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The
chair as aesthetic object. Marcel Breuer's Wassily
Chair
is
a modernist classic -- strong horizontals and verticals make
strange lyricism out of steel tubing and leather, an abstract
composition made utilitarian. Born in Hungary, Breuer
studied art in Vienna, and later was both student and teacher from
1920 to 1928 at the Bauhaus (the famous art-school creative
think-tank) in Germany. While at the Bauhaus, Breuer often
rode his Adler bicycle around campus. Inspired by its
tubular steel handlebars and advances in German manufacturing, he
fashioned something sleek and inventive out of steel and fabric (now
largely replaced by leather), a completely new take on the old
familiar club chair. This use of steel was in many ways
revolutionary - and took the idea of furniture into the industrial
age, leading the way into mass-production.
Founded
by Walter Gropius in 1919 during the liberal Weimar Republic, the
Bauhaus existed for a mere fourteen years before it was shut down
by the Nazis, yet had a profound and lasting effect on
architecture, art, and design. Its aesthetic aim was to ally
art with technology, to design for one's time, a movement towards
clean lines, simple forms, a beautiful spareness. And a
dazzling array of artists and architects -- Breuer, Mies van der
Rohe, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -- helped
shape this aesthetic.
The
Wassily Chair is named for the painter Wassily Kandinsky who was
an admirer of the chair and had been presented with one by
Breuer. Breuer has said that this chair was "my most
extreme work…the least artistic, the most logical, the least 'cosy'
and the most mechanical." The Wassily is like some
beautiful skeletal version of the overstuffed club chair --
leather bands that demarcate space, the sitter never quite
actually touching metal when seated, the idea of reducing
something to its simplest elements given form. Eye candy for
the aesthete!
Teapot,
Marianne Brandt, image via MoMA
MoMA
is celebrating Breuer and his colleagues in
Bauhaus
1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity
beginning November 8. It's a grand opportunity for design
aficionados to view everything from Breuer's furniture to the
famous Marianne
Brandt teapot
that sold for $361,000 at Sotheby's! Also, mark your
calendars for the associated free hands-on design workshops being
offered at
Bauhaus
Lab. See:
Bauhaus
1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity
Learn:
Bauhaus
Lab
Buy:
Wassily
Chair
Buy:
The
cheap-chic budget friendly Wassily knockoff at Target
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