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‘Beyond the clichés of the hand-books’: Le Corbusier's architectural promenade1

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602360600636123

1466-4410

Jan Birksted,

Historical Architecture and Urbanism

Abstract This study places Charles-Edouard Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's concept of the architectural promenade within the culture of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1887–1917. It is based on in-depth empirical research being currently carried out in private and public archives in La Chaux-de-Fonds and in other Swiss towns. The paper also considers to a lesser extent specific aspects of the architecture of Le Corbusier in Paris after 1917, which are in accord with the La Chaux-de-Fonds period of 1887–1917, based on current in-depth research in private and public archives in France. The essay, which thus presents completely new empirical evidence, is part of research in progress towards a monograph in preparation for the MIT Press. By extrapolation, through its analysis of Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's architectural promenade within the cultural and intellectual context of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1887–1917, the study addresses the problematics of the architectural language of the Modern Movement. Acknowledgements This research would not have been possible without the immense help of the librarians in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Sylvie Béguelin and Catherine Cortésy, and of Arnaud Dercelles at the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris. Nor would it have been possible without the help of Michel Cugnet, Pierre Zurcher, Pierre Mollier, Irène Mainguy, Jonathan Giné and François Rognon. I would like to thank many others for their help, including Michel Ditisheim. Maurice Favre has been of invaluable assistance and I thank him and Madame Favre for their kindness. I would also like to thank the librarians at the United Grand Lodge of England who have also been incredibly helpful; their collection of Swiss and French books has been invaluable to me. As always, the librarians in my favourite reading room at the British Library have also been very helpful. I would like to thank H. Allen Brooks for his encouragement; any critique of his research, as indeed is the case for Richard Etlin, is part of the constructive process of research: this endeavour could not have been achieved without their invaluable and impressive prior work. I would like to thank Paul Kenny and Judi Loach who have discussed the text with me. I have had a very helpful correspondence with Jean-Pierre Bayard, and also with Laurent Bastard at the Musée du Compagnonnage in Tours, for which I thank them. Madame Verne at the Librairie du Compagnonnage in Paris has also been extremely helpful, as has Rebecca Patterson at the Ruskin Reading Room at Lancaster University. At UCL, I am grateful to Marion Sadoux for her help with translations, the final mistakes being entirely my own. I am grateful to my colleagues at The Bartlett for both critically questioning me and sustaining me on those days when a researcher wonders where to locate the margins between fact and fiction. Notes 1. I take the expression ‘beyond the clichés of the hand-books’ from Joseph Rykwert, ‘The Dark Side of the Bauhaus’, in Joseph Rykwert, The Necessity of Artifice (London, Academy Editions, 1982), pp. 44–49; p. 44. 2. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder, Two Studies in the History of Ideas (London, The Hogarth Press, 1976), p. 154. 3. Le Corbusier, Textes et dessins pour Ronchamp (Geneva, Presses de la Coopi, 1981), np. 4. Mogens Krustrup, Porte Email: Emaljeporten. La Porte Emaillée. The Enamel Door: Le Corbusier Palais de l'Assemblée de Chandigarh (Copenhagen, Arkitektens Forlag, 1991), p. 29. 5. Richard A. Etlin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The romantic legacy (Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 72. See also Le Corbusier, Une petite maison (Zurich, Editions Girsberger, 1954 1923). 6. Anthony Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 2000), p. 121, p. 54. 