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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Among Auguste Perret's papers is a letter from Le Corbusier thanking him for a brief holiday spent in the south of France in May 1915 as Perret's guest. The importance of this visit for the development of Le Corbusier's Dom-ino project has been noted by several writers. It is, however, important in another way. The holiday was spent at Saint-Clair, near Le Lavandou, the home of the painter Théo van Rysselberghe, who had lent it to Perret so that he might recuperate from an illness (Fig. 1). At Saint-Clair, escaping from a cold Swiss spring and the unfolding horror of the war, and surrounded by works of art, Le Corbusier discussed architecture with his former teacher in a setting of unspoiled natural beauty. A tiny sketch contained in Le Corbusier's letter evokes the place: sea, mountains, and luxuriant vegetation viewed through the enormous window of a studio filled with paintings and objets d' art. Here, it seems, Le Corbusier's fascination with the world of art was incubated; significantly, it occurred under the aegis of Perret.
1 Letter of 29 March 1916. Paris, Institut Français d'Architecture, Archives d'Architecture du XXe siècle, Fonds Perret: Relations avec Ch. E. Jeanneret dit ‘Le Corbusier', 535 AP 558/1.
2 Allen Brooks, H., Le Corbusier's formative Years: Charles Edouard Jeanneret at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Chicago, 1997), p. 458 Google Scholar, and Gargiani, Roberto and Fanelli, Giovanni, Perret e Le Corbusier confronti (Bari, 1999), pp. 40–44.Google Scholar
3 The sketch is reproduced in Brooks, , Le Corbusier, p. 459 Google Scholar. See Silver, Kenneth E., Making Paradise: Art, modernity and the myth of the French Riviera (New York, 2001)Google Scholar for a discussion of the significance of the South of France for artists and architects in the early twentieth century.
4 On Perret and artists before the First World War, see Gargiani, Roberto, Auguste Perret 1874–1954: Teoria e opere (Milan, 1993), pp. 11–14 Google Scholar; Nectoux, Jean-Michel (ed.), 1913. Le Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, catalogue of an exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1987–88)Google Scholar; Riches, Jane, ‘Auguste Perret and his contacts with artists, Paris 1900 to 1914’ (MSc thesis, Bartlett School of Architecture, 1990).Google Scholar
5 See Benton, Tim, The Villas of Le Corbusier (New Haven and London, 1984)Google Scholar; Soth, Lauren, ‘Le Corbusier's clients and their Parisian houses of the 1920s’, Art History, 6, no. 2 (1983), pp. 188–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Raeburn, Michael and Wilson, Victoria (eds), Le Corbusier Architect of the Century (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Blau, Eve and Troy, Nancy (eds), Architecture and cubism (Cambridge, MA and London, 1997).Google Scholar
6 Undated drawings in IFA, Fonds Perret, 535 AP 89/5. Letters from van Rysselberghe to Perret dated February-March 1920 refer to unexecuted plans to enlarge the house with a new studio and a bedroom, 535 AP 318.
7 Perret Frères was established in 1905 by Auguste, Gustave and Claude Perret. Claude had responsibility for business matters, while Auguste and Gustave took joint credit for designs. Of the two, Gustave was concerned primarily with construction, and Auguste, who maintained close relations with the world of art, is customarily given overall responsibility for design. See Britton, Karla, Auguste Perret (London and New York, 2001), p. 20.Google Scholar
8 See Culot, Maurice, Peyceré, David and Ragot, Gilles, Les Frères Perret: l'oeuvre complète. Les archives d'Auguste Perret (1874–1954) et Gustave Perret (1876–1952) architectes-entrepreneurs (Paris, Institut Français d'Architecture, 2000), p. 152 Google Scholar. Green, Christopher, Cubism and its enemies: modern movements and reaction in French art 1916–28(New Haven and London, 1987), p. 214 Google Scholar, makes the connexion between Cassandre and the Purists.
9 Cheronnet, Louis, ‘Les mâitres de l'affiche: Cassandre’, L'Art vivant, 15 November 1926, p. 854 Google Scholar, quoted in Green, , Cubism, p. 314 Google Scholar, n. 50.
