Le Corbusier and Photography Author(s): Beatriz Colomina Source: Assemblage, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp.

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Beatriz
Le

Colomina

Corbusier

and

Photography

Beatriz Colomina is Adjunct Assistant at Columbia Universityand a Professor Consulting Editor of Assemblage.

The MechanicalEye
Thereis a still fromDzigaVertov's movie"TheManwith the MovieCamera" in whicha humaneye appears superon the reflected lens, indicatimposed imageof a camera - or rather, the pointat whichthe camera ing precisely the conception of the worldthataccompanies it - dissociatesitselffroma classical and humanist episteme. The traditional of photography, "atransparent definition in of a real is scene," presentation implicit the diagram instituted the model of the cameraobscura by analogical - thatwhich wouldpretend to present to the subjectthe of a reality faithful"reproduction" outsideitself.In this defin the systemof classical is invested inition, photography But Vertov has not placedhimself representation. Dziga behindthe cameralens to use it as an eye, in the wayof a realistic Vertovhas employed the lens as a epistemology. mirror: the the first camera, thingthe eye sees approaching is its own reflected image. In film, lightleavesits traceson the sensitive emulsion, The manipulation on it permanent shadows. of imprinting - the two realities of two both stills, superimposition - produces tracesof material realities thatis something of of "realism." the Rather than outside already reprelogic sent reality,it produces a new reality. and cinemaseem, on firstreflection, to be Photography mediums.But thatwhichis transparent, like "transparent" the glassin our window,reflects at ilight)the (particularly interior and superimposes it onto our visionof the exterior.
7

2. Still from Dziga Vertov's The

Man with the Movie Camera,

1928-29

1 (frontispiece). Sigmund Freud's 19, study,Berggasse Vienna,detailof mirror in the windownearhisworktable

assemblage 4

3. View of the Cathedralof Esztergom. Photograph by Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, 1911, and drawing realized after it.

The glass functions as a mirrorwhen the camera obscura is lit. Freud placed in the window of his studio, near his worktable, a framed mirror. "The mirror(the psyche) is in the same plane as the window. The reflection is also a selfportraitprojected to the outside world."' Freud's mirror, placed in the frontierthat separatesinterior from exterior, undermines its status as a fixed limit. The line of frontier is not a limit that separates,excludes, dissociates, . . . a Cartesian limit; the line of frontieris a figure, a convention, its aim is to permit a relation that has to be defined continuously, it is a "shadowline."2

as the "formativeperiod"but to his entire lifework).A journey representsthe possibilityof an encounter with "the other." During Le Corbusier'sfirst trip to Algiers, in the spring of 1931, he made drawingsof naked Algerian women and acquired postcardsof naked natives surrounded by accoutrementsfrom the oriental bazaar.The Algerian sketches and postcardsseem, at firstglance, a ratherordinary instance of the ingrained mode of a fetishistic appropriation of women, of the East, of "the other."As Victor Burgin has written: In fetishism, an objectservesin placeof the peniswithwhichthe childwouldendowthe woman(her'incompleteness' threatening the child'sown self-coherence). Fetishism thusaccomplishes that of knowledge frombeliefcharacteristic of representaseparation tion;its motiveis the unityof the subject.. . . The photograph or postcard] stands to the subject-viewer as doesthe [ordrawing fetished object.. . . We knowwe see a two-dimensional surface, we believewe lookthrough it into three-dimensional space,we cannotdo bothat the sametime- thereis a comingandgoing betweenknowledge and belief.4 Le Corbusier,as Stanislausvon Moos has noted, turned this material into preparatory studies for a projectedmonumental figure composition, "the plans of which seem to have occupied Le Corbusierduring many years, if not his entire life."5With the reworkingof his own fetishized drawings, Le Corbusierdissolved the object and opened the way to a more fruitful method of creation,,perhaps reconciling his encounter with the other by re-formingand re-presentingit. Drawing, as has often been noted, plays an essential part in Le Corbusier'sprocess of the "appropriation" of the exterior world. "By workingwith our hands, by drawing,"Le Corbusierwrites, "we enter the house of a stranger,we are enriched by the experience, we learn."6And in clear opposition to a passive, consumeristic, fetishistic use of the camera, he writes:"When one travelsand workswith visual things - architecture,painting or sculpture- one uses one's eyes and draws, so as to fix deep down in one's experience what is seen. Once the impressionhas been recordedby the pencil, it stays for good - entered, registered, inscribed. The camera is a tool for idlers, who use a machine to do their seeing for them."' Certainlystatements such as this (which accompanies some of Le Corbu8

Thinking Photography
In the rare cases when criticism has addressedthe subject of Le Corbusierand photographyit has done so from within the position that holds photographyas a transparent medium of representation,oscillating constantlybetween a realistic interpretationof the medium and a formalistinterpretation of the object. Guiliano Gresleri'sLe Corbusier: Viaggio in Oriente shares in this critical investment, particularly at the delicate point where it takes on the connotations of a nostalgic album by an amateur photographer.3 The subtitle of this book is indicative of a general, conservative concept of artisticproduction, Gli inediti di CharlesEdouard Jeanneretfot'grafo e scrittore.First, "inediti,"unpublished, hitherto unheard of: Gresleri would seem to maintain the notion that the "original" has not yet been relinquished to reproduction,deriving thereby a presumand ably higher value. Then, Le Corbusier"fotfgrafo" Gresleri projects onto Le Corbusier'swork a "scrittore": grid that divides knowledge into watertightcompartments, presentinghim as some sort of multitalented individual capable of producing valuable work in different, specialized branches of knowledge, and, of course, misses the point. Le Corbusieras photographer,writer, painter, sculptor, editor, these divisions - often encountered in standardacademic criticism - mask what is, in fact, Le Corbusier's nonacademic method of working. This nonacademic method is manifest in Le Corbusier's travels, which played an essential part in his formation (I am not referringhere to what is conventionally understood

