September 24, 2020 47
Eileen Gray’s Infinite Possibilities
Martin Filler
The rediscovery of long- forgotten
women who were major participants in
the creation of modern architecture—a
restitution effort that arose with
second- wave feminism in the 1970s—
has had significant consequences. Not
least of them has been an ongoing re-
vision of the architectural canon, with
unjustly overlooked female pioneers
added to the once exclusively male
pantheon of modernist master build-
ers. Arguably the most fascinating and
elusive of these path- breaking women
is the Anglo- Irish architect and fur-
niture designer Eileen Gray, who has
come into much sharper focus during
the past decade thanks in large part to
a network of outstanding female schol-
ars in the United States and Europe.
Interest in Gray was spurred by
an excellent retrospective in 2013 at
the Pompidou Center in Paris that
then traveled to the Irish Museum of
Modern Art in Dublin, and several of
those involved in it regrouped for “Ei-
leen Gray,” an even better survey that
opened at the Bard Graduate Center
Gallery earlier this year. Although the
Covid- 19 pandemic forced the prema-
ture closing of the New York show—a
ravishing installation of two hundred
objects, many of them great rarities—
it will be long remembered because of
its catalog, admirably edited by Cloé
Pitiot and Nina Stritzler- Levine in a
tour- de- force of exhaustive research
and insightful interpretation. It was
imaginatively designed by the Dutch
graphic artist Irma Boom to evoke
Gray’s aesthetic, right down to the
three- tone grisaille fore- edges in hom-
age to her geometric rug patterns, and
is now the indispensable reference work
on the subject.
Nevertheless, Gray remains an
enigma. In contrast to such dynamos
of the 1920s as Margarete Schütte-
Lihotzky and Charlotte Perriand, the
temperamentally reticent Gray seems
to have abetted her lingering obscu-
rity. This was her besetting psycholog-
ical struggle, which she was apparently
aware of, according to her attentive
friend and authorized (if sometimes
unreliable) biographer, Peter Adam,
a German- born British documentary
filmmaker who died last year shortly
before the publication of Eileen Gray:
Her Life and Work, a revision of his Ei-
leen Gray: Architect/Designer (1987).
For decades Adam monopolized
information about Gray through his
closeness with her niece, heir, and
gatekeeper, the British artist Prunella
Clough, and this likely did her repu-
tation more harm than good. Gray’s
standing as an architect was furtherundermined by her being primarily
identified as a designer of furniture
and interiors. She moved incrementally
in scale from small individual objects
to larger ensembles, then entire inte-
riors, and finally buildings, a progres-
sion all the more astounding because
she was self- taught in architecture,
save for private instruction in technical
draftsmanship from the Polish archi-
tect Adrienne Górska (sister of the Art
Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka) in
order to design her initial house.Gray’s first complete interior design
commission was a Paris apartment
for the couturière Suzanne Talbot
(1919–1924; see illustration on page50). Among the pieces she made for
this innovative residence was her Brick
screen, an ingenious composition of
thin lacquered wood oblongs stacked
on invisible vertical rods and horizon-
tally staggered in alternating, pivoting
rows to create solid/void rhythms akin
to a three- dimensional Escher checker-
board. Another brilliant reinvention was
the Lota sofa (1924), a notable depar-
ture from the upright upholstered seat-
ing of the period. Deep, low- slung, and
capacious, at once daybed and divan, it
is flanked by built- in rectangular lac-
quered monoliths big enough to serve as
end tables. In addition to a pair of loose
back pillows, this nearly eight- foot-
wide mega- couch has two large square
cushions that can be moved around to
individualize it for different body types.
This is the most inviting and comfort-
able domestic furniture I’ve ever expe-
rienced, as I did for years in the London
guest flat of friends who owned a later
“re- edition” of this divine divan.
Gray’s labor- intensive lacquer was
affordable to only a few rich syba-
rites, and that remains true a century
later. In 2009 her Dragon armchair
(1917–1919)—an overstuffed fauteuil
embraced by two sinuous curves of
carved lacquer—fetched more than
$28 million, the world record auction
price for twentieth- century furniture.
Yet her later modernist designs in
metal and other workaday materials
were hardly inexpensive, for despite
their machine- made appearance they,
too, initially had to be handcrafted.
Her flair for adaptive multifunctional-
ism is displayed in these later designs,
such as tables that expand in height and
length to accommodate different tasks;
the Satellite mirror (1926–1929), which
combines a large circular looking glass,
a smaller magnifying mirror on a pivot-
ing arm, and a round built- in light; and
a streamlined painted- wood contriv-
ance (1930 –1933) that could be used as
a stepstool, a seat, or a towel rack. HerEileen Gray
an exhibition at the Bard Graduate
Center Gallery, New York City,
February 29–October 28, 2020.
(The gallery is temporarily closed,
and will reopen on October 13.)
Catalog of the exhibition edited
by Cloé Pitiot and Nina Stritzler-
Levine, with contributions
by Renaud Barrès, Catherine
Bernard, Caroline Constant,
Olivier Gabet, Philippe Garner,
Jennifer Goff, Anne Jacquin,
Frédéric Migayrou, Cloé Pitiot,
and Ruth Starr.
Bard Graduate Center/Centre
Pompidou/National Museum of
Ireland, 504 pp., $60.00
(paper; distributed by
Yale University Press)Eileen Gray: Her Life and Work
by Peter Adam.
Thames and Hudson,
327 pp., $39.95Eileen Gray:
E.1027, 1926–1929
by Wilfried Wang,
Peter Adam, and others.
Wasmuth, 288 pp., $50.00 (paper)Eileen Gray:
A House Under the Sun
by Charlotte Malterre- Barthes
and Zosia DzierĪawska.
Nobrow, 155 pp., $19.95In Conversation with Eileen Gray
a documentary film
by Michael PitiotGray Matters
a documentary film
by Marco OrsiniThe Price of Desire
a film by Mary McGuckianBOOKS AND FILMS DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEWThe E.1027 house, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, designed by Eileen Gray, 1926 –1929Manuel Bougot /Cap Moderne Association