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Charles Eames : Furniture from the Design Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York by Arthur Drexler

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Charles Eames : Furniture from the Design Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York by Arthur Drexler Charles Eames : furniture from the design collection, the Museum of Modern Art, New York By Arthur Drexler Author Drexler, Arthur.;Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1973 Publisher The Museum of Modern Art ISBN 0870703145 Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1712 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art CHARLESEAMES FURNITURE FROM THE DESIGN COLLECTION THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK LIBRARY Museumof Mocfc-fnAft CHARLESEAMES FURNITURE FROM THE DESIGN COLLECTION THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK BY ARTHUR DREXLER LIBRARY" iteaurn of Mod&rr Art mha DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART c. ^2 Arthur Drexler, Director William S. Paley, Chairman Emilio Ambasz, Curator of Design Gardner Cowles, Vice Chairman John Garrigan, Assistant Curator of Graphic Design Henry Allen Moe, Vice Chairman Mary Jane Lightbown, Research Associate David Rockefeller, Vice Chairman Kathryn Eno, Assistant to the Director Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, President Katherine Mansfield, Secretary J. Frederic Byers III, Vice President Jerry Bowen, Custodian Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, Vice President Ludwig Glaeser, Curator of the Mies van der Rohe James Thrall Soby, Vice President Archive Neal J. Farrell, Treasurer Susan Evens, Secretary Robert O. Anderson Carol Sullivan, Cataloguer Mrs. Douglas Auchcincloss Anny Eder, Conservator Walter Bareiss Margarete Hachigian, Researcher Robert R. Barker Alfred H. Barr, Jr.* COMMITTEE ON ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN Mrs. Armand P. Bartos William A. M. Burden Philip Johnson, Chairman Ivan Chermayeff Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss Mrs. Kenneth B. Clark Armand P. Bartos John de Menil Ivan Chermayeff Mrs. C. Douglas Dillon Arthur Drexler Williiam H. Donaldson Mrs. Richard Duffalo Mrs. Edsel B. Ford* Jack Lenor Larsen Gianluigi Gabetti Mrs. Charles P. Noyes George Heard Hamilton Donald Page Wallace K. Harrison* T. Merrill Prentice, Jr. Mrs. Walter Hochschild* James W. Husted* Philip Johnson Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin Gustave L. Levy John L. Loeb Ranald H. Macdonald* Mrs. G. Macculloch Miller* J. Irwin Miller Richard E. Oldenburg Mrs. Charles S. Payson* Gifford Phillips Nelson A. Rockefeller Mrs. Wolfgang Schoenborn Mrs. Bertram Smith Mrs. Alfred R. Stern Mrs. Donald B. Straus Walter N. Thayer Edward M. M. Warburg* Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. Monroe Wheeler* John Hay Whitney *Honorary Trustee for Life Copyright © 1973. Printed in the U.S.A. The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York 10019 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 73-76672 ISBN 0-87070-314-5 INTRODUCTION This survey of furniture by Charles Eames is An object is chosen for its quality because the first in a series devoted to important it is thought to achieve, or to have originated, groups of material in the Design Collection of those formal ideals of beauty which have be the Museum of Modern Art. come the major style concepts of our time. The most original American furniture de Historical significance is a more flexible cri signer since Duncan Phyfe, Charles Eames terion. It applies to objects which may not re has contributed at least three of the major solve problems of aesthetics and function with chair designs of the twentieth century. He has total success, but which nevertheless have con also given a personal and pervasive image to tributed importantly— or may yet contribute- the idea of lightness and mobility. His work to the development of design. has influenced furniture design in virtually Reflecting these separate but related consid every country, and his mastery of advanced erations, the Design Collection is administered technology has set new standards of both de in two sections. Objects thought to be of such sign and production. The first of his chairs, excellence that, even if not major works of executed in collaboration with the architect their kind, they may still be said to have se Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) emerged from a cured their place in the history of design, are 1940 Museum of Modern Art competition. incorporated in the Collection as "permanent" Since then furniture by Eames has been mass- acquisitions. Material of supplementary and produced in quantities that must now be perhaps less certain interest is accessioned counted by the millions, and more than 50 ex into the Study Collection. Both categories are amples of his work have entered the Museum's continuously reviewed, and as critical judg Design Collection. ment changes material is occasionally shifted from one to the other. Study Collection ma Concerned primarily with mass-produced use terial may