Charlotte Perriand

What is this “new world” imagined by architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999)? How did she reconceive our relationship with the natural world and the role of art in everyday life? The answers provided by this pioneer of modernity seem astonishingly relevant to us today.

Published on the occasion of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s major retrospective dedicated to Charlotte Perriand and her links with the artists and architects of her era, this book offers a fresh interpretation of her work, which was characterized by commitment and freedom.

Edited by Sébastien Cherruet and Jacques Barsac, with contributions from international authors, it presents an approach that is both chronological and thematic, inviting us on a journey of creativity through the twentieth century.

ISBN: 978-2-07-285719-5

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£45/$60/€49

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_COVERS_0409_ENG_BB_CG_BM.indd Toutes les pages

CHARLOTTE PERRIAND

Charlotte Perriand, letter to Pierre Jeanneret, 1936

LÉGER PICASSO LE CORBUSIER CALDER LAURENS MIRÓ BRAQUE DELAUNAY NOGUCHI TESHIGAHARA …

INVENTING A NEW WORLD

“There is a whole new world that absorbs our interest, because ultimately, the Profession of Architecture is work in the service of humanity.”

CHARLOTTE PERRIAND INVENTING A NEW WORLD

07/09/2019 10:22

18 Preamble

Frank Gehry 20 Preface

Bernard Arnault 22 Foreword

Jean-Paul Claverie 24 Introduction

Suzanne Pagé

176 a committed woman

308 synthesis of the arts

179 Charlotte Perriand in the Political Arena

Jean-Louis Cohen

311 “Proposal for a Synthesis of the Arts, Paris 1955.

Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Charlotte Perriand”

Katia Baudin

198 Manifesto table, 1937 200 Boomerang desk for Jean-Richard Bloch, 1938 203 Charlotte Perriand, CIAM, and the Functional City

Enrico Chapel 210 Maison du jeune homme, 1935

341 The Mural and the “Art de la Rue”

Romy Golan

213 The Practice of Giant Photomontage

Véronique Bergen

Air France agency in Tokyo, 1960 356

234 La Grande Misère de Paris, 1936 240 Minister of Agriculture’s waiting room, 1936 242 The Ministry of Agriculture Pavilion, 1937 245 The Reconstruction

Jacques Barsac 264 Formes Utiles, 1949 266 Maison de la Tunisie, 1952 268 Maison du Mexique, 1952

26 constructing modernity

88 getting back to nature

29 Charlotte Perriand, Advancing Into the Avant-Garde Sébastien Cherruet

91 Nature Revisited in the 1930s

Making Their Own Way in the Open Air

Gladys C. Fabre

46 Fauteuil pivotant (Swivel armchair), 1927 48 Saint-Sulpice studio, 1927 50 Travail et Sport, 1927–1928

118

“Art brut,” the readymade found in nature 122 “Free forms,” 1938

53

Équipement intérieur d’une habitation: New Furniture for a New World Arthur Rüegg

72

76

78

Chaise longue basculante, 1928 Furniture lines by Thonet, 1930 “Wood or Metal?,” 1929

81 The True Measure:

The 14-Square-Meter Cellule per Inhabitant

Sébastien Gokalp

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 16-17

125 Living in Nature with Minimum Impact:

Charlotte Perriand’s Prefabricated Leisure Architecture

Jacques Barsac 146

Maison au bord de l’eau, 1934 148 Tonneau refuge, 1938 151 Charlotte Perriand and the Les Arcs Resort (1967–1989)

Nature as Architectural Ideal?

Jean-François Lyon-Caen 170 La Cascade, 1967–1969 172 Chantel-Haut and Les Terrasses projects, 1981 174 Méribel chalet, 1961–1972

Galerie Steph Simon, 1956–1975 332 Ombre chair, 1954 336 Table Air France, 1953 338

359 Magnifying the Arts

Sébastien Gokalp Reception counter at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1965 376 Apartment of a collector, 1967–1987 378 Galerie Louise Leiris, 1989 380 383 Creating a “New World”

Sébastien Cherruet

270 dialogue between cultures 273 Modern Design and the Politics of Bamboo: Charlotte Perriand and Her Exhibition

Selection, Tradition, Creation in Japan (1941) Yuko Kikuchi 296

298

300

302

304

306

Orienting production in Japan, 1940–1941 Chaise longue bambou, 1940 Tea House, 1993 The Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Paris, 1966–1969 Rethinking craftsmanship in Indochina, 1943–1944 Jacques Martin’s apartment in Rio de Janeiro, 1962

407 appendices 408 I called her Charlotte

Pernette Perriand-Barsac 414 Charlotte Perriand: Across a Century

Chronology compiled by Jacques Barsac 418 Bibliography 421 List of works exhibited

07/09/2019 10:19

18 Preamble

Frank Gehry 20 Preface

Bernard Arnault 22 Foreword

Jean-Paul Claverie 24 Introduction

Suzanne Pagé

176 a committed woman

308 synthesis of the arts

179 Charlotte Perriand in the Political Arena

Jean-Louis Cohen

311 “Proposal for a Synthesis of the Arts, Paris 1955.

Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Charlotte Perriand”

Katia Baudin

198 Manifesto table, 1937 200 Boomerang desk for Jean-Richard Bloch, 1938 203 Charlotte Perriand, CIAM, and the Functional City

Enrico Chapel 210 Maison du jeune homme, 1935

341 The Mural and the “Art de la Rue”

Romy Golan

213 The Practice of Giant Photomontage

Véronique Bergen

Air France agency in Tokyo, 1960 356

234 La Grande Misère de Paris, 1936 240 Minister of Agriculture’s waiting room, 1936 242 The Ministry of Agriculture Pavilion, 1937 245 The Reconstruction

Jacques Barsac 264 Formes Utiles, 1949 266 Maison de la Tunisie, 1952 268 Maison du Mexique, 1952

26 constructing modernity

88 getting back to nature

29 Charlotte Perriand, Advancing Into the Avant-Garde Sébastien Cherruet

91 Nature Revisited in the 1930s

Making Their Own Way in the Open Air

Gladys C. Fabre

46 Fauteuil pivotant (Swivel armchair), 1927 48 Saint-Sulpice studio, 1927 50 Travail et Sport, 1927–1928

118

“Art brut,” the readymade found in nature 122 “Free forms,” 1938

53

Équipement intérieur d’une habitation: New Furniture for a New World Arthur Rüegg

72

76

78

Chaise longue basculante, 1928 Furniture lines by Thonet, 1930 “Wood or Metal?,” 1929

81 The True Measure:

The 14-Square-Meter Cellule per Inhabitant

Sébastien Gokalp

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 16-17

125 Living in Nature with Minimum Impact:

Charlotte Perriand’s Prefabricated Leisure Architecture

Jacques Barsac 146

Maison au bord de l’eau, 1934 148 Tonneau refuge, 1938 151 Charlotte Perriand and the Les Arcs Resort (1967–1989)

Nature as Architectural Ideal?

Jean-François Lyon-Caen 170 La Cascade, 1967–1969 172 Chantel-Haut and Les Terrasses projects, 1981 174 Méribel chalet, 1961–1972

Galerie Steph Simon, 1956–1975 332 Ombre chair, 1954 336 Table Air France, 1953 338

359 Magnifying the Arts

Sébastien Gokalp Reception counter at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1965 376 Apartment of a collector, 1967–1987 378 Galerie Louise Leiris, 1989 380 383 Creating a “New World”

Sébastien Cherruet

270 dialogue between cultures 273 Modern Design and the Politics of Bamboo: Charlotte Perriand and Her Exhibition

Selection, Tradition, Creation in Japan (1941) Yuko Kikuchi 296

298

300

302

304

306

Orienting production in Japan, 1940–1941 Chaise longue bambou, 1940 Tea House, 1993 The Japanese Ambassador’s residence in Paris, 1966–1969 Rethinking craftsmanship in Indochina, 1943–1944 Jacques Martin’s apartment in Rio de Janeiro, 1962

407 appendices 408 I called her Charlotte

Pernette Perriand-Barsac 414 Charlotte Perriand: Across a Century

Chronology compiled by Jacques Barsac 418 Bibliography 421 List of works exhibited

07/09/2019 10:19

Preface

Bernard Arnault President of the Fondation Louis Vuitton

A dialogue of the arts at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Frank Gehry’s passion and immense talent led to the creation of an architecture for the Fondation Louis Vuitton that was immediately lauded by the public as a major new artistic landmark for Paris. Since its inauguration in October 2014, this “vessel” moored in the Bois de Boulogne has welcomed more than five million visitors, offering an artistic program that spans both resolutely contemporary creations and their precursors in modern art.

Today, the Fondation is proud to present one of the greatest creative talents of the twentieth century, Charlotte Perriand, whose work and thinking extend far beyond the fields of design and architecture. Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) invites us on an unprecedented creative journey marked by a dialogue with the artists of her time, from Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso to Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Hisao Domoto, Joan Miró, Henri Laurens, Le Corbusier, and Sōfu Teshigahara. The exhibition presents some two hundred works of art, either integrated directly with creations by Charlotte Perriand, or displayed in conjunction with her design projects. Drawing inspiration from Japan and Brazil, she traces the contours of a new world where tradition embraces modernity, bridging different arts and cultures. I would like to personally pay tribute to Charlotte Perriand by considering some of the major accomplishments throughout her remarkable life.

In the 1920s, the young woman’s boldness and creativity was already surprising her contemporaries. After studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Charlotte Perriand was soon drawn to the creative avant-garde of the era. She engaged wholeheartedly with her times, an age of new technologies symbolized by the automobile. She discovered the Cubism of Braque and Picasso, the Purism of Le Corbusier, and the power of works by Fernand Léger, with whom she forged an unwavering friendship. Her necklace made from ball bearings is an expression of the freedom sought by women such as her friend Dora Maar, whose portrait

by Picasso is included in our exhibition. Charlotte Perriand was also fascinated by Josephine Baker, as can be seen in her impressive sketches. Her design for the Bar sous le toit proved a sensation at the 1927 Salon d’Automne, catching the attention of Le Corbusier, who invited her to join his studio. Her Chaise Longue Basculante and Fauteuil Grand Confort have become design icons. Imagining an ideal apartment with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret—very similar to a contemporary loft – she broke with the codes of her time and proposed something much more than simply architecture, a new art of living.

