Article by Katarina V. Posch for the catalogue of the exhibition The Seen and the Hidden: (Dis)covering the Veil, curated by David Harper, Martha Kirszenbaum and Karin Meisel at the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (22 May–29 August 2009), pp. 38–39.
Marlene Haring exhibited False Friend (Long Chair) (chaise longue, plumber's hemp, 2009) and Because Every Hair is Different (9-sheet, billboard poster, 357 x 252 cm, 2006).
Marlene Haring: False Friend (Long Chair)
With her False Friend (Long Chair), Marlene Haring turns a Modernist icon into a multilayered work of art. The installation is based on the ‘LC4’ chaise longue, named after the Swiss pioneer of modern design, Le Corbusier. When it was conceived and the prototype built in 1927, the LC4 was one of the first designs to bring tubular steel furniture into the home. Its industrial appearance signified the idea of “domestic equipment” for a “machine for living” — Le Corbusier’s notion of the modern house. Still produced today, it has become a lasting symbol of Modernism itself.
The Modernist credo emphasised mass-production for a middle or working class public, rationalization, standardization, the international, the functional, and the male. By contrast, the initial conception of the chaise longue as a furniture type goes back to a time with very different spirit: it was developed during the Rococo era to serve the relaxed, social, conversational and sensual lifestyle of the aristocracy. The chaise longue was inspired by the oriental way of lounging and became popular with women; thus it came to be associated with the private, the sensual, the exotic, and the female — qualities which were considered old-fashioned (reactionary) and usually avoided by radical Modernist designers of the twentieth century.
Interestingly enough, the LC4 was not designed by Le Corbusier but by his employee, the young Charlotte Perriand, one of the few women who would leave their mark on modern design. The ten-year professional relationship between Le Corbusier and Perriand was, not surprisingly, marked by gender-related tensions. The famous picture of her posing on the chaise longue suggests her ambiguous role in a modern world: Perriand exposes her legs and her neck in a rather provocative way, but does not let us gaze upon her hair (which was cut daringly short) or upon her face — almost as if she were hiding behind an oriental veil. The picture conveys a tension between proactive seduction and traditional modesty.
In contrast to the “industrial” structure of the chaise longue, Perriand originally upholstered it in pony skin or leather-trimmed canvas (Hermès-style): both sensual and luxurious materials. Thus Perriand succeeded in creating a perfect balance between rationality and sensuality, between mass-production and luxury, between male and female, between control and indulgence.
Marlene Haring overthrows this equilibrium. Her cover of sensual-luxurious masses of hair offers a voyeuristic gaze upon what is usually kept trimmed or hidden. Some female Modernists favored short hair and promoted it as a sign of liberation, although the cutting of hair belongs to both Western pre-modern and Eastern traditions, which considered exposed hair to be a sign of the free, but required women who were bound by marriage, by serfdom, or by religious oaths to cover or cut off their hair. Marlene Haring’s False Friend (Long Chair) thus unveils the chaise longue’s hidden signs of patriarchal inequality, and becomes a critical statement on Modernism itself.