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Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand

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Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand Mary Patricia May Sekler Published on: Apr 23, 2021 License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand 2 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand In 1907, just before leaving on his first extended trip away from La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Corbusier—known then as Charles-Edouard Jeanneret—gave to a friend a French edition of John Ruskin’s popular book, Sesame and Lilies.1 For those engaged in the intricate process of attempting to order, to understand, and to come to terms with Le Corbusier’s vast legacy of visual and written documents, words of admonition—and solace—are found in Ruskin’s section “Of Kings’ Treasuries,” on the treasures to be found in books. “Do you deserve to enter?” This is the question Ruskin would have us believe is posed to all who wish to pass through the “Elysian gates” to the world of thought contained in the writings of the savants of past generations. He cautions: … be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours…. And be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once,—nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all, and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it.2 In his own writings, Le Corbusier described the creations of the artist in somewhat similar terms. “In a complete and successful work,” he wrote, “there are hidden masses of implications, a veritable world which reveals itself to those whom it may concern, which means: to those who deserve it.”3 These ideas are important to keep in mind when dealing with the work of Le Corbusier. Those who search for meaning in his work soon discover that they cannot find it simply by reading his texts in chronological order or reconstructing the chronology of his artistic production. For although there is a great sense of direction in his work and an overall progression from one phase to another, he was in the habit of making frequent allusions to thoughts or images from his earlier work, often using them as a starting point for new variations or developments. For this reason, one can learn a great deal about his total work through the study of one element, but one can learn only a limited amount about that element without studying his total work. The present essay, which grew from research on Le Corbusier’s earliest drawings,4 attempts to follow from Le Corbusier’s youth some of the peregrinations of one recurring element: the tree. 3 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand The Tree in Le Corbusier’s Early Work at La Chaux-de-Fonds Arbre, compagnon millénaire de l’homme! —Le Corbusier5 Le Corbusier’s awareness of some of the abundant imagery associated with trees began at an early age. He loved the surrounding Neuchâtel Jura and the landscape of the nearby Doubs River, which formed the border toward France. He knew this countryside intimately, having grown up in a family atmosphere where the out-of-doors and Alpinism were among the dominant interests. In addition, his school years coincided with the wave of enthusiasm for natural forms which had characterized the Art Nouveau movement and which still influenced the efforts of one of his teachers, Charles L’Eplattenier, to establish a vocabulary of forms based on Jura motifs. L’Eplattenier’s endeavor had its first flowering precisely during Le Corbusier’s time at the Ecole d’Art from 1902 to 1906, particularly during 1905 and 1906, the first year of L’Eplattenier’s Cours supérieur d’art et de décoration.6 The training Le Corbusier received at the Ecole d’Art concerned in large measure the analysis of forms from the immediate environment, vegetable in nature, as well as mineral and animal. While all these motifs show up in his early drawings, the tree, without question, occupied a foremost place in his creative work. Le Corbusier studied the tree from many points of view. Following a method somewhat like that demonstrated in works by Eugène Grasset,7 he sketched it in its landscape setting, then reduced it to basic elementary shapes, either in whole or in part, to serve as design units to be repeated horizontally and on occasion vertically. In addition, he analyzed growth patterns, investigated the principles of root structure, and studied forms in section as well as elevation and plan. In his drawings, he even considered the tree form for its direct analogies to architectural elements, roots forming the bases of the framing elements of windows, trunks serving aspiloti, masses of foliage defining the shapes of openings, branch patterns forming mullions and bars. Similarities exist between some of the concepts expressed in Le Corbusier’s drawings and those found illustrated or described in other major source books from the nineteenth century.8 The tree motif carried over into Le Corbusier’s early architectural work at La Chaux-de- Fonds: his designs for façades for Beau-Site (1905), a new structure for the Union Chrétienne de Jeunes Gens;9 his house for Louis Fallet fils (1906-1907), the first of his four houses on the hillside of the Pouillerel overlooking La Chaux-de-Fonds from the 4 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand northwest; and his collaborative effort with colleagues from the Ecole on the no longer extant music room for Matthey-Doret (1906) and on the interior redecoration of the Chapelle indépendante of Cernier-Fontainemelon in the Val-de-Ruz (1907). An examination of his use of decorative forms during this early period reveals a general consistency in attitude: motifs from nature—however abstracted—were applied most frequently in their normal position of growth as found in nature, obeying the laws of gravity and the sun. In the music room (Fig. 11), for instance, a pine tree motif was elongated and stylized on the window and door frames; branches, heavy with pendant cones, were worked into the plaster of the upper wall surfaces. The ultimate source of this decorative motif was even made part of the total composition of the room, since one wall (that away from the piano and organ) was dominated by the view through the large window of the living trees outside and by the light which flooded in, giving perpetual life to the plants worked in stained glass. Judging from the typical height of a chair, this window measured almost two meters square, a size unusual for domestic use. 5 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand Figure 11 Music room of Matthey-Doret, La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1906. (Photograph courtesy of Pierre M. Wasem.) Although Le Corbusier’s contribution to the design of this music room ensemble has not been definitively established,10 surviving drawings give clues to the nature of his involvement. One such drawing (Fig. 12) relates to the woodwork. There is an obvious formal relationship between the finished window and door framing and these studies which combine the tops of branches, pendant cones, and the grouping of four or more implied tree trunks with bark patterns and residual branching. 6 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand Figure 12 Le Corbusier drawing of architectural elements based on pine tree motifs, circa 1906. Pencil on sketchbook paper, 18.4 cm × 11.8 cm. (Photograph by Patricia Sekler. Courtesy of Archives Fondation Le Corbusier, no. 2006.) In Vienna, after his Italian trip with Léon Perrin in the fall of 1907, he designed two houses for sites farther up the hill from the Matthey-Doret house and L’Eplattenier’s neighboring home. These were constructed under the supervision of René Chapallaz in 1908, one for Albert Stotzer, the other for Jules Jaquemet. While both houses retained certain motifs relating to the tree, especially for mullions and the barge boards of the Maison Stotzer, they already reflect a new attitude, being far more sparing in the quantity of decorative motifs employed. Le Corbusier’s interest in the detailing of the stonework (gained through close observation of Florentine examples) held the upper hand. One of the strongest features is the northwest entrance of the Maison Stotzer (Fig. 13), where the void reads as the motif of a pine tree while the solid reads as a 7 MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies • The Open Hand Le Corbusier, Ruskin, the Tree, and the Open Hand stepped-rock motif—a device used earlier in various ways in the Maison Fallet, where a tree motif had even dominated several elevations. Figure 13 North entrance of Le Corbusier’s Maison Stotzer, La Chaux-de-Fonds; designed 1907-1908, constructed 1908. (Photograph by Patricia Sekler.) Even during his subsequent work with the Perrets in Paris, Le Corbusier proposed the application of pine motifs as decoration for no less a location than the ceilings and walls of the loggias of the Perrets’ new apartment building at 25 bis Rue Franklin, the building which housed their offices.11 During Le Corbusier’s absence from La Chaux-de-Fonds in Paris in 1908 and 1909 and later in Germany in 1910 and 1911, tree and plant motifs continued to be important in the designs of his colleagues at home who formed the Ateliers d’art réunis, particularly in their work for the main hall of the Post Office at La Chaux-de-Fonds and for the Crematorium, where trees featured in L’Eplattenier’s murals.
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