When Charles-Edouard Jeanneret approached the Parthenon at age twenty-three, he stalled and then hurled himself ahead, prolonged the pleasure and then recoiled from it, all because the event was so overwhelming. In this athletic, balanced, vibrant, faceless building, Le Corbusier created a monument for the twentieth century of no less force and majesty than the temples of ancient Athens (see color plate 6).
3
In February 1929, Le Corbusier visited his now sixty-nine-year-old mother in Vevey. She wrote Albert that he “installed an electric light above the coal bin, a necessity in what had been such a dark hole. But his visit was not confined to such aesthetic matters…and we have spent two days of perfect intimacy together, reading Sainte-Beuve’s Portraits of Women, which Le Corbusier read aloud in a very clear voice to his delighted Maman while the latter was mending the thumbs and other fingers of her fireplace gloves.”3
At last he was devoting himself to her needs: “Edouard has now realized that not only is there the noise of the road behind the house, but on one side as well, so that I am really surrounded—he really must make sound-proof walls on all sides…. Edouard has also explained about Colombo’s bill. Thanks to him for that—I know it costs him so much time and thought.”4
With an improved relationship to his mother, Le Corbusier was ebullient. He was certain the Moscow project was going ahead, and he considered himself impervious to the economic downshifts that were soon to lead to worldwide depression. In April he wrote Marie, “The crash doesn’t affect us. Work comes in from all sides, increasingly interesting. Actually life is enthralling.” He was not blind to what was happening, just confident in his own power. “Terrible events are occurring and hard times coming! The old world must do what it can.”5
4
To his mother, Le Corbusier could reveal his frenzy and fears as well as his braggadocio. To Yvonne, he showed his heart and vulnerability. The combination stabilized him, providing rare understanding and acceptance in a world that often pounced on him.
The good relationship of these two completely different women with each other became essential to Le Corbusier. That spring, Marie Jeanneret visited Paris—as she now did periodically—to see Albert and his family and Charles-Edouard and Yvonne. Marie had come to accept her younger son’s live-in mistress, writing Albert that Yvonne was “always full of affection” and had a “really splendid countenance, the true Arlésienne type.”6 Shortly after her return to Vevey, Le Corbusier wrote her,
I have a very gay and enthusiastic memory of your stay in Paris. How I love my dear Maman! I’d have liked to spoil you, to overwhelm you with attentions, but I could only surround you with affectionate thoughts. I’m a slave to the terrible times. And if I freed myself, I should slip and fall. The kingdom of necessity! Each hour, each minute must be utilized, fecundated. The playing-field has grown so much larger. And ideas swarm, ever greater. I know that ultimately, and in spite of everything, the earth turns. But our fragile happiness, far from being found in luxury, money, worldliness, is here with me, within me, and we must be strong to help the weaker ones. Yvonne is loyal, kind, extremely attached. A constant, vigilant presence. An ever-watchful heart. What luck, simultaneous with the risks of another attempt. We must know when to stop and when to say: this is the right way. She is a little wild creature, skittish as a gazelle, and yet possessed of a very special kind of courage, a resistance, a violence I prefer to any subservience.
You were very good with her. Thank you for that…. Good night dear Maman. Your D.D.7
WHEN LE CORBUSIER wrote Yvonne during his travels, he used short sentences that resemble the text of a children’s book. She was “Mademoiselle Vvon,” “Petit VV,” “Petit Vonvon,” “Petit Von,” “Petit Vvon” while he mostly remained “DD” or “ton Dou.” He never went into any issue in depth, as he did to his mother or Ritter, and simply gave a general summary of his latest activities and let her know how he was. “All the kisses on earth” was his typical way of signing off.8
He was rarely serious, except about money and her need to take care of herself. But under the guise of playfulness and in his telegraphic language, Le Corbusier sometimes was more direct and truthful with Yvonne than when he addressed a larger audience or tried to seem literary. On a return trip to Moscow in June 1929, he wrote, “In Russia, this is how it is: the Eskimos play under the cactuses, the pilotis make the revolution, vodka is for washing, speeches slake thirst, and the Ideal continues. It is cold, but I am warm at heart. All’s well, regards and salutes from everyone here.”9
Yvonne, from a poor family, used to financial struggles, would, he believed, understand this sense of hope about the new Russia.