Colomina

sier's drawingsof his journey to the Orient published in his late work Creation is a Patient Search)have gained the architect the reputationof a proverbialphobia of the camera - a reputationso strong as to make the discoveryof the stock of photographsthat he took while travelingin the East into a "surprise." Yet it is difficult to understandhow this view of Le Corbusier could flourish given such evident manifestos of a sensibility for the photographicimage as his printed works. The material in Viaggio in Oriente reveals the existence of drawings- such as the Cathedralof Esztergomviewed This from the Danube - realized "after" photographs.8 it has been fixed after an of by the practice drawing image camera appearsthroughout Le Corbusier'swork, recalling his no less enigmatic habit of repeatedlysketching his buildings, even long past their final construction. He redrewnot only his own photographsbut also those he encountered in newspapers,catalogues, postcards.The archives of L'Esprit Nouveau hold numerous sketches on tracing paper that are obvious reworkingsof found photo(as graphs. These depict such unlikely subjects as horreurs Le Corbusierwould have said) like "KhaiDinh, the present emperor of Annam" or "The opening of the English Parliament. The king and queen" (taken from L'Illustre and reproducedin L'Art dicoratif d'aujourd'hui),side by side with a portraitof M. Gaston Doumergue, Presidentof the French Republic.9 Apparentlyaimless (these drawingswere not intended for publication), this activity seems to indicate Le Corbusier's resistanceto a passive intake of photography,to the consumption of images occurring in the world of tourism and mass media. In the face of an explosion of informationin the illustratednewspapers,industrialcatalogues, and advertisements- with their pretense to representrealityby ex- Le tensive documentation, by the addition of "facts" Corbusieroperatesby exclusion. In the terms conditioned by the logic of mass media, a photographdoes not have specific meaning in itself but ratherin its relationshipto other photographs,the caption, the writing, and the layout of the page. As Roland Barthesproposed, "All images are polysemous;they imply, underlying their signifiers, a 'floating chain' of signifieds, the readerable to choose some and
9

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4. Photographs from L'lllustre of EmperorKhai Dinh and President Gaston Doumerge and drawings realized after them, with a view to the mise en page of L'Artdecoratif d'aujourd'hui, 1925

assemblage 4

The photographsof the music room disappointedLe Corbusier:"They are well done, but how pitiful is the effect! Perrinand I were really upset at what photographygives of the beautiful thing we know."They consoled themselves by consideringthat their photographsof Florence and Siena taken a few months earlier, in fall of 1907, had also been a disappointment: "Andwe have consoled ourselves with the fact that from our stock of photographsfrom Italy, we do not have a good one of the beautiful architectural To drawoneself,to tracethe lines, handlethe volumes,organize things [we saw], because the effect of photographsis always the surface . . . all this meansfirstto look,andthen to observe distortedand offensive to the eyes of those who have seen and finallyperhaps to discover ... and it is then thatinspiration the originals."The opposite was true for the epatant reproone'swholebeingis drawn into maycome. Inventing, creating, ductions of Hoffmann interiors;at firstthey seemed imstoodindifferent action,and it is this actionwhichcounts.Others pressive, but they did not withstanda close inspection: - but you saw!" "Look at the photographic effectof thesehallsanddiningrooms Drawing is an instrument of the recherche patiente. It is a of Hoffmann: haveunity,theyaresober,simple,andbeautithey technique to overcome the obsessive closure of the object, ful. Let'sexamineit closelyandanalyzeit:Whatarethese to reincorporateit into the process, a processof "no beginchairs? This is ugly,impractical, and juvenile. These barbarian, ning and no end." For Le Corbusierthe process is more wallsof tapedgypsum,likein the arcades of Padua? This fireimportantthan the product, as is also apparentin his writAndthisdresser andthesetables andeveryplace, a nonsense. How and stiff it is. And how the devil is it ings, in which he constantly combines the bits and pieces cold, thing? surly, of his thoughts in different contexts, reworkingthem, as if built? resistinga final form. As Peter Allison once put it, "In The atectonic quality of "modernVienna" shocked and spite of the apparentrepetitiveness,he seldom ever rehimself disgustedLe Corbusier,who had been educated in a verpeated exactly."'14 nacular craftstradition. "Toute la constructionest masqude et truqu&e," he wrote to L'Eplattenier: "The German Reflection and Perception movement is in search of originalityto the extreme, not During his firsttrip to Italy and Vienna in 1907-8, Le occupying itself with construction, logic, or beauty. No Corbusierbecame aware of the difference between archipoint of supportin nature."He recriminatedL'Eplattenier tecture and its photographicrepresentation.This reflection for having misdirectedhim ("Youhave sent us to Italy to on representationbecame a constant subject of his letters. educate our taste, to love what is [well] built, what is logiIn Vienna, where Charles L'Eplattenierhad directed Le cal, and you want us to renounce all this, because of some Corbusierand his companion Leon Perrin, the travelers impressivephotographsin art magazines"),and suggested that he spend fifteen days in Vienna instead of relying on could not find their way to the houses they had previously
10

