Big Flower, Small Root

Three years ago, when searching for a new house of Corbusier near Paris the writer asked for the way, giving a description of white walls, flat roof, and much glass.The Frenchman was puzzled for a moment and then exclaimed: 'Ah, vous voulez dire la maison dans le style allemand?' -Alfred Barr, 'Art in the Third Reich-Preview 1933' 1 Throughout his entire life, Le Corbusier was consistently fascinated with powerbe it that of a man, a regime, or a nation.His rejection of bourgeois or proletarian forms of political revolution was equally consistent.Thus, when he embarked on his first journey to Germany in 1910, Le Corbusier held that the triumph of architecture and the decorative arts that he witnessed there was undeniably linked to Germany's victory over France in 1870.Conversely, France's defeat and what he perceived as that nation's long-standing architectural decadence were both caused, he thought, by the 1789 Revolution.Yet such a universalist approach, whereby Le Corbusier admired displays of power irrespective of geographical considerations, ultimately conflicted with his particularist leanings, that is, with his taste for the 'Latin nations'.The young architect was thereby caught in a double bind between his agnostic fascination with power and his national preference.This tension was resolved in 1918, the year when the 'universal' -power -finally coincided with the 'particular': France.Le Corbusier's social Darwinism could thus freely develop itself in all its guises -national, economic, artistic, and temporal.Ceasing to contradict himself, Le Corbusier could now fit together all the pieces of the puzzle that comprised his mind and which composed a central figure, namely, the architect himself.It bears mentioning that Le Corbusier's was not a simple and univocal nationalist interpretation of Germany and its art; rather, it was a reading of their far more complex political instrumentalisation.The main idea which the present essay seeks to contribute to the rich historiography on the relation between Le Corbusier and Germany is that the latter functioned for the architect as a screen that both hid and mediated his own political convictions and projects.In the final analysis, the scope of these projects exceeded the nationalist antagonism the architect maintained vis-a `-vis Germany.Le Corbusier's idea of revolution; his distrust of parliamentary regimes; his taste for 'solid' and 'whole' regimes, articulated by means of the central figure of the 'chief '; all these convictions were ultimately expressed thanks to and through Germany.The antagonistic relation to the latter functioned as an impetus, able to dramatise the architect's political convictions and the urgency of his own tasks.More precisely, Le Corbusier imputed a revolutionary function to war and considered revolutions per se-i.e.revolutions characterised by political, economic, and social dimensions-to effect devastating kinds of action.This was his vision when he was still a young architect enrolled in the Swiss school 1.

Art · Art history · Bourgeoisie · Decadence · Humanities · Literature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Style (visual arts) · Taste · Victory · Visual arts · Architecture · Architecture and Art History Studies · Architecture, Modernity, and Design · Historical and Architectural Studies · Law

• Between Taylorism and Technocracy

  Open Access•Charles S Maier•Journal of Contemporary History•1970

  Add to list