6.11 Photograph of “Exhibition of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” (1935) held in the Penthouse from the Œuvre Complète.
6.12 A painting by Le Corbusier, a statue by Laurens, a tapestry by Léger and other objects that evoke a poetic reaction in the “Exhibition of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” (1935) held in the Penthouse from the Œuvre Complète.
The union of opposites is reiterated in the orthogonal aperture of the black fireplace where feminine darkness is framed by a masculine geometry and in the black and white fur of the organic animal skin in front of it, which lies, in turn, on the cold industrial tiles of the floor.8 Then we notice the contrast between these flat shiny tiles and the matt warmth of the shadowy round vaults of the ceiling above. Light and dark, vertical and horizontal, geometric and organic, the contrasts permeate Le Corbusier’s work of this period. As Le Corbusier wrote of the Unité in Marseilles, “I will create beauty by contrast, I will find the opposite element, I will establish a dialogue between the rough and the finished, between precision and accident, between the lifeless and the intense and in this way I will encourage people to observe and reflect.” 9 This then was one of the tactics used by Le Corbusier for the promotion of savoir habiter within the temple of his own family. In 1935 in a peculiar blurring of public and private, an “Exhibition of Art So Called ‘Primitive’” was held in the Nungesser et Coli penthouse.10 Although ostensibly curated by Louis Carré, there is much of Le Corbusier in the layout of the pieces. The black and white photographs depicting the exhibition in the Œuvre Complète reveal much about the way Le Corbusier played with texture, colour and narrative to create over-
laps across time as well as space. In Le Corbusier’s studio a plaster cast of an early Greek statue of a man carrying a calf – colourfully painted by Le Corbusier – merges into the rough stone wall behind while its contours are echoed in the Aubusson Carpet that hangs upon the wall, a design by Fernand Léger ( Fig. 6.11). “Full, empty, light, matter: a tapestry of Léger, a statue by Laurens.”11 In this photo
( Fig. 6.12)
the curved arm
of Le Corbusier’s painting is echoed by Laurens’ statue and the Léger behind, as if part of the same composition. In an echo of the fireplace photograph discussed earlier ( Fig. 6.10) a bronze figurine from Benin sits atop a brick creating a diagonal slash of space from high to low that is itself echoed by the diagonal of light that washes
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8 Pearson writes of Le Corbusier’s habit of “superimposing organic forms over an organising grid”. Pearson, “Integrations of Art and Architecture”, p.312. 9 Ibid., p.190. 10 Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Œuvre Complète Volume 3, 1934–38 (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1945), pp.156–157. Originally published in 1938. 11 Ibid., p.157.