ignore others. Polysemy poses a question of meaning. ... Hence in every society various techniques are developed intended to fix the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terrorof uncertain signs."'0While photographyas constituted in the mass media is most often uncritically received as fact, Barthesfurthermakes clear that "the press photographis an object that has been worked on, chosen, composed, constructed.""Le Corbusier takes pleasure in "deconstructing" the images thus for some of them from instance, "constructed,"isolating, their original context, an illustratedmagazine or a mailorder catalogue, and drawingsketchesafter them.12 Again, the sketch learns from what the photographexcludes. By drawing he is obliged to select, to reduce to a few lines the details of the image. The preformedimage thus enters Le Corbusier'screative process, but interpreted.As he himself would put it:

seen in architecturalmagazines;Le Corbusierwrote to L'Eplattenieraskingfor the addressesof modern houses and Deutsche Kunst: "Illopublished in Innen Architektur se faire de La Chaux-de-Fonds des adindiquer gisme, dressespour Vienna; tant pis c'est ainsi." L'Eplattenier sent them reproductionsof Hoffmann interiorsand included some of the music room designed by one of his students for the Mathey-Dorethouse in La Chaux-de-Fonds.1'

Colomina

7. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, engraved watchcase, c. 1902, and Omega advertisement in Nouveau 2, 1921 L'Esprit

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magazine pictures. As for himself, Le Corbusierdecided to leave Vienna for Paris to learn construction. "C'estce qu'il me faut, c'est ma technique." Not surprisingly,he did very little drawingduring his stay in Vienna.
5. Music room of the MatheyDoret house, La Chaux-deFonds, interiors by pupils of CharlesL'Eplattenier,1908

6. Adolf Loos, dining room of the Steiner house, 1910. As in Freud'sstudy, the mirroris in the plane of the window.

It is interestinghow close these letters come to Adolf Loos's criticism of photographyand its shortcomingsin representingarchitecture. In 1910 Loos wrote in "Architektur,""It is my greatestpride that the interiorswhich I have created are totally ineffective in photographs.. . . I have to forego the honour of being published in the various architectural magazines."l6 Loos was reactingto the confusion between architectureand the image of architectureso characteristicof the overfed journalsof the Jugendstil. Le Corbusierwas to go a step furtherthan Loos. In Paris, more precisely with the experience of L'EspritNouveau, he came to understandthe press, the printed media, not only as a medium for the cultural diffusion of something previouslyexisting, but also as a context of productionwith its own autonomy. His encounter with the metropolisproduced a break with L'Eplattenier's craftsformationwhere the object is identified with the world, where the material carriesthe traces of its maker. Such continuity between hand and object is inside a classical notion of the artifact and of the relationshipbetween producerand product. With industry,mass production, and reproduction,this continuity is broken, invertingthe relationshipbetween producerand product. Production in a "consumersociety" develops, as Adorno and Horkheimernoted, accordingto a logic completely internal to its own cycle, to its own reproduction. The main mechanism by which this is accom11

assemblage 4

plished is the "cultureindustry,"the vehicles of which are mass media, cinema, radio, publicity, and periodicalpublications.17

Faked Images

Une Villa DE LE CORBUSIER 1916

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In L'EspritNouveau 6, Le Corbusierpublished the only work he ever recognized from his La Chaux-de-Fonds period: La Villa Schwob. (This house, built in 1916, did not appear in the Oeuvre complete.) In the accompanying article, Ozenfant, under the pseudonym Julien Caron, remarkedon the difficulties of capturingarchitecture through the eye of the camera:"And photography,which is alreadymisleading when it reproducessurfaces(paintings), how much more so when it pretendsto reproduce volumes." Ironically, the published photographsof this house are trompeuse; indeed, they have been "faked." Le Corbusierair brushed the photographsof the Villa Schwob to adapt them to a more "purist" aesthetic. In the sur la masked the pergola for he "facade cour," instance, in the court, leaving its white trace on the ground, and cleared the garden of any organic growth or distractingobject (bushes, climbing plants, and the dog house), revealing a sharplydefined outer wall. He also modified the service entrance to the garden, cutting the protrudingvestibule and the angled steps with a straightplane aligned with the door (a difference observablein the original plans published in the same article). The window correspondingto the vestibule became a pure rectangularopening.18 Le Corbusierdiscardedeverything'thatwas picturesqueand contextual in this house, concentratingon the formal qualities of the object itself. But the most strikingmodification in the photographsof the front and back facades is the elimination of any reference to the actual site, which is, in fact, a steep terrain. By eliminating the site, he makes architecture into an object relativelyindependent of place. This relationshipbetween an ideal object and an ideal site is a constant in Le Corbusier'sarchitectureof the twenties. For example, he designed the small villa for his parentson the shores of Lake Geneva before he knew its specific location.19And in Buenos Aires he proposedan urban develof the Villa opment consisting of twenty "replicas" Savoye.20
12

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11. Twenty replicas of the Villa Savoye for the Argentinian countryside, proposed by Le Corbusierin a lecture in Buenos Aires, October 1929, and published in Pr6cisions

Colomina

9. Villa Schwob, 1916, and detail of pergola (left). Photographs c. 1920.

10. Villa Schwob, version as Nouveau published in L'Esprit

13

assemblage 4

12. Le Corbusier,sketches of the interior of S. Mariadi Cosmedin, with instructionsfor modifying the original photographs before their publication in Versune architecture

