• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Big Flower, Small Root: Germany, War and Revolution According to Le Corbusier
  • Beteiligte: Stavrinaki, Maria
  • Erschienen: Oxford University Press, 2011
  • Erschienen in: Oxford Art Journal
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • DOI: 10.1093/oxartj/kcr016
  • ISSN: 0142-6540; 1741-7287
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  • Beschreibung: <p>The antagonistic relationship that Le Corbusier established towards German architecture is not the simple result of his nationalistic ideas. Le Corbusier's idea of revolution; his distrust of parliamentary régimes; his taste for 'solid' and 'whole' regimes, articulated by means of the central figure of the 'chief'; all these convictions were ultimately expressed thanks to and through Germany. The antagonistic relation to the latter functioned as an impetus, able to dramatize the architect's political convictions and the urgency of his own tasks. Before 1914, Le Corbusier was caught in a double bind, oscillating between universalist admiration of power and particular nationalist leanings: he did admire Germany's voluntarist development, such as expressed in its architecture and industry, but he despised the weakness of its artistic genius. Inversely, he regretted bitterly the political decadence of France — inaugurated in 1789, confirmed in 1870, and expressed in the decline of its architecture, collective art par excellence. It was in 1918, when artistic genius and political power coincided, that Le Corbusier's interpretation of Germany became more coherent. This essay tries to analyze the fabric of Le Corbusier's convictions on politics, aesthetics and temporalities between 1910 and 1925.</p>