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Le Corbusier's Postcard Collection: Poetical Assemblage As a “Porous” Classification System

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Le Corbusier's Postcard Collection: Poetical Assemblage As a “Porous” Classification System 2016 | Volume IV, Issue 1 | Pages 3.1-3.18 Le Corbusier’s Postcard Collection: Poetical Assemblage as a “Porous” Classification System Luis Burriel Bielza, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville ABSTRACT the architect.3 This text strives to highlight their real Le Corbusier collected about 2,300 postcards value by two different means: First, proposing a new throughout all of his life but he always kept them assemblage and second, placing this collection in secretly stored in his apartment. They are nowadays connection with other creative tools. The postcards held in the archives of the Fondation Le Corbusier, are nowadays stored at the Fondation Le Corbusier, filed by geographic origin. However, this system is classified following a typical category within not suited to unravel its signification. Through a new deltiology: geographical origin. However, when associative layout, this article strives to highlight its studying some items of this collection during my proper value and aspires to place them fully connect- PhD research (focusing on the project for the parish ed to his other creative tools. Accompanied by his church of Saint Pierre in Firminy), the relations I paintings, sketches, writings, and architecture, they uncovered gave me the certitude that its scope could will all reveal Le Corbusier’s capacity to synthesize hardly be articulated after its current classification, subjects and concepts regardless of time and space. especially given the fact that the architect did not Stability and transition are the guiding keys to jump have any particular training in this discipline. This from image to image, at the same time charged with unfamiliarity might have led him to cast a superficial the power of evoking the tradition and building the analysis on the matter, but this distance also allowed present. The concept of “poetical assemblage” will him to work completely rid of preconceived ideas, prove that three main goals are intermingled in grow- thereby amplifying the concealed possibilities of the ing degrees: inspiration, education and verification. physical medium which becomes a triggering device. KEYWORDS: assemblage, collection, imagery, Le Corbusier, In an interview I held with his former collaborator postcards José Oubrerie, he reported that Le Corbusier’s frequent trips were the opportunity to buy Up to this point, Le Corbusier’s original sources these postcards, which were then arranged in of inspiration have been at the core of very well- chronological order following the time of acquisition. 1 known research projects, but always through the Based on this assessment, the current system study of documents he compiled at the beginning moves away from the initial classification conceived of his career, while this collection covers his whole by the architect. However, our main goal is not to life. Despite their number, these postcards have restore their original placement. There is a need to never attracted the proper attention they deserve. propose an alternative system, that of an associative Stanislaus von Moos unveiled a very specific choreography: a layout of images organized in order approach strictly attached to four postcards related to reveal their connections, so as to re-introduce to the subject in “Women from Algiers” (Von Moos, and present other scholars with a neglected and 1987, p. 26) and while some of this material has powerful source of research. For Le Corbusier, when been exhibited, it was always portrayed as mere making use of images (sketches, photographs, and souvenirs from a tourist, not providing any clear postcards), “analysis” and “synthesis” share the direction regarding its meaning. This lack of interest same level, bringing into harmony both approaches is partially explained by the fact that Le Corbusier in one single operation. This procedure is truly hardly ever mentioned its existence2 and also that he sustained by the ideas found in his personal copy of never wrote anything upon this material, which he Dr. Alexis Carrel’s book Man, The Unknown, where kept stored away in his apartment. The specimens he underlined the following paragraph: collected were not postcards sent or received by 3.1 Wise geniuses, besides the power to observe The main task to accomplish with this collection is to and to understand, have other qualities such as overcome the current classification system in order intuition and creative imagination. By intuition, to provide a new framework, a new tool with the they grasp what is hidden to other men, they see connections between seemingly isolated ability to reveal the creative process of its owner. phenomena, they sense the existence of the This vision should then be extended to absorb and ignored treasure. (Carrel, 1936, p. 143)4 incorporate other tools of research in the second phase of this text, but on which grounds? The His atelier at Rue de Sèvres in Paris (Figure 1) shall accumulation of documents in his Atelier shall be help us to understand this creative process: plans, understood rather as an “organized stratification,” drawings and models of different projects coexisted helping the architect to articulate his obsessions. and blended to create a highly charged working This pile of paper made sense according to an atmosphere, where ideas were shared and tested in invisible frame, corresponding to an internal process several experimental situations. But also in his Paris that was destroyed or distorted by dispersing all apartment at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli (Figure 2), this these pieces in separate folders. same feeling pervades the air: paintings, drawings, enamels, sketches, collages... different media intermingled in apparent disarray. Figure 1. Le Corbusier’s atelier at 35 Rue de Sèvres around 1960 Figure 2. Le Corbusier’s apartment at 24 Rue Nungesser et Coli around 1964 Artifact | 2016 | Volume IV, Issue 1 | Pages 3.1-3.18 3.2 In July 1935, Le Corbusier presented an exhibition Collecting postcards should also be considered called “Primitive Art in the Modern House”, as an activity born under the same methodology, organized along with art collector Louis Carré. Quite where the true value of each specimen grows from surprisingly, it took place in the architect’s apartment the connections established between the different and extended through some other flats. It comprised pieces of the collection. Besides, any other working several works from contemporary artists such as and inspirational sources developed by its owner will Fernand Léger and Henry Laurens, establishing a be included in this research in order to reinforce and fruitful dialog with classical or folk objects (brought test the hypothesis already developed in his 1935 by Le Corbusier after his initial voyage to the East5), exhibition. This will allow to establish a transversal or even others found in nature which he named as view over his life, reinforcing the inner consistency of “objects of poetic reaction”. Despite its domestic his overall production. Thus, this research comprised size, it was certainly important enough to be included documents from six different sources: in his Complete Works 1934-1938, along with this short text: 1. Drawings and sketches 2. Paintings, tapestries and enamels The grouping technique is some sort of a demonstration of modern sensibility in the 3. Agendas and Sketchbooks consideration of the past, the exoticism or the 4. Photographs present, recognizing “series”, creating “units” across time and space. Giving a palpitating 5. Publications, writings and books view of the things where man has registered its 6. Architectural projects presence. (Le Corbusier, 1938, p. 128)6 Through this fruitful dialogue, postcards reveal The exhibition was a true manifesto: his way of themselves as “poetic images” following Le understanding our present completely connected Corbusier’s understanding, but also supporting and embedded within a much larger historical the definition brought much later on by Juhani context, reverberating in tune with our past and Pallasmaa: “poetic images make reference traditions. I believe this specific approach is the key to an evocative, affective and meaningful to understanding the value of his postcard collection sensorial experience, which is associative and and, by extension, the construction of his poetical dynamic, formed by different layers and which is universe. constantly interacting with memory and desire” (Pallasmaa, 2011, p. 42). Here, two terms are really meaningful for our purpose: associative and Figure 3. The exhibition “Le Corbusier: la passion des cartes”, CIVA Museum, Brussels, April 26th-October 6th 2013 Artifact | 2016 | Volume IV, Issue 1 | Pages 3.1-3.18 3.3 dynamic. They both propose relations which are morphological and typological issues that have neither hermetic nor exclusive. Working on the been discovered, borrowed, recovered or reworked collection as a hermetically sealed entity with from postcards. Those “traces” evolve into an internal logic univocally addressed, or failing “patterns” or “themes” that help to understand their to establish connections with any other medium insertion, their façades, their internal circulations limits our understanding, out of Le Corbusier’s and ultimately, their inner coherence, which rests multidimensional scope. This is in fact an ongoing in the fact that the solution is not the answer to and open research, which strives to attract the an isolated question but rather the result of an attention from other researchers willing to push ongoing process,
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