As Hong Kong hosts Le Corbusier retrospective, new books stir up fascism row
Curator of Hong Kong exhibition brushes off claims about modernist French architect's collaboration with Nazi regime, and says his focus was firmly on human progress
The timing of Hong Kong's first major retrospective of pioneering French architect Le Corbusier, which opened earlier this month at City Hall in Central, is as remarkable as the content of the exhibition.
Not only does this year mark the 50th anniversary of his death by drowning, but the exhibition coincides with the publication of controversial books in Europe that accuse the giant of modern architecture of anti-Semitic and extreme right-wing political sympathies.
In the first of these scandal-raising books, Le Corbusier, Un Fascisme Français, writer Xavier de Jarcy claims that Le Corbusier never renounced the fascist ideals he embraced in the 1920s and that he was a supporter of Marshal Pétain and the Vichy regime, the French government that collaborated with the Nazis. In fact, de Jarcy describes the architect as an "outright fascist".
In Un Corbusier, architect and academic François Chaslin, an admirer of the architect, is unforgiving in his forensic analysis of Le Corbusier's links to fascist groups and ideologies. He says that at one stage Le Corbusier maintained an office for 18 months under the Vichy government.
These are more than personal allegations because they imply not only that Le Corbusier was a Nazi collaborator during the second world war, but also that a fascist aesthetic influenced his work. In short, his vision of the perfect building or urban design was at least partly based on authoritarianism, elitism and racism.