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The Object: Still Life 

Interviews with the new object makers. 
Richard Artschwager and Claes Oldenburg. 
on craftsmanship, art, and function

[[image]]
"Rocker," 60" high, of black and natural birch formica.

Woodworker RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER has been designing and building furniture since 1950 and is the owner of a successful limited production furniture workshop in New York City with a retail outlet called the Workbench, which currently has six stores [three in New York City, one on Long Island, one in Philadelphia, and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts]. Artschwager started to make furniture-related constructions in 1962. A one-man show of this work was held at New York's Leo Castelli Gallery in February of this year. 

QUESTION: This is a big dresser with a formica mirror. Now, aside from the material which you've used, are you making a statement about a dresser or a piece of furniture?

ARTSCHWAGER: I'm making the same statement that I think a dresser makes. The mirror is yellow mother-of-pearl formica. It could be the color of a mirror in a Fauve painting, or a Bonnard; you can see it that way. It works well as a mirror, and the whole thing has a bit of a cruel shape, with the sharp corners—it's pretty harsh. But first of all, it is a celebration— of standing in front of a dresser and looking at one's self, for tying a tie or anything like that. For storing things, I guess the dresser is a useless object. This is a very formal picture— and it says a lot about the dresser.

The rocker, now that was a lot of work. Part of the problem was that the center of gravity was too high. I loved this thing as I made it. I wanted it to rock just right, at the right time. So I started putting weights in the bottom. First, I built a shelf on the inside, underneath, and loaded it with wood scrap. But this was not enough, and I ended up going to a welding shop, and putt, I think, about 140 pounds of scrap iron in the bottom in two enclosures, since the weights are not in the center. See, when it goes over, it's got to hang for awhile, and then swing back the other way. It's got to hang there, too. It's very nicely done, if I do say so myself.

QUESTION: To me it seems marvelously ridiculous, but you don't see it that way, do you?

ARTSCHWAGER: All right, it's ridiculous to you. I happened to come into the shop one day, and one of the men who works for me, an old man, was looking at the dresser, and I saw him doing this (poking the non-functioning cutout plywood plugs which look like buttons on an adding machine). Well, if you think of it that way, it's pretty ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than a clerk tapping out thousands of figures. Such a clerk cannot be in any way

28  CRAFT HORIZONS September/October 1965