Eyre de Lanux, a meteorite of an interior decorator, 1927-1935
In 1964, when Roy Newquist asked Lee Harper, author of a single novel5, (still considered one of the leading novels of 20th-century American literature), what would be the subject of her second novel, she simply answered: “I said all I have to say6” and… she never wrote anything else. Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Radiguet, August Macke and, more recently Bernard-Marie Koltès, JeanMichel Basquiat and Amy Winehouse; examples of artists with careers like shooting stars are not that unusual. Daniel Barr called Eyre de Lanux the “Gerald Murphy of interiors.” The comparison is apropos. An American expatriate in France in the immediate postwar years, the New York art dealer Gerald Murphy was an inspiration for Scott Fitzgerald’s character Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night. Eyre de Lanux, another American expatriate during the same period, inspired the poet Louis Aragon and the novelist Tennessee Williams. Between 1922 and 1924, Gerald Murphy painted fourteen canvases before outgrowing his passion7. Eyre de Lanux dedicated herself to decorating for just a brief time (if not to say occasionally, taking into account the multitude of other activities she was involved in during her long life) and did not produce much more than Murphy. Only six remaining paintings of Gerald Murphy’s oeuvre are known and located, but they were so radically new that they foreshadowed Pop Art forty years ahead of its time. Only a few pieces of furniture by Eyre de Lanux are known, and there are only a handful of photographs documenting her interiors, but they are so imaginative, so original and daring that they obviously have a rightful place of honor in the history of 20th-century interiors.
Man Ray, photograph of Sara and Gerald Murphy at the automobile ball or “bal de l’automobile,” at the home of the comte de Beaumont, circa 1924.
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Eyre de Lanux, a meteorite of an interior decorator, 1927-1935
In 1964, when Roy Newquist asked Lee Harper, author of a single novel5, (still considered one of the leading novels of 20th-century American literature), what would be the subject of her second novel, she simply answered: “I said all I have to say6” and… she never wrote anything else. Arthur Rimbaud, Raymond Radiguet, August Macke and, more recently Bernard-Marie Koltès, JeanMichel Basquiat and Amy Winehouse; examples of artists with careers like shooting stars are not that unusual. Daniel Barr called Eyre de Lanux the “Gerald Murphy of interiors.” The comparison is apropos. An American expatriate in France in the immediate postwar years, the New York art dealer Gerald Murphy was an inspiration for Scott Fitzgerald’s character Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night. Eyre de Lanux, another American expatriate during the same period, inspired the poet Louis Aragon and the novelist Tennessee Williams. Between 1922 and 1924, Gerald Murphy painted fourteen canvases before outgrowing his passion7. Eyre de Lanux dedicated herself to decorating for just a brief time (if not to say occasionally, taking into account the multitude of other activities she was involved in during her long life) and did not produce much more than Murphy. Only six remaining paintings of Gerald Murphy’s oeuvre are known and located, but they were so radically new that they foreshadowed Pop Art forty years ahead of its time. Only a few pieces of furniture by Eyre de Lanux are known, and there are only a handful of photographs documenting her interiors, but they are so imaginative, so original and daring that they obviously have a rightful place of honor in the history of 20th-century interiors.
Man Ray, photograph of Sara and Gerald Murphy at the automobile ball or “bal de l’automobile,” at the home of the comte de Beaumont, circa 1924.
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Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, sculptures, direct carving, 1915-1920.
