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Le Corbusier's imaginary journey to the Far East - geometry and order demonstrated in a Chinese painting

Mingkang Liang Postgraduate Researcher

University of Edinburgh, UK

Keywords: Le Corbusier, Matteo Ripa, Summer Palace Chengde, Orientalism, Chinoiserie, Chinese landscape painting Abstract In pioneering the modern architecture for the new epoch, Le Corbusier rejected academicism, instead using templates from primitive and distant cultures to support his arguments. Although his ‘Journey to the East’ reached no further than Istanbul in 1911, he intended to visit the Far East. In his book Une Maison - Un Palais, a drawing imitating Chinese landscape painting was employed to support his argument for Purist architecture. This painting is composed of traditional Chinese architecture embraced by a natural landscape. Its geometrical form resonated with Le Corbusier’s lifelong interest in the ordering of structures.

Interestingly, Le Corbusier's intention was to demonstrate an ideal house model. What he selected, however, was a pavilion in a royal garden in northern China, built in the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). This painting, presenting one of the thirty-six beautiful vistas in a royal garden, was later remade as an etching; some copies of which were brought to Europe. Le Corbusier praised the pavilion as it had a clear order set against a natural background. The Chinese emperor celebrated its poetic landscape exclusively. This diversity between the West and East was elaborated by Edward Said in Orientalism; it is, however, evidence of an avant-garde architect enriching his work with models drawn from distant cultures.

Introduction In 1965, three months before his death, Le Corbusier was interviewed by Hugues Desalle: “Is there any other architecture, other than Greek architecture, which was an important element in your life as an architect and builder-innovator?” Le Corbusier answered:

‘Yes, yes! I’ve travelled all the countries of the world, except for two cities…Peking and – what is the other? Peking and Mexico City…I am trying to go to those countries…in addition to the palaces… I admired the peasants’ house, the house of man, the huts, the modest thing on a human scale.’(Zaknić, 1997:117)

Even though he did not reply to Desalle precisely, his response explicitly revealed his intentions and expectations. Like many avant-gardes of the twentieth century, Le Corbusier’s primary ambition was to be an idealist in quest of an ideal: to explore pioneer modern architecture for the new epoch. Therefore, he forcefully rejected the existing academicism, choosing instead templates from distant sources. They included nature, a perennial and universal fountain of inspiration; machines, a symbol and the spirit of the new age; and distant cultural references – folk and primitive culture and ancient civilizations, such as the Orient.

Le Corbusier was exposed to foreign cultures during his formative years. When he studied in La Chaux-de-Fonds, his hometown, one of the main textbooks, ‘Grammar of Ornament’ by Owen Jones, consolidates the ornament of Europe, Egypt, New Guinea, China and many other non-European countries. He later researched in many museums in Paris and other places during his travels. He visited Museum of Guimet, Ethnography (in the Trocadero) and the Louvre, and also studied in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, which houses extensive oriental collections. The opulent cultural backgrounds of Paris and of the many countries during his grand tours fully facilitated his pursuit of broader cultural sources.

Ideology leads selection Around this time Le Corbusier’s personal ideologies, such as order, geometry, the right angle, purity, universality and unsymmetrical composition were gradually formulated. His ideologies directly prescribed his attitude in studying broader cultural sources. The most notable one, the ‘right angle’ has been his lifelong aspiration since his formative education. His hometown La Chaux-de-Fonds was redesigned in a checkerboard grid after a devastating fire in 1794. In the Ecole d’Art there, his mentor, Charles L’Eplattenier, taught that decoration was derived from

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Le Corbusier's imaginary journey to the Far East ▌FORUM. Vol.7. nature and organic forms and transformed into abstract and stylised geometric patterns. These patterns became a genuine regional style, free from the conventional patterns. Henry Provensal’s L’Art de Demain, which Le Corbusier read in 1906, maintains that ‘architecture must adhere to eternal laws, including those of number, unity and harmony; that cubic forms can best express such an idea’ (Brooks, 1997:255).

