Still Life with Carafe, Bottle, and Guitar
Amédéé Ozenfant
AMÉDÉÉ OZENFANT, 1919. OIL ON CANVAS.
Art consists in the conception before anything else, and technique is merely a tool at the service of conception. These are two of the tenets of Purism, a movement founded in rebellion to the perceived ornamentation of Cubism by Ozenfant and, perhaps more significantly, Le Corbusier. In the war-torn France of 1918, ravaged by the First World War, Purism emerged as a way to bring back order. Cubism had become the de-facto school of Art and had strayed from it’s earliest intentions to become romantic and decorative, with an emphasis on detail that detracted from it’s radical, abstract origins. With Purism, Ozenfant and Corbusier focused on the essence of objects, free from details or decoration the forms are allowed to stand alone and find beauty in the simplicity of the world around us. It was a way to return to nature, without copying it, and while their unison ended, both Ozenfant and Corbusier held these ideas with them for the rest of their lives, and Le Corbusier used them to create the modern language of design and architecture.