be de-accessioned at the discretion ful objects made to serve a specific purpose, of the Department of Architecture and Design the Design Collection was formally inaugu and its advisory Trustee Committee ; material rated in 1934 with objects culled from the in the Design Collection proper may be acces "Machine Art" exhibition organized by Philip sioned and de-accessioned only with the ap Johnson. Since then the Collection has grown proval of the Museum's Board of Trustees. to more than 2100 examples, representing all About 200 objects illustrating the history of the arts of manufacture, and classified within modern design and its relevant nineteenth the following categories : appliances and century forebears may be seen in the Mu equipment ; furniture ; tableware ; tools ; and seum's Goodwin Galleries. Much of the ma textiles. In size and diversity they range from terial in this exhibition is changed from time such mass-produced artifacts as pill boxes, to time, but certain key works are almost al typewriters and radios to chairs and tables, ways on view. an automobile, and even such semi-architec tural productions as the entrance arch to a Paris Metro Station. Two criteria apply in the selection of ob Arthur Drexler, Director jects: quality and historical significance. Department of Architecture and Design 3 3^ :$m 1 Furniture by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" exhibition, 1941. 2 Scale models by Eames and Saarinen. It is difficult now to recall the fervor with which by Eliot Noyes, the Director of the Museum's early champions of modern architecture Department of Industrial Design, who had re fought to change our buildings and the arti cently completed his studies with Gropius at facts that fill them. By the mid-1980s Marcel Harvard. "A design may be called organic", Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Noyes wrote, "when there is an harmonious Germany, and Le Corbusier in France, had organization of the parts within the whole, established what seemed to be prototypical so according to structure, material, and purpose. lutions for most design problems. Particularly Within this definition there can be no vain or in furniture, German and French work seemed namentation or superfluity, but the part of emblematic of the modern spirit: its talis beauty is none the less great—in ideal choice mans were precise, machined (or hand of material, in visual refinement, and in the crafted to look machined), and apparently rational elegance of things intended for use". useful. Where the Germans and French worked As Noyes now observes, this definition of with metal, Finland's Alvar Aalto preferred organic was not altogether persuasive. It wood; this was understood as a wholesome seeks to relate ideas that have no necessary Scandinavian taste for nature, and perhaps conjunction: thus utility emerges as the ulti also a certain slackness in responding to the mate determinant of form ; and beauty is a by dictates of function. product of "rational" decisions. The exhibi With the arrival at Harvard of Walter tion catalog reviews the pioneering work of Gropius in 1937, and Mies van der Rohe at the several modern designers but omits any men Armour Institute of Technology in 1938, the tion of Frank Lloyd Wright, who popularized ideals and methods of German functionalism the term. Yet Wright's understanding of it were rapidly adapted to the American scene. would have emphasized "wholeness". Like But public acceptance of Bauhaus principles Aristotle, who first defined it, he would have lagged ; young architects emerging from Har understood a "whole" as something in which vard could more readily persuade their clients the position and shape of the parts in relation to accept a modernism of Scandinavian rather to each other make a difference more conse than German character, and it was Aalto's quential than "harmony". The genuine part furniture that was first to appear in small of a whole cannot retain its own character specialty stores. Most modern furniture was except in the whole of which it is a part. To costly, and none of it was widely available. remove it is to destroy the part and mutilate In this context the Museum of Modern Art the whole. responded enthusiastically to a suggestion This conception derives from the example made by Bloomingdale's department store in of living organisms ; and it is not surprising New York City. Bloomingdale's, recognizing that in popular usage "organic design" means the emergence of a younger generation open forms and materials found in nature, preva to new design ideas, wanted to find designers lently curvilinear, and frequently embodying who could produce work of good quality. To the marks of their own history and "growth" ward this end the Museum conducted in 1940 under the craftsman's hand. (Characteristics, an inter-American competition for the design incidentally, of much Scandinavian design of home furnishings. Other stores, and even until the 'sixties). But in the philosophy of tually manufacturers, also joined in sponsor ing the project, which was called "Organic Design in Home Furnishings".
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