Wendell Castle at Chanel in Paris

This is Peter Marino’s recently completed project for Chanel on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. The interior features Wendell Castle’s gilt-fibreglass Triad chairs (2006).  The master prototype of this design was acquired by Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in 2008.

It’s aggressively voluptuous and exaggerated form seems to lurch through the space that is otherwise decorated with monochrome rectilinear patterns and fashion.  Castle is known for his organic and even slightly surreal tendencies.  This chair reflects the most feminine aspect of this interior and upstages the understated elegance of the clothes. Maybe that is why we found it pushed back into a corner when we recently visited the store.  

Chanel and Wendell Castle … a good match?

Richard Artschwager's Chair/Chair

Richard Artschwager’s “Chair/Chair sold very well yesterday at Sotheby’s 20th Century Design Including Works by Tiffany Studios from the Geyer Family CollectionSale in New York.

Estimate: 10,000 - 15,000 USD

LOT SOLD. 37,500 USD (Hammer Price with Buyer’s Premium))

The designer, who passed away last month, spent three years on the design of this chair, which was inspired by a folding chair his family owned. In Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Design is Not Art catalogue, Artschwager is stated as saying, his goal was to “make art that has no boundaries”. He believed it was up to each viewer to interpret his or her relationship to the work”. “If you sit on it, it’s a chair; if you walk around it and look at it, it’s a sculpture…’. I worked on this exhibition and as I recall his wife mentioned that it was their cat that sat on this chair in their house. Hmmm… art or design? Does it matter beyond how each viewer interprets it for themselves?