THE GLOBE-TROTTING ARCHITECT and the former dressmaker’s assistant were growing even closer. By that June, Le Corbusier wrote Yvonne, from La Petite Maison, declaring how happy he would be to have her see the house.
Yvonne’s relationship with the woman who likened her to van Gogh’s beautiful dark-haired “l’Arlésienne” was also strengthening. She spent months that spring making for Marie Jeanneret a smocklike blouse decorated with a flower pattern. Le Corbusier wanted to make sure that his mother adequately acknowledged his girlfriend’s efforts. Even after his mother had written Yvonne a card to thank her, he wrote back, “It was a vast undertaking accomplished with perseverance and taste. You must look charming in it. You and your flowers—it must look very pretty, at the water’s edge.”10 The peasant-style blouse was probably far too youthful in style for its wearer, but Yvonne deemed it perfect for the conservatively dressed, old-fashioned lady from the mountains.
Le Corbusier enumerated his mistress’s virtues to his mother. He pointed out that while he had been traveling to the Soviet Union and elsewhere, “Vonvon has had bad times alone in the house, but she has a stubborn little philosophy, and she resists. Moreover she is used to my being far away at my work. The house is charming, clean as a whistle; each time I return I’m like a fox in his lair.”11
In a letter that crossed his in the mail, his mother had written of “how much pleasure this pretty blouse has given me and how useful it will be.”12 Coming from Marie Jeanneret, it was a major step forward.
5
Yvonne’s letters to her boyfriend’s mother were written in perfect schoolgirl’s penmanship, the capital letters embellished with curlicues, in lines that were ruler straight. Addressing the older woman as “Chère petite maman,” thus making herself a member of the family, Yvonne regularly told Marie Jeanneret that every single day she was thinking of her. She referred periodically to the blouse, in one letter saying how happy she was that it fit well: “As for the bill, I am a grande couturière who enjoys offering the new fashion to dear Mamans as nice as you are.”13
Yvonne provided a picture of everyday life on the rue Jacob. In mid-June 1929, she wrote that she was making two gingham dresses to have them ready for her and Edouard’s departure for Le Piquey on July 15. She recognized, though—after he had made a second trip to Moscow—that the work that had piled up by the time he returned at the end of June would probably push back their travel date.
Yvonne was doing everything she could to ensure her role as a dutiful member of the family. Lotti was away, and in order to spend more time with Albert, Yvonne intended to get her driver’s license, which would make it easier to get out to his house, so far away in the sixteenth arrondissement. She began writing Marie Jeanneret with increased frequency—telling her what color skirts to wear with the blouse, when to wear it puffed out, and when it should be tucked in tight—and assured her that she would like to see her. But Le Corbusier’s mother did not write back. On August 10, the architect wrote her anxiously, “What does your silence mean?” After reminding her of his and Yvonne’s overtures, he continued, “Your big baby Albert is no longer there to fill your days. How about a word to console the younger son?”14
Yvonne was, Le Corbusier assured his mother, “loved by everyone here.” Now he and she, together, proposed that Marie make a
plan to come to Paris to celebrate New Year’s, although it was still half a year away. After all, much as he adored his mistress, his mother’s position was unassailable: “I think of you every day. I expect your letter every noon. A word, a card, if you please.”15 Occasionally she replied—mainly to report on the leaking roof.
LE CORBUSIER regularly listed his achievements for his mother. Once he and Yvonne got to Le Piquey at the end of August, he told her that besides being asked to design a forty-two-story skyscraper in the United States, he swam every day and had the perfect girlfriend who allowed him to be himself. “Yvonne is the darling little elf who knows how to let me be free in my initiatives,” he informed his mother.16 Three weeks later, he added, in a similar vein, “Vonvon is extremely accommodating and nice: she makes all our undertakings easy.”17 This was his constant message to his remaining parent: that Yvonne was an essential ingredient in his ability to succeed.