7. Le Corbusier, ‘Ineffable Space’, in Le Corbusier, New World of Space (New York, Reynal & Hitchcock; Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art, 1948), pp. 7–9; p. 8. (No one seems to have been so close and yet so far from potentially understanding Le Corbusier as Vidler when one compares, on the one hand, his meticulous research on eighteenth century Freemasonic routes [see beneath] and, on the other hand, his dismissive comment on Le Corbusier's secrecy as ‘contempt’ in Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, op. cit., p. 54. 8. H. Allen Brooks, Le Corbusier's Formative Years: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Chicago and London, the University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 352. 9. Other interpretations exist, but brief, undeveloped, without substantial empirical evidence and presented in a somewhat throw-away manner. One such is Anthony Vidler's interpretation of Le Corbusier's use of Choisy's notion of pittoresque as ‘the final conjunction of architectural and filmic modernism; the rhythmic dance of Le Corbusier's spectator (modelled no doubt on the movements of Jacques Dalcroze) anticipating the movement of Eisenstein's shots and montages.’ Anthony Vidler, op. cit., p.121. Daniel Naegele argues the exact opposite, namely that Le Corbusier's ineffable space is not the paranoid/warped space that Vidler associates it with and therefore not Kandinsky's notion of ‘a terrifying abyss’ (Daniel Naegele, ‘Object, Image, Aura: Le Corbusier and the Architecture of Photography’, Harvard Design Magazine No. 6, Autumn, 1998, pp. 1–6); see Wassily Kandinsky, ‘Reminiscences’, in Wassily Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art, Volume One (1901–1921), eds, Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vargo (Boston, G. K. Hall & Co., 1982 1913), pp. 369–370. It would seem from Le Corbusier's Une petite maison (1923), op. cit., that limitless space of the ‘terrifying abyss’ kind is not at all what Le Corbusier was interested in. 10. Richard A. Etlin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The romantic legacy (1994), op. cit. 11. See Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l'architecture (Paris, Edouard Rouveyre, Éditeur, 1899); Le Corbusier, Towards a new architecture (London, The Architectural Press, 1946 [Vers une architecture, Paris, Éditions Crès, 1923]). For a further discussion of Jeanneret's use of Choisy, see Judi Loach, ‘Le Corbusier and the creative use of Mathematics’, British Journal for the History of Science, Special Edition on Science and the Visual,eds, J. V. Field and F. A. J. L. James, Vol. 31, No. 109 (June, 1998), pp. 185–216. 12. ‘… les tracés régulateurs—(la preuve: Choisy)’ (Le Corbusier, The Final Testament of Père Corbu [translation of Mise au point] (New Haven and Yale, Yale University Press, 1997), p. 145.) 13. Richard A. Etlin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The romantic legacy, op. cit., p. 99. 14. Walter-Hanno Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present (London/London and New York, Zwemmer/Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), p. 288. 15. John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992), p 106. 16. Ibid., p 105. 17. ‘… parties dissymétriques, pondération des masses’, Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l'architecture, op. cit., p. 409. (Translations are mine unless otherwise credited.) 18. ‘Chaque motif d'architecture pris à part est symmétrique, mais chaque groupe est traité comme un paysage où les masses seules se pondèrent’, ibid., p. 419; quoted in Walter-Hanno Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present, op. cit., p. 547, note 145 (Kruft's translation). 19. In this respect, Kruft also fails to note that Choisy's example would concern a totally ahistorical case of the application of the eighteenth-century concept of British landscape architecture, being its retrospective application to a landscape of rock contour-levels on the Acropolis in the fifth century BC. 20. Richard A. Etlin, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The romantic legacy, op. cit., p. 99. 21. Jeanneret's meticulous and extended research in the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale and in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève into the history and theory of gardens and of landscape architecture—through Georges Riat's L'Art des jardins, Henri Stein's Les jardins en France de l'origine à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Dézallier d'Argenville's La théorie et la pratique du jardinage, Pierre Patte's Monuments érigés en France à la gloire de Louis XV, Gabriel Perelle's engravings—shows not a single drawing of an English landscape garden, that is, not a single drawing of any garden or landscape associated with the notion of the picturesque. See Georges Riat, L'Art des jardins (Paris, Bibliothèque de l'enseignement des beaux-arts, c. 1900); Henri Stein, Les Jardins en France des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, D.A. Longuet, 1913); A.