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An analysis of the Oeuvre complete uncovers a similar reworkingof the photographicimage. In the published photographsof the Villa Savoye, Le Corbusiermasked, by painting gray, anomalous columns (wet columns perhaps) visible in other photographsof the villa. Interestingly,the published section of the Villa Savoye correspondsto an earlier version of the project ratherthan to the one that was built.21 It becomes evident that for Le Corbusierany document from the process, which better reflectsthe concept of the house, takes precedence over the faithful representationof the actual built work. Furthermore,the distinction he makes between real space and the space of the page is equally clear. It is precisely because the latter is necessarilyreductive that certain elements - such as wet columns - while innocuous in an experientialreadingof the building, are distractivewhen seen in a photograph. Likewise in the Oeuvre complhte,consider Le Corbusier's elimination of two columns that frame the apse of the dining-room projection into the living room in the plan for the Villa Stein at Garches.22The resultingplan conveys the spatial, experiential reading of this house. The absence of the two columns reinforcesthe diagonal thrust of the villa, furtherdisintegratingthe "centralaxis"into fragments.23 Outside his architecturalwork, Le Corbusierused analogous techniques to reinforce his theoretical arguments. For instance, in L'EspritNouveau and later in Vers une architecture, he published a photographof Pisa taken from his own collection; but prior to its reproductionLe Corbusier traced portions of the print in black ink to stressthe purity and clarity of lines in a platform. 24 A page of sketches from the working material of Vers une architecturerevealssimilarly notable instructionsfor modificationsto be applied to the photographsof the church of S. Maria di Cosmedin in Rome.25 These consist of removing tabernacles,decoration on the arches, leather pillows, columns, windows, and anything else that would distractthe readerfrom seeing Greece in "ByzantineRome." The published text declares, "Greece by way of Byzantium, a pure creation of the spirit. Architectureis nothing but orderedarrangement, noble prisms, seen in light."26 Stanislausvon Moos has written that for Le Corbusierthe relationshipof the architecturalwork to a specific site and its material realization are secondaryquestions;that for him architectureis a conceptual matterto be resolved in the purity of the realm of ideas, that when architectureis built, it gets mixed with the world of phenomena and necessarilylooses its purity.27 And yet it is significantthat when this same built architecturalpiece enters the bidimensional space of the printed page it returnsto the realm of ideas. The function of photographyis not to reflect, in a mirrorimage, architectureas it happens to be built. Construction is a significant moment in the process, but by no means its end product. Photographyand layout construct another architecturein the space of the page. Conception, execution, and reproductionare separate, consecutive, moments in a traditionalprocess of creation. But in the elliptic course of Le Corbusier'sprocessthis hierarchyis lost. Conception of the building and its reproduction cross each other again.

Continuous Editing
In the division of tasksamong the editorial group of L'Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusiertook as his responsibilities "administration et finances."Amdede Ozenfant and Paul Derm6e, coeditors of the magazine, were in charge of the more traditionalwork of productionand editing. But Le Corbusieropted to mix with the world outside the intellectual circles, to participateactively in the world of industry and finance, himself a "producer" ratherthan an "inter- the classical task of the intellectual - of the preter" new industrialreality.28 As the magazine was largely financed by advertising,Le Corbusiercame in contact with the culture of mass media.
14

Colomina

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His avid collection of industrialcatalogues, department store brochures, and images clipped from newspapersand magazines thus has, in part, a productiveexplanation.29 Le Corbusierwas in search of publicity contractsfor L'EspritNouveau. In fact, many of these cataloguescame from companies whose productswere ultimately advertised in the magazine. But Le Corbusieralso appropriated this material as a source of images for his articlesand later incorporatedthem as illustrationsin his books."0 In L'EspritNouveau photographyis not presentedas an artisticproject, ratheras a documentarymeans. In Le Corbusier's articles photographstaken from publicity material coexist with images extractedfrom art books and photographsof his own work. But within these pages the world of "massculture"intrudes into and violently unsettles the world of "high art." No matter how often Le Corbusier claims a higher rank for the art object than for the everyday object, his work is continually "contaminated" by the materialsof low culture.31 On the cover of the publicity brochure that Le Corbusier preparedfor Vers une architecturehe stated:"Vient de - interruptedby the reproductionof the book's paraitre" " cover - "Ce livre est implacable. I1ne ressemble aucun autre." Inside he explained the novelty of his book in terms of his use of images: "This book derives its eloquence from the new means; its magnificent illustrations hold next to the text a parallel discourse, and one of a great power."32 Photographyin Le Corbusier'sbook is rarelyemployed in manner. Its conception and intention are a representational fundamentallydifferent. Instead it is the agent of a neverresolved collision of images and text, its meaning derived from the tension between the two. In this technique Le the asCorbusierborrowedmuch from modern advertising: sociation of ideas that can be producedthrough the juxtaposition of images and of images with writing.33 Imagesare the text; ratherthey constructthe not used to "illustrate" text. Again in the publicity brochurehe wrote, "This new
conception of the book . . . allows the author to avoid

