Fineman 7
Andrea Fineman
Prof Scott
FA 197
17 November 2009
Outline and bibliography for final paper
Outline
I. Introduction
A. Ruskin’s influence on Le Corbusier’s writings. Seems unlikely, but it’s real. Has to do with both architects’ use of the sublime in their writings.
B. Is it a conscious borrowing of writing style on the part of Le Corbusier? Subconscious?
C. How does this similarity in written style play out in their designs? (Ruskin not being an architect himself, perhaps it’ll be best to examine what architecture Le Corbusier admired, and why he admired it, and to compare that to Ruskin’s admiration of the styles he liked.)
D. 2 methods: biographical and textual
II. Background information
A. Why they seem naturally opposed
B. Describe Ruskin and his theories
1. The Seven Lamps of Architecture
2. Show examples of Ruskin’s style of writing and the sublime
i. First 2 pages of the “Lamp of Power”
3. Ruskin wrote that it was hard to get words to describe the experience [Wettlaufer 160 or thereabouts]
i. Wettlaufer 161 quote top of page, then 164
C. Describe Le Corbusier
i. Le Corbusier exalts medieval society in Quand les cathedrales etaient blanches:
human beings observed the Hermetic rules of Pythagorus; everywhere you could see the eager search for the laws of harmony. They had deliberately turned their backs on ‘the antique,’ on the stereotyped models of Byzantium; but they threw themselves passionately into the reconquest of the inevitable axis of human destiny: harmony. The law of numbers was transmitted from mouth to mouth among initiates, after the exchange of secret signs. [Birkstead 100]
III. Le Corbusier
A. Le Corbusier’s beliefs
1. Le Corbusier believed that biological, natural organization of cities would lead to health p. 231 [Anthony Sutcliff, “A Vision of Utopia: Optimistic Foundations of Le Corbusier’s Doctrine d’urbanisme,” The Open Hand]
2. From Ruskin’s influence, Le C “had come to believe in harmony as an essential constituent of nature, something present ‘throughout the cosmos.’ This benevolent view became a major force of his thinking. The ‘cities of towers’ were essentially a harmonious blending of potentially conflicting elements: people and traffic, business, industry and living. …” This comment might only be relevant to Le C’s early stuff. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 279]
i. Le Corbusier believed that industrial society “had an inherent form, an objective order derived from the nature of man and the nature of machines, an ideal structure, which—if realized—would bring prosperity, harmony, and joy.” Could be capitalist or socialist p. 247 [Robert Fishman, “Le Corbusier’s Plans and Politics, 1928-1942,” The Open Hand]
ii. Le Corbusier believed that machines and industrialization had corrupted a happy and harmonious world, alienating man from nature. “A machine civilization established itself, slyly and secretly, under the carpet, where we could not see it clearly. It plunged us and held us in a life which is now in question. Symptoms are now appearing of breakdowns in people’s health and of economic, social, and religious changes, etc.” “The effect of inventions has been to shatter the ancestral statute. Everything has been broken, torn asunder. Social life is different. The life of the individual is threatened.” p. 226 [Anthony Sutcliff, “A Vision of Utopia: Optimistic Foundations of Le Corbusier’s Doctrine d’urbanisme,” The Open Hand]
a. But, technological progress was good, he believed.
