Rietveld Chair Revisited

Whatever you do, don't put this chair in your dungeon. Don't.

Much more interesting is what a dungeon designed by Gerrit Rietveld would look like.

In 2019 Michael Shnayerson published his book "Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art", a look into the world of modern art and its random sky-high valuations. It concludes that art has become big business.

As an economist I'm rather fond of Keynes' greater fool theory. It states that it doesn't matter how much a share is actually worth, all you need is someone who buys it for more than you paid for it. And of course get out when the house is on fire. Easier said than done, selling your portfolio at a profit in a global pandemic.

Anything can be art, but not every wannabe artist carries within them that burning desire to be an original. It's probably why struggling artists often look towards erotica for "inspiration." Sex sells is all that matters. There are zero successful artists who believe staying hungry is the path towards artistic enlightenment. Gluttony on the other hand? In all fairness, findommes on every level can learn a thing or two about "the game" from riel artists.

How about selling your precious poo in tinned cans? Signed, sealed, delivered. Of course the buyers should never open them. That's exactly what Italian artist Piero Manzoni did in 1961. He created an artwork consisting of 90 tin cans, each reportedly filled with 30 grams of the stuff. Here's what the label says:

Artist's Shit
Contents 30 gr net
Freshly preserved
Produced and tinned
in May 1961

Originally sold for the price of their weight in gold, about $ 37 at the time, the last remaining [unopened] cans fetch between $100.000 and $200.000 at auction. Eat that Miss Findomme. But is it art? Who knows? Same thing goes for the original Rietveld chair. All I can tell is that it looks uncomfortable.

"In the Red Blue Chair, Rietveld manipulated rectilinear volumes and examined the interaction of vertical and horizontal planes in much the same way as he did in his architecture. Although the chair was originally designed in 1918, its color scheme of primary colors (red, yellow, blue) plus black—so closely associated with the Dutch de Stijl art and architecture movement—was applied around 1923. Hoping that much of his furniture would eventually be mass-produced rather than handcrafted, Rietveld aimed for simplicity in construction. The pieces of wood that compose the Red Blue Chair are in the standard lumber sizes readily available at the time."

    - Museum of Modern Art, New York

Whatever. Now imagine you're a struggling artist a hundred years later. Inspiration is for loosers. Fifty Shades is hot. Meanwhile the alphabet is hard to decipher. Why bother reading the fine print? Get notorious (and rich) or die trying. And yes, we're talking about true art here, vocal style. Lesson number one, you know it's art when you see or hear it. Right, Miss Jackson? No jokes about picking up on the smell please. Doesn't matter if you like it. Art will always be art. That wisdom was clearly lost upon Bastiaan Buijs, a Dutch artist, whom I've never heard of, when he started tinkering with Rietveld's uncomfortable design classic.

Gerrit Rietveld felt that there was a greater goal for the furniture designer than just physical comfort: the well-being and comfort of the spirit. [1] Even if you fail to understand how this particular chair brings that ideal closer, hold on to it, because it's art. A dying breed.

"Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

    - Andy Warhol

A few "risqué" add-ons on the other hand are not. Quick dash for cash, a bit like Disney's Frozen, part 666. One comment highlights the fact that the original chair is all about proportions, composition and detailing, kinda artsy. Mr. Buijs raped the original trying to make up for his lack of inspiration. Harsh but not necessarily untrue. It also dispels the fact that creative folk everywhere speak a common language. Some think of his design as an electric chair, very much the opposite of liberating BDSM from the shadows. Why is it important anyway?

"Through the BDSM Icon chair, Buijs aims to question the apparent boycott of sexuality in design."

""I wanted To bring BDSM into the light," he told Dezeen. "I wanted to show it in another context and to start the conversation or discussion about it.""

How 'bout that "or"?

""To talk about it and recognize it as a taboo results in making it less of a taboo," he added."

Why?Nobody cares about making BDSM less of a taboo. There's already too much kink in broad daylight. Even worse, nobody knows when or if E.L. James will write another pre-se-quel Fifty Shades novel.

Even the contraption in which Miss Jackson disciplines her happy volunteers live on stage looks more like original art than this. Then again, she's a true creative, Mr. Buijs is not. [2]

OWK throne.
Comes with free wicked stepmother!

Even as an iconoclast, the redesigned chair misfires. It took me back to the old days, when I dreamt of one day building mistress a throne. She deserves the best and today's thrones are just butt-ugly. Luckily Dutch is also part-time DIY geek. By the way, have you seen just how ghastly that OWK throne really is? It neither projects power nor does it scream labour of love. Given enough time, say one or two millennia, I can rebuild the entire OWK by hand and make it better, except for the structural engineering. And that throne of course, but for different reasons.

When it comes to thrones, there is no one size fits all. My blog is her altar. She knows, I know. Funny as hell. Sad things always are. Thrones are deeply personal. Only that one special slave who shares an unbreakable bond with his mistress can build her one. Unsupervised of course, otherwise it breaks their red string of fate. And without bling or grand gestures. Why? Because only he understands a throne is mere background noise. Done right, it neither highlights nor downplays the woman sitting on it. The perfect throne reveals to the world a glimpse of what makes her unique and why he loves her. The inherent risk is never in revealing too little but in showing too much.

Upon closer inspection there is only one throne fit for her. The arms in which she falls asleep at night. They're made for it. It's also the reason why I'm the only one who can craft her the perfect throne. [3]

To create something, anything requires dedication, devotion, resourcefulness, skill, love and creativity, just to name a few. But above all you want to create something beautiful just because, not to get rich quick. If that's your goal, Mr. Buijs, why not start a career as a male findom? Canned poo is hot these days. "I wonder which lucky looser slave girl gets to buy my last can of freshly preserved, tinned Master caviar for the bargain price of $100.000?"

---

Notes:

1. Rietveld and his de Stijl colleagues—including the movement’s most famous theorist and practitioner, Piet Mondrian—sought to create a utopia based on a harmonic human-made order, which they believed could renew Europe after the devastating turmoil of World War I. New forms, in their view, were essential to this rebuilding.
2. In contrast with the "taboo" topic, Buijs based the shape of the chair on a design classic – Gerrit Rietveld's iconic 1917 Red and Blue Chair. "The chair itself is inspired on the Rietveld model, but adapted to its functionality in BDSM terms," said Buijs. "Once again this is a beautiful, exciting and intriguing object meant to be used sexually, but also as a showpiece – triggering discussion about lust and excitement."
3. Dutch has the best arms. Or at least that's what she says in my dreams.