ARTS Sitting in judgment

BRYAN ROBERTSON

Matisse is frequently quoted as saying something to the effect that he hoped his

art would provide the equivalent of a com- fortable armchair for tired business men.

Most tired business men do not, alas, find Matisse soothing: his seemingly indolent contours vex or perplex them too much.

But it would be a big step forward, both for our comfort and for our fairly frowsy en- vironment, if the average armchair could achieve the luxurious ease in shape and structure of a Matisse.

A glance in the windows of any suburban or provincial department store will quickly

dispel that hopeful notion. There they are,

on the contrary, marching triumphantly for- ward over the years: the dark oak arms of

faked grandfather chairs with wing sides or the dumpy, cosy (spoiled by irritatingly low backs) anonymity of the three-piece 'suites' of the 'twenties and 'thirties. Far from Matisse, we are back to Landseer or just about up to Sicken.

The exhibition of Modern Chairs 1918- 1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery is a resound-

ing blow in the right direction: thorough in range and scholarly in definition, clearly mounted, historically well researched in an absorbing, copiously illustrated catalogue, it is not surprising that the show is a huge popular success. For hovering over the show like an in- visible Doubting Thomas is the unspoken but burningly important thought, shared by

all visitors, of the human backside. We never see this delightfully vulnerable portion of

our anatomy unless possessed of a narcis- sistic passion for craftily placed mirrors: most of us over the age of about twenty

would prefer not to; but backsides all the same are a constant invisible companion for each one of us, in need of occasional support and frequently demanding rest.

It is not only our backsides that need attention. Most people, I suspect, are not on happy terms with modern armchairs for in addition to being insufficiently capacious, there is still that persistently imposed factor

of modern design, the low back: which sup- ports the spine but quickly produces all the symptoms of fibrositis across the unsup- ported shoulders as well as a crick in the equally disregarded neck.

The Whitechapel assembly of chairs, in which you can try out for comfort models actually on the floor, may dispel that natural suspicion: for modern design has established, with increasing charm and authority over the period under review, the proposition that the needs of total relaxation are not best met by a cavernous receptacle in which you merely slump in a more or less upright position—it is better to recline on some kind of equivalent to a deck chair or a rocking chair in which the whole body is supported. lience the immense comfort of the Charles Eames chairs, with accompanying footstools, or the contemporary variants on the idea of a chaise longue that we find in the work of the Italian designer Bosani, the 'floating dock' attenuation of seat in the long rect- angular armchair of Jorn Utzon, from Den- mark, or the poised immensely elegant hammock chair of Poul Kjaerholm, also from Denmark, in which the lightest and most modest stainless steel frame supports . a dramatically long and subtly curved cane seat.

Most of the chairs at the Whitechapel were designed for purely domestic use; but the interesting problems of stacking chairs has been faced up to in several contexts, though the difficulty of designing a really beautiful, simple, and comfortable chair which also stacks in conveniently large quantities seems almost insoluble. The sleight-of-hand in stacking is often stunning; a single unit, by contrast, seems both puny and awkward in its attempt to combine minimal comfort with a softening degree of decoration.

Although Mies van der Rohe is the in- disputable hero of the show, for it is really not possible to improve on what he achieved in the nineteen twenties, it is good to find young English designers holding their own in toughly competent international com- pany; and it is amusing to find the folding deckchair principle, as a custom-built objet de luxe armchair in a sycamore wood with steel interlocking joints and upholstered suspended seat, first established by the archi- tect and designer Eileen Gray in Paris in 1926, flower again in a squarer, more abrupt version called a 'farmer's chair' by the German designer Gerd Lange, in 1966. The same meticulous attention to intersections is to be found in the more recent chair.

The exhibition contains also some amus- ing novelties, like Dali's couch designed in the cupid's bow shape of Mae West's lips: it's hard to tell whether the demands of the seat part itself or Miss West's lower lip has a decidedly cynical fullness to it. There is also a 'blow chair' of transparent PVC, but one must hope for transparent sides to baths if we are entering the 'see through' phase of modern design.

Carol Hogben who compiled this splendid exhibition has contributed a valuable essay to the catalogue which outlines the historical links in twentieth century chair design; and there is a very necessary and acute essay by

Joseph Rykwert which points to all the uses and connotations of chairs, beginning with the odd demands of our bodies and carrying through with the concept of chairs as symbols of power, authority, femininity and the womb, and so on. There are, incidentally. some distinctly erotic chairs on view which could mean the end of family life as we know it.

The best chair-manufacturer story I know concerns the sculptor, Alexander Calder. A jubilant Bill Hayter, the English engraver and painter long resident in Paris, called on the American sculptor, also living in Paris. some years back and announced the birlh of a son. Calder gave him a drink, aired the usual felicitations, and mumbled something about making a present for the child. Pick- ing up a thin sheet of metal, he fed it through a machine without once glancing down at it, pulled out an improbable flat abstract shape. pushed two ends down and another asymmetrical piece up, and, still talking, handed over the result to a dumfounded Hayter: a flawlessly designed, absolutely stable, small chair.