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Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray is perhaps best known for her vandalism. This was not her doing, but an architect she admired deliberately destroying the house she designed. Gray’s E-1027 is a stunning white modernist masterpiece in the south of France that Le Corbusier modified in the late 1930s, when he decided to paint several murals in his home, in keeping with the inspired A departure from the designs inspired by Le Corbusier’s own designs. Five points of architecture. This act changed the history of E-1027 forever. Even today, after a long restoration process that will see the house reopen to the public in 2021, several Le Corbusier frescoes remain intact.
Our general knowledge of Eileen Gray tends to focus on this incident. Because of the scandal, as it involved Le Corbusier, it is considered one of the hallmarks of modern architecture. But Gray is so much more than that! She was an accomplished architect and designer whose life’s work does not deserve to be defined by Le Corbusier’s boorish behavior. As Irish art critic Dorothy Walker said, Gray was “one of the most outstanding Irish women and one of the most outstanding artists of this century.”
Gray entered the world of architecture through furniture. She studied art in London and Paris during her twenties. In 1906 she moved to 21 rue Bonaparte, the apartment where she would spend the rest of her life in Paris. Around 1906-07, she met Seizo Sukawara, a Japanese lacquer master living in Paris, and began studying lacquer under his tutelage. She learned from and worked with Sugawara for many years. Lacquerware became the majority of her furniture design skill set.
In 1919 Gray was commissioned to design the interior of Madame Mathieu-Lévy’s apartment, a project that truly marked her emergence as a designer. Patricia O’Reilly describes how at Gray’s hands,
The apartment is transformed into an atmospheric haven, with a muted color scheme and sculptural use of space. She created lacquered brick screens, dragon chairs, sausage-like Bib Gourmand chairs and a shell-like canoe daybed.
The apartment’s new interior has been well received Harper’s Bazaar The following year.
As her work grew in popularity, Gray received commissions from other wealthy Parisians and decided to open her own shop, Jean Désert, in 1922. Soon she was known as one of France’s top designers, her profile growing thanks to a steady stream of national and international publications covering her designs.
Gray’s attempts to become an architect began in 1923, coinciding with her personal relationship with the writer and architectural critic Jean Badovici. Through him and his social circle, she met architects such as Le Corbusier and JJP Oud. By then, Gray had become disillusioned with creating one-off luxury goods and became interested in how mass production shaped design. Without any formal architectural training, she completed E-1027 in 1929.
With its simple rectangular appearance, open floor plan and horizontal windows, Gray’s design was clearly influenced by the work of Le Corbusier. However, Gray also envisioned the E-1027, and the furniture she designed for it, as prototypes that could eventually be developed for mass production. For her second building, located in Tempe à Pailla in Menton, France, she moved away from Le Corbusier’s “machine aesthetic” by incorporating existing historic buildings into the design. Unfortunately, her adventures in architecture seemed to stop there. Although records show that she designed over forty buildings, E-1027 and Tempe à Pailla are the only two completed.
As curator Jennifer Goff explains, Gray’s “use of media was novel, combining lacquer, chrome, celluloid, plastic, perforated metal, and cork in revolutionary ways.” Her designs were ahead of their time, blending modernity with tradition to create designs that are both current and timeless.
After World War II, Gray fell into obscurity. For a time, some of her architectural designs were credited to others, including Badovich and Le Corbusier. Towards the end of her life, however, she developed a renewed interest in her work. Retrospective exhibition held in London in 1972 destinyFour lacquer screens she created in 1914 were bought at auction by Yves Saint Laurent for $36,000—for a “forgotten” designer, This is an incredible price. The following year, Gray was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of Irish Architects at the age of ninety-five. Gray died on October 31, 1976, and was buried at her choice, Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
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Author: Dorothy Walker
Annals of Irish Art Criticism, Vol. 15 (1999), pp. 118–125
irish art review
Author: Patricia O’Reilly
History of Ireland, Vol. 18, No. 3 (May/June 2010), pp. 42–46
Wardwell Ltd.
Author: Jennifer Goff
Irish Art Review (2002–), Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn (September-November 2013)), pp. 104-107
irish art review
Author: Deborah F. Nevins
Heresy: Feminist Publications on Art and Politics, Volume 3, Issue 3(11), pp. 68–70
heretical collective
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