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Elizabeth met Constantin Brancusi toward the end of 1920, thanks to her friendship with Ezra Pound, whom she had met at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Pound was among the first to comment on and understand the Romanian sculptor’s approach. In parallel with his sculpture, Brancusi was experimenting with fresco, a technique Elizabeth asked him to teach her. However, spending time with a genius like Brancusi was not limited to something as prosaic as mere technique. He challenged Elizabeth by introducing her to the mysteries of the mineral and vegetal world. She learned, or rather, being intuitive, she sensed that one had to take what great artists cannot teach but which they allow others to steal if they can use it to their advantage. She came to understand that the stonecutter can only split a stone by speaking to it, that things have a soul; that the material is what determines the form and not the opposite, and what differentiates the ironmonger from the goldsmith, whose burin can bring out the glory in any material. She had great aptitude for understanding the deeper nature of things and their secret geographies. She learned that each piece of wood, each stone has its own color, grain, texture and hardness, its own mystique and poetry. Sensitive and intelligent, Elizabeth developed her skills through observation. She assimilated Brancusi’s asceticism, which he had begun to develop in his work before 1914 and had been constantly refining ever since: “Simplicity, he said, “is not the aim in art, but one arrives at it in spite of oneself, by approaching ever more closely the sense of the real in things70.” Seeking to distinguish art from a “nervous breakdown71” and beauty from “grimaces and inadvertent gestures,” he reached the point where he discovered so to speak a mystique of volume and the appearance a form must have from a precisely stretched and flawless skin. “Polishing is a necessity required by the relatively absolute forms of certain materials. But it is not mandatory, even if it is very harmful to those who are making steak [sic]72.” In the light of this experience, Eyre de Lanux would later repeat this experimentation with form and the appearance of surfaces, materials and colors in her future furniture designs. But in the meantime, for Elizabeth, Paris was a feast, and this was just the beginning. She worked with great passion: “I hadn’t painted during the war, and for the two years my husband was involved in the peace conference, I studied with Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson in the Latin Quarter. Contrary to the dreadful way French artists behaved in relation to work, I dove into it with an uncharacteristic ardor, seeking to get the most out of all the opportunities that were available to me73.” Work was serious for her. It was in her genes. Elizabeth set out to build on the foundations she had previously acquired at the Art Students League of New York. Paris and everything that was to be learned there made it possible to turn her desires into certainties. She was now sure. She would be an artist. As she was developing her skills, she sensed that behind Elizabeth, there was Eyre, just waiting for her moment to emerge.
Constantin Brancusi, preparatory study for the sculpture of the baronne Renée Frachon, 1908-1909.
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Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, sculptures, direct carving, 1915-1920.
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Elizabeth met Constantin Brancusi toward the end of 1920, thanks to her friendship with Ezra Pound, whom she had met at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore. Pound was among the first to comment on and understand the Romanian sculptor’s approach. In parallel with his sculpture, Brancusi was experimenting with fresco, a technique Elizabeth asked him to teach her. However, spending time with a genius like Brancusi was not limited to something as prosaic as mere technique. He challenged Elizabeth by introducing her to the mysteries of the mineral and vegetal world. She learned, or rather, being intuitive, she sensed that one had to take what great artists cannot teach but which they allow others to steal if they can use it to their advantage. She came to understand that the stonecutter can only split a stone by speaking to it, that things have a soul; that the material is what determines the form and not the opposite, and what differentiates the ironmonger from the goldsmith, whose burin can bring out the glory in any material. She had great aptitude for understanding the deeper nature of things and their secret geographies. She learned that each piece of wood, each stone has its own color, grain, texture and hardness, its own mystique and poetry. Sensitive and intelligent, Elizabeth developed her skills through observation. She assimilated Brancusi’s asceticism, which he had begun to develop in his work before 1914 and had been constantly refining ever since: “Simplicity, he said, “is not the aim in art, but one arrives at it in spite of oneself, by approaching ever more closely the sense of the real in things70.” Seeking to distinguish art from a “nervous breakdown71” and beauty from “grimaces and inadvertent gestures,” he reached the point where he discovered so to speak a mystique of volume and the appearance a form must have from a precisely stretched and flawless skin. “Polishing is a necessity required by the relatively absolute forms of certain materials. But it is not mandatory, even if it is very harmful to those who are making steak [sic]72.” In the light of this experience, Eyre de Lanux would later repeat this experimentation with form and the appearance of surfaces, materials and colors in her future furniture designs. But in the meantime, for Elizabeth, Paris was a feast, and this was just the beginning. She worked with great passion: “I hadn’t painted during the war, and for the two years my husband was involved in the peace conference, I studied with Maurice Denis at the Académie Ranson in the Latin Quarter. Contrary to the dreadful way French artists behaved in relation to work, I dove into it with an uncharacteristic ardor, seeking to get the most out of all the opportunities that were available to me73.” Work was serious for her. It was in her genes. Elizabeth set out to build on the foundations she had previously acquired at the Art Students League of New York. Paris and everything that was to be learned there made it possible to turn her desires into certainties. She was now sure. She would be an artist. As she was developing her skills, she sensed that behind Elizabeth, there was Eyre, just waiting for her moment to emerge.
