Game of Chairs Part 2 - Take a seat to see

In the early 20th century, artists like Duchamp rejected ideas of beautification as being central to the making of art. By calling found objects such as toilets and chairs a work of art we saw the ready-made movement take hold of the contemporary world. Here we have selected chairs as sculptures from contemporary artists around the world.

Cover Image : 20 Chairs From the Qing Dynasty (2009), Ai Weiwei.

1. Chair (1961), Pablo Picasso.

Picasso began with a drawing on paper, which he cut out and folded, like origami. A craftsman then transferred the design into sheet metal. Picasso himself said it looked like a chair run over by a steamroller. This whole idea of a back and forth between things that are two-dimensional and things that are three is so strongly at play in this work.

2. Please Take a Seat (2013), Tadashi Kawamata

Kawamata is showing how significant recycling is, and can be in our future. Through stacking 1000 chairs, he has changed how these items are used and even created shelter for those within. Most of all though it is visual art on an epic proportion.

3. Broken Chair (1997), Daniel Berset

The Broken chair symbolizes the despair and dignity of armed violence victims.

A reconstruction in Moscow’s new Tretyakov Museum of Alexander Rodchenko’s Lenin’s Workers’ club 1925, Michel Aubry. The desks. The Reading Room of the Workers’ Club and The Chessboard at Paris Exposition.

5. El cochecito (2014), Anita Molinero