L'Obscurier
A fascinating glimpse of life at the cutting edge of mid-20th Century Modernism.
Here are the diaries of L'Obscurier - hugely influential artist, architect, sculptor, painter and social engineer who revolutionised the way we think about the built environment and then drowned in the Mediterranean.
Translated below by Danvers Couchmere from the original haughty French.
Monday, December 20 1954. The streets of Paris are gay with Christmas lights. Everywhere people are seized by a new spirit, a unity of intention.
It is as if a great epoch had begun. The city, bustling inexorably towards an extended holiday, has sprung into life. A "joyousness" is abroad. Citizens have found a singularity of purpose in their celebrations. They bear witness to an abstract spiritual communion of "goodwill". Children's faces are happy and excited.
The scene is one of utter chaos, and nauseating. I fear I will be physically sick if I witness any more of this madness. I shall remain in my studio at Maison L'Obscurier, where work continues on my latest project, the Hum-Bug.
Tuesday. How much saner society would be if religious superstitions were replaced by engineering. All problems in the World Of To-Day - mathematical, social, psychological - have a geometrical solution.
Imagine an aerial view of the city, showing the absurd, illogical routes taken by Christmas shoppers. Their itinerary is confused, improvised, primitive. People mill around like sheep, their paths randomly crossing or merging...it is unacceptable!
If they were engineers, and not shoppers, they would be forced to behave in accordance with the strict needs of exactly determined conditions.
As an experiment, a junior member of Atelier L'Obscurier is despatched on six consecutive evenings to the Place de la Concorde with instructions to bring back a bag of chestnuts. At one-minute intervals a kite-mounted Gamma-Ray camera captures the image of his hat, which has been rendered Radio-Active; perambulation within the public square thus appears as a series of luminous dots. Witness the complete absence of a straight line!
- A crooked path is a donkey track; a straight path, a road for men.
- A Christmas Spirit is a Formless Spirit; an Organised Spirit, one full of form.
- A perambulation is inefficient; grid-based walking is the Way of the Future.
How the Hum-Bug works. Observe the same aerial view of the Place de la Concorde, which has been organised (at last) into a grid. Pedestrians in Radio-Active hats fitted with the Electro-Magnetic Hum-Bug wait at grid intersections until an automatic signal (I have proposed a humming noise, but any acoustic prompt will do) sends them this way or that. The relative density of the surrounding crowd determines whether the Radio-Active hat appears black or white on the monitoring screen.
Retire early with a beastly migraine headache.
Wednesday. A testing day. I awake to certain commotions downstairs. Imagine my surprise when I discover that Mme. L'Obscurier has caused a Christmas Tree to be erected in the atrium.
Not only is there a mindless profusion of untrimmed branches - the whole thing is covered in geegaws and baubles.
No, no and again - no.
Thursday. Appalling scenes of domestic strife. Mme L'Obscurier still refusing to have the tree removed.
An entire season of goodwill seems socially ambitious, but an interlude of compromise is perhaps achieveable. While the house sleeps, I remove all irrelevant branches, trimming back the tree to a single straight line.
The organic world must surrender to the secataurs of rationalism.
Mme L'Obscurier seems unwilling to support the notion, and slaps me in the face.
Friday. Bakunin said the urge to destroy is also a creative urge. Modern society calls upon us to create a more geometrical Christmas by destroying it.
Saturday. Is everything then "cancelled" for Christmas? I venture out of the hotel (walking in straight lines at all times) to find the Brothel for Modernists of To-Day closed.
Sunday. A beautiful, cloudless summer's morning spent sailing in my yacht, The Paradox.
After a great deal of bad-tempered muttering from the crew, and much complicated calculation with the portable Electric Sextant, I manage to guide us to a spot exactly one kilometre from the beach. Here I will disembark and swim to shore - a test of endurance. One of these days I am sure I will be tested to destruction.
