The Architectonic ColourPolychromy in the Purist architecture of Le Corbusier

Jan de Heer

oıo Publishers, Rotterdam 2009

Contents

Preface 6

1. Introduction 8The review of the architectonic polychromy of Le Corbusier 9Issue 16

2. Disegno and experimental aesthetics 20Disegno 20L’Esprit Nouveau 25Dead painters 26Living painters 28Undesirable painters 29Experimental aesthetics 33Fechner 34Lalo 36Henry 37Sound box 39Sensation et énergie 41Conclusion 42

3. Purism: form, beauty and colour 44Form 44Beauty 47Le Purisme 48Ozenfant and Jeanneret 52Gamma 61Ton local 62Variant paintings 63 Impressionism 66Conclusion 69

4. L’Esprit Nouveau and De Stijl 71L’Esprit Nouveau and architecture 71 De Stijl stuttering 73Piano 77Wall 78Geometry 79Léger and Ozenfant 82 Conclusion 84

5. Purist architecture and colour 87Realized projects 87Recipe 89

Exterior and interior 94The associative factor in architectonic polychromy 99Conclusion 103

6. Polychromy and the promenade architecturale 105Promenade architecturale 105Appia 108Maison Guiette 115Conclusion 120

7. Post-Purist architecture and colour 122Lyricism 122La peinture moderne 124Five points and four compositions 126Villa Baizeau 132Maison Loucheur 135Conclusion 140

8. Polychromy architecturale 142‘Salubra’ and ‘Polychromy architecturale’ 142 Architectonic colour 144Smooth and sculptured 149Sentiment 151Salubra keyboard 1931 153Pavillon Suisse 1933 157Conclusion 163

9. L’espace indicible 165Synthèse des arts 165Modulor 171 Unité 173Pavillon Suisse 1957 180Types couleurs and Salubra 1959 184Conclusion 188

Appendices 191I. Publication dates of L'Esprit Nouveau 192II. List of pseudonyms of Ozenfant and Jeanneret 193III. List Variant paintings 194IV. Realized projects and references with regard to polychromy 199V. Texts by Le Corbusier on polychromy 207

Bibliography 240

Index 244

Credits 246

Preface

Polychromy is an essential ornamental component of architecture. Polychromyis concerned with neither the choice of structural system nor the ordering ofspaces, but involves the treatment of the surfaces that are exposed to everydayuse. In present-day architecture, this often relates to the choice and ordering ofthe materials. The origin of the debate on modern architectonic polychromy lies in the nine-teenth century, and the true centre of gravity lies in post-Revolution France.The idea of polychromous architecture arose at the moment that the classicalideal of architecture, the Greek temple and the accompanying architectonicorders became hackneyed. Opposing this universal, eternal monolithic model ofarchitecture, archaeological research had indicated that a constructive skeletonhad been coated with a layer of stucco bearing expressive ornamentation anddecorations. It had not been a monolithic structure but a polylithic one, and nota radiant monochrome architecture but one rich in polychromy. The term ‘poly-chromy’ acquired a polemical charge.The architects involved in this concept-forming included Henri Labrouste, LéonVaudoyer, Félix Duban, Jacques Ignace Hittorff, and Gottfried Semper. On thebasis of this division into construction and cladding, the last-mentioned archi-tect developed an architectural theory in which cladding fulfilled a dominantrole. At the opposite extremity, there arose the idea of an evolution of architec-ture which took the history of building techniques as its starting point, thework of Auguste Choisy being a classic example in this context.The discovery of traces of paint on the walls of the construction elements of theantique temples induced Labrouste and his fellows to draw far-reaching conclu-sions. Their reconstructions of the antique temples were equipped with richlypainted polychromous decoration. The work of these architects also often dis-played coloured use of materials and also painted polychromous decorations.The work of Le Corbusier also conforms to this tradition, from his earliest workright down to his last. The polychromy of his Purist architecture, dating approx-imately from 1922 to 1927, represents an exceptional period in his oeuvre. From1918 onward, Le Corbusier worked as a painter and the experiences he thusgained led him to formulate a radical change in his notions of polychromy. Hisbuildings were painted in their entirety in various colours, comparable to theway in which he assigned colour to the forms in his paintings. The polychromyof his architecture in this stage of his work can be regarded as a play of colours.The effect of this painting was one of total dematerialization, of pure reductionto architectonic form and colour.Hittorff thought that a polychromous system had existed for the Greek templesjust as it had done for architecture. Much of the literature on the polychromy ofLe Corbusier’s Purist architecture assumed a similar system. In his post-warwork in particular, a certain systematic use of colour is immediately conspicu-ous. However, this book presents the view indicate that the system of poly-

6

chromy in Purist architecture only referred to the palette of colours.In the thirties, this extraordinary position was abandoned and his architectonicpolychromy acquired a more regular character; in other words, he devotedattention not only to painted polychromy but also to the natural polychromy ofthe materials.The extent to which Le Corbusier was acquainted with this (ancient) history isnot known. But he was deeply aware of the fact that polychromy is an aspect ofarchitecture, even in its purely painted form.