-J. Dézallier d'Argenville, La théorie et la pratique du jardinage, ou l'on traite à fond des beaux jardins appelés communément les jardins de plaisance, et de propreté (La Haye, Jusson, 1739); Pierre Patte, Monuments érigés en France à la gloire de Louis XV, et suivis d'un choix des principaux projets qui ont été proposes pour placer la statue du roi dans les différents quartiers de Paris (Paris, Chez Lacombe, 1772); Gabriel Perelle, Recueil des plus belles vues des maison royales de France (Paris, Poilly, c. 1660). The emphasis is firmly on the French garden. For a discussion of this, see Claude Malécot, ‘Les Jardins’, in Hôtel de Sully, Le Corbusier: le passé à reaction poétique (Paris, Hôtel de Sully, 1988), pp. 110–118. For Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's drawings, see Fondation Le Corbusier, File B2-20. 22. In this respect, Jeanneret was an instrumental reader, focusing on tasks to be performed. At this point in time, he was working on urban issues. 23. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, op. cit., p. 52. 24. I do not assume, as some historians do, that each period has a single cultural context. Each period has many cultural contexts, which crisscross and overlap, and which the individual human actors therefore manipulate and activate according to the situations involved. See J. Birksted, ‘Talking and Understanding’, in C. Adelman, ed., Uttering, Muttering: Collecting, using and reporting talk for social and educational research, SSRC Publications (1975), pp. 30–46; J. Birksted, ‘School versus pop culture? A case study of adolescent adaptation’, Research in Education, No. 16, pp. 13–23. 25. See Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de La Chaux-de-Fonds (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Imprimerie du National Suisse, 1885); Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de La Chaux-de-Fonds (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Imprimerie du National Suisse, 1919). 26. The situation was slightly more complex since the new Polytechnikum in Zurich, where Gottfried Semper was professor of architecture, also played a significant, but less visible, role in La Chaux-de-Fonds. And issues of Swiss identity and nationalism, revolving around notions of Heimatschütz, were involved too. In any case, the libraries in La Chaux-de-Fonds, being in Suisse Romande, are all and entirely in the French language. In this respect, the argument of this essay implies that the very notion of pittoresque operative in La Chaux-de-Fonds was different from other parts of Switzerland, represented for example by the article ‘Moderne style et traditions locales’ by Charles Melley, architect and teacher at the École d'ingénieurs in Lausanne: Charles Melley, ‘“Modern style” et traditions locales’, BTSR, (1904), Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 72–75). For a discussion of Melley, see Jacques Gubler, Nationalisme et Internationalisme dans l'Architecture Moderne de la Suisse (Lausanne, Éditions L'Age d'Homme, 1975). Melley saw three architectures in Switzerland: the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts, Art Nouveau and the vernacular Swiss pittoresque. Melley blamed Beaux-Arts traditions for the impoverishment of modernism because, working within this tradition, modernism simply deleted classical ornamentation, which was incompatible with industrial building products and procedures, without being able to replace it with anything else. Melley blamed Art Nouveau for being foreign and therefore alien to Swiss values and traditions. Thus, for Melley, only rural, historical and vernacular pittoresque was suitable. In this respect, Melley's notion of pittoresque was backwards oriented. By contrast, La Chaux-de-Fonds was a town characterised by its industrialisation, its internationalism and its cosmopolitanism, therefore operating with a different notion of the value of international cosmopolitan industrialisation. 