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Spring 2006 Book Review: Perriand, Charlotte. Charlotte Perriand: A Life of Creation (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003) and McLeod, Mary. Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003). Daniel Naegele Iowa State University, [email protected]

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Abstract Although she is often considered one of the 20th century's most renowned women in architecture, Charlotte Perriand (1903 -1999) was not an architect- she regarded herself as an interior designer and took issue with those who thought her merely a furruture designer. Her best-known interior was a temporary installation that she and Pierre Jeanneret completed while in the atelier of Le Cor busier for the 1929 Paris Salon d'Automne exhibition. In that same year, in collaboration with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, she designed three chairs: the chaise-longue, grand confort, and fauteuil a dossier basculant. All were essential "equipment" in the 1930s architecture of Le Cor busier, and all are in production today.

Disciplines Architectural History and Criticism | Architecture

Comments This book Review is from Harvard Design Magazine 24 (2006): 113–117. Posted with permission.

This book review is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/arch_pubs/70 BOOK REVIEWS

REVIEWED BY DA N IEL NAEGELE city, it has become like the city: disor­ lSt Charlotte Perriand dered and multi-ordered, with differ­ A Life of Creation ~· ent contributors giving different views of the same typologies, and none of by Charlotte Perriand New York: The Monacelli Press, 2003 the categories managing to contain HARLOTTE their specimens. Nevertheless, the PERRIAN Charlotte Perriand d message of containment wins: The An Art of Living )n Seagram plaza is criticized because it edited by Mary Mcleod breaks the boundary of the building New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003 line. Libeskind's design for the Jewish lie Museum in Berlin is suspect because it Although she is often considered one of breaks the boundaries of "context" the 20th century's most renowned a (New, 226). Suburban sprawl is unac­ women in architecture, Charlotte Per­ ceptable because it knows no bound­ riand (1903 -1999) was not an archi­ ed aries. The boundary of the block and tect-she regarded herself as an the city, the discipline of the grid, so interior designer and took issue with t, ancient and accommodating, must be difficult to answer: Repaired or repro­ those who thought her merely a furru­ preserved, or if lost, restored. The duced traditional urban fabric can't ture designer. Her best-known inte­ r. perhaps genetic disposition to equate conjure traditional civic virtues. rior was a temporary installation that identity with boundary, the line New/old clapboard communities she and Pierre Jeanneret completed between this which is me, or my place, house just as many onanistic geeks as while in the atelier of Le Corbusier rs and that which is other, is here outer-limits sprawl. But social and for the 1929 Paris Salon d'Automne expressed in all its primal simplicity. political alienation require more of a exhibition. In that same year, in col­ And in a way, this is right: Our response than sneering at the recidi­ laboration with Le Corbusier and incapacity to lay down ordinarily vism of those trying in all good faith Jeanneret, she designed three chairs: desirable urban fabric, identified in to respond. If the built environment is the chaise-longue, g;rand confort, and post ex sub dis as a by-product of socio­ the symptom, not the cause, then fauteuil a dossier basculant. All were economic conditions that produce what is the cure? Perhaps to get all essential "equipment" in the 1930s generic peripheral settlements, is here these admirably thoughtful and inven­ architecture of Le Corbusi er, and all ht diagnosed as resulting from a loss of tive people into one room, instead of are in production today. urban design skills that can be restored, on opposing sides of an intellectual Though Perriand's fame was estab­ in part through The N ew Civic Art. The barricade. There are signs of a more lished in Le Corbusier's firm, where she lack of these skills is damaging the complex both/and approach in both worked as an associate from 1927 to

