A conversation in correspondence
October 2017 – January 2018
Constance Rubini, Martin Szekely
CR Before beginning our exchange, I was looking for a way to describe in words the initial effect that your pieces have on the viewer…
MSz It seems to me that the essential function of words is to provide a quantity of information on a given subject. This quantity of information is never sufficient to cover all of the subtexts inherent in the subject, whether it be a table, a pitcher, a landscape, a person or an atmosphere… The commentary can only be a form of partial interpretation, and the language only reduces the reality of the subject, unless the commentary is considered a subject unto itself, viewing it independently, as authors do. In fact, I remain nearly as ill-equipped as anyone else when it comes to talking about my work – but we can try anyway.
CR When we were thinking about the angle to adopt for presenting your work to the public in this exhibition in Bordeaux, you mentioned the importance of the constructive principle in your approach. It correlates to a quest for simplification that tends to take you closer, through an exacting process, to the limit state of the materials. To the point that, like a tightrope walker, you tread a thin line that could break at any moment. How can one innovate in these areas without a background in engineering? How does one pose new structural questions and resolve them, especially when experimenting with a different material each time? Doesn’t it require extremely specialized skills?
MSz Construction is a specialist’s language, even though we have all had the experience of building at some time in our lives. For example, building sand castles involves a multitude of questions and problems that are hardly touched on by the specialists. My own approach in this area is based more on intuition than knowledge. When a new question is raised, my response is informed by a multitude of past experiences. I don’t have the ability to calculate a structure in the project stage, but I can sense how it will work from both a physical and cerebral point of view. I have often found myself in disagreement with engineers who were predicting utter failure, but ultimately our respective approaches complement each other to reach the desired result. Intuition and science make good bedfellows. At the origin of any construction is the material, which itself is made up of complex interacting forces that are often invisible to the naked eye. Engineers try to translate a structure into a mathematical model, but experimenting with the material is the only way to encompass all of the elements involved. My job is to figure out what will happen to my a minima structural system in a dynamic situation or bearing a load. The material is one important element among others. A material, by its nature, dictates the way it must be envisioned and manipulated, depending on its history, its connotations and its physical makeup.
A material is a kind of organism ruled by its intrinsic qualities. In the past, objects were usually made from either a single material (earth, leather, wood, stone…) or from juxtapositions or assemblies of materials. In more recent years there has been a revolution with the advent of glue, which has made it possible to develop “composite materials” (resin and carbon fiber, aluminum honeycomb and sheets, high-density plaster, bamboo blockboard…). A composite material is more solid and resistant than any of its components alone. Their cohesion produces an unprecedented material with new qualities. This opens the perspective of infinite possibilities for each case. As a result, we can envision the material according to the object to be created, instead of adapting the object to the existing material, thus radically changing the approach to the project. As for building “at the limit,” from my point of view that means working right at the leading edge of technical development. The limit changes with the arrival of new inventions and experiments. This can be seen in the evolution of my approach to the theme of the shelf in light of all the experiments conducted around the world. As you will understand, it’s a matter of keeping abreast of, and examining closely, the inventions and modifications that emerge. It is in fact a specialization, linked to the reality, the materiality, of the tangible world. But rather than a specialization in the sense of a quantity of knowledge in a circumscribed field, I think it’s more of a focus in a limitless field.
CR Thus, one of the main goals of your work is to achieve an a minima structural system. Why is this dimension, this form of reduction, of deletion, of elimination, an ideal for you? You favor the economical use of materials – not out of concern for the cost of the object, but rather for its physical materiality. Is this part of a desire to bring out another dimension, one that is not physical but impalpable, a kind of presence, an aura?
MSz Considering my work, I do indeed have an aversion to the superfluous. It must first of all be a way of economizing, adopted at a time in my life when I had very little, and which I would define today with the term “minimum.” I think that this concept of the minimum, whether visual or structural, can be shared and felt by everyone, even before it is understood. Making the minimum a common ground, in the strongest sense of the expression, may lead to that other dimension you were talking about, which I would have troubling defining. In an environment rife with excess, this concept of the minimum has a greater impact and can be fully felt, by each of us in our own way. In the beginning, people had little to work with, but through their acumen they adapted to their environment, discovering its resources and ceaselessly refining them. It always disconcerts me to see a piece of flint chipped and transformed into a knife. Very few people know how to do that today. We city dwellers are far removed from life’s first necessities. Perhaps my approach derives from that state of things when people had to do so much with so little, creating a maximum with a minimum.
