Eileen Gray. Jennifer Goff

this strain, appearing to lack a sharp focus with blurred shadows. She at times treated these photographs like paintings, creating an atmosphere by way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer’s realm of imagination. Other still life photographs are clearly modernist in style and are sharply focused, recording minutiae in a picture. Then in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s two other movements had a profound effect on her photographs. The first was Surrealism. Gray owned a copy of Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution – a periodical issued in Paris from 1930 and 1933. Gray owned a copy of the issues no.3 and 4 from 1931.¹⁰² Issue no. 3 had a numbers of Illustrations, including photographs of Surrealist objects by Breton, Gala Éluard (1894-1982), Valentine Hugo (1887-1968), Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). Gray’s Tablescape, dating from the 1920s and consisting of an African mask hanging on the wall and a still life composed of inanimate objects, directly looks to Breton and Éluard’s still life studies in this issue. Her treatment of the composition and the choice of subject matter are directly inspired by their work. The other movement was the Bauhaus, which directly inspired her photographs of the 1930s, especially the work of László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Gray owned a copy of Malerei, Fotografie, Film (Painting, Photography, Film).¹⁰³ This landmark Bauhaus publication highlighted the debate between the media of painting, photography and film, especially in the recognition of the two latter being considered as art forms. In 1937, 35mm Kodachrome film first became available and Gray embarked – especially during the war years – on a series of images, creating fluid abstract compositions. In this series of images Gray emphasised photography as an extension of human sight, which compensated for the shortcomings of retinal perception, notably in the works Anneaux de rideaux, 1930s, and Torse en marbre du 21 rue Bonaparte, 1930s. Then by the 1950s Gray began to concentrate on natural and industrial landscapes, which were empty and devoid of human contact, with the series Église à Saint Tropez and Port Grimaud. By the late 1950s she had returned to outdoor still life compositions consisting of wood in the series Bois pétrifié.

      3.24 Still Life, 1950, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.25 Tablescape, 1920, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.26 Still Life, 1920s, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.27 Torse en marbre du 21 rue Bonaparte, 1930s, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.28 Port Grimaud, 1950s, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.29 Bois pétrifié, late 1950s, black and white photograph © Private Collection

      3.30 Photographic collage, circa 1920, photographic paper, paint © NMI

From the 1930s through to the 1960s Gray also produced a series of photographic collages. The earliest dates from 1935 and consists of a photograph of white scratched lines haphazardly arranged in accordance with three adhesive black, plastic curvilinear and straight cuts running through the centre.¹⁰⁴ It recalled the Paul Klee-like lines on the back of the 1913 red lacquer screen Le Destin, and the swirling line motifs on the walls of the salon of the Rue de Lota apartment. With this early photographic collage she was simply exploring abstraction through the use of photographic forms. The collage, unfinished, also appears in photographs on Gray’s desk in her home, Tempe à Pailla.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s she returned to photographic collage, producing two large collages, which are nearly identical to one another.¹⁰⁵ On each black and white photographic collage two separate forms are assembled in an abstract manner. The first is composed of an off-white ground with grey or beige triangular shapes and rectangles superimposed on it. Running horizontally across this are strips, a small thin triangle and a large triangle in speckled dark black and off white. The second consists of two different ground colours; a white/cream ground on the left and a speckled black and beige on the right. Superimposed on them is a half circle with five spokes (resembling a hand) joining together and extending outwards. The second form in speckled black and cream is surrounded by a large thick black border and has an acute rectangle in cream in the centre. Stylistically these collages are similar to other gouaches and collages which she produced during this period.¹⁰⁶ They are pure abstraction.

Gray had studied sculpture in both London and Paris and in her archive sketches for sculptural pieces and a number of sculptural heads remain. However, it is difficult to place Gray into the canon of twentieth- century sculpture because so few known examples of her work survive. At the end of 1903 or the beginning of 1904 Gray wrote to Auguste Rodin. From the letters that remain she visited the renowned sculptor at Meudon, greatly appreciative of the time they spent together, and subsequently she purchased a small bronze of La Danaïde.¹⁰⁷ Gray’s friend Kathleen Bruce went on to study with Rodin and became a successful sculptor in her own right. Rodin sparked the flame of modern sculpture, and students flocked to his studio to meet or study under his tutelage. His work was drenched in pools of light and shadow, and he openly undermined the classical movement by allowing his figures to intrude into the viewer’s real space.

      The emergence of modern sculpture between 1906 and 1913 took place almost entirely in Paris. From 1913 other movements and forces began to emerge against the hegemony of Paris. Gray’s work focuses on three movements which influenced her – Cubism, Futurism and the Russian avant-garde – and the work of a number of sculptors, whom she knew, inspired her developments.

      From 1906-1916 in the world of sculpture the human form was liberated and a new vocabulary began to be created. There was a block-like archetype, and every sculpture was a solid mass that was modelled, constructed or created. Space penetrated sculpture, and hollow space was treated with equal validity. New subject matter such as still lifes appeared and new media such as metal, glass, plaster, cardboard and wire were all being used. From the moment Gray had arrived in Paris she was exposed to the debates over French colonial policy in Africa that took place in 1905-6 and the resulting outcry of anticolonial opposition from socialists and anarchists at that time. Two representations of African art appeared in modernist culture of the time. The first came from French West Africa with stories appearing in the press of sacrifice, witchcraft, animism and fetishism which created a mystical, almost romanticised, view of native African culture. The second came from the French and Belgian Congos with the destruction of tribal life through white colonists. Since the end of the nineteenth century pre-historic, African and Oceanic art were being explored as new sources for sculpture. Gray’s sculpture developed directly from these sources and a key aspect of Gray’s sculpture was the discovery of tribal art. Artists began addressing anew the aesthetic qualities of the ethnographic collections in the museums of London, Paris, Dresden and Berlin. The rhythmic proportions of African wooden sculptures standing firmly on legs, set parallel and slightly bent at the knee, offered an alternative to classical contraposto.

Gray was also