Constantin Brancusi, preparatory study for the sculpture of the baronne Renée Frachon, 1908-1909.
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Elizabeth Eyre becomes Eyre de Lanux
“The whole world pulls at you from the center of your belly.” Mireille Havet, Journal, 1919
Man Ray, portrait of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, circa 1925.
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Perhaps no other lines distill the zeitgeist of the times better than those of Mireille Havet, who was busy burning the candle of her life at both ends. It was a time of dances, cocaine, opium and shots of port wine, the age when Antoine styled the boys’ hair “à l’embusqué,” i.e., slicked up and back from the forehead and bobbed for the girls, “à la garçonne,” a sort of very short pageboy cut. Paris was rolling along at high speed on the shining rails of the 20th century74. In 1918, in Le Coq et l’Arlequin (“the Rooster and the harlequin”), Cocteau wrote: “Impressionism had just held its last fireworks display and the end of a long feast. It’s up to us to fill the firecrackers for a new feast […] We gently close the eyes of the deceased; now we must also gently open the eyes of the living.” Six years had already gone by since November 15, 1913, when the first issue of the Soirées de Paris, under the direction of Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cérusse75, featured a Cubist composition by Picasso on the inside front cover. Apollinaire had invented the term two years before in 1911, responding to the sobriquet of “cubisteurs,” a nickname with which Braque had saddled the painters participating in the Section d’Or. Picasso and Braque criticized them for harvesting fields they had not sown. The “cubisteurs” needed an advocate, which fit perfectly with Apollinaire’s line of work. Twelve years had passed – an eternity – and artistic and literary Paris had long since assimilated Cubism, which in any case was already on the decline. For more than twelve years, Matisse, Picasso and Braque had been furiously daubing their paint brushes on their palettes, constantly pushing the canons of traditional painting beyond their limits. Matisse fired the first shot in 1906 when he exhibited his 175 x 241 centimeter canvas the Bonheur de vivre at the Salon des Indépendants. Picasso immediately figured out that if he wanted to remain leader of the pack he would have to up the ante in big way. He set to work seeking an answer to this challenge from that autumn. After spending several months perfecting his response, by the end of spring 1907, he had completed Le Bordel d’Avignon. And it was indeed much bigger (244 x 234 centimeters), went much further and was even more modern. Unfortunately, except for Gertrude Stein and Louis Aragon, no one understood it76, his friends least of all. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon would remain rolled up gathering dust and mold in a corner of his studio for ten years, being exhibited only briefly at the Salon d’Antin, before the art world realized that in it was a major turning point in the history of art77. In 1907, Braque retaliated with Grand Nu78, which laid the groundwork for Cubism. But all in all, what came out of all this was a bit like what placed Let it Be in competition with Let it Bleed. To prefer one of them in no way diminished the qualities of the other. In the literary sphere, the NRF was 11 years old. In 1914, during which time André Gide had sold no more than 122 copies of Les Caves du Vatican, it was already part of the prehistory of his career. Dada was in full swing. Shocking the bourgeoisie had become an art whose paroxysms were on the verge of peaking. On the tract for the Dada Festival of May 1920 (Salle Gaveau), Francis Picabia wrote: “Wisdom is no more than a big cloud on the horizon.” Four years had passed since Adrienne Monnier, the plump little Savoyard, who was both robust and soft, with a cigarette perpetually hanging from her lips, always attired in a costume half nun’s habit and half shepherdess outfit, opened a place that to some resembled a farm and to others a convent. It was here she would reinvent the trade of bookselling. She lent the books first because, to her mind,
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Elizabeth Eyre becomes Eyre de Lanux
“The whole world pulls at you from the center of your belly.” Mireille Havet, Journal, 1919
Man Ray, portrait of Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, circa 1925.