In 1924 Le Corbusier visited Brittany1 and studied vernacular houses. On the seashore, he was amazed by the natural right angle: a vertical stone standing against the horizon (figure 1). To Le Corbusier, it was crystallization, a complete symphony, a magnificent relationship, nobility and the power of synthesis (Le Corbusier, 1991:75). Such a right angle was more than pure geometry. It was an icon of nature and of his personal cosmos. In his book Le Poème de L’angle Droit (The Poem of Right Angle), an anthology of his personal icons, the right angle is the conclusion of this poem (figure 2). Therefore, while he endlessly investigated the enormous sources of distant cultures, he always preferred the material with a clear order or a right angle, as manifested in the examples in his publications, Towards a New Architecture, The City of Tomorrow and ‘Une Maison – Un Palais’, of 1928.

Figure 1. Natural right angle on the seashore of Brittany.

Figure 2. Poème de L’angle Droit (Source: p.151)

Chinoiserie and the admiration of the Orient At the turn of the twentieth century, Europeans were extremely interested in the Exotic, understood as the Orient, inland Africa, Peruvian art, Oceanic art and so on. Among them, the Orient, traditionally embracing North Africa and Asian countries, had long represented romance and exoticism to Europeans. As characterized by Edward Said, it includes the places ‘of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.’ (Said, 2003:1)

1 Le Corbusier Sketchbooks, Volume 1, 1914-1948, Notes by Francoise de Franclieu, Thames and Hudson, 1981, no.314.

Long after Marco Polo’s adventure stories of a journey to China in the thirteenth century, the allure of Cathy remained. Chinoiserie, starting around the eighteenth century, was a style derived from travellers’ tales, exaggerations, the odd artefact from India or Japan, and Europeans’ imaginings of exotic societies. From the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, modern Orientalism developed and an Oriental renaissance took place. A virtual epidemic of Orientalia affected every major poet, essayist and philosopher of that time, when Paris was the capital of the Orientalist world (Said, 2003:42-51).

In 1911 Le Corbusier made a grand tour to the East, from southeast Europe to Istanbul. He experienced diverse architectures and was strongly influenced by the multiple cultures. For example, he praised the Turkish mosque: ‘Such unity! Such timelessness! Such wisdom!’ (Le Corbusier, 1987:240). Furthermore, he took an imaginary journey to the further East by reading many treatises. While staying in Vienna in 1907 and 1908, he read Les Grands Initiés, a gift from L’Eplattenier, and Sanctuaires d’orient all by Edouard Schuré. The former book, which portrays the lives of many great prophets, opened Le Corbusier’s mind, not only with decorative patterns as Owen Jones discussed, but also with profound wisdom from diverse cultures. Schuré states:

‘Lao-Tse2 in China was emerging from the esoterism of Fo-Hi3; the last Buddha Sakya-Mouni was preaching on the banks of the Ganges; in Italy the Etrurian priesthood sent to Rome an initiate possessed of the Sibylline books…Their diverse missions had one common end in view…at certain periods, one identical spiritual current passes mysteriously through the whole of humanity.’ (Schuré, 1929:10, vol II)

Le Corbusier had begun to write a book on city planning, La Construction des Villes, in 1910. He worked on this text for several years, mainly during his travels, his apprenticeships, and notably during his study in the Biblothèque Nationale, Paris, in 1915. In this book he collected and analysed many European and Asian cities and architectures. In fact, La Construction des Villes was never accomplished but was recast afterwards in The City of Tomorrow in 1925 and some of it was used in other publications. Most examples cited are from those he studied in Europe and a number of cases are from South and East Asia; no examples of the Middle East or Africa are included (Duboy, 1985). In his publications, L’Esprit Nouveau in the 1920s, there are examples from the Orient, such as Mesopotamian cities, a Persian palace, an Indian temple, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China, all profusely illustrated, even though he had never been to any of these places.

2 Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism and author of the Tao-Te Chin. 3 In Chinese ‘伏羲’, A legendary intellectual in ancient China who invented ‘Bagua’, eight variations in the universe.

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Grounding modernism on ancient and distant cultures One of Le Corbusier’s studies of Chinese landscape (figure 3), associated with his La Construction des Villes, was published in his Une Maison - Un Palais4, a book written to argue his answer to the loss of the competition of League of Nations in 1927. The examples in this book were selected from the early civilizations and broad cultural sources to support his standpoint. ‘His sketches rise to the timeless primitivism of ethnology.’(Vogt 1998:188) This Chinese drawing was presented alongside the Colosseum and a large Indian temple complex on the same page. Le Corbusier discussed the order within nature as exemplified in the buildings in the Chinese landscape drawing, and further elaborated on hierarchy and power, as well as other subtleties in these cases. This juxtaposition implies that these three architectures remain equivalently magnificent: a moderate Chinese pavilion complex within natural setting, an architectural landmark of a great empire, and a powerful influential religious monument.

