Useful Forms: Furniture by Charlotte Perriand
Princeton University Art Museum
April 2 - July 11, 2004
French designer Charlotte Perriand is frequently named as one of the most important but overlooked modernist designers of the twentieth century. The Princeton University Art Museum give the public a rare opportunity to view a selection of Perriand’s mid-century furniture designs in the exhibition Useful Forms: Furniture by Charlotte Perriand.
Although Charlotte Perriand has been the subject of major exhibitions in both France and England (at the Museé des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Design Museum in London), she has received virtually no exposure in American museums, and remains underrepresented in American museum collections. The Princeton exhibition will be only the second in the United States to focus on her work, and the first to concentrate exclusively on Perriand’s mid-century designs created during the two decades following her employment in the studio of the architect Le Corbusier.
“Charlotte Perriand was an important designer who enjoyed a long and productive career,” notes Jennifer King, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, “but her later work is often overshadowed by her contributions to Le Corbusier’s atelier, where she collaborated on some of the most iconic chairs of the twentieth century. This exhibition highlights Charlotte Perriand designs from the 1940s and 1950s—an extremely fruitful period during which she experimented with different materials and forms, and became concerned with issues of affordability. Perriand thought good furniture design should be accessible to the average consumer, not just the wealthy elite.”
Useful Forms features six works, including the colorful shelving unit designed with the Ateliers Jean Prouvé for the dormitory of the Maison du Mexique of the Cité Universitaire, Paris, in 1952; a freeform desk from 1960; and a folding chaise-longue Charlotte Perriand designed during a trip to Japan in 1941. The exhibition also includes a rare library table designed in collaboration with Jean Prouvé and lighting designer André Salomon for the Maison de l’Etudiant in Paris.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated brochure with an essay by Jennifer King, the guest curator.
“The exhibition coincides with a recent upsurge in attention to Perriand’s career, stemming from the long overdue publication of the first book-length monograph on Charlotte Perriand in English, Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living,” said Jennifer King. The book, edited by Columbia University Professor Mary McLeod, features scholarly essays by several Charlotte Perriand scholars including Princeton Professor of Art and Archaeology Esther da Costa Meyer.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
