Sitting in Strange Times

May 19, 2020 Elizabeth Arzani

In the last several weeks, the frequency of sitting behind screens has inevitably increased as a result of lockdown and shelter in place restrictions around the world.

Last week I found myself watching a documentary of the Vitra Design Museum’s expansive chair collection called, “Chair Times.” It felt appropriate in this strange time to willingly go down the infinite rabbit holed history of chairs and their varied seats.

What fascinates me is that (chairs) have personalities. Each of them tells us something about the time it was created in, about the person who designed it, and of course about the society that utilized this particular chair. And also the fact that they’re basically all the same; that they are all an invitation to have a seat, that they’re all small sculptures make them comparable. This allows us to illustrate an era.
- Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra

The documentary begins with a focus on bentwood chairs designed by the innovative cabinet-maker, Michael Thonet (1796 - 1871).

Currently behind the closed doors of the MAK Museum in Vienna is the exhibition, Bentwood & Beyond, Thonet and Modern Furniture Design.

Last year when I visited the exhibition, I learned that bentwood furniture is not a Viennese invention, nonetheless, the bentwood chair is most well-known as the “Viennese Chair.”

The center aisle of the gallery displays each chair’s unique silhouette projected onto translucent screens; brilliantly allowing you to focus on the overall form before fussing over the details.

In a conversation between curator, Serge Mauduit and Vitra Design Museum Director, Mateo Kries, they discuss how the Industrial Revolution and the societal development of the 19th century contributed to the emergence of a middle class and therefore a middle class public life.

“What interests me is the public aspect. Suddenly, furniture is designed for public space.”
-Mateo Kries, Vitra Design Museum Director

Fast forward to 2020, when public space becomes eerie and vacant.

This collection of Parisian café chairs was captured back in February of last year, when sitting close to people felt annoying, not nostalgic.

Similar to Masion Gatti proudly producing their chairs by hand, Danish design also emphasizes old school techniques and craft as good quality versus a mass produced object meant to be sold at a lower cost.

The Danish Chair An International Affair is a permanent collection at the Design Museum Danmark. Exhibited beautifully in a tunnel display of stacked chairs, is a collection of 110 chair classics with an emphasis on Danish Modern design.

“The chair is the piece of furniture that is closest to human beings. It touches and reflects the body that sits on it with arms, legs, seat and back.”
-Exhibit Curator, Christian Holmsted Olesen

An innate element of Danish furniture is simplifying antiquity. Much of the Danish modernist approach was a combination of functionality and craft tradition as well as the result of collaborations between architects and cabinet makers.

Klismos chair, on the stele of Xanthippos, Athens, ca. 430-20 BCE. — Klismos chair, on the stele of Xanthippos, Athens, ca. 430-20 BCE.

Many Danish designers rediscovered the Klismos chair, a type of ancient Greek chair, with curved backrest and tapering, out-curved legs. This inspired reinventing different versions of frame chair designs - a type of chair with a top rail surrounding a person who is seated.

In architect, Witold Rybczynski’s book, “Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair: A Natural History,” Rybczynski explains that in ancient Greek art, the Klismos chair is represented as more democratic than a throne or symbol of status.

Rokoko Chamber, State Room at the Albertina Museum

Yet, in most cases throughout history, a chair portrays a status or identity and is often reserved for the elite. This is evident in the State Rooms of The Albertina Museum, a former palace that was once the residence of the Habsburg archdukes and archduchesses.

I’m typically more fascinated with a used chair. A favorite pastime of mine is scavenging for the rejects - the “one’s trash is another’s treasure”, side of the road or flea market gem.

Through this process of hunting and gathering, chairs became a reoccurring theme in my own artistic practice.

Largely inspired by artist, Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines,” I began investigating the relationship of painting to sculpture by deconstructing everyday objects.

Similar to how people say that pets resemble their owners, I felt the need to discover the relationship of a chair to a person. How do their frames compare?

Looking again to masters before me, I fashioned my own “Alice Neel Chair” by repurposing a used chair in painted stripes, inviting willing participants to sit for me.

