Date of this Version Textiles as Cultural Expressions:
Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Symposium of the Textile
Society of America, September 24–27, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii
These are the words of the Bourgeois, the fictive character in
Le Corbusier’s seminal book, The Decorative Art of Today. Le
Corbusier’s witty attack on curtains was common in the dominant
rhetoric of modern architecture in which drapes and curtains
were regarded as superficial, fleeting, and effeminate. In spite
of this, curtains were never a legitimate discussion among
modern architects. Conceivably this explains the lack of
scholarship on the use of drapery and curtains in modern
architecture. In this paper I will deal with domestic interiors;
exploring the correlation that exists between the re-
presentation and function of curtains in modern architecture:
display, excess and luxury. I will not offer a history of
curtains, but I will explore certain aspects of them and the
ways in which they have been used in the domestic interiors of
th