Director’s Foreword

Weber, Susan

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Director’s Foreword

Susan Weber

Eileen Gray

The beginning of this century’s second decade marks two very important events at Bard Graduate Center: our organization’s twenty-fifth anniversary and the celebration of the work of Eileen Gray...

Author

Cloé Pitiot (Editor), Nina Stritzler-Levine (Editor)

PublisherBard Graduate Center

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100134

Director’s Foreword

The beginning of this century’s second decade marks two very important events at Bard Graduate Center: our organization’s twenty-fifth anniversary and the celebration of the work of Eileen Gray, one of the most accomplished women designer/architects of the twentieth century. Not since 1980, four years after her death, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a retrospective exhibition of her work, has attention been paid in this country to her significant and groundbreaking achievements in the decorative arts, design, and architecture. Jean Badovici, a close collaborator of Gray’s, attributed to her work as early as 1924 “an atmosphere of boundless plasticity, where different perspectives meld, where each object is subsumed into a mysterious, living unity. Space itself is for Eileen Gray just another material that can be transformed and molded depending on the needs of the décor; she allows herself an infinite number of possibilities.”1Jean Badovici, “Entretiens sur l’Architecture Vivante (Eileen Gray),” L’Architecture Vivante (1924): 27–28. Indeed, once Gray created a design, she continued to reinvent it, not only by using new materials but also by enriching and diversifying an established form through the subtle juxtaposition of materials and, as Badovici explained, the way in which she positioned and placed works to create a “living unity.”

It is with great pleasure that Bard Graduate Center Gallery presents a broad range of this extraordinary woman’s work to an American audience. Not only do this exhibition and book give unprecedented credence in this country to Gray’s versatility and her work in multiple disciplines, but the project also represents a significant step in the Gallery’s commitment to bring the work of women to the forefront of public attention and scholarly investigation, in particular the achievements of pioneering women in the design and architecture professions.

We are especially grateful to our partner, Centre Pompidou, Paris, which mounted the major retrospective on Gray in 2013, curated by Cloé Pitiot, that is the basis of our exhibition. My thanks go to Serge Lasvignes, President, and Bernard Blistène, Director, of Centre Pompidou for the fruitful collaboration between our two institutions. A special note of thanks must be expressed to the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, under the direction of Lynn Scarff, for providing institutional support in myriad ways. NMI’s curator of the Eileen Gray Collection, Jennifer Goff, tirelessly researched Gray’s life and work and played a critical role in the realization of this project. Thanks are also due to Audrey Whitty, Head of Collections and Research; Alex Ward, Curator of Dress and Textiles; and Patrick Boyle, Conservator of Furniture. We are grateful as well to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which houses an extensive Eileen Gray collection, for providing important images for this catalogue. I would also like to thank Christopher Marsden of the V&A for providing critical documentation of Gray’s architectural drawings and Christopher Wilk for offering to help our team.

This exhibition would not be possible without the generosity of our lenders. In addition to the institutions named above, we thank the Peter Adam Collection; Renaud Barrès; Julie Blum, Galerie Anne-Sophie Duval; Antoine Bucher and Nicolas Montagne, Diktats bookstore; Jacques De Vos, Galerie Jacques De Vos; Marcial Di Fonzo Bo; Suzanne Freidli, Collection Paul Schärer; Michael Likierman, Cap Moderne; Gilles Peyroulet and Dominique Chenivesse, Galerie Peyroulet; Martine Baverel, Christelle Pereira, and Cheska Vallois, Galerie Vallois; Colum O’Riordan, Irish Architectural Archive; Stephen Kelly, Kelly Gallery, New York; Kravis Collection; Colleen Schafroth and Steve Grafe, Maryhill Museum of Art; Max Hollein, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Olivier Gabet, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Glenn Lowry, Martino Stierli, Juliette Kinchin, and Paul Galloway, Museum of Modern Art; Magda Rebutato; Alex Nyerges and Barry Shifman, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and lenders who wish to remain anonymous.

Thanks to the efforts of numerous scholars in England, France, Ireland, and the United States, a great deal has been discovered in recent years about Gray. In addition to Cloé Pitiot’s extensive contributions to the project, we acknowledge Caroline Constant’s study of Gray’s architecture, expanded upon here for the first time since her groundbreaking book was first published in 2000. I would like to thank Phaidon Press for permission to reprint a selection of the catalogue entries on architecture from that book. Caroline contributed to this volume in numerous ways, as did Philippe Garner, who heralded the renewed interest in Gray as early as the mid-1970s. Renaud Barrès has been generous in sharing new knowledge about E 1027 and Gray’s fascinating project in Dakar, as well as several other projects. Gray scholarship has been furthered with the new arguments that Frédéric Migayrou makes about how many leading intellectuals in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States informed Gray’s work. Catherine Bernard provides crucial context for Gray’s career in her investigation of London at the turn of the century. The remarkable research of Anne Jacquin, an accomplished lacquer conservator, has brought to the book incomparable knowledge of this critical aspect of Gray’s artistic production. We are grateful to Olivier Gabet, Ruth Starr, and Jennifer Laurent for granting permission to reprint the texts that first appeared in the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition catalogue.

