LECTURE SERIES
BY DR. ERICH KEEL

Le Corbusier:
The Architect as Artist

Tickets $10 / Members: Free.
For reservations, call 202-338-3552.

Few architects of the 20th century influenced the built environment more than Le Corbusier. pseudonym for Charles Edouard Jeanneret, born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1887. His love of clean volumes and luminous spaces is reflected in the concerns of many artists of his time, as, for example, in the transparent sculptures of Naum Gabo or the geometric abstractions of Mondrian. Remarkably, Le Corbusier himself turned to the art of painting, developing a new style, Purism, to express his innovative ideas.

Le Corbusier shows his work Sculpture, in wood and iron, that was part of an exhibition at the Modern Arts Museum in Paris in 1953. Photo by Jean-Jacques Levy/AP, www.time.com.

Philip Johnson:
The Architect as Aesthete

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For reservations, call 202-338-3552.

Philip Johnson, born in Cleveland, Ohio  in 1906, was one of the first Americans to respond to European innovations in design in the 1920’s, including Le Corbusier’s houses at the celebrated Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, Germany. Like Le Corbusier, Johnson was enamoured by crisp lines and light-filled spaces. but he did not become an artist in the traditional sense. His artistic sensibilities are reflected in the paintings and sculptures he collected, and, above all, in the sculptural look and feel that he gave his architecture toward the end of his life.

Philip Johnson in front of Da Monsta, the gatehouse to his New Canann,
Connecticut home. Photo by Martin Skrelunas.

DISCUSSION

Fast Forward:
Architecture Now

Tuesday, May 6
6:30 pm (Doors open at 6 pm)

Tickets $12 / Members: Free.
For reservations, call 202-338-3552.

Join Hilary Lewis, Curator of Philip Johnson: Architecture as Art, Alan Ritchie of Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects and Architectural Critic Benjamin Forgey as they discuss Philip Johnson, his role in 20th century architecture and influence on the present. The evening will be moderated by the Director of The Kreeger Museum, Judy A. Greenberg. The exhibition catalogue, Philip Johnson: Architecture as Art, will be available for purchase along with Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects, that includes many of the projects featured in the exhibition. A booksigning will follow the discussion.

Da Monsta, Philip Johnson. New Canann, Connecticut, 1996.

INSIDE THE ARTISTS' STUDIO

Renee Butler & Joe White

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For reservations, call 202-338-3552.

From their shared studio, artists Renee Butler and Joe White create work that provides a compelling sense of place. The unusual ambiguity of perspective and the relative flatness of pastel tonal areas in Joe White’s paintings show his relation to the Washington Color School. as well the origins of his contemporary representational compositions. Renee Butler’s installations, or “Resonant Environments,” involve a combination of light, translucent fabrics and sound to surround the viewer with sensory experiences of different kinds. Her stated goal is ‘‘to dissolve the boundaries between spectator and participant, inside and outside, abstraction and reality, time and space.”

Above: Entering Emptyness, Renee Butler.
Below: Victor Hotel, Joe White.
Images courtesy of the artists.