0 social fabric and contributing to the books: In post ex sub dis, a contributor 193 7, she was just thirty-four when, at :y atomization of the civis. The analysis in is included who questions the use of the height of the Depression, she left each book is both true and insufficient. the term "fragmentation." In The New the studio. For the next six decades Economic change has resulted in Civic Art, there is the occasional Mod­ she designed mostly interiors. While typological change- the mall, the ernist example of best practice and with Le Corbusier, Perriand espoused shopping centre, Edge City. And we occasional doctrinal contradictions belief in metal and new technology as have, after the ruptures of Modernist between the various contributors. A means for modern furniture; in the urbanism, forgotten how to design that move away from polemic is a move rnid-30s she adopted a preference for which preceded such change. toward the real. D wood. Le Corbu sier himself had l - The question is, do we need to re­ NOTES moved in a similar direction as had member? The answers separate the I. In my essay references to page numbers in the Aalto, Breuer, and many renowned Y'· books under review, post will refer to post ex mb dis: t>r contributors to post ex sub dis- "No, Ut·ban Fmgmentations and Constructions and New artists. As box gave way to human psy­ and anyway, we can't"-from the con­ will refer to The New Civic Art: Elements ofTilWn che, Surrealist artists like Mir6 and tributors to The New Civic Art-"Yes, Planning. Calder experimented with "free-form" 2. Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thou­ and anyway, we must." The best lack sand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994), I. - form easily translated into furniture, all conviction, and the rest are alarm­ 3. Ibid. if not so easily into interiors. For the ingly certain: Salvation through design 4. Rational Architecture: La •·econstruction de lfl ville editor of a leftist paper, Ce Soir, Perriand Europeenne (Brussels: Archives d'Architecture - is it any more justified in its New Moderne, 1978). designed a free-form desk. A unique, Urbanist waistcoat than it was in its large, and apparently expensive object, Modernist boiler suit? The question is the desk seemed to contradict Popular

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Front convictions Perriand espoused Modern form. In agreement with mountain strucrures for minimal habi­ ca at the time. Indeed, bourgeois tastes Japanese preference, Perriand placed tation. On the one hand, her Mod­ F1 and socialist notions were not easily furnirure closer to the ground, thus ernist 193 7-193 8 Bivouac and barrel c reconciled. "One-offs" were obviously creating a greater sense of space. Like shelters-refuges for "inexpensive r< exclusive, whereas Modernist aesthet­ Le Corbusier's pilotis, legs lifted these vacation retreats" comprised of rubular w ics of simplification and serialization objects into the air, permitting an metal supports and aluminum panels were rejected by the French populace. uninterrupted horizontal plane. While and braced by metal cables-were Today issues of cost and mass-market space flowed unencumbered, furnirure shiny, minimal, lightweight capsules. w are addressed in Michael Graves's Tar­ was arranged in orthogonal "rooms." They were intended to be assembled p get line and Phillipe Starck's cheap Lost in this wood translation was the on site, mass-produced, and to deli­ tl. chairs-but with production, materials, illusive spaciousness of earlier high­ cately hover on snow-covered moun­ f( marketing, and consumers unavailable tech interiors, an effect achieved with tainsides. By contrast, the traditional p· to Perriand in the '30s. the gloss of synthetic floors and ceil­ 1960 Meribel-les-Allues wood chalet w When the Germans took France ings, the chromed legs and mirrored that Perri and designed as her own p in 1940, Perriand took refuge in sliding doors of metal furniture, and retreat is rooted in the ground, blended h Japan. There, local tradition, craft, a the translucency of tabletops and ver­ with narure, heavy, organic, and inert. al love of wood, and the presence of tical partitions. Designing in wood, Where the first is anonymous and "for cl bamboo (a strong yet lightweight, Perriand enhanced space not with sur­ the people," the latter is personal, a standard yet unique, warm, malleable, face shine and translucency, but by "second home," a refuge exclusively for organic "rube") encouraged design in placing "other space"-murals and Perriand. The transition can be under­ wood, Perriand now taking cues from lighted openings, both of which pos­ stood as moving from, in Umberto d Japanese vernacular form. In 1941 the sessed their own space, space of an Eco's terms, a positivistic-technological 0 ideology toward a materialistic-histori­ 1 In the late '30s, while retaining a taste for Modernist space cal one: both "optimistic ideologies of and form, Perriand adopted organic materials and shapes, progress" that seek to build a better F and then traditional, vernacular design. Her furniture no world but in very different ways. 1 Sl longer defied gravity; the opposite was true. Inertness Leaving Japan, Perriand moved to n replaced mobility. Space was absorbed, not heightened. Indochina, where in 194 3 she married 1 famed 1929 chaise lonf5Ue was translated order different from that of the inte­ Jacques Martin, an executive with Air c into bamboo and wood, and Perriand's rior ensemble itself-at dominant France, and gave birth to her only b lightweight rubular steel "folding and focal points. Earlier, Le Corbusier had child, Pernette. In France after the war, a stacking chairs" from the mid-30s employed similar strategies using Perriand found that "the polluted Paris were done with a heavy wood frame murals and coloration to "explode" the air wasn't good for Pernette," and she and cushions of a woven straw fabric. space of enclosure, a space simultane­ and her family moved to Jacques's sis­ Perriand's stay in Japan culminated in ously planar and volumetric. ter's "comfortable, sunny house in the a 1941 exhibition of her work at From national to international, Champagne region, complete with Takashimaya, a department store in from metal to wood, from industrial garden, rosebushes, cherry trees, cats, Tokyo and Osaka. As at Sruttgart in to indigenous, from the here and now and dogs" [A, 206]. 1927, the exhibition was a "room within to an ahistoric wandering, Perriand's Perriand continued to design. Her a room" set up inside the warehouse­ transition was permanent. It added guest rooms of the Hotel du Doron like store itself. Designed with the significance to her reuvre, for it initiated (1947) and later for srudent rooms in Japanese architect Junzo Sakakura, the a dialectic. To reiterate, in the late '30s, the Maison de la Tunisie (1952)2 fea­ exhibition room was modulated by while retaining a taste for Modernist rure a colored accent wall combined existing columns and further modulated space and form, Perriand adopted with a continuous, shallow desktop. by Perriand's floor and wall materials. organic materials and shapes, and then Whereas the hotel rooms seem almost The resulting "space" (and here one traditional, vernacular design. This quaint, the srudent rooms offer color relies solely on black-and-white images adoption affected proportions and and Noguchi-esque free form as relief of the installation) was not unlike that strucrure. Her furnirure no longer to the inherent heaviness of an opaque, of the 1929 Salon, or of Le Corbusier's defied gravity; the opposite was true. almost monolithic wood. In 1950 a far Villa Church bibliotheque, or of the lobby Inertness replaced mobility. Space was more intrigillng Perriand is evidenced and bibliotheque of his Pavilion Suisse. absorbed, not heightened. Oddly, this in her kitchens for Le Corbusier's Obviously, furnirure grew chunkier as contrast is most evident not in Per­ Marseilles Unite housing. Later, with wood replaced metal. Yet it was still of riand's interiors but in her three Jean Prouve, Perriand designed wall