Figure 3. Summer residences around Peking (Beijing). (Source: Le Corbusier, Une Maison –Un Palais, p. 11)

This vision of geometry, order and nature is followed in the next page of the book by his discourses on nature, mother earth and geometry through the landscape of Delphi: ‘We get geometry from nature because all chaos is only from the outside. Our will, our creative power is only geometry.’ In the following page is illustrated a sketch of three stone dice5, pure and sublime, against mountains and deep valleys.

The leitmotiv of the book Une Maison - Un Palais is that the folk house, though simple and moderate, could

4 Currently this drawing is not in the La Construction des Villes, but in this treatise there is another drawing FLC B-20-218 from the same family, as this drawing. 5 Probably the three bases of the Ishegaon near the Temple of Apollo, See note 106, Voyage d'Orient Carnets, English edition, trans. Mayta Munson and Meg Shore, Electa spa. Milano & Fondation L.C., Paris, c2002.

epitomize the dignity of great civilizations. Therefore, after a long development, they can evolve into palace or temple. These houses process the qualities of purity, economy, harmony, lyricism and standardization. They consequently become noble and dignified, as palaces or temples. This idea informs Le Corbusier’s architecture, and supported his League of Nations project.

This specific Chinese landscape drawing illustrates a low quadrangle complex and a pavilion on the shore of an extensive lake, which gradually merges the distant mountains. This drawing is annotated: ‘The summer dwellings around Peking.’ (Les résidences d'été aux environs de Pékin.); and the text reads: ‘In a variegated setting, the Chinese erect a house, clear, limpid, precise: a regular event.’ (Dans le site bigarré, le Chinois élève sa maison, nette, limpide, précise: événement régulier.)

Le Corbusier’s argument is precise and reasoned here. As he notes, he first cherished the regular, clear, limpid and precise characteristics of these two architectures, which are contrasted with the irregular, natural and picturesque setting. The right angle was his lifelong delight; its universality extends to the ancient Chinese civilization. Secondly, he preferred the primitive and exotic to the academic conventions of École des Beaux-Arts; thus this Chinese example was selected. The building complexes of both the Chinese residence and the League of Nations were situated on a lakeshore. This Chinese example, universal in Le Corbusier’s mind, exemplifies his ‘lake dwelling fever’ (Vogt 1998:221) and also corresponds with Rousseau’s idea of primeval time, which exists deep inside nature6 (Vogt 1998:144). Furthermore, as the League of Nations was an international institution, his argument needed international references; thus the examples, such as a temple of India, an ancient Ggantija in Malta, Stonehenge in Salisbury, an Irish crannog, and so on were included.

Three or four years before the publication of this book, Le Corbusier completed building a residence similarly located by a lake and surrounded by distant mountains – ‘Une Petite Maison’ in Vevey, a modest house by Lake Geneva designed for his parents. He made this plan in 1922 and 1923 before finding an actual site. Le Corbusier wrote, ‘A plan without a site? The plan of a house in search of a plot of ground? Yes.’ (Le Corbusier, 2001:5) This plan revealed his ideal, which consisted of a composition ordered by the right angle, with a natural surrounding of lake and mountains (figure 4) like the Chinese drawing. This house at Vevey was constructed in 1923 and 1924. He noted that this small project was local but linked to the world, as it within walking distance of a train station. And from the station, one could reach major cities, such as Paris, London, Munich, Milan, Vienna, Berlin and

6 Vogt quoted J.J. Rousseau’s writing from ‘Les Confessions’: ‘The whole rest of the day I spent deep inside the forest and sought and found there the picture of primeval time.’ This naturalistic Chinese drawing is a universal example. Le Corbusier had owned a copy of Rousseau’s book since 1909; see Paul Venable Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier, a Study of the Development of Le Corbusier’s Thought, 1900 -1920, Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1971.

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Le Corbusier's imaginary journey to the Far East ▌FORUM. Vol.7. Marseille (figure 5). In other words, this house is local yet its intention and aspiration extended to the whole world. The link between this Petite Maison and the publication of Une Maison - Un Palais is made clear in a memoir to his father on the first page. He had lived in this small house but had recently died.