3. Le C talks about Hippolyte Taine’s idea about beauty having 2 strains, one of which is sublime, and that Taine uses the Coliseum in Rome as having the quality of sublime beauty which is normally found only in nature. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 67]
4. Le C distrusts the present. Seems inspired by Ruskin. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 169]
5. Le C’s contempt for commercial exploitation. Perhaps Ruskinian. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 288]
B. Le Corbusier’s writings
1. Definition of the sublime
i. Burke
2. Times he referred directly to Ruskin
i. In L’art decoratif d’aujourdhui, Le C writes, “following a discussion of Ruskin’s insistence on honesty in works of art..” (Baker’s words) [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 15]
3. Showing Ruskin’s definition of sublime in architecture
i. I was overwhelmed, an enthusiastic rapture filled me. Not the rapture of the shining coachwork under the gleaming lights, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so much power, so much speed. We are a part of it. We are part of that race whose dawn is just awakening. … Its power is like a torrent swollen by storms; a destructive fury. p. 3 U
ii. And man is capable of perfection; theoretically there is nothing to prevent him reaching the sublime p. 54 U
iii. But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming, or noble. p. 153 VUA
iv. Talking about how people don’t look out windows in office buildings: Such a feeling is only too appropriate in a congested city where the disorder is too painful to witness; it might perhaps even be appropriate in a paradoxical sort of way, in the case of a very sublime, a too sublime view. p. 186 U
C. Biographical stuff
1. His teacher
2. His town and child life
i. Le Corbusier said, about being in the Swiss Alps with his father, “We were constantly on the summits, the immense horizon was quite usual for us. When the sea of mist stretched away to infinity it was just like the real ocean—which I had never seen. It was the most magnificent sight.” [Krass, The Optical Unconscious, 185-186]
ii. Quote from N Fox Weber about watching plants grow
iii. “Both Owen Jones and Ruskin stressed the importance of direct observation, this coinciding with Jeanneret’s general lifestyle during his youth. In later life Le Corbusier was to reflect on these early experiences:
My childhood years were spent with my friends amongst nature. My father moreover was a fervent worshipper of the mountains and river which formed our landscape. We were constantly amongst the mountain tops; we were always in contact with the immense horizon. When mists stretched out on a limitless sea it was like the true sea—that which I had never seen. It was the ultimate spectacle. This period of adolescence is a period of insatiable curiosity, I knew what flowers were like inside and out, the shape and color of birds, I understood how a tree grows and why it keeps its balance, even in the middle of a storm.” From art decoratif. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 15-16]
3. they know he read certain things on his trip as a young person
i. Le C admired “Ruskin [who] spoke of spiritual values.” (on p. 134 of L’art decoratif d’aujourdhui) [J. K. Birkstead, Le Corbusier and the Occult, p. 95]
a. He also called him “an impenetrable, complex, contradictory, and paradoxical apostle” (in L’art decoratif) [Birkstead p. 100]
b. The Stones of Venice and Val d’Arno, both by Ruskin, were in the Ecole d’Art library where Le C went as a young man. [Birkstead 121]
c. “Upon finishing the Villa Fallet and departing for his first extended journey in 1907, Jeanneret gave a copy of Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies to Andre Evard, who had worked with him on the Villa Fallet, and to whom he inscribed the book: ‘To my excellent study companion and friend, A. Evard—a modest thanks for precious help. Ch. E. Jeannert, August 1907.” [Birkstead 121]
d. “Jeanneret found [Ruskin’s] analyses of nature, painting, and sculpture inspirational (on his first trip to Italy he took with him Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence), and he came to rely on Ruskin for information on the techniques involved in drawing and painting.” [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 15]
e. “It was at this higher philosophical level, in addition to questions of technique, that Jeanneret drew from Ruskin, even on occasions borrowing his literary style.” [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 15] He also talks about it on page 67
f. Le C drew a thing in Lucca, right after leaving Florence on his trip, the “central window on the first level of arcading of the main façade of San martino. This is similar to Ruskin’s drawing of arcading at San Michele in The Seven Lamps.” Baker things Le C’s drawing is really close to Ruskin’s and may indicate that he had a copy of the Seven Lamps with him on the trip. He also drew a Byzantine thing that makes Baker think this. [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 101-102]
1) Also, Stones of Venice [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 105]
g. EMA: Le C visited the Val d’Ema because Ruskin says you should in Mornings in Florence [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 72]
h. You could say that this early interest in Ruskin went away, because he wrote critical things in L’art Décoratif… except, he wrote this letter in Sekler44.
