Le Corbusier

by Nicholas Fox Weber

The visitor was to enter via an underground tunnel. The walls would be membranes, some fixed, some movable, to allow for indefinite expansion in the form of a square spiral growing outward around the core. The issue of what one saw from the outside was virtually irrelevant. Additions could be built at any time; with one mason and one laborer permanently employed, the museum would be in the process of perpetual enlargement.

  Le Corbusier assumed that rich donors would underwrite the cost so the people at large could benefit.

  The donor of a picture can give the wall where his picture will be hung; two posts, two cross-beams, five or six joists, plus a few square yards of partition. And this tiny gift permits him to attach his name to the hall which houses his pictures. The museum is built in some suburb of Paris. It rises in the middle of a potato field or a beet field. If the site is magnificent, so much the better. If it is uglified by factory chimneys and the dormers of wretched housing developments, that doesn’t matter: by the construction of partition walls we will come to terms with…factory chimneys, etc., etc.

  My dear Zervos, such is the concept of our museum, which I have hitherto shared with no one. I’m giving it to you. Now it’s in the public domain. I wish you the best of luck.14

  Willing as he was to donate his architectural fees for something he believed in, Le Corbusier was furious at the manner of the bankers who in the same time period caused problems with his Immeuble Clarté in Geneva. The architect’s first apartment building, with forty-five two-story dwellings, the Clarté had cantilevered terraces, industrial windows, stovepipe stair railings, and no ornament whatsoever. Built by Edmond Wanner, an enlightened Geneva industrialist, it quickly became as popular as it was radical. But even after every apartment had been rented, the skeptical bankers who financed the project questioned whether the inhabitants of the building would still be happy there after twenty years. “The bank seems to be claiming that ordinary methods are doomed to an indisputable perpetuity, while everything progressive—and in this instance a particularly far-reaching kind of progressive—is doomed to certain death,” wrote Le Corbusier.15 Nonetheless, the building is still standing today.

  5

  At age forty-three, Le Corbusier began to dispense expertise even more vociferously than before. “Advance an argument, defend yourself, do not capitulate. Triumph!” he advised his mother, after telling her she must consult professional doctors and stop depending on natural medicine to deal with her frequent bouts of grippe. When Albert complained about the time constraints in completing a musical score, Le Corbusier informed their mother, “I told him: that’s what life is. And that’s how things get done. Someone who creates something always dances across a perilous tightrope. Man is capable of sublimating himself.”16

  For Le Corbusier himself, the feeling of walking on a tightrope was increasingly real. Alexandre de Senger was determined to prove that for Le Corbusier architecture and urbanism were merely a pretext, that his main objective was to preach communism and that his buildings were an attempt to further the Bolshevist cause. De Senger published a book, The Bolshevist Trojan Horse; the horse was Le Corbusier.17 Auguste Klipstein gave Le Corbusier a copy shortly after it was published.

  De Senger attacked L’Esprit Nouveau as “one of the most important magazines of Bolshevist propaganda,” pointing out that the review was read in Russia.18 Willfully misquoting Le Corbusier, De Senger claimed that in the magazine the architect had referred to the Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIV styles as “veritable corpses.” In truth, Le Corbusier had criticized the appropriation of these styles but not the styles themselves.19 De Senger also wrote that Le Corbusier had declared rainbows less beautiful than machines—a deliberate misrepresentation of a comparison between rainbows and geometric forms that made no qualitative judgment.

  Failing to mention that Ozenfant, too, was responsible for L’Esprit Nouveau, De Senger wrote, “The editor of this magazine was Le Corbusier, from La Chaux-de-Fonds. His most important collaborators are the Jews and freemasons Walter Rathenau and Adolf Loos. Most of Le Corbusier’s other collaborators are also collaborators of the major Bolshevist newspaper Le Monde, edited by Henri Barbusse. Le Corbusier is known for his frequent trips to Moscow where he has received important commissions.”20 It was all either false or misleading, but de Senger’s followers willingly subscribed to his diatribe.