For the Maison du Jeune Homme (House for a young man, 1935), Charlotte Perriand called on Fernand Léger, leading to an amazing example of integrated art forms. A large painting is hung in the middle of an exercise room, while behind the young man’s desk a “collection wall” displays objects found in nature beside another painting by Léger with a vegetal motif. The tubular metal furniture is combined with a wooden chair, reaffirming a salutary return to nature.

In the 1930s, works by Fernand Léger and Charlotte Perriand engaged in a remarkable poetic dialogue. Her art brut photographs echo drawings by Léger, who created a majestic screen mural with abstract forms that evoke the tails of comets. Here, the rigid distinction between decorative arts and visual arts simply vanishes.

In 1938, when Charlotte Perriand was commissioned to design a desk for the office of Jean-Richard Bloch, editor of the newspaper Ce soir, she conceived a “free form” that encouraged dialogue with his journalists, also designing a coffee table whose top integrated

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 20-21

the abstract forms of Fernand Léger and engravings by Pablo Picasso from his series The Dream and Lie of Franco. In her monumental photomontage La Grande Misère de Paris (1936), she denounces the unhealthy living conditions in the French capital. In 1937, she joined Fernard Léger to create immense murals for the Paris World Exposition.

During this time, she was frequently in contact with Miró, Calder, and Picasso, who used their art to combat fascism. Their work was presented in the Spanish Republican Pavilion, including Picasso’s celebrated Guernica, which had a profound impact on her.

We are proud to be able to display the original cartoons used to weave the three tapestries of Guernica, which were crafted under Picasso’s direct supervision.

Invited to Japan in 1940, Charlotte Perriand discovered a new conception of space that had a profound influence on her career. When she presented the findings of her research in 1941, in an exhibition titled Selection, Tradition, Creation, she demonstrated her ability to continually renew her approach to design and interior architecture. Her chaise longue was revisited in bamboo, sculpting space thanks to a subtle play of shadows and reflections. During the event she introduced Fernard Léger’s work in Tokyo with a reproduction of his Composition aux deux perroquets, since the original could not be transported during wartime. She retained her love of Japan throughout her life. In Tokyo in 1955, she organized Proposal for a Synthesis of the Arts, an exhibition/manifesto bringing together paintings, sculptures and design. Ceramics and canvases by Léger became an integral part of Perriand’s architecture, which provided a fresh context for paintings and tapestries by Le Corbusier. Her visionary eye also incited her to present Soulages and Hartung, both little known in Japan.

A few years prior to her death, Charlotte Perriand once again turned to the East.

The Tea House she designed for the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris embodies a message of peace and harmony. She was always dedicated to nurturing an attentive dialogue between cultures, anchored in creativity and resolutely focused on modernity.

Charlotte Perriand anticipated the evolutions of her time. In 1950, Elle magazine published an imagined government of exclusively women, naming Charlotte Perriand “Minister of Reconstruction.” She took part in the postwar reconstruction with her designs for the student rooms at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris. For the Maison de la Tunisie (1952), she conceived bookcases with polychromatic color schemes by artists Sonia Delaunay, Silvano Bozzolini, and Nicolas Schöffer. In the 1960s, her reasoned approach to space made her a natural choice to rethink the interior design of the Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris. She also entirely redesigned the Galerie Leiris, which, when it reopened, exhibited a series of works by Picasso that were displayed in an architecture that was every bit as modern as the artist’s exceptional canvases. We are delighted to display one of the paintings in Picasso’s series The Women of Algiers, which Charlotte Perriand knew.

Charlotte Perriand’s attentiveness to the dialogue between the visual arts and interior architecture is also manifest in the apartment she designed for the prominent art collector Maurice Jardot, including unique furniture pieces. She rethought the ways of “displaying and seeing” art in both private and public contexts. The reconstitutions of her architecture reveal their full meaning thanks to the presence of artworks that interact with the spaces, such as the Laurens’ bronze sculptures set on an elegant sideboard, or canvases

by Braque and Picasso which can be concealed or revealed by sliding screens, another significant first presented in our exhibition.

Charlotte Perriand’s innovations in design and projects integrating different art forms should not of course lead us to overlook her remarkable work as an architect. Her 1930s waterside house, Maison au bord de l’eau, also recreated for the exhibition, boasts volumes that open out to engage with the surrounding nature, while her Tonneau refuge, also on display, is an invitation to climb mountains. Rather than replicate the compositions of architects trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, she preferred to take a pragmatic approach, subtly engaging with nature to better reveal it for those living in the spaces. She spent nearly thirty years working on the ski resort at Les Arcs in Savoie, creating a complete holiday village. Her design masterfully unifies the different scales, from the furniture to the buildings and the overall site plan, enabling large numbers of people to discover the wonders of a nature she wished to both preserve and elevate. Indeed, Charlotte Perriand’s approach to nature clearly evokes contemporary commitments to ecology and protecting the environment. Here too, she was well ahead of her time.

