"Sitting Pretty" @ Racine Art Museum

Fine Art Furniture Comes of Age

Apr. 16, 2012

1:56 a.m.

Visit the Racine Art Museum at the next opportunity. First vote for the Peeples Choice award at the 3rd Annual International Peeps Competition. Then walk up the steps to the second floor and Gallery Three to view the “Sitting Pretty: Furniture From the RAM\'s Collection.” The word \'pretty\' plays in part upon the past definition of furniture. Designs from centuries past were often adorned with period designs, moving from pure functionality to objects reflecting class, status and details that furniture makers, highly skilled craftsman, gleaned from historical perspectives and design catalogues. <o:p /> Folk artists and the Shaker religious societies crafted furniture in unique ways drawing upon their heritage and life philosophy. Add to this that the German Bauhaus and Arts and Crafts architects or artists began to marry ideas about all art into interior aesthetics. This included sculpturally designed tables and chairs: From Mies van der Rohe\'s Barcelona Chair in leather and steel, Thonet\'s Bentwood Chair from steamed wood, or Eames curved, stackable plastic chair that could be mass marketed. In the mid-twentieth century furniture design went a few chairs further and merged personal expression with fresh technological applications that crossed furniture and fine art. “Sitting Pretty” traces this evolution by collecting master artists in the furniture making fine art tradition that includes Gary Knox Bennett, Wendell Castle, John Cedarquist and Albert Paley. <o:p> </o:p> These artists found their way into the RAM\'s continually expanding and already expansive collection. Behind the dividing center wall in Gallery Three, the exhibition displays a row of chairs, an iconic artists canvas because the chair represents an anthropomorphic object in several ways, "sits" in for the human form. A chair has legs, albeit four, two arms, a back and a seat. One describes the chair in terms humans could describe themselves, and chairs reflect humanity perhaps more than any other piece of furniture. <o:p> </o:p> One drinks, eats, holds loved ones, meditates, reads, relaxes, thinks and rests in a chair, an ideal piece for most daily living. And three chairs from the exhibition “sit pretty” in another light, through a concept that expresses an essence of human nature. Daniel Mack\'s Ghost Chair (1990-1995) fashioned from rough driftwood stands as a pale apparition to the actual furniture, as if haunting the simple legacy to chair design and the environment, or perhaps ancestors that came before this time. Does it tell the viewer about the forest from which chairs come and will vanish as well?<o:p /> <o:p> </o:p> Clifton Monteith\'s American Circa 1980\'s-1990\'s creates a high backed chair from willow and aspen that harkens to the twig furniture used in the Adirondacks, constructed with recycled and renewable resources in bent techniques reminiscent of Thonet. <o:p> </o:p> In a chair fashioned with a distinct link to the museum, Boris Bailey gathers found metal, traffic signs and cork to construct a minimal, straight-backed chair with the word R-A-M in capital letters on the squared off, trapezoid shaped high back. A chair symbolizing a modern tribute to art, furniture and the institution that collects it while referencing the throw away society that breeds the debris from which the chair is made. The fascinating exhibition “Sitting Pretty” encourages the viewer to appreciate their domestic environment, to ponder what could exist and inspire them in their own dwellings to make that inner sanctum more beautiful, striking and thoughtful without giving up comfort. Or if one finds the Lazy Boy recliner more fulfilling as interior furniture, then appreciate the excellence and originality to this sculptural furniture. Innovative forms for businesses and living spaces that revisit this fine art medium\'s endless possibilities in the future.  The Racine Art Museum presents "Sitting Pretty: Furniture from the RAM\'s Collection" through May 6., Please contact <a href=\"http://www.ramart.org\">www.ramart.org</a> for more information.  <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p> <o:p> </o:p>

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