1) Also from art decoratif: “In our youth we were under the influence of Ruskin. An involved complex paradoxical apostle. Those times were unbearable. Things couldn’t go on like that. There was a crushing stupid prevalence of middle-class values drowned in materialism garlanded in stupid and completely mechanical décor. A décor manufactured by the machine, which without one being able to gainsay it produced papier mache and cast iron scrolls. Ruskin spoke of spirituality. Of The Seven Lamps of Architecture shining are the Lamp of Sacrifice, the Lamp of Truth, and the Lamp of Humility.” (there isn’t any lamp of humility) [Geoffrey Baker, Le Corbusier: The Creative Search, p. 56]
IV. conclusion
Bibliography
Arrhenius, Thordis. “Restoration in the Machine Age: Themes of Conservation in Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin.” AA Files: Annals of the Architectural Association School of Architecture 38 (1999): 10-22.
Arrhenius, Thordis. The Fragile Monument: On Conservation and Modernity. Stockholm: Royal Technical College, 2003.
Bacon, Mardges. Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Gans, Deborah. The Le Corbusier Guide. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
Guiton, Jacques, editor. The Ideas of Le Corbusier on Architecture and Urban Planning. Translated by Margaret Guiton. New York: George Braziller, 1981.
Garrigan, Kristine Ottesen. Ruskin on Architecture: His Thought and Influence. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.
Heyer, Paul. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. New York: Walker and Company, 1978.
Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (Sunnyvale, CA: BN Publishing, 2008), 277.
Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its planning, tr. Frederick Etchells. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971.
McLeod, M. “Le Corbusier and Algiers.” In Oppositions Reader, edited by K. Michael Hays, 487-519. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998.
Naegele, Daniel. “Savoye Space.” Harvard Design Magazine 15 (2001): 4-13.
Plattus, Alan. “Le Corbusier: A Dialectical Itinerary.” In The Le Corbusier Guide, edited by Deborah Gans, 12-28. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York: Dover Publications, 1989.
Umbach, Maiken and Bernd Hüppauf, ed. Vernacular Modernism: Heimat, Globalization, and the Built Environment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Walden, Russell, ed. The Open Hand: Essays on Le Corbusier. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.expand into 3 entries
Weber, Nicholas Fox. Le Corbusier: A Life. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2008.
Quotations from Le Corbusier’s texts having to do with the sublime
- AND SHOULD USE THOSE ELEMENTS WHICH ARE CAPABLE OF AFFECTING OUR SENSES, AND OF REWARDING THE DESIRE OF OUR EYES, and should dispose of them in such a way THAT THE SIGHT OF THEM AFFECTS US IMMEDIATELY by their delicacy or their brutality, their riot or their serenity…
- p. 16 Vers une architecture
- Architecture has graver ends; capable of the sublime, it impresses the most brutal instincts by its objectivity impresses the most brutal instincts by its objectivity
- p. 26 Vers une architecture
- The figures are terrifying, pitiless but magnificent
- p. 56 Vers une architecture
- The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition.
- p. 171 Urbanisme
- Vers une architecture is Repetitive, dirge-like—serious tone adds to the gravity of his sublime statements
- But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming, or noble.
- p. 153 Vers une architecture
- I was overwhelmed, an enthusiastic rapture filled me. Not the rapture of the shining coachwork under the gleaming lights, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so much power, so much speed. We are a part of it. We are part of that race whose dawn is just awakening. … Its power is like a torrent swollen by storms; a destructive fury.
- p. 3 Urbanisme
- Thus the various stages of civilization can be classified by forms; the straight line and the right angle cutting through the undergrowth of difficulty and ignorance are a clear manifestation of power and will.
- p. 42 Urbanisme
- And man is capable of perfection; theoretically there is nothing to prevent him reaching the sublime
- p. 54 Urbanisme
- elements on a scale hitherto undreamed of will achieve sublime masses
- p. 78 Urbanisme
- Such are the conditions under which the miracle is about to take place
- p. 142 Urbanisme
- Then having worked through every necessary technical stage and using absolute ECONOMY, we shall be in a position to experience the intense joys of a creative art which is based on geometry
- p. 176 Urbanisme
- Talking about how people don’t look out windows in office buildings: Such a feeling is only too appropriate in a congested city where the disorder is too painful to witness; it might perhaps even be appropriate in a paradoxical sort of way, in the case of a very sublime, a too sublime view.