This book is not a historical study of the relationship between colour and archi-tecture in general nor is it a historical study of architectonic polychromy. Rather,it represents a reconstruction of a working method and of the considerationsthat led to this working method. It is the reconstruction of the architectonicpolychromy that Le Corbusier developed for his Purist architecture. This recon-struction investigates the relationship between Purist painting and Purist archi-tecture, with the emphasis on the relationship between form and colour.Research into the origins of the various constituent components of Purist poly-chromy has given this book a certain kaleidoscopic character.As far as possible, an analysis is performed on the polychromy of Le Corbusier’sprojects from the twenties. Much attention is paid to the way in which heapplied the colours in his architecture during a ‘promenade architecturale’. Acritical analysis of Le Corbusier’s article entitled ‘Polychromy architecturale’forms a concluding evaluation of the study. Finally, as a contrast to the ‘unsys-tematic’ polychromy from the twenties, a chapter on the systematic use ofcolour in his architecture from the fifties has been added.

This book was originally published in Dutch. The English edition contains sev-eral small improvements.

7

8

‘The architectonic revolution is complete...’

‘Space’, Salubra wallpaper collection, 1931

1 Introduction1

1 Le Corbusier, Oeuvre com-plète II 1929-1934, 15.2 For all Le Corbusier’s textson colour, see Appendix V.3 See Appendix V.4 For all coloured drawingsand coloured-in photos inpublications from the twen-ties, see Appendix IV

9

The review of the architectonic polychromy of Le CorbusierThe first part of Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre complète was published at the end of 1929,immediately after his return from South America. The book is a summary of adecade of modern architecture, the conclusion of a period. In the introductionto the second part of this Oeuvre complète, which embraces the period from 1929to 1934, he wrote: ‘It was by chance that the first volume came out in 1929. Thisyear meant to me, to a certain extent, the end of the first period of investiga-tions. 1930 opened a period of new tasks; it relates to important works, greatevents in architecture and town construction, to the marvellous epoch of evolv-ing a new machine civilization.’¹ Le Corbusier regarded his architectonic revolu-tion as complete.It is interesting to know that, of the realized works, only three were allocatedany elucidatory words on the subject of colour use: the La Roche-Jeanneret vil-las, the housing project in Pessac, and the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau.² Alto-gether, Le Corbusier expended no more than nine hundred words on this topic.In comparison to the enormous quantity of his other writings, it comes offrather poorly.³ The text on Pessac appeared in L’Architecture Vivante and later inOeuvre complète I; the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau was a little more expansivelytreated in Le Corbusier’s Almanach d’architecture moderne and also returned in anabbreviated version in Oeuvre complète; the colour of the La Roche-Jeanneretvillas was only discussed in Oeuvre complète. These articles, plus a text in Cahiersd’art, are the meagre textual remains of reflections on colour from the period ofLe Corbusier’s architectonic revolution. For coloured pictures, one had to relyupon L’Architecture Vivante, in which seven different projects were presented.⁴In the context of historiography, the wallpaper samples book he compiled forthe Salubra company forms a rich supplement, giving greater insight into thepolychromy experiments he had undertaken in previous years. The samplesthemselves consisted mainly of plain colours that corresponded to the previ-ously painted colours. A colour keyboard was supplied along with the samplesbook, providing the opportunity to make colour choices. This offers insight intothe combination patterns that he used in various buildings. What he had used asexperiments in his houses in the twenties was commercialized with the wallpa-per and made suitable for large-scale application. The actual accompanying text of the Salubra collection was never published byLe Corbusier himself. Although the samples book itself came with a short expla-nation, the text entitled ‘Polychromy architecturale’, which was first made pub-lic in the eighties, contained a comprehensive explanation of the wallpaper col-lection in addition to an equally extensive outline of the polychromy in hisarchitecture.⁵ In conjunction with the samples book, this text provides the most