27. For a description of the drawing classes of the Cours Yvon and of the architectural classes of Julien Guadet at the École des Beaux Arts, see Annie Jacques, Les Beaux-Arts, de l'Académie aux Quat'z'arts; Anthologie historique et littéraire (Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 2001). Matisse was later to join the Cours Yvon. See also in the Archives Nationales, the files AJ52 879 about the Cours Yvon. 28. ‘… des succès remarquables, plusieurs distinctions, prix et médailles dans les concours en loge et le diplôme d'architecte de l'état, titre qui n'est délivré en France qu'à la suite d'examens sévères. Ses aptitudes artistiques, son talent de dessinateur, l'étude approfondie qu'il a faite des styles décoratifs, l'ont désigné tout naturellement au choix de la Commission d'éducation. Il sera certainement à la hauteur de son enseignement et saura donner à l'École une impulsion féconde’:École municipale d'arts appliqués à l'industrie, Rapport du Comité sur l'Exercise de 1886–1887 (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Imprimerie du National Suisse, 1887), p. 5. 29. Nicholas Green, The spectacle of NATURE: Landscape and bourgeois culture in nineteenth-century France (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 95. 30. Ibid., p. 109. 31. Ibid., p. 96. 32. Ibid., p. 105. Green also studies the context of travel guides and their emphasis on the pittoresque, and again he points out their metropolitan and commercial nature (see chapter ‘Guides to Fontainebleau’, pp. 167–181). 33. Ch. V. D. S. J., Guide pittoresque de l'étranger dans Paris et ses environs, avec 72 vignettes sur bois dans le texte, Les cartes du parcours des chemins de fer et un plan de Paris et ses environs orné de 18 vignettes et taille-douce, Nouvelle edition, entièrement revue et complétée (Paris, Jules Renouard et Cie, Aubert et Cie, nd, after 1850). 34. M. J. Morlent, Voyage historique et pittoresque du Havre à Rouen sur la Seine avec une carte des rives de la Seine et six gravures (Rouen, A. Le Brument, Éditeur, 1844). 35. G. Touchard-Lafosse, La Loire historique, pittoresque et biographique de la source de ce fleuve à son embouchure dans l'océan (Tours, Chez Lecesne, Éditeur, 1851). 36. Ch. V. D. S. J., Guide pittoresque de l'étranger dans Paris et ses environs, op. cit. 37. M. J. Morlent, Voyage historique et pittoresque du Havre à Rouen sur la Seine, op. cit. 38. ‘L'aspect de Rouen est pittoresque et ravissant; c'est une ville charmante, vue de loin; l'intérieur, malgré les améliorations successives qu'elle éprouve annuellement, présente encore les vieilles maison en bois, à étages surplombés, les rues étroites et tortueuses des villes du moyen-âge. Cependant, les quais de cette grande et populeuse cité éminemment marchande s'achèvent et s'embellissent; les anciennes constructions font place à des édifices modernes de bon goût; aussi, dès ce moment, le bassin de la Seine et le port de Rouen offrent un des aspects les plus majestueux qu'on puisse imaginer.’ Ibid., p. 160. 39. G. Touchard-Lafosse, La Loire historique, op. cit. 40. Ibid.: see p. 1 of ‘Introduction’. 41. ‘L'HÔTEL DE VILLE, séjour passager du Gouvernement provisoire et du maire de Paris, est redevenu l'hôtel de la Préfecture, et a été décoré de nouvelles statues qui complètent sa riche façade. LE JARDIN DU LUXEMBOURG a reçu de splendides embellissements en décorations architecturales, statues et jardins anglais, sous l'habile direction de M. de Gisors, architecte, et de M. Hardy, jardinier en chef. LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE SAINTE-GENEVIEVE, dont l'ancien local tombait en ruine, a été remplacé par un construction élégante, qui décore la place du Panthéon.—Cette riche Bibliothèques est très fréquentée par la jeunesse laborieuse de nos Écoles, qui y reçoit, de la part de MM les conservateurs, l'accueil le plus hospitalier. LES BOULEVARDS de la rive droite, selon un projet antérieur à la revolution de Février, sont macadamisés…’ (Ch. V. D. S. J., Guide pittoresque de l'étranger dans Paris et ses environs, op. cit., pp. XXI–XXII). 42. See John Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture, op. cit., p. 126. 43. Ibid., p. 117. 44. Ibid., p. 117. 45. Two books are in Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's library—Joris-Karl Huysmans, La Cathédrale (Paris, Plon, 1908): this is signed Ch.-E. Jeanneret, Paris 1909 and has annotations; and Joris-Karl Huysmans, Sainte Lydwinet de Schiedam (Paris, Plon, 1915): this is signed Ch.-E. Jeanneret. 