The Pompidou Centre in Paris has hit back at critics who say its Le Corbusier exhibition, which opened to the public yesterday, 29 April, glosses over recent accusations that the Swiss-born French architect was a militant fascist with links to the Vichy regime.
A spokeswoman for the Pompidou says the exhibition does not refer to Le Corbusier’s fascist past because “it’s about the proportions of the human body, which are present in his architecture and painting. [...]”
— The Art Newspaper
20 Comments
hey can someone post some of Corb's erotic sketches so we can go back to discussing his misogyny please?
hitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitlerhitler
"It's as if Corb thought all a person needed was light and space... "
I know, its trolling, but its still one of the saddest things I've read on an architecture board.
"In August 1940, the architect wrote to his mother that "money, Jews (partly responsible), Freemasonry, all will feel just law". In October that year, he added: "Hitler can crown his life with a great work: the planned layout of Europe."
Maybe his mom was a Nazi sympathizer and he was just playing along?
Seems like gotcha journalism. What iconic figure are we getting next week?
we've had multiple threads about this, thayer, with actual quotes of actual scholarly content.
you can keep your clickbait.
cheese eating surrender monkeys
Thayer-D you have posters of Albert Speers work hanging on your walls or something? All traditionalists are Nazis! I thought everyone knew that.
Trigger warning!
I just can't look at a Corbusier building without associating it with oppression and antisemitism. It's forever tainted. I'm sorry, I can't help it.
International style modern = the architecture of fascism.
Anyone else enjoy Reiny's rehabilitation of Futurism?
Olaf,
Albert Speer was a horrible architect IMO, but I'm endlessly fascinated by how a large educated nation with such a noble history could have been taken in by a two bit nutty Austrian corporal. So no, it's no surprise that Corb got caught up with the fever. Politicians use architects for their own purposes, and Mies and Corb where no different in that they would have been happy to work with the dictator. Lucky for them and modernism that Hitler rejected their styles and unlucky for traditional architecture that Hitler embraced it, all be it a horrible version. Just the way it goes...
EKE, maybe you better reread this article or this one and remember that the International Style was actually based in social housing for the everyman?
What it was based on, and what it has come to represent are two different things, are they not, Donna?
Similarly for Classical architecture, no?
I'm pulling your leg here, Donna. :)
I don't actually think that international style modernist architecture is tied to facism, and I don't think classical architecture is tied to oppression. I believe that one should be consistent, though.
Donna, what does classical architecture represent to you?
What is your point?
Thayer, I'm either generous or wishy-washy: Classical doesn't mean any one thing, nor does Modernism. Everything means various things to various people depending on various contexts for trying to understand it.
Agreed.
I'm endlessly fascinated by how a large educated nation with such a noble history could have been taken in by a two bit nutty Austrian corporal
It's called the Treaty of Versailles, which levied Germany with war reparations (in gold, not paper) that could never be paid. The economy collapsed, and by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. FYI that's 4.2 trillion.
Hitler gave a starving and economically destroyed population a scapegoat that he used to climb to power. Thus the Treaty of Versailles created Hitler.
History is littered with tyrants who have risen from the ashes of a culture.
I agree Donna. I am stylistically agnostic, even though certain ideologues can only debate issues by painting me into the opposite corner from which they argue. It's a sad commentary on the state of our architectural discourse that we are still stuck in this adolescent tit for tat, but maybe someday architecture will move beyond the false incriminations, regardless of people's stylistic or ideological affiliations.
Miles, you are certainly correct about the effects of the depression on the Germans, but many places including America went through a depression. It's the level of insanity and how systemized and organized that fascinates me. The herd mentality is fascinating.
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