  In May 1934, de Senger was to publish an article called “L’Architecture en peril” in the periodical La Libre Parole. Here, too, his means of denigrating Le Corbusier was to accuse him of complicity with Jews: “The allies of international Jewry continue, despite the crash, to intrigue under different titles and programs in order to increase their fortunes and retain their influence.”21 This time, there were no tears. Le Corbusier wrote his mother that he felt honored by de Senger’s diatribes. Such opposition put him on the level of Diderot, the organizer of a revolution, and recognized his influence. For a self-anointed martyr, opposition was the most effective incentive to continue on the path of rightness.

  6

  Algiers (together with certain other privileged places such as cities on the sea) opens to the sky like a mouth or a wound. In Algiers one loves the commonplaces: the sea at the end of every street, a certain volume of sunlight, the beauty of the race.

  —ALBERT CAMUS

  From the Hotel St. Georges in Algiers, Le Corbusier wrote his mother at the end of March 1931: “This is a splendid country where the fraternal beauties increase with every feature, from lovely sea to snowy mountains and to the desert. A charm, a light, and the endless attractiveness of the Muslim races. Here, more than ever—as at Rio—my heart is won and takes root.” For fifteen days, he had studied the city of Algiers from every possible angle. “What Paris is in despairing lethargy, this land of colonization is in strength, in needs, in urgency of achievements…. How beautiful the world could be if we brought it into harmony!…Already I feel myself at one with this country; Le Corbusier the African.”22

  After returning to Paris, Le Corbusier got word that he was being asked to undertake urbanism in Transjordan. It was a “crescendo”23 work was coming from everywhere. Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius invited him to show the Plan Voisin in a major exposition in Berlin. He was painting, with an exhibition planned for the fall (again making specious his claim of keeping his painting under wraps). He was also writing articles for The New York Times and working away on The Radiant City—a new and thrilling exegesis on urbanism.

  Yvonne gave grace and balance to his domestic life. While the architect readied himself for a second trip to Algiers, she made another blouse for his mother out of assembled fabric samples. She was obsessed with finding all the right pieces and tested them for shrinkage. She cooked Albert his favorite ravioli. Le Corbusier wrote his mother, “I am entirely content. Our life flows by in order and good humor.”24

  The difficulties were with Marie Jeanneret and his health. As usual, Le Corbusier begged his mother for more mail, accusing her of saving her energy by writing to Albert and not to him. His repeated attacks of sinusitis and chronic nasal congestion exacerbated his irritation, and he became even more upset when his mother began to complain about her house while still refusing to hire a maid. By midsummer, Le Corbusier cracked: “You have always brought passion into these matters. Proclaiming your rights, charging others with bad intentions, nastiness or incapacity. This does not make the work easier; it creates a painful atmosphere. My stays at Lac Leman, ever since the house has been there, have been consistently tormented by this strained atmosphere. It is much more painful than you think. You don’t realize how explosive you are with me, precisely when I need 24 hours of relaxation, you know what I have to deal with every day of my life. If you could give the situation some thought that would be a good thing. You must know I don’t let things slide, but at the same time I don’t try to make everything into a drama. What really annoys me is that in this whole business, from A to Z, I’m the one who receives your reproaches and Albert gets treated as a fine
fellow. Believe me I’m not jealous, far from it. But consider the situation a little more carefully and you’ll see what I mean.”25

  After all that, he instructed her, “But try to realize that life must be taken with as much serenity as possible.”26

  HE NEVER KNEW when the next onslaught would come from either her or Yvonne. In a spell of bad weather, Yvonne again became tired and nervous. In his next letter to his mother, in mid-July, he quipped, “Maman is always seething and …arbitrary, like all temperamental women.”27

