Le Corbusier and the Occult (review)
Rent from DeepDyve- Le Corbusier and the Occult
Linda Henderson argued that mysticism and occultism were so fashionable in the early twentieth century that it is hard to find an artist unaffected by them. Not even Frederick Etchells's mistranslations of Le Corbusier's books, which ditch the "spiritual" connotations, could disguise that Corb too was into them. Research has established links to alchemy, astrology, Orphism, and Gnosticism throughout his work, and all point toward the spiritual rebirth he imagined his buildings would bring about. In this new book, Birksted initiates Corb into the freemasons while looking into his early years in La Chaux-de-Fonds. This link has been missed until now because Pétain's clampdown on freemasonry during Vichy (but weren't we just in Switzerland?) led to the destruction of lodge records. Then what evidence can Birksted muster? Corb visited with the novelist William Ritter throughout 1915, conceivably at the same time as a couple of freemasons. Corb's art school teachers were in the local Loge L' Amitié. His family ran a watch-making business overlooking the lodge HQ. Corb's first residence in Paris had a neoclassical folly in the garden with "A L'Amitié" on the pediment. Marat and Robespierre may have "lodged" there. The "Promenade Architecturale" of Corb's 1920s villas was a bit like the "Trois Voyages" of masonic initiation. Strange photographs abound: moustachioed men posing in masonic garb or flexing dumbbells; picnic parties; alpine expeditions; lodge furnishings. This is architectural history in the vein of W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz . . . But then, the proof: a document from the Vichy secret police records Corb's membership and rise through [End Page 553] the Loge L' Amitié. Maybe that explains why he got kicked out of Vichy in 1942? But wait! The document fingers Charles Jeanneret, not Charles-Édouard. Wrong man. Birksted traps the reader, while his quarry escapes.
This book is interesting when it focuses on Swiss freemasonry—its history, rituals, and brotherhood—especially when Birksted lets his voluminous quotations pass without comment. When Corb is introduced, the book becomes a recognizable type of detective yarn: full of conviction, but no conviction.
Simon Richards, lecturer in art history at the University of Leicester, is the author of Le Corbusier and the Concept of Self and, recently, Architect Knows Best. He was an organizer of the Tate Modern conference "Self and the City" in 2004 and is coeditor of a forthcoming collection of the papers presented.