A woman of resolute commitments and a creator of spaces that integrate the arts and engage with nature, Charlotte Perriand is beyond any doubt a seminal figure in the history of twentieth century art. She is also a woman whose work remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for us today. Her creations, her thinking, and her engagement were so visionary that they continue to assert their relevance at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Bernard Arnault

21 07/09/2019 10:19

Preface

Bernard Arnault President of the Fondation Louis Vuitton

A dialogue of the arts at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Frank Gehry’s passion and immense talent led to the creation of an architecture for the Fondation Louis Vuitton that was immediately lauded by the public as a major new artistic landmark for Paris. Since its inauguration in October 2014, this “vessel” moored in the Bois de Boulogne has welcomed more than five million visitors, offering an artistic program that spans both resolutely contemporary creations and their precursors in modern art.

Today, the Fondation is proud to present one of the greatest creative talents of the twentieth century, Charlotte Perriand, whose work and thinking extend far beyond the fields of design and architecture. Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999) invites us on an unprecedented creative journey marked by a dialogue with the artists of her time, from Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso to Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Hisao Domoto, Joan Miró, Henri Laurens, Le Corbusier, and Sōfu Teshigahara. The exhibition presents some two hundred works of art, either integrated directly with creations by Charlotte Perriand, or displayed in conjunction with her design projects. Drawing inspiration from Japan and Brazil, she traces the contours of a new world where tradition embraces modernity, bridging different arts and cultures. I would like to personally pay tribute to Charlotte Perriand by considering some of the major accomplishments throughout her remarkable life.

In the 1920s, the young woman’s boldness and creativity was already surprising her contemporaries. After studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Charlotte Perriand was soon drawn to the creative avant-garde of the era. She engaged wholeheartedly with her times, an age of new technologies symbolized by the automobile. She discovered the Cubism of Braque and Picasso, the Purism of Le Corbusier, and the power of works by Fernand Léger, with whom she forged an unwavering friendship. Her necklace made from ball bearings is an expression of the freedom sought by women such as her friend Dora Maar, whose portrait

by Picasso is included in our exhibition. Charlotte Perriand was also fascinated by Josephine Baker, as can be seen in her impressive sketches. Her design for the Bar sous le toit proved a sensation at the 1927 Salon d’Automne, catching the attention of Le Corbusier, who invited her to join his studio. Her Chaise Longue Basculante and Fauteuil Grand Confort have become design icons. Imagining an ideal apartment with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret—very similar to a contemporary loft – she broke with the codes of her time and proposed something much more than simply architecture, a new art of living.

For the Maison du Jeune Homme (House for a young man, 1935), Charlotte Perriand called on Fernand Léger, leading to an amazing example of integrated art forms. A large painting is hung in the middle of an exercise room, while behind the young man’s desk a “collection wall” displays objects found in nature beside another painting by Léger with a vegetal motif. The tubular metal furniture is combined with a wooden chair, reaffirming a salutary return to nature.

In the 1930s, works by Fernand Léger and Charlotte Perriand engaged in a remarkable poetic dialogue. Her art brut photographs echo drawings by Léger, who created a majestic screen mural with abstract forms that evoke the tails of comets. Here, the rigid distinction between decorative arts and visual arts simply vanishes.

In 1938, when Charlotte Perriand was commissioned to design a desk for the office of Jean-Richard Bloch, editor of the newspaper Ce soir, she conceived a “free form” that encouraged dialogue with his journalists, also designing a coffee table whose top integrated

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 20-21

the abstract forms of Fernand Léger and engravings by Pablo Picasso from his series The Dream and Lie of Franco. In her monumental photomontage La Grande Misère de Paris (1936), she denounces the unhealthy living conditions in the French capital. In 1937, she joined Fernard Léger to create immense murals for the Paris World Exposition.

During this time, she was frequently in contact with Miró, Calder, and Picasso, who used their art to combat fascism. Their work was presented in the Spanish Republican Pavilion, including Picasso’s celebrated Guernica, which had a profound impact on her.

We are proud to be able to display the original cartoons used to weave the three tapestries of Guernica, which were crafted under Picasso’s direct supervision.

Invited to Japan in 1940, Charlotte Perriand discovered a new conception of space that had a profound influence on her career. When she presented the findings of her research in 1941, in an exhibition titled Selection, Tradition, Creation, she demonstrated her ability to continually renew her approach to design and interior architecture. Her chaise longue was revisited in bamboo, sculpting space thanks to a subtle play of shadows and reflections. During the event she introduced Fernard Léger’s work in Tokyo with a reproduction of his Composition aux deux perroquets, since the original could not be transported during wartime. She retained her love of Japan throughout her life. In Tokyo in 1955, she organized Proposal for a Synthesis of the Arts, an exhibition/manifesto bringing together paintings, sculptures and design. Ceramics and canvases by Léger became an integral part of Perriand’s architecture, which provided a fresh context for paintings and tapestries by Le Corbusier. Her visionary eye also incited her to present Soulages and Hartung, both little known in Japan.

