienced through an act of optical, sequential engagement became a central preoccupation for Le Corbusier. It was to evidence itself in his various attempts at introducing what we may call “paths of perception” into his work. At times, this was to manifest itself it terms of spiral staircases or ramps intended to lead people between levels in fluid movements. More commonly however, the “architectural promenade” would manifest itself as a complex system of spatial linkage, like paths, bridges, walkways, etc. These would oblige visitors to his buildings to take in multiple perspectives through an evolving sequence of spatial interactions as they walked.
Evident at the Villa Stein-de-Monzie and the Villa la Roche, it is a characteristic that has been discussed in detail by Geoffrey Baker and Geoffrey Marcus. Baker describes how people move through the Villa Stein-de-Monzie: “the route from the roof terrace to the garden is an elaborate progression which starts on the top of the half cylindrical enclosed area, then moves out to the front, piercing the barrier plane as it returns inside before descending to the raised terrace by traversing the north and east sides”. At key points, he also identifies that it “creates specific views at tree top level”.23 Marcus describes something similar at the Villa la Roche: “a controlled climb along twisting ramps and staircases that open onto set vistas and reveal calculated moments of visual excitement”.24
Such was the intention of Le Corbusier, suggests Marcus, that the Villa la Roche is best described in photographic sequences such as that published in Almanach d’architecture moderne, 1925; images he describes as “drawing the reader along the walkway into the central hall, up the staircase to the dining room and ultimately culminating on the terrace with a framed vista of the neighbouring properties”25 (Fig. 2). What such descriptions suggest is that, in addition to being a polemicist, a provocateur for industrialisation and an architect working in the medium of painting, Le Corbusier’s work of the 1920s demonstrates an interest in framed views and the notion of movement sequences, features that help understand his later relationship with, and interest in, the work of Sergei Eisenstein.
Figure 2: The Villa La Roche, hall and staircase seen from hall, as presented in photographic sequence. Almanach d’architecture moderne, Paris. 1926.
Filmic architecture in the Constructivist Soviet Union
At the time the Parisian-based Le Corbusier was using painting to develop his approach to architectural composition and the notion of movement in the architectural promenade, the art of post-revolutionary Russia was capturing the world’s imagination from the other side of Europe. Even prior to the revolution however, Russian artists had taken up the radical ideas of Western European art and architecture.26 Futurism was certainly a major influence, as was Cubism. As a result of the latter, French-based artists and designers were of particular significance.27 Through both these channels came what may be called an “obsession with movement” that had been absorbed, and completely assimilated, by the mid-late 1920s when Le Corbusier first visited the Soviet Union.
In this context, the painters of the period were regularly producing works imbued with a sense of motion: Kazimir Malevich’s Woman with Water Palis: Dynamic Arrangement, 1912; Luibov Popova’s Pictorial Architectonic, 1918; Alexander Rodchenko’s Line Composition, 1920, being just a few.28 In sculpture, these experiments were repeated with equal propensity; Georgii Stenberg’s KPS 13, 1919; Naum Gabo’s Linear Construction in Space No 2, 1917 and Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine’s Symphony No. 1, 1913, being standard examples.29 In architecture too, the obsession with kinetic form had taken hold early and was most famously evident in Vladimir Tatlin’s proposed Monument of the Third Communist International, 1919. It was however, also reflected in the dynamic compositional approaches of projects such Nikolai Ladovsky’s Collective Housing Project, 1920 and El Lissitsky’s Proun IA Bridge I, 1919, amongst many others.30
It was not in painting, sculpture or architecture, however, that artists would most successfully capture the contemporary interest of imbuing static form with a sense of movement, what Nicolas Pevsner called “the realization of our spatial perception of the world”31. On the contrary, it was in film. For the earliest experimental filmmakers of the Russian-Soviet period, such as Vsevolod Podovkin, film offered the opportunity to creatively rupture space and time in order to dramatise events. For Lev Kuleschov this ability to fragment space and events would offer film the opportunity to unleash a new visual language and a new approach to narrative construction. For Dziga Vertov, it would alter “our perception of the world” and everyday events32 whilst also manipulating the “mechanics of the eye”.33 Vertov differed from Pudovkin and Kuleschov, however, in one crucial way. For Vertov, film was a documentary medium, whilst for the others it was a narrative form. This differentiation would prove to be particularly fractious in the relationship between Vertov and the Soviet narrative director par excellence, Sergei Eisenstein. With a background in theatre, Eisenstein’s crossing of disciplines would not mean the loss of dramaturgy. For him, film was about more than “filming reality”; it was about creating dramatic effects and producing emotional responses. As a result, he was categorised as “an artist” and, as such, would be intensely criticised from the functionalist wing of Constructivism in general, and by Vertov in particular. Indeed, Vertov went as far as “declaring war” on staged films, a category in which Eisenstein’s work would most definitely fall.34
More important than the name calling of the period however, are the characteristics of Eisenstein’s films that led to this charge. Eisenstein sought to transcend the documentary nature of the “objective” filmic image through the creation and manipulation of “staged” shots.35 This meant individual images could be manipulated through the use of stage sets, dramatic lighting, musical scores, etc. The individual shots were to be given the freedom to function as emotive images in and of themselves. However, they were also intended to be arranged by the director into sequences.36 These sequences were to be read coherently, would lead to an overall concluded story and were to be capable of inducing predetermined “emotive responses” in an audience.37
Expanding on these ideas years later, Gilles Deleuze explains Eisenstein’s montage sequences, and the relationship they sought between individual parts and a greater whole, through the metaphor of the Golden Section.38 In outlining Eisenstein criticism of D.W. Griffiths, Deleuze identifies that Eisenstein argues for a “dialectical use of montage”; a “unity of production or organism that leads individual shots to a final overall image or argument”.39 In stressing montage sequences as “organisms”, Deleuze uses the idea of an “organic spiral” which, he underlines, is drawn according to the proportional logic of the Golden Section. He thus suggests that Eisenstein’s films are intended as narratives and formal sequences that evolve from a specific starting point to a broader overall argument or image in a coherent, understandable and logical way.
