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L'Esprit Nouveau: Purism In Paris, 1918 - 1925Editions
Review
To redress the balance they have set out to produce a series of small, well-defined, scholarly exhibitions, and in the summer of 2001 they excelled themselves with a survey called “Purism in Paris, 1918-1925”. This was accompanied by this handsome volume, concentrating on the work of the Movement’s greatest exponents, Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known by his later pseudonym, Le Corbusier. Their aims are summed up in their manifesto of 1918, often quoted but here, it would seem, translated into English in full for the first time: “The War over, everything organizes / everything is clarified and purified; / factories rise already, nothing remains / as it was before the War.” Collectively they were inspired by the principles of Cubism, and, as with the Italian Futurists and the British Vorticists, they were excited by the possibilities and the strong imagery of up-to-date technology, which led them to produce paintings, sculpture and architecture of great refinement, in what would emerge as an outstanding contribution to the development of 20th century Modernism. Much of the visual excitement is provided by the early works of Fernand Léger who shared the ideology, and we can see the effects of artistic cross fertilisation in many of the 75 pictures examined by the author / curator Carol S Eliel in this beautifully presented and produced book, which is appropriate to the high-minded principles of this under-appreciated coterie. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has become something of a Cinderella, since local and international attention has increasingly been given to the more recent MOCA (Museum Of Contemporary Art) and the even flashier Getty Museum.
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