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lbi- cabinets and storage units for Air ski resort units in the French Alps. furniture?) But this is by design and France staff housing in Brazzaville, These late manifestations of prefabri­ not omission. tel Congo. In both instances, metal was cation and equipment are important, Issued in French as Vie de creation in reintroduced into a wood aesthetic as for they return Perriand to what 1998-a year before Perriand's death tlar was the sense of mass production, seems her most significant contribu­ at the age of ninety-six-Charlotte Is though the latter was never realized. tion to Modern design: working walls Perriand's autobiography was published In the mid-50s in Japan, together (sometimes swollen to include kitchen in English five years later by The s. with Sakakura and Martha Villiger, or bath). Neither furniture nor "inte­ Monacelli Press as Charlotte Perriand: l(j Perriand designed the exhibition Syn­ riors" per se, these highly ambiguous A Life of Creation. It is dedicated: "To thesis of the Arts, a living and dining -in the most positive sense of the Tessa and future generations who will room ensemble for Takashimaya. Pro­ word-elements of architecture are build the twenty-first century." At il­ portions, intimate scale, color, the simultaneously object and place and as ninety-five, Perriand tells the story of lt warmth of wood, and subdued metal such question the notion of furniture her long life in design. Many of the parts were crucial in achieving a and room as distinct and immutable book's shortcomings result from this led humane, delicate aesthetic. As noted entities. Certainly similar questions distant perspective. Recollections are rt. above, in 1960 Perriand built a rustic occurred in earlier architecture; and sometimes inaccurate. Biases are all too for chalet for her own use (tempting after Perriand and Le Corbusier, evident. Sentimental moments appear another comparison to Le Corbusier Kahn found like value in poche space, as obstacles in otherwise intriguing [Of and his 1952 cabanon), but perhaps while various PoMo masters allowed stories. And opinions on things and ~ r- more importantly, at this time she thickened walls to swallow up the built­ events outside Perriand's realm of designed two interior screen walls: ins and barely mentionables. The con­ expertise are offered all too often. In ;al one, a colored pleated fabric for the cept is not original, but Perriand's addition, the book only marginally ri­ Tokyo Air France agency; the other, a Modernist manifestation might be. establishes the conditions of the times ,f "staggered bookshelf" for her own Air Recently, several accounts of in which Perriand lived. And unlike France apartment in Rio. Both, in a Perriand's life and work have appeared Henry Adams's Education, for instance, sense, are thickened walls, the latter including Perriand's autobiography or even Bob Dylan's Chronicles, :o more "equipment" than the former. and an extensive, beautifully made Perriand's autobiography seldom ele­ :d The bookshelf of 1962 owes its con­ review of her work, Charlotte Perriand: vates its telling to a point at which the r ceptual origin to the wall of casiers in An Art of Living, edited by Mary inevitable truths of experience are both the Villa Church and the Salon McLeod. The former is Perriand's communicated. Still, the autobiography 1r, d'Automne of 1929. In Rio, as earlier personal account of her life and friend­ succeeds, for one value of autobio­ IS in the mid-' 50s Japan Synthesis of the ships. It makes little attempt to directly graphical writing is not its accuracy of e Arts exhibition and in her design for account for her design but offers accounting but its capacity to convey shelving in the Maison du Mexique, instead a chronological record of her the author's way of thinking about e Perriand brings color and the warmth life and valuable insight into personal things. And whereas a too guarded and texture of wood to this wall. The and professional relationships. The recollection necessarily diminishes this design of a functional wall that both latter, by contrast, is a detailed review conveyance, one imagines Perriand's partially separates and fully invigorates of Perriand's work, a collection of writing as at least semi-unguarded. r modern space seems the very essence essays that more or less chronologi­ That is to say, she does not tell all, but of furniture as equipment. Perriand cally examines not Perriand the person, the absence of the sound of hammer elaborated the concept in her designs but Perriand the designer, her furni­ on nail head is conspicuous. We are for bathrooms. With the bathroom for ture and interiors, and their political encouraged to speculate, and in such the 1929 Salon d'Automne as prece­ and social context. Taken together, the encouragement some idea of her way dent, Perriand pursued the idea in the two give a well-rounded view of Per­ of thinking is communicated. Delafon bathroom for the '3 7 Paris riand. Neither book critically exam­ This being said, one notes that World's Fair (together with Le Cor­ ines Perriand's design from formal or often the impression Perriand renders busier and Pierre J eanneret), in a 1952 functional points of view. (Isn't the of herself is less than flattering. Again ., design for her own Paris apartment, gran comfort too wide for most human and again she tells of her socialist con­ arguably in the very wonderful "Mai­ bodies, the petite comfort too narrow? victions, her sympathies with the son du Sahara" capsules with Prouve And why is the former a diminutive French working class, and her various in 1958, and ultimately in a 1975 pre­ twenty-five inches high, causing it, or attempts to better the everyday life of fabricated polyester bathroom-mass­ everything around it, to look posi­ the average French citizen through produced and plugged into Arc 1800, tively wacky in the company of "real" furniture design-attempts that reached

