Infinite horizons: Le Corbusier, the Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau dioramas and the science of visual distance
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13602360903027970
ISSN1466-4410
Autores Tópico(s)Architecture, Modernity, and Design
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Le Corbusier, L'art decorative d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1925): cited in Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1979), p.6. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, trs. Frederick Etchells (New York, Dover, 1987), p.231, n.2; originally, Urbanisme (Paris, Les Éditions G.Crès Cie, 1925). See also, Carol S. Eliel, L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918–1925 (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Harry N. Abrams, 2000), pp. 51–53 and Mary McLeod, Urbanism and Utopia: Le Corbusier, from Regional Syndicalism to Vichy (Princeton University PhD thesis, 1985), p.13. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., pp.215–231. Most of the paintings displayed in the pavilion are still in existence. The notable exception seems to be the large diorama paintings, which, according to the Fondation Le Corbusier, exist only as photographs. The pavilion itself was, of course, demolished soon after the exposition closed and although a reconstruction has been built in Bologna, this no longer contains the reproductions of the panoramic images installed for its opening. See, Giuliano Gresleri, L'Esprit Nouveau. Parigi-Bologna: Costruzione e ricostruzione di un prototipo dell'architettura moderna (Milan, Electa, 1979). For information on the planning and organisation of the exposition see, Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989), pp.362–367. See also, Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris, 1918-1925’, in, Carol S. Eliel, ed., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, op. cit., pp.48–49. W. Boesiger and O. Stonorov, eds, Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret: Œuvre Complète 1910–1929 (Zurich, Les Éditions d'Architecture, 1929), pp.34–43; pp.92–121. The Plan Voisin takes its name from the aircraft manufacturer Gabriel Voisin, whose company gave 25,000 francs towards the construction of the pavilion. See, Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, ‘Preface to the 1959 Edition’ (London, Architectural Press, 1987), p.xiv. See also Nancy Troy, Modernism and Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991), p.219. Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, eds., L'Esprit Nouveau (Paris, Éditions de l'Esprit Nouveau, 1920–1925): ‘About a dozen articles reflecting the forthcoming “International Exhibition of the Decorative Arts” had appeared in L'Esprit Nouveau during 1924’; Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, op. cit., p.xiii. For an account of the origins of L'Esprit Nouveau, see Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris’, op. cit., pp.23–24. Completion of the pavilion also marked an end to the periodical and to Le Corbusier's collaboration with Ozenfant. See Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps, op. cit., pp.372–373. Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, op. cit., p.xiii–xv. See also, Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., p.280. On other issues concerning the siting of the exposition, see Tag Gronberg, ‘Making Up the Modern City: Modernity on Display at the 1925 International Exposition’, in, Carol S. Eliel, ed., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, op. cit., p.105. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., p.284. Ibid., pp.277–278. See also, Norma Evenson, Le Corbusier: The Machine and the Grand Design (London, Studio Vista, 1969), pp.19–20. Bernard Comment, The Panorama (London, Reaktion Books, 1999), pp.29–44. Pierre Prévost, ‘Preliminary drawing of Paris in 1804 for the panorama of Paris exhibited in Vienna, 1814’ (Collection Galerie J.Kugel, Paris). The pavilion was located on a small site directly alongside the Grand Palais. See, Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps, op. cit., p.372. The awkward nature of the site has often been attributed to Le Corbusier's acrimonious relationship with the exposition organisers: see Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris’, op. cit., p.52. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., pp.163–176; see also, W. Boesiger and O. Stonorov, eds., Œuvre Complète 1910–1929, op. cit., pp.34–39. Some years earlier, in 1919, Fernand Léger had also made an image of the city. Léger's painting is clearly not a proposition, but rather reflects, perhaps celebrates, the city as a complex and disjointed space. Fragments of buildings, signage and other structures crowd in. There are glimpses of more distant elements, but the city as depicted here is enveloping and distant views are always partly occluded by objects in the intervening space. Fernand Léger, The City, 1919: see, Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris’, op. cit., p.29. A discussion of the sense of separation and quiet implied by Corbusier's proposals can be found in Simon Richards, Le Corbusier and the Concept of Self (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003), pp.108–110. