7 Feb 2022 | Objects

Furniture designed by artists

DS.WRITER:

Sophia Throuvala

Throughout the history of art, pieces of furniture have been used in many ways: as decor, as part of performances, or even as statements, mainly by feminist artists who wanted to talk about household life and its conditions. There have also been actual furniture constructions one could say, functional and designed in such a way that they balance between art and design. There are many sorts of furniture pieces in museums, exhibitions and collections: others are historical evidence, others collectible objects and others artworks either created by artists, thus earning their place in such spaces, or crafted to create an intense relationship between art and daily life in order to invite audience participation. Following are some examples of such pieces by famous artists who weren’t, for the most part, designers. The main reason that these works can (also) be considered as furniture, other than that being clearly inferred by their shape, is their functionality. In this context famous artists such as Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901–1985), Franz West, Donald Judd, Salvador Dali, Richard Artschwager and others, created their own furniture, embracing in this way the language of design.

During the 30s, Salvador Dali built a close relationship with furniture maker and interior designer Jean-Michel Frank and together they created a series of transformations of daily objects to functional objects and to objects for personal use. The lips sofa (fig. 1) is a furniture piece created in 1936, prompted by the “sensuous lips” of actress Mae West. The surrealist painter designed all his furniture so that they deceptively look like something else or by distorting their perspective, like in the 1930 floor lamp Bracelli Lamp (fig. 2), or even by referencing his own iconic paintings, like the Leda Low Table (fig. 3) which was designed in 1930 but actualised in the 90s.

Fig. 2: Bracelli Lamp conceived in the 1930's, first production in the 1990's BD Barcelona Design

Fig. 3: Leda Low Table conceived in the 1930's, first production in the 1990's BD Barcelona Design

Jean Dubuffet was a French artist and creator of the term and group “ART BRUT”. ART BRUT was an amalgamation of sculpture and “raw” painting, meaning a method of placing materials, not necessarily painting materials, on top of each other without any aesthetic intervention. Inspired by the art of primitives, child painting, the creations of prisoners and of the “insane”, he created his well known and shocking artworks as well as some furniture. More specifically in 1972 he created a living room design which consisted of a coffee table and a chair titled “Guéridon et Chaise de Pratique Fonction II” (fig. 4), which means chair of practical function. The title begs the question of whether the artist wants to participate or is being ironic. An earlier version of this chair (1969) can be found today at the B&E Goulandris Museum, titled “Guéridon and Chaise de Pratique Fonction I” (fig 5.) and is actually placed vertically on the wall, rendering it non-functional.

Fig. 4: Guéridon and Chaise de Pratique Fonction II

Fig. 5: Chaise de pratique fonction, Jean Dubuffet, B&E Goulandris Foundation, Athens © Adagp, Paris, 2021

Austrian artist Franz West is never really interested in art that hangs on the walls. As he has stated “Ιt doesn't matter what the art looks like but how it's used”. His life itself and his choices, his artistic production and his participation in radical movements like Viennese Actionism, points to the view that art must mainly concern the public and the relationship between creator, object and spectator. Specifically his Passstücke (Adaptives), forms that he created in the 80s, were but furniture. He started creating his first chairs with Mathis Esterhazy using cheap materials like newspapers, then moved to metal and the number of people claiming that those were the most comfortable chairs they’ve ever used, wasn’t by any means small (“And I think his dining chairs are among the most comfortable that I’ve come across” says art dealer David Zwirner). So much in form as much as in use, West created furniture-situations to be used by the public, like for example the work titled Auditorium, installed in the Documenta IX of Kassel in 1992, in Pompidou in 1994 and again in Tate in 2019 (fig. 6).

Fig 6: Franz West Auditorium, 1992 Documenta Kassel

Fig. 7: Donald Judd, Armchair, designed 1984, fabricated 1998; SFMOMa, photo: Katherine Du Tiel

One of the most important artists of the 20th century, Donald Judd (American) combined in his work architecture, design and sculpture. Other than artist, theorist and critic, Judd was also a furniture collector. He had collected works by great architects and designers like Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gerrit Rietveld and Rudolph Schindler amongst others. Even though he is known as a “sculptor” he designed a series of furniture-artworks with the name “specific objects”. In this series Judd drew elements from the furniture in his collection, adding his personal minimalist idiom, in order to craft works that could be used by the spectator. These works were presented on the 6th floor of the “specific furniture” exhibition at SfMOMa in 2018. Works from his collection were exhibited as well as his own creations (like Armchair, 1984) (fig. 7), to make their correlation obvious.

The American sculptor and painter Richard Ernst Artschwager, who also took interest in minimalism, uniting design and sculpture, created sculpture-furniture pieces and furniture series. These sculptures had the shape and function of furniture, however they were a series of solid shapes which informed the spectator of their use by the painting on them. As he described his works they are “useful furniture with an overlay of representation”. The work (part of a performance) titled Table and Chair (1963-4) (fig. 8) exhibited at Tate, is a characteristic example.