A few years prior to her death, Charlotte Perriand once again turned to the East.

The Tea House she designed for the headquarters of UNESCO in Paris embodies a message of peace and harmony. She was always dedicated to nurturing an attentive dialogue between cultures, anchored in creativity and resolutely focused on modernity.

Charlotte Perriand anticipated the evolutions of her time. In 1950, Elle magazine published an imagined government of exclusively women, naming Charlotte Perriand “Minister of Reconstruction.” She took part in the postwar reconstruction with her designs for the student rooms at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris. For the Maison de la Tunisie (1952), she conceived bookcases with polychromatic color schemes by artists Sonia Delaunay, Silvano Bozzolini, and Nicolas Schöffer. In the 1960s, her reasoned approach to space made her a natural choice to rethink the interior design of the Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris. She also entirely redesigned the Galerie Leiris, which, when it reopened, exhibited a series of works by Picasso that were displayed in an architecture that was every bit as modern as the artist’s exceptional canvases. We are delighted to display one of the paintings in Picasso’s series The Women of Algiers, which Charlotte Perriand knew.

Charlotte Perriand’s attentiveness to the dialogue between the visual arts and interior architecture is also manifest in the apartment she designed for the prominent art collector Maurice Jardot, including unique furniture pieces. She rethought the ways of “displaying and seeing” art in both private and public contexts. The reconstitutions of her architecture reveal their full meaning thanks to the presence of artworks that interact with the spaces, such as the Laurens’ bronze sculptures set on an elegant sideboard, or canvases

by Braque and Picasso which can be concealed or revealed by sliding screens, another significant first presented in our exhibition.

Charlotte Perriand’s innovations in design and projects integrating different art forms should not of course lead us to overlook her remarkable work as an architect. Her 1930s waterside house, Maison au bord de l’eau, also recreated for the exhibition, boasts volumes that open out to engage with the surrounding nature, while her Tonneau refuge, also on display, is an invitation to climb mountains. Rather than replicate the compositions of architects trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, she preferred to take a pragmatic approach, subtly engaging with nature to better reveal it for those living in the spaces. She spent nearly thirty years working on the ski resort at Les Arcs in Savoie, creating a complete holiday village. Her design masterfully unifies the different scales, from the furniture to the buildings and the overall site plan, enabling large numbers of people to discover the wonders of a nature she wished to both preserve and elevate. Indeed, Charlotte Perriand’s approach to nature clearly evokes contemporary commitments to ecology and protecting the environment. Here too, she was well ahead of her time.

A woman of resolute commitments and a creator of spaces that integrate the arts and engage with nature, Charlotte Perriand is beyond any doubt a seminal figure in the history of twentieth century art. She is also a woman whose work remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration for us today. Her creations, her thinking, and her engagement were so visionary that they continue to assert their relevance at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Bernard Arnault

21 07/09/2019 10:19

38

Charlotte Perriand in her Saint-Sulpice studio, 1928

Charlotte Perriand, Le Bar sous le toit (Bar under the roof) presented at the Salon d’Automne, 1927.

Banquette, card table, phonograph cabinet, bar, cascade lamps. Bar stools in nickel-plated copper. Stool with cross-shaped base, chrome-plated copper and leather

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 38-39

39 07/09/2019 10:20

38

Charlotte Perriand in her Saint-Sulpice studio, 1928

Charlotte Perriand, Le Bar sous le toit (Bar under the roof) presented at the Salon d’Automne, 1927.

Banquette, card table, phonograph cabinet, bar, cascade lamps. Bar stools in nickel-plated copper. Stool with cross-shaped base, chrome-plated copper and leather

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 38-39

39 07/09/2019 10:20

Équipement intérieur d’une habitation: New Furniture for a New World

Arthur Rüegg

The development of modern interior design reached a peak in 1929, when Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand exhibited the furniture models they had designed in a spectacular single-room flat at the Salon d’Automne. It was the same year in which Eileen Gray completed the experimental house E-1027, designed together with Jean Badovici, on the Côte d’Azur.1 It was also the same year in which Ludwig Mies van der Rohe presented his Pavilion of the German Reich with the exclusive Barcelona chair at the International Exposition in that same city. Although these three icons of modern interior design share certain fundamental principles—their positioning in the luxury sector, their free plan, large openings toward the exterior—they also exhibit essential differences with regard to how the space and the elements within it relate to each other.

Mies van der Rohe endeavored to make his “buildings neutral frames in which man and artworks can carry on their own lives.”2 Gray, in contrast, articulated every detail of use, indicating the daily routine of specific residents with her fixed built-in furniture. It was only Le Corbusier/Jeanneret/Perriand who seemed to choose the space-defining power of a universally implementable program of standardized elements that could be used in different ways.

