Page 36 - Studio International - February 1973

nothing but straight, machined materials. So I the human figure as well as a useful object. For
had the plank sawn into strips and laths; the Rietveld, the chair was evidently 'subject' rather
centre part I sawed in two halves, so I had a than object, as the figure was 'subject' for Rodin.
seat and a back and then, with the laths of Rietveld's chairs, together with Duchamp's
various lengths, I constructed the chair. When ready-mades and Tatlin's useful objects and
making that thing, it never occurred to me that glider demonstrate how the object had itself
it would prove to be all that meaningful for become subject: that it was in the end the
myself and possibly for others too. . . .' (Gerrit quality of the artist's eye, hand and mind, that
Rietveld, in a filmed interview.)4 Rietveld was would distinguish his object from other things
brought up in his father's furniture workshop as and from reality in general. However because of
a designer and maker of objects. As an architect the attitudes of these artists, the proclaimed
and an early member of De Stijl he was in a anti-art stance of Duchamp and Tatlin, the
position to put into practice the dreams of self-effacement of Rietveld, and the conventions
remaking the world that animated the post-war of appreciation of sculpture, most of the
avant garde. His Shröder House in Utrecht attention and credit for the realization of the
(1924) is a key piece in the evolution of the object in sculpture has gone to Giacometti, who
modern movement in architecture, and the first had less of a sense of sculpture than any of these
building in which De Stijl's theory was realized, three, but a far greater sense of the moment, of
as the Red-Blue Chair (1918) had been the how much and what taste in sculpture could
embodiment of De Stijl in three dimensions. take in the late 1920s and 1930s. Giacometti's
However the chair exists in an earlier, unpainted sensibility was always, as his post-war figurative
version, in which its material and construction style demonstrated, that of a painter. Most of his
are more positively affirmed : and what binds pre-1930 sculptures are either frontal and planar,
Rietveld to Duchamp and Tatlin in the or laid out on the horizontal as a tableau. The
development of the object in this period is the object of which he made a slogan — 'objects
great series of chairs he made largely during the without pedestals and without value, be thrown
1920s which are virtually abstract structures away' — became in his hands essentially an
articulating the simplest and most expressive academic concept: the sculpture object of
ordering of materials within the general concept Brancusi, the objects of cubist still-life: the
of 'chair'. They seem not intended primarily for objects of Duchamp, re-incorporated into
use or for production; they exist as autonomous sculpture in traditional materials, plaster,
chair-objects, conceived and elaborated for their bronze and wood. But the ingenuity of his
own sake. Wood in rectangular and round borrowing and juxtaposition, the clarity of
sections, bent and moulded plywood and presentation, cannot conceal the fundamental
fibreboard, steel tube, sheet aluminium and lack of feeling. It is more an indication of
plastic are employed separately or in various sculpture's poverty than of Giacometti's talent
combinations. There is no repetition. Each chair that his work has acquired such a reputation.
is a new adventure. The sensitivity to the Even now, when the post-war figures are
aesthetic properties of 'ordinary' materials, the coming to be recognized for what they are, the
invention in joining rigid materials and bending tiresome and inflated repetition of a single idea
and forming flexible materials to give structural (the articulation of form by perception, which
strength, the sense of detail and proportion, give had already been used to far greater effect by
these pieces a character and an authority which Matisse), the early sculptures have acquired a
attach them to the history of modern sculpture. niche in the history of modernism that has
Rietveld's own ingenuous description — 'a thing seemed impregnable. But the more one looks at
of beauty, i.e. a spatial object' — should alone these early pieces, the more suspect is their
leave no doubt that here was an artist, rather quality. Only one sculpture, the Woman with her
than architect, designer or craftsman at work. Throat Cut, communicates a real and
Indeed it is evident from Rietveld's own authoritative coincidence of image, formal
evolution, and his increasing success as an invention, and handling of material. Elsewhere
architect, that as his distance from the work the object world is exploited for its contained
increases, when invention is no longer taking Gestalts, simple and symmetrical structure and
place in and with tools and materials, the mechanical forms : but the deadness of the
product declines into an anonymous 'modernity'. handling, the slackness of the proportions, only
Though he made other objects of extraordinary serve to emphasize the dependence of the
force and beauty — for example the celebrated sculptures on imported figurative and
sideboard (1919), and the suspended lamp of intellectual referents. q
three opposed fluorescent tubes — the chair
seems to have long been Rietveld's central
preoccupation and certainly the area in which he
achieved the most consistent success. Its size, its
(Above)
Rietveld relation to the human form and to the ground,
Red-Blue Chair 1918 its necessary strength, its relation to gravity both 'Excepting the Table and Stools at Turgu Jiu.
(Below) in its own structure and its supportive role, its 'Catalogue for Tatlin exhibition, Moderna Museet
Giacometti stressed horizontality and verticality, its Stockholm 1968, Letatlin p. 78.
Woman with her Throat Cut 1932 separation of inside and outside, front and back— 3Idem p. 76.
Bronze, 34 1/2 in. long 'Catalogue for Arts Council Rietveld exhibition,
Museum of Modern Art, New York all these factors make the chair an analogy for Hayward Gallery 1972, items I r, 12.
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