Content provided in partnership with
Collective affinity
ArtForum, Summer, 1999 by Hendel Teicher
HENDEL TEICHER TALKS WITH CHARLOTTE PERRIAND
At ninety-five, Charlotte Perriand has found a rule to live by: "Cultivate happiness." This self-conscious optimism has enabled her to play a crucial role in defining the modern spirit in twentieth-century design. Still at work in Paris, the city of her birth, she recently oversaw the installation of "Charlotte Perriand, Fernand Leger: une connivence," a survey exhibition focusing on her collaborations with the painter that recently opened at the Musee National Fernand Leger in Blot.
- Most Popular Articles in Arts
- Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
- Free-standing cardboard sculpture
- What makes a successful business person? Business people who are tops in ...
- Take advantage of local advertising: TV, newspaper or magazines? If your ...
- Tino Sehgal at the ICA
- More »
One of the few women to have gained entry to the male-dominated world of avant-garde architecture, Perriand worked from 1927 to 1937 with Le Corbusier and architect Pierre Jeanneret in their studio at 35 rue de Sevres in Paris. As head of the "furniture equipment" division, she produced objects that have become landmarks of twentieth-century design. It's difficult to imagine a more mythical object of modernism than their tubular lounge chair of 1928-29.
Among the many projects the studio undertook were the complete furnishings for both the Villa Laroche in 1928 and the Villa Church the following year. Stimulated by the utopian belief that furniture should be inexpensive and accessible, they presented, at the Salon d'Automne of 1929, the "Equipment for living: cabinets, chairs, tables." Their interest in the mechanics of daily life culminated in Perriand's prototype of an integrated kitchen for Le Corbusier's "Unite d'habitation" in Marseilles, in 1950.
It was at this moment that Perriand resumed her work with architect and designer Jean Proure. Having known one another for over a decade, the pair embarked on a series of important collaborations. Two of these projects were realized in Africa, where they designed the interiors and furniture for both the Air France building in Brazzaville in 1950 and the Hotel de France in Conakry in 1953. Perriand's work is marked by a stylistic diversity that feels oddly current. With the ubiquity of shelter magazines promoting once-utopian and populist design as the height of fashionable luxury, her objects are undergoing a belated revival.
Perriand has traveled widely, incorporating the lessons she learned abroad in her own work. From 1940 to 1946, her stay in Asia, especially Japan, became a major source of inspiration and played a crucial role in the development of her aesthetic - wood became her material of choice, and space was increasingly defined by the Japanese dynamics of "the void." This sensitivity to "local conditions" also affected her work in Brazil, where she incorporated indigenous materials and vernacular approaches in her designs. Closer to home, she has sustained an Interest in Alpine architecture and furniture design. This openness to the specifics of place, to other cultures, remains a signature asset.
I met Charlotte Perriand in April in her small top-floor studio in Paris, a space that satisfies her desire to be as close as possible to sky, landscape, and light. This feeling of transparency and ease is also reflected in her manner of speaking and dressing. On the day of our interview, she wore Jeans, Nikes, and an oversized blue blouse. Open and generous, Perriand looks to the twenty-first century with high spirits. - HT
HENDEL TEICHER: You are about to have an exhibition devoted to your "affinity" with Fernand Leger. Can you tell me something about your relationship?
CHARLOTTE PERRIAND: I met Leger in 1930 at a reception at the German Embassy in Paris for a Bauhaus exhibition and the members of the Union des Artistes Modernes, which he belonged to, as did I. Apparently Leger was bored. I didn't know him yet, but he seemed bored. It was fairly evident because his face was collapsing. I was with Pierre Jeanneret and some other friends and we decided to leave the dull reception and walk around Paris to find a bistro. That's how it started. The "affinity" was that we both loved life - not always its representation, but what it really is to be alive. Leger, quite naturally, had that in him. I also had it because I loved the mountains, I loved country people. I was born in Paris but raised on my great uncle's farm until the age of three. I loved the manure, the cows. Then we lost touch, but one day I moved from the place Saint-Sulpice to a little studio building on the boulevard Montparnasse. I was moving in with all my plates and cutlery, and Leger said, "What are you doing here?" and I said: "I'm moving in." And it turned out the walls of my studio were also the walls of his.
HT: What luck!
CP: Wonderful luck. He said to me, "What a good idea! Now I can have my cafe au lait at your house." Pierre Jeanneret came up there, too; a little later Jose Luis Sert and Mouncha came to live at my place until the war in Spain ended. Every day was marvelous; we got together at breakfast each morning, talked a bit, and afterward everyone went off to attend to their affairs. It was an absolutely rich period, a period of exchange, of course, of diverse encounters. Leger was an easel painter, but he dreamed only of walls. He said to Corbu, "Give me some walls." But Corbu kept his walls for himself. Leger was curious about everything. There were several occasions when I asked him to participate in projects. He always said yes, whatever the difficulties. In other words, he was not a man of commerce; he was a man of conviction.