“Storage, chairs, and tables”: the program It is undoubtedly thanks to Charlotte Perriand that this Équipement intérieur d’une habitation, presented in 1929, was put together in less than two years. She managed to combine the ideals of those years in a highly evocative ensemble. However, the overarching theme had been set by Le Corbusier. In the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau four years earlier, he had shown “what was ready to take the decorator’s place”:3 a few items of standardized furniture manufactured in large production runs. The succinct program that Charlotte Perriand worked on according to her own terms was called “storage, chairs, and tables.”4

A few keywords must suffice in order to give weight to these terms.5 In 1912, Le Corbusier, a trained artisan, started working intensively as an interior designer, an activity that was interrupted in 1917, but continued in Paris between 1922 and 1925.

Unlike most of his fellow Behrens acolytes, he was not interested in the artistic reinvention of utilitarian objects. He soon started selecting common mass-produced items whose unmistakable form was defined by their function and their industrial or commercial production process—or that at least looked as if that was the case.6

53 BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 52-53

07/09/2019 10:20

Équipement intérieur d’une habitation: New Furniture for a New World

Arthur Rüegg

The development of modern interior design reached a peak in 1929, when Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand exhibited the furniture models they had designed in a spectacular single-room flat at the Salon d’Automne. It was the same year in which Eileen Gray completed the experimental house E-1027, designed together with Jean Badovici, on the Côte d’Azur.1 It was also the same year in which Ludwig Mies van der Rohe presented his Pavilion of the German Reich with the exclusive Barcelona chair at the International Exposition in that same city. Although these three icons of modern interior design share certain fundamental principles—their positioning in the luxury sector, their free plan, large openings toward the exterior—they also exhibit essential differences with regard to how the space and the elements within it relate to each other.

Mies van der Rohe endeavored to make his “buildings neutral frames in which man and artworks can carry on their own lives.”2 Gray, in contrast, articulated every detail of use, indicating the daily routine of specific residents with her fixed built-in furniture. It was only Le Corbusier/Jeanneret/Perriand who seemed to choose the space-defining power of a universally implementable program of standardized elements that could be used in different ways.

“Storage, chairs, and tables”: the program It is undoubtedly thanks to Charlotte Perriand that this Équipement intérieur d’une habitation, presented in 1929, was put together in less than two years. She managed to combine the ideals of those years in a highly evocative ensemble. However, the overarching theme had been set by Le Corbusier. In the Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau four years earlier, he had shown “what was ready to take the decorator’s place”:3 a few items of standardized furniture manufactured in large production runs. The succinct program that Charlotte Perriand worked on according to her own terms was called “storage, chairs, and tables.”4

A few keywords must suffice in order to give weight to these terms.5 In 1912, Le Corbusier, a trained artisan, started working intensively as an interior designer, an activity that was interrupted in 1917, but continued in Paris between 1922 and 1925.

Unlike most of his fellow Behrens acolytes, he was not interested in the artistic reinvention of utilitarian objects. He soon started selecting common mass-produced items whose unmistakable form was defined by their function and their industrial or commercial production process—or that at least looked as if that was the case.6

53 BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 52-53

07/09/2019 10:20

70

Charlotte Perriand, Research sketches of tables with ovoid airplane tubing, 1928, ink on paper, 27.4 × 21.3 cm, AChP

Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Table tube d’avion (Airplane tube table), 1928, and Fauteuils pivotants by Charlotte Perriand, 1927. Presented at the 1929 Salon d’Automne

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 70-71

71 07/09/2019 10:20

70

Charlotte Perriand, Research sketches of tables with ovoid airplane tubing, 1928, ink on paper, 27.4 × 21.3 cm, AChP

Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Table tube d’avion (Airplane tube table), 1928, and Fauteuils pivotants by Charlotte Perriand, 1927. Presented at the 1929 Salon d’Automne

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 70-71

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362

Charlotte Perriand (furniture), Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1969, Entrance hall.

Reception counter. Display cases under the counter by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Faucheux. In the background, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer) by Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (panneau 2) (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer [panel 2]), 1937, painting on wooden relief, 534 × 201 × 17 cm, gift of Sonia Delaunay and Charles Delaunay in 1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre de création industrielle, AM 1363 S (2) Robert Delaunay, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (panneau 1) (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer [panel 1]), 1937, painting on wooden relief, 595 × 200 × 10.5 cm, gift of Sonia Delaunay and Charles Delaunay in 1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre de Céation Industrielle, AM 1363 S (1)

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363 07/09/2019 10:21

362

Charlotte Perriand (furniture), Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1969, Entrance hall.