CR Can this minimum be correlated to the principle that you have upheld since the Perrier Glass1 (1996), namely “no more drawing”? A precept that has become, in the words of writer Christian Schlatter, “like an avant-garde slogan,”2 and was used as the title of your exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2011, which Françoise Guichon saw as “a genuine commitment and a reversal attributed to the position of the creator…”3
MSz I was far from thinking of never again picking up a pencil to take notes or make sketches, but from then on, a line of reflection was established for each project based on the culture of the object, its mode of production and its intended use. Before then, the object and emblem of the brand was the little Perrier bottle, instantly recognizable for its “bowling pin” contours. In fact, its designer, the owner of the brand in the 19th century, was directly inspired by that shape. When I was asked to develop the brand’s first glass, I knew right away that it would have to be an alliance – a “marriage” – of the little bottle, a historic object, and the glass. And what is a marriage if not the convergence of two entities that share the same state of mind, without physically resembling each other? It seemed an apt description of this situation. I started researching the history of the bottle and analyzing its form: a narrow base, but wide enough to hold itself upright, a round body to contain the sparkling water, a narrow neck for pouring. The glass should, as envisioned, express the same state of mind as the bottle. I sketched out its basic shape: a thick base to protect against impact on the table or counter, and a flared body to deliver the water and make it easy to grasp and hold. Tens of millions of Perrier glasses were produced. A while after it was launched, I realized that this glass had not been drawn, but worked out based on real, tangible elements. In fact, my job had been to reconcile and unify all of these objective elements. This project profoundly changed the way I perceive the job of the designer. The result is no longer directly related to my ego, but actually involves a distancing of the result and its gestation.
CR So the phrase “no more drawing” is to be interpreted as a desire to take yourself, in your role as a creator, out of the foreground, in order to bring forth the truth of the object, arising primarily from its intended use and function. You may know the essay by Roland Barthes, published in 1968, entitled “The Death of the Author,”4 in which he wrote, “The author enters his own death, writing begins.” Isn’t your assiduous muting of form in fact your best ally for bringing out the fundamental character of your work? After all, despite a reduced vocabulary that seems to tend toward anonymity, I think that one can recognize a Martin Szekely creation right away.
MSz Yes, you are no doubt right, and yet that was never an “express desire,” but rather a disalienating approach to drawing (perceived as a signature), which worked for me and still works very well. I am not surprised that one could end up recognizing me over the course of my various projects, although I think you’d have to push the proposition to the limit in order to prove it. I would never espouse the ludicrous idea of negating my existence: I am indeed the one who brings together all the elements that are external to my being (material, technique, intended use and place…) that ultimately make up the project. The proof is that if you gave different designers the same elements to work with, the resulting projects would all be different. The fact that I exist as a singular person is the minimum that we expect of any human being. But as you have understood, the goal would be to burden the project as little as possible with my persona, my ego, my signature. Obviously, I am still a person with an ego, but I distance it as much as possible from the result, i.e. the project. To that end, I analyze the materials, the techniques, and I always look at the project from the angle of its practical use. In the best case, the project concentrates the essence of each of its component elements and nothing else, allowing each person to apprehend it, to make it his own, with his own subjectivity. Only then can one call the project successful: when it exceeds the sole perimeter of my being.
CR Yes – disappearing in order to appear, the way a sound takes on its full magnitude in silence. Is this also the reason why you so rarely use color, preferring the neutrality of gray? Is gray more of a thought than a color for you, its neutrality allowing you to avoid the subjectivity of reactions? A neutral shade that by nature can be apprehended by each individual?
MSz These notions call for some qualification. The orangish red of copper, the evanescent green of fiberglass, the deep black of carbon fiber, the silvery highlights of aluminum, plus gold, wood, stone… All of these colors are present in my work, although it is true that in most cases they are the original colors of the materials and not chemically produced. They are a component element of the materials used. More so than the colors themselves, I focus on their vibrations, which are infinitely variable depending on the changing light. Colors are fleeting – they may be appealing at first, but eventually we grow tired of them. Ultimately, the colors become an imperative for their intrinsic qualities, like the materials used. A given situation calls for a given material and its color, i.e. its relation to light. Also, I almost never use color to adorn a surface – the surface presents itself. But there is no set rule: for the MAP tables, I anodized the aluminum to harden it and alter its original color while allowing the aluminum to show through. My approach is open to anything that can serve the premise and avoid any confinement within a method, a rule or even a dogma. That said, as you have mentioned, I have a penchant for the color gray and all of its variations. In my childhood, when we watched black and white television all of the colors were there, according to each viewer’s imagination, sensitivity and tastes. The same is true of black and white photography and cinema.