On vacation at Le Piquey, late 1920s
ON SEPTEMBER 3, Yvonne herself wrote another long letter to Marie, explaining that while Le Corbusier was in South America, where he was about to embark on a major effort to promulgate his urbanism, she would be at home sewing and embroidering, following designs he had drawn for her to work on in his absence: “Dear Maman, I’ve begun my bedspread, green linen with big stars sewn with different yarns, just dazzling! It’s taking a long time but it’s not tiresome work. I’ll have plenty to do during his absence, and the time will seem shorter.”18 She was also canning cornichons and onions and trying new ideas for her makeup and hair.
It was just what Le Corbusier wanted.
XXIX
1
Le Corbusier had been invited to Argentina and Brazil to give a series of lectures and to help develop urban schemes for Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. On September 13, 1929, he boarded the train in Paris for the port of Bordeaux. Albert, Pierre, and Yvonne accompanied him to the Gare d’Orsay.
Yvonne wrote to Le Corbusier’s mother later that day. She was sad to think of his being away for two months and was worried that he might be seasick, but Albert was coming for dinner, and she was going to make him ravioli, one of the older brother’s favorite dishes. They would also have some of the peaches and pears Marie Jeanneret regularly sent to the rue Jacob; “ever so many thanks for all your kindnesses!” Yvonne wrote Le Corbusier’s mother.1
After settling into his stateroom, Le Corbusier disembarked briefly to post a letter to Yvonne before his ship, the Massilia, departed. His porter had won a bet because he had been the first person to board. “Kisses all around, keep your spirits up,” he wrote. “Everything promises for the best. From your dd.”2
Le Corbusier adored the ship. With its architecture based primarily on necessity, it provided a vantage point for splendid vistas. After two days at sea, he sent his mother a letter, which would be mailed from Lisbon, in which he compared the journey to a dream. The Massilia was “a miracle of modern construction and organization.” On this journey that cost only twenty thousand francs round-trip, there were splendid fresh flowers in the dining room, an admirable style of service he termed “marine-française,” and superb cooking.3 How restful this means of travel was; how magnificent the setting! The change from his normally packed schedule thrilled him, and he relished the opportunity to get more than four hours of sleep per night. He was even happier gliding slowly across the ocean’s surface than he had been soaring through the sky. His only frustration was that there was no swimming pool; while seeing water all the time, there was none he could enter.
Le Corbusier decided to work with a private trainer. He was enjoying the people he met on board—an old Argentinian minister and the wife of a great poet, left unnamed, whom he had met initially at the house of the duchess of Dato—and, except for one of his frequent colds (he kept his mother informed of the extent to which his nose was stuffed), life was perfect. He assured Marie Jeanneret, however, that he had not forgotten the problems she was having with the leaks at La Petite Maison. But he begged her to have perspective: “You must realize that life has other purposes. That so many things can change. And above all, that there’s no need to fuss over situations that are immutable. This was always your weakness and Papa’s: a certain inflexibility.”4
After ten days at sea, Le Corbusier penned a second report: “I must repeat my philosophy lessons: take life as it comes, welcoming the good and acknowledging the bad as inevitable. But for yourself, in your life, let the scale tip toward the good,” he instructed. It was his prelude to a diatribe about the haute bourgeoisie who constituted the two hundred first-class passengers: “diamonds and fake diamonds, toothpicks at the ready, etc.” Having tired of the passengers he had initially liked, he had stopped attending the nightly parties: “I am unsociable in ‘bourgeois’ circles. I have a sense of emptiness confronting such people, who have no thoughts or who think other people’s thoughts. Impossible contacts and frequentations.”5
What he did enjoy were the afternoon performances of “théâtre Guignol,” the famous puppet show for children in which the clever Guignol beats the stupid policeman, Gnafron. Anyone who could defeat a bureaucrat was worth watching.
2
With Le Corbusier away, Yvonne dined regularly with his traveling companion of his earlier years, Auguste Klipstein, as well as with Albert and Pierre. But of everyone in Le Corbusier’s circle, her favorites were the couple she referred to as “M. and Mme. Léger,” who invited her to their farm in Normandy. Yvonne loved drinking local milk, eating fresh eggs, and sitting in front of a large fire with these good-natured people who made her loneliness more bearable.