Reception counter. Display cases under the counter by Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Faucheux. In the background, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer) by Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (panneau 2) (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer [panel 2]), 1937, painting on wooden relief, 534 × 201 × 17 cm, gift of Sonia Delaunay and Charles Delaunay in 1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre de création industrielle, AM 1363 S (2) Robert Delaunay, Relief pour l’escalier du Palais des chemins de fer (panneau 1) (Relief for the stairs of the Palais des Chemins de Fer [panel 1]), 1937, painting on wooden relief, 595 × 200 × 10.5 cm, gift of Sonia Delaunay and Charles Delaunay in 1964, Centre Pompidou, Paris – Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre de Céation Industrielle, AM 1363 S (1)

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 362-363

363 07/09/2019 10:21

I called her Charlotte

Pernette Perriand-Barsac

“Living means moving forward,” Charlotte used to say. “You have to give voice to your era,” live in tune with the times, create with the techniques available, both industrial and artisanal, using metal, wood, bamboo, stone, enameled metal, glass, polyester, rubber, and so on, depending on the project and the site. At the end of her life, she was dreaming about using carbon fiber and soft materials. “Nothing is off the table; there is no single answer” was one of her favorite expressions. That’s how she constantly reinvented herself throughout her seventy-year career in design.

Shortly after Charlotte passed away, a friend told me that “we have to wait twenty years or so after the death of a creator to understand their role in the history of art.” His words puzzled me. Yet here we are, and I now realize he was right. Through the filter of time, the sifting of fashions, the successive waves that make or break ephemeral glory, we have to wait to see what is still standing around the world. The problem is even greater in that Charlotte’s work—that of a woman designer—has been fused with the great names of modernity, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Jean Prouvé, with whom she worked throughout her long career. As if a woman could not be autonomous, the equal or even more relevant than a man in these dominant fields. It’s true that the world of architecture and design was, essentially, a masculine one, and that the old paradigm of male domination still held sway, including in the history of art.

“How to describe Charlotte?”

Architect, urban planner, designer, photographer, art director, exhibition curator, an advocate of art for all. “I don’t define myself; that would be too limiting,” she would tell journalists. “A woman of art,” was a description that suited her well. In any case, she was an avant-garde woman, a visionary and an innovator, who kept lessons from the past in mind and paid close attention to vernacular imagery and designs in all the countries she visited. “You have to keep your eyes as open as fans,” she told me, meaning that curiosity is a crucial skill, because you don’t invent, but rather discover. She traveled all over the world, encountering new cultures to enrich her own, and sometimes enriching others; cross-fertilization, as it is called today.

Charlotte was an independent woman, in constant motion, observing the world, a leader, an activist who initiated or organized movements, always keeping the idea of the collective in mind, uncompromising; a committed woman who wanted to bring the progress of modernity to the largest number of people and who always advocated for women’s freedom. She had a team spirit, both professionally and personally, forged through her experience mountaineering, when roped to her climbing partners—this meant she pushed through projects bringing together men and women, equally, through both troubled times and successes.

“The Profession of Architecture is work in the service of humanity.”1 Charlotte charted her course between functionalism and poetry, on a human scale, devoting her life to perfecting the “human nest,” factoring in the body and mind, in a continuum spanning the individual, the environment, and nature; interior architecture, exterior architecture, and urban planning. Although she was a pioneer of design, Charlotte viewed her approach as that of an architect, conceiving every element as a piece of the whole, paying attention to details and the whole.

She felt that “there is art in everything, whether it be an action, a vase, a saucepan, a glass, a piece of sculpture, a jewel, a way of being.”2 “Making love is an art,” she wrote in her notebook while traveling in Japan. This vision of art reveals a profound sense of optimism, as it opens the doors of art to one and all. Everyone can be a creator.

“Work and consume, an infernal circle … in which life’s sublime beauty is ignored.

The subject is mankind and our still latent faculties are begging to blossom.”3 She had a zest for life, a “joy in creating and living in our century”4 each and every day, thereby avoiding regret and bitterness. “I have always cultivated happiness, that’s how I made it through,”5 she responded to a student’s question one day. The famous photograph depicting her with a bare back facing a valley is the perfect image of my mother, whom I called Charlotte.

1. Handwritten letter from Charlotte Perriand to Pierre Jeanneret, [1936], Archives Charlotte Perriand.

2. Charlotte Perriand, A Life of Creation: An Autobiography (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003), p. 237.

3. Ibid., p. 374.

4. “Wood or Metal?,” manifesto, 1929, Archives Charlotte Perriand.

5. Interview with Charlotte Perriand, April 22, 1999, by Élise Koering for “Charlotte Perriand-Le Corbusier, étude d’une collaboration,” master’s thesis, art history,

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 408-409

Université Marc-Bloch, Strasbourg, October 1999, p. 206.

Charlotte Perriand facing a valley, c. 1930

07/09/2019 10:21

I called her Charlotte

Pernette Perriand-Barsac

“Living means moving forward,” Charlotte used to say. “You have to give voice to your era,” live in tune with the times, create with the techniques available, both industrial and artisanal, using metal, wood, bamboo, stone, enameled metal, glass, polyester, rubber, and so on, depending on the project and the site. At the end of her life, she was dreaming about using carbon fiber and soft materials. “Nothing is off the table; there is no single answer” was one of her favorite expressions. That’s how she constantly reinvented herself throughout her seventy-year career in design.

