Charles – SpecNews

Party with the Eameses! Inside the modernist masters’ riotous home

As Charles Eames used to tell his staff: “Take your pleasure seriously.”
The Eameses playful mischief is still evident in their home studio, the smaller pavilion that stands across a small courtyard from the house.
New employees of the Eames Office would be set the daunting challenge of rearranging the keys to make a new tune.
As the British brutalist architect Peter Smithson, an Eames-admiring contemporary, put it: “They made it respectable to like pretty things”.
A replica features in the exhibition, providing an appropriately anarchic plinkety-plonk soundtrack to the riot of ideas.

The last British Art Show was the best so far.
AS
The dynamism, unexpectedness and sheer abundance of the art market makes these art fairs a window on the new – and the old.
Jonathan Jones
Groundbreaking attempt to place pop art in its global context or another rehash of familiar names and images?
This long-overdue survey should allow us to focus more on the art, less on the man.
The spiritual art of the past echoes in his work – martyrs, triptychs, meditation, all that sacred jazz.

That view of 20 Fenchurch Street that brought you to tears is the exact opposite of what he wanted.
Either 20 Fenchurch Street is there as long as it endures, or we do something about it.
After a day in Paris at Frank Gehry’s exhilarating fish-like, wave-like I found myself on the South Bank almost weeping at the view of 20 Fenchurch Street.
I still find it very hard to accept that Centre Point, a building that once personified hit-and-run property development, should now be a listed building.
Or even Sant’Elia, although buildings like 20 Fenchurch Street do seem to exploit modern engineering to create futurist dreams that would be a lot better left on paper.