Beschreibung:

SHIRO KURAMATA (1934-1991)Miss Blanche Chair from the edition of 56, designed 1988 manufactured by Ishimaru Co., Tokyo, Japan, acrylic, artificial roses, anodised aluminium height 36 1/4in (92cm); width 24 3/4in (63cm); depth 24in (61cm) FootnotesProvenance Private Collection, France Literature Matthias Dietz 'Japan Design', Cologne, 1992, pp. 74-75 Makoto Uyeda, ed., 'Shiro Kuramata: 1934-1991', exh. cat., Tokyo, 1996, pp. 26-27, 39-40, no.1, p. 48, 187, no. 8, p. 192, no. 4 Alexander von Vegesack, et al., '100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection', exh. cat., Weil am Rhein, 1996, cover, pp. 179, 204-205 Domus, no. 788, December, 1996, p. 56 Jean-Louis Gaillemin, ed., 'Design Contre Design: Deux siècles de créations', exh, cat., Paris, 2007, p. 301 Anne Bony, 'Meubles et Décors Des Années 80', Paris, 2010, p. 154 'Shiro Kuramata and Ettore Sottsass', exh. cat., Tokyo, 2010, p. 68 for a drawing, pp. 69, 208, 211, no. 27 Deyan Sudjic 'Shiro Kuramata: Essays and Writings', London, 2013, pp. 77, 104-105 Deyan Sudjic 'Shiro Kuramata: Catalogue of Works', London, 2013, p. 362, no. 541 "My ideal is to see objects floating in the air with no support... transparency does not belong to any special place but it exists and is everywhere". The Miss Blanche chair is Shiro Kuramata's most iconic work. It was first exhibited at the KAGU exhibition, held during the Tokyo Designer's Week at Axis Gallery Annex in 1988, and then in Paris the following year, in a solo exhibition of the designer's work at Galerie Yves Gastou. Kuramata became a member of the Memphis School in 1981 and participated in the group's inaugural exhibition that same year held at the Salone del Mobile, Milan. He later referred to Ettore Sotsass, its founder, as his 'maestro'. Poetic and dream-like, the Miss Blanche chair is constructed predominantly of acrylic, a material Kuramata loved for its sense of "non-existence", which suited his philosophy of presence-absence and interest in denying materiality. Despite the chair appearing almost weightless, in defiance of gravity, in fact it weighs in excess of 150 lbs; the suspended roses are captured and locked in time, like insects in amber, evoking fragility and impermanence. Miss Blanche is named after Blanche Dubois, the antiheroine of Tenessee Williams' 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire and said to be inspired by the corsage worn by Vivian Leigh who played her in the 1951 film adaptation. The roses can symbolise Blanche Dubois' sense of vanity and notions of preserved beauty; their arrangement in the acrylic slabs evokes a dream-like illusion that a series of roses could support a human form, reflecting the illusion and denial present in the mind and world of Blanche herself. The use of acrylic and artificial roses was decided upon after initial experiments with real roses, which, it was found, could not adequately withstand the necessary heat of the acrylic. In order to create the chair, the artificial roses were held in place by studio assistants holding tweezers, often for hours, as the acrylic hardened enough around them. This attention to detail and expenditure of human time contrasts with the seemingly industrial properties of acrylic and aluminium. In fact, Kuramata's assistant at the time, Hisae Igarashi, recalls him saying, "It has to be fake, because Blanche Dubois herself is a fake." Examples of the Miss Blanche chair are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Vitra Design Museum, M+ Museum, the Brussels Design Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.