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15

assemblage 4

In fact, Le Corbusier'sbooks were conceived through a continuous editing of found images. The workingmaterial of Vers une architecturereveals as much.34 It consists of a series of sketches, grouped as vignettes, which correspond to the images to be displayed. Some images come from Le Corbusier'smemory ("cartepostale, ouiest la carte postale?" is the footnote to one vignette);others are extracted from machinery catalogues, from FreddricBoissonnas'salbums of Greece, and so forth. Almost invariablyLe Corbusier transformedthese photographs.Beyond removing them from their original context, he painted on them, erased their details, reframedthem; these, then, are images that have been workedon, chosen, composed, constructed.
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Though photographymakes everythingaccessible- "dis- choice rather tant places, famous people, springtime" than accumulation is its essence. Framing is the issue of photography.The photographsof Greece by Boissonnas that Le Corbusierpublished in Vers une architecture were taken primarilyfrom Maxime Collignon's Le Parthenon and L'Acropole.35 Some were reframed,and bear a resemblance to his own sketches in Le Voyage d'Orient. They are "incomplete."They create a tension that pulls toward the missing element. As StanfordAnderson, referring to the sketches, has observed: We hold no vantage the buildpointfromwhichwe maypossess And if we did possess such a vantage ing objectively. point,these tell us we wouldbe missingsomething else. Experience drawings itselfandthe knowledge whichcomesonlythrough experience. level Le Corbusier withhow ... At a conceptual is concerned we correlate and knowledge. . . . This insistence on experience is moreforceful when madein the presence of a work experience forwhichwe havepreviously instilled modesof [theParthenon] . . did . Le not or make Corbusier more appropriation. repeat . . . he produced the earlier researches into the orders, a precise set of sketches whichevokevividly the sequential of experience the ascentof the Acropolis. 36 Boissonnas'sphotographsexemplify the previouslyinstilled mode of an aestheticized appropriation of the Parthenon. The enormous plates of this book force the readerto step back every time he turns a page, presentingeach image as an object for contemplative immersion, as a "workof art." Le Corbusierbreaksaway from his source when he wrenches these images from the sanctuaryof high art,
16

15. Original page of sketches from the draft manuscriptof Versune architecture

Colomina

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reduces their size, and places them next to the everyday images of newspapersand industrialcatalogues(which themselves have undergone equivalent transformations). Mass media makes everythingcontiguous and equivalent. Le Corbusierdoes not pretend to maintain a hierarchial division of the material by genre or type. Instead, he presents the collision of fragmentscorrespondingto the experience of culture in the society of media. Thus his work becomes a critical comment on the conditions of culture in our time.

Si...............

A Window with a View

There is a drawingby Le Corbusier(with the heading "Roneo")in the archives of L'EspritNouveau that illustratesthe bitter and long-lasting controversybetween Auguste Perretand Le Corbusierover the fenetreen Perretmaintained that the verticalwindow, the longueur.37 reproducesan "impressionof complete space" porte fen.tre, it permits a view of the street, the garden, and the because en sky, giving a sense of perspectivaldepth. The fen.tre a correct longueur, by contrast, diminishes perceptionand appreciationof the landscape. In-fact, Perretargued, it cuts out of view precisely that which is most interesting: the strip of the sky and the foregroundthat sustainsthe illusion of perspectivaldepth. The landscape remains, but (as Bruno Reichlin has put it) as though it were a planar projection sticking to the window. In this dispute Perretexpresses,with an exceptional clarity, the authorityof the traditionalnotion of representation defined as within a realistic epistemology, representation the reproductionof an objective reality(is this what he means by "complete space"?).Le Corbusier'swork underthe fenetreen Ionmines this concept of representation; in architecture. its achievement is of gueur paradigmatic Classical paintings attempt to identify images with their models. Built up with shapes and images of recognizable objects - bottles, glasses, books, pipes - Puristpaintings, as Ozenfant and Jeanneretclaim, eschew this identification. In La Peinture modernethey define th9 objects that they chose to representin their paintingsas those of "the most perfect banality,"which have "the advantageof a per18

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19. Le Corbusier,"Roneo" drawing, illustratingthe polemic between Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret over the fenetre en longueur

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20. Le Corbusierand Pierre Jeanneret, Maison Cook, 1926

21. Le Corbusier,sketch of the confrontation between the porte fenetre and the fenetre en longueur

fect readabilityand of being recognized without effort."'38 Objects on the canvas are thereforelike words in a sentence: they refer to recognizable things, but the objects in the world that are representedare less importantthan the conjunction of differentialunits within the painting itself, each element being qualified by its place in the ensemble, or in Saussure'swords, by "differenceswithout positive terms."39 Viewing a landscape through a window implies a separation. A window breaksthe connection between being in a landscape and seeing it. Landscapebecomes purely visual, and consequently available to experience only through memory. Le Corbusier'sfenetre en longueurworksto put this condition, this caesura, in evidence. Le Something about this "Roneo"drawingis paradoxical: Corbusier intends by his drawingto illustratethe superiority of the fenetre en longueur;in actuality, the intensity and detail with which he drawsPerret'sportefenetre, in contrastto the sketchinessof his renderingof the fenetre en longueur, makes the former much more emotionally charged.40 This may be seen, above all, in the way in which Le Corbusierdrawsthe human figure in each. In the porte fenetre, a man stands at the center of the window, holding it open with wide-stretchedarms - recalling Perret'sassertion (in an imaginarydialogue published by Le Corbusier in the Almanach d'architecture moderne)that The window is man himself. portefenetreprovides "a ... man with a frame, it accords with his outlines. . . . The vertical is the line of the upright human being, it is the