CR I don’t think that the colors are an adornment, but rather an energy conferred upon the objects. It seems to me that there is a paradox in the approach that you describe: you strive for the reduction of form, color and all other expressive elements, but you also cultivate effects using gloss, sparkling or matte surfaces. You exacerbate the decorative potential inherent in the materials, playing on it to the point of creating ornamentation.
MSz Could it be somewhat overstating things to call the result of my work decorative or ornamentation? Allow me to go back in time: in the Cistercian churches, decoration, ornamentation – anything that might distract the monks from introspective prayer – was banned. And yet, don’t we find contentment and an esthetic aspect in the sight of the stone fixtures that form the bare walls of these remarkable buildings, revealed by the beams of light that filter in through the rare openings, or in the ratios of volumes and voids that structure these edifices, so magnificently integrated into the landscape? To return to my work and its esthetic dimension, which I fully acknowledge, doesn’t it show that my approach is open, among other things, to all sorts of effects that inevitably emerge? Why cancel out the characteristics of the materials that I have chosen for all of their qualities in combination? Constructing means making use of presence, and nothing can prevent us from seeing “beauty” in the simplest things. There is no paradox in that. On the contrary, I see it as one way among others for the person viewing the construction to apprehend it.
CR The Cistercians did not forbid all decoration and ornamentation – they simply wanted to eliminate the superfluous, anything that did not serve religion or the love of Christ. But there is ornamentation, geometric and linked to nature, in the white windows of Aubazine Abbey, the ceramic tile floors of Fontenay or the capitals of Sénanque. But yes, it may be exaggerating somewhat to use the term ornamentation in reference to your work, although I rather like the idea: “decorative” as it is understood historically and in many civilizations, i.e. considering decoration and ornamentation as synonyms for attentiveness and beauty. Our perception of the concept was altered by the moderns in the early 20th century, for economic reasons. Adolf Loos called for its elimination because a “lack of ornament results in reduced working hours and an increased wage” for the worker. 5 But cost is not an issue in our context. For example, when you expose the honeycomb structure of the SL table (2003), which serves to strengthen the Corian top while keeping it thin and delicate, you produce shimmering patterns that are highly ornamental. Modernity has faulted ornamentation for its uselessness, but it is not intrinsically gratuitous. The architect André Hermant (1908-78), a member of the Union des Artistes Modernes, raised the following question in his manifesto Formes Utiles: are colors and ornaments in nature really “ornaments”? To which he responded, “Not if we give the word its customary meaning of ‘superfluous.’ But yes if, as we understand it here, the ornament is a functional necessity. The butterfly needs its bright colors and clever camouflage as much as it needs its wings: it’s a matter of life or death.”6 Therefore, in the conception of Manière Noire, when you juxtapose the carbon fiber fabric modules so as to alternate the direction of the weave, couldn’t we say that you are purposefully creating color effects to give the object character, to endow it with vitality, with a certain beauty? That you draw from the potential of the material ornamental qualities that will affect our senses?
MSz Your question relates to my previous response and reinforces it. To take once again the example of the carbon fiber fabric of the Manière Noire storage towers: let’s suppose that I had taken an “anything will do” approach to the direction of the weave of the fabric, which – and this is a very important point – doesn’t cover but rather structures Manière Noire. Everyone would inevitably think that the result is a deliberate esthetic choice. This takes me back to what I have been trying to say up to now: one cannot escape from the esthetic aspect of the materials, much less from what makes the construction stand upright. If my construction is like a butterfly with eye-catching and lifesaving colors, I acknowledge the serendipitous effects. To return to the history of ornamentation and Loos’s economic observation: according to Oleg Grabar, ornamentation in Islamic Art, before being seen from an esthetic or narrative point of view, is about the time spent for the benefit of others, for those who behold the ornament – an offering, a courtesy. And for the person looking at it, it’s about the time devoted to deciphering and reading the motif being presented. Ultimately, in most cases wealthy people are interested in decorated things for these same reasons, because they are nurtured by painstaking care requiring a temporal dimension translated into wealth. According to Karl Marx, “Works of art, which represent the highest level of spiritual production, will find favor in the eyes of bourgeois society only if they are presented as being liable to directly generate material wealth.”7 Back to the topic of the Cistercian monks: whether at Thoronet, Silvacane or Sénanque, I am struck most by the impact of the empty space and the power of the mineral construction. At Aubazine, the interlacing patterns of the windows, if you step back a bit, are seen as a gray screen between the interior and exterior of the religious edifice, a border – it’s a question of efficiency. And perhaps the impersonal geometric decorations that you mention were also there to distract the gaze and encourage deeper introspection. Again, a question of efficiency.
