The Art Bulletin

ISSN: 0004-3079 (Print) 1559-6478 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcab20

Stamo Papadaki, Editor, Le Corbusier, Architect,

Painter, Writer

H. R. Hitchcock

To cite this article: H. R. Hitchcock (1950) Stamo Papadaki, Editor, Le Corbusier, Architect,
Painter, Writer, The Art Bulletin, 32:1, 86-87, DOI: 10.1080/00043079.1950.11407910

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.1950.11407910

Published online: 06 Mar 2015.

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 86 THE ART BULLETIN
based on his a:il analyste, that highly developed faculty
for observing and realizing "nature." This exceptional
faculty, however, was possessed by all important paint-
ers of the time, by Annibale (see his genre scenes and
landscapes) and Rubens and, before them, by Titian.
Poussin shares with these painters the aim of bringing
natura naturata into the spiritual sphere by means of
the "idea," the "perfection of nature," the "marvel of
art," the "providence of the intellect," and the "light
of phantasy," to use the phrases of Bellori, the friend
of Poussin. Erudition, rationalism, morality, intimately
connected with Poussin's special "idea," cannot very
well be called the attributes of the "paysan francais."
It is logical, therefore, that the morphological Pous-
sinists have some prejudice against a Poussin presented
to posterity, as always in the past, as the peintre philo-
sophe, who walked along the Pincio explaining his
theories to learned friends or young artists. They prefer
to visualize his creative powers as rooted in French
Downloaded by [University of Exeter] at 05:29 01 April 2016
soil, undamaged by exposure to doctrines and book-
learning. Anyway, he read very little, so they say. It
does not matter to them that the critique erudite can
prove and has proved that Poussin sometimes trans-
ferred Ovidian poesis literally into "pictura," his own
medium, and that he not only knew Cartari's l m-
magini degli Dei, but probably also the more difficult and
nebulous mythographer, Natalis Comes. One should
not, it is true, overrate Poussin's antiquarian knowledge
or his sometimes confusedly expressed theories. But it is
much queerer to picture him as an autochthonous genius
who intuitively turned to the source and essence of all
French art: "Atticism." This precious inheritance of the
French spirit, bequeathed from Greece, specifically from
Athens, enabled Poussin to come as close to Praxiteles,
Scopas, and Alexandria as to French statuary, Fouquet,
and the Maitre d' Avignon. The influence of antique
Rome was only a passing fancy in Poussin's art. After
the Death of Germanicus he liberated himself from it
and recovered his true "Attic" soul. The unity of
French art, about twenty years ago still a matter of dis-
pute even among the French, seems now to have be-
come sacred dogma, which must not be disrupted by
Poussin's as well as Claude's embarrassingly long, nearly
lifetime, absence from their native soil.
It is significant that in the three morphological dis-
cussions, Poussin's art is regarded almost entirely from
the optical point of view, from the "vie des formes."
The content of these forms factually and, still more,
spiritually, how they served Poussin and won him fame
as a favellaggiatore and narrators (as Bernini called
him), is totally neglected. However, it is just this
spiritual and historical content, with its moral and stoical
didacticism, that sharply distinguishes Poussin's painting
from Italian art. He is French in the sense of the sev-
enteenth century, French because his "ethos" corre-
sponds to the thinking and temperament of the higher
bourgeoisie in France. By far the best essay written
on Poussin and his relation to the spiritual forces of
his home-country is the one by Paul Desjardin (La
M hhode des classiques franfais, Paris, 1904), which,
despite its being almost a half-century old, should not
be forgotten, certainly not by a society dedicated to
Poussin,
Nevertheless, the ideas and feelings of the ecole mor-
phologique on Poussin and French art are, at least
symptomatically, interesting. Perhaps without these con-
tributions the two bulletins of the Societe Poussin would
appear less stimulating. In any case the courageous and
learned editor, Mme. Bertin-Mourot, deserves every
praise and encouragement.
WALTER FRIEDLAENDER
New York University
LE CORBUSIER, New World of Space, New York,
Reynal and Hitchcock; Boston, The Institute of
Contemporary Art, 1948. 128 pages, illus., col.
front., $6.00.
STAMO PAPADAKI, Editor, Le C orbwier, Architect,
Painter, l-Vriter, New York, The Macmillan Com-
pany, 1948. 152 pages, illus., $7.50.
Witz, Holbein, Bocklin-Switzerland has produced
some rather great artists in the past, but in the twentieth
century her record is altogether exceptional. Although
their modest motherland has received little credit (since
their careers have centered elsewhere), Klee, one of the
two or three most famous and most characteristic mod-
ern painters, and Le Corbusier, without much question
the most famous and even perhaps the most influential
of modern architects, are both Swiss. Their art could
hardly be more dissimilar. The reputation of Klee rests
on a very large oeuvre, indeed, now closed by his death
a decade ago. Frederick S. Wight, the editor of New
World of Space, has included what he calls "a basic
listing" of the executed buildings of Le Corbusier. In-
complete, it includes some thirty-five structures up to
1940, among which several were temporary exposition
pavilions and many are relatively modest in scale. It is
a surprisingly small amount of work on which to base
so tremendous a reputation.
The list of some two dozen publications by Le Cor-
busier, from the thirty years between 1918 and 1947,
which Mr. Papadaki, the editor of Le Corbusier, Archi-
tect, Painter, Writer, provides, explains better the rea-
son for his tremendous influence on the architecture of
the world in the last quarter century. More impressive
still is the fact that two series of volumes, eight issued
in France and four issued in Switzerland, have pro-
vided over the years continuous documentation on his
executed work and his even more significant projects.
Many of the more important of these books by or about
Le Corbusier are now again available in new editions
and in translations. The preparation and publication in