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their apex in 1934, when Perriand wrote Often Perriand's autobiography and analytical account of Perriand and Per "The Housewife and Her Home" col­ seems excruciatingly self-centered­ her work. Edited by Mary McLeod, ma1 umn for Vendredi, the "Fight-Against­ beleaguered by the word "1." This is the book is a collection comprising an gra Fascism" review [73]. Yet despite these most evident in her telling of various introduction and eight essays. The Me stated convictions, almost always Per­ romantic relationships, a telling that first four essays (for brevity, I've wo: riand's actions belie an allegiance comprises a substantial part of her abstracted all titles) are arranged more mg either solely to herself or to political book and tends toward the frivolous. or less chronologically: Esther Da wit parties overtly responsible for social Thus while still a student in Paris's Costa Meyer's "Perriand Before Le she misery on the largest scale. Union centrale des arts decoratif, she Corbusier"; Mary McLeod's "Domes­ by For instance, when in June 1940 married an Englishman. "He was tic Equipment, 1928- 29"; Danilo cal the Germans marched effortlessly into called Percy," she writes (20), then Udovicki-Selb's "Perriand and the USt Paris, the thirty-seven-year-old Char­ explains that "at the time marriage Popular Front"; and Yasushi Zenno's rna lotte Perriand escaped by train to Mar­ was the only way for the chrysalis I "Perriand in Japan, 1940-41." The tio seille. There she boarded an ocean was to turn into a butterfly ..." (20). next three are overviews that collect tio liner and traveled in a "first-class, She divorced a few years later. In the Perriand by type, association, and he mahogany-finished cabin" (129) to '30s, she pursued Pierre Jeanerret, Le "object-ness": Arthur Ruegg's "Trans­ un Japan. In Japan, she assumed a gov­ Corbusier's partner. J eanneret appears forming the Bathroom, 1927- 57"; (2( ernment position as design consultant in the book's photos six times more Roger Aujame's "Perriand and Jean in decorative art with the Imperial often than both of Perriand's husbands Prouve"; and Joan Ockman's "Lessons Ministry of Trade and Industry at a combined. "Pierre followed me" (58), from Objects." The final essay, "Per­ "salary of 100,000 francs a year, plus Perriand writes triumphantly. And riand and the Alps," is a largely picto­ fees and travel expenses" (121). Perriand later, "Poor Pierre ..." (64), and then rial review of six decades of Perriand's m: -who pleads, "Not for anything in " ... so I dragged Pierre along ... designs for various ski huts and resorts. te: the world did I want to leave Paris," where amid fragrant thyme and rose­ Throughout, the book is richly illus­ []( and then asks, "Would it be able to mary we swam naked ... " (102). trated in black-and-white photographs G defend itself?" (125)-exited the Indeed in reading the autobiography and line drawings. In addition, it fea­ qt chaos of war in comfort and luxury, one imagines that being naked in pub­ tures fifty-nine color plates, color being dt not forgetting to take proper skiing lic was a particular preoccupation of essential to interior design. Four short M and mountaineering gear, having Perriand. "I wondered how I could "Recollections of Charlotte Perriand," ar learned in advance, she tells us, that sunbathe nude with a priest around," followed by five "Selected Writings by fu "there was a lot of snow in Japan" she mused (102), while the autobiog­ Charlotte Perriand," end the book. The (122). Apparently, Perriand was raphy's illustrative text shows Perriand selected writings offer Perriand's own a! untroubled by atrocities committed in in 193 5 from the back, topless, hands theoretical insight into each phase of ti Nanjing by Japanese soldiers against raised above her head Rocky-style. her long career, adding "ideology" to d innocent Chinese citizens and by the More than a quarter of the book's practice and therefore expanding one's n menacing presence of]apan in French photos are not of Perriand's design understanding of Perriand's purpose. e Indochina. She seemed untroubled, work, but of Perriand herself. There McLeod's collection is largely his­ 0 too, by the presence of Stalin during are no images of Perriand in her for­ torical. It touches on the last half of a her extensive stays in the Soviet ties; only two of her in her fifties; and Perriand's long career, but far greater a

