There’s a temptation to allow Eileen Gray’s enigmatic biography to eclipse her creative achievements. Largely forgotten by the time furniture mogul Zeev Aram tracked her down and rewrote her into the design history books in the 1970s – by which point she was 93 and a virtual recluse – Gray can slide conveniently into that romantic type of the sidelined genius if you want her to.
A woman, largely self-taught, with bobbed hair and with illicitly donned trousers, lesbian flings and passionate affairs, Gray lived in self-imposed exile from her aristocratic Irish home. Oh, and there was a dramatic spat with that patriarch of Modernism, Le Corbusier: a tale laden with enough phallocentricity to write a thousand feminist texts on male cultural dominance and female violation (against Gray’s permission, Corbusier scrawled murals all over the walls of her architectural masterpiece E-1027 [pictured above] and most tellingly, he whipped his cock out to do so). If it all sounds like the stuff of a nostalgic and raunchy art flick, it soon will be: an upcoming biopic, The Price of Desire sounds poised to hone in on the more salacious biographical details of Gray’s life, including the Corbusier conflict.
It’s an easy trap to fall into. Biographies can overshadow the work of even the most compelling artists. It can be an easy (and often perfectly valid) in-road into understanding the work of a great mind, particularly one that belonged to an entirely different cultural landscape. But IMMA’s upcoming exhibition Eileen Gray: Architect Designer Painter derives its strength from an attention shift back onto the work itself – eschewing context to focus first-hand on the huge body of work that triggered cause for celebration in the first place.
The reasons for Gray fading into obscurity for half a century are more complex than the simple fact of her womanhood, or even her modesty. Despite being a key figure in Modernism, Gray also retained aspects of intimacy and personal touches that set her apart from the rest of the movement. Her buildings were less “machines for living” as highly attuned sensory experiences. For her so-called “love nest”, E-1027, Gray tracked the course of the sun throughout the day, anticipating the inhabitants’ movements throughout the building as the day progressed and planning the division of space accordingly. Such subtleties of design, though fascinating to us now, may offer a partial explanation for her fading popularity as Brutalism came into vogue.
Even Gray’s most austere creations, such as the Bauhaus-inspired round tubular steel and glass table she created in 1927, had a very personal function. The story goes that Gray created it for her sister, whose pesky habit of wolfing down breakfast in bed left a sticky trail of crumbs all over her host’s sheets when she stopped over for a weekend visit. The table is designed to be adjustable in height, perfect for slotting around a bed, making her sibling’s habit less inconvenient for both parties.
Then there is her penchant for luxurious and exotic woods, fur, ivory and, most notably, lacquer. Gray was introduced to the Japanese technique of lacquer while in London, and fell in love with the tricky and time-consuming medium, working it until she succumbed to “lacquer disease”: a blotchy rash resulting from prolonged exposure to the slightly poisonous substance. Hand-crafted and artisanal, the technique is in many ways rather at odds with the manifestoes of Modernism (which championed machinated production of everything), but perhaps appeals more to our 21st-century preoccupation with craftsmanship.
Gray’s use of lacquer is one of her most important contributions to design, and her (by now iconic) folding screen Brick is amongst her most captivatingly idiosyncratic creations. It feels both industrial and classical, drawing upon the language of sculpture, and though by all purposes conceived to facilitate privacy, the screen is just about see-through enough to expose a glimmering outline from the other side. Inviting yet secretive, it’s all the more alluring for its partial concealment.
Gray designed interiors with fluidity and flexibility in mind: furniture that could be constantly reconfigured and changed around, viewing domestic dwellings not as something static, fixed and permanent, but spaces constantly in flux. Her metamorphic approach to design is sophisticated, showing a sensitivity to living requirements that – for all its romance and intuitiveness – is above all else, utterly practical.
Gray’s masterpiece was E-1027, currently closed to the public as it undergoes restoration. The villa had fallen largely into disrepair by the close of the 20th century, and it’s been a long time since it housed Gray’s original furniture. It’s difficult to fully grasp her vision without it because for Gray, the enclosing structure and the items with it in were inextricable; this is perhaps why she experimented with so many varying techniques and materials, from carpets to cabinets. She saw all as a cohesive whole.
E-1027 will reopen to the public later this year, with replicas of her furniture donated by ARAM, the primary licensed vendor of Gray’s designs. (ARAM also recently launched www.eileengray.co.uk, a swankily designed website that offers an introduction to her life and work; it’s worth a pit stop.) But short of making the journey to the restored villa (in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, near Monaco) when it does reopen, IMMA’s sizable retrospective is undoubtedly the most complete and immersive insight into Gray’s vast and varied oeuvre available. It’s a timely opportunity to fully explore the brilliance of one of Ireland’s greatest contributions to design. Explore it, saturate yourself in her vision, and if you really like what you see, make for the French coastline to see her work in action.
Eileen Gray: Artist Designer Painter runs at IMMA from October 12th until January 14th 2014