CR I like Grabar’s perception, associating ornamentation with courtesy, with time spent dedicated to others. It is indeed a focus on the other. In Occidental culture, ornamentation, like color, was often used to endow objects with symbols – which were then widely understood – thus giving them meaning, a functional dimension. Abstract motifs reduce the narrative value, leaving each observer free to choose the meaning given to the object. This brings us back to the “minimum” dimension that you mentioned before, a concept that can be universally shared. Is this pursuit of the essential thus a striving for universality?
MSz The universality that you mention may be the culmination of my aspiration to give the objects total autonomy. I want a table, for example, once it is finished, to be autonomous. It must exist unto itself for anyone who, at one time or another, encounters it. It should need no external justification in order to exist – ideological, political, social, economic, philosophical or of any other kind. The table should exist without me as a person and without my commentary, whether under exhibition conditions or in practical use. Working as closely as possi ble to its definition, furniture can attain a universal dimension. And this universal dimension would be the assurance that the furniture is right for us and, in a way, fulfills us. Indeed, in this aspect, the utilitarian object has a certain advantage over a work of art. The definition of a table, for example, is common to everyone – it’s a solid premise for confronting a new table for the first time. The substance of design is the tangible in its materiality, in contrast to the substance of art, which is artifice. What could be more different than a table and a painting, a text, a play, a film…? The materiality of art is the surface behind which lies the content (the subjective thought open to all interpretations), whereas the table sets forth nothing more than a table and what it implies, its practical purpose.
CR I just heard this morning the sad news of the death of Azzedine Alaïa, whom you knew very well. Some of the things that we have said over the past few days in this conversation – about the way you use materials, how you envision the construction of each furniture creation, your desire for reduction and thus for precision – clarify the images that come back to me concerning Alaïa’s work. He steadfastly remained outside the system, escaping the tyranny of time constraints in order to concentrate on the construction of clothes, and innovating, especially in his use of materials. He collected your work and called upon you for various projects. Did your respective approaches to creation have points in common? Whether we’re talking about design, fashion, music or literature doesn’t really matter – don’t such affiliations come from elsewhere?
MSz In recent times, Azzedine would complain that I didn’t come to see him more often. When I would ask him what he was doing, he invariably answered, “I’m working,” and I’d tell him that I was doing the same. If there was something that united us, it’s our obstinacy in relation to our work. Azzedine was one of those people possessed of an infectious courage to invest themselves entirely in their work; he’s an example of independence of expression, to the point of being shocking. But above all, he remains an immense creator. I had the pleasure of staging his work at the Palais Galliera8 and as a result got to know them better. His imagination was such that no one could understand where this profusion of brilliant ideas came from whenever “Monsieur Alaïa” lent himself to the exercise of the fashion show. Without a doubt, his confidence in me gave me the courage to overcome the difficulties. I just now learned that he will be buried in Tunis, far from the whirlwind Parisian scene, far from his fief – a decision made by his loved ones, as Azzedine probably would have wanted. Some time ago, I filmed him at work. He forgot I was there, concentrating on his project, of which I understood nothing – construction with a soft material like fabric is utterly alien to me. We were both there, but I felt that he was alone, that the mini-camera and I didn’t exist. The hours went by, and he never showed the slightest hesitancy in what he was doing. The operations on the fabric succeeded one another, never revealing a hint of their mastery.
CR In an interview, he confided to Olivier Saillard, “My work is all of my time.”9 This question of time seems fundamental to me: how to be “of our time” when time today is all about jumping from one thing to another, or in any case dispersion and multiplicity? Nowadays, does taking the time needed to concentrate and do thorough, in-depth work mean assuming a stance of resistance in relation to commissions, clients, the press…?
