During this week’s lecture, when talking about Le Corbusier, something really stuck out to me. Obviously, La Villa Sevoy was a hugely successful build. It embodied everything Le Corbusier stood for and was incredibly beautiful; it was his masterpiece, the pinnacle of his career. After its completion, Le Corbusier was left stumped. How could he top this? Where do you go after you’ve completed your masterpiece? I think that is a very relevant question for all artists and people who create about anything. As an artist, there was a time in my life, my junior and senior year of high school, where I was creating my best fine art work. Since then, I haven’t really made anything I am as proud of, but that is because my focuses have changed, my major is different, and I have less time to Paint. However, I am 19 years old and an amateur artist and designer. It would be silly for me to think I have reached my peak, I have just paused and changed. Anyway, where do you go once you’ve peaked? And can you ever truly peak if you keep creating? The way Le Corbusier designed, he couldn’t simply scale up his work and go bigger. He had to shift some things. From 1929-1933, Cite de refuge Paris was constructed. this was Le Corbusier’s next step. Personally, I am a big fan of La Villa Sevoy. It is clean and elegant and beautiful. When I saw the black and white photo of Cite de Refuge, I was not impressed. The building in the photo looked kind of ugly in my opinion, just a gird of variously sized windows. I thought, this is what Le Corbusier came up with? It also reminded me of Chandigarh, a building we looked at in Recitation, which I also wasn’t a fan of. When I sat down to write about it because I was surprised of the lack of elegance to it, I looked up more images. The building is actually adorned with the primary colors. This was a little more interesting. It looked much better in color, and actually reminded me of the work of Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was a modernist painter living at roughly the same time. His paintings were black grids on white backgrounds and some of the boxes were painted in the primary colors. Then I remembered the little stained glass windows in his chapel Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp also looked like stained glass version of Mondrian’s work. One of Charles and Ray Eames Case study houses also looked Mondrian-esque. I am officially off topic from where I started with my question of where we go after our masterpieces. Anyway, let me try and get back on track. I found the colors of Cite de Refuge very interesting and much more beautiful than the first images of the buildings I saw, I also find it very interesting the connection between modern architecture and Piet Mondrian, that is something else I’d like to explore at another time. For Le Corbusier, moving forward meant going bigger and adapting his work to be able to be built on a large scale. Looking at some of his later work, a lot of it was kept on stilts and raised platforms which I find very interesting. He also started looking at different point of inspiration. He started working w the human figure and objects he found in nature like seashells rocks wood and other things that began looking like the work of Picasso, and that had an influence on his work. Seeing connections between Picasso, Mondrian, and Le Corbusier’s work goes to show how art and architecture can go hand in hand and draw inspiration from one another. I think moving past your masterpiece and creating something new means finding new points of inspiration and learning more. For Le Corbusier, he had a very strict way of thinking and doing things, as many of us do. I think we can get stuck in our ways and moving on means getting out of our comfort zones, getting creative, and learning more. I had also question whether or not it is possible to peak if you keep creating. I think while it is possible to have a piece of work or a series of work be your best ever, you never quite know what will bee your best until you’ve finished everything you will ever make. Thinking you have peaked, like Le Corbusier did, may actually hinder your process for moving on. It stops you from thinking you can still improve. You can always improve and you should never stop trying. Get inspired, learn new things, and get out of your comfort zone. Always aspire to be the best you can be, not matter what point you are at in your life or what you have done so far.
