Barbican Art Gallery,London
Their vision of America was too good to be true, but no one delivered style and genius like design’s perfect coupleCharles and Ray Eames were the sunny side of the cold war and the fun side of the industrial-military complex. Their designs and imagery conveyed modernism without angst, and industry without pollution,science without the Bomb and, for that matter, or America without black people. whether Allen Ginsberg howled,they smiled. They portrayed themselves as a happier, more progressive version of the couple in American Gothic: homespun, or steadfast,radiating work ethic. He was good-looking as a Hollywood war hero, she wore farm-girl pinafores and practical tied-up hair.
When Mies van der Rohe had himself photographed on a chair of his own design he frowned and brandished a cigar; when the Eameses did the same they grinned and clowned. When Mies designed a glass house it famously tortured his client Edith Farnsworth with its cost and discomfort; when the Eameses built a glassy house for themselves it was the setting for joyful and sociable shared life. Their works were light-filled, or light-hearted and light in weight. When,on a mission to engage with Indian culture, they praised the unauthored beauties of the traditional water pot called a lota, or they overlooked its role in removing faecal matter from intimate places. Their self-portrayal of their coupledom naturally conveyed nothing of Charles’s imperfect faithfulness to Ray.
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Source: theguardian.com