Between lines and gazes

Primitive man, as introduced to us through the gaze of Marc-Antoine Laugier, finds himself alone in a hut made of wooden branches—a safe haven from which he can observe violent nature. After occupying the caves, and having left his bloody prints as signatures of an informal ownership, he continued to plan his strategy of expansion into the anarchic nature, establishing his spatial dominance with elaborate gestures that incorporated desire in the formation of his accommodations. Modernism pushes Laugier’s thinking towards new ethics and principles by exalting functionality, which was followed by industrial achievements, as he rethinks the escape from the “dust” of civilization. At the same time, a lush exotic nature is presented lavishly through the “pulsating” paintings of Gaugin and Rousseau. Moreover, exoticism stars as the most popular spectacle on the Champs-Elysées, with a highlight performance being the intoxicating elegy of Josephine Baker. Snared in Josephine Baker’s web, Le Corbusier as a promising suitor and Adolf Loos as a charmed admirer become the starting point of a journey that analyzes the architectural implications of this particular menage à trois, in order to rethink concepts such as nature, the hut, boundaries, and domination.

1. Le Corbusier, Josephine Baker, and other instances of takeover

The romantic affair between Le Corbusier and Josephine Baker was recorded in confessional letters from Corbu to his mother, in surviving postcards, in photographic archives of their joint appearances at shows and dinners, as well as on a ten-day cruise; yet it is a series of drawings depicting Josephine Baker that attests to Le Corbusier’s particular interest in her.2

But before we begin to explore this relationship, we can pause and reconsider Le Corbusier’s manual habit of drawing. Le Corbusier’s drawings unfold episodes of dominating intentions, and are to some extent developing as sketches of architectural significance. Such is the case of Cabanon, his modern version of a primitive hut that was constructed at Cap-Martin as another control mechanism.

In his book Creation is a Patient Search, Le Corbusier states that “once the impression has been recorded by the pencil, it stays for good, entered, registered, inscribed.”3 Drawing for him is a process of understanding; through this knowledge he penetrates and occupies the impression, the object, the experience. One might almost “claim” that the boundaries of his own cosmogony are inscribed in the imprints of the tip of his pencil. Le Corbusier’s habit of drawing allows him to supervise events, to grasp them in their entirety and, finally, to transfer them onto the paper as events that he has lived, grasped and conquered. Revisiting the various versions of his favorite subject, Algerian women,4 drawn over and over again on drawing paper, one can discern Le Corbusier’s persistence in conquering his subject, as each tracing of the line makes the body his. The drawing process brings the lived experience back to life, prolonging an eternal hedonistic continuum.

The Cabanon, “a machine for living in” emerging from Le Corbusier’s designs, corresponds to the general traits of the primitive hut, whose presence haunts nature as the other of architecture. At the same time, its function as a vacation home allows for an escape from metropolitan reality, spurring the dweller towards an outdoor life.5 Although this ritual of rebirth eradicates the sufferings of urban life, we might discover the real reason for the Cabanon’s existence in its surroundings: Eileen Gray’s house, E1027. The wooden walls of the Cabanon protect the watchful gaze of Le Corbusier, who is observing daily life at E1027. The openings of his hut are framing the outside, organizing the landscape along a vertical axis intersected by a horizon, namely Gray’s area. The hut’s outline abuts the neighboring property and nullifies Gray’s original goal, which was none other than to live in a place that is not easily accessible, either physically or visually.6 Eileen Gray’s body—as a place, as “aura,” as lines—is constantly under Le Corbusier’s surveillance. The wooden walls of the cabin become Le Corbusier’s feeble resistance to his “capitulation” to Eileen Gray. Le Corbusier’s daily walks along the shoreline of Cap-Martin, his inexhaustible drawings, texts and letters, are tiny little conquests over Gray’s life. The persistence of Le Corbusier’s scrutiny emphasizes his recognition of Gray as his “nature,” the unique nature that he tries to dominate from within his cabin. Yet, E1027 cannot become a controlled field for him as long as Gray is present. When Gray leaves it, Le Corbusier fills in for her in the daily life that unfolds within E1027 and exchanges letters with Badovici that aim to erase, to conceal the traces that betray Gray’s relationship with E1027. Finally, as another caveman, Le Corbusier leaves his signature on E1027 with his famous murals. Le Corbusier stands naked in front of the camera that captures him in front of the completed works, and thus marks the famous residence as his own, condemning to silence everything that described Gray. The figure of Le Corbusier is captured alone and safe in the Cabanon, watching over Gray’s now domesticated nature.

