Book Description

Museum Jorn in Silkeborg, Denmark, commemorates the 50th anniversary of Le Corbusier's passing with an exhibition and an academic conference. The coinciding book will reflect both, the exhibition's content and the results of the conference. Le Corbusier (1887-1965) aimed for nothing less than changing the world and therefore called out for a revolution in architecture and society. His thinking and sometimes megalomaniac ideas have been, and remain to the present day, highly influential for architects around the world. This new book for the first time investigates in detail Le Corbusier's reception in Scandinavia, in Denmark in particular. The book's focal point is the connection between the Danish experimental expressionist artist Asger Jorn (1914-73) and Le Corbsuier. As a young student of art in Paris, Asger Jorn collaborated with Le Corbusier on the Pavillon des Temps Nouveaux at the 1937 Paris World Exposition. The young Jorn was fascinated by architecture--the most public form of art--in general and also followed closely Le Corbusiers building activities and his book publications. The book opens with four essays providing a survey of Le Corbusier as an artist architect. Further contributions examine Le Corbusiers influence on Asger Jorn and the younger artist's initial admiration for and later critique of the famous architect. They discuss Jorns position towards Le Corbusier in theory, and also look at relationships in both men's artistic practice, e.g. in poetry, book production, tapestry, etc. Another four essays deal withLe Corbusier's traces in Danish architecture and urbanism, his intellectual reception in Scandinavia, parallels between Le Corbusier and Jorn Utzon, and a comparison of the Arhus Brutalism and Le Corbusier. The book also features reprints of texts by Asger Jorn and an especially commissioned photo essay by the German experimental film director Heinz Emigholz of Asger Jorns Aarhus Mural and Le Corbusiers Villa Savoye.