the de Stijl movement revolved around the notion that forms, colors, and spaces, when presented in their elementarized forms, could achieve utopia by effectively balancing man and nature. the movement's explicit use of vertical and horizontal lines represent (in the words of Schoenmaeke) "the two fundamental, complete contraries which shape our earth....the horizontal line of power, that is course of the earth around the sun, and the vertical, profoundly spatial movement of rays that originate in the centre of the sun". the de Stijl palette similarly was comprised of only fundamental colors; yellow: the vertical movement of the ray, blue: the horizontal skies, and red: the mating of yellow and blue.
following WW1, Gerrit Rietveld created the first projection of the de Stijl aesthetic onto three-dimensional space. in 1917, he built the "Red-Blue Chair", ie the ultimate physical resting place for the soul. the chair is built from simple wood blocks whose forms are defined by the sacred lines and colors of the de Stijl aesthetic. Rietveld constructed the "Red-Blue Chair" to counteract the gravitational forces of nature and induce feelings of contentment and comfort.
ah, to sit down in a chair and feel impervious to gravity/at one with nature...until then, i'll settle for the the Mondrian painting on my desktop.
buy a reproduction of the Red-Blue Chair at Bauhaus2yourhouse.com
on
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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