line of life itself." In the fenetreen longueur,which opens by sliding, a diminutive figure occupies a position peripheralto the window. In 1925 Le Corbusierwrote in the Almanach, "fenetre,e1ement type - A16ment mecanique type: nous avons serrede pris le module "41 anthropocentrique. Any concept of the window implies a notion of the relationship between inside and outside. In Le Corbusier's work this relationshiphas to do with the contrastbetween the infinity of space and the experience of the body, a body that has become a surrogatemachine in an industrial "Decoraage. As he writes in L'Art decoratifd'aujourd'hui: tive art is the mechanical system that surroundsus ... an extension of our limbs; its elements, in fact, artificial limbs. Decorative art becomes orthopaedic,an activitythat appeals to the imagination, to invention, to skill, but a craft analogous to the tailor:the client is a man, familiar to us all and precisely defined."'42And in a footnote to the book, Le Corbusierwrote that when the typewritercame "This into use, anthropocentrismbecame standardization: standardization had considerablerepercussionsupon furniture as a result of the establishmentof a module, that of the commercialformat. . . . An internationalconvention was established [for paper sheets, magazines, books, newspapers, canvases, photographicprints].43 Perret'swindow corresponds,as Reichlin has shown, to the in Western traditionalspace of perspectivalrepresentation art. Le Corbusier'swindow corresponds,I would argue, to the space of photography.It is not by chance that Le Cor20

Colomina

22. Le Corbusier,small villa for his parents, Corseaux,view through interior overlooking LakeGeneva

23. Maison Cook, view showing the fenetre en longueur of the opposite wall reflected in the mirrorof the buffet

busier continues the polemic with Perretin an argument in Precisions,demonstrating"scientifically" that the fenetre en longueur illuminates better, by relying on a photographer's chart that gives times of exposure. Though photography(as with film) is based on single-point perspective, between photographyand perspectivethere is an epistemological break. The point of view in photographyis that of the camera, a mechanical eye. The painterlyconvention of perspectivecenters everythingon the eye of the beholder and calls this appearance"reality." The camera - and more particularlythe movie camera - posits that there is no center. Using Walter Benjamin's distinction between the painter and the cameraman, we could conclude that Le Corbusier's architectureis the result of his positioning himself behind the camera.44By this I refer not only to the aforementioned implications, Le Corbusieras "producer" rather than "interpreter" of industrialreality, but also to a more literal reading that sees in the deliberatedispersalof the eye in Le Corbusier'svillas of the twenties - effected through the architecturalpromenade together with the collapsing of space outside the fenetreen longueur- the architectural correlativeof the space of the movie camera. The fenetre en longueur that stretchesalong the fagadeof the villa for Le Corbusier'sparentsin Corseaux on Lake Geneva (1923) - a house that became central to the Perret-Le Corbusiercontroversy- does not open by sliding. The window is divided into four elements, each of which is divided into three panels. The central panel, a

rectangle, opens by pivoting;the two squarepanels are fixed. How importantthese divisions are for Le Corbusier is evident in his sketches of the house: the view outside each panel seems relativelyindependent of the adjacent view. The grouping of curtains in the side post, also stressedin Le Corbusier'ssketches, reinforcesthe quadridivision of this window. to the window glass is superThe panorama"sticking" that suggestsa series of photoon a rhythmic grid imposed in a row, or perhapsa next to each other placed graphs series of stills from a movie. What is more, in the "Roneo" drawingthe fenetre en longueur does slide open; and, when opened, one glass panel is overlaid on another. This window is divided into three square panels; the central one is fixed. The individual does not occupy the center of the window when opening it, but must stand to the side. More than at Corseaux, he is displaced. We imagine a boat going down the lake. Viewed from a portefenetre there would be an ideal moment: the boat appearsat the center of the opening directly in line with the gaze into the landscape- as in a classical painting. The boat would then move out of vision. From the fenetre en longueur the boat is continuously shot, and each shot is independently framed. With Le Corbusier'sfenetreen longueurwe are returnedto Dziga Vertov, to an unfixed, never reified image, to a seand forward quence without direction, moving backward according to the mechanism or the movement of the figure. 21