Union in the early '30s, and untrou­ then three of her in her nineties. The emphasis is placed on Perriand's more ]' bled later by the notorious Mao front cover of the Monacelli English productive and significant first thirty regime during her 1972 visit to the edition features three photographs, all years. Despite Perriand's relative fame, People's Republic of China. Indeed of Perri and herself, including a cropped little was known about her work after during that visit, when the tourist Per­ version of the well-known "Charlotte she left Le Corbusier's atelier. Carol riand sensed herself intrusive as she and Corb" image (with husband Perry Corden's entry on Perriand in the 1982 attempted to pry "in the old quarters, smiling benignly in the background Macmillan Encyclopedia ofArchitecture is hoping to see one of those small tradi­ while tending bar for the occasion) limited to about 200 words. Because tional dwellings nestled in a square and the oh-so-controversial photo­ of this, the book is a revelation. All courtyard," she tells us that to avoid graph of a face-to-the-wall Charlotte, seems fresh, even new. There is a pre­ ostracism she gladly would "have reclining, with skirt at the knee, on carious balance that must be main­ slipped into a Mao outfit" (357) if the 1929 chaise-longue. 3 tained, however, in presenting only to be free to see all that she Charlotte Perriand: An Art ofLiving Perriand at this time, when so much is wanted to see. is a far more comprehensive, accurate, constantly being made of so little. For

