Few designers have elevated the chair to the artistic heights of Robert Wilson. The legendary theater director and artist has long considered furniture not just functional, but performative—an extension of space, movement, and meaning, particularly in his own productions. "In almost all of my plays, there is a chair specially designed," he once said. "Often, the chairs are much like an actor." Now, his singular vision takes center stage as Raisonné and August Editions present a new monograph, Robert Wilson: Chairs.
Edited by Owen Laub, the book dives deep into Wilson’s prolific career, unveiling previously unseen works and offering a fresh perspective on his groundbreaking approach to form and function across five decades. To mark the occasion, a limited-edition set of his chairs, produced by RW Works, will be produced. Raisonné is also hosting "Robert Wilson: Works for the Stage." Opening today, the exhibition marks the unveiling of the Queen Victoria Café Chair, originally designed by Wilson in 1974 and now produced by Raisonné in an edition of 10.
Wilson’s relationship with furniture is as much about collecting as it is about creating. Over the years, he has amassed an unconventional and expansive collection, including several hundred chairs from historically significant makers. The focus on learning from assembled master is fitting for the experimental theater director, best known for his collaborations with the likes of Philip Glass, Lucinda Childs, and Tom Waits.
The histories of art and design are embedded in his precise, unexpected stage interventions that pull from this collected body of work and his own imagination—the ideas made manifest in wood, bronze, and steel, as well as taxidermied legs, tempered glass, and neon.
In the publication, Wilson's practice is elucidated in text by the artist himself, curators Glenn Adamson and Trevor Fairbrother, set designer Marie de Testa, and August Founder and Editor-in-Chief Dung Ngo. Photographer Martien Mulder captures the pieces as one might a model: standing in various poses across a stark editorial backdrop.
If Wilson’s work teaches us anything, it’s that a chair is never just a chair—it’s a statement, a sculpture, and, in the right hands, a work of art.
