Gerrit Rietveld "Red Blue Chair" (1923) Flashcards
Function
Red blue chair has been constructed with armrests and is in a position, suggesting rietveld designed it to be used as a chair to relax in.
Function
The bold, saturated colouring of the chair suggests that rietveld intended this chair to be a statement piece in the home, standing out instead of blending in.
Fitness for purpose
Rietvelds design uses straight, flat planes of wood throughout, which would mean it was less comfortable to sit on for the user.
Fitness for purpose
The red blue chair is painted, meaning that it is resistant to staining and can be wiped clean.
Material/techiques
Red blue chair is made from solid wood. This would make the chair strong to heavy weight and durable when used.
Material/techiques
Rietveld constructed his design from standardised wood sizes which makes the design easy to produce and therefore avaliable is wider audience.
Visual impact
Red blue chair is made from painted wood, meaning rietveld was able to add extremely saturated colour and bold black to the blocks, creating strong contrast
Visual impact
Rietveld has used primary colours when specific blocks of the chair. This gives the chair a more playful, engergetic look
Style
Red blue chair is in a called “de stijl” which is a dutch art movement that focused on simplified geometric shapes, which is clear in rietveld use of rectangular blocks.
Style
Rietvelds chair is abstract in style. He was very influenced by abstract painter modrian. His chair is constructed from very simple shapes similar to mondrians that almost seem to be floating.
Social, cultural/other influences
Rietvelds’ design was influenced by the paintings of a famous artist, piet mondrian. Mondrian was a painter whose most famous work explores simplified colour schemes of primary colours. Rietveld was heavily influenced by the bold, simplified colours in mondrians painting, which can clearly be seen in his use of flat primary colouring in the end blue chair
Social, cultural/other influences
Mondrians art is also known for its bold black lines. This element of his art can be seen influencing rietvelds choice of constructing the primary colour panels with black painted supports of red blue chair.
Social, cultural/other influences
The baubaus was a german art school that was known for merging fine art and design ideas with principles of mass production. Rietvelds design approach took direct influence from this principle as he made red blue chair out of standard lumber sizes that were readily avaliable, to allow his chair to be easily mass produced.
