This article was originally published in Domus 1048, June 2020. Robert Wilson’s chairs are furniture pieces, sculptures, icons, stage props, storytellers, characters, and in all these roles, are part of an artistic Gesamtkunstwerk. Their existence affects and changes the world around them. Like everything he designs, they cross disciplinary boundaries, function in multiple ways, and leave room for personal interpretation. Chairs are an integral part of the theatre director’s work and contribute to the mesmerising beauty of his ever-evolving oeuvre. My favourite example is the Chair with its Shadow (Freud Hanging Chair), which originated out of a happy accident. When Bob wasn’t satisfied with the upright proportion of an early prototype, an assistant taped a shorter and wider silhouette to its left side. He saw this improvised improvement and fell in love with it. As a result, the final chair got six legs and an un- expectedly comfortable seat.
Robert Wilson: “I never thought of theatre design as decoration, but as something architectural”
The great American director reconstructs the complex dialogue between the arts involved in his productions, revealing a rich range of different references. Starting point, the chairs.
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- Christian Wassmann e Robert Wilson
- 13 August 2020
Even though his chairs are static objects, they are always on the move. Once a new object (or a person whose physical presence is treated equally) enters the stage or a space, tensions build up, dialogues occur. The original occupants react until the balance in the constellation is restored once again, just to be slowly pushed or pulled away anew moments later. This constant play is also one of the fundamental principles of The Watermill Center, the laboratory for the arts and humanities with residencies and workshops that Robert Wilson founded in 1990 on Long Island, New York. After studying architecture at Pratt Institute in the 1960s Bob Wilson worked with Paolo Soleri planning his visionary town Arcosanti.
Christian Wassmann is a New York-based Swiss architect and designer who frequently collaborated with Robert Wilson between 1997 to 2007.
When I was 11 years old, I went for Thanksgiving to my Uncle Sherod’s house in Alamogordo, New Mexico. He lived as a recluse in the White Sands Desert in a white adobe house that he built himself. It was a simple house with a floor and walls of mud and a beam and mud ceiling. There were very few items placed in each room. One room of Native American ceramic jars and pots. Another room with a mattress and Navajo blanket on top. But the most impressive room was a room that had a single chair. It was a thin, small, rather high-backed wooden chair, the origins of which are unknown, but it was probably built by someone living in New Mexico. It was no more than 40 centimetres wide, and approximately 1.4 metres high.
I said to my uncle Sherod: “That’s a very beautiful chair,” and the following Christmas, he sent it to me as a Christmas present. This was a highly unusual Christmas gift for a boy from Central Texas. Normally I got a shotgun or red flannel chequered shirt, none of which I liked. Six years later, my cousin John wrote me a letter and said that his father gave me a chair, and it was his, and he wanted it back, and I sent it to him in California, and that was the beginning of my interest in chairs. Marcel Breuer said: “In the detail of this chair are all my aesthetics. The same aesthetics as when I design a building, or a city are inherent in the detail of the chair.”
Bertolt Brecht wanted an epic theatre where all elements were equally important. A gesture, a text spoken or printed, a chair, were all integral and equally important in what he called an epic theatre. The chairs in my productions are not thought of as stage props but can be seen on their own as sculpture. Since the beginning of my career in the theatre, I have very often had a chair as an integral element in my productions. One of the earliest plays in 1969 was The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud. For that production, I designed a hanging chair. The Freud play was in three acts, and the chair was lowered throughout the three acts, from the top of the proscenium in the first act, to the last act, where it landed on the floor. It was a kind of timepiece to measure the length of the play.
The chairs in my productions can be seen on their own as sculpture
From this chair I designed a sculpture, the Freud Hanging Chair, made of square wire mesh. It is hung diagonally and lit with one source of light, which casts a shadow on a nearby wall. When seen from a certain distance it is not distinguishable whether one sees the chair or the shadow. They are all lines in space. Some of the chairs I have designed to me represent gods of our time: Freud, Einstein, Stalin, Queen Victoria, Marie Curie. Just as the Greek playwrights wrote about gods of their time. Often the chairs are non-functional. They are something one can look at abstractly as a sculpture. They can stand on their own independently from a stage production.
Gertrude Stein said, when asked what she thought of modern art: “I like to look at it.” I never thought of theatre design as decoration, but as something architectural.