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., p.281. Precedents for Le Corbusier's urban planning include Tony Garnier's ‘Cité Industrielle’ (1903) and Auguste Perret's ‘tower-city’ (1922). See Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis, op. cit., pp.189–191. Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium, trs., Deborah Lucas Schneider (New York, Zone Books, 1997), p.93. Stephen Parcell, ‘The Metaphoric Architecture of the Diorama’, Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell, eds, Chora 2: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture (Montréal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996), p.183. Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype (London, Secker & Warburg, 1956), pp.13–18. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1992), pp.112–113. The Mirror of Literature (2nd October, 1824): cited in Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre, op. cit., p.23; see also, Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama, op. cit., p.79. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., p.281; see also, Tag Gronberg, ‘Making up the Modern City’, op. cit., p.104. Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., p.164 (emphasis added). Ibid., p.281. Bernard Comment, The Panorama, op. cit., pp.134–137. Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capitale du XIXe Siècle: le livre des passages (Paris, Cerf, 1989) ; translated in Bernard Comment, The Panorama, op. cit., p.137. ‘A painting is an association of purified, related and architectured elements.’, Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘Purism’, trs., Robert L. Herbert, ed., Modern Artists on Art (New York, Dover, 2000), pp.59–60. See Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps, op. cit., pp.383–384; and Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris’, op. cit., p.28. Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘Le Purisme’, L'Esprit Nouveau, 4 (1920), pp.369–386; trs., Robert L. Herbert, ed., ‘Purism’, Modern Artists on Art, op. cit., p.65. Ibid., pp.59–60. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, ‘Transparency: Literal & Phenomenal [Part 1]’, Perspecta, 8 (1963); republished in Transparency (Basel, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1997). György Kepes, Language of Vision (Chicago, P. Theobald, 1944). Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Après le Cubisme (Paris, Edition des Commentaires, 1918); trs., John Goodman, ‘After Cubism’, in, Carol S. Eliel, ed., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, op. cit., pp.134–139. Carol S. Eliel, ed., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, op. cit., p.25. ‘A painting is an association of purified, related and architectured elements.’ Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘Purism’, op. cit., pp.59–60; see Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps, op. cit., pp.383–384. See also, Carol S. Eliel, ‘Purism in Paris’, op. cit., pp.28; 60–64. Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘Purism’, op. cit., p.58. Rosalind Krauss, ‘Léger, Le Corbusier and Purism’, Artforum, 10/8 (April, 1972), p.52. Bruno Reichlin, ‘Jeanneret — Le Corbusier, Painter — Architect’, in, Eve Blau and Nancy Troy, Architecture and Cubism (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1997), pp.196–199. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, ‘Transparency: Literal & Phenomenal [Part 1].’, op. cit. See also, Yve-Alain Bois, ‘Cubistic, Cubic, and Cubist’, in, Eve Blau and Nancy Troy, Architecture and Cubism, op. cit., pp.187–194. For the origins of Gestalt psychology, see, amongst others, Edward Reed, James. J. Gibson and the Psychology of Perception (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988), pp.33–37 and Nicholas Wade, The Art and Science of Visual Illusions (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp.3–6. For a critique of Rowe and Slutzky's essay see Rosemarie Haag Bletter, ‘Opaque Transparency’, Oppositions, 13 (Summer, 1978), pp.125–126. L'Esprit Nouveau, 1 (1920). See Judi Loach, ‘Le Corbusier and the Creative Use of Mathematics’, British Journal for the History of Science, 31/2 (June, 1998), p.197. Ozenfant and Jeanneret, ‘Formation de l'optique moderne’, L'Esprit Nouveau, 5/21 (1924). See Jean-Louis Cohen's introduction to John Goodman's translation of ‘Vers une Architecture’, Towards an Architecture (London, Frances Lincoln, 2008), pp.13–14. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, 23 (Paris,1926); see Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London, Butterworth, 1988), pp.257–259. Le Corbusier's partial blindness is recorded in a letter to William Ritter: ‘I am a Cyclops in spite of myself, a nasty joke. And for this very reason things are quite complicated for me. You get used to it: it's been going on for two years.’ (7th April, 1922); cited in Nicholas Fox Weber, Le Corbusier: A Life (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), p.187. See also, Joseph Masheck, ‘Review of an exhibition of Le Corbusier's paintings at the Denise René gallery in New York, 1972’, Artforum, 10/8 (April, 1972), p.89. This remark is attributed to the architectural historian Vincent Scully; cited by Nicholas Fox Weber in Le Corbusier: A Life, op. cit., p.186. Undoubtedly the most comprehensive account of vision as studied through the physiology and optics of the eye is Hermann von Helmholtz's three-volume treatise on physiological optics which offers an encyclopaedic documentation of the scientific understanding of vision in the nineteenth century: Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics, 3 vols, trs. and ed., James Southall. (Wisconsin, Optical Society of America, 1924–25); (originally, Leipzig, Voiss, 1856–1866). The closely related discipline of psychophysics originates in the work of Gustav Fechner. Fechner's approach, which used the measurement of stimulus to gauge sensation, offered a way to by-pass some of the uncertainty concerning the nature of the unconscious and claimed to provide quantifiable measures for sensation and experience. Fechner's ideas also formed the basis for the work by Charles Henry (director of the laboratory of physiology and sensation at the Sorbonne), whose attempts to quantify and measure universal responses to visual stimuli relate directly to Purism's search for a visual language based on absolute constants, and were actually featured in a series of articles in L'Esprit Nouveau. Gustav Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik (Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1860). See also, William Braham, Modern Color/Modern Architecture: Amédée Ozenfant and the Genealogy of Color in Modern Architecture (Aldershot, Ashgate Pub. Co., 2002), pp.24–30; Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer, op. cit., pp.145–146 and Nicholas Wade, A Natural History of Vision (Cambridge Mass., The MIT Press, 1998), pp.395–396. Charles Wheatstone, ‘Contributions to the physiology of vision — Part the first. On some remarkable, and hitherto unobserved phenomena of binocular vision’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 128 (1838), pp.371–394. Republished in The Scientific Papers of Sir Charles Wheatstone (London, Physical Society of London, 1879), pp.225–259. All subsequent page references given here relate to this later publication. It is now generally recognised that Wheatstone was the first to realise the full significance of binocular vision, but this is an issue that has been the subject of considerable debate. See Nicholas Wade, Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (London, Academic Press, 1983), pp.42–49 and Nicholas Wade, A Natural History of Vision, op. cit., pp.300–304. William Braham, Modern Color /Modern Architecture, op. cit., p.24. Louis Daguerre, An historical and descriptive account of the various processes of the daguerreotype and the diorama (1839); trs. (New York, Winter House, 1971). Charles Wheatstone, ‘Contributions to the physiology of vision — Part the first.’, op. cit., p.225. Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama, op. cit., pp.49, 59. L. J. M. Daguerre, The Valley of Chamonix (1832): see, Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre, op. cit., p.28. See also Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama, op. cit., p.80. Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis, op. cit., pp.5–6; p.193. Von Moos describes the enthusiasm Le Corbusier's father had for mountain climbing and Le Corbusier's childhood walks in the Alpine landscape. See also, Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, op. cit., p.194. Diorama d'une ville contemporaine, Salon d'Automne, 1922. In particular, three drawings, all from 1922, indicate the sequential refinement of Le Corbusier's design for the diorama. In these drawings Corbusier appears to be exploring the relationship between the viewer and the depicted scene. Various lines of sight have been drawn and the position, extent and curvature of the display wall are gradually adjusted. Some marginal sketches also clearly emphasise the window-like manner in which the view is intended to be framed. The final form of the diorama is almost identical in dimension to that employed in the Esprit Nouveau pavilion. (Fondation Le Corbusier catalogue nos. 30.826; 30.832 and 30.833.) See, H. Allen Brooks, ed., Le Corbusier Archive, Vol.1: Early buildings and projects, 1912–1923 (New York, Garland Publishing/Paris, Fondation Le Corbusier, 1982). Charles Wheatstone, ‘Contributions to the physiology of vision — Part the first.’, op. cit., pp.226–227. Various editions of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura would have been available to Wheatstone, but he cites a 1721 translation: presumably, Pierre François Giffart, ed., A Treatise of Painting (London, Senex; W.Taylor, 1721). The quotation used here is however taken from a recent translation by Martin Kemp and Margaret Walker: Martin Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989), pp.63–64. It is worth noting that the word used by Leonardo is ‘relievo’ which Kemp notes is literally translated as relief or modelling, but is also used to refer to the three-dimensionality of objects: Kemp, Leonardo on Painting, p.315. Wheatstone also refers to Robert Smith's Compleat System of Opticks (Cambridge, Cornelius Crownfield/Robert Dodsley, 1738), which contains extensive references to Leonardo and to questions of binocular vision. Martin Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting, op. cit., p.64. Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘After Cubism’, op. cit., pp.136–139. Amédée Ozenfant, ‘Notes sur le cubisme’, L'Elan, 10 (1st December, 1916); cited in, Carol S. Eliel, ed., L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism in Paris, 1918–1925, op. cit., p.12. The same artists are cited by Ozenfant and Le Corbusier in Après le Cubisme, ‘After Cubism’, op. cit., p.133. L'Esprit Nouveau (Paris, Éditions de l'Esprit Nouveau, 1920–25; twenty-eight issues). Articles relating to psychology and sensation include: Victor Basch, ‘L'Esthétique Nouvelle et la Science de l'Art’, No.1 (1920) and Charles Henry, ‘La Lumière, La Couleur, et Le Form’, Nos.6–9 (1921). In the pages of the journal there are frequent references to the nature of sensation and to the great nineteenth-century physiologists such as Wilhelm Wundt and Hermann von Helmholtz: but most notably, to the psychophysics of Gustav Fechner. See also, William Braham, Modern Color/Modern Architecture, op. cit., pp.24–30. Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, ‘Le Purisme’, op. cit., p.58. Ibid., p.60. The two photographs of the Ville Contemporaine panorama (see Figure 6 above), show different parts of the painting viewed from slightly different angles. This may be responsible for the impression that the painting has been constructed using curvilinear perspective. However, based on the relationship of the drawing to the edge of the paper, it is equally likely that the projection used was entirely conventional. It is interesting to note that a separate illustration depicting a similar view, published in Urbanisme, did include curvilinear distortion but it is conceivable that this was either an attempt to capture the curvature of the diorama in the drawing for publication, or was simply inspired by photographs such as these. (Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow and Its Planning, op. cit., pp.190–191.) Since the diorama paintings reputedly no longer exist it is difficult to be certain which construction was used but even if one of the diorama paintings were in fact executed with some curvilinear distortion, this would not have changed the directional nature of the perspective view. Rosemarie Haag Bletter, ‘Opaque Transparency’, op. cit., p.124. Leon Battista Alberti, De Pictura (1435); trs., Cecil Grayson, On Painting (London, Penguin, 2004), p.56. See also, Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp.41–45. See also, Robin Evans, The Projective Cast: Architecture and its Three Geometries (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1995), pp.110–111. Alberti's notion of the intersection is considered with respect to binocular vision by Penelope Haralambidou in ‘The Stereoscopic Veil’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 11/1 (2007), pp.36–51. John Ruskin, The Elements of Perspective (London, Smith, Elder & Co, 1859). Le Corbusier's education is outlined in Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier: Elements of a Synthesis, op. cit., pp.2–5. Le Corbusier himself describes the significance of Ruskin for his education as an artist in The Decorative Art of Today, op. cit., pp.132–133. For an account of Ruskin's attitude towards vision and optics see, Martin Kemp, The Science of Art, pp.242–243. Kemp also discusses Ruskin's understanding of perspective. Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical themes in western art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), pp.254–256. Ruskin's Elements of Perspective was written at a time when the stereoscope was at the height of its popularity and there can be little doubt that Ruskin was aware of its role in vision, even if he chose not to see its use as appropriate to art. John Ruskin, The Elements of Perspective, op. cit., p.2. Sébastien le Clerc, Discours Touchant le Point de Vue, dans lequel il est prouvé que les choses qu'on voit distinctement, ne sont vues que d'un oeil (1679). A similar argument is made by Svetlana Alpers, in relation to seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of architectural space and landscape: Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing, op. cit., pp.50–51; 138–139. On the subject of attention and binocular vision, see Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1999), pp.104–105. Stephan Oettermann, The Panorama, op. cit., p.59.
Referência(s)