ABSTRACT
Purism emerged literally from the accidents of the First World War, from Amedee Ozenfant's rejection by the army, his publication of a journal to keep in touch with other artists at war and his introduction to Le Corbusier as a result of that journal. Ozenfant later declared the show to be premature, calling it Proto-Purism, but the principles were clear and if the paintings failed to galvanize visitors, the ideas in their manifesto found a critical sympathy in the post-war spirit of renewal. Purism's impossible task was to develop a psychology of color that could stabilize the changeable pleasures of color in their relation to durable and enduring architectonic forms. According to Ozenfant, the disciplines of painting and architecture had been separated by all the same historical forces that created the modern metropolis and modern architecture, and the divorce itself was finalized with the conceptual shift that distinguished the mobile wall surface from its structure.
