‘The Bibendum Chair’

Designed By Eileen Gray

Diana Volovei Viscom.1 DT 545

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This essay will define modernism and it will discuss a modernist pioneer
object of he first phase of that time which exemplifies two of the twelve
Greenhalgh’s characteristics of Modernism. The chosen object is the
‘Bibendum Chair’ designed by Eileen Gray. Firstly what is Modernism? It
is the term that describes the broad movement in Western art,
architecture and design, which self-consciously rejected the past as a
model for the art of the present. Hence the term modernism or modern
art. It began in the 19th century and proposed new forms of art on the
grounds that they were more appropriate to the present time. The
movement is characterized by constant innovation. But modern art was
greatly influenced by various social and political agendas. These were
often idealistic, and modernism was in general associated with ideal
visions of human life and society and a belief in progress. WILSON(2008)
The first phase was pioneer between 1900-1914 and 1918-1930ish and
the second was international 1930s -1972. In the first phase a set of ideas
and visions about how the designed world can improve people’s lives by
renovating their material conditions instead of following a consistent style.
It was not a new style to be added to the historical list used by the
Victorians, but a new way of thinking to improve the design world.
Pioneer Modernism consisted of a series of movements and individuals
who approached the problem and resulted in a appropriate design of the
20th century. Their main areas of activity were: architecture, furniture
and graphics. They were not the first to ponder the idea of a ‘modern’
style neither did they invent all of their own ideas, technologies and
stylistic mannerisms. Indeed, they invented few of them. Rather, what
made them different from anything, which had gone before, were holistic
world-view they constructed from earlier, disparate ideas, and the
absolutist nature of their vision. One gets sense, when comparing the
most progressive objects of 1880 with those off 1929, that one mode of
design has drifted to its conclusion and another one has replaced it. The
Pioneers brought clarity. This is not a qualitative observation so much as
an ideological one. Paul Greenhalgh’s modernism characteristics were as
follows:
1.Decompartmentalisation
2.Social Morality
3.Truth
4.The Total Work of Art
5.Technology
6.Function

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7.Progress
8.Anti-historicism
9.Abstraction
10. Internationalism/Universality
11.Transformation of consciousness
12.Theology
Greenhalgh, (1990)
The pioneer modernism object that will exemplify two of the twelve
characteristics of modernism I will discuss, is the ‘ The Bibendum Chair’
designed by Eileen Gray. 
Eileen Gray, who was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford in 1878.
Her childhood was divided between the family’s houses there and in
London’s South Kensington. Gray's father, James Maclaren Gray, was a
keen amateur artist who encouraged her creative talent by taking her with
him on painting tours to Italy and Switzerland and to enrol at the Slade
School of Art in London to study painting. After her father’s death in
1900, Gray moved to Paris and continued her studies at the Académie
Julian and the École Colarossi. For the next few years she moved house
between Paris and the family’s homes in London and Ireland, but moved
back to London in 1905 due to her mother’s illness.
During her stay in London, Gray returned to the Slade but found
drawing and painting less and less satisfying. Once she came across a
lacquer repair shop which awoke her interest and she decided to learn the
rudiments of lacquer working. She was taught by a young lacquer
craftsman Sugawara, for four years. Lacquer work was not only
painstaking, but dangerous. Slowly she refined her technique to create
stark forms with simple geometric decorations. This simplicity was as
much as a part of Gray's aesthetic preference. It was not until 1913 that
she felt confident enough to exhibit her work by showing some decorative
panels at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs.

At the end of World War in 1917 Gray was commissioned to decorate an

apartment on Rue de Lota. In 1922 she opened Galerie Jean Désert in
collaboration with the architecture critic Jean Badovici to sell rugs,
furniture and lighting. By then Gray had decided to concentrate on
architecture encouraged by the architecture critic Jean Badovici. “Eileen
Gray occupies the centre of the modern movement,” he wrote at the
time. “She knows that our time, with its new possibilities of living,

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necessitates new ways of feeling.” In 1924 they began work on the
construction of a house E-1027 on a steep cliff overlooking the
Mediterranean near Monaco. L-shaped and flat-roofed with floor-to-
ceiling windows facing the sea and a spiral stairway to the guest room, E-
1027 was both open and compact. Gray designed the furniture as well as
working with Badovici on its structure. Gray introduced the rotund
Bibendum armchair in 1929 and it was inspired by the recent tubular
steel experiments of Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus.
http://designmuseum.org/design/eileen-gray

 
http://www.steelform.com/pics/eileen_gray_bibendum_chair.jpg
‘The Bibendum’ armchair in the image above is an overweight fat-boy of
a chair that wraps up the sitter in its corpulence. It is made of a frame in
solid wood covered with polyurethane foam and has chrome plated
tubular steel base. The size of it is L -100cm H-75 cm D-81cm
Like its namesake the Bibendum (AKA Michelin) Man, Gray’s Bibendum
chair has a stout frame and is generously girthed. The two Greenhalgh’s
modernism characteristics this armchair presents are function that shows
that the design of the armchair was planned effectively and meets its
purpose. The armchair’s function was for lounging and socializing also
the surrounding armrest allows privacy for resting. The second
characteristic it presents is progress, which is notable in design and
change of style.

Gray has been spurred to design the chair when she came to understand
the potential for tubular steel, which other modernist designers – notably,
Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breur – were already using to support
their furniture. Gray’s chair, however, reveals a playful, ironic outlook
that is different to other modernist designs. The ‘Bibendum Chair’
appears overstuffed and top-heavy, a structure whose instability makes
the sitter fear for the apparently spindly tubular legs. The thick wedge of

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foam that makes the seat and the two corpulent semi-circular tubes that
form the chair’s back rest and arms add to the effect of inflated attraction.

After much though and research on the topic. I have defined modernism
and its stages. The object I chose to exemplify Greenhalgh’s
characteristics of modernism was the ‘Bibendum chair’ by Eileen Gray. I
have included Eileen Gray’s biography in this essay and the stages of her
design career till she developed the ‘Bibendum Chair’. The chair kept
with Gray’s design philosophy, subtly subversive and was fashioned with a
good measure of whimsy. It certainly accomplished what the designer
hoped to achieve when she set-out on the design. It is welcoming and
comfortable, serves its function and shows very effective progress in
design. Qualities that have made the chair a modernist classic.

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Bibliography:

WILSON LACK, Simon and Jessica (2008) The Tate Guide To Modern Art
Terms. London, Tate Publishing.

GREENHALGH, Paul (1990) Modernism in Design, London, Reaktion

Books

HARRISON, Charles (1997) Modernism, Movements in modern art. London,

Tate publishing

DELAPORTE, Guillemette (2004) Rene Herbst, Pioneer of Modernism, Paris,

Flammarion

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