PURISM

in painting, a variant of Cubism (q.v.) developed in France in about 1918 by the painter Amde Ozenfant and the architect and painter Charles-douard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). The two artists, critical of the later decorative trend in Cubism and the creation of arbitrary and fantastic forms, advocated a return to clear, precise, ordered forms, expressive of the modern machine civilization. The collaboration of the two artists began with their book Aprs le cubisme, of 1918, and continued with essays published from 1920 to 1925 in their review, L'Esprit Nouveau. In an essay entitled Purism, which appeared in this review, the authors defined painting as an association of purified, related, and architectured elements. This concept of painting is reflected in their still-life canvases, which present clean, pure, integral forms. In Still Life (1920), for example, Le Corbusier repeats the rhythmic, curving contours of a guitar (a favourite Cubist motif) in the shoulders of a bottle and in other objects on the table; by tilting the tops of the objects toward the spectator, he gives an added emphasis to their cubic volume. A motif of circles is carried out in the various sizes of the openings in bottles, pipes, and containers. The colour scheme is purified to include only the neutralsgray, black, and whiteand monochromes of green. Paint is smoothly applied to enhance the cool, harmonious shapes of the objects. He thus creates a symphony of consonant and architectured forms. As a movement in painting, Purism did not have an appreciable following. There were many painters, however, who, like the Purists, were attracted to a machine-inspired aesthetic; most notable were the French painter Fernand Lger and the American Precisionist painters of the 1920s. See Precisionism.