Freud Hanging Chair. I made a series of chairs that were in some ways like the wooden chair that my uncle Sherod had
Blacksmith Chair, 1999, from the play with music The Days Before: Death, Destruction, and Detroit III
Kafka Chair, 1987, the chair for Kafka from Death, Destruction, and Detroit II
Pierre Curie Chair, 1989, a chair for Pierre Curie, from the Louis Andriessen opera, De Materie
For Einstein on the Beach, I made the Einstein chair out of plumbing pipe, because Einstein said if he had to live his life over, he would rather be a plumber. It was also curious that at the time I made it, Philip Glass was a plumber
Jochanaan’s Chair, 1987. When I did Salome at La Scala, with Montserrat Caballé as Salome, I built this red chair for Jochanaan
Bessie Smith “Breakfast” Chair, 1988. Then, with text by Allen Ginsberg and a jazz composition of George Gruntz in Hamburg, I did a work called Cosmopolitan Greetings. I had a scene with Bessie Smith. One day, Bessie Smith was having breakfast with her husband and he didn’t talk during breakfast, and towards the end of breakfast he left the breakfast table, walked out of the room, and never came back. So, I did this double chair where two characters sat facing opposite directions. A man and woman sat there, and a man got up and left. I never told anyone, and it was not self-evident in the scene, but that story was the subtext for the Bessie Smith Chair
Butterfly “Waiting” Chair, 1993. This was the Butterfly Chair, the “Waiting” Chair. I designed it for Madame Butterfly. For me, the most important scene in Puccini’s Butterfly, is a moment which lasts between 11-13 minutes, depending on the conductor. Nothing happens on stage, except for Butterfly sitting and waiting for Pinkerton to return. A whispering chorus is offstage singing. Often that scene is not performed in the production because no one knows how to stage it. When it was originally performed, critics attacked Puccini. They said the production failed because nothing happened! So, he cut it from the original production soon after it opened. As long as Puccini, Madame Puccini were living that scene was forbidden, and often today it is still not performed. When I did Butterfly I staged it, and generally, people said it was the highlight of the opera. This chair was seen often throughout the production as a sculptural element. Only occasionally did we see Butterfly sitting, waiting. It is the Butterfly Chair Waiting Chair
Child’s Horse Chair, 1994. I did in Münchner Kammerspiele in the 1980s a production called The Moon in the Grass, which was based on the Grimm’s fairy tales. I had a scene with a child who was playing with blocks. With them he built a house that someone else later destroyed. This was a child’s chair that was a horse
Father’s Chair, 1999. In 1999 I directed The Days Before: Death, Destruction and Detroit III, with text by Umberto Eco. I had a family scene. This was the Father’s chair
Mondrian Chair, 1989. This chair I did for Mondrian. The production was called De Materie, an opera composed by Louis Andriessen. There was a scene about Mondrian. He hated diagonal lines. All of his paintings and the environment around where he lived were all straight lines, at right angles. So, I made a chair of diagonal lines, andIhaditonawallof acid green. Mondrian hated green. Someone once gave him tulips and he painted the stems and the leaves grey, because he did not want to see the colour green. This chair is painted grey and it was seen on an acid green wall. This was a facet of his personality; a kind of portrait of him
Headrest for Saint Theresa, 1996. I did Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson’s Four Saints in Three Acts, and this was a headrest for Saint Theresa. She rested her head on the heavenly mansion
Parzival Chair, 1987. This is a chair I designed for Parzival, based on the original Wolfram von Eschenbach text, the old text in which the holy grail is not found. I designed a chair with its shadow for Christopher Knowles, who was playing Parzival
Salome Chair, 1987. This was a chair I did for Salome. It was in the production I directed at La Scala in 1987. A throne. No one ever sat on it
Rudolf Hess Beach Chairs, 1979. For Death Destruction and Detroit, which I did in Berlin at the Schaubühne in 1978-79, there was a scene about Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. These were beach chairs that were seen on a rooftop in New York City, for two people to sunbathe in the middle of the night during a world war
Marina Rocker, 2011. This is a version of a rocking chair I did for a production based on the life of Clementine Hunter, called Zinnias. When I was 12 years old my parents took my sister andmeonatripto Louisiana, and there I met Clementine Hunter. She was a painter who lived her whole life on a rural plantation. She never studied painting, nor did she learn to read or write, but she made hundreds of paintings, images of daily life, scenes of baptisms, marriages, funerals, laundry days and nature. Her paintings were a visual record of her time. I bought one of her paintings for 25 cents. It was the first time I had bought a work of art. Zinnias were Clementine Hunter’s favourite flower, and she often painted them, so I called my production about her life Zinnias. I designed this rocking chair for her, and I was thinking of rocking chairs on a porch, like we see in the southern part of the United States. I made two versions. The other version I used in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic
Writer’s Table, 1998. This was for a production I did called White Raven, an opera I made with Philip Glass. This table is composed of positives and negatives. It was a table for a writer, and in the table were flowers floating on water. The writer sat at the table writing with a feather in the air. For the opening, Lisa Ponti sent me a drawing, previously unknown to me, of a table that her father, Gio Ponti, had designed. In his drawing, the top of the table is filled with water, and is for flowers to float
Hermione Chair, 2005. This is Hermione’s Chair, from my production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, which I directed at the Berliner Ensemble. It is bronze with a slate seat
Electric Chairs... As You Like It, 2011. These are chairs I did for a fantasy. I originally designed 7, for the 7 ages of man depicted in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The chairs are seen as lines in space. The neon lines have nothing to do with the form of the chair