Lot Essay
Tériade was one of a number who valued Le Corbusier as much as an artist as an architect. Together they planned a book, like Matisse's Jazz, which presented a harmony of large, round manuscript writing with illustrations bold both in form and colour. Far from being a treatise on architecture La Poème de l'Angle droit is a poem about the natural order and the position of man within it. It is an outline of a world where universal harmony as Le Corbusier saw it applies to all things and reconciles nature and man-made creations.
'On a cosmic scale there is nothing orthogonal about the world we inhabit for right right angles do not exist. The universe is polarized into centres of gravity, concentrations of energy and matter at incredible distances from each other and quite probably in expansion.
Yet at the human level, space is perceived as orthogonal. It focuses on verticality: the trajectory of falling bodies, men and trees standing upright. This verticality is perpendicular to the ground, and to the surface of still waters, which we consider horizontal. Our spatial perceptions are entirely conditioned by the orthogonality of vertical and horizontal planes.
Architecture furnishes concrete, tangible evidence of this orthogonality. It materializes vertical and horizontal lines and thus becomes our principal means of locating, positioning and perceiving movement.
This is especially true of Le Corbusier. The right angle is the basis of his architectural thought. All his projects and executed designs testify to this. But all forms have meaning for Le Corbusier. Wherever he erects architectural forms in space, he charges it with a signifying value. The right angle is not only geometry; it is also a symbol, charged with mystical significance. It is the image of man, erect for action and supine for sleep and death. And the transition, the oscillation between vertical and horizontal is the very image of life.
The right angle constitutes a "pact with nature".' (A. Wogenscky, 1989)
'Droit sur le plateau terrestre Des Choses saisissables tu
contractes avec la nature un pacte de solidarité: c'est l'angle droit Debout devant la mer vertical Te voilà sur tes jambes'.
'On a cosmic scale there is nothing orthogonal about the world we inhabit for right right angles do not exist. The universe is polarized into centres of gravity, concentrations of energy and matter at incredible distances from each other and quite probably in expansion.
Yet at the human level, space is perceived as orthogonal. It focuses on verticality: the trajectory of falling bodies, men and trees standing upright. This verticality is perpendicular to the ground, and to the surface of still waters, which we consider horizontal. Our spatial perceptions are entirely conditioned by the orthogonality of vertical and horizontal planes.
Architecture furnishes concrete, tangible evidence of this orthogonality. It materializes vertical and horizontal lines and thus becomes our principal means of locating, positioning and perceiving movement.
This is especially true of Le Corbusier. The right angle is the basis of his architectural thought. All his projects and executed designs testify to this. But all forms have meaning for Le Corbusier. Wherever he erects architectural forms in space, he charges it with a signifying value. The right angle is not only geometry; it is also a symbol, charged with mystical significance. It is the image of man, erect for action and supine for sleep and death. And the transition, the oscillation between vertical and horizontal is the very image of life.
The right angle constitutes a "pact with nature".' (A. Wogenscky, 1989)
'Droit sur le plateau terrestre Des Choses saisissables tu
contractes avec la nature un pacte de solidarité: c'est l'angle droit Debout devant la mer vertical Te voilà sur tes jambes'.