Once Le Corbusier was in Buenos Aires, his days were charged from early morning to late at night. He gave lectures to university faculty, had tea with the American ambassadress, and met prominent people, among them Victoria Ocampo, for whom he had begun, in Paris, to design a large house on a beautiful site on the Argentinian coast.
Le Corbusier considered Ocampo one of his most enlightened clients to date. He had met this sophisticated and well-connected rich woman in Paris after the Comtesse Adela Cuevas de Vera had written to Le Corbusier on her behalf in August 1928. Ocampo had told him that she wanted a house like his villa at Garches; she also had organized his upcoming lecture tour. The design he gave her was full of his and his associates’ new furniture designs, with a wonderful large salon and dining area punctuated by columns and a form at its center that resembled an igloo, which contained the bathroom.
Le Corbusier was also developing an urban scheme for Tucumán, a small city in the north. But while Argentinian high society and selected individuals were on his side, the Argentinian government was not receptive to his proposals. His new hope lay farther away. The American ambassadress suggested that when Le Corbusier went to New York, where he had a possible skyscraper project, he visit President Hoover in Washington.
Writing his mother from the Majestic Hotel in Buenos Aires, Le Corbusier believed, or hoped his mother would believe, that this interview he expected to be granted with the new president would enable him to discuss yet again the “world city”—meaning the League of Nations.6 Perhaps it was not too late for him to win the Geneva commission after all. And in America there was no end of potential for his ideas on urbanism.
The United States was the land of promise. The secretary at the American embassy was “an immigrant of Slavic origin, extremely intelligent, very strong, a splendid type. As for Oklahoma, I’m told that these westerners are remarkable, taking very practical views so that now there’s a tremendous new development in the far west. Both of us feel that here on American terrain everything works amazingly well. Tremendous power, though lack of culture.”7
Attracted as he was to what was raw and uncouth—and having settled on Oklahoma as his image of a place of pure unfettered energy—for the moment Le Corbusier was impressed with himself for having made it into the refined bastions of upper-class Argentinian living. He had lunch at the Buenos Aires Jockey C
lub—he told his mother it was the wealthiest in the world—where paintings by Corot, Monet, and Goya hung on the walls. He mocked the pretentiousness, but he was proud to be invited.
Once again, the adventurous architect flew in an airplane and wrote his mother about it: “Tuesday night [October 23], got up at 2:30 a.m., then the plane took off for Paraguay, where I had been invited. First trip made with visitors. We are ten. Average speed: 220 km an hour. This plane is the new model, making its first major flight, a crossing of 1200 km, altitude 500, 1000, and 2000 meters. Amazing trip over the center of South America. Colossal rivers widened by flooding: they seem to be bays. The experience of a virgin nature. Plains of complete silence, meandering rivers and their constant modifications. Here and there, checkerboard cities, farming, cattle. Palms, groves, herds of cows, horses. Water everywhere. Images we traverse, flying under and over. Disturbing melancholy. Mold! It’s the same mold as in jam pots; no doubt about it, mold on a huge scale. Asunción, center of Spanish and Indian America. Violent red earth, intense verdure, enormous trees. Yellow and pink violets. Poetry everywhere. The houses are adorable: Le Piquey in the tropics. Le Lait de Chaux and flowers. Pink, red, and yellow facades. Etc. etc. A day and a half. Overwhelming return, pure sky, enormous America!”8
It was one of those moments Le Corbusier periodically experienced—when he was not demolished by anguish. Intoxicated with earthly existence, he was overtaken by a surfeit of joy. He marveled at the ultimate new product of human intellect and impeccable engineering—the airplane—but, above all, at the inestimable magnificence of nature. The exuberance eventually showed up in the best of his architecture—Ronchamp, the assembly at Chandigarh, his rooftop in Marseille.
Concomitant with that effulgence of joy, Le Corbusier hated what was visually or morally corrupt. Mas de Planta, a beach resort, was monstrous, the Argentinian equivalent of the over-the-top French resort Deauville. Yet even there, he could dive into the pure depths of clear water. The product of landlocked Switzerland compared himself, not for the first time, to a porpoise. He could always avoid the abuses of the bourgeoisie by escaping to his underwater kingdom.
Le Corbusier Page 36