  In August, he returned to Spain on his own, in part to escape both his torturers. The sights and people in Almería, Andalusia, and Málaga quickly restored his high spirits: “In everything here I sense the awakening of the Latin races, full of strength, health, the intelligence of accurate feelings.” Reflecting about her from afar, he recognized that Yvonne was the essence of the type. On his way to Valencia, he characterized his wife to his mother as “like a little child, devoted, loving, loyal, and very dignified, but morbidly fierce.”28

  From Spain, Le Corbusier traveled on to continue his work in Algiers. It was, he claimed, fifty-four degrees, but even though he felt he was “dead from thirst”—so he wrote on a postcard on which he drew a skull and crossbones—he was thrilled to be in a place he loved and away from the two women whose crankiness and disapproval weighed on him more than all the critics and academies and architectural juries put together.29

  LE CORBUSIER always had one current undertaking that was the ne plus ultra—a project that would allow him to realize his philosophy in its totality and change civilization. Now it was his major city plan for Algiers, on which he was going full throttle in the steamy North African city that August.

  Then, just as he was about to set sail back to Europe, he had some devastating news. Marie Jeanneret’s beloved dog, Bessie, had been run over. After the initial shock, he did his best to summon his sense of perspective: “Dear Maman, you must not interpret the effect of what was a pure accident as a stroke of fate. You must be aware of events, and sensitive to them, but not weak.” He did not, however, trivialize the importance of a pet dog. He told his grieving mother that he had recently come to realize, “I’ve always met my dog’s eyes with my own: dogs are a kind of mirror of tenderness and trust.”30 He craved constancy and affection wherever he could find them.

  7

  When Le Corbusier turned forty-four on October 6, he received greetings from all over the world; more important, this time his mother did not forget. He responded to her greetings by sending her a summary statement of his life. First, she should know the extent to which he suffered from stomach problems and colds; he was susceptible to sickness because of all the travel and “an intensity of work that knows neither schedule nor calendar…. People who live a clockwork life are more likely to be given a more regular bulletin of health.”31

  That reflection prompted one of his anti-Swiss diatribes: “Once over the border one returns, in France, to the country of liberty. What relief, what benign welcoming dust. Switzerland has placed itself under orders I cannot accept, for I am concerned with other things. A Vauxdois customs officer is a monument of brutal rigor and stupidity.”32

  Le Corbusier continued his overview: “Life here is calm, agreeable, productive. At forty-four, one needs one’s lair with its hideouts and its raisons d’être. Then everything can flow without a hitch. Yvonne continues to be the understanding accompaniment to my life. That is serenity for me.”33

  His mother, however, impeded that serenity. Marie, now seventy-one and still living alone, had fallen down the stairs that led from the new room Le Corbusier was in the process of putting on the house. He implored her to change her ways and hire a maid—which was precisely why he had built a maid’s room there. Le Corbusier considered the accident a result of her intractability and her deliberate resistance to living joyously.

  He lashed out at both her refusal to have help and her suggestion that she might have to move:

  These dreadful threats are a distortion of your spirit. When we were kids, I remember you always made light of housework, relatively speaking, and concentrated your energy on giving lessons, from which you obtained something for our own upbringing as well as a lively contact with your students. These threats, aside from your personal feelings, are a barrier you deliberately raise against us, thinking (what an illusion!) you could impose your concepts on us, though in such situations they are of no use to us whatsoever.

  The Swiss mania for order annoys, disgusts, chills, and scandalizes me.

  So all your efforts of persuasion are entirely futile.

  And the consequence of this mental distortion is your feverishness, your terror of not being ready, your haste…. And you fall down the stairs.

  I know I’m being harsh, and I make no efforts to mask my thoughts. No, this is an unfortunate aspect of your character that I implore you to turn your attention to. Pedantically, may I remind you of Jesus’s remarks on the subject of Martha and Mary.

  You see that the case has existed for a long time.

  But you who read the Bible and can find something else in it besides Protestant points of view, take a lesson from it for life. There is a choice to be made in life—of the important things most of all. And you, your life, your image, what other people seek from you, is your artistic power, your freedom of mind, your personal, individual interpretation.