MSz More than a question of temporality, it’s about avoiding all types of submissiveness and alienation, whether temporal, economic or ideological… Pursuing the kind of work that’s right for oneself requires some adjustments in relation to others, the economic powers, the media, etc. In everyday life, it’s difficult for me to isolate myself from the functioning of the world – but would I actually want to? For example, I am glued to my telephone, I keep my appointments and meet most of my deadlines. There are also all sorts of distractions, fleeting temptations, but I admit that they serve to renew my enthusiasm for my work. It’s a constant back and forth, a permanent state of concen-
tration in alternation. When Glenn Gould was working on a difficult passage, he would turn on the radio and tv at high volume so as not to hear himself play as he practiced the problematic part. Only after he had “worked out” the passage in this unusual sonic ambience would he integrate it, expressing it in the way that we are fortunate to hear in his recordings. In addition, and also on the subject of music, we should remember that Bach had to compose a cantata for every Sunday, besides teaching his art in order to feed his large family, all the while building up an oeuvre. May this anecdote explain that it’s possible to be part of the world, take advantage of it in every way, and pursue one’s own work at one’s own pace, according to a personal course of action. As for my relations with the media, I only show my work and engage in communication on specific occasions, as for my exhibition Draw No More at the Centre Pompidou in 2011 and now for the exhibition Construction in Bordeaux. In between, I have granted a few written interviews in France and other countries. Communicating constantly, which was the thing to do in the 1980s – and still is today – trivializes the work in the eyes of the public, drowning it in an endless outpouring. On the other hand, I think there is some benefit in showing the results of one’s efforts at a few wellchosen moments, if only to maintain a degree of freshness in the perception of the work that has been accomplished. And need we emphasize the fact that communication is most often associated with business – the business of ideas, of products, of art…? Shouldn’t the question then be to put a respectable distance between one’s work and the business aspect so that the latter influences it as little as possible? And yet, the spotlight is on the communicators, the ones who “shine.” Shining is a superficial condition, but what is the real substance of those who monopolize the media, the implicit partners of journalists who much prefer talkative “good sports” to those who are more reserved, for whom silence is at once meaningful and constitutive?
CR On the topic of constitutive silence, Azzedine Alaïa said in that same interview with Olivier Saillard that when he was a child, his grandfather would drop him off at the neighborhood movie theater on the days when he played cards. While waiting to be fetched, the young Azzedine would see the same movie over and over, several times in a row. With each showing he would watch the movie differently, focusing on the costumes, then on the sets, etc. Today, the grandfather would be accused of bad parenting, and yet… Your parents were both artists. With hindsight, can you identify certain things that you saw or heard that nurtured your way of working today?
MSz My artist parents were preoccupied with their art and left me to my own devices. When I was a child we lived in the countryside. My parents’friends were intellectuals and my friends’parents were farmers. During that time I developed a sensitivity for landscapes and their propensity to elicit a feeling of contentment. From this came my interest in communal spaces, which by definition bring people together. Contact with nature, in relation with the elements, also probably inculcated in me the special relationship that I have with materials and their resistance to stress. And so many things seen and heard through contact with artist friends from many countries – my parents spoke five languages, and I became accustomed to the sounds even though I couldn’t understand them.
CR I just came from a presentation at Artcurial where, among other things, I noticed a beautiful work: a brown cowhide with a large abstract motif shorn into it. Believe it or not, it was signed by Pierre Szekely! What was your parents’artistic world like? Who were these artists that you grew up with?
MSz My parents were Hungarian. They fled Budapest in 1946. I’m not sure what to say except that I was raised far from the bourgeoisie, even though my parents were part of the bourgeoisie back in Hungary. They pursued their art with passion, and were not interested in acquiring possessions. I grew up in this atmosphere of frugality and artistic culture, tinged with mysticism, until the age of 13, when I “came up” to Paris to learn typography and engraving at the École Estienne. When I was young my parents took me to the opera and to exhibitions, in France and other countries – including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where I must have identified with the little girl in Rembrandt’s The Night Watch: an intruder among armed dignitaries; popping up where you’re not expected…
CR Daniel Léger’s book, Vera Székely. Traces,10 includes an interview between your mother and Michel Thomas in which she says, “For me, weightlessness is essential. I don’t want to be categorized as a sculptor. I have never really sculpted a material to attain a form. Large volumes are always heavy, immobilized as a matter of principle. I have always been much more interested in assembling and structuring.” She talks about heavy volumes, but Thomas then points out the fragile, lightweight character of her works. Further on, she specifies, “I realized that the structure of the human body is a interrelation of tensions, of bones and muscles. That touches upon something truly fundamental. If you take away the ribs, the pleura are useless. But as long as the ribs and muscles are there, it’s possible to breathe.” Reading these words gives a better understanding of “the experience of construction” that you mentioned early in the conversation, and your intuitive relation to these questions, which seem to have been part of your childhood. “Popping up where you’re not expected”: does that explain your decision to become a designer?