Shortly after Charlotte passed away, a friend told me that “we have to wait twenty years or so after the death of a creator to understand their role in the history of art.” His words puzzled me. Yet here we are, and I now realize he was right. Through the filter of time, the sifting of fashions, the successive waves that make or break ephemeral glory, we have to wait to see what is still standing around the world. The problem is even greater in that Charlotte’s work—that of a woman designer—has been fused with the great names of modernity, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Jean Prouvé, with whom she worked throughout her long career. As if a woman could not be autonomous, the equal or even more relevant than a man in these dominant fields. It’s true that the world of architecture and design was, essentially, a masculine one, and that the old paradigm of male domination still held sway, including in the history of art.

“How to describe Charlotte?”

Architect, urban planner, designer, photographer, art director, exhibition curator, an advocate of art for all. “I don’t define myself; that would be too limiting,” she would tell journalists. “A woman of art,” was a description that suited her well. In any case, she was an avant-garde woman, a visionary and an innovator, who kept lessons from the past in mind and paid close attention to vernacular imagery and designs in all the countries she visited. “You have to keep your eyes as open as fans,” she told me, meaning that curiosity is a crucial skill, because you don’t invent, but rather discover. She traveled all over the world, encountering new cultures to enrich her own, and sometimes enriching others; cross-fertilization, as it is called today.

Charlotte was an independent woman, in constant motion, observing the world, a leader, an activist who initiated or organized movements, always keeping the idea of the collective in mind, uncompromising; a committed woman who wanted to bring the progress of modernity to the largest number of people and who always advocated for women’s freedom. She had a team spirit, both professionally and personally, forged through her experience mountaineering, when roped to her climbing partners—this meant she pushed through projects bringing together men and women, equally, through both troubled times and successes.

“The Profession of Architecture is work in the service of humanity.”1 Charlotte charted her course between functionalism and poetry, on a human scale, devoting her life to perfecting the “human nest,” factoring in the body and mind, in a continuum spanning the individual, the environment, and nature; interior architecture, exterior architecture, and urban planning. Although she was a pioneer of design, Charlotte viewed her approach as that of an architect, conceiving every element as a piece of the whole, paying attention to details and the whole.

She felt that “there is art in everything, whether it be an action, a vase, a saucepan, a glass, a piece of sculpture, a jewel, a way of being.”2 “Making love is an art,” she wrote in her notebook while traveling in Japan. This vision of art reveals a profound sense of optimism, as it opens the doors of art to one and all. Everyone can be a creator.

“Work and consume, an infernal circle … in which life’s sublime beauty is ignored.

The subject is mankind and our still latent faculties are begging to blossom.”3 She had a zest for life, a “joy in creating and living in our century”4 each and every day, thereby avoiding regret and bitterness. “I have always cultivated happiness, that’s how I made it through,”5 she responded to a student’s question one day. The famous photograph depicting her with a bare back facing a valley is the perfect image of my mother, whom I called Charlotte.

1. Handwritten letter from Charlotte Perriand to Pierre Jeanneret, [1936], Archives Charlotte Perriand.

2. Charlotte Perriand, A Life of Creation: An Autobiography (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003), p. 237.

3. Ibid., p. 374.

4. “Wood or Metal?,” manifesto, 1929, Archives Charlotte Perriand.

5. Interview with Charlotte Perriand, April 22, 1999, by Élise Koering for “Charlotte Perriand-Le Corbusier, étude d’une collaboration,” master’s thesis, art history,

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_Interieur_0409_ENG_BB_CG2_avecsommaire.indd 408-409

Université Marc-Bloch, Strasbourg, October 1999, p. 206.

Charlotte Perriand facing a valley, c. 1930

07/09/2019 10:21

What is this “new world” imagined by architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (1903–1999)? How did she reconceive our relationship with the natural world and the role of art in everyday life? The answers provided by this pioneer of modernity seem astonishingly relevant to us today.

Published on the occasion of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s major retrospective dedicated to Charlotte Perriand and her links with the artists and architects of her era, this book offers a fresh interpretation of her work, which was characterized by commitment and freedom.

Edited by Sébastien Cherruet and Jacques Barsac, with contributions from international authors, it presents an approach that is both chronological and thematic, inviting us on a journey of creativity through the twentieth century.

ISBN: 978-2-07-285719-5

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£45/$60/€49

BAT_GALL_CP_FLV_COVERS_0409_ENG_BB_CG_BM.indd Toutes les pages

CHARLOTTE PERRIAND

Charlotte Perriand, letter to Pierre Jeanneret, 1936

LÉGER PICASSO LE CORBUSIER CALDER LAURENS MIRÓ BRAQUE DELAUNAY NOGUCHI TESHIGAHARA …

INVENTING A NEW WORLD

“There is a whole new world that absorbs our interest, because ultimately, the Profession of Architecture is work in the service of humanity.”

CHARLOTTE PERRIAND INVENTING A NEW WORLD

07/09/2019 10:22