10 Gargiani, and Fanelli, , Confronti, p. 144.Google Scholar
11 See Lahalle, Pierre, ‘Une Maison à Versailles’, Mobilier et Décoration, October 1927, pp. 141–46.Google Scholar
12 See Gargiani, , Auguste Perret, p. 13 Google Scholar and Soth, , ‘Le Corbusier's clients’, p. 189 Google Scholar. The relationship ended with a dispute over a commission for the Maison Gaut. See Gargiani and Fanelli, pp. 138-45.
13 See for example his designs for ‘Maisons en série’ of 1921 and the Maison Gaut of 1923, illustrated in Gargiani, , Auguste Perret, pp. 295 and 296.Google Scholar
14 Perret, , ‘Maison Mouron (Cassandre)’ typescript, 535 Google Scholar AP 416/5, IFA and Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 151.Google Scholar
15 Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 151.Google Scholar
16 For a spectrum, see Banham, Reyner, ‘Ateliers d'artistes. Paris studio houses and the Modern Movement’, Architectural Review, 120 (1956), pp. 75–83 Google Scholar; Delorme, Jean-Claude, Les Villas d'artistes à Paris (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar; Benton, The villas of Le Corbusier.
17 Auguste Perret, ‘Chana Orloff — G. Aghion — G. Braque — F. Cocea Bressy’ typescript, n.d., 535 AP 329, IFA. Despite the title of his book, Delorme included a spectrum of Perret's domestic commissions of the 1920s; Gargiani, Auguste Perret and Britton, Auguste Perret do not discuss artists' houses as a special category. Gilles Ragot in his catalogue entries in Culot, Les Frères Perret, is unusual in proposing such a distinction.
18 Collins, Peter, Concrete: the vision of a new architecture. The contribution of Auguste Perret and his precursors (London, 1959), pp. 230–31.Google Scholar
19 Gee, Malcolm, Dealers, critics and collectors of modern painting: aspects of the Parisian art market between 1910 and 1930 (London and New York, 1981).Google Scholar
20 Halika, Alice, Hier: souvenirs (Paris, 1946), p. 101 Google Scholar, trans. Silver, Kenneth E., The Circle of Montparnasse: Jewish artists in Paris 1905–45, catalogue of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum, New York (1985), p. 45.Google Scholar
21 See Silver, , Montparnasse, p. 112 Google Scholar; Marcilhac, Felix, Chana Orloff (Paris, 1991).Google Scholar
22 Imbert, Charles, ‘Le quartier artiste de Montsouris, la cité Seurat, 101 rue la Tombe Issoire (Paris)’, L'Architecture, 40, no. 4 (1927), p. 110.Google Scholar
23 Imbert, , L'Architecture, p. 110.Google Scholar
24 See Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 162.Google Scholar
25 Gargiani, and Fanelli, , Confronti, p. 167 Google Scholar, n. 1. These ideas, reduced to a few key axioms — the five points of a new architecture — were published in German in 1927. In the French version published that autumn, ‘Où en est l'architecture’, L'Architecture vivante (1927), a sixth point was the suppression of the cornice. Ibid, p. 178.
26 Ibid, pp. 212–13.
27 See Cohen, Jean-Louis, André Lurçat 1894–1970: autocritique d'un moderne (Paris, 1995), pp. 29–40.Google Scholar
28 By describing villa Seurat as a ‘rue de Caire’, a popular attraction at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, Imbert mischeviously suggested that it was both un-French and ephemeral.
29 Mayer, Marcel, ‘Une Oeuvre Classique’, L'Amour de l'Art (1928), pp. 267–69Google Scholar.'… elle s'y dresse comme un rappel à l'ordre, au bon sens, au bon gôut … Architecture çela, architecture actuelle et architecture française’ (p. 268).
30 Lurçat, Fonds, ‘Journal des activités’, 533 Google Scholar AP 450, IFA, reads ‘1925 juin. Paris. Commande de l'étude d'un maison particulier pour le sculpteur Chana Orloff.’
31 Golan, Romy, Modernity and nostalgia: art and politics between the wars (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 141–42.Google Scholar
32 One is reminded of Federico Zuccaro's Florentine studio of 1578, decorated with plaques emblematic of the arts of painting, architecture and sculpture and the ground floor of rough-textured freestone, from which door and window frames emerged to represent the skill of the occupant to impose form upon raw materials. See Wittkower, Rudolph, ‘Federico Zuccari and John Wood of Bath’, Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 6 (1943), pp. 219–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Ragot in Culot, Les Frères Ferret, p. 162.Google Scholar
34 Imbert, , L'Architecture, p. 112 Google Scholar. In photographs of 1926–27, the living room and the tiny nursemaid's room on the mezzanine level are arranged as ancillary exhibition spaces.