assemblage 4

Notes Praeger, 1960); English trans. of L'Atelierde la recherche patiente A condensed version of this text is (Paris:Vincent & Freal, 1960). published in German and French in L'Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier 7. Ibid., p. 37. und die Industrie 1920-1925, ed. 8. Gresleri, Viaggio in Oriente, Stanislaus von Moos (Berlin: Ernst 141. p. & Sohn, 1987). It is also a chapter in a book in preparationL'Esprit 9. Le Corbusier, The Decorative Nouveau: Le Corbusierand the Me- Art of Today, trans. James Dunnett dia. Financial supportfor this study (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1987), pp. came from a grant from the Fonda- 9-11; English trans. of L'Art decortion Le Corbusier. I would like to atif d'aujourd'hui(Paris:Editions thank Kenneth Frampton, Michael Cr6s, 1925). For the corresponding sketches, see Fondation Le CorbuHays, Alicia Kennedy, and, espesier A3 (6). cially, Sandro Marpillerofor their careful reading and suggestions. 10. Roland Barthes, "The Rhetoric 1. Marie-Odile Briot, "L'Esprit of the Image," in Image-MusicNouveau; son regardsur les sciText, trans. Stephen Heath (New ences," in Legeret l'esprit moderne, York:Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. exhibition catalogue (Paris:Mus&e 38-39; original text, "Rhetoriquede d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, I'image,"Communications 1 (1961). 1982), p. 38. 11. Roland Barthes, "The Photo2. I have borrowedthe concept of a graphic Message,"in Image-Music"shadowline," linea d'ombra, from Text, p. 19; original text, "Le mesFranco Rella's literaryanalogy to sage photographique,"CommunicaJoseph Conrad'snovella The Shations 1 (1961). dow Line, proposed in "Immagini 12. I am permitting myself to use e figure del pensiero," Rassegna the fashionable word "deconstruc9 (1982): 78. tion" with referenceto Le Corbu3. Giuliano Gresleri, Le Corbusier: sier's manipulation of images not so Viaggio in Oriente (Venice: Marsimuch to insist on a presumed antilio and Paris:Fondation Le Corbuphilological vice as to call attention sier, 1984). to Le Corbusier'sknowledge of the 4. Victor Burgin, "Modernismin thought of Nietzsche and, in particthe Work of Art," in The End of ular, the Nietzschian critique to the Art Theory,Criticism and Postmod- concept of sign, of truth, interof preted not as the representation ernity (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Huan absolute content but as a stratifimanities Press, 1986), p. 19. The cation of signs. See, for example, article first appearedin 20th CenFrederich Nietzsche, "Unzeitgetury Studies 15-16 (December masse Betrachtungen,Zweites 1976). Stuck:Vom Nutzen und Nachteil 5. Stanislaus von Moos, "Le Corder Historie fur das Leben"(On the busier As Painter,"Oppositions 19usefulness and disadvantages of his20 (Winter-Spring 1980): 89. One tory for life), somewhat mistranof its manifestationswas a mural slated into English as "On the Use completed in 1938 in the house and Abuse of History." that Eileen Gray had built for Jean Badovici in Cap Martin. 13. Le Corbusier,Creation is a Patient Search, p. 37. 6. Le Corbusier, Creation is a Patient Search (New York:Frederick 14. Peter Allison, "Le Corbusier,

A 'Architector Revolutionary'? Reappraisalof Le Corbusier'sFirst Book on Architecture,"AAQ 3, no. 2 (1971): 10-20. 15. The correspondencebetween Le Corbusierand Charles L'Eplattenier is in the Fondation Le Corbusier. All quotationshere are taken from the lettersof 26 February,29 February,and 2 March 1908. For an extensive commentaryon Le Corbusier'searly correspondence, see Mary PatriciaMay Sekler, The Early Drawings of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, 1902-08 (New York: Garland, 1977). in 16. Adolf Loos, "Architektur," Sdmtliche Schriften, vol. 1 (Vienna and Munich: Verlag Herold, 1962), pp. 302-18; trans. Wilfried Wang in The Architecture of Adolf Loos, exhibition catalogue (London:Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985), p. 106. It should be noted that earlier English translationsof this famous text omitted this and other relevant passages. For a furtherdiscussion, see Beatriz Colomina, "On Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann:Architecture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"9H 6 (1982): 52-58. 17. Max Horkheimerand Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York:Continuum, 1972), esp. the chapter"The Culture In" dustry. 18. These "painted" photographs are in the Fondation Le Corbusier, Phototeque L2 (1). 19. Stanislausvon Moos, Le Corbusier:Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1979), p. 299. 20. Le Corbusier,Precisionssur un 'tat pr sent de I'architecture et de I'urbanisme (Paris:Editions Cr6s, 1930), p. 139. 21. MargaretSobieskipointed out to me the "missing"columns of the Villa Savoye. See Le Corbusier,

Oeuvre complete 1929-1934 (Zurich: Editions Girsberger,1935), pp. 24-31. 22. Paul Spangler, in an unpublished paper on the four compositions, speculateson the meaning of Le Corbusier'somission of columns in the Villa Stein at Garches. See Le Corbusierand PierreJeanneret, Oeuvrecomplete 1910-1929 (Zurich: Editions Girsberger,1930), pp. 142, 144. 23. Colin Rowe has written, "At Garches central focus is consistently broken up, concentration at any one point is disintegrated,and the dismemberedfragmentsof the center become a peripheraldispersion of incident, a serial installation of interestaround the extremitiesof the plan" (The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays MIT Press, 1977], pp. [Cambridge: 1-28). The blind spot of this brilliant analysis- one that reflectsa classical conception of representation and photography- is that Rowe dutifully restoredthe columns to their place on the plan of the Villa Stein vis-A-visthat of Palladio's Malcontenta, as though the way in which Garches was presented in the Oeuvrecompletewas merely a "printingerror." 24. Fondation Le Corbusier, Phototeque L1 (10) 1. 25. Fondation Le Corbusier, B2-15. 26. Le Corbusier,Towardsa New Architecture,trans. FrederickEtchells (London:The Architectural Press, 1927), pp. 150-51; English trans. of Vers une architecture (Paris:Editions Cr6s, 1923). 27. Von Moos, Elements of a Synthesis, p. 299. 28. ManfredoTafuri rightly notes that "Le Corbusierdid not accept the industrial'new nature' as an external factor and claimed to enter it