5 Le Corbusier, ‘Veel-kleurigheid in architectuur’,in Jan de Heer, Kleur enarchitectuur (Rotterdam,1986). For an extensivereview of this subject and apubication of the text‘Polychromie architecturale’in three languages (French,German, and English), seeRüegg, A., Le Corbusier -Polychromie architecturale(Basle, 1997). A (slightlyimproved) translation intoEnglish of Le Corbusier’sarticle, taken from Rüegg’sbook, has been included inAppendix V. 6 Hitchcock, H.R. andPhilip Johnson, The Inter-national Style (New York,1960), 75.7 Léger, F., ‘Mauern,Architekten und Maler’ inMensch. Machine. Malerei(Bern, 1971), 140; originallypublished as Fonctions de lapeinture (Paris, 1965).

10

complete picture of Le Corbusier’s ambitions in this field. Arthur Rüegg regardsthe set-up of the samples book as the testament of the Purist colour theory and,in doing so, implies that this also marked the conclusion of a certain period withregard to colour.In the same year that the Salubra collection appeared, 1931, an exhibition onmodern architecture was held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Thebook covering the exhibition, The International Style by Hitchcock and Johnson,appeared a year later. Le Corbusier’s villas were allocated a particularly conspic-uous place among the modern architecture of the twenties. In the book, thepainted polychromy in modern architecture was reduced to two positions: ‘InHolland and Germany small areas of bright elementary colors were used; inFrance large areas of more neutral color. The two practices were in large partdue to the influence of two different schools of abstract painting, as representedon the one hand by Mondriaan and the other by Ozenfant. In both cases colorswere artificially applied and the majority of wall surfaces remained white.’⁶ Andthe treatise continues with the remark that colour is currently (1932) used to amuch lesser extent. ‘It ceased to startle and began to bore.’ Neither Le Corbusiernor Theo van Doesburg, who had died just previously, in March 1931, receivedthe honour that was due to him. After all, although Le Corbusier and Ozenfantsevered relations with one another as far back as 1925, Purist painting was theirjoint progeny, and the ‘polychromie architecturale’ was exclusively Le Cor-busier’s work. And although Mondriaan had written a great deal on the absorp-tion of painting in architecture and the layout of his own studio was a mixedmetaphor of this notion, Theo van Doesburg was actually the driving forcebehind the various colour experiments in the architecture of De Stijl. Neverthe-less, The International Style had introduced a simple reduction and dichotomy inideas into general circulation.In May 1933, the painter Fernand Léger gave a lecture in Zurich entitled ‘Lesrapports de l’architecture et de la peinture’, which was also referred to as ‘Lemur, l’architecte, le peintre’ in its written form. The lecture was presented onthe occasion of an exhibition of his work being shown there. In some of Léger’sprevious articles on the same theme, he had manoeuvred close to the positionadopted by Le Corbusier. But as the twenties progressed, he began to experi-ence increasing scepticism with regard to painting in architecture. Half of thelecture in Zurich was expressly directed over the heads of the audience towardarchitects in general. He did not talk about colour but rather about the blankwall, about the division of labour, and about the social implications of modernarchitecture. Léger wondered why architecture, painting and sculpture were nolonger interconnected, as they had been in the past, and he gave architects theblame for this. He observed that modern architecture had expanded to cover thefield of urban planning. In doing so, he pointed to the schism between modernarchitecture and the lifestyle of the common man who was consigned, help-lessly, to an empty space with blank walls within modern architecture. Painterswere needed to fill this void, claimed Léger. In his opinion, based on the princi-ple of specialization, it was not ideal to have the architect determine thecolours. ‘The painter is the arch-enemy of all dead surfaces and is still awaitingyour assignment.’⁷ Do architects actually know what it means to create build-

11

Fernand Léger, Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier near Carcassonne FLC L4-14-16-001

