This dissertation investigates the early twentieth century work of Irish-born interior designer and architect, Eileen Gray. While the existing literature has tended to read Gray and her work primarily in relation to major male modernist movements and figures, this dissertation contends that considering her engagement with the alternative modernisms developed by other women artists and writers at the time will enrich our understanding of the wider social, cultural and historical implications of her work. In order to make sense of what scholars have long recognised as Gray's critically different architecture and design I analyse her work in relation to three of her female contemporaries: the artist Romaine Brooks, and writers Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes. Such an analysis reveals that Gray's critically different work was importantly related to the critically different aesthetics, genders and sexualities that Gray and many of her female contemporaries cultivated at the time. / The first chapter argues that debates about domestic architecture and design were also importantly debates about modern bodies and subjects and provides the framework for the analyses that follow. Chapter 2 compares Gray's early lacquer works, La Voie Lactee (ca. 1912), Le Magicien de la Nuit (1913) and Le Destin (1914) to Romaine Brooks' two paintings from 1910, White Azaleas and The Screen, focusing on their use of decadent aesthetics. Chapter 3 considers Gray's first intricately designed house, E.1027 (1928), in relation to the content and cultural impact of Radclyffe Hall's 1928 novel, The Well of Loneliness. Chapter 4 examines Gray's extremely private and less known house, Tempe a Pailla (1934), in relation to the obscure and non-communicative narrative strategies of Djuna Barnes' 1936 novel, Nightwood. Overall, the argument that binds my dissertation is that Gray's work both contributed and responded to changing conceptions of gendered and sexual subjects in the first half of the last century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.102825 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Rault, Jasmine. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Art History and Communication Studies.) |
| Rights | © Jasmine Rault, 2006 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002601770, proquestno: AAINR32233, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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