Word: purism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fine command of line as well as color, but his composition is not well integrated. There is, nevertheless, a sense of discipline that never allows the picture to fail completely. Le Corbusier's canvases are two-dimensional. Along with Ozenfant, he was responsible for the creed of Purism promulgated about 1920 in an effort to preserve Cubism from the decorative tendency that was threatening to engulf it. The original impulse aimed at removing the literary art of Picasso and Braque to a more democratic level. Their concept was to dignify humble subject matter, objects like bottles and pipes that...
Sullivan's exuberant geometric and floral motifs are now long out of fashion. But for the present generation of modern architects too long imprisoned in a strait-jacket of glassy steel and aluminum purism, his concern for structure, color and decoration today places Sullivan, who died almost forgotten in 1924, once again at the center of tomorrow's architectural aspirations...
...refuses to approach books as if the chore were unpleasant. In the essay "Pundits and Philistines," he speaks sharply of his colleagues: "More and more of our serious critics are moving into the tight, gnomelike little world of the pedagogues, carrying on endless ill-natured controversies in print, confusing purism with integrity, using every critical article as the basis for another. As a result, criticism very misguidedly denies literature any sense of allure...