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/ 1987: The first Vitra Edition

I first met Rolf Fehlbaum, the chairman of the Swiss company Vitra, in 1984. A mutual friend, the artist Balthasar Burkhard, introduced us at the opening and unveiling of “Balancing Tools”, a large-scale sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen. Rolf had commissioned this work to celebrate the seventieth birthday of his father Willi Fehlbaum, founder of the company. Still situated in front of the main plant in Weil am Rhein, Germany, the sculpture remains a dynamic and playful emblem of the Vitra philosophy. That first encounter with Rolf was followed by many more, and I came to understand and enjoy his passionate, curious and risk-taking approach to design. In the mid 1980s, I was working as a curator at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva, and Rolf and I had many common interests and spirited discussions. During one of our conversations, he described a Vitra project that involved building experimental objects with the eventual goal of developing new products. I was also taken with the idea of objects that explore process and form and had recently organized the exhibition “Alberto Giacometti, retour à la figuration, 1933–1947”.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Giacometti produced utilitarian objects commissioned by Jean-Michel Frank and Albert Skira, as well as his sculptures and drawings. As I developed the exhibition, it became clear to me that Giacometti’s visual investigations were not confined to categories, and I decided to show his functional pieces alongside his artworks. Mantles, lamps, vases, pots and cabinets shared space with more traditional ‘high art’ objects. The meaning and significance of his achievement encompassed these stunning designs. Based on our shared interests, Rolf and I embarked on a collaborative project together in 1986. Its purpose was to explore the notion of the object – both as sculpture and as functional product. We decided to invite architects, designers and artists to work within the parameters of a specific project: the production of prototypes for chairs. This was the genesis of the first Vitra Edition, exhibited at the Musée Rath in Geneva in February 1987. The eight participants were Ron Arad, Richard Artschwager, Frank Gehry, Shiro Kuramata, Gaetano Pesce, Denis Santachiara, Ettore Sottsass and Scott Burton. The goal was to see as wide a range of approaches as possible, and the wild and wonderful results are reflected in the titles of the works: Well-Tempered Chair (Arad), Chair/Chair (Artschwager), Little Beaver (Gehry), How High the Moon (Kuramata), Greene Street Chair (Pesce), The Sisters (Santachiara), Teodora (Sottsass) and Soft Geometric Chair (Burton).*

The exhibition was an unconventional choice for the Musée Rath whose programme generally followed a more classical and conservative approach. The museum was also unfamiliar with working so quickly: it took only a few months from the project’s inception to its realization. Somehow the limited timeframe added to the intensity of the experience and accelerated the generation of forms. The artists brought their extensive knowledge of craft and tradition to the process. I remember thinking that the prototypes held their ground as sculptures, embodying the same drives, questions and resolutions. Not every prototype became an industrial product but they all possessed independent and singular presences. The thinking and practice that went into them resulted in a stimulating exhibition that revealed a sense of freedom and play. The project offered real opportunities to see the close connections between technology and art. It also explored the potential of one of Modernism’s great hopes: the manufacture of high-quality mass-produced objects. I also recall that the exhibition received a somewhat negative response: why show prototypes of chairs? Why was the museum collaborating with industry? From this vantage point it is difficult to imagine that resistance. Fortunately, times have changed. The boundaries between art and design are blurred and their close connections are more easily accepted. Design occupies an important place in today’s art world, both commercially and curatorially. This is due, in part, to the establishment of design museums, such as Vitra’s. Today’s design landscape has profoundly changed for the better, I think, since that first Vitra Edition some twenty years ago.

* Up to 1992, experimental objects by the following designers were added to the first Vitra Edition: Ron Arad, Paolo Deganello, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Ginbande, Alessandro Mendini, Jasper Morrison, Borek Sipek and Philippe Starck.

Hendel Teicher