Le corbusier returns to Marseille, year of the European Capital of Culture with the exhibition: "Le Corbusier and the question of brutalism", a great chance to enjoy his work!

When they asked me to organise an exhibition on Le Corbusier within the framework of Marseille-Provence 2013, I immediately accepted the project. There was special motivation because the last exhibition was held in 1987, 26 years earlier, an entire generation ago. And, since then, I’ve had the opportunity to present Le Corbusier’s work in the four corners of the world, whether it be in Taiwan, India or Brazil ... So, to return to Marseille was a little bit like taking Le Corbusier back home to the city where his name and work resonates deeply, most notably as a result of the Unité d’Habitation on the boulevard Michelet, one of the most celebrated apartment buildings in the world.

When I later learned that the designated space for this exhibition was the J1, my enthusiasm doubled as this would a unique opportunity to present the work of Le Corbusier in an unusual space: on the very quay in the port of Marseille where he embarked for Algeria on numerous occasions and for Athens for that memorable trip with his fellow architects in 1933.[...]

The exhibition initially follows a chronological path, then a thematic path, to address the question of Le Corbusier and Brutalism during his mature period of creation. In this sense, these paintings, drawings, sculptures, tapestries, enamels, models, films, and photographs, all of which were produced as a result of what Le Corbusier described as the ‘atelier of patient research’, testify to the exceptional and powerful work of one of the 20th century’s most significant architects.

Text.- Jacques Sbriglio.

 
 

Le Corbusier and the question of brutalism. At the LC AU J1. Marseille, France. © Photo : Chloé Heyraud

FIRST PART OF THE EXHIBITION_TO THE ORIGINS OF BRUTALISM

This exhibition raises the hypothesis that the Brutalist aesthetic, which received both its inauguration and coronation with the construction of the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille (1945-1952), was much more than a mere trend that Le Corbusier dabbled with. In reality, it was the fruit of a long process of research and experimentation that was carried out project after project, book after book, and painting after painting, throughout the years that preceded World War II.

The first section of this exhibition, entitled ‘To the Origins of Brutalism’, illustrates the high stakes involved in this construction technique that was so overtly intellectual and artistic. It begins with the years of training and the subtle influences that shaped Le Corbusier as he attempted to carve a path between idealism and rationalism. It continues with his clear position on the notion of regionalism during the 1930s and his exploration of ancestral cultures, whether South American or North African. It’s also during this period that Le Corbusier took an interest in ‘arts primitif’ and ‘art Brut’. [...]

SECOND PART OF THE EXHIBITION_LE CORBUSIER AND THE QUESTION OF BRUTALISM

Le Corbusier never called himself a ‘Brutalist’ architect, or a ‘Purist’ painter. It was the critics who decided on these appellations. New Brutalism was born in England in 1953 under the impetus of the architect Peter Smithson. It was analysed and theorized through the work of the architecture critic Reyner Banham, who devoted several articles to the subject. It acted as a call to order for architects to resist both the return to historicism that was manifesting itself in England and the spread of the culture of consumption that was taking hold of European society at the start of the 1950s. New Brutalism defined itself by its critical stance toward the International Style that was an offshoot of Modernism and was already acclaimed as an important new school of architecture.

Practical information.-

Date.- From 11 October to 22 December 2013.
Location.- J1, Place de la Joliette, boulevard du Littoral, 13002 Marseille. Metro 2 and Tramway 2, Joliette station.
Hours.- Opendaily, except Mondays, from noon to 6pm.
Tickets.- Full price: 10 €/Reduced price*: 5 € for youth 18 to 25, students, unemployed.
Free*: less than 18 years old, with City Pass Marseille Provence 2013,benefits recipients...

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Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland on October 6th, 1887. He is best known as Le Corbusier, one of the most important architects of the XX Century that together with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright rise up as the fathers of Modern Architecture. In his long career, he worked in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Argentina, India and Japan.

Jeanneret was admitted to the Art School of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1902. He knew Charles l’Éplattenier, his first teacher, and he became interested in architecture. He built his first house, Villa Fallet, in 1906, and one year later he set out on his first great journey to Italy. From 1908-1909 he worked in Perret Bother’s Studio, where he focussed on the employment of the concrete, and from 1910-1911 he coincided with Mies van der Rohe in this studio in Berlin.

In 1917, Charles Édouard Jeanneret set up finally in Paris. The next year he met the painter Amedée Ozenfant and he displayed his first paintings and wrote his first book, Après le Cubismo. In 1919 he founded the magazine l´Esprit nouveau, where he published unnumbered articles, signing with the pseudonym Le Corbusier for the first time.

He opened his own Studio in 1922, in the number 35 of the rue de Sèvres. In this decade when his laboratory epoch started he carried out a great number of activities as a painter, essayist, and writer. But also as an architect, he planned some of the most recognizable icons of modern architecture and developed the principles of the free plan. Some of these works are the Villa Roche-Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye in Poissy, and the Siedlungweissenhof’s houses built in Stuttgart in 1927. It should be pointed out that at the same time; he set out the “five points” of the architecture.

Le Corbusier projected “The contemporary three million population city” in 1922 and in 1925 put forward the Voisin plan of Paris, which is one of his most important urban proposals. Three years later, in 1928, through his initiative, the CIAM was created and in 1929 he published his first edition of the Oeuvre Complète.

In the 30s, he collaborated with the magazine Plans and Prélude, where he became enthusiastic about urbanism and he started, in 1930, to elaborate the drawings of the “Radiant City” as a result of the “Green City” planned for Moscu, his project would be summarized in the “Radiant Villa”, which was enclosed with the projects for Amberes, Stockholm, and Paris. By 1931 he presented Argel, a proposal that composed the Obus Plan. And in 1933 the 4th CIAM passed and there he edited the Athens Document.

Le Corbusier, in 1943, developed the “Three Human Establishments Doctrine” and founded the Constructors Assembly for Architectural Renovation (ASCORAL). He made the project the Unite d´habitation of Marsella in 1952, which was the first one of a series of similar buildings. At the same time, the works of Chandigarh in India began, where he planned the main governmental buildings. Nevertheless, in the same decade, he worked in France too, in the Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in Ronchamp, in the convent of La Tourette in Éveux, Jaoul’s houses in Neuilly and the Unites d´habitation of Rézé-lès-Nantes, Briey-en-Forêt and Firminy.

He wrote and published his worldwide known study of the Modulor in 1948 followed by a second part in 1953. Meanwhile the next Le Corbusier’s books had a more autobiographic nature, among them the Le poème de l'angle droit (1955), l'Atelier de la recherche patiente (1960) and Mise aupoint (1966) stand out.

Le Corbusier, at the end of his life, created many projects that would not be built, for example, a calculus center for Olivetti in Rho, Milan; a congress in Strasbourg, the France embassy in Brasilia and a new hospital in Venice.

He died drowned on the 27th of August of 1965 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

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Published on: November 13, 2013
Cite: "Le Corbusier and the question of brutalism" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/le-corbusier-and-question-brutalism> ISSN 1139-6415
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