35 See Perry, Gill, Women artists and the Parisian avant-garde (Manchester, 1994), p. 157 Google Scholar, and Mela Muter 1876–1967, catalogue of exhibition at Musée de Pont-Aven (1993–94).
36 This is also suggested in the houses of other artists. Lurçat's early plans for his brother Jean Lurçat's house in villa Seurat included an exhibition gallery (repr. Cohen, Andre Lurçat, p. 32). Soon afterwards Jean Lurçat was given a contract by a dealer, and the gallery was eliminated from the final plans (see plans repr. Imbert, , L'Architecture, p. 109 Google Scholar).
37 Montserrat-Farguell, Isabelle, ‘Villa Seurat’, in Hameaux, Villas et Cités de Paris (Paris, Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1998)Google Scholar. Orloff's second house, and a room for a nursemaid constructed on the roof of the first house, was designed by Zéev Rechter, a young Palestinian architect studying in Paris.
38 Plans dated October 1927 and May 1928, 533 AP 24/4, IFA.
39 ‘Mela Muter travaille comme un sculpteur dont chaque boulotte d'argile vient se placer où il faut pour occuper un volume déterminé d'éspace’, wrote André Bloc, ‘Portraits de Mela Muter’, L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1933), p. 94 Google Scholar. Gargiani, , Auguste Ferret, suggests a link between client and design, p. 94 Google Scholar, n. 28.
40 He also experimented with the glazing design of the folding doors separating the garden from the dining room, and of the bedroom above it. 535 AP 24/4, IFA.
41 See Gargiani, and Fanelli, , Confronti, p. 179.Google Scholar
42 Vingt ans d'architecture à Boulogne-Billancourt 1920–40, catalogue of exhibition at the Musée Marmottan, Paris (1973).
43 See Martin, Brenda, Dorich House Guidebook (Kingston University, 1998)Google Scholar for Gordine's biographical details.
44 The brief is at 535 AP 34/7, IFA: ‘Ecrits’.
45 There are 125 drawings for Gordine's house in the Fonds Perret at 535 AP 34/7.
46 Drawings at 535 AP 29.5.35 and 29.5.36, n.d.
47 The columns of the frame are more narrowly spaced on the garden elevation.
48 I am indebted to the analysis of the three houses given in Vingt ans.
49 Perret, Auguste, ‘Le Musée moderne’, Mouseion, III, no. 9 (1929), pp. 225–35Google Scholar. ’… le squelette rhythmé, equilbré, symétrique de l'animal contient et supporte les organes les plus divers et les plus diversement placés. De même I'ossature de notre édifice devra être composée, rhythmée, equilibrée, symétrique même, et elle devra pouvoir contenir les organes les plus divers exigés par le programme.
C'est là, la base même de l'architecture. Si la structure n'est pas digne de rester apparente, l'architecte a mal rempli sa mission.
Les matériaux de revêtement et de remplissage devront compléter l'ossature, mais sans la dissimuler, il faut que se montre un poutre, là où il y a un poutre et un poteau, là où il y un poteau.
Ces dispositions éviteront bien des surprises désagréables …' (p. 230).
50 Dormoy, Marie, ‘Dora Gordine, sculpteur’, L'mour de l'Art (1927), p. 166.Google Scholar
51 See Culot, Maurice and Foucart, Bruno (eds), Boulogne-Billancourt: ville des temps modernes (Paris/Liege, 1992), p. 337.Google Scholar
52 Estimates produced for Gordine's house in October 1928, plans date from March-May 1929; plans for Huré's house date from March-September 1929, probably completed December 1929.