Figure 4. Le Corbusier, ‘Une Petite Maison’ in Vevey, Switzerland. (Source: Le Corbusier (2001), ‘Une Petite Maison’, p. 9)

Figure 5. Le Corbusier, ‘Une Petite Maison’ in Vevey, Switzerland. (Source: Le Corbusier (2001), ‘Une Petite Maison’, p. 8)

A summerhouse or a palace There is no further description of this drawing in the book regarding its source, which is not unusual for Le Corbusier. But where and what is this summer residence near Beijing? Unfortunately, this drawing is not shown in Philippe Duboy’s research (1985) on La Construction des Villes’s, nor in the archive file of Une Maison - Un Palais at the Fondation Le Corbusier. Uncharacteristic of Chinese architecture, this quadrangle and pavilion complex is not an ordinary residence, not being arranged symmetrically, always a typical feature of the Chinese residence. It is more like a large-scale garden, and its grand scale suggests that it is most likely a royal garden. The capital of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was Peking, and there were several summer palaces built nearby in this dynasty. The most remarkable was in Chengde, north of Peking.

Ancestors of the emperor of the Qing Dynasty had come originally from the northeast of China. This summer palace, closer to their ancestral home, was built for the emperor to escape from the summer heat in Peking (Beijing). The natural scenery of lake and mountain provides a grand setting for this resort and provides the main theme for the royal garden. Many other themes, such as legends, mythology and poetry are also incorporated in the garden in various forms. The major vistas here were beautifully presented and interpreted in a number of poems7. To harmonize with nature, the original topography was conserved as far as possible when the buildings were constructed.8 This was ordered by the Emperor Kang-xi, who initiated this summer palace. The volume of the architecture is moderate, in contrast to the grand scale of the Forbidden City. Nevertheless, royal grandeur and beauty expressed through elegance in design and harmony with the splendid surrounding mountains. The Emperor selected the thirty-six most beautiful vistas, composed a poem for each of them, and ordered his court artist to make a drawing of each vista. These poems and drawings were then collected, transformed into woodcut drawings and edited as an anthology for publication. One of the vistas, ‘Spring sound resonates near and far’ (in Chinese,遠近泉聲, Yuan Jin Quan Sheng) (figures 6 & 7, the same vista was shown in both versions) clearly provides the source of Le Corbusier’s drawing9 (figure 3).

In this vista, a quadrangle and a pavilion in the foreground are encircled by an extensive lake, and the scenery expands gradually to take in the contours of the lake, with the magnificent mountains afar as the backdrop. The composition of this landscape painting is arranged in a ‘rising-eye-level’ sequence, a vertical viewing system of successive eye-level vistas and perspectives, which conveys an expression of depth when the viewer shifts his focus from the architecture at the bottom to the winding lake and the mountain peaks on the top, and from the foreground to the background.

Chinese formal architecture is always composed of rectilinear courtyards and quadrangles arranged along a central axis. The distribution and sequence of interior space reflects Chinese social and ethnical values as well as its hierarchy (Liu, 1980:9). Building columns and wooden beams support a curved roof, whereas walls function primarily as enclosing partitions only. This is echoed in Le Corbusier’s ‘Free plan’, as he proposed in his ‘Five points towards a new architecture’. Le Corbusier’s interest in oriental quadrangle settings was revealed in several sketches made during his journey to the East. These include a Turkish house between Murattis and Rodosto (Le

7 Each vista was illustrated by more than one poem. For example sees the poems to this vista, a few paragraphs later. 8 Tianjin University; Bureau of Cultural Relics of Chengde, Ancient Architecture of Chengde. pp. 27-31. 9 As compared with others of the thirty-six beautiful vistas of the Summer Palace in Chengde, both in wood cut and etching version (see the following discussion), Le Corbusier is very close to the etching of a specific vista, thus the connection with the Cheng-De royal garden, and the source.

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Corbusier, 1987:80), and a sacred necropolis in Eyüp enclosed by walls as a quadrangle setting (Le Corbusier, 1987:125-6). In Le Corbusier’s eyes, this building is clear, lucid and regular within a variegated setting. But from a Chinese viewpoint, what does this architecture and landscape convey?