MSz The Vera Székely interview dates from 1978, when I was already an adult. By then I had hitchhiked all over Europe several times, completed my military service three years earlier, and had been supporting myself for several years, far from my family. Vera Székely was a strong personality with firm opinions. In the interview she seems to be saying that she prefers lightness to heaviness. As you have no doubt noticed, since the start of our exchange my answers to your questions are most often quite nuanced – even though this is not an era that favors fine shadings. From my point of view, heaviness has its merits just like lightness. It’s a matter of situation and circumstance. I would even go so far as to say that it makes no sense to prefer light over heavy. My mother, even where she is now, is going to be miffed… The intuition that you mention in my approach to structures, materials and construction in general has probably been nurtured since childhood. As I said earlier, the natural surroundings, the farmers, the local craftsmen, my artist parents and their friends – it was all quite certainly the starting point of a stratification of experiences that led me to acquire this sensitivity for materials and structures. As for popping up where I’m not expected, it’s more a hindsight than a life path. If, in the beginning, I opted for the legal and professional status of designer, it was first of all to escape the subjectivity of the artist. I started out working in a metal atelier, then in a string of carpentry ateliers, until I met Kwok Hoï Chan, who introduced me to design and its presupposition, the intended use..
CR In various interviews, Vera Székely proclaims her filiation with the graphic artist “who must always strive toward ‘less,’ toward ‘little,’ eliminatingthe superfluous.”11 Your parents were close friends with the typographer Pierre Faucheux. At the very beginning, did you learn your first profession with him? Was it after your experience in the metal atelier?
MSz My first summer job was at the Petit-Chanon sheet metal and metal works in 1969. A few years earlier, as a child, I had watched the workers in that same atelier12 make the full-scale model of the jet engine for the Concorde, the Franco-British supersonic airplane. My parents met Pierre Faucheux when they first came to France. In 1978 I joined his studio, a stone’s throw from the Centre Pompidou, which I watched being built as a bystander. While his collaborators, under his masterly direction, produced the superb book covers that we all know, and that interest so many young graphic designers today, I assisted him in architecture and furniture. Faucheux was quite a character, a cross between Leonardo da Vinci, Le Corbusier and Buckminster Fuller. If he had been given the means, he would have changed the world! It was from him that I learned the precept of independent thinking – so well, in fact, that I left the studio, with his approval, to work on my own.
CR Was it Faucheux who encouraged you to study metal engraving at the École Estienne? You then tried cabinetmaking at the École Boulle and in a carpentry atelier. Finally, after this overview, you went to work for the designer Kwok Hoï Chan. Whether it was by fortunate chance or the desire, stated or not, to explore different realms, in any case this early career indicates a curious mind. The rest of the story is better known: you met Pierre Staudenmeyer, another strong personality, and your interaction with him certainly helped establish your positioning. Had he already opened Neotù Gallery?
MSz Yes, it was no doubt Pierre Faucheux, a prominent alumnus of the École Estienne, who gave me the desire to study the graphic arts. But once I was enrolled at the school (1972 to 1975), I chose the intaglio engraving workshop, where we reproduced Dürers, Rembrandts and other engravings by the great masters. Also, out of fascination with the letter as symbol, I developed a purely personal specialty at the workshop, engraving whole texts in black block capitals. As for the École Boulle, I went there to audit night classes, only once a week, during the 1976 school year, to hone my skills in furniture drawing, which I had learned on the job at carpentry ateliers in Marcoussis (1975), Lunel (1976) and Gometz-le-Châtel (1976). I met Kwok Hoï Chan in 1977, and in 1978 we worked together on a furniture kit collection for
the Sauvagnat company in Aurillac. All that was done on a kitchen table in a 25-square-meter studio on Rue des Archives. In fact, at the time Kwok Hoï Chan no longer had his own firm and had stopped working at Steiner, where he created some extraordinary furniture, the fruit of his dual Asian and European cultural background. That said, to paraphrase Tom Waits, I don’t think I’ve ever been at a crossroads where I would have had a choice.
I met Pierre Staudenmeyer and Gérard Dalmon in 1984, before they had a gallery. It wasn’t until March 1985 that they exhibited, on Rue de Verneuil, the Pi lounge chair (1983), Pi chair (1983), Pi bookshelf (1983), Pi coffee table (1983) and Pi console table (1984). Staudenmeyer found words for my work, and later it was Christian Schlatter who would help me make use of words. Words as an emanation of the process, coming before or after the execution.