22

Colomina

as 'producer'and not as 'interpreter"' (Theoriesand History of Architecture [New York:Harper& Row, 1976], are, for Tafuri, p. 32). Interpreters those who perpetuatethe figure of the artist-magicianin the Benjaminian definition, those who, faced by the "new nature of artificialthings" to be used as raw material in their artisticwork, remain anchored to the principle of mimesis. On the opposite side is the artist-surgeon, again in the Benjaminian sense, one who has understoodthat reproduction techniques create new conditions for the artist, the public, and the media of production. Instead of passivelyadmiring the "equipment,"they go behind it and use it. See also Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"in Illuminations (New York:Schocken, 1968). 29. Among the catalogues in the archives of L'EspritNouveau are those for automobiles by Voisin, Peugeut, Citroen, and Delage; airplanes and hidravionsby Farman and Caproni;trunksand suitcases by Innovation;office furnitureby Or'mo; file cabinets by Roneo; sport and hand travelingbags by Hermes. They include as well a more "exselection of turbines by travagant" the Swiss company Brown-Boweri; high-pressurecentrifugalventilators by Rateau;and industrialoutillage by Clermont Ferrandand Slingsby. The archives also hold department store mail-ordercatalogues from Printemps, Au Bon March6, and La Samaritane. 30. See Beatriz Colomina, "L'Esprit Nouveau: Architectureand Publicity,"Productionand Reproduction, Revisions 2 (1987). 31. Thomas Crow has written that both Clement Greenbergand Adorno "positthe relationshipbetween modernism and mass culture

as one of relentless refusal"; and yet, "modernismrepeatedlymakes subversiveequations between high and low which dislocate the apparently fixed terms of that hierarchy into new and persuasiveconfigurations, thus calling it into question from within" ("Modernismand Mass Culture in the Visual Arts," in Modernismand Modernity, ed. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Serge Guilbaut, and David Solkin [Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983], p. 251). 32. Fondation Le Corbusier, B2 (15). 33. A similar sensibility to advertising is evident in Le Corbusier's photographsof his early villas. Von Moos has pointed out that most of them include cars, if not his own Voisin: "Indeed, it is often unclear in these images whether it is the car or the house that supplies the context for an advertisementof the contemporarygood life" (Elements of a Synthesis, p. 84). 34. Fondation Le Corbusier, B2 (15). 35. Maxime Collignon, Le Parthenon and L'Acropole,photographs by Fr6d6ricBoissonnas and W. A. Mansel (Paris:LibrairieCentrale d'Artet d'ArchitectureAncienne, n.d.). 36. StanfordAnderson, "Architectural Research Programmesin the Work of Le Corbusier,"Design Studies 5, no. 3 (July 1984): 151-58. 37. See Bruno Reichlin's insightful analysis of this controversy,"The Pros and Cons of the Horizontal Window," Daidalos 13 (1984): 64-78. 38. Am6d6e Ozenfant and CharlesEdouardJeanneret, La Peinture moderne(Paris:Editions Cres, 1925), p. 168.

39. Ferdinandde Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York, 1966), p. 120. 40. KerryShear firstpointed out to me the paradoxicalnature of the "Roneo"drawing. 41. Le Corbusier, Almanach d'architecturemoderne(Paris, 1925), p. 96. 42. Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, p. 72. 43. Ibid., p. 76n. 45. In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Benjamin studies film techniques as an example of an art in which the reproductiontechniques confer a new condition on the artist, the public, and the media of production. He writes:"Unlike the magician . . . the surgeon renounces facing the patient man-to-man; instead he penetrateshis body operatively. The magician and the surgeon behave respectivelylike the painter and the operator.The painter keeps, in his work, a natural distance from what he is given, while the operatorpenetratesdeeply into the texture of the data.. [The image] of the painter is total, that of the operatoris multifragmented, and its partsare rearranged according to a new law. Therefore the cinematic representationof reality is vastly more meaningful for the modern man because, precisely on the basis of its intense penetration through the equipment, it offers him that aspect, free from the equipment, that he can legitimately ask from the work of art"(p. 233). Tafuri finds in this passagea principle by which to identify the distinctive featuresof the twentiethcentury avant-gardes.It is interesting to note that he includes Marcel Duchamp among those who perpetuate the figure of the artist-magician (Theoriesand History of Architecture, p. 32). See also note 28.

Figure Credits
1. Photographby Edmund Engelman. From Berggasse19 (New York:Basic Books, 1976). 2. From Dziga Vertov, The Man with the Movie Camera, 1928-29. 3. Giuliano Gresleri, Le Corbusier: Viaggio in Oriente (Venice: Marsilio and Paris:Fondation Le Corbusier, 1984). 4. Photographsfrom Le Corbusier, L'Art decoratifd'aujourd'hui(Paris: Editions Cres, 1925). Sketches from Fondation Le Corbusier. Reproduction forbidden. 5. Mary Patricia May Sekler, The Early Drawings of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret1902-1908 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977). 6. L. Munz and G. Kunstler,Adolf Loos: Pioneerof Modem Architecture (London, 1966). 7. Engravedwatch case from Paul Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier (New York:Garland Publishing, 1977). Omega advertisementin L'EspritNouveau 2, 1921. 8, 10. L'EspritNouveau 6, 1921. 9, 12, 14, 15, 19. Fondation Le Corbusier. Reproductionforbidden. 11. Le Corbusier, Precisions(Paris: Editions Cr6s, 1930). 13. L'EspritNouveau 20, 1924. 16. Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (Paris:Editions Cras, 1923). 17. Le Corbusier, L'Art decoratif d'aujourd'hui(Paris:Editions Cr6s, 1925). 18. L'EspritNouveau 27, 1924. 20. Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complhte 1929-1934 (Zurich: Editions Girsberger, 1935). vi21, 23. From L'Architecture vante. 22. Le Corbusier, Une petite maison, 1923 (Zurich: Aux Editions d'Architecture, 1954).

23