Movie Review
Eames: The Architect and the Painter (2011)
Charles, left, and Ray Eames in 1948.
At the Altar of Design, When Self-Expression Met Mass Production
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: November 17, 2011
All that has been written since the death of Steve Jobs last month is a reminder of how passionate modern consumers can be about the things we buy and how fascinated we are by the people who make and sell them. The appeal of those Apple gadgets — so sleek and logical, so cool and friendly and flattering to whoever picks them up — is obvious enough, but the exact nature of Mr. Jobs’s contribution has been harder to specify. Was he a visionary innovator or, as Malcolm Gladwell recently argued in The New Yorker, a tireless “tweaker” of the inventions of others? Was he primarily a designer, an engineer, a computer nerd or an artist? A benevolent guru or the center of a cult of personality?
First Run Features
The couple's home in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Similar questions circulate through “Eames: The Architect and the Painter,” a lively new documentary by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey. The subjects are Charles and Ray Eames, a married couple (sometimes thought to be brothers because of their names) whose approach to product design and the presentation of information was in its way as influential as Mr. Jobs’s. Their name is still most commonly associated with the chairs sold by the Herman Miller company, but the film argues that their characteristic mix of the practical and the aesthetic has left traces in nearly every aspect of contemporary life.
Charles Eames was trained as an architect. Ray Eames, his second wife, was an artist, and together they ran a design studio in Venice, Calif., that was a hive of creativity. Charles arrived there in the 1940s from Michigan, and his migration from the industrial Midwest to Southern California was part of a larger cultural and aesthetic shift. The house that he and Ray built in Pacific Palisades, with its simple, boxy shapes; abundant light; and whimsical ornaments was a domestic temple for a new, less austere kind of Modernism, one that joined a streamlined, functional, practical style with bright colors and pleasing shapes.
Their motto was “the best for the least for the most” — a characteristically pithy statement of a utopian ideal of capitalist mass production. The idea that striking design and sound craftsmanship could be available to everyone has an obvious democratic charm, but it also contains a paradox. The Eameses, who had long-lasting contracts with Westinghouse, I.B.M. and other large corporations, were selling the notion that individualism could not only coexist with commercial standardization, but that idiosyncratic expression could also flourish within the collective rituals of consumption. The stuff you buy, if it’s the right stuff, is part of what makes you what you are.
Their own eccentricity turned out to be a great asset. Charles, tall and tousle-haired with a trademark bow tie and a professorial air, was both awkward and charismatic. Ray, with her bangs and old-fashioned dresses, is described by one colleague as “a delicious little dumpling.” Together they look, in archival footage, captivatingly odd, and they seem to have captured the loyalty of a great many talented young designers, who look back fondly, if sometimes incredulously, at the long years spent working at the studio.
This documentary’s portrait of the Eameses is hardly idealized. Like Walt Disney — and like Steve Jobs — Charles Eames did not share credit. His name alone went on the studio’s products. And though Ray was his equal partner and indispensable collaborator, the sexism of the age pushed her, at least publicly, into the margins.
The film includes an appalling, hilarious appearance the two of them made on “Home,” in which the chipper hostess takes great pains to keep Ray in her silent, subordinate place, making Charles the reluctant center of attention. Later their marriage was tested by his infidelity, and their partnership was weakened by a loss of common creative purpose. After Charles died in 1978, Ray tried to keep their work going until her death 10 years later.
All of which is to say that they were human, and the most gratifying thing about “Eames” is that it shows, in marvelous detail, how their work was an extension of themselves and how their distinct personalities melded into a unique and protean force. The film is also appropriately busy and abundant: full of objects, information, stories and people, organized with hectic elegance.
Furniture, housewares, films, exhibitions — at times it is hard to keep track of everything the Eameses were making. But the scale and variety of the enterprise also establish them as precursors of digital culture, which combines technology with handicraft, and layers information and images into what Charles Eames called (meaning it in a good way) “information overload.”
A conventional documentary cannot quite achieve that kind of sublimity, but this one comes close, serving both the fact-gathering imperatives of biography and also the need, especially important with subjects like these, to convey a sense of the beauty and meaning of what they did.
EAMES: THE ARCHITECT AND THE PAINTER
Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
Produced and directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey; written by Mr. Cohn; narrated by James Franco; edited by Don Bernier; music by Michael Bacon; released by First Run Features. In Manhattan at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. This film is not rated.
Charles Eames was trained as an architect. Ray Eames, his second wife, was an artist, and together they ran a design studio in Venice, Calif., that was a hive of creativity. Charles arrived there in the 1940s from Michigan, and his migration from the industrial Midwest to Southern California was part of a larger cultural and aesthetic shift. The house that he and Ray built in Pacific Palisades, with its simple, boxy shapes; abundant light; and whimsical ornaments was a domestic temple for a new, less austere kind of Modernism, one that joined a streamlined, functional, practical style with bright colors and pleasing shapes.
Their motto was “the best for the least for the most” — a characteristically pithy statement of a utopian ideal of capitalist mass production. The idea that striking design and sound craftsmanship could be available to everyone has an obvious democratic charm, but it also contains a paradox. The Eameses, who had long-lasting contracts with Westinghouse, I.B.M. and other large corporations, were selling the notion that individualism could not only coexist with commercial standardization, but that idiosyncratic expression could also flourish within the collective rituals of consumption. The stuff you buy, if it’s the right stuff, is part of what makes you what you are.
Their own eccentricity turned out to be a great asset. Charles, tall and tousle-haired with a trademark bow tie and a professorial air, was both awkward and charismatic. Ray, with her bangs and old-fashioned dresses, is described by one colleague as “a delicious little dumpling.” Together they look, in archival footage, captivatingly odd, and they seem to have captured the loyalty of a great many talented young designers, who look back fondly, if sometimes incredulously, at the long years spent working at the studio.
This documentary’s portrait of the Eameses is hardly idealized. Like Walt Disney — and like Steve Jobs — Charles Eames did not share credit. His name alone went on the studio’s products. And though Ray was his equal partner and indispensable collaborator, the sexism of the age pushed her, at least publicly, into the margins.
The film includes an appalling, hilarious appearance the two of them made on “Home,” in which the chipper hostess takes great pains to keep Ray in her silent, subordinate place, making Charles the reluctant center of attention. Later their marriage was tested by his infidelity, and their partnership was weakened by a loss of common creative purpose. After Charles died in 1978, Ray tried to keep their work going until her death 10 years later.
All of which is to say that they were human, and the most gratifying thing about “Eames” is that it shows, in marvelous detail, how their work was an extension of themselves and how their distinct personalities melded into a unique and protean force. The film is also appropriately busy and abundant: full of objects, information, stories and people, organized with hectic elegance.
Furniture, housewares, films, exhibitions — at times it is hard to keep track of everything the Eameses were making. But the scale and variety of the enterprise also establish them as precursors of digital culture, which combines technology with handicraft, and layers information and images into what Charles Eames called (meaning it in a good way) “information overload.”
A conventional documentary cannot quite achieve that kind of sublimity, but this one comes close, serving both the fact-gathering imperatives of biography and also the need, especially important with subjects like these, to convey a sense of the beauty and meaning of what they did.
EAMES: THE ARCHITECT AND THE PAINTER
Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
Produced and directed by Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey; written by Mr. Cohn; narrated by James Franco; edited by Don Bernier; music by Michael Bacon; released by First Run Features. In Manhattan at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. This film is not rated.
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