2. Le Corbusier, Josephine Baker, and the hunt for the elusive presence

Josephine Baker’s residence designed by Adolf Loos, a contemporary example of a maison de plaisirs (house of pleasures), functions as a refuge for two intertwined natures. Adolf Loos coordinates an architectural proposal that balances between preserving a secret, on the one hand, but also hinting at Baker’s seduction by Loos instead of Le Corbusier, on the other.

The “made-up” appearance of the house with the black horizontal lines was the ultimate camouflage concealing everything that went on in the bedroom. The house is introverted, turning its back on the city, forgetting the rules of urban life. The visitor is faced with an inside, their gaze unable to penetrate the window and what is happening outside it. The gaze is led to the interior of the house, oriented towards the living subject that inhabits it, Josephine Baker in her everyday life.

On a second reading, the house establishes an escape from the traditional, family way of life—the non-reproductive intercourse inside the house is dictated by a multi-layered play of gazes.7 The tour of the house is fueled by the promise of encountering Baker naked. The visitor is exhausted by the anticipation of Josephine, while she comes down the stairs or swims in the pool.8 As the visitor moves through the house’s interior, they are constantly aware of Baker’s presence, through the overlapping shadows of her silhouette or the blurry reflections that disturb the pool’s waters.

With an inquisitive gaze, the visitor becomes immersed in the core of the house, without knowing if perhaps they are being watched in a similar way themself. All the possible voyeuristic keyholes create an unstable terrain for the “characters”—the possibility of a role reversal between subject and object of observation subjects the shell of the house to a state of constant formation. Josephine Baker’s house is a battlefield whose availability is defined by the line between victim and perpetrator. The rules of survival ordered by nature are re-territorialized inside the house, inside the shelter, and as a result the search for safety alludes to other places.

The violent character of this “nature” is etched on the facade of the Baker residence, with intense black horizontal lines, like a tattoo of another scale. Adolf Loos indulges in a decorative sin in exchange for a public “confession” of his desire for Josephine Baker. But Loos did not stop there; he continued to cite misleading memoirs about his relationship with Josephine Baker, persistently, so that he could make Baker his in the public sphere. Loos and Le Corbusier seem to prefer primitive ways of signifying something as theirs—indeed, they afford rumors particular value when the possibility of a conquest is at stake.

3. Unseen dialogues

Leaving this game of half-closed doors behind, Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier have initiated an architectural—and not only—dialogue. They meet in the publication L’art décoratif d’aujourd’hui, which is very much related to Loos’s work and Le Corbusier is the main participant. Both strongly support their views on art and architecture, using similar methods to communicate their principles. When Le Corbusier collaborates with the magazine L’ Esprit Nouveau by contributing articles and illustrations, Adolf Loos presents us with Das Andere.9 Comparing the Moller and Planeix houses, or the Stein villa and Tzara’s house, we can see several similarities in the way they are structured, or we can even talk about common elements that they share, such as the flat roof. Their differences with regard to materiality and representation, construction method, gaze and aspects, are some of the elements that were passed down to subsequent generations. Thus, the involvement of the two with Josephine Baker seems to be rather yet another chapter in their confrontation—an erotic impulse for the exotic persona that distracts our interest from the actual “war.”

In the example of the primitive man, nature is the main field of surveillance. Architecture in its crudest form guarantees man’s domination over nature. The hut becomes the basis of his colonial strategy, his gaze sweeps the outside as something that is his. The primitive man is possessed by his desire. Le Corbusier uses the Cabanon in a similar way. He orchestrates his attacks during Gray’s absence, conquering even more ground at the moment when she is at her weakest. Adolf Loos delivers a planned narrative, where the voyeur enjoys Josephine Baker from a distance during her weakest everyday moments. Holding on to this ping-pong between the two architects, the gaze starring in the strategies of conquest they devise, we can rethink the primitive hut and nature by corresponding them to this dipole. Their conflicts, confrontations, obsessions, the close monitoring of each other’s work and progress, the recognition of the other as a worthy opponent, indicate that the development of the one would not have been possible without the existence of the other. Loos becomes Le Corbusier’s anarchic nature and Le Corbusier becomes in turn the unpredictable other. The contemporary huts of Loos and Le Corbusier become monuments to their desire for dominance. These two architects, who desired the dominance of one over the other, could not avoid conflict in their dialogue with each other, nor omit tactics of displacement and replacement of a memory. Contemporary huts fail to function as shelters for a chaotic civilization, but instead bring the violence of nature back into the home, into the self.