Was Le Corbusier a Fascist?

In short, not really, but his mum strongly supported the Vichy government Corbusier spent the war years rather pathetically hovering around, one day in, the next out, severely testing that boundary between co-existence and collaboration and escaping the latter by a whisker, and he did admire Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. But neither of these really count, even if it sounds like you can't really be a real Nazi if you are not good at it, for he certainly had no time for Hitler or what he termed 'the Fritz' in general (despite the fact that La Chaux de Fonds has as much in common with Germany and France as it is Swiss and he was devoted to his mother and her opinion of him). He had also visited Mussolini, but he visited the USSR too. He got disappointed by everybody. His opinions on what is natural and human and pure and harmonious and the biology of urbanism could put him in trouble, especially considering he was in, and then out, with some of the more nasty Vichy French working towards a French master race.
However, having achieved next to nothing but starve through the war he would be re-energized by De Gaulle to build the magnificent Unite d'Habitation, the twentieth century's village, and certainly an object that defies any crass politicization. If there is a system of order there, it's cosmic, it's the modulor.

Photo Paul Davies 1983

The Working Day 2

Of course the working day seems to have disappeared. Writing about life in the fifties (below) only serves to exacerbate the curious condition we find ourselves in today; where people either seem to work all the time, or hardly at all, or perhaps do both at the same time whilst desperate to get on Come Dine With Me. So much for 'labour saving devices' or the 'leisure society'. So much for 'soft' and 'hard' skills too. So much for high culture, so much for the public house, they've just mutated into Pret a Manger. So much for nature too. Of course this might not be such a bad thing, it's only easy to tell in hindsight, but it does feel rather post-human; all these people trooping around KFC with their laptops. And today I noticed the screen on the cash point suddenly offered just £5 as an option, just £5! That suddenly seems a harbinger of bad things in the offing. But on minimum wage working behind a bar, it would take four hours work just to make what you could spend in that same bar in a couple of minutes, and by the time you've paid the rent, what's left? So all that could make you reasonably nostalgic for the fifties, and especially for some notion of social housing, predicated on straight forward needs, not constructed for profit by the same corporations sucking you dry of everything else.

The Working Day

For most of his working life, Le Corbusier rose at six, did some exercises, had breakfast at eight, painted sketched or wrote till lunch, went to the office for two, and was home for evening pastis by five thirty. That means he supervised all that architecture, all eight volumes of it, in just three hours each afternoon, at the end of which, apparently, he'd start to grumble, mutter something about how difficult architecture was, and fuck off home. Mies was even more minimal, rising at noon, with cocktails at six. I imagine this routine is the same for all great figures; Alvaro Siza famously sitting in his cafe sketching this and that- all that sort of thing- it is charming and civilized. The thing to distrust, it would seem, is the work ethic, or rather, the thing to cling to, is charisma; Corbusier could not have motivated his beehive at Rue de Sevres without that. However you need other tools too, things that allow the office to do the Unite at Nantes 'by themselves' or Pierre Jeanneret to be left to do the colossal secretariat in Chandigarh 'by himself'. There was a great deal in LC's thinking to do with making design easier, including I suppose the modulor which I might personally find both unfathomable in use and uncomfortable in result, but which would at least satisfy the proclivities of my boss if I used it. Same of course, with Mies, but with less instructions. Working without method must be just guesswork, in fact, it must be ghastly to have to be original all the time, to expend all that energy; the very enemy of charm and civility and thought. There is an inevitability to 'boring', it's no bad thing.

Art Piece

Here's an advance picture of a piece called Three Broken Big Bikes I hope to show soon- possibly in Margate of all places. Forgive the setting, which appears to presently include student essays, and it's sat on top of a Mordaunt Short speaker, but the Las Vegas ladies in the background are integral. It's one of my first joyfully idiotic moves into sculpture (ROFL).

Le Corbusier - A Life

This is a terrific book, even though as it only arrived yesterday and I've only browsed it, well not quite just browsed it, but feverishly gone to the section on the Villa Sarabhai to see if I was right about Le Corbusier's toboggan (see early post). When you look at anything from a distance, your observations have a certain measure, but they are accentuated by the addition of more facts, or more gossip, and this book is thankfully full of both. Since I'd never been to Ahmedabad and only had the Ouvre Complet (1952-57) to hand, my speculations were mere speculations.
I didn't know that the Sarabhais were Jains, which means they would be not so much afraid of cobras as at one with them, and I didn't know that Mme Sarabhai's son indeed loved slides and was the inspiration for the toboggan. I was relieved to find out the villa suffered from water penetration, and not surprised to find that architect and client fell out rather spectacularly, and that the Sarabhais were every rich indeed; the kind of client Le Corbusier did best with, even though he rather forced them to pretend otherwise when he presented them with residences. This book is full of people Le Corbusier fell out with and very illuminating on his personal traits, which are hilarious.
Are these traits hilarious because we are at a distance from them? Is empathy with Le Corbusier as difficult as it might be with Brunelleschi? Well probably, but it should stop us trying. I just nearly fell off my chair as I read that on a particular encounter with a female journalist Le Corbusier refused to talk about his work, but remarked instead that they should go out. When it became clear they couldn't, he apparently said 'Pity, you are fat and I like my women fat!'
Now this is the sort of thing I like to read about my heroes.

Lars Iyer - Exodus

This is a good book for thinking and it's an especially a good book when you are not reading it. It encourages thought. Basically it's about thought, or the lack of it, or where thought is going (the ethics of badminton) and where it's been (University of Essex) or the capitalist consumption of everything. It's very darkly funny. As Scott says, 'Capitalism turns everything in to money', and this is the novel to go on the side. In fact, I just find myself staring at the Mies chair and wondering which lamp might go with it, and thinking that thought very profoundly each time I put this book down. For those who enjoyed Terry Eagleton's After Theory, this is a novel (pun intended) equivalent. Very clever, but don't expect fun things, or indeed anything, to happen, this is a book about thinking. You have to wait for thinking to come to you.

Cats from Hell

A whole city is shut.

(Yes the whole thing)

'Stay Indoors!' they cry.

Pure Evil is fought.

And on the other channel:

Cats from Hell!!

Young couples terrorized 

by domestic felines.