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Perhaps no other lines distill the zeitgeist of the times better than those of Mireille Havet, who was busy burning the candle of her life at both ends. It was a time of dances, cocaine, opium and shots of port wine, the age when Antoine styled the boys’ hair “à l’embusqué,” i.e., slicked up and back from the forehead and bobbed for the girls, “à la garçonne,” a sort of very short pageboy cut. Paris was rolling along at high speed on the shining rails of the 20th century74. In 1918, in Le Coq et l’Arlequin (“the Rooster and the harlequin”), Cocteau wrote: “Impressionism had just held its last fireworks display and the end of a long feast. It’s up to us to fill the firecrackers for a new feast […] We gently close the eyes of the deceased; now we must also gently open the eyes of the living.” Six years had already gone by since November 15, 1913, when the first issue of the Soirées de Paris, under the direction of Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cérusse75, featured a Cubist composition by Picasso on the inside front cover. Apollinaire had invented the term two years before in 1911, responding to the sobriquet of “cubisteurs,” a nickname with which Braque had saddled the painters participating in the Section d’Or. Picasso and Braque criticized them for harvesting fields they had not sown. The “cubisteurs” needed an advocate, which fit perfectly with Apollinaire’s line of work. Twelve years had passed – an eternity – and artistic and literary Paris had long since assimilated Cubism, which in any case was already on the decline. For more than twelve years, Matisse, Picasso and Braque had been furiously daubing their paint brushes on their palettes, constantly pushing the canons of traditional painting beyond their limits. Matisse fired the first shot in 1906 when he exhibited his 175 x 241 centimeter canvas the Bonheur de vivre at the Salon des Indépendants. Picasso immediately figured out that if he wanted to remain leader of the pack he would have to up the ante in big way. He set to work seeking an answer to this challenge from that autumn. After spending several months perfecting his response, by the end of spring 1907, he had completed Le Bordel d’Avignon. And it was indeed much bigger (244 x 234 centimeters), went much further and was even more modern. Unfortunately, except for Gertrude Stein and Louis Aragon, no one understood it76, his friends least of all. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon would remain rolled up gathering dust and mold in a corner of his studio for ten years, being exhibited only briefly at the Salon d’Antin, before the art world realized that in it was a major turning point in the history of art77. In 1907, Braque retaliated with Grand Nu78, which laid the groundwork for Cubism. But all in all, what came out of all this was a bit like what placed Let it Be in competition with Let it Bleed. To prefer one of them in no way diminished the qualities of the other. In the literary sphere, the NRF was 11 years old. In 1914, during which time André Gide had sold no more than 122 copies of Les Caves du Vatican, it was already part of the prehistory of his career. Dada was in full swing. Shocking the bourgeoisie had become an art whose paroxysms were on the verge of peaking. On the tract for the Dada Festival of May 1920 (Salle Gaveau), Francis Picabia wrote: “Wisdom is no more than a big cloud on the horizon.” Four years had passed since Adrienne Monnier, the plump little Savoyard, who was both robust and soft, with a cigarette perpetually hanging from her lips, always attired in a costume half nun’s habit and half shepherdess outfit, opened a place that to some resembled a farm and to others a convent. It was here she would reinvent the trade of bookselling. She lent the books first because, to her mind,
41
Jacques Doucet, 1925-1927. The studio of the couturier Jacques Doucet fitted out by the architect Paul Ruaud and decorator Pierre Legrain, 33 rue Saint-James in Neuilly-sur-Seine, circa 1925. Canvas by Matisse above the chest by Legrain. Photograph published in L’Illustration, May 1930.
