Art Is A Chair, A Test Tube, A Loaf of Bread

"WELL, there was T. S. Eliot, Ben Shahn, and now me. I don't know what that will do to it," said Charles Eames, referring to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair that he will hold next year.

The question is not what he will do to it, it is what Charles Eames will do with it. In the same way that Eames has transformed the lounge chair and ottoman into a voluptuous and functional medley, he has transformed the lecture into a multi-image, multimedia environment: in 1940 Eames and architect Ecro Saarinen won first prize for designs entered in the Museum of Modern Art's Organic Furniture Competition; and at the University of Georgia and UCLA in 1953, Eames and his wife, Ray, for the first time used multi-media techniques in a public presentation.

Whether it's in making a film or in designing a chair, Eames' first concern is with the idea or the function rather than the style, "I use film to get across an idea, not to invent a style," he said. "Style's important in getting across a point; through interest in the subject, one invents style, not through interest in style alone."

A step inside the Charles Eames Office in Venice, California (L.A.'s bohemian district) not only reaffirms his fascination with ideas but also revcals the style with which he goes about his problem solving. The Office in itself is a transformation- from an old garage to a furniture factory, film studio, design workshop, and think tank. But outside, one could not tell this white-washed building from its former incarnation. "We haven't had a sign on the door for twenty-five years now," said Eames, Today it simply has the address, "901."

Entering the building is like penetrating a chrysalis to suddenly find a multi-colored butterfly inside. The Eames Office harbors more than one colorful butterfly. Fluttering above or resting on shelves, Japanese kites wait to be chosen for a part in the next film. A glass-sided storage case displays the cowries and conches that starred in a 1967 film proposal for a National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. Indian and oriental tops lie motionless on their sides, recuperating from their featured billing in 1969 (Eames' film entitled Tops ).

Tops exemplifies the type of film done by Charles and Ray Eames, the toy films. These films are "purely visual and musical," said Eames. In their previous toy films, they explored the world of toy trains, bread, or even soap flowing over a black top. When the making of bread was the topic for a film presentation at UCLA in 1953, they added smells of freshly baked bread to the images and sounds on the screen:

.... Art is a chair, a test tube, a loaf of bread ... art is a mathematician's formula. a philosopher's way of life. any man's dreams... "

Through their toy films, the Eameses have examined everyday objects by illustrating the objects' characteristics; tops are to be spun, not to sit on the shelf. So for seven minutes the audience delights in watching whirling tops of different colors and nationalities. A snow-flake top from India splits and becomes five tops spinning at once. There is no narration; a musical score anticipates the spinning function found even in a jack or thumbtack.

The other category of Eames' films is the idea films. "We're not concerned here with how much background information we can provide in sixteen minutes," he said, "Were trying to provide a common experience from which a number of people could work. In a life with so many demands, especially on students, the idea film is so good a teacher could come along and work with it."

Powers of Ten, one such idea film that Eames presented in 1968 to ameeting of America's top physicists, sketches a linear zoom to the farthest known point in the galaxies down to the nucleus of a carbon atom. What makes the film almost surreal at times is the starting point- the wrist of a man lying on Miami Beach- and the narrator, a serious female voice. Yet, whether physicist or child, one gets a feeling for the dimensions of time and space.

The '67 film proposal for a National Aquarium was also an idea film. This time the subject was so tangible, that even though building construction had not begun, those seeing the film believed in the existence of the aquarium. The aquarium will never equal the "fiction of reality" that Eames has created, even if it is built. Still, fragments of this aquarium reality exist in the Eames Office: Photos of sea anemones cover one wall in the Office's projection room. Tanks of plant life, fishes, and octopuses occupy a niche next to the model chairs that are being developed for the Herman Miller Furniture Company.

Eames continues his work in furniture design. Conceptualizing new chairs involves mocking-up components of plywood and clay or forming new metal supports. Other pieces of furniture are tested with new upholstering. Previous experimenting- with plastics, lamination processes, and molded plywood- developed the whole breed of Eames chairs.

For the Navy during World War II. Eames developed a traction splint- a natural outgrowth of his investigations in wood form and function. This led to what the Herman Miller Company called "America's most famous chair"- two doubly curved molded plywood components, one for the seat and the other for the back, which were connected with rubber shock mounts to the plywood and bent steel rod legs. The aristocrat of the Eames tamily is the black leather-upholstered lounge chair, but what became every man's chair was Fames' molded fiberglass stacking chair.

Eames' discoveries overlap the realms of science and art. Even he can only describe one in terms of the other.

"Science is essentially an aristic or philosophical enterprise- carried on for its own sake. In this- it is more akin to play than to work. But it is quite a sophisticated play in which the scientist views nature as a system of interlocking puzzles. He assumes that the puzzles have a solution, that they will be fair. He holds to a faith in the underlying order of the universe. His motivation is his fascination with the puzzle itself- his method a curious interplay between idea and experience. His pleasures are those of any artist."

from HOUSE OF SCIENCE, a film introduction to the Seattle World's Fair Science Exhibition, 1962

THE integration of the arts and sciences is also evidenced in Eames' exhibits. The Seattle exhibit of '62 was a multi-image, partially animated view of science and how it got that way. In 1965 Eames prepared a memorial exhibit of Nehru, his life and his India, including the problems of technology. He changes even a pack of cards into a design problem: his House of Cards Picture Deck is made up of beautifully patterned photos that have slits so that one can build a house of herbs and spices, spools of thread, Victorian English pill boxes or Chinese baby firecrackers. Charles and Ray Eames restore order to their world with their problem solving.

" It is in preparing the problem for solution in the necessary steps of simplification that we often gain the richest rewards. "

(THINK, IBM exhibit at New York World's Fair, 1965)

Visiting with Charles Eames evokes a kaleidoscope of images rather than words: he defies labeling. Eames is the designer and architect, the artist and film-maker, the scientist and philosopher. Perhaps the connection is his gift as problem-solver- whether it's in designing a computer exhibit for the new IBM building or in joining a metal support to the back of a chair.

Eames (along with his wife and 30-member Office), is a contemporary Bauhaus. To the architect. Eames' self-designed Santa Monica home is as important a landmark as any Gropius house. The Eames Lounge Chair holds its position in design as well as Mies van der Rohes' Barcelona Chair. He has integrated the plastic arts with crafts and industry as the Bauhaus did, and what pedestal there was for art to stand on, Eames has replaced with the "everyman's" chair. The Bauhaus was a school; Eames is an educator.