46. Huysmans, Against Nature [À Rebours, 1884] (London, Penguin Books, 2001), p. 22. ‘…au bain Vigier, situé, sur un bateau, en pleine Seine. Là, en faisant saler l'eau de sa baignoire et en y mêlant, suivant la formule du Codex, du sulfate de soude, de l'hydrochlorate de magnésie et de chaux; en tirant d'une boîte, soigneusement fermée par un pas de vis, une pelote de ficelle ou un tout petit morceau de câble qu'on est allé exprès chercher dans l'une de ces grandes corderies dont les vastes magasins et les sous-sols soufflent des odeurs de marée et de port; en aspirant ces parfums que doit conserver encore cette ficelle ou ce bout de câble; en consultant une exacte photographie du casino et en lisant ardemment le guide Joanne décrivant les beautés de la plage où l'on veut être; en se laissant enfin bercer par les vagues que soulève, dans la: baignoire, le remous des bateaux-mouches rasant le ponton des bains; en écoutant enfin les plaintes du vent engouffré sous les arches et le bruit sourd des omnibus roulant, à deux pas, au-dessus de vous, sur le pont Royal, l'illusion de la mer est indéniable, impérieuse, sûre. Le tout est de savoir s'y prendre, de savoir concentrer son esprit sur un seul point, de savoir s'abstraire suffisamment pour amener l'hallucination et pouvoir substituer le rêve de la réalité à la réalité même’: Joris-Karl Huysmans, A Rebours (Paris, Fasquelle Editeurs, 1974 1883), p. 51. 47. See Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘La Maison Suisse’, Les Etrennes Helvétiques, Almanach Illustré (Paris, Fischbacher & Cie., Editeurs; Dijon, Félix Rey, Librairie Générale; La Chaux-de-Fonds, Imprimerie Georges Dubois, Editeur, 1914), pp. 33–39. 48. Isabelle Kaiser, ‘La Suisse Pittoresque’, ibid., pp. 45–47. 49. ‘…accord de la technique et du paysage’: Jacques Gubler, Nationalisme et Internationalisme dans l'Architecture Moderne de la Suisse (Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1975), pp. 225–226. For a discussion of the general Swiss context, including the Heimatschutz movement, see ibid. Gubler places the public perception of the overlap of modernity with alpine scenery in the 1930s, and relates it to Max Bill and his work with the Swiss Tourist Board. My research indicates that in La Chaux-de-Fonds, an industrial town, this trend existed well before that period. In this respect, Gubler himself writes that ‘l'accord de la technique et du paysage, consacré par les traditions romantiques ou préromantiques du sublime ou du pittoresque, se trouve ainsi renoué’ (pp. 225–226). To prove that sweeping and speculative statement with reference to La Chaux-de-Fonds, one could look at the work of the romantic Chaux-de-fonnier painter, Léopold Robert (1794–1835), pupil of David. However, Robert lived in Paris, Neuchâtel and then Italy until his death so that perhaps too many complex cultural layers are superimposed. 50. John Dixon Hunt, op. cit., p. 197. 51. Charles Humbert has hitherto been overlooked for several reasons. First, being a particularly influential person in Jeanneret's life, his importance and role were played down by Jeanneret, as was always the case with the most important people. Secondly, Humbert's archives are still largely in private hands. Thirdly, Humbert's work is not as ‘historiogenic’ as L'Eplattenier's because it does not fit in easily with simple historical periodisations such as, for example, Art Nouveau, and therefore does not fit in either with ‘touristogenic’ historicity. 52. These often daily meetings and discussions are documented in Charles Humbert's Diaries (Private Collection, La Chaux-de-Fonds) and have been tabulated by the owner of the diaries to show their frequency. 53. ‘Figurez-vous: il m'arrive d'aller le soir avec des amis, chez eux, à quoi faire: à nous raconter toujours les mêmes histoires: Cézanne, Hodler, Titien, Tintoret. Je rentre passé minuit, la maison étant close. Et on s'imagine chez moi que je me putinise, que je vois des ou une garce.’ Letter from Charles-Edouard Jeanneret to William Ritter, 23rd December, 1913; quoted in H. Allen Brooks, Le Corbusier's Formative Years: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 1997), pp. 353–354. La Chaux-de-Fonds was a place of extreme wealth and extreme poverty and, with its population of destitute and/or seasonal labourers, prostitution was rife. 54. Charles Humbert, Diaries (Private collection in La Chaux-de-Fonds). For a study of Ruskin's reception in France, see Jean Autret, Ruskin and the French before Marcel Proust (Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1965). 