Le Corbusier

Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier published the texts entitled “Après le cubism”, “After cubism”, and “Purisme”, “Purism”, in the magazine “L’Esprit Nouveau” in 1918 and 1921 respectively. In these texts, they derived purism from cubism, but they also made a distinction between the two: they criticized cubism as being decorative and ornamental whereas purism was to be a new rationalist art suitable for the society of the industrial age. The typical aspects of purism can be seen in the painting “Vertical Guitar (Version 1)” shown here:

Le Corbusier painted a type of still life showing a wide range of different objects. He called objects of this kind “objets-types” meaning “type-objects”: these are not individual objects but objects which have been reduced to types. The carafes, bottles, books and glasses in the purist paintings resemble each other in all his works. They are industrially manufactured mass products with clear, standardized forms as expressions of certain functions. The objects thus correspond with the modern living environment – that is the society of the industrial age – towards which purism is directed.

Le Corbusier painted the objects and the background as monochrome areas. They are shown in a simplified form and had not been painted in the correct perspective. The carafe on the left-hand side can be seen from the front and from above. The guitar is shown from the front, but its side is visible too. The neck of the guitar and the head with the tuning mechanism have been painted in the background to the right of the guitar. Le Corbusier evokes cubist multiperspectivity here: an object can be seen from various different angles at the same time or is shown in a fragmented form. In the case of other objects such as the carafe, we can see shadings which give the shape volume. A device with a crank is depicted below the guitar and there is a glass in front of it. On the left-hand side, Le Corbusier has painted a curved object, the top of it catches the eye with its light colour – the object is reminiscent of the opened books we find in other works of his.