Design Design
During the 1970s and 80s, Kuramata expanded and deepened his philosophical investigations into the forms and functions of furniture. Alert to the revolutionary possibilities of new technologies and industrial materials, he seized upon acrylic, glass, aluminum, and steel mesh to create objects that appear to break free of gravity into airy realms of transparency and lightness.
Despite their sleek machine-age appearance, each of Kuramata’s pieces is realized in a process of meticulous craftsmanship and painstaking attention to detail that is rooted in centuries-old Japanese tradition. Note, for example, the varied treatments of the edges of steel mesh in the slung seat Sing Sing Sing, the edges are bent and cut; in the chair Hal, the upholstered cushion appears to float before a curved mesh sheet whose edges are enclosed on both sides by thick pipe legs and joined at top and bottom to thin rods; in the club chair How High the Moon (above), the mesh’s edges are welded point by point onto fine rods, creating an ethereal outline that denies volume and obscures the distinction between object and space.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES: Sedia Seduta and 01 Chair
As his art matured, Kuramata commented on its modernist origins. Two chairs derive from the work of a great early-twentieth-century designer. In Homage to Josef Hoffmann Vol. 2, inspired by a black-and-white photograph of Hoffmann’s 1911 scallop-back armchair, Kuramata replaced the original white stitching with rows of microlights, magically transmuting the massive form into a flashing sign. In Homage to Hoffmann, Begin the Beguine, he took Hoffmann’s celebrated bentwood chairwhich is still in productionwrapped it in flat steel rods, welded the joints, and set it on fire, burning it out to create what has been called “the glittering aura of a Modernist icon” while also invoking big-band music from the era of the American Occupation of Japan.
Delight in American popular culture inspired many of the pieces in the exhibition, including the carpet Panacee, which is modeled on a color Xerox Kuramata made of fruit-shaped candy received as a gift from a friend living in New York. For the 1984 Issey Miyake boutique in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York, he created a variation on his famous “Star Terrazzo”in which he updated a traditional flooring material by mixing shards of multicolored glass into concrete. In this case the shards were broken Coca-Cola bottles and the terrazzo was extended to cover many surfaces, serving not only for flooring, but also for columns and thin wall panels through which light passed to create a jewel-like glow.
High the Moon, 1986; Made by Terada Tekkojo, Ltd.;
Nickel-plated steel mesh; Ishimaru Co. Ltd.