In introducing a metaphor resonant in architectural circles, Deleuze reiterates Eisenstein’s own architectural analogies. Most notably evident in his 1938 text Montage and Architecture, Eisenstein uses the work of the architectural historian Auguste Choisy, whose drawings were also used by Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture, to propose that architecture operates as a form of sequential narrative montage.40 In this reading, architecture offers an understanding of events as something we perceive, experience and engage with along both a spatial and a temporal path. Referencing Choisy’s interest in the nature of architectural experience as a phenomenon involving a moving viewer, Eisenstein describes the imagery captured by the eye and the lens as a form of peripatetic vision.
Quoting extensively from Choisy’s Histoire d’architecture, in which the historian describes the visual experience of a walking visitor to the Acropolis,41 Eisenstein suggests that the viewer’s engagement with architecture becomes one of glimpses, partial views and momentary glances in se
quence, a form of “montage computation within an architectural ensemble”. In developing this argument he goes on to identify that the journey followed by the cinematic eye involves taking the viewer along an imaginary path that works its way through a series of objects and, in doing so, “diverse impressions pass in front of the immobile spectator”. By way of analogy, and contrast, the path followed by the “architectural eye” involves “the spectator passing through a series of carefully disposed phenomena which are absorbed in order with the visual sense”.42 What they fundamentally share, however, is the notion of path, or what we may call in Le Corbusier’s terms, the promenade.
The clarity with which Eisenstein’s architectural analogy echoes with Le Corbuiser’s work is underlined if we return to some of Le Corbusier’s own words. In Vers une architecture, he discusses, in the context of student architects, the notion of the “plan as illusion”. He says ... “when at schools they (students) draw axis in the shape of a star, they imagine that the spectator arriving in front of a building is aware of it alone, and that his eye must infallibly follow and remain exclusively fixed on the centre of gravity determined by these axis”. However, in reality…“the human eye, in its investigations, is always on the move and the beholder himself is always turning right and left, and shifting about”.43
Elsewhere he describes architecture as a movement sequence: “…you enter and the architectural spectacle at once offers itself to the eye; you follow an itinerary and the views develop with great variety; you play with the flood of light illuminating the walls or creating half lights…Here, reborn for our modern eyes are historical architectural events; pilotis, the horizontal window, the roof garden, the glass façade”.44 On other occasions he would describe the same phenomenon through recourse to historical examples such as what he calls, “Arabian architecture”; “…Arabian architecture gives us a precise lesson. It is appreciated by walking, on foot; it is by walking, by moving, that one sees the order of architecture developing”.45 Repeating the characteristics mentioned earlier in descriptions of Le Corbusier’s work by Baker and Marcus, these explanations clearly underline the similarities of concept evident in the ideas of Le Corbusier and Sergei Eisenstein. For both men, architecture and film are seen as controlled, sequential experiences of events and views, whether that be for the eye or for its prosthetic replacement, the film camera.
Le Corbusier and Eisenstein on the “cinematic promenade”
What these descriptions by both Eisenstein and Le Corbusier indicate is an analogous interest in the sequential movement theme. In addition to this, however, we can also discern a number of other general analogies between the two men, both worked in cross-disciplinary ways, both showed an interest in the specific shot or vista and both were concerned with the emotive potential of their work. For Eisenstein, this manifested itself in his concern with narrative drama, whilst for Le Corbuiser it was evident in his concern for the “masterly and magnificent play of masses brought together in light”.46 Indeed, this emotive interest was at the heart of the criticism both men received from the functionalist wings of Constructivism and elsewhere.47 Underlying and superimposed on all of this, however, was a much more personal chemistry that existed between the two; a chemistry that emerged when they first met in October 1928.