Figure 6. ‘Spring sound resonates near and far’ (in Chinese 遠近泉聲, Yuan Jin Quan Sheng), Summer residences in Chengde. Woodcut by court artisans from original painting by a Chinese court artist. (Source: Shengzu, 1983)

Figure 7. ‘Spring sound resonates near and far’ (Yuan Jin Quan Sheng), version of copperplate etching made after the woodcut drawing (figure 6). This was the version that Le Corbusier drew from. (Source: Shengzu, 2002)

The traditional Chinese gardener treasures a natural setting. He always follows the existing topography and further enhances the characteristics of the natural landscape. Many Chinese gardens were constructed or commissioned by intellectuals proficient in painting and poetry. The building in a rectilinear layout, without the

strict symmetry of the Beaux-Art school, and synchronized with the landscape, inspired Le Corbusier, and was chosen as a case study.

The subject of this painting is ‘Spring sound resonates near and far’ (in Chinese, 遠近泉聲), referring to a spring in the north and a waterfall in the west of that region. The painting contains not only the visually picturesque lake and mountain but also an imaginary resonance of the sound of the spring, and even the temperature, cooled by water, shade and wind. This image was also perfectly conveyed by the Emperor Kang-xi, the master of this garden, in his beautiful symmetrical “Dui-Lian” (in Chinese 對聯, a Chinese traditional literary form consisting of two regulated sentences in certain strict and consistent rhymes and rhythms, which symmetrically respond to each other): ‘An image of the sun emerges among the surrounding floating waterweed; a celestial spirit is reflected in a celestial green lake.’ (in Chinese：四面浮青開日景，一泓澄碧見天心) and in his poem: ‘Draw spring to hear the cascade, dancing water arouses dewdrops; jade-like sound echoes in the air; they exist but are invisible.’ (in Chinese：引泉聞瀑布， 迸水起飛珠，鏘玉雲嚴應，色空有若無) (He Kun et al, 1966:17). The buildings were not the Emperor’s focus; neither did he praise the architecture. Instead, he appreciated the natural scenery and sounds, quite in contrast to Le Corbusier’s interpretation of the architectural order within a mottled landscape.

A variegated Chinese landscape Emperor Kang-xi’s anthology on the scenery was illustrated by woodcut landscape drawings. Chinese landscape and poetry had been developed within an autonomous and matured system for thousands of years. Chinese painting and landscape design treasures nature and incorporates the environment. The poetic appreciation of nature in Chinese landscape painting, was formalized in the Six Dynasties (265-581AD) (Sullivan, 1977:139). Painters of that time already regarded landscape painting as a high art because landscape consists of both substantial existence and the realm of spirit.10 ‘The Chinese were the first people…who placed the painter on the same level as the inspired poet’ (Gombrich, 1999:150). The brush painting and woodcut was implemented by the Emperor’s order, and therefore should reach the highest artistic level in China. Why was it ‘variegated’ (bigarré) in Le Corbusier’s eyes? How did he obtain access to this Chinese document since he had never been to China?

The original illustration for the Emperor’s anthology was a woodcut designed by a court artist, Yu Shen (in Chinese沈喻), beautifully carved by court artisan. It was later reproduced as a copperplate etching (figure 7) by

10 These words were probably by Tsung Ping (宗炳, 375-442), a Buddhist scholar and painter, in his ‘Preface on Landscape Painting (山水畫序)’ . See Sullivan (1977), p. 98.

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Le Corbusier's imaginary journey to the Far East ▌FORUM. Vol.7. Matteo Ripa, an Italian missionary, in 171311 under the Emperor’s order. It mainly followed the woodcut version. This etching, however, was the first of a series of copper etchings made in China. Matteo Ripa was the only westerner in the court who knew etching and his knowledge was limited in its theory. He knew no more than what he had learned from a single class taught by an artist in Rome. The required materials and tools were not available. The ingredients for aqua forties (nitric acid) were inadequate, with the result that the lines of the etching were very shallow. The ink was not suitable for etching; nor was there a machine for pressing. Matteo Ripa did many experiments and finally achieved certain progress (Ripa, 1979:77-84).

