Purism
- This article is about an art style. There is also another meaning for purism, namely linguistic purism.
- For the Spanish architecture style, see Purism (architecture)
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This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. (September 2012) |
Purism, referring to the arts, was a movement that took place between 1918–1925 that influenced French painting and architecture. Purism was led by Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). Ozenfant and Jeanneret created a variation of Cubist movement and called it Purism.[1]
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Amédée Ozenfant[edit]
Amédée Ozenfant was the creator (along with Jeanneret) of Purism. In Susan Ball's book, Ball explains that Purism was an attempt to restore regularity in a war-torn France post World War I [1]
L' Esprit Nouveau[edit]
Ozenfant and Jeanneret ran an art magazine called L’ Esprit Nouveau spanning from 1920–1925 that was used as propaganda towards their Purist movement [1]
Purist Manifesto[edit]
The Purist Manifesto is worth mentioning because it helps describe rules which Ozenfant and Jeanneret created to govern the Purist movement.[1]
- Purism does not intend to be a scientific art, which it is in no sense.
- Cubism has become a decorative art of romantic ornamentism.
- There is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art is at the base, the human figure at the summit.
- Painting is as good as the intrinsic qualities of its plastic elements, not their representative or narrative possibilities.
- PURISM wants to conceive clearly, execute loyally, exactly without deceits; it abandons troubled conceptions, summary or bristling executions. A serious art must banish all technique which is not faithful to the real value of the conception.
- Art consists in the conception before anything else.
- Technique is only a tool, humbly at the service of the conception.
- PURISM fears the bizarre and the ‘original”. It seeks the pure element in order to reconstruct organized paintings which seem to be facts from nature herself.
- The method must be sure enough not to hinder the conception.
- PURISM does not believe that returning to nature signifies the copying of nature.
- It admits all deformation is justified by the search for the invariant.
- All liberties are accepted in art except those which are not clear.[1]
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- Ball, Susan L. Ozenfant and Purism: The Evolution of a Style 1915–1930, Ann Arbor; UMI research Press, 1981. Print
