Gray's personal story provides a fascinating and instructive context to her oeuvre. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Zosia Dzierzawska bring some, but only some, of that story to life in Eileen Gray: A House Under The Sun.
Malterre-Barthes has Gray sum up her ethos in an interchange with her lover Jean Badovici, for whom she designed the E-1027 house. "The poverty of modern architecture stems from a lack of sensuality," Gray tells him. "A house is not a machine to live in! It's an extension of the inhabitant — their release, their emanation." As Gray makes her points, Dzierzawska draws her and Badovici sliding around one another, playing with bodily space and gazing steamily into each other's eyes. It's a lovely elaboration of Gray's words.
Malterre-Barthes continues the theme of sensuality with her brief depictions of the more glamorous parts of Gray's life. Gray was involved in the louche social scene of 1920s Paris, dressing in masculine garb, habituating lesbian salons and attending wild parties.
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