These two versions reveal different disciplines between two cultures, as well as maturity in technique. The woodcut drawing (figure 6) follows the basic technique of strokes in Chinese brush painting (‘Tsuen’ or cun, in Chinese 皴法), a special technique of modelling strokes that Chinese artists have been using to depict the textures of the trees, rocks and mountains. The brushstroke allows a varying thickness of line and changes of direction in the same stroke. Conversely, in copperplate etching the artist ‘draws’ the line with a sharp needle over the resinous layer on the plate; thus the line is very fine and minute.

There are significant differences between these two versions, as revealed in the manner of depicting the mountains. In the woodcut (figure 6), the mountains are depicted as abstract and flat, either covered by slender dots where they are nearby or just a contour line for these further distant; whereas in the copperplate version (figure 7), all the mountains are of uniform shade. There are also some minor variations. In the woodcut there is an area of lines representing the waves in the centre of lake, but in the copperplate etching it is lacking. A short bridge leads to a small island on the lower right corner; but in the copperplate version, the linkage is unclear. Thus the copperplate version becomes ‘variegated’, as Le Corbusier described. The woodcut drawing by the Chinese painter and artisan is closer to the Chinese poetic and naturalistic spirit, whereas Le Corbusier’s drawing (figure 3) seems more likely reproduced from the version of the copperplate etching (figure 7) rather than the woodcut (figure 6), if one compares the details of trees, mountains and lakes in each of them.

Since Le Corbusier had never been to China, how did he get the access to these copies of the copperplate etching? The Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris had owned a copy of this copperplate version before 183312, and the

11 Matteo Ripa (Chinese name馬國賢), 1682-1745, Italian missionary who stayed in China from 1710-1723.Author of ‘Memoirs of Father Ripa, during thirteen years residence at the court of Peking in the service of the emperor of China.’ 12 Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Etampes et Photographie, Rés. Hd 90, Entré avant 1833.

woodcut one in 1846.13 After 1908, Le Corbusier lived in major European cities, such as Paris, Berlin and Vienna, studying, working as an apprentice, and writing books of Étude sur le mouvement de l’art décoratif en Allemagne and La Construction des Villes. He revisited the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris in 1915 to further research for the latter book and others14. Here he was exposed to Matteo Ripa’s Chinese drawing and to other sources, including the schematic analysis of the Achaemenian cupolas in Dieulafois’s L'art antique de la Perse, subsequently included by Le Corbusier in his Towards a New Architecture.

A romantic conjecture The architecture in this drawing actually is not a house as stated in Le Corbusier’s book, but a royal pavilion at the Emperor’s summer palace, which is quite the opposite to Le Corbusier’s idea of ‘une maison’ (a house) but indeed could be considered ‘un palais’ (a palace). Nor is the main theme of this setting a visual order but a poem set to the sound of water. Le Corbusier idiosyncratically selected what he needed for his argument, and made a personal interpretation on the setting of this part of the summer palace. Nevertheless, the orthogonal order in the painting is explicit. Such things ‘other than colonialist superiority were uppermost in his mind as he drew.’ (Samuel, 2004:80)

It is interesting to see how a western artist selected, manipulated and utilized this distant source. The original context would inevitably be reinterpreted by different cultural perceptions. New interpretations by modern artists and architects, such as Le Corbusier, manipulated the sources. Of course, Le Corbusier was an architect, painter and writer, not an archaeologist. Other artists, such as Picasso, were inspired by African artefacts but did not undertake scholarly research into the context and meaning. Whether consciously or not, an artist ‘shapes his artist expression to fit the use for which the work is intended, and in the process adjusts the themes to the psychological and aesthetic environment of the time’ (Humbert, 1994:25).

Le Corbusier’s source, the image in Ripa’s copperplate version, is annotated with Chinese text. Even if Le Corbusier could have read Chinese and understand this painting, as the Chinese would, Chinese traditional painting does not care for realism but rather for an imaginary expression and a cognitive presentation. This is evident in the high viewpoint of this painting rather than an eye-level perspective, where there is no such viewpoint on the actual site. The spiritual meaning of the landscape is sought, not precise photographic reproduction. Le

13 Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Manuscrit orientaux, mandchou 111 et mandchou112. 14 H. Allen Brooks (1997), Le Corbusier’s Formative Years, pp. 430-5. Also, the vista from the same source (FLC B-20-218 or F/19) was in Philippe Duboy’s research of La Construction des Villes with a title, ‘Ch.E. Jeanneret, "La Construction Des Villes" Biliotheque Nationale De Paris, 1915.’

