La Ligne Claire de Le Corbusier. Time, Space, and Sequential Narratives

Abstract

[EN] In 1921, issue 11-12 of L’Esprit Nouveau featured an article entitled “Toepffer, précurseur du cinema” where Le Corbusier, signing as ‘De Fayet’, vindicated the figure of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799-1846), a Swiss a pioneer of comics, as a key element in the development of cinema. Marginal as it may seem, this reference unveils a deeper relationship between Jeanneret and Töpffer’s work which started in his childhood, and would have a key role in the development of some of Le Corbusier’s trademark obsessions: travel, drawing, and cinematic narratives. In this context, “La Ligne Claire de Le Corbusier” proposes a close examination of the presence of graphic narrative and its aesthetics in Le Corbusier's early work in relation to its evolution from a sequential promenade architecturale to multispatial enjambment. The paper explores themes such as narrative and the inclusion of time in le Corbusier's Purist paintings, or his evolution from a painterly approach to drawing to an idealized, linear and synthetic rendering style.