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and Perriand's importance is in many ways often fraught with contradictions. Yet, REVIEWED BY MARSHALL BERMAN I, marginal. By its very nature, a mono­ both work and life are the subjects of Moment of Grace an graph must promote its central figure. an autobiography and a large, unusu­ The American City in the 1950s McLeod quite ably elevates Perriand's ally beautiful and intelligent review, by Michael Johns work, but for the purpose of scrutiniz­ work too good to be dismissed as fash­ Berkeley: University of California Press, ore ing it carefully, from several angles and ionable elaboration on the odd or 2003 with great critical insight. "I hope," irrelevant. Not to ask of these books she writes in her introduction, "that "Why Perriand?" is to risk underesti­ Happy Days, Green Lights, Crash es- by expanding the conventional histori­ mating the significance of her life and For Anaerican cities, the 1960s began cal perspective to examine what has design. My own answer is that first, a prolonged horror show. The prime usually been considered a modest or Perriand was a woman in architecture; monster was the ever expanding Fed­ rs marginal practice-because of her posi­ second, Perriand made a decisive eral Highway System-the largest tion as a woman, working in collabora­ move from metal to wood, a move public works project, people said, tion, and designing interiors-it will implying much more than simple since the Pyramids. 1 All over Anaerica, help provide a fuller and more nuanced preference; third, like Gray, Chareau, from the biggest cities to the smallest, s- understanding ofFrench modernism" Breuer, and others, Perriand cultivated the FHS worked as an engine for rip­ (20). I think it is to McLeod's great the extremely potent notions of furni­ ping up downtowns. In just a few years, credit that the "understanding" goes ture as equipment and of functional hundreds of solid city neighborhoods ns well beyond French Modernism. wall as ambiguous entity. turned into fragments lodged between Rather unfortunately, the essays (Da I suspect, however, that neither the freeways and entrance/ exit ramps. D­ Costa Meyer's is the exception) too autobiography nor Mary McLeod's An Thriving businesses found themselves l's infrequently place Perriand in the con­ Art of Living would agree with this cut off from their customers. Venerable ts. text of other French designers of inte­ answer. Each sees the work differently streets became parking lots. Beloved riors and furniture-Herbst, Chareau, and in its own way. Significance is not hotels and department stores, so vital rrs Gray, for instance-and too infre­ absolute. The two books together to civic identity, were forced to close. quently focus on essentials of interior expose Perriand's life and work and Even as the FHS ravaged down­ ag design-color, scale, space, light. What way of thinking. The expose provokes town, it created overpowering reasons rt McLeod's book makes evident again the reader to thought. One could for moving, "offers you can't refuse," " and again, however, is the role of salons, hardly ask for more. D as the wiseguys in The Godfather said. ,y furniture rooms, and marketing images NOTES Capital, jobs, and people took the Je -that is, the role of the ephemeral and I. The nomenclature is from Umberto Eco, Trav­ offers and left. Meanwhile, millions of els in Hypn· Reality, trans. William Weaver (New almost wholly visual-in the promo­ York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Southern and West Indian blacks tion and dissemination of "interior 1986), 91. poured into Northern cities in search design." (Has anyone ever sat in a Per­ 2. One questions, however, the 1947 wood chairs of the entry-level jobs that were fast 's pictured in Perri and's Shangri-La nightclub in riand chair?) This being said, McLeod's Meribel-les-Ailues (McLeod, 172 , fig. 22). The disappearing. Meanwhile, a heroin emphasis on materials and production, nightclub's seemingly uneven, apparently stone epidemic spread, leading to a pro- on Perriand's associations with artists floor could only have encouraged the notorious instability of three-legged chairs. That reviewers and industrial designers is entirely never interrogate the comfort and function of fur­ appropriate to Perriand. One wonders niture is unfortunate, for as with architecture of a if it is indicative of French Modernism certain kind, "commodity" is an essential criterion. 3. That Perriand was an extremely short person is as well? not noted when this image is "analyzed." Yet What then is the significance of Perriand's size seems of the utmost importance Charlotte Perriand-her life, her since a good deal of the furniture that she designed or helped to execute-including the chaise-longue thoughts, her work-to the 21st cen­ -is unusually small, so much so that it borders on tury? For while her designs were the dysfunctional. Scale is significant to interior extremely good, arguably they were design and is only understood in relationship to the human body. Almost all of Perriand's work is never as essential as those of Herbst, shown without the human figure, the obvious Chareau, Noguchi, Breuer, Eames, or exception being two of the four photos of the 195 5 a host of other furniture and interior Takashimaya Synthesis of the Arts exhibition that feature female Japanese models conveniently designers. And her life's story, though attired to "work" with the show. it spans nearly the entire century and involves architects and artists of great renown, lacks heroic conviction and is

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