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拍品專文
Along with fashion designer and friend Issey Miyake, architects Arata Isozaki and Tadao Ando, and film-maker Akira Kurosawa, Kuramata belonged to the remarkable generation of talented young Japanese who transformed the way that their country was viewed
by the world. All of them were born just before the outbreak of the second world war and developed during a period in which the collapse of Japan’s traditionally authoritarian social order released a creative explosion that propelled Japan into the creative forefront
in cinema, literature, fashion, architecture and design. Kuramata’s work occupies a central place in this period. Specialising in the
design of furniture and interiors his aesthetic combined Japanese simplicity and clarity with a European-like preoccupation with
non-traditional materials and forms. Kuramata was particularly interested in experimenting with plastics and metal and with creating furniture and lighting that not only blurred the boundaries between function and ‘art’, but also transcended cultural divisions.
From 1976 he created a series of radical shop interiors for Issey Miyake, however, almost all of the 400+ interiors he designed, and
for which he was well-known for during his lifetime, sadly no longer exist. One rare survival, the Kiyotomo sushi bar in Tokyo, will form
part of the collection of the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, due to open in 2019.
Since his death at the tragically early age of 56 in 1991, a number of his designs have achieved ‘iconic’ status. These include his
terrazzo tables for Memphis, 1983, the superb, clear acrylic of ‘Miss Blanche’, 1988, and the current lot, ‘How High the Moon’, of 1986.
Many of Kuramata’s designs are both functioning object and sculpture, neither western nor Asian, but which has a remarkable
creative power as well as a sense of endless invention. Kuramata’s work was clearly modern in the way that it used materials, and
specifically Japanese in its simplicity and elegance. Kuramata was always prepared to experiment. He explored the potential of commonly-used materials as if they were precious, using humble acrylic or chipboard, or the kind of steel mesh used to reinforce
plaster. It is the exploration of the properties of this steel mesh, always intended to remain invisible beneath the surface, which gave
reality to his ‘How High the Moon’ armchair. Kuramata referenced American culture for the titles of numerous works to include Miss
Blanche, the character from A Street Car named Desire, and this design which gained it‘s name from the jazz standard recorded by
numerous singers from Ella Fitzgerald to Duke Ellington.
The model, also available as a two-seater, is a poetic abstraction of a traditional armchair whose shape is further ‘dematerialised’ by
the planes of see-through mesh of which it is constructed. It plays with one of western furniture’s most iconic typologies – the bulky
upholstered armchair – and reimagines it in an almost dematerialised form. It is both light and transparent, while being cold and strong, and sits somewhere between a piece of furniture and a work of sculpture. The narrative of the piece revolves around surface rather than structure. As Kuramata noted, the piece ‘retains the form of an armchair, yet deprived of volume. As well as being something physically and visibly light, through which the wind can blow, it becomes something which is both existing and not existing at the same time’. Lacking any framework it can be viewed as the ultimate work of minimalist design.
by the world. All of them were born just before the outbreak of the second world war and developed during a period in which the collapse of Japan’s traditionally authoritarian social order released a creative explosion that propelled Japan into the creative forefront
in cinema, literature, fashion, architecture and design. Kuramata’s work occupies a central place in this period. Specialising in the
design of furniture and interiors his aesthetic combined Japanese simplicity and clarity with a European-like preoccupation with
non-traditional materials and forms. Kuramata was particularly interested in experimenting with plastics and metal and with creating furniture and lighting that not only blurred the boundaries between function and ‘art’, but also transcended cultural divisions.
From 1976 he created a series of radical shop interiors for Issey Miyake, however, almost all of the 400+ interiors he designed, and
for which he was well-known for during his lifetime, sadly no longer exist. One rare survival, the Kiyotomo sushi bar in Tokyo, will form
part of the collection of the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, due to open in 2019.
Since his death at the tragically early age of 56 in 1991, a number of his designs have achieved ‘iconic’ status. These include his
terrazzo tables for Memphis, 1983, the superb, clear acrylic of ‘Miss Blanche’, 1988, and the current lot, ‘How High the Moon’, of 1986.
Many of Kuramata’s designs are both functioning object and sculpture, neither western nor Asian, but which has a remarkable
creative power as well as a sense of endless invention. Kuramata’s work was clearly modern in the way that it used materials, and
specifically Japanese in its simplicity and elegance. Kuramata was always prepared to experiment. He explored the potential of commonly-used materials as if they were precious, using humble acrylic or chipboard, or the kind of steel mesh used to reinforce
plaster. It is the exploration of the properties of this steel mesh, always intended to remain invisible beneath the surface, which gave
reality to his ‘How High the Moon’ armchair. Kuramata referenced American culture for the titles of numerous works to include Miss
Blanche, the character from A Street Car named Desire, and this design which gained it‘s name from the jazz standard recorded by
numerous singers from Ella Fitzgerald to Duke Ellington.
The model, also available as a two-seater, is a poetic abstraction of a traditional armchair whose shape is further ‘dematerialised’ by
the planes of see-through mesh of which it is constructed. It plays with one of western furniture’s most iconic typologies – the bulky
upholstered armchair – and reimagines it in an almost dematerialised form. It is both light and transparent, while being cold and strong, and sits somewhere between a piece of furniture and a work of sculpture. The narrative of the piece revolves around surface rather than structure. As Kuramata noted, the piece ‘retains the form of an armchair, yet deprived of volume. As well as being something physically and visibly light, through which the wind can blow, it becomes something which is both existing and not existing at the same time’. Lacking any framework it can be viewed as the ultimate work of minimalist design.