one year of two relatively modest compilations of his
work may therefore seem redundant. It must be frankly
stated that only those who wish complete documentation
on Le Corbusier will be well advised to add these par-
ticular volumes to their libraries so long as more basic
works are available. Yet both add something to the
 BOOK REVIEWS
canon-s-curiously enough, much the same thing: a better
coverage of his work as a painter than has previously
been available. (Art, a special number of L'architecture
d'aujourd'hui, Paris, 1946, also illustrates much of Le
Corbusier's work as a painter but has been difficult to
obtain in this country.)
From this point of view, New World of Space, pre-
pared in relation to a large retrospective exhibition of
his painting held at the Institute of Contemporary Art
in Boston, has the more to offer. An introductory text
by Le Corbusier, running to only some dozen pages,
is supplemented by occasional groups of paragraphs
from his earlier writing interspersed through the plate
section as well as by briefer notes (presumably by the
editor). This introductory text is here given for the
first time and offers interesting evidence of the way
Le Corbusier today sees his activity as a painter in rela-
Downloaded by [University of Exeter] at 05:29 01 April 2016
tion to his major career as an architect and city-planner.
Since many architects query the importance of the dis-
ciplines of modern painting to the architect, the testi-
mony of Le Corbusier, the chief painter-architect of
our day and the best (or the worst) example of the in-
fluence of modern painting on modern architecture, is
well worth having. There is a rather full coverage of
his work as a painter in the plates, chronologically ar-
ranged from a still life of 1918 to a figure study of
1946. In very loose correlation there are also illustra-
tions of his principal executed buildings and his projects
in architecture and city-planning. The student must
draw his own conclusions as to the significant connec-
tions between the two-dimensional and the three-di-
mensional works of different stages of Le Corbusier's
career. To follow adequately his development as an
architect it is necessary to have recourse to books
in which more adequate sets of architectural drawings
and more varied groups of photographs are to be
found. But the pictures are all dated and their dimen-
sions given, so that the book provides at least a not
inadequate pictorial monograph of his work as a painter.
The layout is extremely casual and scrapbook-like,
while the reproductions in offset, printed in a slightly
bluish ink, are not very agreeable. The typography,
moreover, is worse than undistinguished, so that all told
the book is not an attractive visual object.
Superficially, therefore, Le Corbusicr, Architect,
Painter, Writer, with its crisp halftones and more
careful design, not to speak of the distinguished names
that appear on the titlepage, may seem the more de-
sirable. But Dean Hudnut's text on Le Corbusier's archi-
tecture runs to only three pages-a tribute rather than
an essay; Dr. Giedion's on his furniture to but two;
Leger's on "Colour in Architecture" to two and a half;
and Sert's on his city-planning to a little more than
three. In a final piece on "Le Corbusier, the Painter"
James T. Soby takes slightly more space and provides a
coherent and useful account of his successive phases in
relation to the general development of painting in the
last thirty years. The pictures in various media and the
87
drawings are well selected and brilliantly reproduced
but there are less than a third of the number included
in New 'World of Space. Finally, a few pieces of Le
Corbusier's own writing are given. For the most part,
these are so short as to be hardly more than samples
of his literary style and his ideas.
Both books conclude with an illustration and an ac-
count (fuller in the Papadaki volume) of the Modulor,
Le Corbusier's device for establishing proportions. The
lists that have been mentioned earlier, of executed work
in the Wight book and of publications in the Papadaki
book, are supplemented by Wight with a list of plans
and projects and an epitome of his career as a painter,
together with a shorter enumeration of his publications
(which nevertheless contains several items not in the
Papadaki list). In the other book, a biographical chro-
nology and a mixed list of executed works and projects
are given. In other words, even in their accessory
paraphernalia (presumably prepared by the editors)
the books overlap; yet each has sufficient material not
in the other to indicate that neither is really complete
nor accurate.
Considering the effort that the publishers and editors
have put into these two books, neither of which is
low priced, it is a pity that they could not have worked
together on a single volume, less pretentious but more
thorough in carrying out implied promises. Doubtless
the time has not yet come for a really authoritative
and objective study of Le Corbusier's work. But a
sort of "Student's Corbu," like the small-size Pal-
ladios and Vignolas that were produced in earlier cen-
turies, would be really useful, if the selection of work
illustrated and discussed were carefully done and the
technical drawings adequate to explain the selected
buildings and projects. The Papadaki volume comes
the closer of the two to providing this; yet neither the
selection of works illustrated nor the choice of views
and drawings to cover them seems very carefully
considered. On the whole, despite its superior physi-
cal quality and the excellent Soby contribution, this has
less to offer that cannot be better found elsewhere in
print than does the Wight volume.
In justice to the editors, it should be said that Le Cor-
busier is not an easy man to work with; that he fre-
quently provides visual material which is quite unsatis-
factory for reproduction; and that his own books, for
all their brilliance of ideas, are muddled in organization
and physically unattractive. In the end we must admit
that these American books are not uncharacteristic of
the existing foreign literature on and by their erratic
subject. If you want to complete your Le Corbusier
shelf, you will have to have them. The reviewer, hav-
ing received his copies free and thereby extended his
own shelf at no cost, can only pity those who must buy
these instead of more satisfactory books.
H. R. HITCHCOCK
Smith College