The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity Launches Steinberg Meets the Eameses, an exploration into the designers’ relationship with
artist Saul Steinberg
The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity has launched their eighth exhibit, titled Steinberg Meets the Eameses. The exhibit is an exploration into the relationship between design icons Ray and Charles Eames and Romanian-American artist Saul Steinberg and showcases the collaborative works that resulted from an extraordinary encounter between the parties in the summer of 1950. The exhibit is now available to view, and coincides with the launch of the newly recreated Eames Fiberglass Armchair with Steinberg Cat by Vitra and Herman Miller. The Eames Institute retains two original Steinberg painted chairs—including the chair with cat—in the Eames Collection.
This exhibit begins with the story of a botched Hollywood assignment that led Steinberg to the West Coast and how he then came in contact with the Eameses. It details the now iconic works that resulted from a collaborative day spent at the Eames Office at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California—including the chair with cat and another chair painted with a nude figure (both of which remain in the Institute’s holdings). It also includes a number of works that resulted from their connection, including a officious but entirely illegible diploma Steinberg bestowed on Charles Eames (because the designer never finished school), and photographs taken by Eames of Steinberg drawings being projected onto Steinberg’s wife, Hedda Sterne, and Ray Eames. “The interconnection of Steinberg’s ideas and how this overlapped into the designs of my grandparents is incredible,” shares Llisa Demetrios, the Eames’s youngest granddaughter and the Institute’s Chief Curator. “I think this collaboration is exemplative of how they liked to create— always open to another creative iteration, going beyond what’s expected.”
Francesca Pellicciari, co-curator of the career-spanning 2021 exhibit “Saul Steinberg: Milan, New York” at the Triennale di Milano, contributes an informative essay that delves into the manifold connections between the Eameses and Steinberg and the respective places they hold in each others’ worlds. “Steinberg was ever-observant of America’s changing cultural landscape,” writes Pellicciari, “and seemed to delight in the widening gulf between popular tastes and the vanguard of modernist art and design.”
The Eames Institute and Saul Steinberg exhibit has launched, while the accompanying book will be available to purchase through William Stout Architectural Books.
Please contact eames@alphakilo.com for more information.