This book has benefited substantially from the superb copy-editing skills of Barbara Burn. Carolyn Brown provided the foundational work on the Case Studies, which proved to be a monumental task. Tristan Bass-Krueger and Gammon Sharpley brought sensitivity, skill, and insight to the difficult work of translating several of the manuscripts from French to English.

Irma Boom has created a lucid, beautiful, and engaging design for this volume, our fifth book with Irma Boom Office. Each section of the book has a wonderful graphic treatment, but the exceptional clarity of the Case Studies, which integrate many different kinds of materials, is perhaps the most impressive. At IBO, Eva van Bemmelen worked with Irma and our team to realize the wonderful design.

This project is the result of a highly successful partnership of curatorial teams at Bard Graduate Center and in Paris. Cloé Pitiot and Nina Stritzler-Levine are the co-directors, and I want to acknowledge their outstanding efforts in realizing the book and exhibition. In Paris, Marine Bry was an invaluable curatorial assistant to Cloé Pitiot. She conducted research, helped with the Case Studies, and responded to innumerable queries. As curatorial and editorial assistant in New York, Emma Cormack, an essential member of our team, managed many different aspects of this volume and the exhibition. The reader is perhaps less familiar with the important and complex job of sourcing photographic images, which is most ably done by Alexis Mucha. Our talented designer, Ian Sullivan, created the thoughtful exhibition design. Marianne Lamonaca provided support to the exhibition team. I want to thank Frédéric Migayrou, Deputy Director of the Centre Pompidou, for his initial encouragement. Yvon Figueras, former head of exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, directed the collaboration between our two institutions before he left the museum at the end of 2019. Claire de Cointet, head of publications at Centre Pompidou, responded affably to many questions about the catalogue.

The exhibition is accompanied by a film, In Conversation with Eileen Gray. Directed by the renowned filmmaker Michael Pitiot, it is based on a previously unknown 1973 interview with Eileen Gray conducted by Andrew Hodgkinson. The film offers visitors a unique opportunity to hear Eileen Gray reflect on her long and accomplished career as she looks at the Portfolio she had compiled of images of her work. Thanks are due to Michael, as well as to Cloé Pitiot and Philippe Garner, who prepared the film for the screen. Special thanks to Andrew for granting permission to use the interview for this purpose.

We sincerely appreciate the effort of the Bard Graduate Center staff who have played a role in bringing this project to fruition. We thank Mohammed Alam, Samantha Baron, Amy Brady, Miao Chen, James Congregane and the facilities team, Kate DeWitt, Eric Edler, Izabella Elwart, Amy Estes, Tim Ettenheim, Christine Griffiths, Alexander Gruen and the installation crew, Caroline Hannah, Olivia Kalin, Benjamin Krevolin, Jocelyn Lau, Minna Lee, Jesse Merandy, Laura Minsky, Rita Niyazova, Kristen Owens, Angela Prevosto, Emily Reilly, Carla Repice, Antonio Sanchez, Chandler Small and the security team, Hellyn Teng, Heather Topcik, and Maggie Walter. BGC MA and PhD students Nicholas De Godoy Lopes, Nicole Dee-Collins, Noah Dubay, Emily Hayflick, Jackie Mazzone, and Alice Winkler also contributed their time and assisted with the project.

I have saved the final words of gratitude for our sponsors. This project counts among them two of the most respected private patrons of design and architecture. Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, your support is critical to our work, and we are inspired by your passion and knowledge. We are grateful for the outstanding leadership of Joan Davidson and the generosity of Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. We appreciate the corporate sponsorship of Phillips. This project was also made possible by generous contributions from federal and state agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. We are honored to be the recipient of grants from the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Selz Foundation, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Edward Lee Cave, loyal friend to Bard Graduate Center, understood the merits of this endeavor from the outset and became its earliest benefactor. Without these sponsors, such a thorough investigation of Eileen Gray’s life and work would not have been possible.

Susan Weber
Director and Founder
Bard Graduate Center

1 Jean Badovici, “Entretiens sur l’Architecture Vivante (Eileen Gray),” L’Architecture Vivante (1924): 27–28. »

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