Self Portrait, 1980, pg. 252, Alice Neel Painted Truths — *Self Portrait,* 1980, pg. 252, *Alice Neel Painted Truths*

During this process, I was also very preoccupied with various presentations of chairs and the concept behind the installation titled, “One and Three Chairs,” by artist Joseph Kosuth, which compares an object, an image and words as representations of a chair.

Josef Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965 (photographed at the Centre Pompidou in 2019) — Josef Kosuth, *One and Three Chairs,* 1965 (photographed at the Centre Pompidou in 2019)

This resulted in a repetitive series of paintings depicting seated portraits, and then hanging the painting of the person sitting in the chair behind them while they sat in the actual chair and had their picture taken.

As the series evolved, I lost interest in the figure and focused fully on the chair itself, examining it’s relationship to interior and exterior site- specific locations.

The chair became smaller and smaller, disappearing into wallpaper or miniaturized in the alternative world of dollhouses.

“ A house within a house, the dollhouse not only represents the house’s articulation of the tension between inner and outer spheres, of exteriority and interiority - it also represents the tension between two modes of interiority. Occupying a space within an enclosed space, the dollhouses’s aptest analogy is the locket or the secret recesses of the heart: center within center, within within within. The dollhouse is a materialized secret.”
-Susan Stewart, On Longing Narratives of the Miniature, The Gigantic, The Souvenir, The Collection

Which brings me back to where I started - chairs with personalities that reflect a time or the object’s maker.

Artist, Ellie Richards humorously captures the strange times we are in with her rocking chair that doubles as a game and a workout (you have to physically stand and rock the chair to move a steel ball through the maze’s tracks) all the while commenting on the psychology of feeling stuck in a labyrinth.

Rocking Chair by Ellie Richards (@ellieinthewoods)

So tell me - what kind of chair are you sitting in?

The Faces in the Walls

April 20, 2019 Elizabeth Arzani

For the past week I’ve been an international dog-sitter to a cute little guy named Ferdinand. On our daily walks through Vienna, I started to notice all the faces in the walls.

Ferdinand, the opposite of my dog. He likes to sleep in, bark loudly at other dogs and stop frequently on walks, but cuddles lovingly.

It might sound crazy, but do you ever have that feeling that you are being watched? In Vienna, you always are.

Dramatic faces built into the walls above entryways, windows and adorned to arches or rooftops are known as mascarons. Initially, they were designed to prevent evil spirits from entering the premises, hence some of the frightening expressions.

At times I felt like I was walking amidst a collection of life sized dollhouses. You don’t have to walk far to notice that Vienna’s architecture is a rich range of new and old dichotomies; from Baroque-era designed architecture to minimalist 20th century designs.

Architect, Adolf Loos’s smooth and clear surfaced building designs are a stark contrast to the elaborately ornamented and “well dressed” buildings surrounding them; earning the nickname “houses without eyebrows.”

According to Jackie Craven’s guide to architecture in Vienna, “wealthy aristocratic families like the Liechtensteins may have first brought the ornate Baroque style of architecture (1600-1830) to Vienna.”

Of course there is a wide variety of architectural influences that creates the aesthetic of walking amongst “pastel painted dollhouses.” There are the Neoclassical, Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), Romanesque and Gothic architectural influences; as well as the notable works by Austrian architect, Otto Wagner.

The presence of mascarons exist throughout many of these architectural styles with depictions of beautiful women, gods and goddesses to grotesque demons and animals, usually lions. From symbolism to pure decoration, these dramatic expressions to emotionless, mask like faces are around every corner.

When visiting the Belvedere Palace, examples of Baroque architecture can be found inside and out. The faces in the walls are seen in grandiose theatrics of tricky mirror walls, altered perspectives and illuminated surfaces with dramatic sense of light or chiaroscuro techniques.

Then of course there are the faces on the wall, added by graffiti artists. Before visiting the city, I knew of the famous artistic geniuses linked to the iconic Vienna Secession, like painters, Gustav Klimt and his protégé, Egon Schiele. And of course the musical classics like Beethoven and Mozart. What I didn’t expect to find was the street art.