CR I know that you write regularly, probably as a way of clarifying your ideas. How do you see pieces like your Stoléru sofa (1987) or Marie-France armchair (1989) today?
MSz Those two pieces from the 1980s are seats and I haven’t designed many seats. Both were created during a period when drawing, in its expressiveness, was the signature of the project. Signature as a sign of recognition of its author; a practice still widespread among artists. Since the late 1990s, my approach to the project has veered away from drawing as an emanation of my persona toward an approach that’s more open to external elements and, first and foremost, to the story behind the object in question, its mode of production and its intended use. These two pieces, very expressive in terms of drawing, remind me of a time when I was fervently searching for something ineffable, more so than a period of fulfillment. Since then, I have elucidated as best I can this approach that I’ve been pursuing for nearly 20 years, rather similar to that of a scientist (which I am not).
CR Was this more recent approach forged over the course of the collections exhibited since the late 1990s at Galerie kreo?13 MSz That’s a fact. In this quest, each project is a new chapter. The pieces that I’m creating today – and that I’m exhibiting at Blondeau & Cie in Geneva, at the galleries Salon 94 in New York and Pierre Marie Giraud in Brussels, at the Hotel de Clermont-Tonnerre in Paris last autumn, 14 and of course in Bordeaux for this exhibition, where we’re showing The Drawers and I for the first time – reflect my latest research. Seeing the older pieces again, which I avoided for a long time, places me in a perspective that stretches back through 40 years of activity, a history whose content is the subject of a collection of books already published or to be published by Éditions B42 – a way of putting things in order, as one would do in a house before moving out. CR I’d like to go back to the role of technique in your work. The other day when we were talking about the question of decoration, you mentioned an equivalence between the concept of time related to ornamentation and the technological complexity contained in your creations. Can you explain that further?
MSz Complexity for complexity, I think that there is a form of equivalence possible between the complexity of ornamentation, related to the time needed for its execution (e.g. the elaborate walls of the Alhambra), and the technological complexity of, say, the Opus shelf. Both are ways of enriching the work, and, in both cases, it’s about the attention invested in the execution. The viewer, encountering the work being presented, responds to what overwhelms him (ornamentation) or what exceeds comprehension (technology).
CR Technique is thus a means for reaching the goal, more so than an element to be displayed. Your stone-shaped pieces, for example, could seem natural; what complicates their perception is above all their title, Artefact. Do you sometimes take technology as a premise, a starting point? And is it important for this technique nonetheless to remain discreet, in order to preserve its mystery?
MSz The application of a new technique does not always generate a new form. It’s a more global process. Technology changes our environment implicitly (and not deliberately) in terms of both forms and uses. Through the ages, people have always utilized the means available to them, and I wonder whether real inventions are not always related to a form of economy. In the 15th century, movable type made it possible to print texts and distribute them widely in book form. In the 20th century, thanks to digital devices, the entire world was interconnected, and the advent and perfection of glue (or rather “glues,” since there are so many types, all adapted for a specific purpose) changed, in particular, the possibilities of glued laminated timber building frames, thus freeing up space in architecture. Closer to our own time, honeycomb and rolled sheet aluminum, thanks to glue, can be joined to structure airplanes and light interplanetary craft, lasers can be used to operate on the human body with minute precision, and there are countless other examples. Implicitly, these technologies are altering forms and uses with each successive invention. For Opus, the form is the result of several inventions combined: laminated aluminum, extruded aluminum, the invention of the aluminum honeycomb sandwich panel – composite materials par excellence – and the little locking mechanism that holds the modules precisely together. Without these elements and their combination, the Opus shelf could not exist in its simplest definition: intersecting vertical and horizontal lines. In most cases, technology is what allows me to achieve simplicity, but technology is not the prerogative of the new. For example, the Construction shelf is made entirely of bamboo planks and screws. More than something new, I’m striving for simplicity, the kind of simplicity that stretches across history, and by any means possible: leading-edge technology, ancestral methods through traditional craftsmanship, or both combined thanks to new artisans who themselves have a transversal vision of techniques and are constantly looking for ways to combine them. In my point of view, history is the substrate for anything new, in continuity. As for the mystery of technology, don’t you think that it’s really a lack of understanding among the general public, ourselves included, regarding inventions? In most cases we use technology with no knowledge of the underlying basics.
