{"id":147922,"date":"2019-04-02T07:50:49","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T11:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu?p=147922&preview=true&preview_id=147922"},"modified":"2019-04-02T07:52:58","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T11:52:58","slug":"exploring-furniture-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/04\/exploring-furniture-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Furniture as Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year, the staff at the William Benton Museum of Art faces a creative challenge in determining how to curate an exhibition related to the annual UConn Reads book selection. The books have included some addressing topical issues, such as Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America, <\/em>by Eboo Patel in 2016, and others considered classic literature, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby<\/em> in 2012.<\/p>\n

The book selected for 2018-2019 was George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones,<\/em> the first novel in a multi-volume series titled,\u00a0A Song of Fire and Ice,<\/em> which gained a wider audience through HBO’s highly popular televised series that concludes later this year.<\/p>\n

“When I saw the book selection, I started getting lost in the concept of fantasy art,” says Nancy Stula, executive director of the Benton and curator for the exhibit. “I toyed around with having a costume show, because Game of Thrones costumes are spectacular. In the end, the idea of the chairs kept resonating, and I decided to explore furniture as art.”<\/p>\n

The Benton\u2019s exploration of chairs takes a modern view of chairs designed in the 20th and 21st centuries in \u201cGame of Thrones: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art Furniture,\u201d which opened last week and continues through July 31.<\/p>\n

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Central to this exhibition is the idea that design aesthetics and function can be integrated into one object. — Nancy Stula<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cGame of Thrones\u201d features examples of art chairs created by some of the key artists and makers of contemporary art furniture: John Dunnigan, Jim Cole, Terence Main, Mitch Ryerson, Lothar Windels, Estudio Campana, Dale Broholm, and Wendell Castle.<\/p>\n

\u201cChairs are democratic in that everyone knows what chairs are, everyone sits in chairs daily, and everyone likely owns at least one chair,\u201d says Nancy Stula, executive director of the Benton and curator for the exhibit. \u201cIt can be a challenge for some of our audience to accept a chair\u2019s status as art. It is our goal to introduce the museum-going public and the Benton\u2019s student audience to the decorative arts as fine art, and to the concept that the chairs on view are a form of sculpture. Central to this exhibition is the idea that design aesthetics and function can be integrated into one object.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stula says one of her objectives with the exhibition is to illustrate that decorative arts \u2013 which include textiles, silver, ceramics\/glass, and furniture \u2013 are also fine art. Decorative arts are defined as the design of objects that are both functional and beautifully designed.<\/p>\n

The Iron Throne in “Game of Thrones” is an imposing seat created from the swords of defeated rulers (allegedly 1,000 swords, but the actual number of swords is 200) melted by the fiery breath of the dragon, Balerion the Black Dread, and shaped into a seat. But the concept of a chair literally representing a seat of power was a gradual process, according to Witold Rybczynski, an architect, professor emeritus of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a book on the history of chairs titled Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos to Plastic Chair, A Natural History<\/em> (2016).<\/p>\n

\u201cAttaching status to sitting has more to do with the nature of a society than with the chair itself,\u201d Rybczynski says in an email interview. \u201cYou can divide early civilizations into chair-sitters and floor-sitters (or, in the case of ancient Egypt, both). China was the unique case of a floor-sitting culture that voluntarily shifted to chair-sitting. Status is sometimes associated with sitting, especially in the case of thrones, but not always. For example, Egyptians used stools while working, but important people are sometimes shown kneeling or squatting, as well as sitting. In ancient Greece, we have representations of klismos chairs occupied by men and women, musicians and philosophers, so it seems to have been a democratic device.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rybczynski notes that chairs, such as a classic Windsor chair or the ancient klismos chair \u2013 which has a curved backrest and tapered, outcurved legs \u2013 can have sculptural qualities.<\/p>\n

\u201cChairs are like buildings \u2013 they can be made with artistry but this is always tied to a practical function,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is this particular combination of beauty and utility that is the peculiar attribute of a \u2018beautiful\u2019 chair. If you disconnect the two, you don\u2019t gain anything, and you lose something precious. Chairs, like any domestic object, can have aesthetic appeal: the pattern of the fabric, the shape of a leg, the workmanship, the texture of wood. And furniture is always a part of the overall decor of a home, which always has an aesthetic side.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Benton exhibition includes chairs made of wood, bronze, gilded fiberglass, stainless steel, and found objects, including:<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cOde to King Bee,\u201d c. 1990 (bronze), an armchair by Jim Cole;
\n\u2022 \u201cArmchair Gardener,\u201d 2000 (fumed oak, aluminum found objects, copper, bronze) by Mitch Ryerson;
\n\u2022 \u201cCake Stool,\u201d 2008 (stuffed animals hand sewn on canvas cover over brushed stainless steel structure) by Estudio Campana;
\n\u2022 \u201cWing Chair,\u201d 2019 (birch plywood, crackle milk paint, polyurethane finish) by Dale Broholm.<\/p>\n

Watch the exhibition being installed:<\/em><\/p>\n