Alfred Roth, Der Ton, 1933Alfred Roth, Der Farbton, 1933 Alfred Roth, Die Farbe, 1933

ings for the people? Architects ought to tackle this problem in conjunction withsculptors and painters. He described the speciality of the painter as follows:‘Colour is one of the elements of life, no less so than water or fire, a raw mate-rial just as useful as grain.’⁸ You have brought movement to your walls by meansof colours, he said to the architects, but the painter is the one who truly acti-vates them. Colour is not something superficial, but rather something that isvital.The lecture was undoubtedly a response to Le Corbusier’s Salubra collection. LeCorbusier had made use of the phrase ‘Colour is one of the elements of life, notless so than water or fire’, countersigned with the name Fernand Léger, as a slo-gan in the elucidation of his wallpaper collection. Léger apparently wasunhappy with the association of his slogan and his name with a project in whichcolour was applied to an architectural project without a painter being involved.In his view, the significance that colour gained from the hand of the painterextended further than the colour keyboards of the Salubra collection.Among Léger’s audience in Zurich that day was Alfred Roth, a former memberof staff of Le Corbusier, who did not agree with various standpoints of thespeaker.⁹ Roth had special interest in the topic, partly due to his contact with LeCorbusier and Mondriaan. Stimulated by this lecture, he produced his own epis-tle entitled ‘Architektur und Malerei, Analyse der farbigen Oberflächengestal-tung von Raum und Volumen’ (Architecture and Painting. Analysis of colouredsurfaces of space and volumes). He was concerned with the optical effects ofcolour, divided into three levels of intensity: the Tone, the Colour Tone, and theColour. To the lowest intensity level, the Tone, Roth attached the specific atten-tion that Léger had directed toward mass-produced housing. The Tone had to beused in neutral colours to ameliorate the proportions in housing constructionand workplaces. Subsequently, the Colour Tone had explicit optical propertiesand was capable of changing spatial proportions, particularly in combinationwith white and grey. According to Roth, the most important example of thiscould be found in the work of Le Corbusier. Finally, he regarded the three pri-mary colours, along with white, black and grey, as used in De Stijl, as being theColour. He referred explicitly to Mondriaan’s studio as an example of this. Rothpresented his study at the fourth CIAM congress in the presence of Le Corbusierand Léger. At the same congress, in the lion’s den one might say, Léger held thesame lecture as in Zurich, but now entitled ‘Discours aux architectes’. Roth hadsent his text to Mondriaan for comment prior to the lecture. They spoke about itcomprehensively, on several occasions. Roth never mentioned any communica-tion with Le Corbusier on the text. The latter, who could be regarded as thetutor of Roth in modern architecture to a certain extent, must have seen this asbetrayal by Roth.¹⁰

The end of 1934 witnessed the publication of the second part of Le Corbusier’sOeuvre complète with a foreword by Sigfried Giedion. He argued that the archi-tecture of Le Corbusier was based on the ‘Five points’, and regarded VillaSavoye (1929) as the highlight of this theory. With regard to the villas, this wasalso the end point, as none of the six dwelling houses that Le Corbusier built inthe thirties was designed with reference to these ‘Five points’. And only one ofthese bore polychrome painting, namely, his own house on the rue Nungesser-

12

8 Ibid. 142 9 Roth, A., Begegnung mitPionieren (Stuttgart, 1973),170.10 It is striking that theschematic division of thecolours that Roth used wasborrowed from the schemethat Theo van Doesburghad presented in ‘Debeteekenis van de kleur inbinnen- en buiten-architec-tuur’. Le Corbusier hadrefused to publish this arti-cle in L’Esprit Nouveau,which Roth probably didnot know at that time; seealso p. 85, 86 of this book.