55. The accepted historical interpretation is that the reception of John Ruskin must be seen as mediated by Charles L'Eplattenier, who read Ruskin reverently. See H. Allen Brooks, op. cit.; Paul V. Turner, La formation de Le Corbusier: Idéalisme et Mouvement Moderne (Paris, Macula, 1987); Mary Patricia May Sekler, ‘Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand’, in Russell Walden, ed., The Open Hand: Essays on Le Corbusier (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1977), pp. 42–95. And my research supports the fact of L'Eplattenier's reverent reading of Ruskin, as can be seen by René Chapallaz's immediate purchase of several Ruskin books after his first meeting with L'Eplattenier (see René Chapallaz Private Letters, Fonds René Chapallaz, Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds). However, after Jeanneret's return from his apprenticeships with Auguste Perret in Paris (1908–1909) and with Peter Behrens in Berlin (1910–1911), there follows the period when he, Humbert and others begin to distance themselves from L'Eplattenier. They have fights with L'Eplattenier, and they criticise L'Eplattenier's simplistic aesthetics and art practices, the ‘pine tree style’, le style sapin. This coincides with the inauguration of L'Eplattenier's public sculpture of 1910 in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Hommage à la République Neuchâteloise, which received a critical, sometimes negative, occasionally damning, response. Already from 1909, disagreements had developed between L'Eplattenier and his students, who were critical of his insistent emphasis on repetitive pine-tree motifs. Humbert noted in his diary of 3rd July, 1912 ‘Causé avec le patron sur les dissentiments des élèves à son égard.’ On 26th September, 1912, he noted ‘Mr L'Eplattenier m'insulte et me reproche ma conduite envers Mme Perrochet (Ch-E. Jeanneret me défend).’ The following day, he noted that ‘Le patron prend une attitude méprisante envers Mlle Woog et moi.’ Then, on the day after that, events come to a head as he noted that ‘Le patron nous apprend sa demission’: Charles Humbert, diary of 3rd July, 26th, 27th and 28th September, 1912, quoted in Maurice Favre, ‘Les Voix et leur époque 1919–1920’, Nouvelle revue neuchâteloise, No 78, 20e année (Autumn, 2003), p. 18. 56. ‘…une œuvre de piété; c'est aussi un acte de justice’: Maurice Millious, ‘Introduction’, Joseph Antoine Milsand, L'Esthétique anglaise: Étude sur M. John Ruskin (Lausanne, Librairie Nouvelle, E. Frankfurter, 1906 2nd edition), p. V, in the collection of the Bibliothèque de l'École d'art de La Chaux-de-Fonds (Book No. 18; T.O. no. 283). Joseph Antoine Milsand's study of Ruskin, originally of 1864, is listed in subsequent and contemporary academic bibliographies as being the first major study of Ruskin in French. An example of such listing is George Allen Cate, who notes, in his John Ruskin: a Reference Guide; A Selective Guide to Significant and Representative Works about him (Boston, G.K. Hall & Co., 1988), that ‘This is the first full-length study of Ruskin in French, and a valuable one. Ruskin himself read it and enjoyed it…’ See also Jean Autret, Ruskin and the French before Marcel Proust, op. cit. Milsand's book of 1864 is the one that Proust read (see Marcel Proust, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1er Avril, 1900, p. 311). A recent conference publication is Matthias Waschek, ed., Relire Ruskin: Cycle de conferences organisé au Musée du Louvre, March–April 2001 (Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts et Le Louvre, 2003). See also Kirk H. Beetz, John Ruskin: A Bibliography, 1900–1974 (Metuchen, New Jersey, The Scarecrow Press, 1976); Thomas J. Wise, A Complete Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of John Ruskin LL.D with a list of more important Ruskiniana (London, printed for subscribers only, 1864 [reprinted for Dawsons of Pall Mall London, 1893, 2 volumes].) I thank Rebecca Patterson, Deputy Curator of the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, for these detailed clarifications and references. 