Review: Design~Recline

A new exhibition opening at the Busch-Reisinger Museum today does the unthinkable in the artistic world: it invites visitors to touch the artwork.

More specifically, visitors are asked to sit in it. “Design~Recline: Modern Architecture and the Mid-Century Chaise Longue,” looks at a particular brand of chair created by a particular group of people. The chair: the chaise longue. The people: modern architects in the 1920s and 1930s.

The chaise longue, a relative of the daybed, is an extended chair intended to encourage recline and repose. The exhibit features nine chairs from the post-World War I period, seven of which are originals from the 20s and 30s. Two of the exhibition’s chairs are contemporary reproductions, made to the architects’ specifications, and perfect for exhibit-goers ready to take a break and a seat.

The show offers some surprises, as it quickly expands out of its one-dimensional chair-exhibit premise into the space inhabited. Architecture and architects pop out from behind the chairs themselves, while each chair offers its own charm and appeal.

Robin Schuldenfrei, a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Design and the exhibit’s organizer, placed each chair in front of a large-scale photograph of one of the architects’ buildings. The chairs merge into the background and become part of the scene, providing the illusion of a natural habitat.

The result is a smooth exhibit that veers away from resembling a living room to focus on the chairs as artistic forms in themselves and in contrast to the architects’ buildings. Though at first it is hard to understand the connection between such different structures, as the brightly colored brochure explains, the architects’ furniture work is often exemplary of their larger undertakings.

Schuldenfrei explains that the modern architects displayed in the exhibit were concerned with new ideas for a new way of living. In various ways, the chairs in the exhibit display attempts to deal with ideas of health, indoor and outdoor living, the use of new materials and technologies and functionalism and rationalism. Le Corbusier, one of the featured artists, famously called a house a “machine for living.” The chair is something of a machine for rest, Schuldenfrei says. Each one is meticulously created, with intentionality behind every material, angle, and seat cushion.

Each chair in the exhibit was intended to be used, and some of the architects even intended to mass produce them. For the most part, however, the chairs ended up in the homes of wealthy patrons.

The tension between art and practical use presented by the chairs offers one of the interesting contradictions of the exhibit. Each architect worked with the explicit goal of creating a useful thing—chairs were meant to be easily portable to move through the variety of spaces being created in their buildings. They were never created as sculpture or art of-and-for-itself. But the chairs, which never reached very large audiences, find themselves in a gallery after all.

The exhibit includes a chair by architect Jean Prouvé, who designed a sanitarium for recovering World War I veterans. Each room in the building was equipped with a bed, table and chair, and each chair was a chaise longue. In the context of Prouvé’s art, the chaise longue is a tool of recuperation, intended for relaxation out on the porch and in the open air.

Peter Nisbet, head curator of the Busch-Reisinger, spoke of the excitement of putting the show together. “It’s been wonderful to watch this show evolve,” he said. “So many surprises have come out of it.”

Nisbet explained the difficulty many museums often face when trying to do architecture shows. He said that the emphasis in the exhibit need not necessarily be on the chairs themselves. Rather, they create windows into the architects’ larger plans and styles.

Husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames exemplify the postwar embrace of modernism with their whimsical take on the project. Their materials are modern, but the chair’s metal legs are thin and nearly hidden.

Schuldenfrei compares the resulting floating form to Salvador Dali’s surrealism. The Eames backdrop is not a photograph but a plan for a room. The walls, tables, lamps and chairs are all carefully planned elements, demonstrating that architecture is inside and outside, big and small.

Another contributor is Marcel Breuer, a Jewish-Hungarian whose art helped him escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. Walter Gropius, head of design for functional design firm Isokon, offered him a position in England working on new plywood furniture designs. The chairs that resulted, two of which are present in the exhibition, are the ones that most lend themselves to being mass produced.

Each chair invites the viewer to think about it in a different way, and the exhibit is set up to facilitate a variety of endeavors. It is as easy to appreciate the utility while seated in the Le Corbousier reproduction, as it is to enjoy the art while closely examining the faded red cotton webbing of Scandavian artist Alvar Aalto. The result is a museum experience all its own.

Design~Recline will be open through July 11, 2004.