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Title details for Le Corbusier by Nicholas Fox Weber - Available

Le Corbusier

A Life

by Nicholas Fox Weber
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From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of Balthus and Patron Saints—the first full-scale life of le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century, heralded is a prophet in his lifetime, revered as a god after his death.
He was a leader of the modernist movement that sought to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. He predicted the city of the future with its large, white apartment buildings in parklike settings—a move away from the turn-of-the-century industrial city, which he saw as too fussy and suffocating and believed should be torn down, including most of Paris. Irascible and caustic, tender and enthusiastic, more than a mercurial innovator, Le Corbusier was considered to be the very conscience of modern architecture.
In this first biography of the man, Nicholas Fox Weber writes about Le Corbusier the precise, mathematical, practical-minded artist whose idealism—vibrant, poetic, imaginative; discipline; and sensualism were reflected in his iconic designs and pioneering theories of architecture and urban planning.
Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s training; his coming to live and work in Paris; the ties he formed with Nehru . . . Brassaï . . . Malraux (he championed Le Corbusier’s work and commissioned a major new museum for art to be built on the outskirts of Paris) . . . Einstein . . . Matisse . . . the Steins . . . Picasso . . . Walter Gropius, and others.
We see how Le Corbusier, who appreciated goverments only for the possibility of obtaining architectural commissions, was drawn to the new Soviet Union and extolled the merits of communism (he never joined the party); and in 1928, as the possible architect of a major new building, went to Moscow, where he was hailed by Trotsky and was received at the Kremlin. Le Corbusier praised the ideas of Mussolini and worked for two years under the Vichy government, hoping to oversee new construction and urbanism throughout France. Le Corbusier believed that Hitler and Vichy rule would bring about “a marvelous transformation of society,” then renounced the doomed regime and went to work for Charles de Gaulle and his provisional government.
Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s fraught relationships with women (he remained celibate until the age of twenty-four and then often went to prostitutes); about his twenty-seven-year-long marriage to a woman who had no interest in architecture and forbade it being discussed at the dinner table; about his numerous love affairs during his marriage, including his shipboard romance with the twenty-three-year-old Josephine Baker, already a legend in Paris, whom he saw as a “pure and guileless soul.” She saw him as “irresistibly funny.” “What a shame you’re an architect!” she wrote. “You’d have made such a good partner!”
A brilliant revelation of this single-minded, elusive genius, of his extraordinary achivements and the age in which he lived.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 11, 2008

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307270566

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307270566
      • File size: 8710 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      December 15, 2008
      Le Corbusier is arguably the greatest and most influential 20th-century architect, and the literature on him is vast. But because of his mercurial, enigmatic, and controversial personality, scholars have been reluctant to put his life under the biographical microscope. Art historian Weber ("Balthus: A Biography"), having combed the archives of the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris, offers a uniquely intimate account of the architect. The countless letters in which "Corbu" poured out his theories, passions, and many idiosyncrasies form the basis of this revelatory, nearly day-by-day chronology. In "Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture", Charles Jencks likewise veered away from architectural analysis to delve into the architect's psyche but never approaches the exhaustive, even voyeuristic degree Weber achieveswe witness Corbu's verbal assaults on friends and powerful clients alike, the extramarital but hardly clandestine affairs, a horrific swimming accident, even a photo of Corbu painting in the nude! Le Corbusier truly comes to life in Weber's biography, but many will still prefer a more compressed and analytical study, such as Kenneth Frampton's excellent "Le Corbusier".David Soltesz, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH

      Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from November 1, 2008
      Universally recognized for his radical theories and daring buildings, the architect, urban designer, utopist, and painter who called himself Le Corbusier has nonethelessremained an enigma. Now Weber, an exceptionalarts biographer, delivers the first comprehensivebiography of Charles-douard Jeanneret. Born in 1887 to Swiss Calvinists, he escaped his Alpine watchmaking hometown at19 and embarked on alife of work, travel, and controversy. Anchored in Paris, he ran a brick factory, obsessed over sex, started a magazine, and became a self-taught architect on a mission to improve the world. Cascading detail makes this a towering work. What makes it compelling is the masterful use Weber makes of his unprecedented access to the architects wildly expressive letters. Liberally quoted throughout, these rants, pleas, and manifestos chart Le Corbusiers knotty relationship with his parents;marriage to lonely, alcoholic Yvonne;and shipboard romance with Josephine Baker. Weber seesLe Corbusier, who was blind in one eye and unconscionably opportunistic, as straddlingthe line between genius and insanity during the epic struggles to bring his revolutionary ideas to fruition.Both megalomaniacal and brilliant, Le Corbusier emerges from Webersmesmerizing pages in all hiscomplexity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

Formats

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  • English

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