Page 33 - Studio International - September October 1975

were no more than a setting for the main canvas is that between the black La Ville, and a series which grew out of these.
drama — the drama of real life, of pe0ple ballustre-supporting plane and the Waldemar George, `Le Salon des
and things. Modern life, even scarlet of the vase, and aptly enough Indépendants', L'Amour de l'Art, Paris,
encapsulated in a Corbusian interior along the sharp edge of their meeting February 1923, p. 466.
animated by Léger murals, remained the Léger plays with particular relish the 6 F. Léger, 'Pensees', Valori Plastici, Rome,
centre of attention. 'In this new simple yet ambiguous game with spatial February-March 1919.
Maurice Hiver discusses the exterior factor
environment,' wrote Léger in suggestion so typical of the murals. with some interest in his Montparnasse review
`L'Architecture polychromie', 'a man can Mid-way up the edge the black juts into of Léger and Csaky's project; see note 3.
be seen, for the eye is not distracted by the red of the vase seemingly to overlap 8 In Le Corbusier, `Le Salon d'Automne',
dispersed qualities. Everything is it, the way that the vase shapes are cut off L'Esprit Nouveau, Paris, No. 19.
arranged. Against these big calm areas, ab0ve enhancing this effect, but at the 9 At the end of 1923 Le Corbusier was just
the human face assumes its pr0per status. base the black plane juts unmistakably beginning on the Pessac housing scheme, had
A nose, eye, foot, hand or jacket button under the red reversing the illusion. just arrived at the final designs for the Villa
will become a precise reality.'26 And the Again, as in the murals, Léger is La Roche-Jeanneret, and was still involved in
paintings which he made to celebrate the concerned and decisive about the the building of the Atelier Ozenfant.
•objects and figures of the main drama positioning of colour areas and linear 1° See Richard Francis, Le Corbusier and
Cubism, unpublished M.A. thesis, Courtauld
still, for him, possessed 'the right to a accents in relation to the picture-edge, Institute, University of London, 1971,
place in this organization.' allowing strong, unchecked linear thrusts footnote 56.
Yet Léger's deepened awareness of the ab0ve, but none beneath, and part closing, Published in L'Architecture Vivante, Paris,
relationship between painting and part opening the composition on the right autumn/winter 1924, and translated by
architecture as an harmonious by the siting of the rich blue book-cover- Charlotte H. Green in Leger and Purist Paris,
relationship, and the development like plane there. Then again echoing the Tate Gallery, London, 970-71.
between 1924 and 1926 of his mural murals, Léger allows only a single short 12 Ibid, p. 91.
painting style did have an effect on his passage of d0ts to embellish the structure 13 In fact, Mallet-Stevens chose an already
development as painter of modern life; of the whole. Le Balustre would indeed existing mural which he felt fitted his
intentions, and therefore it cannot be inferred
and an effective way of demonstrating more violently than the 1924 Composition that Léger intentionally adjusted his
this is to pause and look again at the two have challenged the flat identity of the composition to the features of its
paintings which were his contribution to wall on which it hung in Le Corbusier's architectural setting. See F. Léger, `De la
the Pavillon de L'Esprit Nouveau, the ideal living-room, but in no way would it peinture murale', in Fonctions de la peinture,
1924 Composition and Le Balustre. have opposed the stable simplicity of the Paris, 1965, p. 1os.
The 1924 Composition came of dazzling architecture. And its central 'motif' — the 14 See especially Almanach d'Architecture
beginnings : it was developed from the ballustre/machine element — would have Moderne, ed. Le Corbusier, Paris, 1926.
Disques and Armistice day paintings of f0rmed its own particular relationship 15 See Fernand Leger, 1881-1955, Musée des
1918-19," and it contains therefore a with the 'equipment' that filled the space Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1956, p. 33; and
Douglas Cooper, Fernand Leger et le nouvel
variety of pictorial incident found in none in front of the wall, with the standardized
of the true murals. But it is, for all that, a cupboard units, the easy chairs and the espace, Geneva, 1949, p. 91.