Even the exhibition, “Vienna 1900, The Birth of Modernism,” at the Leopold Museum alludes to the history of Vienna’s street art or the “art gallery for the poor man.” I was surprised to find that Vienna’s street art dates back to the Vienna Secession posters. In fact art critic, Ludwig Hevesi coined the slogan, “Kunst auf der Straße” (Art in the Streets) with his article about walking through the streets of Vienna published in 1899. This saying can also be found transcribed on the facade of the Secession building.

“Posters had been established as an advertising tool since the 1880s, but they became an interesting form of an artistic point of view with Henri de Toulouse Lautrec’s color lithograph. Access to art was no longer reserved to an elite interested in culture, which made posters a potential means of an aesthetic education.”

- excerpt from Vienna 1900 Birth of Modernism exhibition

History lessons provided by adventures with Ferdinand in the city. Turns out dog walking can be quite educational if you want it to be.

Neighborhood Finds

April 11, 2019 Elizabeth Arzani

On November 6th, 2018, I moved from Seattle, Washington to Gonderange, Luxembourg. Even after six months that statement still feels strange to me. Maybe it’s the differences in living in a village in a country with a population less than the city of Seattle or maybe it just the fact that it takes time to feel like you live somewhere.

The life I had in Seattle feels like it was years ago.

It all happened quickly. We sold our house on a Saturday, packed everything else we didn’t sell on a Monday and left the country the very next day. I never thought I would live in either Seattle or Gonderange. I certainly never imagined myself in a village in Central Europe with a barn behind my house. Life is funny that way.

I’ve found that most of the villages here in Luxembourg are all centered around a church. Mine is orange.

Gonderange (Gonnereng in Luxembourgish) is a small village in the commune of Junglinster. When I tell people, where I live (this also includes some locals), I usually have to say Junglinster in order for people to recognize the area. Which makes sense, because the population of my village is less than 2k.

Ok so I made this house super yellow even though in reality it is not. I promise there are houses that are this yellow, I just liked this building more.

Strangely enough, living in the countryside of Luxembourg makes me think of my hometown in certain ways. I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in the south of Charlotte, North Carolina. Similarly, everything is clean, too clean, suspiciously clean.

Like other suburbs I have encountered, there are your standard big houses, fancy cars, and well tended bike paths. I have found all of those things here; the details are just different - the shape of the windows, the patterns of the rooftops, the sculptures in the yard. Similar, yet different.

What I love most about walking through my neighborhood, are the bold colors of people’s houses. Blinding reds to juicy oranges (especially midday, shining in the sun). Then there are the plethora of the pale faded pinks - the whole spectrum is there. All the colors I always thought you weren’t supposed to paint a house are there and I’m glad that they are.

There is so much history here. In the old buildings, the renovated barns with tracings of past lives. To give you some context, the commune of Junglinster was first recorded in 867, during the construction of Bourglinster Castle.

I’m fascinated by all those things that aren’t quite right or slightly askew, just as much as I am fascinated with circular cobblestone patterns that form a seamless design.

Truthfully, I like having access to the quiet beauty of the countryside and it’s endless rolling green fields. The city is a short distance away by bus or car. Not to mention Germany, Belgium and France are close by when Luxembourg begins to feel too small.

For now i’m pretty content taking in my new surroundings in places like the balcony overlooking the Alzette river at Liquid Café in the Grund neighborhood of Luxembourg City. A cold beverage and new friends like designer, Irina Moons (check out her work) are also a plus!

A neighborhood is a collection of dwellings

Since I have lived here, I have also become aware that even if the beach isn’t nearby, Junglinster has surfing and salt cave options for you. If you want to workout by practicing surfing skills in someone’s garage, Challenge Your Balance is an option. Or if you want to sit in a man-made salt cave for self care, curiosity or other healing processes, Salzgrotte promotes itself as a treatment center that “feels like a day at the ocean.” So who wants to go with me?