By the time Le Corbusier visited Moscow for the first time in late 1928, he would most certainly have been aware of Eisenstein’s work; Eisenstein had become an instant celebrity and Soviet spokesperson abroad after the critical acclaim awarded to his 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin.48 Given the extensive coverage that Le Corbusier had received in the art and architecture circles of the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s, Eisenstein too would certainly have been aware of Le Corbusier.49 Indeed, he is said to have owned a German translation of Vers une Architecture.50 Furthermore, one of the architects to accompany Le Corbusier throughout his stay in Moscow was Andrei Burov, a young architect who had recently designed stage sets for Eisenstein’s film The General Line.51
It was Burov who introduced the two men at a private screening of The Battleship Potemkin organised at Le Corbusier’s request, in which he also saw four reels of a work in progress; the film later released under the title The Old and the New.52 The warmth between the two men after this screening is clear from Le Corbusier’s dedication in a copy of L’art décratif d’aujourd’hui he left to the filmmaker…“To M. Eisenstein, this dedication after Potemkin and The Straight Line. I seem to think as M. Eisenstein does when he makes films. Spirit of truth, a coat of whitewash, two chapters that express the same conviction. Why, my deepest sympathy and highest regard”.53
Beyond the good nature and deliberate play of words with Eisenstein’s “General” and Le Corbusier’s “Straight Line” however, the dedication gives little indication of the nature of the thinking that Le Corbusier saw as concomitant between them. More light would be shed on this in an interview he gave on the same trip that was subsequently published in Paris. In it he states…“Architecture and cinema are the only two arts of our time. In my own work I seem to think as Eisenstein does in films. I should like to take this opportunity to express all my admiration for Eisenstein’s principle of freeing events from all that is uncharacteristic or insignificant. This insistence on essentials not only raises his work beyond mere narrative but also raises everyday events that escape our attention to the level of monumental images, for instance, the procession of The General Line, with its “dynamic porticos” of advancing icons and the sculptural quality of its figures”.54
Emphasising the functional and the artistic qualities of Eisentein’s work (“the freedom from all that is insignificant”, on the one hand, and the “monumental imagery”, on the other) Corbusier gives a sense of their shared sensibilities. However, it is in Le Corbusier’s reference to “the procession of advancing icons” that we glimpse their shared interest in the sequential filmic path and architectural promenade most clearly. When taken in conjunction with Eisenstein’s subsequent text, Montage and Architecture, and Le Corbusier’s descriptions of architecture as “an experience in movement”, it would not be difficult to add to Le Corbusier’s initial dedication of “spirit of truth and a coat of whitewash”, a third point of similarity between their work – one expressing their shared interest in the idea of a “cinematic promenade”.
In response to this meeting, and the relationship that stemmed from it, Eisenstein was to praise Le Corbusier numerous times in the years to come. This was particularly evident when the architect was subject to the criticism of “artist” from the functional wing of the Soviet Constructivists, a charge he was himself all too familiar with.55 Whatever the specifics of their relationship however, and however abstract Le Corbusier’s description of their commonalities was in 1928, it is undeniably through the sense of sequential experience that their work finds its most obvious and fruitful resonances when viewed from the distance of time. This would be clearly evident some ten years later in Eisenstein’s text Montage and Architecture. More interestingly however, it was also evident in the project – the Villa Savoye, Poissy, Paris – Le Corbusier was in the process of developing when the two men first met. Commissioned in the spring of that year, Tim Benton has documented the development of its design in drawings from October to December 1928. These drawings show that Le Corbusier was considering various ideas for its internal planning before finally deciding on the use of the promenade as a principal feature in December56 (Fig. 3).
Figure 3: Redrawn ground and first floor plans of the Villa Savoye. 17 December, 1928.
As identified by Baker and Marcus, the Villas Moize-de-Steine and La Roche were both characterised by the idea of the promenade. However, in these projects its manifestation is general and more subtle than in the Villa Savoye; the buildings and their immediate surroundings are conceived as interconnected spaces and paths that allow a route to be weaved through them by an itinerant and exploring visitor. At the Villa Savoye by contrast, the latent sequential path through these buil
dings becomes manifest in a literal ramp that does more than suggest a route; it literally demarcates the route and leaves very few options to the visitor, who is confronted with the ramp’s starting point immediately upon entering the building.
Whilst most of Le Corbusier’s private projects of this period employ the notion of the “architectural promenade”, and although they have all subsequently been described in terms of “views and movements in sequence”, none of these projects foregrounds the “promenade” in a way that compares to the Villa Savoye – the icon of the Modern Movement.57 Commissioned in September 1928 as the country retreat of the Savoye family, the original design was subject to modifications as late as the spring of 1929. Construction began in the summer of that year and the clients finally moved into the house in 1931. By the end of the year, they were locking horns with Le Corbusier over the failings in its construction.58
The Architecture of the Screen Page 26
