Le Corbusier's Carpet












At college I thought Architecture was the chosen course for dreary middle class morons but 20 years hence I find myself marvelling at Prague's Baroque churches, Ancient Rome's Parthenon, the cliff-hugging marvels of Positano and even the floodlit NFT on the Southbank. So, of course, last Thursday night meant a trip to the Barbican for the 'Le Corbusier' exhibition.

What to expect from a person who calls themself 'Le Corbusier'? A certain pretense, peut etre? Well, I wasn't disappointed. Whilst strolling around the first floor of the exhibition a gentlemen next to me suddenly started to declaim ("I am an acrobat of forms, player with forms ...") from the balcony in a mid-atlantic accent as a mournful flute joined in. And was that a discordant piano turning the duo into a trio? It was indeed. How fantastic. A post modern (remember that term?) musical performance (of Xennakis) during a modernist architectural exhibition in the Barbican. It all fell in place.

My girlfriend hated it.

Buoyed by the intellectual pretention I wandered around the other floors, smiling, and attempting to take photos with my phone whilst dodging the beady eyes of the gallery attendants. And then I found it. The jewel of the exhibition: a huge carpet displayed on the wall with a pattern of colourful abstract forms with black strokes curving suggestively around it and within it. And just below the centre a black outline of a hand. But what a hand. The personality in that hand is amazing. It's like somethig out of a cartoon or a pop-art piece & I'm mesmerized even now.

How does the father of architectural modernism, with it's harsh, man-made, concrete materials, it's straight edges and hard angles, produce something so fluid and organic and seemingly at odds with everything else he's produced?

Because he truly was "an acrobat of forms, a player of forms". And a great carpet designer.

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