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of materials, these are the main aesthetic concerns of these experimenters. Thus, according to them, the furniture of today will offer a better fit with all these scientific applications we now live with and which have become inseparable from our desire to ensure comfort and good hygiene. And now we find ourselves far removed from the traditional concept of furniture, which, in addition to its humble utility and the idea of delicately pleasing the eye, was its role as a faithful servant to often richly brocaded raiment, and a placid testimonial to a peaceful and pious existence transmitted from generation to generation134!” During the Exposition of 1925, with the notable exception of Le Corbusier’s pavilion of L’Esprit Nouveau, it still generally seemed to be just a question of modernizing the dwelling by creating modern furnishings (in the meaning of “up-to-date”). These are still merely modernization through simplification. Whether these innovations drew from the visual vocabulary of the classical heritage, or were interpreted through the
filters of individual sensibilities, no one − except Le Corbusier − was proposing a genuine reformulation of the dwelling taking modern living as its yardstick. He was the only one daring to start with a tabula rasa capable of integrating the technical innovations that were revolutionizing modern everyday life, with each passing year bringing a slew of new ones. These innovations (which were opening the path to the modern dwelling as we conceive of it today) were not appealing to public tastes. They were badly perceived, even objects of contempt. This attitude was almost exclusively a French one. As proof, the bedroom-boudoir for Monte Carlo by Eileen Gray (1923), which concentrated all the thinking she had done for the apartment of Madame Lévy in the rue de Lota, was characterized by the French critics as the “cabinet of the daughter of Dr. Caligari135,” whereas the Dutch magazine Wendingen dedicated an article filled with praise of her creations; which in turn attracted the attention of the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud.
Eileen Gray, collage T3-10, drawing room of the apartment of Madame Mathieu Lévy, rue de Lota, circa 1931.
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Jacques Doucet, 1925-1927. The studio of the couturier Jacques Doucet fitted out by the architect Paul Ruaud and decorator Pierre Legrain, 33 rue Saint-James in Neuilly-sur-Seine, circa 1925. Canvas by Matisse above the chest by Legrain. Photograph published in L’Illustration, May 1930.
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of materials, these are the main aesthetic concerns of these experimenters. Thus, according to them, the furniture of today will offer a better fit with all these scientific applications we now live with and which have become inseparable from our desire to ensure comfort and good hygiene. And now we find ourselves far removed from the traditional concept of furniture, which, in addition to its humble utility and the idea of delicately pleasing the eye, was its role as a faithful servant to often richly brocaded raiment, and a placid testimonial to a peaceful and pious existence transmitted from generation to generation134!” During the Exposition of 1925, with the notable exception of Le Corbusier’s pavilion of L’Esprit Nouveau, it still generally seemed to be just a question of modernizing the dwelling by creating modern furnishings (in the meaning of “up-to-date”). These are still merely modernization through simplification. Whether these innovations drew from the visual vocabulary of the classical heritage, or were interpreted through the
filters of individual sensibilities, no one − except Le Corbusier − was proposing a genuine reformulation of the dwelling taking modern living as its yardstick. He was the only one daring to start with a tabula rasa capable of integrating the technical innovations that were revolutionizing modern everyday life, with each passing year bringing a slew of new ones. These innovations (which were opening the path to the modern dwelling as we conceive of it today) were not appealing to public tastes. They were badly perceived, even objects of contempt. This attitude was almost exclusively a French one. As proof, the bedroom-boudoir for Monte Carlo by Eileen Gray (1923), which concentrated all the thinking she had done for the apartment of Madame Lévy in the rue de Lota, was characterized by the French critics as the “cabinet of the daughter of Dr. Caligari135,” whereas the Dutch magazine Wendingen dedicated an article filled with praise of her creations; which in turn attracted the attention of the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud.
Eileen Gray, collage T3-10, drawing room of the apartment of Madame Mathieu Lévy, rue de Lota, circa 1931.
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