53 See Vingt ans, ‘Hotel Particulier, 23 rue du Belvèdére’.
54 Chaussé, Véronique, ‘Marguerite Huré et le décor des claustra entre 1924 et 1933: contribution à la modernité’, Dossier de la commission royale des monuments, sites et fouilles, 7, Art, technique et science: la création du vitrail de 1830 à 1930 (Liège, 2000), pp. 33–41.Google Scholar
55 Glass with Marcel Imbs for the church of St Thérèse at Elisabethville by Paul Tournon.
56 See Huré, Marguerite, ‘Le vitrail: techniques modernes’, Glaces et verres, October 1928, pp. 17–21.Google Scholar
57 Drawings 535 AP 29.5.35 and 29.5.36, n.d., IFA.
58 Culot, , Les Frères, p. 189 Google Scholar, suggests that these were not the definitive plans. However, the publication of the plans in L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, v, no. 1 (1934), p. 10, ‘Maison d'un peintre-verrier à Boulogne-sur-Seine, architectes A. et G. Perret’ (my Fig. 14) indicates that they were.
59 Drawing 535 AP 29.5.12,19 September 1929, IFA (balustrade); 535 AP 29.5.21 and 29.5.25, n.d., IFA (cornice).
60 Fischer: 4 rue du Belvédère, 1928 and 11 rue du Belvédère, 1925–28; Lurçat: 9 rue du Belvèdére, 1926. See Delorme, , Villas d'artistes, pp. 121, 136–42.Google Scholar
61 Ragot points out that a steel frame might actually have been more economical. Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 189.Google Scholar
62 Site plan, 535 AP 24/5. The street was re-named rue du Douanier and subsequently rue Georges-Braque. See Delmas, Jean-François, ‘Autour de Montsouris’ in Hameaux, Villas, p. 114.Google Scholar
63 Plots were larger than in the neighbouring streets, perhaps to compensate for the presence of a riding school at the end of the street.
64 Ragot in Culot, Les Frères Perret, p. 166.Google Scholar
65 Perret, , ‘Chana Orloff — G.Aghion’ typescript, 535 AP 329.Google Scholar
66 Ragot, p. 168 and Olivier Cinqualbre, ‘Braque bâtisseur’, in Braque: l'espace, catalogue of exhibition at the Musée Malraux, Le Havre (1999) give perceptive analyses of the elevation. An awkward effect was created by the projection of the street elevation beyond the perimeter of the side walls, giving the effect of a crust applied to the surface of the building.
67 Gimpel, René, Diary of an Art Dealer, entry for 13 March 1934 (London, 1986), p. 425.Google Scholar
68 Fitzgerald, Michael, Making modernism: Picasso and the creation of the market for twentieth-century art (London and Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar analyses the autonomy which Picasso enjoyed thanks to Rosenberg.
69 Green, Christopher, Art in France 1900–1940 (London and New Haven, 2000)Google Scholar, provides a stimulating discussion of the cultural significance of the artist's studio in general, and Picasso's in particular.
70 Delorme, , Villas d'artistes, p. 58.Google Scholar
71 Reproduced in Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 167 Google Scholar. Drawing 535 AP 27.5.8t.
72 See Cinqualbre, p. 105. Nelson built a house for Braque at Varengeville, followed by a studio there in 1949.
73 Interview with Madame Claude Laurens, Paris, 3 November 2000. See also Gimpel, , Diary, p. 427.Google Scholar
74 The Guggenbühl house was built between July 1926 and July 1927. For an analysis and photographs see Cohen, , André Lurçat, pp. 46–49.Google Scholar
75 See Delmas, , ‘Autour de Montsouris’, pp. 112–16.Google Scholar
76 Dormoy, Marie, ‘Le faux Béton’, p. 132.Google Scholar
77 Dormoy, Marie, ‘La Cité Seurat’, L'art vivant, 15 January 1927, p. 69.Google Scholar
78 The Fonds Perret contains designs for an unexecuted house for Marc Chagall dating from 1927. It is not clear whether this was to contain a studio. 535 AP 24/9 IFA. See Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 169.Google Scholar
79 Green, , Art in France, p. 57 Google Scholar; Gee, , Dealers and critics, p. 283 Google Scholar, and see Flanner, Janet, Paris was yesterday 1925–1939 (New York, 1988), pp. 61–62 Google Scholar: ‘Letter from Paris, 1929’.