2 Fernand Léger, 'Peinture murale et
severe painting, and must have seemed table (complete with nickel-plated legs) peinture de chevalet', 195o, in F. Léger,
utterly correct in the Pavillon, striking up ordered fr0m a supplier of h0spital op. cit, p. 31.
a quiet rapport with the earth brown wall furniture." 17 Mlle. I. Morillon of the Fondation Le
which was opposite, even though itself In the living-room of the Pavillon de Corbusier in Paris, very kindly on my behalf,
hung in a dark frame on a pristine white L'Esprit Nouveau, as part of the ensemble asked the daughter of Albert Jeanneret if she
surface. The quality of its spatial which came closest to making the could recall murals in the Pavillon and
received a very definite negative answer.
suggestions, the calm of its dominant proportionally harmonious, strictly 18 Letter from Léger to Le Corbusier dated
br0wns, ochre and greys, and the flat rational, mass-production ideal 0f the 17 November 1925, E.N. Pavillon file,
simplicity of its maj0r parts were all Purists seem an imminent reality, Léger's Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris.
perfectly in sympathy with the room Le Balustre declared his commitment to a 18 L'Architecture Vivante, Paris, winter 1925,
Le Corbusier designed and furnished in kind of painting which could fit in with p. 5o.
1925. Although not a mural the painting the new architecture, and which could 2° I am indebted to Angelica Rudenstine for
c0uld act as an architectural element in an fit t0o as part of an avant-garde effort giving me important information on the
architectural composition, and the reason whose internationalism seemed briefly to dating of the Guggenheim and Nelson
is obvious, because, with the 1918-19 link Paris with Amsterdam, Berlin, the Rockefeller murals, and for letting me see her
subject so distant, its remnants so few, it Vienna of Friedrich Kiesler and the entry on the former in her forthcoming
has become virtually all architectural Dessau of the Bauhaus. The murals catalogue of the Solomon R. Guggenheim
setting, and it was of course the flat themselves never added up to a working Museum collection. Her entry is extremely
architectural settings of Léger's modern programme for painting in architecture — comprehensive and sets Léger's murals in the
context of his life-long involvement with the
life paintings that were affected by the they are the fragmentary remains of an problem of mural-painting in a way very
experience of the murals. Their colour incomplete experiment — but they gave to much complementary to this article. She has
was muted, their spatial activity was given Léger's celebration of modern life independently found other evidence to prove
new definition and they were ruthlessly a simple strength international in its that the 1924 Composition hung in the
simplified, a process which is clear in all significance. Pavillon.
his non-mural paintings of 1924. 21 These two murals (both at the Musée
Le Balustre was not even nearly a National de Fernand Léger, Biot) are dated
mural, and the bright flat scarlet of its A much fuller account of the construction 1924, and are much more muted in colour
than any of the others, being in tune with the
vase on the left would not have toned and significance of the Pavillon de L'Esprit still-lives of 1924 and paintings like
Nouveau, as well as of the relationship
quietly in with the brown of the wall between Léger's mural and non-mural L'Homme au chandail (Mme. S. Frigerio
opposite. It was one of a brand new paintings is given in my forthcoming book collection, Paris).
type of object-painting; its central Leger and the Avant-garde, to be published by 22 Jean Baldovici in L'Architecture Vivante,
architectural 'motif' is given a polished Yale University Press, New Haven and Paris, autumn/winter 1924.
metallic sheen more associated with London, spring 1976. Ibid.
sparking-plug advertisements than with 2 See Laura Miner, Abstract Art in Paris, 24 In conversation with me (1971).
the traditional forms of masonry unpublished M.A. thesis, Courtauld Theo van Doesburg and Cor van Eesteren,
architecture, the self-importance of this Institute, University of London, 1971. Vers un Construction collectif, Paris, 1923.
centre-piece perfectly foiled by the Miner also uses an unpublished sketch-book 26 Fernand Léger, `L'Architecture
simplicity of its setting. Firmly contained which she dates 1918-19 to prove that Herbin polychromie', in Leger and Purist Paris, p. 96.
A small oil version of the 1924 Composition
worked towards his symmetrical abstractions
27
by its rectangular black surround, the from figurative and landscape 'motifs' in a exists painted on paper and dated '22', whose
ballustre/machine element hovers before synthetic cubist way. Plates 17-20. present whereabouts I do not know. It
a structure of flat planes far more 3 Maurice Hiver, 'Réflexions, Léger et Czaky' includes a disc and is more clearly linked to
colouristically pugnacious than the (sic), Montparnasse, Paris, 1 March 1923. the 1918-19 disc and Armistice day themes.
murals, but in every other respect mural- 4 Particularly close are certain of the See E.N. Pavillon file, Fondation Le
like. The focal confrontation on the watercolour studies behind Léger's 1919 Corbusier, Paris.
107