CR There is certainly an ignorance of technology, but do we need to understand how things are made in order to appreciate them?
MSz Of course, in order to appreciate anything – fine cuisine, for example – you don’t have to know the recipe. However, having that knowledge takes you into another sphere of understanding. The ultimate stage is to do the cooking yourself. You can appreciate the result of my work at first sight, without knowing what goes into it. But this spontaneous positive reaction gains another degree of appreciation once you know more about the context, the tools and techniques used, etc. Knowledge makes it possible to progress from perception to understanding. My approach can be likened to that of a scientist who publishes the results of a research project in a specialized journal, not only to establish precedence but also to connect with a public, whether professional or not. For the work to attain widespread popular approval is not a goal in itself, but it must receive enough recognition to allow the research to go on. That’s what guarantees freedom of action over the long term.
CR That’s a rather singular point of view for a designer. Since starting out, you have put a lot of thought into the work itself but also into the construction of a system for production, exhibition and publication in which you have invested, first in collaboration with Galerie kreo, and on your own today. In your opinion, isn’t the reality of the work enough to substantiate it? In order to last over time, must an artist or designer also develop a strategy?
MSz It has always been a goal to make the work exist, “whatever the cost,” and show it to others, but also to compile a corpus that ultimately constitutes an oeuvre – œuvre in the sense of a consistent body of thought that has been built up gradually through accumulated experience, making no concessions. When I feel that the result of a project seems to exceed the sum of my own knowledge, and that I have managed to attain something new, I have to do everything possible to make it exist and get it shown. A vital necessity…
1 “And, to this end, I no longer use drawing, which has been a real revolution in my activity.” Interview with Annette Nève, “Une Œuvre Commentée: le Verre Perrier,” Le Festin, nº26, 1998.
2 “Reduced to the extreme, allure apparent and provocative, the proclamation ‘No more drawing’ describes in all its uniqueness the work of designer Martin Szekely over the past ten years. How should we understand this assertion? It has the boldness of an avant-garde posture, revealing progress over other fabrication concepts declaring deliverance from servitude, from the overlong subjugation of design to drawing. It could be describing a new design practice, explaining reversed role concepts, a displacement of design and its propositions… We don’t have to choose between these interpretations, they are just as correlative as they are indissociable. The statement ‘Not to draw anymor’ is first and foremost the result of Martin Szekely’s experience. Experience that led him to abandon progressively the illusion that design is a matter of drawing, that convinced him (who had drawn so much) that the time had come to free himself of that self-imposed slavery to drawing and its seductive effects, the disguise of design by drawing. It was the abandonment of the ancient assumption that design follows drawing and image that led to the statement at the start of this article. It had nothing to do with any programme, no connection to some bold decision taken before some production, no blinding flash after such and such a production. On the contrary, no beginning can be ascribed to it, no particular year, no particular object. It found its formulation in the commentary that accompanied the project for the Perrier Glass (1996). It was simply the manifestation of a maturation along the road being followed… the gradual acknowledgement that every design object has its definition, that every design object has its function, and that these parameters are clear long before the first drawing, and that this definition is totally determined by function and use and that these cannot be drawn.” Christian Schlatter, Martin Szekely – Shelves, Paris, Bernard Chauveau Éditeur, 2005.
3 Françoise Guichon, Martin Szekely. Ne Plus Dessiner, Éditions B42, 2011, p. 2.
4 Roland Barthes, french edition “La Mort de l’Auteur,” Manteia, nº5, 1968.
5 “Ornament and Crime,” 1908.
6 André Hermant, Formes Utiles, Paris, 1959, p. 134.
7 Karl Marx, The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof, french edition by Allia, 2006.
8 Alaïa, exhibition at the Palais Galliera, curated by Olivier Saillard, September 28, 2013 – January 26, 2014.
9 Olivier Saillard, interview with Azzedine Alaïa, catalogue of the exhibition Alaïa, Palais Galliera, September 28, 2013 – January 26, 2014. Paris Musées, 2014.
10 Daniel Léger, Vera Székely. Traces, Bernard Chauveau Éditeur, 2016.
11 Interview with Christian Dumon, 1987, in Daniel Léger’s Vera Székely. Traces, 2016.
12 The atelier in which Vera Székely produced her metal fireplaces.
13 In the late 1980s, Martin Szekely met Clémence and Didier Krzentowski, with whom he collaborated until 2013, first through their agency Kreo and later Galerie kreo after its opening in 1999.
14 Autumn 2017.