57. ‘Jusqu'au XVe siècle, l'artiste pouvait être lui-même un poète ou un philosophe, mais comme artiste, il vivait dans une sorte de sanctuaire, il appartenait à une confrérie qui avait ses secrets et formait un monde à part; il recevait par initiation les traditions de ses devanciers, et en peignant il ne reconnaissait pour juges que ses maîtres et ses pairs. Enfermé avec son inspiration, il disait, même à un pape: procul esto, les profanes n'entrent pas’: Joseph Milsand, L'Esthétique anglaise: Étude sur M. John Ruskin, op. cit., Préface, p. III–IV (Bibliothèque de l'École d'art de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Book No. 18; T.O. no. 283). 58. William J. R. Curtis, Le Corbusier, Ideas and Forms (London, Phaidon, 1986), p. 32. 59. ‘…c'est de spiritualité que parla Ruskin’: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, L'Art décoratif d'aujourdhui (Paris, Vincent Fréal, 1925), p. 134. 60. ‘Apôtre touffu, complexe, contradictoire, paradoxal’ ibid., p. 134). 61. H. Allen Brooks, op. cit., p. 69. 62. ‘…un de ces maîtres d'œuvres du Moyen Age’: W. Matthey-Claudet quoted in Jacques Gubler, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Inventaire Suisse d'architecture 1850–1920 (Berne, Société d'Histoire de l'Art en Suisse, 1982–84), p. 141. 63. Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the Country of Timid People (London, Routledge, 1947/1948), p. 6. 64. ‘La Chaux-de-Fonds, das man als eine einzige Uhrenmanufaktur betrachten kann…’: Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867, Book 4, p. 12, Paragraph 3, Note 32). This quotation is often repeated; see, as one example, Jacques Gubler, Inventaire Suisse d'Architecture, 1850–1920, La Chaux-de-Fonds, op. cit., p. 214, note 32. 65. See Maurice Favre, ‘Daniel Jeanrichard, Premier horloger des Montagnes neuchâteloises et personage de légende’, Musée Neuchâtelois, Number 2 (1992), pp. 45–56. 66. See Jules Wolff, Notice historique sur la communauté israélite de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Centenaire 1833–1933 (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1933). See also Jean-Marc Barrelet and Jacques Ramseyer, La Chaux-de-Fonds ou le défi d'une cité horlogère, 1848–1914 (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Éditions d'En Haut, 1990). 67. ‘… eine einzige Uhrenmanufaktur’: Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867), op. cit.; quoted in Jacques Gubler, Inventaire Suisse d'Architecture, 1850–1920, La Chaux-de-Fonds, op. cit. 68. See Jean-Marc Barrelet and Jacques Ramseyer, La Chaux-de-Fonds ou le défi d'une cité horlogère, 1848–1914, op. cit. 69. Curiously, Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's grandfather lived directly next to this Masonic lodge, and, upon his death, Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's father inherited the flat, which became his atelier until the final move to the Villa Jeanneret-Perret. Also Jeanneret/Le Corbusier's aunt, Pauline, lived in the building next to the Masonic lodge. And Jeanneret/Le Corbusier himself spent time there in the evenings with friends. 70. Charles Thomann, L'Histoire de La Chaux-de-Fonds inscrite dans ses rues (Neuchâtel, editions du Griffon, 1965). 71. See Jean-Marc Barrelet and Jacques Ramseyer, La Chaux-de-Fonds ou le défi d'une cité horlogère, 1848–1914, op. cit. 72. Jacques Gubler, Inventaire Suisse d'Architecture, 1850–1920, La Chaux-de-Fonds, op.cit. 73. See Claude Garino, Le Corbusier, De la Villa Turque à L'Esprit nouveau (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Idéa Éditions, 1995). But Garino makes a fundamental mistake, suggesting that two Freemason lodges existed in La Chaux-de-Fonds, which is incorrect. 74. H. Allen Brooks, op. cit. 75. Paul V. Turner, La formation de Le Corbusier: Idéalisme et Mouvement Moderne, op. cit. 76. Mary Patricia May Sekler, ‘Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand’, op. cit, pp. 42–95. 77. Some scholarly exceptions are James S. Curl, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry: An Introductory Study (London, B. T. Batsford, 2002); Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: freemasonry and politics in eighteenth-century Europe (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991); Patrizia Granziera, The Ideology of the English landscape garden 1720–1750 (Warwick University, PhD thesis, 1996); David Hays, ‘Carmontelle's Design for the Jardin de Monceau’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 32, No. 4 (1999), pp. 447–462; David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasony: Scotland's Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988). This is a ridiculously brief overview of the literature, which will