Mori Art Museum presented the lecture, “Le Corbusier's World of Painting,” as part of its Public Program for “LE CORBUSIER: ART AND ARCHITECTURE - A LIFE OF CREATIVITY.”

Le Corbusier's 120th anniversary falls in 2007, and Fondation Le Corbusier is currently lobbying to have some of his most important architectural works around the world officially recognized as World Heritage properties in 2008. The imperative for an exhibition focusing on Le Corbusier was given further impetus by the fact that Mori Minoru, founder of the Mori Art Museum, is a long-established collector of his works. After describing this background, Mori Art Museum Director, Nanjo Fumio, introduced the two main presentations for the lecture – Purist Paintings and White Houses by Professor Yamana, and Paintings and Architecture After Purism by Hayashi Misa.

Yamana looked into the relationship between the paintings produced by Le Corbusier in the 1920s after he relocated to Paris, and the series of predominantly white houses and villas he designed during the same period. When Le Corbusier left rural Switzerland in 1917, one of the people he encountered in Paris was the artist Amédée Ozenfant. Inspired by Ozenfant, Le Corbusier threw himself into experiments in painting, advocating a “purist” composition. Particularly notable is his 1918 painting La cheminée, which depicts a mysterious white block that could well have represented the first image of what would become Modernist architecture. With Ozenfant, Le Corbusier published L'Esprit Nouveau from 1920 to 1924, using the magazine as a vehicle to expound his ideas on art, architecture, and urbanism. However, it was not long before Le Corbusier began to produce distinctive paintings characterized by greater freedom and richer coloring. From contacts made through editing L'Esprit Nouveau and through his painting, Le Corbusier began to receive commissions to design houses for Parisian artists and art enthusiasts with a keen interest in experimental art.

Yamana next showed the video PLAN LIBRE / Four white houses by Le Corbusier – Painting + Time = Architecture, a co-production by Mori Art Museum and CAD Center. Having supervised the production of this video, Yamana provided additional commentary to further explicate the relationship between Le Corbusier's paintings and architecture, helping the audience to simultaneously see and sense that relationship as demonstrated through the white houses. Moving around and inside each architectural space, the viewer encounters a series of scenes that develop like a Purist painting, so that the space is experienced through a number of overlapping flat compositions. That experience of the space appears to be what Le Corbusier conceived as an architectural promenade. Each day, he spent his mornings painting in his studio and his afternoons working on his architecture and designs. Playing out this constant alternation of two activities (“jeux” in French) – painting and architecture – was how he discovered his own poesy.

Hayashi Misa's presentation gave a detailed analysis of Le Corbusier's paintings after Purism, noting how they relate with his architecture. Purism came to an end in about 1925, and his paintings gradually changed from this time. First of all, his subjects filled out, and as they filled out, curves began to play a greater part in his art. He painted poetical objects such as bones, stones, and shells over and over again as motifs. The poesy that emerges from the encounters of different motifs suggests a relationship to the poetics of surrealism. Then, in the 1930s, his painting style changed greatly, depicting texture directly. His architecture of this period includes works that make significant use of natural materials such as wood and stone, as can be seen, for example, in masonry-work walls that resemble groupings of cells. From the end of the 1920s to the 1940s, Le Corbusier repeatedly painted women. Initially, his women were sturdily built, but in the latter half of the 1930s, they became suppler, and his architecture also began to incorporate softer curves. Comparing his art with his architecture reveals that his architectural works often employed the very same curves that are found in his paintings. Post-war, his works retained these soft curves, but the coloring changed to use more distinct colors. New characteristics appeared, including large panes of color placed independently of the lines, and the frequent use of new, original motifs such as the bull and the open hand. In this period, Le Corbusier also began to use other forms of expression in addition to oil painting, giving his art a greater breadth. The paintings of his later years are largely characterized by distinct colors and simple compositions. Other characteristics seen in his work are the acoustic works produced through association with sounds, and the metamorphosis of similar motifs. Hayashi went on to point out that because Le Corbusier places objects within a structured composition, all of his works convey an impression of rigidity, even when he is painting with soft curves. The process of thinking about proportion and balance gave birth to Le Corbusier's own scale, the Modulor, which was inspired by the proportions of the human body. In turn, the Modulor produced musical effects in his works. Another interaction between art and architecture can be seen in his compositions that have the effect of a single line leading the viewer around the canvas. This approach has a lot in common with his idea of an architectural promenade. In his later works, there is often movement that encourages the viewer's focus of attention to float upwards.

The two presentations were followed by a discussion between Yamana, Hayashi and Nanjo. In response to the question of “What did Le Corbusier really want to be?” Yamana explained that “Le Corbusier's architecture was probably just painting in a different form,” adding that “his clients were people who understood Cubism and Purism, so that was probably why he was able to design houses just as if he were painting a Purist picture.” Many questions emerged in thinking about the significance of painting for Le Corbusier. Why was Le Corbusier's early architecture white? Perhaps it was because he saw the white outside walls as a canvas. Why do Le Corbusier's sculptures seem so two-dimensional when an architect should be proficient at designing in three dimensions? Conversely, are Le Corbusier's architectural works really paintings? It was also suggested that “if Le Corbusier were alive today, he would probably still be identifying new lifestyles and creating architecture to suit them.” The world of Le Corbusier was one where architecture and art are in constant flux. That interplay was a permanent fixture, like the daily repetition of painting in the mornings and working on his architecture and designs in the afternoon. Le Corbusier's poesy cannot be properly understood by simply examining just his art or just his architecture in isolation. Gaining a clear realization of that point was one result of this thought-provoking lecture.