80 Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 396.Google Scholar
81 Braque: l'espace, p. 134; Gimpel, , Diary, entry for 13 March 1934: ‘Braque sells a good deal’, p. 426.Google Scholar
82 Montserrat-Farguell, Isabelle, ‘Villa Seurat’, pp. 231–33.Google Scholar
83 Silver, , Circle of Montparnasse, p. 112.Google Scholar
84 Dorich House Guidebook.
85 Letter from Rene Dacbert to Richard Hare, 18 February 1935, Dorich House archives.
86 Huré, , ‘Le vitrail’, p. 19 Google Scholar, n. 1.
87 See L'Art Sacre au XXe siècle en France (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1993), p. 62.Google Scholar
88 So apparently did the stained glass designer Louis Barillet, who commissioned a studio-house from Mallet-Stevens in 1931 (see Delorme, , Villas d'artistes, pp. 160–63Google Scholar).
89 Information kindly supplied by Véronique Chaussé. The ‘Marguerite Huré’ file at the Musée des Années Trente at Boulogne-Billancourt contains an invitation to an exhibition at Huré's rue du Belvédère studio dating from the 1950s.
90 André Bloc, ‘Les portraits de Mela Muter’: ‘une excellente artiste, dont le talent ne s'entache d'aucune superchérie.’‘… A une époque où le bluff tient trop souvent lieu de talent et où beaucoup de peintres sont, ou la proie ou les complices des marchands de tableaux, il est agréable de constater que certains artistes ont continué à exerciser honnêtement, courageusement leur profession. Leur tâche est ingrate et la crise actuelle rend parfois leur situation tragique.’ (p. 96).
91 Mela Muter, p. 9.
92 Bloc, André, ‘The Question of Ornament’, L'Architecture d'aujourdhui (1932), no. 1, p. 1.Google Scholar
93 See Watkin, David, Morality and architecture (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, part I.
94 See Flanner, , Paris, p. 132 Google Scholar, for a verdict on the 1920s as ‘unrestrainedly dishonest’. Berthe Weill, the art dealer, looking back from 1933 to the boom year of 1925, wrote: ‘the epoch is disastrous for art, disastrous for commerce, an epoch of speculation, of bluff, an unwholesome epoch’, quoted in Kluver, Billie and Martin, Julie, Kiki's Paris: artists and lovers 1900–1930 (New York, 1994), p. 236 Google Scholar, n. 5.
95 George, Waldemar, ‘Une mise en accusation de l'architecture moderne: culture et architecture’, Le Bulletin de l'Art ancien et moderne, May 1934, pp. 181–84 (p. 182).Google Scholar
96 See Golan, Romy, ‘The “Ecole francais” versus the “Ecole de Paris”: the debate about the status of Jewish artists in Paris between the wars’, in Silver, The Circle of Montparnasse, pp. 80–87 Google Scholar, and Green, Art in France, chapter 10.
97 Muter converted to Catholicism in 1923, according to Catherine Puget's biography in Mela Muter, p. 9. Kenneth Silver points out the orientalist interpretation of Orloff's work in ‘Made in Paris’, L'Ecole de Paris 1904–29: la part de l'Autre, catalogue of an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2000), pp. 46-47. In L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui (1934), no. 1, p. 10, the elevation of Gordine's house was captioned: ‘Exemple type d'une portique constructif qui reçoit en façade une expression humaine.’
98 See Gargiani, and Fanelli, , Confronti, pp. 180–81Google Scholar and chapter 7.
99 This was developed by Dormoy in her Histoire de l'Architecture Française of 1938.
100 This was a major theme in Peter Collins, Concrete.
101 Britton, , Auguste Perret, pp. 107–09Google Scholar, and Abram, Joseph, ‘Une structure de production insolite’, in Culot, , Les Frères Perret, p. 30.Google Scholar
102 Zahar, Marcel, D'une doctrine d'architecture: Auguste Perret (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar made the following observation of Perret's houses of the 1920s: ‘Elles sont donc diverses, tant pour la dispositions des plans que par l'apparence des façades … De même que le peintre pour un portrait, l'architecte, dans son ouvrage, ne cherche-t-il pas à refléter l'impression qu'il reçoit du charactère de son modèle, c'est-à-dire de l'usager de la demeure?’ (p. 31).
103 For example, Le Corbusier's designs for the studios of Ozenfant, Lipchitz and Ternisien suggest an intriguing response to the character of the work of his artist-clients which warrants fuller investigation.
104 Vergine, Lea, L'autre moitié de l'avantgarde 1910–1940 (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar, and Perry, Women, have pioneered the reinstatement of women in the history of the Parisian avant-garde.
105 Zahar, , Perret, p. 31.Google Scholar