et-Coli. However, much use was made of the expressive character of naturalmaterials. We also know with certainty that colour was applied in three large-scale buildings that were constructed at the same time: the Clarté building inZurich, Pavillon Suisse and the Cité de Refuge, both in Paris. In this context, onemust realize that, after 1933 to 1946, Le Corbusier only realized one single build-ing. With the exception of the relentless flow of projects and publications, hisarchitectural practice had come almost to a halt.In a discussion with Léger and Aragon on ‘Peinture et réalité’ in 1936, Le Cor-busier formulated a response to both Roth and Léger.¹¹ He was scathing aboutRoth’s preference for Mondriaan. ‘Perhaps the northern races – the Anglo-Sax-ons or the Germanic peoples – take the liberty to indulge in abstractions’, hewrote.¹² In contrast, French art is essentially concrete and realistic and formsthe basis of international art. He endorsed Léger’s claim that the arts hadentered a collective period, with architecture at the fore. Architecture had to beaccompanied by painting and sculpture, but he assumed the primacy of archi-tecture. It had to make demands on the other art forms so that they could beadopted into architecture in a harmonious manner. Architecture could notprogress further without these, but if they wished to accompany architecturethey had to take proportion, the basis of architecture, as the starting point.None the less, he was also afraid that inappropriate art would spoil the wallsand, for that reason too, the artist had to follow the train of thought of thearchitect. He distinguished two methods of applying painting. The first waspolychromy. In his view, architectural polychromy could curb confusion, createlyrical spaces, bring order, enlarge dimensions. ‘This is not yet painting. That isnot necessary. This is architectonic polychromy. If a wall or part of a wall has anoppressive effect, I can break it open with a suitable colour. But, if there isscope for it, I can also ask a painter to shape his imaginative thoughts on thistopic and to open the doors to the distant land of dreams in one fell swoop –and especially at those places where there is no real depth.’¹³ The secondmethod could be applied when the architect prepared a place for the artist tointroduce a lyrical touch in the whole of his architecture. With this, the possibil-ity of deep harmony was generated, but the danger of dualism loomed. To LeCorbusier, the integration of modern architecture in large urban projects and theaim to ensure the applicability of polychromy in wallpaper for the common manwere part and parcel of the same ideal. He wished to extract the relationshipwith painting from this process and to integrate it in a new ‘synthèse des arts’.The same book that contains the above-mentioned text by Le Corbusier alsoincludes a text by Alberto Sartoris, ‘Colour in interior architecture’.¹⁴ Sartorishad been a member of the Movimento Italiano per l’architettura razionale since1929, and Le Corbusier knew him from the first CIAM congress in 1928. In thistext, Sartoris treated ‘colour as a vital complement of architecture; it is one ofits logical and indispensable elements.’ He distinguished between a dynamic anda neo-plastic method, both of which are firmly linked to theories of architec-tonic functionalism. According to the dynamic method, walls that do not receivedirect light ought to be painted white or given a very light colour. Walls that arehalf-illuminated or fully lit can be given gradually brighter colours. But everycolour has to respect the wall, its form, volume and purpose. In the neo-plastic

13

11 Le Corbusier, ‘Destin dela peinture’ in La querellede réalisme (Paris, 1936), 80ff. Published in English asLe Corbusier, ‘The quarrelwith realism, the destiny ofpainting’ in J.L. Martin etal., Circle, International Sur-vey of Constructive Art(London, 1937), 67 ff. Seealso Le Corbusier, ‘Les ten-dances de l’architecturerationaliste en rapport avecla collaboration de la pein-ture et de la sculpture’ inL’Architecture Vivante. LeCorbusier et Pierre Jean-neret, septième série, Paris1937, a lecture held in Romein 1936. 12 Ibid. 70.13 Ibid. 72-3.14 Sartoris, A., ‘Colour ininterior architecture’ in J.L.Martin et al., Circle, Inter-national Survey of Construc-tive Art (London, 1937), 212ff.

15 Braham, W., ModernColor / Modern Architecture(Burlington, 2002); thisbook’s sketch of the colourtheory of Purism is ratherinadequate.

14

method, every wall is painted in the primary colours of red, yellow or blue,along with white, grey and black. In contrast to this restriction of the palette,the dynamic method makes use of all colours. Sartoris believed that, to generateharmony, it was best to make use of dissonance and contrast, thus creating ananimated unity, a vital harmony. With this, he took a stand against the mono-chrome interior and the monochordal composition of the interior, and saw hisidea of harmony as the normal link in attuning architecture and divergent fur-nishings.In a recent study, William Braham has dealt with Ozenfant’s ideas on poly-chromy in the thirties.¹⁵ In 1937, Ozenfant published several articles on colour inrelation to architecture, and these formed the basis of Braham’s study. The arti-cles showed that Ozenfant had definitively abandoned his Purist standpoint,and that he had not followed Le Corbusier’s transformation of this standpoint toarchitecture. His ideas were a complete repudiation of a position that he hadfirst advanced in 1918, in conjunction with Le Corbusier, and which Le Corbusierstill appeared to advocate. Ozenfant adopted an almost scientific approach, ashad been elaborated by Signac at the end of the nineteenth century. Colour wastreated as an autonomous phenomenon, subject to its own laws. In architecture,colour was not directly connected to form and proportion, but rather to ambi-ence, use, the furnishings, and the entire upholstery of the interior.

One can conclude that, in the early thirties, a picture arose of the architectonic

Alberto Sartoris, Casa Morand-Pasteur, axonometry of interior, 1933 Alberto Sartoris, Casa Morand-Pasteur, axonometry of interior, 1933

15

Amédée Ozenfant, colour scheme of interior of own studio in London, 1937