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Corbusier seized upon the clarity and order in nature for his own purpose.

Le Corbusier’s appropriation of this print took place against the larger backdrop of Orientalism in Europe. ‘A kind of second-order knowledge – lurking in such places as the “Oriental” tale, the mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability – with a life of its own’ (Said, 2003:52). Western notions on the Oriental cultures and civilizations were rather different from those of the Orientals themselves, as observed by Edward Said:

‘the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displayed, made supererogatory any such real thing as “ the Orient.” Thus all of Orientalism stands forth and away from the Orient: that Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient, and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear, “there” in discourse about it’ (Said, 2003:21-2).

Conclusion Le Corbusier’s drawing characterizes his multi-layered rejection of academicism, his celebration of the geometrical order against irregular surroundings, and his justification of modernism with primitive and distant cultures. It also reveals how an artist and a designer manipulated sources ignoring scholastic archaeological accuracy. To an extent, this drawing typifies the westerners’ attitudes in their Chinoiserie and Orientalism.

There is a clear divergence in interpretation between Le Corbusier’s own viewpoint and the Chinese perspective; such a condition also exits between two versions of the same drawing. Between the West and the East, there are dilemmas of understanding, modes of communication and different protocols of presentation. This specific Chinese drawing is only one example from Le Corbusier’s enormous sources of primitive and other distant cultures. These fall beyond the scope of this paper.

The dilemmas and discrepancies nevertheless reveal the richness and opulence of the world’s cultural resources. The diversities between the West and the East suggest boundless complementary possibilities and potentialities. The East, as the ‘other’ is valuable not because its similarity but for its difference. As an avant-garde architect, Le Corbusier constantly sought possibilities in and multiple reinterpretations from distant sources as fuel for his creativity, and inspiring and valuable resources enriching his modernism.

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The University of Chicago Press. Duboy, Philippe (1985) Architecture de la ville: Culture et

triomphe de L’Urbanisme. CH.E. Jeanneret, ‘La Construction des villes’, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, 1915. Ministere de L’Urbanisme, du Logement et des Transports.

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出版社, Liu, Xu Jie (1986) Introduction to Ancient Chinese

Garden (Zhong Guo Gu Dian Yuan Lin Gai Shu). Beijing, China Architectural Industry Press. 劉敘杰 (1986) 中國古典園林概述, 中國古典建築學術講座文集, 山西省古建築保護研究所編, 北京, 中國建築工業出版社.

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御製避暑山莊圖詠 不分卷/(清)聖祖撰; (清)揆敘等注; (清)高宗和;(清)鄂爾泰等注;(清)沈喻繪. 附注: 書名頁題<清聖祖避暑山莊圖詠> 收於:喜詠軒叢書, 臺北, 廣文書局, 民國72年[1983])

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Le Corbusier's imaginary journey to the Far East ▌FORUM. Vol.7. Shengzu (2002) (Ch’ing Dynasty), Palace copperplate

etchings of the thirty-six vistas of Summer Palace, Beijing, Xue Yuan Press.

銅版避暑山莊三十六景詩圖/(清)聖祖撰; (清)王曾期書詩文;(清)沈喻繪圖,北京:學苑出版,2002. 附注: 亦名<御製避暑山莊三十六景詩圖> 影印本, 圖爲清康熙五十二年[1713] 內府銅版印刷.

Ripa, Matteo (1979) Memoirs of Father Ripa during thirteen years' residence at the court of Peking in the service of the Emperor of China, New York, AMS Press.

Ryan, James A. (1996), Leibniz’ binary system and Shao Yong’s Yijing, Philosophy East & West, vol. 46, no. 1, January.

Schuré, Edouard (1929) The great initiates. Sketch of the secret history of religions, translated by Fred Rothwell, London, Rider & Co.

Sullivan, Michael (1977) The Arts of China, University of California Press.

Tianjin University, Bureau of Cultural Relics of Chengde (1982), Ancient Architecture of Chengde, Beijing, China Architectural Industry Press.

天津大學建築系, 承德文物局(1982) 承德古建築, 北京, 中國建築工業出版社.

Vogt, Adolf Max (1998) Le Corbusier, the noble savage: toward an archaeology of modernism, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

Zaknić, Ivan (1997) The final testament of Père Corbu: a translation and interpretation of Mise au point, New Haven, London, Yale University Press.

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