  Life, life, life. That’s what we all love.

  We your children and their friends and companions have oriented our lives in this direction. We have found our earthly happiness there.

  You will find yours there as well. Come back to it, the truth is here, and the atmosphere of the lake will be poignant with intensity, clarity, personality. Understand what I am saying: you make threats.34

  Dressed as a cleaning woman, on holiday at Le Piquey, ca. 1930

  THE ARCHITECT was becoming as discouraged about the state of the world overall as about his mother. As the end of 1931 approached, he believed now more than ever that completely new solutions were required if civilization were not going to continue its downward spiral.

  His belief that society barely functioned was exacerbated by a bitter dispute concerning the enlargement of La Petite Maison. The head of public works in Lausanne had written Marie Jeanneret demanding that construction work stop because the necessary permits and permissions had not yet been organized. Rarely had the regulations and silliness of authorities infuriated him more. He wrote the official in Lausanne saying that everything had been done according to the rules, that he had personally met with the necessary people in Lausanne more than a year earlier, that it was impossible to stop construction in mid-November, and that his mother was a white-haired lady who had the right to be left in peace and not to have her health compromised.

  Le Corbusier probably had not conformed to the letter of the law in planning the expansion of La Petite Maison. He still believed in his inalienable right to follow his own rules—especially in his capacity as his mother’s protector. In this instance he prevailed, and the alterations to La Petite Maison were completed.

  8

  Le Corbusier always dreaded the way Christmas and New Year’s threw life off course and led to “communal stupidity.”35 Now married a full year, Yvonne’s expectations for the holidays only made matters worse; having grown up with few comforts, she was both childish and needy. The architect’s greatest problem at the year’s end, however, was knowing that his completed work was in that diplomatic pouch. The thrill of creation was over.

  Nothing more was expected or needed, but Le Corbusier could not stop himself. For the next two months, he continued to send documents concerning details of the building. The architect made note of experiments he had undertaken with light waves in order to evaluate the acoustics, and he provided explanations for the reason that flat roofs on top of hot-water pipes were an effective means of melting and draining snow.

  Le Corbusier then came to believe that his project for the Palace
of Soviets had been “favorably received in all circles in Moscow,…[and] declared suitable for construction” and that it was to be the pinnacle of the current Five-Year Plan.36 He was completely disconnected from reality. On February 28, 1932, a short list of three was announced, and he was not on it.

  In Izvestia, the leading Moscow newspaper, Alexei Tolstoy wrote that the “Le Corbusiersianry” resembled “a strongbox—a latter-day feudal fortress—the home of a bandit protected by impregnable walls of gold. This is the ultimate devastation, a refusal of reality, a submission to materials, the cult of materials, fetishism; it is only one step away from the primitive condition of the psychological troglodyte.”37

  Manipulating the roof of a model of the auditorium of the Palace of the Soviets, in the office at 35 rue de Sèvres, 1934

  Lecturing in Barcelona about the manifesto sent to Stalin following the verdict of the committee in Moscow concerning the construction of the Palace of the Soviets. Le Corbusier is speaking to, among others, Walter Gropius and José Luis Sert, March 29, 1932.

  The winning design, by Ivan Zholtovsky, resembled an Italian Renaissance city, complete with a piazza and Roman-style coliseum. Le Corbusier declared, “We were expecting from the USSR an example of authority, edification and leadership, since such an example expresses the noblest and purest judgment…. There is no more USSR, no doctrine, no mystique, or anything else!!!”38

  Then, in April, Le Corbusier drafted a telegram to Stalin calling the jury’s decision an act of “criminal thoughtlessness.” The scheme chosen for the palace, he subsequently informed the Soviet leader, “turns its back on the inspirations of modern society which found its first expression in Soviet Russia, and sanctions the ceremonial architecture of the old monarchies….[T]he Palace of the Soviets will embody the old regimes and manifest complete disdain for the enormous cultural effort of Modern Times. Dramatic betrayal!”39