Le Corbusier mural, Les Trois Femmes , also known as Sgraffite , on the wall of the covered terrace defined by the pilotis of Eileen Gray’s house E1027, in Roquebrune, France. Photograph by J-P Rayon, shows damage caused
by its use as target practice in 1943.
Reédition, L’Architecture vivante , Da Capo Press, New York, c 1975
presentation and representation Le Corbusier’s claimed his murals to be ‘pictorial inventions that animate the house’. Entrez Lentement , one such mural is intensely garish and exaggerated, not without certain sense of sexual provocation. However, it is Les Trois Femmes, above, that I wish to discuss: the original whitewashed wall was kept largely intact. The mural was executed with simple and finely curved ink lines, tracing out the profile of two major figures, naked and posturing in an intertwining manner. This is a delicate and light touch painting for Le Corbusier, but still strong enough to stand out as a conspicuous work of art. Here I am less interested in speculating the meaning of Corbusier’s invention, or commenting on Eileen Gray’s indignation at these acts of vandalism, instead I concentrate on what and how the coming of the fresco alters and revises the ambient situation. Let’s take a few step back away from the fresco and allow for a more inclusive vision of its spatial conditions. Situated at the border of interior and exterior, this is the place where the garden flows into the structure of the building, where the outside and inside unifies into one world. The arrangement is unsymmetrical, with no identifiable building façade facing outward, an expression less of formal composition, more of an oblique and incidental collection of structures. They post an opening gesture towards nature and welcome it as a filling of an inner blankness. The white wall without the fresco would offer a setting more taciturn, still and composed, better prepared for taking on additional loads. Without
the fresco it would be vigorous and energetic with potential, a mute surface favourable to the reverberation of nature, each complementing one another in a perfect way. Nature, a realm of display and performance, is made lucid and apparent. Before the advent of these frescos, the scene reminds us of the whiteness in Suzhou gardens. One not only reads in whiteness the articulation and accumulation of nature, more significantly perhaps, it reveals the history of the architecture and its associated human life. On stepping closer, one can read on the surface its own stories, inscriptions and disclosures expressed in its materiality. Witnessing wartime shootings, the surface is riddled with tiny cracks and dents. The abrasions and erosions are not only subtractions, but also add extra layers of historical depth. Simultaneous with deterioration is accumulation. Dirt, ash, stain, soot, grime, layers of residual substances accumulate on the bumpy surface, covering up the remote past and enabling renewals of the present. Both the subtractions and recollections give to the white plane the thickness of time — a palpable chronicle. Inscribed on the surface are also traces of human actions. The paint that abrades non-uniformly, the sockets that droop down to different heights, the buckets embarrassedly installed at the foot of the wall, all are tiny but significant gestures suggesting the signs of daily usage. Everyday life is prosaic, mundane and customary, repeating itself like the stream passing across the stone, carrying along in a
river of time, but hardly leaving any conspicuous marks. The conduct of people cannot be more familiar, but remains outside awareness exactly because of its universal acquaintance. As the principal constituent of reality, meanings are equivocal, but can hardly be rendered in an objective way. Flows of domestic activities call for a rightful claim, patterns of daily affairs need a material testimony. It is the very whiteness of surface here that configures culturally constituted behaviour, furnishing it with visible and discernible forms, a reservoir of concrete and typical dwelling practices.
On Site review 35 : the material culture of architecture
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